The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Ups and Downs of Giving a Peak Oil Presentation

130 comments on The Ups and Downs of Giving a Peak Oil Presentation

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

Neven911 on June 16, 2008 - 7:06pm

Ralph

Yes a lot to cover in a short time, In explaining PO I find it best to dispel myths first, like
"The oil companies control how much of the worlds oil? (A:15%)" or "How much of the Worlds oil does Shell produce (A:3%)", once you engage an audience in this way you can build on their knowledge, like the person than told me that Canadian Oil sands had more oil than Saudi Arabia, my reply "Yes the do but to get it out they have to strip mine and area the size of Great Britain" and yes I know they are working on in-situ extraction but the point was pithily made

A LOT of people are still in the mindset that this is all a rip-off by the oil companies, and our current govt are using them as a scapegoat to cover their own incompetence NZ Government-ordered inquiry

Neven (NZ)

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Kiashu on June 16, 2008 - 9:47pm

Yes, I've encountered that "it is teh conspiracy of teh guvvermint an' teh companies!" many times.

I emphasise the physical part of the peaking. What I do is say,

"When we first drilled oil, the stuff was literally oozing out of the ground, just whack a pipe in and it's yours. So it was cheap, ten bucks a barrel or something. But that stuff is mostly used up. Now we're going for the more difficult oil.

"Have you heard of the Canadian tar sands? Those tar sands are like getting oil from the bitumen in that road - they have to pump in fresh water and boil it all up at hundreds of degrees to get the oil out, and the heat dissipates so now they're thinking about freezing it around and only then heating inside this big cylinder. That's a lot of energy and effort to get the stuff out. And after all that the stuff is really heavy so they have to mix it with regular crude oil to get anything useful out of it.

"Have you heard of the recent Brazilian discover of some oil offshore? Well, their discovery is 3km down in the sea, then another 1km through rock, then another 2km through salt, then another 1km of rock, and only then is there oil - nobody's ever got oil from a place like that, the pressure gives them lots of technical problems.

"So, oil from the tar sands and under the sea - they can do it, but it takes years, it's a lot of effort, a lot of very well-paid and experienced people, a lot of energy used. And that all costs money. In the end, if we want to get the oil, we can - but it'll come out slowly, and we'll have to pay for it.

"With Canada and Brazil both, that oil is not going to come out as quickly as when we could just whack a pipe in the ground and it'd ooze out under its own pressure. So over time, how much oil we can get every day drops down.

"We are never really going to run out of oil. But we'll get less and less each year, and it'll cost more and more. At some point, mate, you are going to have to walk and take the train. Sorry."

The numbers are not all precise and the description not scientifically accurate, but the basic idea - that we have to go to more and more effort to get the oil, and effort costs money, and eventually it'll be more trouble than it's worth - that's accurate, and you can get it across without trouble.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.