[dinopello]

Personally, I didn't see much spirited debate. I saw two guys in complete agreement about what's happening and two different ways to respond to it. It made for a boring debate. If this is what passes for spirited debate these days, I'm even more sad that Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us. Now there was a guy who could always give you a spirited debate.

That's just the point, everyone should agree on what's happening, because that is what is happening. The debate should be about how to respond to it because that is where the options lay. The problem today is that everyone doesn't have the same view of reality. Too many people think its all a conspiracy for example - its the speculators, its the oil companies, its the environmentalists - whatever. There is and there is gonna be less and less cheap energy - what should we do ?

[dissident]

Personally, I didn't see much spirited debate. I saw two guys in complete agreement about what's happening and two different ways to respond to it. It made for a boring debate. If this is what passes for spirited debate these days, I'm even more sad that Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us. Now there was a guy who could always give you a spirited debate.

That's just the point, everyone should agree on what's happening, because that is what is happening. The debate should be about how to respond to it because that is where the options lay. The problem today is that everyone doesn't have the same view of reality. Too many people think its all a conspiracy for example - its the speculators, its the oil companies, its the environmentalists - whatever. There is and there is gonna be less and less cheap energy - what should we do ?

Thank you mainstream media for the epic fail. News is about presenting facts and not just opposing opinions. I suspect that Exxon and friends not only fund global warming deniers, they fund peak oil denial as well. And the media whores for Exxon and its paid shills. Without the media creating a consensus there is not going to be one.

[Graeme]

Hedge your Bets in the Peak Oil Debate

There is nothing but “Sad News for Peak Oil Disciples” these days, according to the Financial Post.
The latest example: Leonardo Maugeri, a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs—and a long-time critic of Peak Oil analysis—has just published a new report, “Oil: The Next Revolution,” in which he forecasts a sharp increase in world oil production capacity and the risk of an oil price collapse. His report has triggered a spate of press articles with titles like “No Peak Oil In Sight”, “Potential U.S. Oil Boom shakes Up Energy Politics,” and “Peak Oil Is Simply Not a Threat Anymore.”

These follow on the heels of a string of other articles touting increasing production of oil from “tight” shale deposits in the US—pieces with titles like “Has Peak Oil Peaked?” and “Is ‘Peak Oil’ Idea Dead?” And those in turn ride the slipstream of Daniel Yergin’s widely feted book The Quest, which provided last year’s fodder for an anti-Peak Oil media frenzy.


We at Post Carbon Institute [this is an article by Richard Heinberg] hope to sort out some of the technical issues related to unconventional oil in a report (forthcoming in September) by David Hughes, a follow-up to his 2011 reality check on U.S. shale gas production. But the bigger environmental and economic questions will no doubt continue to generate uncertainties for some time.

Still, there are a few observations that no serious energy analyst can dispute. Oil exploration and production costs are skyrocketing (Bernstein Research estimates that this year the industry needs prices in the range of $100 a barrel to justify new projects). The super-giant oilfields that still account for 60 percent of world crude production are aging, and so the more modest contribution of unconventionals, which are expected to be both expensive and slow to come on line, must push against a tide of depletion and decline. It’s only a question of when the overall global production decline begins, not if. Meanwhile, some of the fuels (ethanol, natural gas liquids) counted by IEA and EIA in the “all liquids” category have significantly lower energy content per unit of volume than regular crude oil; thus an increase in barrels-per-day of “all liquids” does not necessarily mean an increase in the amount of energy delivered to society.

oilprice

[pstarr]

Excellent article by Heinberg. I look forward to the follow-up to the 2011 David Hughes report on natural gas.

[Pops]

The proof of concept of peak oil is the current wave of published celebration over wells that deplete 65% the first year, might replace 7 or 8% of our imports, for a while, and cost 400%-500% more to produce than what we need.

Meanwhile we'll do less and less to change our dependence – there is a glut after all, I read it in the WSJ – and all the while we continue to deplete the $20 oil our society was built on.

Tight oil is not a replacement for conventional oil, it's a quaternary or quinary recovery technique where there never was a primary. It's at best an extender, a kicked can, the Hamburger Helper of petroleum. At worst it's a diversion, a whistle past the graveyard, the thing that takes the eye off the ball.

[seahorse3]

I just started a thread titled "There won't be a glut in US oil production." That is according to Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources and one of the largest developers of US oil in Bakken and other areas. So, it makes me question the optimistic assumptions made by Maugeri, who believes that oil shale production worldwide will lead to a glut in oil production - assuming no recession before 2015, a big assumption.

[shortonoil]

"The cornucopian mindset is certainly rife among leaders in the oil industry (Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, recently said of climate change and energy security, “We [humans] have spent our entire existence adapting. We’ll adapt . . . it’s an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution”)."

The Hill's Group is an affiliation of freelance engineers that have been working on the problem of world oil depletion for over two years. Over that period we have developed a model that is simple, mathematically and thermodynamically complete, and testable. We can conclusively demonstrate that world oil depletion is a function of the specific internal energy of crude oil, which is a constant. Our conclusion is that the world's oil reserves are in an advanced stage of depletion. There is no engineering solution to this problem; it can not be solved by increasing reserves. There is a specific, definable amount of reserve that will ever be be extracted - and no more. The problem results from the fundamental properties of the substance oil and the Second Law, and those can not be altered.

The term "Peak Oil" has been a most unfortunate choice of terms. Because of the term it is suggested that there will be a gradual downside to world oil production before it terminates. Our model demonstrates that other alternatives are possible, and even probable. The most probable senario is that production of crude oil will decline very slowly until wide spread shut-ins of major fields begin. The final stage of world oil production is more likely to resemble the fall of dominoes than the gradual decline projected by Hubbert's curve.

Because of this we find the comment of the CEO of EXXON distressing; either for its total lack of understanding, or for its disingenuous nature. Our methodology is not above the capabilities of any good engineer, and the oil industry has a plethora of them. It is very unlikely that we are the sole wards of this knowledge, and thus, it is very unlikely that Mr. Tillerson believes what he is saying.

As human beings we have a responsibility to our society. The continuance of our culture depends upon it. The comments of Mr. Tillerson and his piers appear to have the semblance of a troop of monkeys fighting over the last banana in a tree; at a time of great upcoming social stress they are hardly the responses that will be needed from our society's leaders.



The Hill's Group

[dorlomin]

We are running much faster to stand still that when I first joined this site.

In that short time I have watched $100 oil go from unthinkable to the ordinary. We have lived in a world of permenant financial crisis and we see car miles continue to fall across the west.

No rabbit has been pulled from any hats, just higher prices accessing the real tought to get oil. The real savings are made from driving less and buying smaller cars.

[SeaGypsy]

The rabbits which have been pulled (not tight plays, but new conventional oil such as Iran's) have been shoved back in, as they are too competitive with the tight plays. The magician has a stage hook around his neck.

[Tanada]

Now that we have done our politics for a while time to get back to the purpose of this website.

The world of Peak Oil has been pretty silent since the fires in Fort McMurray last summer disrupted tar/ bitumen production from Canada. Even the Iran renewed sanctions havn't made much of a dent in public consciousness. I think this is mostly an issue of three years of surplus supply and low prices coupled with short attention spans but am ready to be debated on that POV.

[Plantagenet]

The oil surplus continues.

US production hit another record high and oil prices have been falling for five weeks.

oil-bear-market-

We're technically in a bear market for oil now, and Jim Cramer is predicting oil will fall further to ca. $40/bbl soon.

Cheers!

[ROCKMAN]

P - I'm curious: do you know what Cramer was predicting for 30-day future closing prices this second week in Nov back in the second week of Oct when they were closing about 20% higher? If he did come close to being correct and made bets backing his mouth he should have pocketed many $millions. As would anyone who followed such a recommendation...had he made it.

Very easy to predict 30-day future contract closing prices. If you wait a month to do so. LOL.

[aspera]

Bardi, U. (2019) Peak oil, 20 years later: Failed prediction or useful insight?, Energy Research & Social Science, 48, 257–261.

A B S T R A C T
20 years ago, in 1998, Scientific American published a paper by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère titled “The End of Cheap Oil” [1], starting a debate on oil depletion continuing to the present day. It was the return of a viewpoint on oil depletion which had been proposed more than 40 years before by Marion King Hubbert [2] and, in later years, largely forgotten. In their paper, Campbell and Laherrère updated Hubbert’s model with new reserve estimates and proposed that the world’s crude oil production would peak around 2004–2005, and then start an irreversible decline. Shortly afterward, Colin Campbell proposed the term “peak oil” for the highest global oil production level. The term was to become popular over the following decade, generating a true movement of ideas sometimes called the “peak oil movement.” Today, these predictions turn out to have been only partially correct, mainly because the role of “non-conventional” oil was underestimated. The peak oil movement seems to have faded away, while the concept seems to have disappeared from the debate and to be commonly described has having been “wrong.” The present paper reviews the cycle of the peak oil movement, examining how the peak oil concept was understood with the public and the decision makers and what caused its diffusion and its demise, at least up to the present time.

https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.lib ... 9618303207

Quote, Pp. 260 (emphasis added) - ...it must also be said that the weakness of the theory ceased to exist when it was understood that the bell shaped curve is just a simplified version of the general theory of mineral depletion [33] based on the concepts developed first by J. Forrester [34] and by the authors of the 1972 “Limits to Growth” report [35] (For a modern version of these models, see the recently developed MEDEAS model at http://www.medeas.eu).

In short, the basis of the bell shaped curve is in the decline in the net energy of extraction, a concept often expressed in terms of “Energy Return On Energy Invested” (EROI or EROEI) [36,37]. So, the peak oil idea was based on solid theoretical foundations. The quote “when I have new data, I change my interpretation, what do you do, sir?” is attributed to John Maynard Keynes and one wonders why it was not applied to the peak oil theory. With new data input on the consistency of the non-conventional oil resources, the theory could still provide useful information on the future of fossil fuels, but this was not done. Instead, most commentators preferring to engage in an activity that we could define as “Hubbertbashing.”

[Revi]

I don't know where we're at, but this article by Ugo Bardi seems to say that we are at the peak of diesel production:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018 ... g-for-you/

[Plantagenet]

.....this article by Ugo Bardi seems to say that we are at the peak of diesel production:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018 ... g-for-you/

Makes sense to me.

Diesel is made partly from heavy, conventional oil. If conventional oil has peaked then diesel has peaked. You can't make diesel just from the lighter oil that comes from tight oil shale.

Cheers!

[rockdoc123]

Diesel is made partly from heavy, conventional oil. If conventional oil has peaked then diesel has peaked. You can't make diesel just from the lighter oil that comes from tight oil shale.

According to the McKinsey oil assay library the average LTO in the states will yield 10% by volume of Diesel under the distillation process. That is the same yield of diesel as WTI, Arab Light and just above Maya blend at 8%. Bonny Light, on the other hand has a higher yield of diesel at 15%.

The issue really is not the oil type but the setup of the various refineries. In the US the refineries are tooled for crudes that will generate higher gasoline output and less diesel given the main demand they see is gasoline. In Europe, the refineries are setup more for diesel than gasoline. In order to generate significantly more diesel the refineries that are currently geared towards gasoline will have to be retooled which requires enough economic incentive for the owners to do so.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The issue really is not the oil type but the setup of the various refineries. In the US the refineries are tooled for crudes that will generate higher gasoline output and less diesel given the main demand they see is gasoline. In Europe, the refineries are setup more for diesel than gasoline. In order to generate significantly more diesel the refineries that are currently geared towards gasoline will have to be retooled which requires enough economic incentive for the owners to do so.

Exactly. And when the decision rests with economic incentive, clearly it's a matter of CHOICE. If the need (demand) is great enough, more diesel will be produced, over time.

The idea we need to panic or that more diesel can't be produced is laughable.

[Revi]

The problem is that we are making less and less of the sweet crude and more and more of either super light, or weird sludge like the tar sands syncrude. The market doesn't want to pay for it. They got about $10 a barrel for the crap they want to push down from Canada, and even Bakken didn't get a good price. The market is beginning to figure out that oil isn't all the same. It only pays full price for the good stuff.

https://rbnenergy.com/low-budget-wester ... 0-year-low

[rockdoc123]

The problem is that we are making less and less of the sweet crude and more and more of either super light, or weird sludge like the tar sands syncrude. The market doesn't want to pay for it. They got about $10 a barrel for the crap they want to push down from Canada, and even Bakken didn't get a good price. The market is beginning to figure out that oil isn't all the same. It only pays full price for the good stuff.

oversimplified I'm afraid and basically incorrect as a result. The main differential currently between Canadian heavier crude and lighter oils in the US has to do with transportation and lack thereof. There is limited egress from Canada to the US, there has been no new pipelines built in a long time and rail can only handle so much due to the availability of railcars. As a consequence lots of production of heavy oil in Canada, not enough upgrading capacity and hence oversupply. As a consequence, the price goes down. If the pipelines were in place to either ship more to the US (which needs this crude for refining) or overseas to Asia the price would be higher because there would be less free supply.

So we have you telling us the heavier crudes are worthless and Shortonbrains telling us the lighter crudes have no value. Strange that these oils were all selling for around $70/bbl not that many weeks ago.

[KaiserJeep]

I read this thread and I just cannot fathom the answer to "the" question. I fully realize the answer is not simple, the question is not easy to answer, and any answer is not without considerable ambibuity, but you guys are experts.

Have we passed the oil peak, or not?