<Net Oil Exports and the "Iron Triangle" The Oil Drum DrumBeat: July 14, 2007>

81 comments on The NPC Report...

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Panama on July 13, 2007 - 5:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

"In a draft letter to Bodman outlining its findings, the National Petroleum Council says, "The world is not running out of energy resources, but there are accumulating risks to continuing expansion of oil and natural gas production from the conventional sources relied upon historically.""

Well, it's certainly not the hyperbolic gloom and doom we all know so well here on TOD, but, then again, reading between the lines, the NPC report doesn't sound that far off. Certainly many of us would have preferred a stronger statement, but the quotation above isn't exactly telling us to go back to sleep and forget about it.

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Slippery Slope on July 13, 2007 - 7:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Those risks include "political hurdles, infrastructure requirements and availability of trained work force," according to the findings of the panel

Reading these lines I think the report is indeed far off the mark.

What about depletion, and all giant fields past peak production? If these truths are in the executive summary obtained by Reuters, then they would also be the headline.

I am greatly disappointed by the leaked contents of this report, but not really surprised given the desire for oil companies to avoid windfall taxation.

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Gail the Actuary on July 13, 2007 - 8:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I am willing to "frame" peak oil in more than one way.

One way is of course the decline because of geological constraints.

The other is that we moving from the easy to extract to the harder to extract oil. The harder to extract oil takes more resources of all kinds - engineers, special equipment, energy inputs like natural gas, and other resources like water in some cases. At some point, we are not able to continue to expand production because there simply aren't enough inputs to keep raising the amount of oil produced. This latter framing fits more with what the NPC is saying, and may be more understandable to some people.

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memmel on July 13, 2007 - 11:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

They are only missing the fine print.

Given these massive investments we will be able to keep production maximized at the geologic decline rate.

They are right, WT export land model (ELM) is right, National Oil companies will invest at even lower rates, and I think a few people are starting to realize that with all three effects are included oil production is lowered by the sum of all three. Considering export land has oil exports effectively going to zero within ten years even with generous error margins we are looking at only 2-3 years at best before facing a major energy crisis.

Btw my wife informed me that we run out of oil by 2010 she heard this on a popular Taiwanese talk show. Just a tidbit but it shows peak oil is getting out ( a bit garbled it seems :)

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81 comments on The NPC Report...

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