The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: June 9, 2006

260 comments on DrumBeat: June 9, 2006

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Leanan on June 9, 2006 - 9:33am

News about Venezuela:

With Oil's Cash, Venezuelans Consume

CARACAS, Venezuela -- On a recent Sunday morning here, free-spending customers have emptied Vintage, a trendy upscale bar, of nearly all its best vodka. At the Castellana Chevrolet dealership nearby, buyers wait eight months to get the keys to cars they paid for long ago.
And on a recent weekend at the LG Digital Store and at RCA Electronics in the Sambil mall, consumer confidence has helped strip the shelves of television sets and refrigerators.
"Even our construction workers are spending their whole paychecks as soon as they get paid," said Gerardo Pereira, 33, the owner of Vintage, who says he has never seen Venezuelans of all social classes spend this much.

Fuel for Westexas' "peak export" theory?

And Greg Palast thinks "the Peak Oil crowd is crackers." He thinks tar sands, oil shale, etc., will save us. Which means Venezuela will be the next country to be "liberated."

Here's the case for the believers in heavy crude, tar sands and oil shale. When oil is priced at $10 a barrel, the supply is low because only the easy and cheap to extract and refine kind are economically feasible. But at $70 a barrel, it's a whole new oil market. The heavy stuff and the rest become more economical to extract and refine, and a new far higher finite supply is realized almost magically. In short, it's just a matter of supply and demand with the price of a commodity depending on how much of it consumers want. Too little demand and the price is low, but when it's high like now and rising, then so does the price.
Greg also discussed the way this relates to Venezuela and how this increases that country's available crude reserves to off-the-chart levels. I reported earlier that Venezuela may have reserves of about 350 billion barrels if all their known heavy and light crude are counted. That number is far more than is now officially recognized by OPEC which means the country has greater reserves than the Saudis by that number alone.
But there's more, a lot more. Greg reports his DOE expert believes Venezuela holds 90% of the world's super-heavy tar oil reserves which he estimates to be an astonishing total of 1,360,000,000,000 (1.36 trillion) barrels. So with a report like this coming from a source Greg feels is credible (I make no such claim), it's easy to understand why Venezuela is so strategically important to the US and why it will do whatever it takes to secure control over that supply by any means including an act of aggression to seize it. The US goal isn't access to the oil. It's the control of the supply and its price, what companies profit from it, and overall how control of as much of this resource as possible can be used as a strategic weapon. The stakes for the US are enormous, and the battle lines are drawn in the global game of where the supply of oil is located and how an aggressive and predatory US will make every effort to control as much of it as possible even if it takes waging war to do it.

(I guess we're even, because I think Greg Palast is crackers...)

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westexas on June 9, 2006 - 10:22am

As I noted before, notice how the "Unconventional Oil Will Save Us" crowed always talks about reserves and not production rates?

As I have also noted before (based on someone else's post on the Internet), Canadian oil production in 2005 was far below EIA projections made in 2003.

In regard to Greg Palast, IMO Mr. Palast either grossly misunderstood Dr. Hubbert's work, or he deliberately misrepresented Dr. Hubbert's work.

From the Texas/Lower 48 article:

"To be clear, despite what is either a profound misunderstanding of or a misrepresentation of Dr. Hubbert's work in some quarters, Dr. Hubbert was not predicting the end of world oil production by 2006; he was predicting that production peaks when producing regions have consumed about half of their recoverable conventional oil reserves."

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BrianT on June 9, 2006 - 10:54am

He's a sharp guy. It's highly unlikely he misunderstood.

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bradshaw on June 9, 2006 - 11:02am

In regard to Greg Palast, IMO Mr. Palast either grossly misunderstood Dr. Hubbert's work, or he deliberately misrepresented Dr. Hubbert's work.--westexas

BrianT -- You say "He's a sharp guy. It's highly unlikely he misunderstood."

So basically he deliberately misrepresented Dr. Hubbert's work...? What's his motivation in doing that?

-- I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm posing the question of his motivation in that direction. (I had actually posted on Palast while back calling on TODs to debunk him), FYI...

-C.

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BrianT on June 9, 2006 - 11:21am

I don't know for sure. My guess is money. As he has built up a certain sort of credibility among some readers, he is being paid to spin this story. When you read what he says, what it points out is how difficult his (or anyone else's) task really is. The arguments in favor of oil depletion are too strong.You don't have to be a rocket scientist to follow the reasoning. Maybe I'm wrong-maybe Greg got really stupid really fast. Maybe Yergin is mentally challenged.

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oldhippie on June 9, 2006 - 1:22pm

Palast also has a background in statistics. He can read the numbers. It's very odd to see this sharp guy go this way. No explanation here. It's just odd.

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fallout on June 9, 2006 - 2:01pm

Bought and paid for, perhaps?

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TrueKaiser on June 9, 2006 - 3:17pm

Most likely yes.
money talks and the people we are dealing with think anyone has a price.

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Ablokeimet on June 11, 2006 - 9:22am

It wouldn't be money. Palast is a Leftist (that's no insult in my books - I'm a good deal to the Left even of him, but I come here to read up about Peak Oil rather than preach my politics) and suffers from a problem common to most people who are committed to their political ideas. He can't accept an idea that seems to pull the rug out from under his whole philosophy.

Peak Oil challenges a lot of people on the traditional Left because they assume that:

(a) Capitalism can only be surpassed in a society of material plenty for all; and

(b) Admitting that energy consumption is way past a sustainable level and has to be cut would bar the way to socialism.

IMO, he's wrong in that (a) actually says a good deal less than he thinks because the concept of "plenty" is actually a social construct; and (b) is plain incorrect.

At a guess, his idea of "socialism" would probably have a lot more in common with the economics of the late, unlamented USSR than mine does, though I'm certainly not accusing him of supporting the political regime that existed there.

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MillMan on June 9, 2006 - 11:55am

I think most humans overestimate the influence of humanity itself on daily life. I think that's a simple extension of the human ego. Particularly today, after 60 years of abundance in the west, almost none of us include material limits as a variable in our daily calculus. Also, to someone like Palast who does a lot of political commentary, most issues are simply political problems with political solutions.

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step back on June 9, 2006 - 12:35pm

Relax,

The fluid flow will never end.
God gave "us" dominion over all things on this Earth.
There are plenty of alternatives for the blood that feeds our non-negotiable way of life. After the sweet and easy ones are gone, why, we'll just drive our straws into the alligators next. No worries:

(Mosquitos are We)

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MicroHydro on June 9, 2006 - 3:30pm

Palast is a disinformationalist. He is a sheepdog or gatekeeper to herd the gullible on the left in the same manner that fellow peak oil deniers Corsi and Alex Jones herd the gullible on the religious right. So get mad about the 2004 election in Ohio or the abiotic oil coverup or the Illuminati staging mock human sacrifices at Bohemian Grove. But, PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE PEAK OIL BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

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ET on June 9, 2006 - 1:34pm

Venezuela has been on the crude oil radar-screen a long time. My Dad did his WWII service working for Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. in Venezuela ca. 1941-1943 until he had a ruptured appendix out in the bush and had to be transported over jeep roads to a hospital (ouch!). Venezuela's first and likely only peak was in 1970 with the heavy oil likely only to ease the downslope somewhat. This will probably be the case with Canada which is likely peaking as we are speaking :-P
In short, it is no surprise that Venezuela is contracting to buy oil from Russia. They just can't produce it fast enough.

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Sam Foucher on June 9, 2006 - 1:35pm

The heavy stuff and the rest become more economical to extract and refine, and a new far higher finite supply is realized almost magically.

Classic argument that I have seen 100s of times on the web. Nobody he's questionning how large the tar sands can be. The real question behind PO he's how fast can we convert tar sands to synfuel. Here is the mistake: PO is not about How much oil is left but, I quote Colin Campbell:

What is Peak Oil?
"The term Peak Oil refers the maximum rate of the production of oil in any area under consideration, recognising that it is a finite natural resource, subject to depletion."

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Sam Foucher on June 9, 2006 - 1:38pm

Oups! sorry for the typos, I hit the post button instead of preview!

Notice that people pushing the tar sands/shale oil argument never adressed the question of what will be the production rate from such sources.

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fallout on June 9, 2006 - 2:03pm

Because if they did, and were honest about it, investors and the public at large would be appalled and say "Wait? That low?!?"

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step back on June 9, 2006 - 2:22pm

Maybe we should rename "PO"
as "PoW-Wo-ER":

Peak of World Wide oil Extraction Rate

(Painting: Morning Pow Wow --err)

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pstarr on June 9, 2006 - 5:21pm

What Palast and his ilk do not understand is the industrial system that feeds, clothes, houses, and buries them. This is what Deffreyes has to say,

"Green River oil shale has been hanging over the conventional oil industry since I was a little kid. When oil was $3 per barrel, many people thought that if oil ever reached $8 per barrel, Green River shale would have it revenge on Spindletop and shut down the oil industry."

Petroleum is the single fuel that powers everything including alternatives and as it become dearer so do it replacements. Folks who misunderstand this do not really appreciate their own place in the universe. Sadly enough, it is all about entropy.

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Nick on June 9, 2006 - 6:35pm

"Green River oil shale has been hanging over the conventional oil industry since I was a little kid."

I think Deffeyes' point is that shale oil isn't very useful. I agree. It's really an expensive, primitive precursor to oil, like coal except not as good.

But he's not talking about energy-ROI.

E-ROI (or EPR) has been thoroughly researched for wind. It's about 80 to 1, meaning that the power you put in is recovered in less than half a year. Furthermore, the power you get out (electricity) is higher quality than much of the power you put in (process heat for steel & concrete, fossil fuel feedstock for carbon/plastic parts, etc), so the return is even better than that. Solar PV is averaging around 15:1 (about 2 year payback for conventional silicon, much better for thin film and concentrating), and improving rapidly (at least 10% per year).

Labor is the big thing. For instance, wind turbine blades still commonly use primitive, time consuming methods for producing the carbon fibre composites needed. This will change, and continue to improve wind's cost advantage over fossil fuels (when all costs are included). Let
s assume the world oil supply drops by 25% in the next 20 years, and oil prices triple. Because energy costs are maybe 5% of the cost of a wind turbine, some users would be squeezed out (mostly the poor), but the cost of a wind turbine would go up maybe 15% (or less, as they'd look for efficiencies they're not using now at lower prices). So alternatives would be perfectly practical.

I've looked at almost all of the peak oil books (Kunstler, Deffeyes, Goodstein, etc), and none of them convincingly discuss the usefulness (or lack thereof) of wind and solar. Kunstler clearly knows nothing about them - he just assumes they can't help because he wants things to collapse - wishful thinking. Deffeyes says right out that alternative energy is not his expertise. Simpson is just dealing with oil. Goodstein simply notes that a transition to alt energies would be a very big job, and that we should get started now. So does Hirsch.

You mentioned entropy:

The 2nd law of thermodynamics tells us 2 things: 1) any closed system (say, the ENTIRE Universe, or for practical purposes, our solar system), will eventually run down. This really tells us nothing about the earth, which is extraordinarily far from a closed system (the ratio of the sun's energy input to human energy use is something like 10,000 to 1).

2) Perfect efficiency is impossible. Again, this tells us nothing useful about human energy use, which is probably about 2% efficient from a system point of view. If human energy use were made 95% efficient (with which the 2nd law would be perfectly consistent), human energy use would drop by about 50 times.

The 2nd law tells us nothing useful about practical engineering of energy systems, or limits thereof.

Peak oil is a big problem, but there's no theoretical reason why it's the end of civilization. It's entirely up to us, and our ability to be creative.

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baka on June 9, 2006 - 7:25pm

Just so we get our definitions straight
From our "favourite" internet look up source wikipedia

Thermodynamics is basically concerned with the flow and balance of energy and matter in a thermodynamic system. Three types of thermodynamic systems are distinguished depending on the kinds of interaction and energy exchange taking place between the system and its surrounding environment:
* Isolated systems are completely isolated in every way from their environment. They do not exchange heat, work or matter with their environment. An example of an isolated system would be an insulated rigid container, such as an insulated gas cylinder.
* Closed systems are able to exchange energy (heat and work) but not matter with their environment. A greenhouse is an example of a closed system exchanging heat but not work with its environment. Whether a system exchanges heat, work or both is usually thought of as a property of its boundary.
* Open systems: exchanging energy (heat and work) and matter with their environment. A boundary allowing matter exchange is called permeable. The ocean would be an example of an open system.

Ignoring space dust, asteroids and other impacts and various other (on a percentage basis) rather small mass exchanges, the earth is considered a closed system...

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Nick on June 9, 2006 - 9:35pm

hmmm. I'm surprised. That's not an intuitive nomenclature.

Well, in any case, I believe then that the 2nd law applies to "isolated" systems. A system that accepts the enormous energy inputs of the sun won't run down until the sun does, in several billions years.

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fallout on June 10, 2006 - 12:40pm

This is correct. A closed system is one that meets conservation of mass criteria. Energy inputs and outputs (such as heat and work) may cross it's boundaries, and it still be considered a closed system.

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porsena on June 9, 2006 - 8:49pm

Entropy. Somebody told me once that he'd uncovered the purpose of life: it's to slow down the accumulation of entropy. You can see how this might make sense. In a lifeless world, sunlight energy hits the planet's surface and some net amount is radiated directly back into the featureless diffusion of space. In a world with life, a part of that sunlight energy is concentrated and channelled through the food web, each part of the trophic pyramid extracting a portion.

Each human represents a considerable accumulation of sunlight energy, energy that would have passed long ago into entropy if we were not here. As a thought exercise, ask if the release of stored energy from burning fossil fuels is compatible with the purpose of life.

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Nick on June 9, 2006 - 9:44pm

"ask if the release of stored energy from burning fossil fuels is compatible with the purpose of life."

I'm not sure I want to think of my main purpose in life as hoarding energy.

OTOH, this suggests that nature abhors inefficiency, and also that our mission in life should be to capture as much of the sun as we can. Sounds good.

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Seadragon on June 9, 2006 - 10:47pm

Oddly enough, Kunstler has a pretty good discussion of this in The Long Emergency. I understood it well enough to see that SprawlMart would go out of business since it's operation is contrary to physics.

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Nick on June 10, 2006 - 3:47pm

" it's operation is contrary to physics."

Kunstler's argument is very simple. 1) Suburbs and cars are bad. 2) Suburbs and cars need oil. 3) There's no replacement for oil, so peak oil is peak energy. 3) Peak energy would be bad for suburbs, therefore peak energy is inevitable. He doesn't prove any of these assumptions, and his logic doesn't follow.

It's wishful thinking on his part - it's as simple as that.

As I discussed earlier, if you search through his book, (as well as other by Deffeyes, Heinberg, Simpson, etc) you won't find any detailed or substantive analysis of wind and solar. Kunstler clearly knows nothing about them - he just assumes they can't help because he wants things to collapse.

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isaiah on June 10, 2006 - 3:47am

oddly at one point, years ago, i thought (purely for fun) that perhaps someone could make a religion out of minimizing entropy. entropy would be viewed as the equivalent to "sin". well, it all worked well, exhorting the mechanically efficient masses, until we become OCD freaks about every excess movement, action and thought. efficiency is overrated. life is too short. embrace your entropy.

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dipchip on June 10, 2006 - 7:26am

In a lifeless world, sunlight energy hits the planet's surface and some net amount is radiated directly back into the featureless diffusion of space.
Actually the amount of earth energy radiated into space is exactly equal to the amount directed at the earth from the sun. If not the earth would become a fireball. Currently some mini mini miniscule amount may be retained to provide for GW.

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AlanfromBigEasy on June 9, 2006 - 11:18pm

Regarding composite wind trubine blades.

Technology and industrial processes being developed for the the Boeing 787 will be easily applied to automated lay-up of carbon fibers on wind turbine blades.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/273302_fuselage09.html

As for "all energy is oil" POV, nonsense.

Steel requires very little oil. Underground coal is almost entirely an electrical process. It could be transported via electrified railroads to a smelter to melt scrap Hummers into steel supports for wind turbine towers or the coal could be used to make concrete for concrete supports.

Some oil is involved but minimal amounts.

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TrueKaiser on June 9, 2006 - 11:43pm

define minimial, and show us proof.
just because you think it's minimal doesn't mean it is.

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AlanfromBigEasy on June 10, 2006 - 12:04am

Long wall mining machines are driven by electric motors. Coal is transferred up to the surface by electric driven conveyor belt and later loaded onto rail cars by the same type convetor belts.

Coal rail cars can be pulled by electric locomotives (Lake Powell & Black Mesa RR in AZ is).

Unloaded and moved around steel plant by electric conveyor belts. (Some times by electric cranes).

Half of US steel today comes from scrap steel, half from ore. Scrap is collected by a variety of means (locate junk yard by rail line). Most scrap moves by rail.

Note that ALL US railroads use 220,000 barrels/day. So electrification is great, but we will NOT run out of diesel to run RRs and other high value/low oil transportation uses (water for example).

Most iron ore is surface mining, which can use trucks OR conveyor belts to move ore. Giant shovels often run on diesel, but can run on electricity. Explosives (if needed) can use nitrogen fertilizer (from NG) and diesel. But the quantities are minimal.

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pstarr on June 9, 2006 - 11:02pm

my point to this post is that the presumption that highter petroleum costs make alternatives relatively cheaper is nonsence. Every alternative is designed, prototyped, manufactured, installed, maintained, and recycled or disposed of with petroleum and as the price of petroleum increases so to will the alternatives.

Petroleum is the primary energy source of this particular distributed and mobile infrastructure we've created since the industrial revolution went into high gear in the late 1800's. There is no way that this system can adapt to lesser energies or produce alternative energies. Petroleum is as much the cause of our industrial metabolism as sugar, glycose, and ATP are the basis for mammalian metabolism.

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Nick on June 10, 2006 - 3:31pm

"Every alternative is designed, prototyped, manufactured, installed, maintained, and recycled or disposed of with petroleum and as the price of petroleum increases so to will the alternatives."

Well, no, not really. "designed" with oil? The PC's that are used for design these days maybe have $1 worth of oil-based plastics. If the price of oil triples, PC's might go up in price by $2. PC's run on electricity, and only 3% of electricity comes from oil. The same kind of comments apply to most of the activities in this list.

Transportation is the one thing that depends on oil, and with a little transition time (say 10 years for the first 25%, 30 years for the rest) that can be switched to electric.

Now, fossil fuels are a bit harder. Oil only accounts for 40% of man-made energy, FF is probably 80%. But alternatives will work. Replacing all FF is a much bigger job, but we have a much longer time window: peak gas is probably 15 years out, and peak coal is at least 40 years out.

The larger problem is global warming: we need to get alternatives going much more quickly to address GW than we do for peak FF. Fortunately, we're on our way: planned wind generation is 40% of overall new generation in the U.S. in 2006 and 45% in 2007 (adjusted for capacity factor), and this trend is likely to continue. Wind could easily handle all new generation in the US within 5-10 years.

These come from the Nuclear Energy Institute:
http://www.nei.org/documents/Energy%20Markets%20Report.pdf on page 7, and capacity factors are here http://www.nei.org/documents/U.S._Capacity_Factors_by_Fuel_Type.pdf

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westexas on June 9, 2006 - 5:33pm

(I also posted this on the EIA thread in response to a question from Calorie. The principal point I finally hit upon regarding the March/April import anomaly was that oil prices were rising while imports were falling, which to me suggested the beginnings of a bidding war for remaining net export capacity. Total US petroleum imports are finally up, after we bid the price of oil up by 15% to 25%, and Leanan has documented multiple examples of poorer countries experiencing unrest over energy shortages and prices. My point with the following post is that we pick the peak based on declines from recent highs, e.g., Texas oil production peaked in 1972, but 1973 production was 6.3% higher than 1971 production.)

Re: Total Petroleum Imports

We've got 22 weeks of reported total petroleum (US) imports for 2006. Let's look at the four week running average of total petroleum imports for these 22 weeks versus 12/30/05, and let's look at a comparable time period last year versus 12/31/04.

Relative to 12/31/04, 19 of the 22 weeks in 2005 showed higher imports than the four week running average ending on 12/31/04.

Relative to 12/30/5, two of the 22 weeks in 2006 showed higher imports than the four week running average ending on 12/30/05.

Notice a pattern here, especially in light of Saudi Arabia's recent admission?

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DelusionaL on June 9, 2006 - 8:47pm

Again westexas scares me (seriously!)...Put in 2,500 gallons fuel storage-filled today. Premium $3.10 gallon, reg 2.96 gallon, truck diesel(low sulfur highway taxes incl.) $3.02 gallon, farm diesel(high sulfur, dyed( in case you try to run in your truck fine = $10,000)) $2.51 gallon.

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260 comments on DrumBeat: June 9, 2006

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“Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.”

—George Eliot