Peak Oil News and Message Boards

emersonbiggins wrote:No doubt bad calls were made on both sides, JD. The difference is that Yergin was consistently wrong for years prior to the collapse, in addition to being wrong about the collapse itself. The sudden collapse in prices was a mulligan on all sides, as your graphs well point out.

Hasn't anyone who has made consistent concrete predictions about these things been wrong for years?

mcgowanjm wrote:$71.50 is the top for oil now and the electricity grid can't handle
the plug ins even if the world does have enough lithium which it doesn't.

The grid can handle it [url=http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/ornl-study-expl.html[fine[/url]. If the cars charge after 10pm (time) we don't have change a thing due to the hug difference between consumption over the course of a day. Lithium supplies are more than enough for any realistic growth in PHEVs over the next couple decades.

mcgowanjm wrote:And then who can spend the $1000's on replacing the battery every couple of years.

These days it's more like every couple of decades. 100-200k miles isn't unheard of for EVs built last century. Current Lithium batteries can last two to three times that.

On 17 September The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article on “peak oil,” “There Will Be Oil,” written by Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research and consulting firm and deserved recipient of Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “There Will Be Oil” “is adapted from his new book, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World.”

The essay will doubtless have widespread influence amongst prosperous The Wall Street Journal readers, but in his glib dismissal of “peak oil” theory advocates, Yergin glosses or ignores a number of issues fundamental to the larger picture, for whatever reason, and these oversights should be considered in any evaluation of the piece and the peak oil “specter.”

Yergin notes, “Just in the years 2007 to 2009, for every barrel of oil produced in the world, 1.6 barrels of new reserves were added.” But this fails to take into account the following points.

First is that for oil producing nations reserves are like money in the bank and inflated reserve figures are common. Even with the newest technology oil reserve figures remain at best “guesstimates” and should not be taken as hard and fast figures.

Secondly, while the Middle East for the foreseeable future will remain the world’s top producing area, it is unhappily also one of the most politically unstable regions of the world. The “Arab Spring’s” impact is still playing out, much less potential impact of Palestine’s incipient bid at the United Nation’s for recognition, both of which could yet still throw a major spanner in the works.

To recap briefly:

Saudi Arabia, the world’s first or second-largest producer, vying with the Russian Federation for top position, is not immune from either of the two aforementioned effects. Saudi Arabia does not allow foreign oil companies concessions and has adopted a strict conservation policy, so don’t expect to see a massive rise in production there anytime soon. As for Palestine’s impact, last week former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence and ex-ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal in an essay in the New York Times warned that an American veto of Palestinian U.N. membership would end the ''special relationship'' between the two countries, and make the US ''toxic'' in the Arab world.

As for Iraq, eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, holder of massive amounts of untapped reserves, the country remains mired in a low-grade civil war and unresolved political issues between its oil-rich northern Kurdish region and Baghdad. Further east, Iran is most unlikely to boost production significantly anytime soon because of U.S. sanctions imposed in 1979.

Libya remains the wild card, with only 25 percent of the country’s oil potential explored, but it has been wracked by six months of civil unrest, and the irredentist cadre of Gaddafi supporters could easily target the country’s oil infrastructure in the future.

In the Western Hemisphere, OPEC recently announced that Venezuela’s potential reserves could top those of Saudi Arabia, but Full article at: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Da ... orian.html

I say historian. The Prize was instrumental in informing me about the role of oil in history. He covered everything from Pennsylvania to Rockefeller to the rise of the Middle East. He placed them in perspective and over turned many stones. That being said, I can't see why he isn't on board in any way, even under the table, with peak oil. Many people say it is because he is in this or that pocket. That certainly could be it, but without him they would find another. Yes, he could be an egomaniac enjoying his place in the sun, deep down realizing it goes away if he takes up warning about peak oil. The simplest answer, however, is probably that, like all of us, he has a problem with exponential thinking. It takes math and critique to discover if curves are at work. From peak oil to the rise of wealth inequality people don't easily see them.

We have several generations of western ingenuity and growth and the harnessing of power on the planet. Daniel Yergin's position regarding peak oil for me is mainly framed within this ideology of believing that this ingenuity will continue to serve global capitalism regardless of any physical constraints out there. Any doubt expressed regarding our ability to continue to overcome obstacles is immediately assumed in the minds the likes of Yergin that this also comes from an ideology that is anti capitalism, anti growth, and somehow representing a subversive sub culture.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes into play. As long as these ideologies frame your perspective than all the data points out there will be interpreted from within this ideological divide.

What bridges the polarity of these apposing ideologies?

Consequences.

Aaaaah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... X720141001

Kind of like Obama receiving the nobel prize for peace, eh? If it wasn't so sad and wrong I would laugh.

Paulo

Yergin puts out exactly the kind of BAU propaganda that the Obama administration likes. How appropriate that they would create a new medal in "energy" and select Yergin to be the recipient of the first energy medal.

Paulo1 wrote:Kind of like Obama receiving the nobel prize for peace, eh? If it wasn't so sad and wrong I would laugh.

Paulo

I hate to say it but that's the first thing I thought of too.

pointing fingers at any person for predictions they made regarding peak oil is pretty pointless to my mind, there are a lot of moving parts and it is pretty difficult to put everything together and come up with anything other than a wide range of possible outcomes. I landed on my view of a bumpy plateau a long time ago but you could argue that is a bit of a cop-out in terms of making any prediction of when peak might happen. It is pretty easy to point out where any particular person who has written on peak oil was wrong at one time or another, nature of the beast.

Yergin's contribution to the energy industry to my mind is solely in his book The Prize. This was a fantastic piece of historical research that at the time of publication answered a lot of questions regarding what role politics and personalities played in the history of oil and gas. Still one of my favorite books and I occasionally direct people to certain chapters which make good points about what drove the industry in the past and what is different with today.

I am laughing so hard I'm hurting. Both Yergin and the US government have become a bad joke.

Doc - "Yergin's contribution to the energy industry to my mind is solely in his book The Prize." Certainly a significant contribution for the public to gain some insight to the global energy situation. But I can't think of any contribution to my efforts or those of anyone I know. What specifically has he contributed to your chunk of the oil patch?

An interesting comment from Dan as he received the award: "“There will be disruptions,” he said. “We need to plan for them to occur, to be alert, be prepared and be able to see the big picture”

After reading Schlesinger's bio on wiki I can better understand why they gave the award to Dan:

When Jimmy Carter became President in January 1977 he appointed Schlesinger as his special adviser on energy and subsequently as the first Secretary of Energy in October 1977. Secretary Schlesinger also oversaw the integration of the energy powers of more than 50 agencies, such as the Federal Energy Administration and the Federal Power Commission. In July 1979, Carter replaced him as part of a broader Cabinet shakeup. According to journalist Paul Glastris, "Carter fired Schlesinger in 1979 in part for the same reason Gerald Ford had—he was unbearably arrogant and impatient with lesser minds who disagreed with him, and hence inept at dealing with Congress."

So Jimmy, though not effective at raising the energy alarm bells at least he tried, didn't think Schlesinger was the man to aid in this effort. Yep... tagging Yergin with his legacy makes sense now. LOL.

The irony of certain doomers here whose own predictions have been miserable, making fun of Daniel Yergin because of his bad predictions, cannot be over-emphasized.

c-a: Given that on numerous occasions you've pointed erroneous less then optimistic prediction isn't your critique of others doing the same a bit hollow?

copious.abundance wrote:The irony of certain doomers here whose own predictions have been miserable, making fun of Daniel Yergin because of his bad predictions, cannot be over-emphasized.

Some Peak Oil predictions have been pretty good, like conventional crude maxed out and prices zoomed.

Yergin predicted that wouldn't happen. Ironically he got a medal.

I tried to google a pic of the medal, but no luck.