Thanks !

Just to add support that the cannibilistc nature of super preadators is critical we can look at Orcas the super predator of the oceans.

http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=84

And, as their common name implies, the remains of other orcas have also been found in the stomachs of these "killer whales." It is uncertain why these animals are cannibalistic. Orcas are also known to eat the remains of other animals.

Generally in my opinion omnivores like humans have a better predator/prey cannibalistic relationship. The fact we generally only kill ourselves for sport and habitat control is simply a waste of good meat. However generally we only wipe out the male lineages and impregnate the females so that makes up for wasting the protein. Maybe once we developed rudimentary agriculture burial practices where a way to re fertilize the soil using the dead bodies. So we got more energy out of using our enemies and old as fertilizer than simple eating them directly. So the combination of impregnating the live fertile females of a slaughtered clan that where supported by the now dead males and then using their bodies as fertilizer makes up for not being in general good direct cannibals. So you can see how basic agriculture changed us from simple direct cannibalism. This carrot of adoption of fertile females instead being slaughtered and eaten is probably the balance that kept us from self extermination. You have some pretty heavy selection at least in females for those willing to join another clan and allow impregnation.

This natural selection for survival probably is why men can still treat women as second class citizens. Women that resisted where treated as equals to men and slaughtered. In men homosexual in the sense of female like traits would also be a positive so you have some selection pressure for men that can act like females to avoid being slaughtered.

In anycase although the above is off topic maybe ? You can see that in the oil industry we have the same sort of selection pressures with the Western Oil companies behaving like Orcas or humans. Many of the national oil companies take on the feminine like roles and are still submissive although not always as a mega contract but certainly via subcontracting back to western companies for technology. The role has changed from fully submissive to quasi but its still there. Also of course humans are the top biological predator exhibiting the required cannabilism but companies are a order of magnitude better than the individual or even governments. You can see that as our super national companies have refined their cannibalistic abilities that we face and extinction event as they destroy the economies/ecosytem that gave them birth.

Thanks!

Another way to look at it thats related to Maximum power is simultaneous reserves or active reserves. I prefer to call them real reserves. Given that we produce about 30GB of oil a year and we have been able to keep production basically steady with 3mbd or so of new production brought on line. You get a pretty simple quick estimate of 1md == 10GB of backing reserves. This is a maximum. I also get a similar number looking at field production histories and URR.

So for 30GB a day we have at most 300GB of active reserves backing our production. This is inline with a world URR of about 1350 or so as Hubbert predicted. Now you can deplete this number and still keep production up. And of course new fields refresh it. But we could be as low as 60GB given the assumption that you can maintain high production rates to 80% depleted.
I think we will see production declines well before we hit that level since the 80% is more of a per field result I'm not sure its correct for the globe.

In any case if your not adding new oil and you start with the 300GB at 30GB a day your depleted in 10 years or a 10% depletion rate which is not insane.

Using other numbers.

http://www.opec.org/home/PowerPoint/Reserves/World%20crude%20oil%20reser...

And you know dammed well that we have not found any 10GB+ fields recently.
Then you know the 99GB for OPEC which is half the entire amount of reserves ever found in the US over 100 years is dog poo not even paper barrels. The non opec 29 at least rates paper barrel status.

In any case using the 1:10 rule with a cumulative was about 950 in 2000 (note I did not find the exact total cumulative for that year ) 950+174 = 1124. The point is we burned through 174GB of oil with no major changes in production rates. We brought online about 3mbd or so of new production per year or about 1GB a year over 6 years this is 6GB using 10:1 rule give a maximum backing of 60 GB. Now assuming Non OPEC paper barrels are better than OPEC this gives OPEC additions of about 30GB perfectly inline with the performance of non OPEC countries or at least at the same paper barrel level.

The other 60GB's where probably created at the camel races.

But you can see over this time period we went down at least 114GB with 60GB of suspect additions. In my opinion probably more like 10-20GB of real new oil with the rest coming from pushing production and typing on paper.

So back to the 1350-950 gives a 400GB reserve backing over the period or using 10:1 a max production rate of 40GB a year or close to the 100mbd or so that some people claim is possible. You can see how its fits with the 10:1 rule. And you can also see that 10:1 is a sort of maximum.

In any case the majority of the remaining oil is in Iraq Russia KSA and Iran probably in that order. With I estimate at least 100GB not being actively produced for political reasons primarily in these countries. This gives 300GB
and we are back in line with the 10:1 max or about 10 years of active production. Figure right now we are at 1060-1100 in production this gives 200GB. Lets say high production rates for on 70% of this gives 140GB/30GB or
4 more years of high production before we reach say 50% of our current rates.
Obviously even if production crashes assuming a decline rate to say 15GB a day in 4 years gives a 15/4 == 3.75GB decline or 13mbd decline rate.

I tend to put it at 10mbd per year or a 11% initial decline rate. 3 times higher than other estimates but not insane. A simple replacement of 1GBnew/30GB
gives 3%. Thats a real 3% underlying decline rate on production that should still be effectively flat if not increasing with the max of my pessimistic approach of 400GB of real reserves left.

In any case this approach is way to rough for the level of reserves we have left but given what I'm saying and the fact that a good bit of the oil is in Iran and Iraq say about 100 GB or more if you could pacify the two countries probably eventually via all out genocide they would represent probably close to 25% of the worlds oil production if not more if it declines like I think it will. If you take into account export land effects its probably not sufficient to encourage these countries to produce peacefully since the populations are high enough that exports would probably not be at the needed level. You pretty much have to either impoverish or kill the local population.

You would think one of the super powers would do everything in its power to control this oil. Russia is the other big oil producing nation so they pretty much get a lot of the rest of production by default and it has nuclear weapons.
You would think that Iran and Iraq if they figured all this out would be hell bent on obtaining nuclear weapons to protect themselves within the next 10 years before they get invaded.

Maybe one of the other super powers has this all figured out and is doing the obvious and taking control of Iran and Iraq. However regardless if these two countries are not quickly brought up to maximum production I'm not sure what the bottom is it wont be 40mbd like my calculations say since you need these two Iran and Iraq to ramp up production yesterday and impoverish their populations like Nigeria.

But to finally finish this approach is simply to rough to capture the current situation its got errors as high as 100GB or 3 or more years of production the error term is 30% of the potential remaining oil. So we could crash now like I'm thinking or hold for a few more years then go down. I don't see and significant increases possible we barely have the reserve base to sustain current production and the distribution of remaining reserves is a huge issue.