Spindletop preceded refineries closer than Pennsylvania, docks, pipelines ect and spewed out on the ground and was hastily contained by an earth dike. The first 600,000 barrels caught fire and burned up about a week after the Lucas gusher blew in.So the EROEI was negative for quite a while. Reference; "Spindletop" by James Clark & Michael Halbouty, 1953

This is an interesting history book, and could remind people of how difficult it was to start the modern fossil fuel age. The oil business didn't just start by magic, and neither will any alternative that will replace it. It was only when the British and American navies switched from coal to oil around WWI that a steady enough market was assured to make sure oil became the main fuel for the industrialisation of the world. People tend to denigrate the growth of wind and solar as not being fast enough to make a difference in the future, but they are making proportionate progress just like oil did against coal a 100 years ago or so.
Bob Ebersole

You are absolutely wrong and the original thesis is correct.

No. It is you who is absolutely wrong and the original thesis is junk. See down below.

This is no excuse for lower EROEIs, get me. People tend to think that I'm somehow escusing low EROEIS. I'm not. Of course a good EROEI is better. But you're making WRONG MATHS.

People just don't understand me. Listen. Less EROEI is as bad as it gets, but please, don't count it twice. A Truck that was built with a EROEI petrol of 100 will use the same energy than a truck built with a EROEI petrol of 50, 30 or 20. That's not the issue with EROEI at all. You're confusing stuff. You're saying that a truck spends the energy it requires PLUS the energy that the pumps and refineries require to function. But those are different things. The problem is how much energy does the production of ENERGY takes out of the system. If you subtract them, there's your real energy output for the society.

It appears that what you are saying amounts to the same thing.

Well it almost would if I wasn't wrong saying what I said. The thing is, a truck spends 10 energy cubes. Imagine. You have 1000 energy cubes produced. You could have built 100 trucks. But to build those energy cubes, you required 10 energy cubes (EROEI = 100), so you can only build 99 trucks with what is left (990 cubes). If EROEI = 50, then a truck won't cost you 20cubes, but still only 10. It's the energy cost that doubled. That means that for producing 1000 energy cubes, you spent 20 cubes. That leaves 980 cubes, which goes to produce 98 trucks. Like someone above said, this doesn't have much influence until it reaches values much closer to 1 (where it reaches infinity).

But get this: the truck ALWAYS costs 10 energy cubes. Not 2X it. That's different. That's WAY different.

Okay?