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Page added on March 28, 2014
Ex govt adviser: “global market shock” from “oil crash” could hit in 2015
A former oil man calls for renewable “Renaissance” to ward off shale dystopia
In a new book, former oil geologist and government adviser on renewable energy, Dr. Jeremy Leggett, identifies five “global systemic risks directly connected to energy” which, he says, together “threaten capital markets and hence the global economy” in a way that could trigger a global crash sometime between 2015 and 2020.
According to Leggett, a wide range of experts and insiders “from diverse sectors spanning academia, industry, the military and the oil industry itself, including until recently the International Energy Agency or, at least, key individuals or factions therein” are expecting an oil crunch “within a few years,” most likely “within a window from 2015 to 2020.”
Interconnected risks
Despite its serious tone, The Energy of Nations: Risk Blindness and the Road to Renaissance, published by the reputable academic publisher Routledge, makes a compelling and ultimately hopeful case for the prospects of transitioning to a clean energy system in tandem with a new form of sustainable prosperity.
The five risks he highlights cut across oil depletion, carbon emissions, carbon assets, shale gas, and the financial sector:
“A market shock involving any one these would be capable of triggering a tsunami of economic and social problems, and, of course, there is no law of economics that says only one can hit at one time.”
At the heart of these risks, Leggett argues, is our dependence on increasingly expensive fossil fuel resources. His wide-ranging analysis pinpoints the possibility of a global oil supply crunch as early as 2015. “Growing numbers of people in and around the oil industry”, he says, privately consider such a forecast to be plausible. “If we are correct, and nothing is done to soften the landing, the twenty-first century is almost certainly heading for an early depression.”
Leggett also highlights the risk of parallel developments in the financial sector:
“Growing numbers of financial experts are warning that failure to rein in the financial sector in the aftermath of the financial crash of 2008 makes a second crash almost inevitable.”
A frequent Guardian contributor, Leggett has had a varied career spanning multiple disciplines. A geologist and former oil industry consultant for over a decade whose research on shale was funded by BP and Shell, he joined Greenpeace International in 1989 over concerns about climate change. As the organisation’s science director he edited a landmark climate change report published by Oxford University Press.
Industry’s bad bet
Leggett points to an expanding body of evidence that what he calls “the incumbency” – “most of the oil and gas industries, their financiers, and their supporters and defenders in public service” – have deliberately exaggerated the quantity of fossil fuel reserves, and the industry’s capacity to exploit them. He points to a leaked email from Shell’s head of exploration to the CEO, Phil Watts, dated November 2003:
“I am becoming sick and tired of lying about the extent of our reserves issues and the downward revisions that need to be done because of far too aggressive/ optimistic bookings.”
Leggett reports that after admitting that Shell’s reserves had been overstated by 20%, Watts still had to “revise them down a further three times.” The company is still reeling from the apparent failure of investments in the US shale gas boom. Last October the Financial Times reported that despite having invested “at least $24bn in so-called unconventional oil and gas in North America”, so far the bet “has yet to pay off.” With its upstream business struggling “to turn a profit”, Shell announced a “strategic review of its US shale portfolio after taking a $2.1bn impairment.” Shell’s outgoing CEO Peter Voser admitted that the US shale bet was a big regret: “Unconventionals did not exactly play out as planned.”
Leggett thus remains highly sceptical that shale oil and gas will change the game. Despite “soaring drilling rates,” US tight oil production has lifted “only around a million barrels a day.” As global oil consumption is at around 90 milion barrels a day, with conventional crude depleting “by over four million barrels a day of capacity each year” according to International Energy Agency (IEA) data, tight oil additions “can hardly be material in the global picture.” He reaches a similar verdict for shale gas, which he notes “contributes well under 1% of US transport fuel.”
Even as Prime Minister David Cameron has just reiterated the government’s commitment to prioritise shale, Leggett says:
“Shale-gas drilling has dropped off a cliff since 2009. It is only a matter of time now before US shale-gas production falls. This is not material to the timing of a global oil crisis.”
In an interview, he goes further, questioning the very existence of a real North American ‘boom’: “How it can be that there is a prolonged and sustainable shale boom when so much investment is being written off in America – $32 billion at the last count?”
It is a question that our government, says Leggett, is ignoring.
Crunch time
In his book, Leggett cites a letter he had obtained in 2004 written by the First Secretary for Energy and Environment in the British embassy in Washington, referring to a presentation on oil supply by the leading oil and gas consulting firm, PFC Energy (now owned by IHS, the US government contractor which also owns Cambridge Energy Research Associates). According to Leggett, the diplomat’s letter to his colleagues in London reads as follows:
“The presentation drew some gasps from the assembled energy cognoscenti. They predict a peaking of global supply in the face of high demand by as early as 2015. This will lead to a more regionalised oil market, a key role for West African producers, and continued high and volatile prices.”
The text of the 2004 letter is corroborated by a 2009 PFC Energy report commissioned by the International Energy Forum which concluded that world conventional oil supply was approaching “peak production, where the petroleum industry’s ability to continue to increase – or even maintain – production of conventional oil (and eventually gas) is constrained…
“Exploitation of unconventional oil will provide additional liquids, but in all probability only at increasingly higher costs, and it will depend on significant investments to develop appropriate technologies to convert today’s resources into tomorrow’s reserves. The exact timing of both the plateau and onset of irreversible decline will be influenced by the factors that determine long-term changes in supply and demand. Nevertheless, the challenge is coming, and this emerging world of limited conventional production will require major adjustments on the part of both consumers and producers.”
Requests for comment from PFC Energy and Cuadrilla, a UK energy company, concerning Leggett’s warning of a near-term oil crash despite shale gas production received no response.
Critics point out that Leggett and others warning of peak oil are wrong because they never saw the prospect of shale. In response, Leggett tells me:
“Its true that the short burst of shale gas and shale oil has taken a lot of ‘peakists’, myself included, somewhat by surprise, and that the oil peak has been pushed out in time a little by tight oil. What hasn’t changed is the basic issue: most of the incumbency says the ‘all-liquids’ oil production peak is many years hence, the minority doubting the narrative says it is much nearer, within this decade. And lets not forget: conventional crude oil has already peaked, as even the IEA admits.”
After his stint as Greenpeace’s science chief, Jeremy Leggett went on to found the UK’s largest solar energy company, SolarCentury, and to advise the British government on renewable energy from 2002 to 2006. He is now convener of the UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security which includes major multinationals like Arup Group and Virgin, chairman of the Carbon Tracker Initiative which aims to improve the transparency of carbon embedded in equity markets, and a co-organiser of the Trans-Atlantic Energy Security Dialogue I reported on last January. That same month, Leggett addressed world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos about his forecast.
The 2015 oil crunch forecast, Leggett writes, is corroborated by the Industry Task Force report:
“In this report we updated the evidence that defines global oil reserves and extraction rates, and concluded that the global peak production rate for oil would likely occur within the decade, very likely by 2015 at the latest – at a value no higher than 92 million barrels per day.”
Based on flow rate data, the report found that “increases in extraction would be slowing down in 2011–13 and dropping thereafter.” From then on, global oil production would drop “at 1% a year from 2015. If the then IEA forecast of demand rising to 105 million barrels a day in 2030 were to prove correct, supply would fall short in 2015.”
Uncertain future
The “incumbency”, as Leggett calls it, strongly disagrees. A much-touted Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study, The Future of Natural Gas, has predicted that US gas consumption will double to 40% of the country’s energy needs by 2050.
Though at first glance an impressive body of interdisciplinary work, a report by the US-based Public Accountability Initiative in March last year documented “growing evidence that the oil and gas industry” had attempted to “corrupt” the process of “academic inquiry.” The report alleged that the MIT study was both authored and funded by oil and gas industry insiders, and as a consequence marred by “poor scholarship.”
Other large studies of oil supply challenges which acknowledge the peak of conventional production are less specific, though. The UK Energy Research Centre, for instance, has forecasted such a peak to occur “before 2030” – a position backed up by more recent research published by the Royal Society. A convener of that research, however, agrees that a near-term peak is more likely than a later one.
Peak oil does not mean, Leggett insists forcefully, that oil is “running out.” The problem is the increasing costs of extraction and decreasing flow rates of unconventionals:
“It will never run out. Oil reserves under the ground, we tried to say, once again, are not the same as oil flows from production pipes at the surface.”
The UK Industry Taskforce’s pinpointing of 2015, Leggett emphasises throughout his book, is corroborated by forecasts from a range of other agencies, including the US and German militaries.
UK risk blindness?
Citing the cracks appearing in the US shale market, he pulls no punches about the stark consequences of what he sees as the UK government’s deliberate policy to “actively suppress renewables”:
“Picture the scene if most of the national energy eggs are put in that basket, infrastructure is capitalised, and then supplies of cheap gas fall far short of requirement, or even fail to materialise.”
I put Leggett’s concerns about UK energy strategy to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), and whether they found his scenario at all plausible. A spokesperson said:
“Geological uncertainty, economic, geopolitical and environmental factors make it difficult to predict future oil reserves. The Government does not subscribe to a particular view on when oil production is likely to peak and at what level, although there is a recognition that it is inevitable that oil production will peak and then begin to decline. The Government is committed to a diverse energy mix and is investing in nuclear and renewables, which will ensure we have a secure supply of energy in the future. The lights will not go out.”
Although Jeremy Leggett’s warnings put him in a minority, he is in good company. Writing in Nature in 2012, former chief government scientist Sir David King dismissed the notion that a shale gas boom could avert a coming energy crisis due to overestimated reserve sizes, rapidly declining production rates, high production costs, and insufficient profits.
The good news, Leggett writes, is that the unprecedented ramifications of a post-crash economy could create exactly the kind of new social and political context that could spur massive appetite to change our ways. But in practice the crash could play out in different ways:
“…. if my suppositions are correct so far – a big if – the world faces either an oil shock by the end of 2015 and a financial crash soon after, or a second financial crash before then, followed by a delayed oil crash some years later.”
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed
43 Comments on "Ex govt adviser: “global market shock” from “oil crash” could hit in 2015"
Plantagenet on Fri, 28th Mar 2014 10:16 pm
Shale gas drilling has “dropped off a cliff” because drilling and frakking produced so much shale gas the price dropped. Thats not bad—thats a good thing.
The author of this book doesn’t seem to understand the most basic facets of the energy biz.
Nony on Fri, 28th Mar 2014 10:29 pm
He’s a Greenpeacer. If there’s really no oil/gas to be found, he’s got nothing to worry about. Kind of funny how he wants to argue so hard against trying or looking though. Oh you won’t find anything. Those grapes are sour, said the wolf. (Aesop)
GregT on Fri, 28th Mar 2014 11:19 pm
“He’s a Greenpeacer.”
Yup those damn ‘Greenpeacers’, always trying to stop the greedy people from destroying the planet that we need for our survival. Unfortunately for those of us that actually care about living, it looks like the ‘Greenpeacers’ have most likely lost the battle. Oh well, who gives a crap about future generations, or all other species for that matter. As long as we have consumer crap, lattes, and dollar bills, that’s all that really matters.
Kenz300 on Fri, 28th Mar 2014 11:22 pm
Relying on limited and getting more expensive fossil fuels is foolish.
The price of oil, coal and nuclear keeps rising and causing environmental damage.
The price of wind, solar and other alternatives keep getting cheaper.
The energy transition tipping point is here – SmartPlanet
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/the-take/the-energy-transition-tipping-point-is-here/?tag=nl.e660&s_cid=e660&ttag=e660&ftag=TRE4eb29b5
Nony on Fri, 28th Mar 2014 11:31 pm
I’m fine if he wants to stop the polluting. Just man up and do it directly. Not this “there’s no oil left” crap when what they’re really worried about is that there is oil left.
GregT on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 12:07 am
Nony,
What the scientific community is worried about, is that there are far more fossil fuels available than what we can afford to burn, if we hope to stop the sixth mass extinction that is well underway, and a runaway greenhouse event that has the potential to end most, if not all life on Earth.
Peak Oil was never about running out of fossil fuels, but of course you already knew that, right?
From the article above:
Peak oil does not mean, Leggett insists forcefully, that oil is “running out.” The problem is the increasing costs of extraction and decreasing flow rates of unconventionals:
“It will never run out. Oil reserves under the ground, we tried to say, once again, are not the same as oil flows from production pipes at the surface.”
ghung on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 12:10 am
Plantagenet & Nony – I’m sure Jeremy Leggett wouldn’t even waste his time sitting down and comparing credentials and industry respect with you guys. He understands scale and doesn’t compartmentalize everything like you guys. You just don’t like that he’s a convert from the oil industry; he got it years ago. More notable is other industry personalities coming out years after Leggett did, like Steven Kopits, saying essentially the same thing; the party’s winding down.
Reality is handing the fossil fuel age its hat, and the scale of adaptation that will be required is unprecedented. If you guys want to bargain with that, even profit from it, go for it. Shooting the messengers won’t change anything.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 12:14 am
ARTICLE SAID – The good news, Leggett writes, is that the unprecedented ramifications of a post-crash economy could create exactly the kind of new social and political context that could spur massive appetite to change our ways. But in practice the crash could play out in different ways:“…. if my suppositions are correct so far – a big if – the world faces either an oil shock by the end of 2015 and a financial crash soon after, or a second financial crash before then, followed by a delayed oil crash some years later.”
Well, if the complex interconnected global system was not accompanied by a population in severe overshoot to its carrying capacity in the all-important areas of food, water, energy, industrial resources, and wastes the ramifications of a new social and political context spurring change might succeed. We could say a 1960 level population could have negotiated a transition but in the current scenario there is no elbow room for crisis. People will be pushing against other people spreading crisis and collapse like a contagious disease. In reality food is the big issue to watch. Famine will panic even the strongest willed people. Today our food situation is so precarious because of the long distribution lines and the significant processing infrastructure that is in place but potentially useless in a crisis. It is not like we can take our corn down to the mill and trade it for corn meal. What happens with all the frozen foods thawing, how do we keep spoilage down, how about wheat mountains in Kansas shut off from the market, and cooking with fuel shortages? I feel like we will see a financial crash 1st and not directly related to energy. There are many possible causes but most likely it is just a standard bubble deflation and associated panic. The problem with bubble deflation this time is the immense weight of debt and the central banks tool bag is empty. I fear the financial crash will spread like a wildfire. This financial wildfire will cause a loss of confidence in global trade and exchange crippling the global support system that supports “ALL” local support systems. Even if you think you are immune locally the community or nation nearby might not be secure leading to a cross contagion of chaos. There is little we can do about these dangers being in overshoot as a species. Nature will run it normal horrible course that all species have encountered including humans. Again my bet is the financial system will give out 1st but if not a few years later the energy sector will finish the kill like a wolf pack stalking a wounded elk in deep winter. Time is not on our side as we fiddle while Rome Burns.
ghung on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 12:20 am
J-Gav on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 12:27 am
Yeah, or 2016 or 2017 or 2018 … But for sure, the dilemma is real.
Nony on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 12:27 am
He’s a GreenPeacer. Busy interfering with whaling ships and French coral island atom blasts. He probably voted for Gore. (Just didn’t push hard enough on the punch card. Haha. 😉 )
Northwest Resident on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 1:35 am
It borders on absurdity to try to destroy Leggett’s credibility by calling him a “GreenPeacer when he presents so much credible evidence backed up by industry experts, government energy officals and other highly credible sources. I used to think that a certain individual was just trying to play the fool for fun and gags, but recently I’m becoming convinced that he isn’t playing, it is for real.
“The UK Industry Taskforce’s pinpointing of 2015, Leggett emphases throughout his book, is corroborated by forecasts from a range of other agencies, including the US and German militaries.”
The U.S. Military predicted in the 2010 J.O.E. that oil shortfalls could very possibly begin hitting in 2015, accompanied by significant potential for civil strife and international conflict. It has been KNOWN since at least 2010 that we are heading into severe oil shortages, and yet BAU keeps on truckin’. If TPTB have a plan, the only one that I can see being put into action is to drive the global economy off the cliff and crash it once and for all. Some plan.
Pumping trillion$ more into the global economy won’t prevent these shortfalls. As Leggett points out, drilling thousands of more holes into shale rock will only postpone the inevitable for a short while longer, at horrendous cost to the environment.
When all roads lead to DOOM, it is no dishonor to be thought of as a “doomer”. Coming up shortly, everybody is going to be a doomer, but will they be a prepared doomer or an unprepared doomer, that’s the question.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:05 am
NR said – When all roads lead to DOOM, it is no dishonor to be thought of as a “doomer”. Coming up shortly, everybody is going to be a doomer, but will they be a prepared doomer or an unprepared doomer, that’s the question.
I am getting more respect all the time. I started this doomer thing 14 years ago. I have grown, matured, and mellowed. You may not feel that way when you hear my spiel but I have gone through the stages of death. I am here ready to witness the greatest show on earth ever! NR, you are right about being a doomer. We are just being honest with ourselves. We are not in the religious doomer category. We are reacting to overwhelming scientific facts. We are honest people that can’t hide our heads in the sand. I hope I have several years more to enjoy life and prepare my lifeboat. I am having the time of my life and don’t want it to end. Yet, I know the shit storm is coming and when things break it will be swift and decisive. Living in the kind of world we live in today makes a change explosive. Too bad we are not a Roman and could slowly unravel with each barbarian wave. We will truly be swept away by a tsunami of change. We will be making a great transition from industrial man back to something closer to our real nature.
ted on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 3:30 am
I think some of you are so environmentalist/liberal that you fail to notice the obvious….mankind is a parasite and will burn all the oil and natural gas and coal until the planet burns up…we will live to see methane hydrate being harvested from the depths of the sea….
GregT on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 4:13 am
“we will live to see methane hydrate being harvested from the depths of the sea”
If we live to see the methane clathrates melt in the arctic, I doubt very much that any of us will see methane hydrates being harvested from the depths of the sea……
Stilgar Wilcox on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 5:50 am
What a spirited debate this thread presents, while also pointing out why our species cannot get on the same page about anything, let alone peak oil.
There are those that benefit too much from BAU to entertain any other course, joined by those too blind or filled with cowardice to face the predicament, countered by a vocal minority willing to look the monster in the eye and explain it in easy to understand language, like Leggett.
The end result of cancelling arguments is our course remains unchanged. How unfortunate for all of us.
John Baldwin on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 7:45 am
The analysis represents a Peak of incompetence …..there is no point being a shale gas denier, makes you look like a complete idiot
Arthur on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 8:25 am
Leggett is right of course, there is no alternative for alternatives. The good news is that Leggett can provide solutions straight from his own shop, Solarcentury. Leggett is putting your money where his mouth is. 😉
Arthur on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 8:32 am
Ghung: “Testing html tags”
I have this suspicion that your test failed and that you really wante to see:
Testing html tags
or
Testing html tags
And now you want to know how to do that right, right?
” Testing html tags ”
” Testing html tags ”
Arthur on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 8:34 am
Sh**, my ‘advice’ was itself eaten by the html parser.
First you type
For bold use: b
Don’t forget the closing tag /i, etc.
Arthur on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 8:37 am
Wrong again. The parser even eats ‘smaller than’ and ‘larger than’ characters. This should give you the clue.
Stilgar Wilcox on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 8:49 am
Some people are so young.
Northwest Resident on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:19 pm
John Baldwin — What the hell is a “shale gas denier”? How does “the analysis” represent “a Peak of incompetence”?
shortonoil on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:30 pm
“Its true that the short burst of shale gas and shale oil has taken a lot of ‘peakists’, myself included, somewhat by surprise, and that the oil peak has been pushed out in time a little by tight oil.”
This is the problem with comparing apples and oranges. It takes 2.8 barrels of condensate to equal one barrel of light sweet crude. If that simple fact is taken into consideration, we are still on the same path that we have been on since 2006 when conventional peaked. From a societal (not the petroleum industry’s) point of view tight oil is not cost effective. It can only continue as long as it is highly subsidized. Over the full life cycle of the well, drilling cost in the Bakken are now $55/barrel. Condensate is even worse because only about 7% of it can be turned into transportation fuels. 2006 was the real end to increasing petroleum production, the other interpretations are merely the result of applying insufficient metrics.
Making predictions like 2015 to 2020 for a crisis in the petroleum industry is dangerous. The problem, like with tight oil, is in the subsidies that get transferred to the industry. The society does this by converting the capital it has accumulated over the history of the oil age into production funds for the industry. That allows the industry to keep on drilling even though it provides no overall benefit to the society. We are already on the downhill slope. The question is how long do we try to keep it up; do we begin the transition now, or do we wait until we have eaten the last ear of corn in the bin?
http://www.thehillsgroup.org
Nony on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:33 pm
Check out this comment predicting 10% drops per year during this decade. And then the head post and the rest of the comments. Massive TOD peaker fail. And y’all don’t want to face up to it.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/27/61031/618#comment-133406
Or look at Matt Simmons, what a crazy man.
ghung on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:45 pm
Arthur – thanks I know b for bold, I for italics work. Testing things like blockquote
ghung on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:47 pm
Reason being, in a lot of comments it’s hard to see what is a quote and what is part of the comment. Folks need to do a better job, perhaps using quotes and italics, “as I normally do”.
ghung on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:50 pm
…and at least give sections used from other sources their own paragraph.
ghung on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:52 pm
Nony – I think folks are beginning to ignore your binary all-or-nothing comments/conclusions. Just sayin’.
Nony on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:55 pm
I realize it’s repetitive. Maybe I leave y’all alone soon. And y’all are darned repetitive too. Look at the ELM fellow spamming the same stuff all the time into unrelated threads. And anyhow, I’m fine with you having your little niche of the Internet to hang out with fellow thinkers. Seriously, it’s cool. It’s really hard to change anyone’s mind on the net and most people just won’t consider things different from their viewpoint.
Nony on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:57 pm
Short, if the condensate was not selling for enough money, the wells would not be drilled. After all, this is “coal mining”, high decline, Red Queen stuff. They can turn on/off the drilling in response to prices.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 2:58 pm
SHORT SAID – Making predictions like 2015 to 2020 for a crisis in the petroleum industry is dangerous. The problem, like with tight oil, is in the subsidies that get transferred to the industry. The society does this by converting the capital it has accumulated over the history of the oil age into production funds for the industry. That allows the industry to keep on drilling even though it provides no overall benefit to the society. We are already on the downhill slope. The question is how long do we try to keep it up; do we begin the transition now, or do we wait until we have eaten the last ear of corn in the bin?
Short good recap to remind those of us non-petroleum experts the reality of different resources.
Short, IMHO, we have to keep drilling for oil long after it is not economic. If it comes to the military and nationalization then so be it. Oil like food has to be made available for society to function at this point in time. It will be needed in the decent also. There are vital services that will require oil. If we want any kind of gentle decent oil has to be part of the equation. You speak of a transition. In my opinion the initial transition is the loss of life of 1/4 our global population. This population reduction continuing through ½ or more. Of course some areas worse than others but in aggregate at some point population management by nature will be the name of the game. There is no transition to a nice shiny AltE world minus FF’s. I firmly believe at some point countries with oil resources but lacking food will trade among each other. I see a new political economic dynamics in the works with countries trading in mutual self-interest with market price and value becoming a thing of the past with the loss of confidence in fiat money and credit. I see no other choice but a command economy in relation to vital resources of food, water, and energy. Markets will not function properly in a panic and or a crash. Locally a new economy will be energized around food, services, and cottage consumer goods industries. Someone will have to make cloths when cheap Asian imports stop. Multiply that by all the basics we need. The 1st hurdle will be a population declining to a carrying capacity. Where this is and how long it takes is the elephant in the room.
Nony, just have some patience, Geez, talk about cognitive dissonance. You are constantly complaining about old predictions!
shortonoil on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 5:07 pm
“Short, IMHO, we have to keep drilling for oil long after it is not economic.”
What you have to understand is that the Laws of Physics tell us that a point will be reached when you can no longer extract petroleum. It is sort of analogous to attempting to put 6 gal of SH**T in a 5 gal pail. Just isn’t going to happen, and we are not that far from that point. The Laws of Nature don’t answer to the Federal Reserve [no matter how much they think otherwise]. When the world’s fields hit the “dead state” you will be able to stack $100 bills on them clear to the moon, and not one more barrel is going to come out.
The age of oil that everyone you know who has grown up with is soon coming to an end [less than one generational period]. What we will become as a society is probably impossible to project, but it definitely it won’t be what we know now! The society that we know will no longer be functioning, because it will no longer exist.
Got a plan B?
Northwest Resident on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 7:16 pm
ahortonoil — You just bluntly stated the proverbial “bottom line” when it comes to oil extraction. Now watch everybody try to wiggle and squirm their way out of having to face that cold, grim, hard fact. We’ll convert to NG. Nuclear power will save us. Electric vehicles are the answer to our problems. Or, as one poster on this site once stated, there will always be plenty of (slave) human labor to dig for that oil. Oh, and my favorite — there are trillions of barrels of shale oil around the world just waiting to be extracted. In the end, they can squirm, and they can wiggle, and they can distort reality and cold hard facts to their heart’s desire, but the Laws of Physics will still be standing — a thick, indestructible and impenetrable wall of reality through which no “hope” can pass.
Davey on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 7:31 pm
Short I was thinking the knife edge after it is too expensive economically. If the economy crashes and money is expensive and scarce we have to still make an effort to get at reasonably economic oil from a georgics sense. This will mean subsidies from other areas. I totally agree at some point economically and physically it is not feasible. So economy contracts and oil is there and feasible to get at in a non-contracted economy my idea is society has to get at it if possible to finance so to speak our decent. If we want a soft landing we need some oil and food. I may just be dense or we are looking at it differently.
ted on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 8:18 pm
I didn’t say methane in the arctic I said harvesting methane off the coast of Japan, South Carolina etc…..we don’t know where that industry is in their development but I am guessing that the amount of money that Japan and other countries are putting into it they are close. Japan knows that if they don’t solve this problem they are dead….I am always surprised at how the people on this website think they are the only ones that know about peak oil!! Also time line predictions are very detrimental to the cause because it gives deniers fodder to argue against peak oil. Just because you are an old man with a laptop and internet connection does not mean you are an expert in a particular field.
Davey on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 8:55 pm
Ted I have read, listened, watched and daydreamed this for 14 years. I can smell an expert in this field of study. We have experts here on this site. The deniers will founder on their fodder soon enough. They already are exhibiting a bout of the stages of death. That is of their denial. Yea predicting is a fools game but we all do it. Ask short, our resident petro expert about methan hydrates and he will give you an ear full. Definitely bad economics with it IMHO.
Davey on Sat, 29th Mar 2014 9:12 pm
Ted one other thing Mark Twain quoted “Genius is the handmaiden of hunger”. More and more I am wondering if excessive expertness blinds one from seeing the forest for the trees. We need experts but how far should we jump in bed with them?
Ted on Sun, 30th Mar 2014 3:06 am
I don’t doubt there are “experts” on here but unless they are actually in the field doing research on how to get hydrates out and converted etc…they are basically like a professor who is teaching abstract theory. There is a definite contingent here that are victims of group think. I was one of those people at one time on the Oil Drum getting angry with anyone that believed anything but collapse. I have been a peak oiler since 1996….and I have to say that if they found 20 huge oil fields tomorrow I would be disappointed. I hate the gross waste of energy in this country but I feel that my emotions have the better of me and caused me to be myopic in viewpoints on peak oil. I noticed Steve Kopits on a website and as soon as he commented that we would have to change how we live he was immediately chastised for not agreeing that we are going to fall to the stone age…he stopped commenting soon after that. We are going to burn this planet up before we run out of energy…how many people here would be very disappointed if there was a huge energy source found? I would say a lot…..
Arthur on Sun, 30th Mar 2014 9:58 am
Arthur – thanks I know b for bold, I for italics work. Testing things like blockquote
Umm, how do you do that?
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 30th Mar 2014 12:02 pm
Ted said – I don’t doubt there are “experts” on here but unless they are actually in the field doing research on how to get hydrates out and converted etc…they are basically like a professor who is teaching abstract theory. There is a definite contingent here that are victims of group think.
Ted I think this board is not about us proving society anything expert. Society could give a rat’s ass about us here and our views. We are fringe as far as they are concerned. For the general public doomers and preppers are something you see on the news with religious whacks claiming an end date or Nat Geo showing clowns in severe delusional thinking preparing with aK47’s and claymores. We here are helping each other through what we see are facts of multiple human predicaments that will impact us directly. Time frame can be argued but not the predicaments in my mind. Anyone who argues against an energy problem, climate problem, population problem, growth problem, or pollution problem is not with it. The scientific evidence is there plain and simple. Methane hydrates are a something like fusion. No evidence of sound economics or scale. When something pops that points to that then we will see some interest. I learned PO in college in 84. I have been reading DAILY about PO, AGW, food, water, and pollution issues since 2000. I was a mild environmentalist before that. Before that I was also into the whole globalization trend and bought into it. I believed economic growth and development would lift the global population away from pollution and ecological destruction by education and population stabilization. I learned two languages German and Spanish. I moved to and worked in Germany. I married a Spanish woman who spoke 4 languages. We had multiple international friends. Now I am a post globalism thinker because globalism has run its course. I am a doomer because I am not yet sure we can navigate a transition to a post global world. I have a wonderful life and would be stupid to want it to end. Yet, I am honest about reality and I have deep spiritual misgivings about wealth inequality and the rape and pillage of all of our “MOTHER NATURE”.
Carl on Sun, 30th Mar 2014 5:12 pm
Davy- I appreciate your well expressed pessimism. I don’t however share it.
Sure in the long run we are all dead and all civilizations die–no question, both are going to happen.
However, you have to admit, like Mark Twain once observed, “the reports of my death are exaggerated”. For example, I followed, rather silently the entire peak oil ideology and 15 years ago no one on this board seriously predicted the reemergence of the US as an emerging oil power using new fracking technology.
Similarly 15 years ago, Al Gore was wailing on about imminent global warming–followed by what even the IPCC has called a 15 year “pause” in the rate of global warming–and even now is dramatically reducing forecasts of future warming trends.
Finally, I remember back when I was in college in the 70’s Paul Erlich, in the “Population Bomb” was predicting a close in scenario straight out of Solyent Green–neither he nor the Club of Rome never in their wildest imagination conceived that the Chinese, Japanese, Europe, the then Soviet Bloc and even the US (apart from immigration) would be in a state of incipient population decline.
Now I’m not Pollyanna-as I said earlier, like the Shakespearean plays, “Everyone dies” and I do occasionally like to peruse these boards, as I do several survivalist sites, but the problems, at least in my opinion, most likely to cause mass death in the near future are: a solar Carrington Event or man made (EFP pulse, spreading of a naturally occurring or manmade supervirus, an old fashioned general war using nuclear weapons or other WMD, the eruption of a super-volcano like Yellowstone, or even the development of an artificial intelligence that ultimately decides that humankind is a plaque on the earth are all are more urgent problems in the next say 50-100 year time horizon than the peakoil “crisis” many of you folks are presently focused on especially given the equally fast development of much more economically efficient natural sources of energy, fuel conservation efforts, and long term development of thorium or even fusion reactors.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 30th Mar 2014 6:09 pm
Carl, I really hope you are right. Do you think I am excited about this pessimism of mine? I am not concerned with me betting on a winner and you the looser. No, I have an exceptional life with a great family and good health. I do not want my wonderful life to end. Yet, I have been following this for 14 years and too much is falling in place to deny a big possibility of serious consequences ahead for a population overshoot and a complex global economy in diminishing returns at the limits of growth. It appears now we have a new multipolar global political cold war developing. This could be the nail in the coffin for the global economy because competition and cold war are not conducive to running a complex interconnect global economy. The storm clouds are approaching. I may be erring on the side of pessimism but excessive optimism is dubious with so many predicaments and problems.