Peak Oil News and Message Boards

They are putting out a foul brew. It is a combo of tar sand, ethanol and NGL. It all sounds good, but it isn't the same stuff as we got before. Look at the octane of gas nowadays. It's all much lower than the gas we used to get. We may have hit a new high, or maybe it's a new low.

pstarr wrote:NGL (counted by the liars at EIA) is not oil, but rather a minor subset that may replace some gasoline. This is why (among several reasons) diesel prices remain historically high. You can gin up the gas supply with fake gasoline substitutes, but not diesel which is made from real oil

Including ethanol as oil is equally disingenuous. It ruins engines. My 2-stroke and 4-stroke lawn tools are in the shop because the corn liqueur destroyed parts. What is that doing to the expensive volvo and tacoma? It is also has a negative EROEI and so is double counting. The natural gas, coal, petroleum that goes into farming and distillation should be debited from the IEA numbers.

Real oil is in decline.

Engines can be engineered to work with ethanol, no problem. Same way as engines changed when lead was omitted from gas. Bio-diesel is made from real vegetable oil. And it's profitable, too.

meemoe_uk wrote:This evidences what I say about the IEA making 2 contradictory statements, their figures say peak oil hasn't happened yet, yet they will publish assertions of peak oil being 4 years ago. Still waiting for Pops to get back to me on that one.

What is it you don't understand?

Conventional oil production volume hasn't increased in half a decade – the $20/bbl kind we've been burning for 150 years can't meet demand regardless of the record prices.

So we're substituting whatever else we can find that will burn, just like the economists said we would – we're up to the $80-$120 kind so far.


Kind of like burning the furniture to keep warm because the firewood shed is empty, LOL.


Did I mention Brent in April was at an all-time 12 month average of almost $120/bbl, the highest in real terms in the history of oil?

Pops wrote:Conventional oil production volume hasn't increased in half a decade – the $20/bbl kind we've been burning for 150 years can't meet demand regardless of the record prices.

I do believe meemoe already addressed this:

If new sources aren't allowed, then peak oil happened 150 years ago when bucket and spade from the surface seep oil supply peaked and was being superceded by this new fangled 'dig down thru rock with a pick axe' oil.

Any time a new technology allows production from new sources, doomers find a way of invalidating it. It's like saying the "good" oil peaked when you could scoop it off the ground from surface seeps, but once we had to resort to - gasp! - drilling a hole in the ground, doomsday was just around the corner.

Sorry, meemoe is right. Doomers are constantly shifting the goalposts. We're using new technology to extract new oil. Been going on for 150 years.

OilFinder2 wrote:Sorry, meemoe is right. Doomers are constantly shifting the goalposts. We're using new technology to extract new oil. Been going on for 150 years.

Sounds like you're looking to strike it rich in the Klondike gold rush 113 years too late.

Also, if we look at production per capita (which is more logical as we need to factor in increasing population as we consider increasing production), then we see that that peaked back in 1979.

Thus, any "record" in total production won't be enough until we go back to that peak and exceed it.

And then there's oil demand, which we are meeting with non-conventional sources. A better scenario would be seeing major increases in conventional sources similar to those of the past.

OilFinder2 wrote:Sorry, meemoe is right.

Is that the first time on PO.com that someone has publically supported him on any issue?

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I supported some of his stuff on the solar cycle 24 thread

His numbers are basically correct
so are the objection on including ethanol in the total , completely different stuff

as for tar sand shale oil and pre-salt oceanic oil ,
things must be pretty bad to go so far , so deep and wring oil out of a stone
it illustrate very well the problem , good cheap oil is pretty much gone
with the conventional giant fields going in irreversible decline

a side comment ..... the crisis is on oil Exports, what is available on the world market
all the producers increase their need faster than world production
politics get nasty when the exporting countries governments try to limit local consumption

The present drop in prices is due to slack demand due to the depression and Saudi Arabia waging economic warfare against Iran
and no they are NOT brothers.

sparky wrote:.
I supported some of his stuff on the solar cycle 24 thread

His numbers are basically correct

Good to have it out in public. I had assumed even the skeptics had given up on him as a complete crank.

OilFinder2 wrote:Sorry, meemoe is right. Doomers are constantly shifting the goalposts. We're using new technology to extract new oil. Been going on for 150 years.

So since he is "right" I guess it's all settled so I can go down and fill up at 25¢ a gallon?

No?

Debates about "goalposts" or calling it "new oil" or Magic Pixie Pee or what have you on some obscure website mean less than nothing. In the real world, easy, cheap oil has plateaued and what is left is much more difficult and expensive to extract/manufacture. Full Stop.

Great to see that memes believes something outside of his own imagination. So IEA is now his trusted source. So he now also accepts these other statements from the Fatih Birol of IEA:
"It would come as a very, very big surprise to me if we saw a significant decline in [2012] CO2 emissions."
[url]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/2 ... 42785.html[/url]

"What I see now with existing investments for plants under construction … we are seeing the door for a 2 degree Celsius target about to be closed and closed forever"...

A major reason for rising carbon dioxide emissions was fossil fuel subsidies, he added.

In 2012, $630 billion was spent on fossil fuel subsidies globally, with half of this from the Middle East and the other half from the rest of the world, Birol said.

"By contrast, in 2010, fuel subsidies totalled $400 billion. We are going backwards," he said.

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2012/05/door-to-2-degree-temperature-limit-is.html

Good to hear that memes now agrees with the science and with the IEA that anthropogenic global warming is not only real, but is taking us rapidly into catastrophic levels of heat and climate chaos. Welcome to the doom wagon!

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Well numbers are numbers , they can be dissected , analyzed of course
but they are what can be taken as reality
I am a strong believer in peak oil happening now ,
I could be wrong by a decade ( maybe not )
Tar sands , shale oil and pre-salts have changed things , though in my mind not the end result

I don't mind being wrong , my ego can deal with it , facts are my only concern

sparky wrote:.
Well numbers are numbers , ..,..,
I could be wrong by a decade ( maybe not )

Probably not a decade, perhaps two to three years I would think.

OilFinder2 wrote:Any time a new technology allows production from new sources,

Corn ethanol, hydrofracking rock and extracting tar sands are not new technologies.

Its the price and (for the ethanol) the government subsidies that give the product of those technologies a market.

You see your strawman collapses with the lights puffs of air. But it is indicative of what is going on. Your need to errect the false narrative of your small band of heoric genuises against 'doomers'. The silly argument that anyone who does not indulge in your mindless worship of voluptuous abundance is a 'doomer'. The deliberate and dishonest ignoring of all the nuance in the debate.

From this one can easily observe you have no confidence in your own arguments.

You fear to bring them in a less overzelous form.

When you can finally face yourself in the mirror and recognise that the people you are arguing with are not all one dimensional caricatures, then you will have taken the first step in having something of value to add.

pstarr wrote:Dorlomin, magnificant!

It became apparent years ago that Oilfinder has no intention of entering into honest debate. He is a fascinating phenomena. Rarely looses his cool. Always smiling. Somewhat humorous. Takes on all comers. You almost think he was planted here to drive page views. Could he be the ever-elusive admin?

OF2 surves a useful purpose here. How interesting would the discussions be if we all agreed? His robotic optimism makes a useful punching bag for everyone else to express their opinion.

dorlomin wrote:

OilFinder2 wrote:Corn ethanol, hydrofracking rock and extracting tar sands are not new technologies.

I never said anything about ethanol. I'm not really a fan of biofuels.

As for digging tar sands and hydrofracking rock, 20 or 30 years ago the technology existed, but back then it was primitive and was not widely used. Sort of like ... in 1994 the internet was not a new technology (it had been around since the 70's), but until the early-mid 90's its use was limited. It was not until the world wide web and browsers came along in the mid-90's that its widespread use became practical. So, while it was not technically "new," to the vast majority of the world's population it was basically "new."

Same could be said of Colonel Drake's well. Drilling holes into the ground was hardly a new technology in the mid-1800's, but using it to extract a liquid energy source certainly was. So, for the purposes of energy extraction the technology was "new." This is no different from what's going on now.

dorlomin wrote:You see your strawman collapses with the lights puffs of air. But it is indicative of what is going on ... The irregularities of in factual states compromise that of the knowing evidence thou initiates the process of realignment of logic, interpreting the interests of human evolution through that which incepts the ideal concept enticed by common knowledge.

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Actually the first modern commercial use of crude oil was for lighting , for about 50 years !
the kerosene lamp brought a revolution in household and public places habits
previous illumination technique were expensive , messy and quite dangerous
this use was pushed and perfected by the forvceful and not always ethical genius of Rockefeller and his Standard oil
from New York to warlords ravaged China , he was giving away cheap lamps but you had to buy his kero

Using it for energy was not very successful at first , coal fired steam was ( and still is ) much more powerful
the military Navies of the world worked on the problem , encountering great difficulties
until the British First Sea lord Fisher could confidently convert the Royal Navy to oil from around 1905

the motor car , trucks and airplane developped at the same times