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146 comments on Peak Oil Overview - June 2008 (Pdf and Powerpoint available)

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SamuM on June 26, 2008 - 4:20am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Great update, many good points. Thanks for all the work.

Some notes (based on the PDF version).

Page 11: Myth #1
"International oil companies use..."
Shouldn't that read "National Oil companies use..."?
As the text is referring to OPEC

Page 12: Myth #2
As oil is a worldwide fungible commodity, would it make sense to plot Alaska+ANWR on top of the world graph. That would really show how miniscule it is. After all, US producers will sell it to the highest bidder, anywhere in the world, right?

Page 13: Myth 4
Additional points: Requires lots of water.
Produces lots of greenhouse gases

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Gail the Actuary on June 26, 2008 - 1:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks. I will fix myth 1, and add to the discussion of 4.

Myth 2 issue I will keep in mind for the future. I am not convinced that oil will remain as fungible in the future as it is now. Even now, it depends on a proper match between refining capacity and oil type. I expect there will be a major drop in the value of the dollar relative to oil producing countries. If this is the case, we may find it difficult to buy much oil overseas. US oil sales may be regulated further.

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SamuM on June 27, 2008 - 2:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks for your comments, Gail. This was in fact what I've been thinking myself. And not just in the case of US...

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artaxt on June 27, 2008 - 2:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This is through NPR, but the same question was reviewed in reference to Myth #2. It turns out that oil cannot be exported from the U.S. If it's pumped here, it stays here.

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Gail the Actuary on June 27, 2008 - 9:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Oil that is pumped here is refined here. We also import oil and refine it. Sometimes some of the refined products are exported. With this intermediate step, it seems to me that some of the oil pumped in the US exported, not as crude oil, but as a refined product, such as diesel fuel.

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dratman on June 27, 2008 - 9:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

But I think refined products can be exported from the US. I recently read that we export about 300,000 bpd of diesel.

On the other hand, maybe the cited diesel was made from imported crude. Does anyone here have more details of this restriction on exports of US oil? I think that rule could eventually become important.

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Gail the Actuary on June 27, 2008 - 10:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

That is really my question also. It is difficult to see how one could keep from commingling diesel made from our own oil with imports.

I also know that Alaska exports LNG to Japan. It was required to get special permission to do this, because it would be exporting a product that was produced in the US. Since there were no pipelines to transport it, it was given permission to do this. Of course, our LNG import terminals sit almost empty, while the LNG goes to Japan, and our natural gas costs rise.

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146 comments on Peak Oil Overview - June 2008 (Pdf and Powerpoint available)

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