119 comments on Update on US adaptation to higher oil prices
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k Nation (Jim Kunstler)
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Its relentless. How could it be otherwise?
Could it be otherwise? Oh Please. Which scenario did you want? I just spent all night running alternate Hubbert numbers.
I'm afraid not, Nate.
This goes back to a classic conversation that happened with "Old Mossy."
Can the sum be greater than the parts?
Not in this case.
Demand can never be higher than production when every order is filled every day.
Sorry. What are we celebrating?
Even Tertzakian, who avoids the words "peak oil" expects a "break point" as reservoir depletion overrides discovery and produciton.
How could it be otherwise?
Even as a bit of a VMT skeptic (not that confident in the measure) I think this is positive news. The graph shows us what we want to see - a deflection from past patterns in response to new conditions.
We wouldn't want a "trajectory" to stubbornly continue as prices rise past the production peak. We'd want to see responses.
FWIW, I think a similar graph of finished gasoline consumption (and diesel) would be nice. If gasoline consumption does not deflect (from its past increase) at all, something is wrong with the VMT data.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_gasoline.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_distillate.html
One cautionary note is that we have just gone through the transition to ULSD, so the diesel numbers are kind of wacky for the past 6 months or so.
If you download the whole xls, you get consumption data going back many years and even decades (depends on the category of data, and when they started to collect it).
If we look at gasoline:
you don't see much drop in gas consumption over 2005, but in 2005 we had Katrina, so I would almost want to see curves for 2003 and 2004 as well to see how this year compares to more "normal" years.
Unfortunately it shows something the other doesn't, a new high in 2006. Oh well, count our blessings I guess ... and wait to see what next summer's prices bring.