I read the article and it basically said nothing new.

It's not what they are saying is new -- it's that they are dealing with it that is new.

As shocking as the WSJ giving any credence to oil limits is what John Hofmeister, President of Shell, U.S. said last week on CNBC (video here at TOD). He said that Simmons was right on peaking oil given his narrow set of hypotheses i.e. conventional oil from traditional producers. So he indirectly admitted imminent conventional peak!

But then he said that Simmons and peak oil theorists don't take into account the vast new world of new liquids being added to the mix. Well excuse me, but we do consider them. We consider them a lot. He apparently doesn't read much at TOD.

There is indeed a vast new world of liquids being stacked upon the conventional oil curve, and they pretty much all have the same problem - EROI. As global peak is approached, you naturally have a declining EROI of conventional oil where you have an ever-increasing portion of oil being used to retrieve more oil. That process is being augmented by diversion of conventional oil to the manufacture of substitute liquids of dangerously low EROI.

Dangerous? How can EROI be dangerous? If you look at how EROI proceeds through the peaking process as shown by a chart Nate Hagens has shown here and compare that to what's going on with the new liquids, you see this:

The unconventional add-ons aren't exactly the "Y" in the first chart being that it isn't all EROI=1 where equal amounts of energy are used and created. But there is enough EROI drop across the divide between the crude of the past and that of the new liquids to create a similar effect.

Does dropping the EROI really warp the curves that much? Well, as Robert Rapier showed in his EROI Review of 3/18, when you go from an EROI of 20 (old fashion crude) to an EROI of 1.3 (corn ethanol) you wind up having to make over 60 times the volume of the lower EROI source to net the same energy as the higher source. That means that less than 1/60th of all that added production is actually contributing to the net energy curve! But not to worry; all of the ethanol contributes to food inflation.

The danger part about EROI is the cliff that is camouflaged and seemingly set as a snare for our time:

You get a similar warp, though not nearly as severe, going from say a 30 average EROI to the left of the peak to say a 5 average EROI for the composite of ethanol, NGL, deepwater, oil sands, and shale to the right of the peak. It makes a vast difference whether you go to an EROI of 5 or to an EROI of 2 or 1.3 from the traditional high net oil of the past as can be clearly seen on the cliff chart above. Since so much of the new alternative liquids being stuffed into that critical add-on region are thought to have EROI right around the super-critical 5 area, perched right on the edge of the cliff, it is imperative that we know accurately what the EROI is for our various options. Things like the deepwater oil, which has EROI by some estimates less than 5, could easily be nudged over the cliff to join corn ethanol as yet another costly boondoggle. EROI should be the number one subject of research and legislation in Congress instead of nonexistent in their discussion or understanding.