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88 comments on Nigeria: A Closer Look at "Above Ground Factors"

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westexas on June 20, 2007 - 12:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I've used the example of the US since about 1950, 20 years before we peaked. We saw a gradual increase in production, a peak in 1970, a decline, a little rebound due to Prudhoe Bay and then the gradual decline resumed, but we still have a pretty reasonable level of production.

One problem, if the US were the sole source of crude oil for the world, net crude oil exports since 1950 would have been zero.

You are right about the demographics. I think that the Saudis are "down" to something like six children per family now. Saudi crude oil production seems to have recently stabilized at about 8.6 mbpd. One problem. With rapidly rising consumption, flat production = declining exports.

Look at some of the problems that Iran is having trying to curtail their subsidized gasoline consumption.

Every time I run these scenarios through my head, I get more concerned. I remain stupefied that declining world export capacity is not the #1 story in the world.

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DelusionaL on June 20, 2007 - 7:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

WT, I think you really have it nailed with your Iron triangle. reading the paper "...housing prices up 8%..."
http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2007/06/portlandarea_home_prices...
When you read it you see in SW washington "median" prices are up 4.3% yet volume is off 17.7%.
I find the volume data for the Portland market missing while they report the 8% increase in the "median" cost of homes, and that the national media wanted to report on it(why?).

I firmly believe you have this correct(I-T). I pay nothing extra to get the paper delivered to my remote address. They have to make it up on advertizing, and advertizers want increasing sales(or at least not down!). It is all to easy to see why things get reported (spun) the way they do.

Add to the newsprint papers reluntance to kill the sales of it's advertizers the general populations avoidance of PO and I think it adds up to any export story being buried in the middle in small print if at all.

This is one major reason I think we are screwed.

It will take high prices to change behavior and this will be bad for retail sales and our service based economy. The effort made to prop our economy via low interest rate, mortage ATM withdrawl, is all but over.

There is no political will to tax our energy use.

Add CERA's and Exxon's recient statements that everything is OK for 35 years and I think we are set up for some serious problems.

This is my optimistic forcast.

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westexas on June 20, 2007 - 7:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

D,

The MSM people are really in a fix. A financial columnist for the Dallas Morning News (Danielle DiMartino) last year wrote a series of columns warning about a housing collapse, and she occasionally referenced future oil supply problems. I can only imagine the angry e-mails that the Morning News was getting from real estate related advertisers. Result? She was fired in September of last year: http://housingdoom.com/2006/09/15/dimartino-goodbye/

From her next to last columan:

"Goodbye

In the past several months I’ve received numerous e-mails asking why I haven’t written an ‘I told you so’ column on housing. My answer has always been that there’s nothing to celebrate.

To the contrary, a huge amount of work will be required in the coming years to address the fallout of the largest financial bubble in history. The ramifications extend far beyond the realm of residential real estate.

To that end, I will write one last column tomorrow and take my leave. My hope is that I can do more by saying less as a member of the private sector and soldier on the front lines of the economic battlefield.

I will be forever humbled by the tremendous outpouring of support readers have provided over the years. You were the very thing that made being the voice of the minority bearable."

In any case, the net result is that the message being conveyed to the average Joe Consumer by the Iron Triangle is that high energy prices, high food prices and slumping real estate prices are temporary problems.

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Buckler on June 22, 2007 - 3:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The root problem is the lack of a low cost source of energy (obviously). Concerning this, there are a series of articles over at EnergyPulse (one of the most respected websites for utility articles) by Dr John K Sutherland that state that new generation breeder reactors
re-enrich (reprocess) uranium as they use it -- so the resource base of uranium is over 100 years (Sutherland estimates 100,000 years here): http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=374

All articles by John Sutherland and bio: http://www.energypulse.net/centers/author.cfm?at_id=283

From reading briefly on breeder reactors it seems to fit -- but I am not a nuclear expert. Does anyone konw more about Breeder reactors and supply of uranium (I know the traditional estimate of supply is only 50 or so years but breeder reactors propose to increase supply
dramatically).

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wizofaus on June 22, 2007 - 9:41pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

So far no-one's managed to keep a breeder reactor running long enough for it to actually start "breeding" in significant quantities (AIUI, all reactors breed to some degree), for various commercial and safety reasons, but there are no serious technical limitations that I'm aware of. I've never heard 100,000 years though. Personally I think a couple of hundred would be more than enough time for us to develop something else. But note that FBRs aren't particular cheap - indeed wind power is significantly cheaper.

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88 comments on Nigeria: A Closer Look at "Above Ground Factors"

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