Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash — This is one of the most extensive sites I’ve seen on the oil crises, if there is one. With links to sources on everything from the biotic oil theory (this says that somehow oil appears not from bio-mass but some other process) to drilling and usage trends. Please read the links. While this is a gloom and doom scneario, it does offer many viewpoints. A fabulous site of resources if you were a student doing a paper on oil.
Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.
In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependent economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.
Interesting article.
I think the same processes that resulted in oil being in the ground to begin with are ongoing and that oil is still being created, but probably not in quantities that matter and certainly not in quantities sufficient to keep up with increasing demand.
The argument about hydrogen is flawed. The assumption is that fuel cells are required to obtain work from hydrogen. This completely misses the option to just burn it outright, such as in an internal combustion engine. Storage issues are being addressed by companies such as Millenium Cell (www.millenniumcell.com). Of course the real issue with hydrogen, as with any other replacement fuel, is the energy required to produce it. Hydrogen is all around us, but there is a cost to extracting it. Anyway, the platinum thing is a red herring. I’m banking on hydrogen solutions for our future.
I’ve seen this same graphic with the downslope starting right after the peak circa 1980. The problem is we keep pushing that peak further and further forward in time.
I don’t think production has peaked, as much of the world is getting their act together and bringing new production online. Russia, the Caspian region, Iraq, West Africa. And areas that suffered instability and disruptions are settling down, like Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iraq. Everyone has development projects in the works, and in 5-10 years there will probably be another glut like there was 7 years ago. Oil was $12 a barrel 7-8 years ago!
What seems more important is putting in place a system for stabilizing the price, and making the eventual decline (2050, 2075?) a gradual soft landing. Much like people are demanding in international currency and FDI (foreign direct investment) markets after the Asian economic crisis.
The website is correct in that prices are too sensitive to small swings in supply. Excess production capacity is being used up and wrung out of the system, much like the move to reduce inventories and use Just-in-Time delivery in manufacturing and the rest of the economy. Saudi Arabia isn’t interested in the being the “producer of last resort” when there are tremendous budget and social pressures at home, and they need more revenue. China is growing by leaps and bounds, sucking up all the excess capacity, without improving effeciency. (The American economy uses 1/2 as much oil per $1 of GDP as it did in the 70s.)
There’s an interesting new book called “The Bottomless Well” by Peter Huber that makes the other side of the argument. The debate on Amazon.com is quite fierce. The book seems to get either 1 star or 5 stars, and nothing in between.
http://tinyurl.com/5htrd
I don’t know who to believe. But I do think that society will successfully adapt when the decline finally comes. Rising oil prices will make alternatives more attractive, spur research and startups to exploit new technologies and new forms of energy, and the world will make a successful transition to another major energy source.
For me the scary thing is so much depends on one despotic state, Saudi Arabia and what happens in one tiny area of it. If there was a sufficient crisis there the price could explode overnight. Even if everyone else went flat out on production they couldn’t stop a massive energy crisis and the fallout from it would be apocalyptic. GWB and company are bought and paid for by the Sauds who have proved to be pathological liars and still have every reason to lie about almost everything we need to know to make good decisions about policy.
The “Hubbert” curve for the USA (named after M.K. Hubbert who 50 years ago calculated it) has been pretty accurate, but analogous curves like this one for the whole world have been soft. Among other reasons, mainly we don’t have any real reliable idea what world oil reserves are. Hubbert could predict US oil futures because the USA was well explored, but much of the world (e.g. Russia, central Africa) is not. And, for obvious reasons, plenty of countries simply lie outrageously about what kinds of reserves they have. That measns we could run out a lot sooner than many calculations predict. On the other hand, of course, oil that was way too expensive to mine at $20 a barrel is worth chasing at $70. So we won’t necessarily run out of oil, but we are pretty certainly going to run out of cheap oil. My bottom line after studying this stuff for quite a while is, this will probably happen sooner than later. And, this is going to punish us (I mean especially the USA) because although there are plenty of things we could do to prepare for and minimize the effects of oil shortages, we haven’t done any of them. For whatever reasons, the Japanese and Euros have done a WAY better job anticipating this than we have, so they will suffer less. I bought a retirement farmstead on a lake fairly close to a hydropower dam and plan to sail and fish my way through the crisis. 😉
It seems pretty extreme. There are lots of good points about the questionable viability of alternative energy sources. Lots of fun facts.
It’s kinda strange that nobody mentions stealing tires off gas guzzlers as a solution.
Again, people go take a course on economics. As the price of oil rises, people will turn to alternatives to solve their needs. Specifically talking about transportation, alternative fuels and alternative modes of transportation will become more attractive. Not more than 30 years ago, when we had the gas crunch, manufacturers started making more fuel efficient cars. When gas prices went up, the overall consumption went *up*. Why? Because people were able to drive longer distances for approximately the same amount of money with more fuel efficient cars.
Peak oil is a lie.
http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/
Diamonds are not rare either.
Do some reading…
All the proof needed to expose the peak oil psyop is here…
http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/
If the oil reserves decline as rapidly as predicted because of the growing economies of China and India, then the North American industry must look at other sources like nuclear for stationary power plants ( as well as coal) and to supplement our mobile requirements, coal liquifation is a proven alternative. There are huge coal reserves in North America. Using Natural gas to generate power in cogen plants was and is a very short-sighted policy. Natural gas should have been reserved for chemical manufacture and individual home heating.