Saudi Arabia is lowering exports to comply with 1.7 million-barrel-a-day production cuts agreed last year by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries....
It's the eighth month that Saudi Aramco has reduced exports to Asia.
The world is calling on OPEC to increase production because of the expected summer crunch. But OPEC says they will do nothing until they meet in September, then decide.
Yet in the meantime Saudi continues to cut, piecemeal style, a little bit almost every month since their peak in the summer of 2005.
February production of the original OPEC-11, was down 1,950 million barrels per day since their peak in September of 2005. Yet Saudi continues to cut...and cut....and cut. But of course all these continued tiny cuts are all voluntary! Right Robert?
One thing I don't understand is how are the Asian refineries making up for the reduced supplies? If they buy more oil on the spot market, shouldn't that cause spot prices to go up a lot?
I think so. The Dow Jones version of this story said:
With the arbitrage window for crude oil from the West closed and Saudi Arabia maintaining term supply cuts for June, some refiners in Asia may take spot cargoes for July loading, helping to push up spot premiums further.
But the Saudi's have been cutting supplies to Asian refineries since November last year. I am wondering how they have coped with reduced supplies so far. There are no reports of fuel shortages from countries affected by the cutbacks.
And some have said that the Asian refiners can't handle heavy crude. There was that story about China rejecting some shipments because their refineries couldn't handle that much heavy sour. So maybe the cuts were not that big a deal.
The interesting thing is, for the first time, Saudi Arabia is cutting back the light stuff, too.
The interesting thing is, for the first time, Saudi Arabia is cutting back the light stuff, too.
Yup! That is the key!!
So far the cuts were for heavy or medium grade crude. Now they are beginning to cut the supply of light grade crude. The next few months should be interesting.
There are no reports of fuel shortages from countries affected by the cutbacks.
News.google- Asian Fuel Shortage -and get a different opinion. Or better still just news.google Fuel Shortage because it is a worldwide problem.
Fuel is being diverted from Africa, (those unable to pay higher prices) to Asia, (those able to pay higher prices).
Hey, think about it. You say they are buying more oil from the spot market. The Asian spot market is simply tankers willing to sell to the highest bidder. If some Asian country outbids Zimbabwe or wherever for oil, and averts a shortage in that part of Asia, that just means the shortage is shifted to someone else who could not afford to bid high enough.
The African countries, are they bidding on spot crude or do they bid on refined product? Do they have their own refineries, or do they bid on crude that is later refined in a third country?
I just watched the very excellent documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. In it there is a section on the ship salvaging area of Bangladesh. There is a shot of 100 men carrying by hand a giant, 2 and a half inch cable along the tidal flats. In the bonus features, the filmakers say they asked the foreman why they didn't use their winch to pull along the cable. The foreman did some quick math, saying hiring 100 men at 10 cents an hour cost them $10. The diesel for the winch would cost them $15. Is this our future?
Here is a website by a well known photographer and teacher, who visited that part of Bangladesh (he is also a videographer and perhaps the video you saw was partly his doing). He has a pic of a cable gang:
I am not a social activist. I went to the yards with my workshop's members to simply photograph what I knew to be one of the world's most fascinating locations for unique images. But, I was deeply affected by the working conditions at Chittagong, as I was with the fact that this incredibly poor country still has child labour, and numerous other social ills, at least by the standards of advanced western countries.
There are organizations that are working with the people and government of Bangladesh to address these ills, and though it isn't the intent of this photo essay to grind any axes, maybe in its own small way it will draw the world's attention to this distressing situation.
Also Jeffery Brown's estimation of our future. I bet OPEC is reading TOD and thinks Jeffery has the "nut flush". Cut back on contracted volumes and allow selling on spot market to the highest bidder. Makes perfect sense.
Jeffery, I have to give you a hand on this one, that was a very insightful call on your part. Your other comments are with out a doubt coming to "fruition" as well, as much as I don't like reading any of it.
Farmland or light rail accessable? I bet you will say farmland...
Best, D
I can't help but think there's a lot of countries that will be going the way of Nepal. They can't pay their fuel bill, so they've been cut off. They are begging for delivery to be resumed, but they can't pay. And I don't see how they will ever be able to pay. They've fallen so far behind. I guess they're hoping that oil will get cheaper, or their economy will boom, giving them more money to spend.
I also recall a story from 2004, when oil prices first started to spike. The forests were being denuded, as people turned to firewood instead of fossil fuels for cooking.
Nepal sells hydroelectricity to India, which desperately needs every MWh it can get (with more projects in the pipeline). So there is hope for them long term. Nepa; is probably a net energy exporter and can expand that.
Nepal has a huge population problem... several times larger than the 1900 level, to which it must eventually find a way back. The current growth rate is 2.17 (CIA Factbook 2006, via Wikipedia). Ominous signs.
Preliminary OECD stock data continue to point to a 930 kb/d draw in first-quarter total oil stocks, following on from a draw of similar magnitude in the previous quarter.
And that is JUST from OECD. I suggest the remaining shortfall is being demand destroyed in poorer countries.
Pushing my T+3 week for KSA's failed ability to meet summer demand, September is a joke for reassessment - by the we can expect:
1) Oil supplies to be even tighter as stocks are drawn all summer.
2) Gasoline to be potentially critical(but not necessarily for the same reasons).
3) Natural gas and heating oil prices rising rapidly in anticipation of a tight winter.
4) An economy shaky at best.
What happens after that is the stuff of nightmares...you fill in the blanks.
If the U.S. is not going to be able to refine enough product to meet demand for the summer driving season, will it really be able as has been suggested to import the shortfall? Whose refining surplus is available for export? Is Europe poised to meet this demand?
Demand is a function of price, so rest assured demand will be met, just not the way motorists would want it to.
Oil pumped out of the ground now in the middle east, has to be piped to an export terminal, loaded onto tankers, sailed to Europe, offloaded, piped to a refinery, processed into gasoline, piped to an export terminal, loaded onto tankers, sailed to the US, offloaded, loaded onto trucks, and finally driven to your local gas station.
I am not excatly sure how long this takes. But I feel it's safe to say that even if OPEC raised output today. Europe can not save your summer driving season.
We tend to talk of demand as an immovable point - but it is better to say - demand will meet supply via price(and some politics).
Price will rise - some plants may squeeze out some more capacity, imports will rise as we divert 2 supertankers (VLCC class) full of gasoline a week from someone else in the world who cannot afford the new price. Demand will shrink due to the new pump prices (however little/big)...until they meet in the middle.
Gone are the days of supply will meet demand. Even if you think there is a still a few more years to peak, we are on a plateau until then...this is the new economics of depletion.
Exactly right. In any market there are a range of consumers with different marginal utilities for the good being supplied. The buyers with the lowest marginal utility for oil will be the first to drop their demand when the price of the oil exceeds their marginal utility. And so it will go, all the way down to the point where the price gets so high that there is nobody left to buy.
Hurin:"Demand is a function of price". Maybe. IMO, the current USA gasoline price increase trend is not sharp enough to choke off demand before supply issues arise. Possibly the prices will rise faster in late May and June.
If demand for gas in the U.S. is inelastic, this is certainly not true for all consumer spending. When American consumers feel unable to cut back on gas consumption in the face of high gas prices, demand destruction hits other sectors, as we saw in the April consumer spending numbers. May consumer spending stats should be interesting.
However, I suspect that in the longer term cutbacks in consumer spending circle back and ease pressure on energy supplies. If people are buying less, they are making fewer trips to the store. Long haul truckers are delivering less inventory to retailers, manufacturers cut back their deliveries of their own inputs, etc.
In other words, the pressures of summer gas supply/demand exigencies could easily tip us into recession.
And this is right too. Consumers with the means to afford the higher prices will simply pay them, and cutback on some other good of lower marginal utility. It is only those consumers with nothing else left to cut back on that will have no choice but to cut back on their consumption of gasoline or diesel or fuel oil.
If a poor person cannot afford to fill up the gas tank, then the gas tank won't get filled up. That is what we really mean by demand destruction. Sad, but true.
The US's refineries cannot refine enough to meet demand, a situation that's existed for many years now. We import well over a million barrels of gasoline per day alone. Much of that product comes here to the west coast, thus the much higher prices at the pump.
This is one of the great mysteries of our time. Is KSA running out of oil, or cutting voluntarily?
One factor to consider: OPEC makes more money when they pump less. Unlike farmers. Having thousands of farmers means each one can only increase profit by growing more. The cumulative effect, of course, is usually a glut, and they make less.
Not so in the oil world. A few extremely large "oil farmers" can cut production, and make more.
If you had a choice between 1) pump more and make less, or 2) pump less and make more, which would you choose?
Another fact to consider: At $60 a barrel, it looks like world fossil consumption is falling, or flatlining. To pump more now would mean a fall in prices. OPEC knows this, even winos in the park know this. My guess is that world fossil oil consumption falls mildly and semi-permanently at more than $60 a barrel. World consumption fell 11 percent after the 1979 price spike. That spike was worse in absolute terms (adjusted for inflation) but this one may be more sustained. Nevertheless, oil prices are double and triple or even five times late 1990s levels. Sooner or later, the screw will turn.
By the way, check out crude oil production in North America (not just the Lower 48) for the last 30 years. It is a flatline, despite cheap-o oil prices for most of that period. As a founding member of the Fossil Flathead Society, I call that "Cole's Plateau" (as opposed to Hubbert's Peak).
No one can say what makes the Lower 48 any more instructive than North America as a whole. Indeed, if our ancestors had been a little more aggressive in their fevered dreams of Manifest Destiny, maybe the USA and North America would be the same. Alak and alas, we let things slide away, and so we have Hubbert's Peak, instead of Cole's Plateau.
Last note: Veep Cheney was in Iraq (according to Sunday's LA Times) and told Iraqis if they didn't get that oil law passed, then come September they would find Congressional support for US troops in Iraq would dissolve. Hmmm. You can put women back into the Stone Age, kick out non-Islamics, and in general create anarchy, but man if we don't get that oil, we are leaving.....
I am fascinated at how you can go from one subject to another without using even one linebreak. 'Semi-permanently' is that even a real word?
My guess is that you're home schooled, and that your mom just invented her own grammar as she went along.
Btw. Your plateau is no longer a plateau. You can add more continents to it, if you feel like. But since you can't add another planet, your point is moot.
I'm fascinated by the fact that BC spouts off about all manner of "flatlining" ideas without offering up any document links to substantiate whatever the hell he is talking about. I thought TOD was a meat-grinder and this guy gets a free pass? Now that's fascinating!
I have considered suggesting that he use paragraphs but resisted as I thought it might be perceived as too snarky. But now that this has been brought up, I second the notion that line after line with no breaks is not bearable and I refuse to read him anymore.
Okay, check out British Petroleum's website, then look at their world statistical review. You will see world oil consumption in 2005 rose 1.3 percent. World oil consumption rose 3.5 percent in 2004.
We are waiting for June's annual report from BP, which will reveal world oil consumption in 2006. But, look, from 3.5 percent increase to 1.3 percent in one year. Prices were even higher in 2006.
It is not so far-fetched to believe that consumption flatlined in 2006, or is currently, or indeed, may even be declining. Why this good news causes such outrage and umbrage is beyond me.
Further, if you review the statistics, you will see that consumption has already flatlined for deacdes in Europe (BP calls it Eurasia), and nearly so in North America. Moreover, that flatlining occured in an era of cheap oil prices! What will happen in the new $60 a barrel regime? economies and buyers do respond to price signals.
in short, the developed world, outside the Far East, is already using less oil than before. Whole nations, such as Germany, Great Britian and France, are using less oil than 20 years ago, or even than in the 1970s. Check it out.
Even India reportedly used less oil in 2005 than 2004. More recent reports suggest Indian oil consumption is going up again. China is a killer, using lots more oil (although they have been making oil strikes, and claim they will not import increasing amounts, in years ahead).
The USA is also a killer, as we seem to consume at ongodly levels. Althoguh that means we can reduce more easily.
Okay, so you have the document link. Go look for yourself. But mostly, I think we look at each other's ideas for what we can gain, not for the chance to make insults. I like many of the posters here, and many disagree with me. That is what makes this a fun forum!!!!
Give it up Hurin. His rose-colored glasses are so thick he can no longer tell truth from fiction. If he wants to disregard Hubbert (a very experienced Phd) and invent his own mathematical models of oil production/depletion, let him. He can babble harmlessly to himself in the corner over here.
At some point (perhaps when he is hungry enough) he will take those glasses off long enough to read a book or two on how the models are constructed. And perhaps he will learn what EROI means and that a 100 EROI barrel of West Texas crude is not the same as a 3 EROI barrel of tar sands glop.
The Parliament is supposed to approve the law by end-May; so Cheney's September deadline seems like recognition that the May target date will not be met. Interesting that VP Cheney is using the Democratic Congress as a threat to the Iragi Government. We know that Congress Democrats, including Obama and Clinton, are in favour of the proposed oil law and the Irag Constitution that gave rise to it. AFAIK the Iraq Constitution is the only state Constitution in the world that specifies how oil is to be marketed - " by moderb marketing methods" which I suppose translates as Big Western Oil Companies. This is the same neocolonialist approach favoured by the French Government in the post-war liberation of French colonies in Africa. The locals obtained an "independent Government" while France controlled and still controls their natural resources. Iragi "independence" meant that US companies were consulted about the prosposed law before the Iragi Parliament. Strange that. But we know that Cheney involved US energy companies in pre-2003 studies of Iragi oil fields, without any communication with Congress; so he may regard such secrecy s "normal Democracy". According to Al Jazeera Iraqi parliamentary opposition to the proposed oil law is growing with even former US stooges such as ex- Prime Minister Allawi now against. And if the US does not gain control of Iragi oil, to have it become what RR called "foreign US oil interests" ( e.g. pillage) then what's the point of occupiing Irag.
BenjaminCole's claim that US production since 1970 peak has "flatlined" demonstrates gross ignorance of the real data. As I replied to him in a prior drumbeat when he first made this claim, he is completely factually in error. US production has fallen at a roughly 2% clip annually leading to roughly half the oil production today that we had in 1970. This graph from the EIA clearly demonstrates the lie of Cole's original assertion. Since I called him on this false statement, he has since moved on to claiming "North America" but Mexico was not even in production on a large scale when the US peaked, thus showing the error of his analysis right there. He completely fails to understand what the term "finite resource" means. He ignores or is totally ignorant of the oil production history of Texas, Alaska, the North Sea, the lower-48 US, Yibal, etc.
BenjaminCole's other assertions have also failed the "sniff test" of real data. His 3 gallons of oil per pig from pig manure is perhaps the most sensational but his current assertions are no less faulty. His assertion that global consumption is "flatlining" is based on the FALSE belief that if demand rose, the production must rise to accomodate it. What he fails to realize is that if production has peaked, then consumption CANNOT rise and would give the exact same appearance as his false expectation.
Instead, demand remains strong, there are fuel shortages globally, and even fuel riots as the remaining fuel goes into a bidding war, just as Jeffrey Brown has predicted. They just have not happened in the OECD nations yet so BenjaminCole thinks that this means everything is ok. Notice how tiny and constrained his perspective is? He tosses out the entire developing world, ignores the news items (such as those Darwinian referenced), bases his entire belief system on faulty theory that ignores thermodynamics, then claims that we are all wrong.
I do not find even many cornucopians making statements as ridiculous as BenjaminCole.
Ghawar Is Dying The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Greyzone! I keep posting that it is North American crude oil production that has made a plateau, not US production! See Cole's plateau further down in the posts, done graphically. Very pretty. North American production has been roughly flat for decades, in the face of cheap oil. Mexico is a mess now, so maybe this plateau will start losing some elevation. On the other hand, $60 a barrel oil may spur more production elsewhere. But it is not a peak, for sure.
From the link on Saudi cuts above:
The world is calling on OPEC to increase production because of the expected summer crunch. But OPEC says they will do nothing until they meet in September, then decide.
Yet in the meantime Saudi continues to cut, piecemeal style, a little bit almost every month since their peak in the summer of 2005.
February production of the original OPEC-11, was down 1,950 million barrels per day since their peak in September of 2005. Yet Saudi continues to cut...and cut....and cut. But of course all these continued tiny cuts are all voluntary! Right Robert?
Ron Patterson
One thing I don't understand is how are the Asian refineries making up for the reduced supplies? If they buy more oil on the spot market, shouldn't that cause spot prices to go up a lot?
I think so. The Dow Jones version of this story said:
Thanks. That makes sense.
But the Saudi's have been cutting supplies to Asian refineries since November last year. I am wondering how they have coped with reduced supplies so far. There are no reports of fuel shortages from countries affected by the cutbacks.
Prices have gone up in Asia and Europe.
And some have said that the Asian refiners can't handle heavy crude. There was that story about China rejecting some shipments because their refineries couldn't handle that much heavy sour. So maybe the cuts were not that big a deal.
The interesting thing is, for the first time, Saudi Arabia is cutting back the light stuff, too.
Yup! That is the key!!
So far the cuts were for heavy or medium grade crude. Now they are beginning to cut the supply of light grade crude. The next few months should be interesting.
News.google- Asian Fuel Shortage -and get a different opinion. Or better still just news.google Fuel Shortage because it is a worldwide problem.
Fuel is being diverted from Africa, (those unable to pay higher prices) to Asia, (those able to pay higher prices).
Hey, think about it. You say they are buying more oil from the spot market. The Asian spot market is simply tankers willing to sell to the highest bidder. If some Asian country outbids Zimbabwe or wherever for oil, and averts a shortage in that part of Asia, that just means the shortage is shifted to someone else who could not afford to bid high enough.
Ron Patterson
The African countries, are they bidding on spot crude or do they bid on refined product? Do they have their own refineries, or do they bid on crude that is later refined in a third country?
I just watched the very excellent documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. In it there is a section on the ship salvaging area of Bangladesh. There is a shot of 100 men carrying by hand a giant, 2 and a half inch cable along the tidal flats. In the bonus features, the filmakers say they asked the foreman why they didn't use their winch to pull along the cable. The foreman did some quick math, saying hiring 100 men at 10 cents an hour cost them $10. The diesel for the winch would cost them $15. Is this our future?
Here is a website by a well known photographer and teacher, who visited that part of Bangladesh (he is also a videographer and perhaps the video you saw was partly his doing). He has a pic of a cable gang:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/locations/ship-breaking.shtml
His conclusion:
Yes. But first and foremost in agriculture.
Also Jeffery Brown's estimation of our future. I bet OPEC is reading TOD and thinks Jeffery has the "nut flush". Cut back on contracted volumes and allow selling on spot market to the highest bidder. Makes perfect sense.
Jeffery, I have to give you a hand on this one, that was a very insightful call on your part. Your other comments are with out a doubt coming to "fruition" as well, as much as I don't like reading any of it.
Farmland or light rail accessable? I bet you will say farmland...
Best, D
What about Nepal?
I can't help but think there's a lot of countries that will be going the way of Nepal. They can't pay their fuel bill, so they've been cut off. They are begging for delivery to be resumed, but they can't pay. And I don't see how they will ever be able to pay. They've fallen so far behind. I guess they're hoping that oil will get cheaper, or their economy will boom, giving them more money to spend.
I also recall a story from 2004, when oil prices first started to spike. The forests were being denuded, as people turned to firewood instead of fossil fuels for cooking.
Nepal sells hydroelectricity to India, which desperately needs every MWh it can get (with more projects in the pipeline). So there is hope for them long term. Nepa; is probably a net energy exporter and can expand that.
Not true for other nations.
Alan
Nepal has a huge population problem... several times larger than the 1900 level, to which it must eventually find a way back. The current growth rate is 2.17 (CIA Factbook 2006, via Wikipedia). Ominous signs.
ciao,
Bruce
Drawing inventories still.
From IEA May Oil Market Report
And that is JUST from OECD. I suggest the remaining shortfall is being demand destroyed in poorer countries.
Pushing my T+3 week for KSA's failed ability to meet summer demand, September is a joke for reassessment - by the we can expect:
1) Oil supplies to be even tighter as stocks are drawn all summer.
2) Gasoline to be potentially critical(but not necessarily for the same reasons).
3) Natural gas and heating oil prices rising rapidly in anticipation of a tight winter.
4) An economy shaky at best.
What happens after that is the stuff of nightmares...you fill in the blanks.
5) the coming hurricane season in the GOM, which ist again expected to become intensive this year
If the U.S. is not going to be able to refine enough product to meet demand for the summer driving season, will it really be able as has been suggested to import the shortfall? Whose refining surplus is available for export? Is Europe poised to meet this demand?
Demand is a function of price, so rest assured demand will be met, just not the way motorists would want it to.
Oil pumped out of the ground now in the middle east, has to be piped to an export terminal, loaded onto tankers, sailed to Europe, offloaded, piped to a refinery, processed into gasoline, piped to an export terminal, loaded onto tankers, sailed to the US, offloaded, loaded onto trucks, and finally driven to your local gas station.
I am not excatly sure how long this takes. But I feel it's safe to say that even if OPEC raised output today. Europe can not save your summer driving season.
We tend to talk of demand as an immovable point - but it is better to say - demand will meet supply via price(and some politics).
Price will rise - some plants may squeeze out some more capacity, imports will rise as we divert 2 supertankers (VLCC class) full of gasoline a week from someone else in the world who cannot afford the new price. Demand will shrink due to the new pump prices (however little/big)...until they meet in the middle.
Gone are the days of supply will meet demand. Even if you think there is a still a few more years to peak, we are on a plateau until then...this is the new economics of depletion.
Exactly right. In any market there are a range of consumers with different marginal utilities for the good being supplied. The buyers with the lowest marginal utility for oil will be the first to drop their demand when the price of the oil exceeds their marginal utility. And so it will go, all the way down to the point where the price gets so high that there is nobody left to buy.
Hurin:"Demand is a function of price". Maybe. IMO, the current USA gasoline price increase trend is not sharp enough to choke off demand before supply issues arise. Possibly the prices will rise faster in late May and June.
If demand for gas in the U.S. is inelastic, this is certainly not true for all consumer spending. When American consumers feel unable to cut back on gas consumption in the face of high gas prices, demand destruction hits other sectors, as we saw in the April consumer spending numbers. May consumer spending stats should be interesting.
However, I suspect that in the longer term cutbacks in consumer spending circle back and ease pressure on energy supplies. If people are buying less, they are making fewer trips to the store. Long haul truckers are delivering less inventory to retailers, manufacturers cut back their deliveries of their own inputs, etc.
In other words, the pressures of summer gas supply/demand exigencies could easily tip us into recession.
And this is right too. Consumers with the means to afford the higher prices will simply pay them, and cutback on some other good of lower marginal utility. It is only those consumers with nothing else left to cut back on that will have no choice but to cut back on their consumption of gasoline or diesel or fuel oil.
If a poor person cannot afford to fill up the gas tank, then the gas tank won't get filled up. That is what we really mean by demand destruction. Sad, but true.
kenny you are dead on. I think the feedback loop has started and will show up in MSM later this year or early next.
The US's refineries cannot refine enough to meet demand, a situation that's existed for many years now. We import well over a million barrels of gasoline per day alone. Much of that product comes here to the west coast, thus the much higher prices at the pump.
Have you tried cutting down on driving?
Another important point is that it is LIGHT crude, where previously also heavy and medium were cut.
This is one of the great mysteries of our time. Is KSA running out of oil, or cutting voluntarily?
One factor to consider: OPEC makes more money when they pump less. Unlike farmers. Having thousands of farmers means each one can only increase profit by growing more. The cumulative effect, of course, is usually a glut, and they make less.
Not so in the oil world. A few extremely large "oil farmers" can cut production, and make more.
If you had a choice between 1) pump more and make less, or 2) pump less and make more, which would you choose?
Another fact to consider: At $60 a barrel, it looks like world fossil consumption is falling, or flatlining. To pump more now would mean a fall in prices. OPEC knows this, even winos in the park know this. My guess is that world fossil oil consumption falls mildly and semi-permanently at more than $60 a barrel. World consumption fell 11 percent after the 1979 price spike. That spike was worse in absolute terms (adjusted for inflation) but this one may be more sustained. Nevertheless, oil prices are double and triple or even five times late 1990s levels. Sooner or later, the screw will turn.
By the way, check out crude oil production in North America (not just the Lower 48) for the last 30 years. It is a flatline, despite cheap-o oil prices for most of that period. As a founding member of the Fossil Flathead Society, I call that "Cole's Plateau" (as opposed to Hubbert's Peak).
No one can say what makes the Lower 48 any more instructive than North America as a whole. Indeed, if our ancestors had been a little more aggressive in their fevered dreams of Manifest Destiny, maybe the USA and North America would be the same. Alak and alas, we let things slide away, and so we have Hubbert's Peak, instead of Cole's Plateau.
Last note: Veep Cheney was in Iraq (according to Sunday's LA Times) and told Iraqis if they didn't get that oil law passed, then come September they would find Congressional support for US troops in Iraq would dissolve. Hmmm. You can put women back into the Stone Age, kick out non-Islamics, and in general create anarchy, but man if we don't get that oil, we are leaving.....
I am fascinated at how you can go from one subject to another without using even one linebreak. 'Semi-permanently' is that even a real word?
My guess is that you're home schooled, and that your mom just invented her own grammar as she went along.
Btw. Your plateau is no longer a plateau. You can add more continents to it, if you feel like. But since you can't add another planet, your point is moot.
And my guess is that childish insults aren't helpful.
I'm fascinated by the fact that BC spouts off about all manner of "flatlining" ideas without offering up any document links to substantiate whatever the hell he is talking about. I thought TOD was a meat-grinder and this guy gets a free pass? Now that's fascinating!
I suspect most people just aren't reading his posts. Not least because his wall 'o text style makes it very difficult to read.
check
I have considered suggesting that he use paragraphs but resisted as I thought it might be perceived as too snarky. But now that this has been brought up, I second the notion that line after line with no breaks is not bearable and I refuse to read him anymore.
BenjaminCole
Okay, check out British Petroleum's website, then look at their world statistical review. You will see world oil consumption in 2005 rose 1.3 percent. World oil consumption rose 3.5 percent in 2004.
We are waiting for June's annual report from BP, which will reveal world oil consumption in 2006. But, look, from 3.5 percent increase to 1.3 percent in one year. Prices were even higher in 2006.
It is not so far-fetched to believe that consumption flatlined in 2006, or is currently, or indeed, may even be declining. Why this good news causes such outrage and umbrage is beyond me.
Further, if you review the statistics, you will see that consumption has already flatlined for deacdes in Europe (BP calls it Eurasia), and nearly so in North America. Moreover, that flatlining occured in an era of cheap oil prices! What will happen in the new $60 a barrel regime? economies and buyers do respond to price signals.
in short, the developed world, outside the Far East, is already using less oil than before. Whole nations, such as Germany, Great Britian and France, are using less oil than 20 years ago, or even than in the 1970s. Check it out.
Even India reportedly used less oil in 2005 than 2004. More recent reports suggest Indian oil consumption is going up again. China is a killer, using lots more oil (although they have been making oil strikes, and claim they will not import increasing amounts, in years ahead).
The USA is also a killer, as we seem to consume at ongodly levels. Althoguh that means we can reduce more easily.
Okay, so you have the document link. Go look for yourself. But mostly, I think we look at each other's ideas for what we can gain, not for the chance to make insults. I like many of the posters here, and many disagree with me. That is what makes this a fun forum!!!!
In the absence of meat, meat grinders sit idle.
Alan
Give it up Hurin. His rose-colored glasses are so thick he can no longer tell truth from fiction. If he wants to disregard Hubbert (a very experienced Phd) and invent his own mathematical models of oil production/depletion, let him. He can babble harmlessly to himself in the corner over here.
At some point (perhaps when he is hungry enough) he will take those glasses off long enough to read a book or two on how the models are constructed. And perhaps he will learn what EROI means and that a 100 EROI barrel of West Texas crude is not the same as a 3 EROI barrel of tar sands glop.
Best let the children day dream a bit longer.
The Parliament is supposed to approve the law by end-May; so Cheney's September deadline seems like recognition that the May target date will not be met. Interesting that VP Cheney is using the Democratic Congress as a threat to the Iragi Government. We know that Congress Democrats, including Obama and Clinton, are in favour of the proposed oil law and the Irag Constitution that gave rise to it. AFAIK the Iraq Constitution is the only state Constitution in the world that specifies how oil is to be marketed - " by moderb marketing methods" which I suppose translates as Big Western Oil Companies. This is the same neocolonialist approach favoured by the French Government in the post-war liberation of French colonies in Africa. The locals obtained an "independent Government" while France controlled and still controls their natural resources. Iragi "independence" meant that US companies were consulted about the prosposed law before the Iragi Parliament. Strange that. But we know that Cheney involved US energy companies in pre-2003 studies of Iragi oil fields, without any communication with Congress; so he may regard such secrecy s "normal Democracy". According to Al Jazeera Iraqi parliamentary opposition to the proposed oil law is growing with even former US stooges such as ex- Prime Minister Allawi now against. And if the US does not gain control of Iragi oil, to have it become what RR called "foreign US oil interests" ( e.g. pillage) then what's the point of occupiing Irag.
BenjaminCole's claim that US production since 1970 peak has "flatlined" demonstrates gross ignorance of the real data. As I replied to him in a prior drumbeat when he first made this claim, he is completely factually in error. US production has fallen at a roughly 2% clip annually leading to roughly half the oil production today that we had in 1970. This graph from the EIA clearly demonstrates the lie of Cole's original assertion. Since I called him on this false statement, he has since moved on to claiming "North America" but Mexico was not even in production on a large scale when the US peaked, thus showing the error of his analysis right there. He completely fails to understand what the term "finite resource" means. He ignores or is totally ignorant of the oil production history of Texas, Alaska, the North Sea, the lower-48 US, Yibal, etc.
BenjaminCole's other assertions have also failed the "sniff test" of real data. His 3 gallons of oil per pig from pig manure is perhaps the most sensational but his current assertions are no less faulty. His assertion that global consumption is "flatlining" is based on the FALSE belief that if demand rose, the production must rise to accomodate it. What he fails to realize is that if production has peaked, then consumption CANNOT rise and would give the exact same appearance as his false expectation.
Instead, demand remains strong, there are fuel shortages globally, and even fuel riots as the remaining fuel goes into a bidding war, just as Jeffrey Brown has predicted. They just have not happened in the OECD nations yet so BenjaminCole thinks that this means everything is ok. Notice how tiny and constrained his perspective is? He tosses out the entire developing world, ignores the news items (such as those Darwinian referenced), bases his entire belief system on faulty theory that ignores thermodynamics, then claims that we are all wrong.
I do not find even many cornucopians making statements as ridiculous as BenjaminCole.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Greyzone! I keep posting that it is North American crude oil production that has made a plateau, not US production! See Cole's plateau further down in the posts, done graphically. Very pretty. North American production has been roughly flat for decades, in the face of cheap oil. Mexico is a mess now, so maybe this plateau will start losing some elevation. On the other hand, $60 a barrel oil may spur more production elsewhere. But it is not a peak, for sure.