<An Idea: Repeal or Amend the US Gas Guzzler Tax The Oil Drum DrumBeat: May 26, 2009>

158 comments on Book Review: Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller

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CreosoteChris on May 25, 2009 - 6:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Andrew

I have much the same misgivings

If we look, for instance, at Mexico - the poster-child ELM example, we can see that:
1) exports are falling off a cliff
2) the Mexican economy, heavily dependent on these exports for the delivery of hard currency earnings, is about to succumb to chaos, because their revenues are also falling off the same cliff.

There's no way that the Mexican economy will sustain real growth, year-on-year, that will ensure its oil consumption will grow at 5% plus p.a. It's ignoring the feedback loops, just like the way most of us (myself included) ignored the the feedback loops that led to the collapse in oil prices, following the run-up to July 2008.

Full respect to the excellent work of Brown+Foucher, but I feel it needs a further level of refinement to be really industrial-quality. The extrapolations out to 2025 just aren't credible - the feedback loops will kick in long before that, resulting in a world of complexity and chaos, long before those dates are reached, and rendering the predictions meaningless.

Regards Chris

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westexas on May 26, 2009 - 2:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

As noted below, it helps to look at real numbers regarding net export declines in countries like Mexico, which has so far shown an accelerating net export decline rate in the four year period from 2004 to 2008. If memory serves, their production decline rate over this time period has been about -5%/year with consumption increasing at a little over +2%/year. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the next four years.

In any case, by the end of 2014, our best case is that the top five net oil exporters--Saudi Arabia; Russia; Norway; Iran and the UAE--will have shipped about half of their post-2005 cumulative net oil exports. This is the theme of our next paper--the fact that the bulk of post-peak cumulative net exports are shipped early, e.g., Indonesia shipped half of their post-1996 cumulative net oil exports in slightly over two years, as they went from their final production peak in 1996 to net oil importer status in 2004.

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gregor on May 29, 2009 - 12:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I spent an entire day last week looking at the EIA excel workbook on Mexico, which looks at their entire energy record since 1981. It was quite a story. A soon to be very sad story, frankly. We sucked them dry. And they, unfortunately, were only too happy to oblige. Worse, as their supply of oil dwindles, there in the background (as is the case with so many countries) is the ongoing narrative of population growth seen in the yoy rising demand for domestic coal and NG.

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158 comments on Book Review: Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller

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