<DrumBeat: June 24, 2007 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: June 25, 2007>

228 comments on In Defense of the Hubbert Linearization Method

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wolverine on June 24, 2007 - 12:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Just playing devil's advocate, but won't the cornucopians and deniers immediately come back to westexas' point with another talking point along the lines of:

"Well, there's plenty of oil out there, we just haven't discovered or developed those fields yet!"

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Joseph Palmer on June 24, 2007 - 3:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

First, thanks for pushing back. I think it's healthy and good for the discussion. It might even be helpful to put together a "Cornicopian rebuttal FAQ" -- with an emphasis on Factual data to rebut these kinds of "Faith-Based talking points.

For the "plenty of oil argument" I can think of a handful of replies for different occasions: (Some are just for fun)

1) Serious / Factual:

The Peak of oil discovery was in 1964. Even with all of the technology developed since then: computers, seismic mapping, 3D visualizations, ultra-deep water exploration, we have never found as much oil per year as we did two generations ago.

2) Serious / Business:

We have been using more oil every year than we have found through exploration since 1980. In 2004 more energy has been expended in exploration than was in the oil that was found.*

(*I need a technical reference for that, I believe I read it in a Roscoe Bartlett special orders speech, but the FAQ would need to have bulletproof, referenced facts.)

3) Flippant / disdainful / Political

So- I suppose these undiscovered fields are guarded by the undiscovered WMDs from Iraq, Right?

4) Flippant / disdainful

So - your point is we haven't found it, therefore it must be there! We've been searching for it for over hundred years, where it it hiding? How are you so very sure it's there?

5) Disdainful / Serious

So - you're betting the future of human civilization on undiscovered resources? What will you tell your children if you're wrong - "Sorry kids we spent your resource inheritance filling the Escalade. - it was all for your comfort and safty! Really!"

6) Disdainful / joking

Listen, if you know where these "undiscovered" oil resources are, you could be the richest person in human history. You could own the oil companies. I guess that's why you're not telling me where it is.

7) Disdainful / Jim Kunstler

Are you telling me the Earth has a creamy nougat center of oil?

(Edited for spelling. Too much coffee)

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xeroid on June 24, 2007 - 4:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

There are unbelievably large amounts of fossil fuels in the world ... peak oil is about flows of oil ... we can't get it to flow out of the ground at the rates required to meet our exponential expectations of increase in demand.

IMO anybody that responds to peak oil by talking about the amount of oil in the world, either undiscovered or discovered, doesn't understand the problem.

Xeroid.

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SailDog on June 24, 2007 - 8:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Good point. My response to that is "Reserves are not the issue. The issue is how fast you can get it out of the ground. There is an unstated assumption that if oil is "there" that there is no difficulty in getting out of the ground, processed at the well head for water and other impurities, transported halfway round the world, then refined and delivered to you. There are a lot of difficulties, lately with refining, but mostly in getting it out of the ground. We can discuss those difficulties if you want."

At this point the eyes have normally glazed over and they think I am a nutter (probably I am) and they walk away. Most people just do not care. Even educated, aware people, do not care. They do not have the entire matrix of information required to understand the information in their heads. Most people are not aware, they are more concerned with the personal habits of Brad Pitt and Paris Hilton, or football. These are the folks who also whine about "gougers" and being ripped off etc.

Humanity will trip over the edge wondering what dress x or y actress is wearing to the Oscars. Nobody cares.

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relocalizeNow on June 25, 2007 - 10:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Your comment reminds me of an excellent movie... starring Brad Pitt! Fight Club is described by a fan like this:

"the story is nothing short of incredible, a pure shock-value social commentary on the state of the world at the end of the century"

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gTrout on June 24, 2007 - 5:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Discovery rates are a good approach.

8) We can use past discovery to predict how much is left. As discovery each year drops, it points to a maximum:

In "Beyond Oil" Deffeyes models "hits" on new oil fields. His model projects that we have found 94% of all oil and that roughly 100 bbl remain unlocated (this was in 2005). (which is why a "big" field like 7 billion barrels is news and we don't find any 70 billion barrel fields).

9) We can play a "what if" game. What if there were 4 trillion barrels. Then we would expect to be finding X bbls of oil per year in new fields now. We are not.

Colin Campbell co-authored an analysis (which I cannot find right off hand) where he showed how much discovery we would have to be having to find the extra 1 trillion and 2 trillion barrels of oil predicted by the USGS. As you can imagine, to find another 2 trillion, we would need a second discovery peak as huge as the one in the 1960's. And to find another 1 trillion, the peak would have to be half the size. Nothing like that is happening.

10) Serious/Business

If there is so much more oil to discover, why are the oil companies trying to get into tiny slivers of protected Federal Land? Why not just drill the vast world wide reserves? (because the protected areas are the only undrilled areas remaining).

11) Serious/Business

If there is so much more oil to discover, why are the oil companies developing fields in countries that are undergoing civil war (Nigeria) instead of developing the 2 trillion barrels of oil elsewhere.

The next cornicopian response will be that we will just squeeze more oil from the current fields.

12) Serious/Business

If we could get more oil from the current fields with advancing technology, then why is the US lower 48 in decline? Why is the most technologically advanced country int he world, home the the most sophisticated oil companies, unable to halt the decline in oil production?

(Here we could use a few more items that explain how oil becomes locked in the rock once the water or gas flood replaces a percentage of the oil. And some references on how water and gas flooding have been used extensively since the 60's. "Twilight in the Desert" is one source.)

The next step is dealing with low EROI alternates. And then other energy sources substituting for oil.

Jon Freise

Analyze Not Fantasize -D. Meadows

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wolverine on June 24, 2007 - 10:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the detailed reply, you certainly came up with a wide array of counters to the common talking points out there.

I feel like the (Western) world has lived through some great years and now we are entering a period of consequences.

Personally I am very frustrated that people at all points of the political spectrum are so completely in love with their cheap oil lifestyles to formulate a constructive response to the end of cheap, easy oil.

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GreyZone on June 24, 2007 - 7:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The problem is that production curves look very similar to discovery curves and the global discovery curve peaked back around 1964, I believe. It may be a year off either way but it was roughly then. The discovery curve since then looks like a descending meteorite, absolutely plummeting downward.

So we are left with one of the following options:

1. All the geologists in the world are in cahoots to hold back oil to drive up the price. OR
2. All the geologists in the world are incompetent and can't find what their granddaddy could clearly find. OR
3. There's not much oil left for today's geologists to find.

My response to geologists who insist there is more oil is to directly ask them - where? I ask them if they have looked at the discovery curve over the last 100 years and almost always they say no. Like most employees in most businesses they are concerned about today and tomorrow and don't have much time for yesterday. Yet in the data from yesterday are important clues about today and tomorrow.

So while you are playing devil's advocate, please explain the discovery curve:

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

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SailDog on June 24, 2007 - 8:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Greyzone, this is not about oil, but my own lack of HTML skills. How do you embed an image in TOD. I have tried, but not yet managed this.

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WebHubbleTelescope on June 24, 2007 - 11:52pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Eyeballing that particular discovery curve it would give a URR probably around 2000 bbls. I suppose that the geologists would explain away the clear decline by saying that the actual URR is 3500 bbls (such as what USGS predicts). But then we should ask, where is the discovery curve that supports the higher value?

Well here is one from Shell Oil:

(for SAILDOG, note how to imbed a pic
<img src="http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/po-shell6.jpg" /> )

Well, this discovery curve shows approximately 3500 bbls, which is 75% higher than the other discovery curve. It would be interesting to do a year-by-year analysis of this curve against the one you posted to see how the discovery values are boosted. Shell either puts in reserve growth or place fairly aggressive predictions on the discovery values (possible instead of provable or probable?)

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memmel on June 25, 2007 - 1:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Or better reserves are known to be 3500 bbls so the discovery curve must match. A bit simpler explanation without a in depth analysis. The prediction discovery is asymmetric. However if you assume that Antarctica can and will be fully exploited you probably do have 3500 barrels. Does anyone know if some people are excluding Antarctica and some are including it. You would have to think their has to be some pretty big oil fields in Antarctica.

Funny the USGS included it with Africa.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=636

And they have a lower figure.
I'd have to guess that estimates for the Arctic and Antarctic would be the wild card ?

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Mad Max-Out on June 25, 2007 - 5:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Antarctica is protected by international treaty. Whether any geologists include it or not is anyones' guess. However that continent was in a tropical spot during the Carboniferous period. If anything, it'll have coal, though pretty inaccessible. Wouldn't add that into the coal reserves. As far as oil, one could try the obvious and use Google.

If oil is there, the treaty becomes an above-ground sticking point and drilling becomes a pain as ice under great pressure flows and will cause the drilling pipe to get stuck. READ: heated piping. The EROEI might not be worth it even for a large field. The treaty does not allow for divvying up the Antarctic into "colonies" though military and research bases are allowed. And of course, a spill would make quite a mess. A similar treaty protects the moon from national ownership.

I wonder if any seismic exploration has occured on the sly and kept secret regardless of the results. A scientific base looking for fault lines doing the exploring on the sly seismically could find possible formations. Fun conspiracy theory: Suppose the USA bases did find a Ghawar size field. We'd keep it quiet until we break the treaty and being the only superpower (while fuel lasts!) go in uncontested. The Antarctic is really the last unexplored (as far as we know) oil patch. But since it's covered in ice, all bets are off.

Petrol prices high enough yet? Just wait!

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WebHubbleTelescope on June 25, 2007 - 7:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

AKAIK, nothing has been discovered at the poles yet, so how can it appear on the chart if these have to be probable or provable?

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memmel on June 25, 2007 - 8:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thats what made me wonder if its a case of we don't know whats been discovered at the poles.

You would have to guess that both regions still have some large reserves discovered or undiscovered or as I'm wondering discovered but generally unreported. Considering extraction costs political issues etc etc and more important the fact that we are a long way from even attempting to exploit these fields I don't think they are important to oil use with our current economy. But you have to figure their must be significant reserves somewhere in the arctic regions that have not been officially acknowledged.

I don't see why a nuclear sub could not be used to do a bit of prospecting.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9807/01/arctic.yoto/

Its not a large stretch to go from this to actually do a bit of oil exploration.

And this
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/01/980129074316.htm

But not a single hit from google for seismic studies with a nuclear submarine. I can't think I'm the first person to think about doing this.

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Sacerdos on June 25, 2007 - 11:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Perhaps the difference is (at least partly) explained by a difference in what is being measured on the left axis of the two graphs. One is barrels (bbl) and the other is barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

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WebHubbleTelescope on June 25, 2007 - 9:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Good call, I will update with that information.

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228 comments on In Defense of the Hubbert Linearization Method

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