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273 comments on DrumBeat: January 23, 2007

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Hothgor on January 23, 2007 - 3:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You seem to have selected particular labels to fit me that do not necessarily reflect my opinions as a whole. And while I appreciate your obvious humor and sarcasm, I have to point out that I have stated on numerous occasions that I believe in Peak Oil, that I believe that at some point oil production must peak and then decline forever, and that our present way of life is unsustainable.

My main objective however is to point out to people that a world without FFs doesn't require us to revert back to a pre-industrial agrarian aristocracy. I've tried my best to emphasize electrification of our transportation, though unlike Alan I think our needs can best be served by electrifying cars in the medium term. In addition to that, one of my majors in College was a study on improving efficiencies in a work environment and various systems.

With that said, our use of energy world wise is grossly wasteful. The idea of building our modern economy on the ICE which utilizes less then 15% of the energy content of oil is, to put it mildly, idiotic. The uses of various hydrocarbons are far to numerous to waste burning in a machine that has over 600 moving parts built by the lowest bidder in some third world country.

To that end, however, I can not stand people who proudly proclaim that the end is near and that we must experience some form of grand hardship. Our lifestyle does not warrant some kind of divine punishment. The old adage that no good deed goes unpunished should have no sway in our future.

Unfortunately, people do not like to be criticized on their misguided beliefs. And they certainly don't appreciate anyone attacking their self serving 'prophet'.

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Roger on January 23, 2007 - 3:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Dear Hothgor,

That is interesting. When do you think peak oil will happen?
And what do you think decline rates in production and export will be?

I think you are right about the potentials of conserving and wiser energy usage.
My own experience is that it is quite easy to cut ones energy expendure by 20% without any real sacrifices at all. Quite a nice experiment to do I can tell you.
Ofcourse the Jeverson paradox is messing things up here ;-)

Roger from the Netherlands

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Hothgor on January 23, 2007 - 9:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Around 2015

Around 2-3%

I look at total liquids, individual declines will be greater obviously.

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Roger on January 24, 2007 - 1:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Decline rates in conventional oil are in modernized oil fields between 8 and 15 %.
Where will all the compensating extra oil comming from? Oilsands? Bio?

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Ener Ji on January 24, 2007 - 5:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

How about new fields? Do you think the oil companies of the world are going to stop developing new fields when we peak? New fields are continually coming online to offset the decline of existing fields. One day they won't be quite enough to offset the decline and we'll start to see a slow decline in production.

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step back on January 25, 2007 - 5:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

New fields are continually coming online to offset the decline of existing fields.

News flash.
Discovery of your so-called "new fields" peaked 40 years ago, in the 1960's. (Welcome to TOD --trust, but villify)

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Freddy Hutter on January 25, 2007 - 4:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Ener Ji's point was that to maintain the 40-yr R/P ratio, the field decline rate matters not if discoveries and reserve growth keep pace. Your graph is disingenuous i.e. it fails to reflect that the magnitude of Reserve Growth has allowed new discoveries to slide.

Based on 18 recognized estimates, URR (including Discoveries & Reserve Growth) has grown 140-Gb/yr since Y2k as compared to the 48-Gb/yr fifty year average. This is despite the fact that we consume 31-Gb/yr. To what end would an R/P ratio of 50 yrs or 60 yrs serve? The marketplace says "none".

The last year that the URR AVG actually decreased was 5-GB in 1994. The last year that Remaining Reserves AVG declined was 9-Gb in 1998.

There is no doubt that URR is increasing due to economic factors. The rate of growth in the next two decades may be correlated to Pricing.


please click link to see whole graph: http://trendlines.ca/TrendlinesPeakOilURREstimatesGraph70106.gif

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step back on January 26, 2007 - 12:25am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"Reserves"?

That's the best that you can pull out of your bag of shill's tricks, Freddy?

Come on, we already know about that tired old numbers game.

Yes, I'll grant you that we grow the "Reserves" number to any large value we want simply by counting up the hydrocarbons on Jupiter, Neptune and the moons of Endore.

As a matter of fact we can arbitrarily double the "Reserves" count for East Texas.

This scary, but I'm going to do it.

Watch this:

I hereby declare that the "Reserves" numbers for East Texas are now double of what they were yesterday.

Wow.
Even I'm surprised. Jeffrey of Westexas just called me. Seems production in Texas went up 100% just seconds after I proclaimed that its Reserve numbers are hereby doubled. They can't believe it but it's true. Oil production doubled overnight in Texas. It was that simple. All I had to do was utter magic words.

"Reserves".

Them are powerful words.

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Freddy Hutter on January 26, 2007 - 7:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It is unfortunate that the concept of Reserve Growth as explained by many at TOD has escaped u thus far. Perhaps a basic tutorial at Wikipedia would assist u in that regards. It continues to amaze us how folks like yourself presume that we use the same oil three times and don't have to replenish. Stick in there, eh...

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Ener Ji on January 25, 2007 - 5:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

New field discovery may have peaked but they are still being discovered, and old fields that were not put into production because there was lower hanging fruit will continue to be put into production especially as the price of oil rises. Therefore yes, new field production will continue to partially offset the decline of production post peak and diminish the rate of decline.

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Freddy Hutter on January 25, 2007 - 7:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The only recognized modeler to incorporate aggressive decline rates was Chris Skrebowski's Megaprojects with its 3% to 7% progressive rate. But upon review and the realities of exhausting 1.2-Tb of Reserves over the next hundred years, he prudently revised his Decline Rate to 2.5% in December. To seek the average Post Peak Net Decline Rate, one must average the declining fields with the hundreds of undeveloped fields.

Like Colin Campbell, Chris has decided to put integrity of data and good science ahead being "ambassadors" of the Peak Oil message of immenency. They understand that being forthright and credible is the foundation for being heard.

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