The Oil Drum

German tanks were always running out of fuel. One big reason that the defeated Brits got away at Dunkirk was that the panzers were immobilized from both lack of fuel and also the fact that the tankers had been going on benzedrine for about a week with no sleep at all.

My recollection from Speer's memoirs is that oil production from coal peaked higher and later than you state, but Speer could have been wrong, or (Yes, it has happened a couple of times.) my memory could be in error.

MUDLOGGER -

I suspect you might have slipped a decimal place there, and that it should really be 160,000 barrels per day instead of 16,000.

While I don't have the German synthetic fuel production for 1944, one of my military books cites a 1940 production of 4.25 million metric tons. That would translate into an equivalent average daily production rate of roughly 78,000 barrels per day. So, if the Germans ramped up production to reach a maximum in 1944, that would constitute about a doubling over the 1940 production level, and therefore indicating that 160,000 barrels per day is very likely the correct number.

While it took a tremendous effort on the part of the Germans to attain this level of synthetic fuel production, by modern standards it's pretty tiny, about the output of a medium-size oil refinery.

I bring this up not to nit pick about German production numbers but to perhaps add some perspective on what a major undertaking it will be to get even several million barrels per day of additional coal-to-liquid production.  

I do recall that Hermann Goering was pissed off to the max about this problem of low-quality gas. He truly loved his pilots like a father and did all he could (which was nowhere near enough) to protect them. However, there is an interesting post-script here: Post World War II for at least twenty-five years the de-Nazified and loyal NATO new German Luftwaffe still had a horrendous accident rate among jet pilots due to inadequate training. By this time RAF fliers were big buddies with the sons of their father's enemies and felt so sorry for them, because one thing the RAF has understood from about late 1917 is that the key to an effective air force is good pilot training--something the Brits maybe are still the best in the world at, though U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and Israeli pilots vehemently disagree with this conjecture of mine. Oddly, everybody agrees the Israeli mechanics are the best and Russians the worst, or to be more precise, the least reliable. The best Russian pilots are as good as any in the world, but in a collapsing society they cannot do much. British mechanics are also excellent and have a pride and expertise that is remarkable; they have trained many of the best grease monkeys around the world.

What I am getting at here is that in regard to Peak Oil, you are only as good as your engineers, your geologists, and your managers. The focus on equipment limitations, etc. is valid, but I think in the real world often the most serious bottleneck is the shortage of highest quality well-trained talent.

The U.S. impending shortage of steel is scary. To me ten times scarier is our shortage of engineers.