One must expect dissent . . . .
Posted by Heading Out on October 28, 2005 - 1:10am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: methane hydrates, peak oil [list all tags]
Turning first to Dr. Jones's comments, he begins his piece with the comment
In the national debate over energy, the idea that world oil production may peak within the next few years is gaining currency.But this notion rests on two persistent misconceptions about the oil situation: first, that there is not much oil left to be discovered and, second, that new technology won't make much of a difference.
In fact, some of the most oil-rich areas in Russia, the Caspian Sea, the Middle East, the delta areas of Africa, Greenland and the deepwater parts of the Gulf of Mexico have scarcely been explored. With prices up, oil companies are investing heavily in these areas. . . . . . .For every place where oil production is declining, such as the North Sea or Texas, production is increasing elsewhere.Well I suppose that as long as oil production, collectively around the world, is still going up, then one could make a case for the latter part of the argument being true, but to suggest that there has been little exploration of the oil-rich areas that he cites is to either be unaware of the extent of modern exploration activity, or perhaps it is that he feels that until the oil has been "found by the bit" that the area has not been properly explored. With today's rig costs companies generally have done a lot of geophysical exploration before they will commit to that investment, and the evidence from the references in places such as the Oil and Gas Journal, and Rigzone articles show that he is clearly mistaken.
Dr Jones bases his article on the U.S. Geological Survey estimates and sources in the petroleum industry, which state that "there are more than 131 billion barrels of oil and 1,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas remaining to be discovered in this country." With all those rigs (1,481 in the US, 477 in Canada) merrily drilling away you would have thought we would have found a significant portion of that by now. But apparently we are drilling in the wrong place, if we were only to drill in the eastern GOMEX, off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and on federally-managed land we would find it all. But if we don't then it will be all our fault.
And then there is
The second misconception is that advances in technology won't make much difference. Yet better technology and management has helped Russia - the new "hot" area for oil exploration - to significantly expand its production.Sigh! It was the introduction of Western and modern technology into Russia that allowed them to bring back many of their old fields, but having made that restoration, it is now generally recognized that Russia is now back to close to a peak production point. The "new" technology has been used in the West for some time, and it actually the use of that technology that is accelerating the depletion that we write about here so frequently. Well I could go on, but you have heard the gist of his remarks, and we have discussed the unreality of his position many times. It is only, however, by refuting them consistently that the American public can be made to understand the realities of geology.Sophisticated drilling technologies are making it easier to find new supplies and to squeeze more oil out of existing fields.
A similar case can be made for Peter Huber's comments, that began, after a cursory description of Hubbert's Peak, with
Nonsense. Technology and politics--not geology--determine how much we pump and what it costs.As his argument continues, however, it begins to look remarkably like that of Dr Jones.
Today Alaska contains 18 billion bbl. of off-limits crude. We've embargoed at least an additional 30 billion bbl. beneath our coastal waters. And we could fuel many of our heavy trucks and delivery vehicles for a decade with the 20 billion bbl. worth of natural gas we've placed off limits in federal Rocky Mountain lands.He places his hopes, further, on Alberta's tar sands, and those of Venezuela, on methane hydrates, and on getting oil from coal. He points out that "General Patton's Third Army completed its roll across Europe on coal liquefied with German technology." Which is something I must confess to not knowing.
A few strokes of a pen (or laptop) and see, all the world's troubles are gone. Trivial details such as only a death-wish denialist might raise, such as "How ?" or "When?" are of course not worth discussing!
Tragically it is articles such as these that continue to suggest to the general public that the rise in the price of oil is purely because of the greed of the oil companies, and that the world does not have a problem. Perhaps they should move to Northern England this winter, where a fuel shortage and a more than normally cool set of temperatures might help their understanding of the difference between wishful thinking and immediate reality.
> Today Alaska contains 18 billion bbl. of
> off-limits crude. We've embargoed at least
> an additional 30 billion bbl. beneath our
> coastal waters.
Translation: we have embargoed less than three years at present world consumption rates. If you divide by US consumption only, then a whopping 12 years of this supposed "embargoed" oil. Then what?
> And we could fuel many of our heavy trucks
> and delivery vehicles for a decade with the
> 20 billion bbl. worth of natural gas we've
> placed off limits in federal Rocky Mountain lands.
Bozo detector: We don't fuel heavy trucks or delivery vehicles with natural gas. Neither is natural gas measured in barrels. Have a nice day.
> He points out that "General Patton's Third
> Army completed its roll across Europe on
> coal liquefied with German technology."
> Which is something I must confess to not
> knowing.
German technology in this case involved massive slave labor, mining the coal and transporting it for liquefaction. No way we can scale that to even a fraction of our conventional oil use today.
Besides, I've heard some Simmons articles saying that a lot of remaining coal is lower-quality brown/soft coal, not the good hard anthracite of yore, which is largely gone.
Kurt
Besides, if we could freely convert those NG boe into useful syncrude, it's still only 20bln bbl, less than one year at world consumption rates.
As to lignite's use in CTL projects, I suspect that the overall energy density problem weighs higher: lignite just takes more volume and mass for a given amount of useful energy, if I understand it correctly.
I am sure when the peak oil crunch becomes apparent, there will be drilling, mining, prospecting on a scale that may make today's efforts look trivial: oil, coal, natural gas, uranium deposits... everything will be furiously developed, but I doubt that anything will "save" us.
Meanwhile, people keep breeding. Stopping the rampant rabbit breeding is the ONLY thing that will save us. Until exponential growth stops, all is moot, because even 1% exponential growth will double in a constant period of time, as I'm sure you are aware.
Nazi coal liquefaction was based on the hydrogenation of lignite:
"Hydrogenation also had experienced greater development because brown coal (lignite), the only coal available in many parts of Germany, underwent hydrogenation more readily than a F-T synthesis"
http://www.caer.uky.edu/caerseminar/fsstrang.shtml
Much, if not all, of the fuel used to support the troops came via PLUTO - Google Pipeline Under The Ocean for an excellent description of how it was done.
Peter Huber probably read Michael Lynch, because this is Michael Lynch's pet argument. Now lets see if it holds. Lynch states that there are numerous examples of productioncurves from several nations that do not show a bell curve at all, and he attributes that to "politics". I suspect Britain would be a good example. But in my humble opinion the very fact that you look at the productioncurves of *nations*, which are political units, instead of looking at productioncurves of regions or at global scale overstates the political influence. So let us look at the North Sea productioncurve and all of a sudden "politics" are a mere blip on a bellcurve..
When politics diminish production in one country others will mitigate. Therefor worldproduction follows a bellcurve, a hubbert curve that is, far more closely.
- An appealing idea. The notion that there is plenty of oil, and nothing will change, is appealing and comforting. It's easy to embrace. The idea of peak oil is frightening, and this leads towards repression or denial.
- Perceived credibility. Previous oil shocks were artificial political events. The markets are working now, and there is a steady supply of oil products with little disruption (so far). And it seems a lot more plausible to think that life will go on as normal, and new technologies will come along to meet our needs.
There is a need to convince policymakers and the public that a real issue is looming. It is a challenge. Peak oil will never be a likeable concept, but it can be a credible one. Is that enough? I think it's still a tough sell.Since it seems that PO is a grear argument for having more nuclear power, the fact that Mr. Huber takes pains to dispute it could mean that he believes in PO, but that the world, if convinves that the peak were nigh, would find non nuclear solutions. He needs the peak to hit us unawares, so that nuclear becomes only the only option open.
As an aside, why do nuclear plants release so much 'waste' heat (and what would that do to Alberta?)? Why can't hotter water be user to preheat cooler water, and so on until the 'waste' heat is negligable?
At a steam temperature of 540°C and a cooling water temperature of 27°C the theoretical thermal efficiency is 63% meaning that 0.57MW of heat has to be given out to the environment for every 1MW of electricity generated. In practice coal and nuclear power stations achieve about 33% efficiency at those sorts of temperatures meaning that 2MW of heat is given out to the environment for each 1MW of electricity generated.
High temperature reactors could increase this efficiency and also open the possibility of the direct production of the hydrogen needed for the hydrogenation the tar using the sulfur-iodine process circumventing the further losses in electrolysis. .
Peter Huber has written many kind words about nuclear power in the past but your ad hominem dismissal is disengenuous. Calling him a shill or a true believer is just a way to insult. Stick to the arguments.
That said, I was disappointed with the quotations presented here - it's not up up to Huber's usual quality.
In fact, compressed natural gas can be and is used for transport fuel. Several US gas utilities have actively promoted its use for vehicles by sponsoring and subsidizing public and prive refuel stations.
Note that methane has an octane number of about 120. An engine optimized for burning methane would then use a much higher compression ratio and achieve a higher thermal efficiency and therefore better milage. Few vehicle conversions go to that much trouble and so are sub-optimal. The range is also driven by the on-board gas storage capacity but that is a bigger burden than a gasoline tank so is a negative.
As to nuclear's waste heat, the inefficiencies that result in waste heat are driven by the physical characteristics of the water used to cool the core. We're stuck at about 33% efficiency. The only way to substantially improve that is to go to liquid metal cooling where efficiency would improve to roughly 40% or to helium cooling using nuclear rocket engine technology and gas turbines where 55% efficiency would be possible.
A possible use of the waste heat from current reactor designs would be for desalinization, producing potable water. In Asia, the waste heat is sometimes used for public swimming pools located adjacent to the plants.
Note that methane has an octane number of about 120. An engine optimized for burning methane would then use a much higher compression ratio and achieve a higher thermal efficiency and therefore better milage. Few vehicle conversions go to that much trouble and so are sub-optimal. The range is also driven by the on-board gas storage capacity but that is a bigger burden than a gasoline tank so is a negative.
I think Gloomy summed up my thoughts on this nicely,
"That NG idea almost knocked me out. We will have NG shortage in US for heating this year and this guy suggests that we divert yet another substantial part of it for fuel! So invest more resources for infrastructure, etc. to compete for an ever declining supply of NG? What a brilliance of mind... Fortunately that idea people are not likely to buy."
An old perception management method is to get an "expert" from another field to disagree with the science in your field. To a reporter they are all experts. Thomas Gold anyone?
Their next biggest arguement is that we'll develope new technology and/or "alternative energy sources" and the world will go on without missing a beat.. AGH!!!
I suppose we'll be seeing more and more of these arguements and until the crap hits the fan, people will continue to live in their comfort zone..
Remember that history is written by the victors, and if the energy companies succeed, they are not going to attribute deaths in the poorest nations to their own inaction. They'll attribute it to racial or ethnic warfare, local ecological disaster, or heck, maybe even global warming all the while patting themselves on the back for having gotten us all off petroleum while the world "only" experienced a few hundred million deaths.
The only way that I can see this period being really recognized for the denial now occurring is if the collapse is far harsher, if several billion end up dead, and if human culture is fragmented into tiny islands of technology amidst seas of primitive living. And frankly, while I believe that is possible, I don't think it's probable (yet) and I certainly don't want it to happen.
For me, the most probable scenario is those decades of recession/depression until we turn the corner and have actually rebuilt enough infrastructure to not be reliant on petroleum to stabilize our ecology and economy into a more steady state endeavor. And quite honestly, given the alternatives to that, achieving that sort of a landing would still be a "win" for the human species, in my personal opinion.
But Likewise EVERYONE else that I talk to seems to think, and can not be convinced otherwise, that ITS THE OIL COMPANIES that are making the higher PROFITS and the PRICES go through the roof. And they get it from headlines, From the Media, From the Government, From the OIL Companies themselves, nothing I say to the contrary will dent their preconcived notions.
I have stopped talking to folks about the issues at hand, I can't convince them, I just have to let the worldwide Dominio effect happen and have myself prepared for the outcome.
As someone above mentioned, FOOD production is the big thing to watch out for slowing. Somewhere recently I read that the USA is now a net food importer. Most of that is likely the result of the USA getting a lot of foods from the Southern Hemisphrire in our WINTER. Chile is now exporting a LOT of food crops to the USA, peaches, apples, grapes, and hundreds of other products that we WANT in our stores. Shipped to us via some sort of OIL using transportaion.
But remember TECHNOLOGY will save us when GEOLOGY fails us.
((( its a joke )))
* A total of several trillion barrels of oil soak the sands of Canada and Venezuela alone--a century's worth at the current global rate of consumption. *
Major red flag when commentators say things like +current rate of consumption+. As population goes up, even by a small amount, resources used increase greatly over time. Albert A. Bartlett has a great video lecture that one can download from the net on the exponential function.
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461
Every time I hear this argument, I ask "what about Texas?"
We have had essentially zero political limitations on drilling, and we have tried every technological advance known to the oil industry. Exactly as predicted by M. King Hubbert, Texas oil production has fallen relentlessly for 33 years. If Texas were the sole source of crude for the world, for every four gallons of gasoline that we bought in 1972, we would be bidding for one gallon today.
Perhaps when Americans can't afford to heat their McMansions--after they listened to Peter Huber, et al, and bought Hummers to commute to large energy inefficient homes--they can burn books by Huber, et al in their fireplaces to generate heat.
This reserve increase has been written about extensively by many people, by probably Matt Simmons is the best known. You can check out any of these presentations that he has, as most of them discuss this reserve increase. However, the short version is that most OPEC countries basically doubled their reported reserves in the mid 1980's without any public justification as to why. Of course the real reason was to game the OPEC production quota system which was based on reserves. None of these countries allow their reserves to be audited by 3rd parties nor do they share any of the data that supports their reserve estimates. Think of these reported reserves as earnings reported by Enron before it went bankrupt. Whether you believe them or not depends on you and how much trust you put in autocratic foreign governments that are only concerned with holding on to power.
But we have even Saudi Arabia claiming that OPEC can't increase production by more than about 5 mbpd now. (Stuart has linked that information in another article somewhere around here.) That's a discrepancy of, oh, just a teensy-weensy 90-95 mbpd.
Here's a spreadsheet assessment of depletion using data from the Oil and Gas Journal, March 2005. Look where we are and then look at where we end up just by 2020, let alone 2030. We're bringing about 2mbpd online and the author of the article graciously extends that assumption clear to 2020. But even that comes nowhere close to even meeting current demand let alone future demand.
When I encounter people who insist we can keep on doing this for the foreseeable future, I realize I've encountered someone who doesn't understand geometric growth and the implications thereof.
However, here are a few potential counter arguments to M Lynch's position that I've used in the past:
He lumps nonconventional sources with conventional and this is misleading. Canadian tar sands and heavy Venezuelan oil require significantly greater amounts of energy to extract and process so you should apply an energy efficiency multiplier to these reserves. Also, nonconventional resrves require huge infrastructure investments and have far larger environmental impact; it may take decades and trilions of $s at great environmental cost to ramp up production volumes to offset the loss of conventional sources if such a replacement is even possible. It's not valid to mix apples and oranges.
New technology will certainly boost recovery rates. However, the low hanging fruit has been picked. As you get over 50% recovery you have to work harder and harder to get a few more percent - the law of diminishing returns applies here. In the past very simple improvements dramatically increased the reserve base, but increasingly we will have to turn to extremely complex and difficult methods to squeak out a marginal recovery boost. So if the extraction technology is already mature you will quickly come to a point where tech improvements fail to keep up with demand increases. Lineraly extrapolating future reserve increases by looking at past benefits of new technology will dramatically overestimate the reserve base.
The shift in production from light to heavy crudes is a pretty good indication that peak conventional production is nearing, since the natural tendency in resource use is to use the most available, highest value form of that resource first and producers only turn to the lower quality reserves last. When you tell me that the future of oil production is asphalt like deposits in Venezuela and kerogen in US oil shale I know we are scraping the bottom of the barrel and that cost are likely to skyrocket and production is likely to diminish.
Since demand is already very high and is relentlessly increasing, the difference in the peak production date between 2 and 3.5 trillion barrels of ultimate reserve is not so great ( ((3500-2000 barrels)/2 / 35 barrel/yr = 21 yrs, for a really rough estimate). I don't know how old Mr. Lynch is, but the majority of people alive today will experience peak oil, whether it is today or 21 yrs from now. Even if the most optimistic viewpoint ends up being correct, isn't it a good idea to mitigate risk by encouraging conservation and seeking alternative fuel sources now?
The disinformation about reserves isn't just elsewhere - it is in the US too.
It took the recent Energy Bill to get our government to do a critical assessment of offshore potential in Florida and California. Previously, we had a law on the books PROHIBITING USGS, et al from performing and diseminating detailed assessments.
I discovered this at a marine laboratory open house where the scientists were celebrating a new marine sancutary of the North coast of California. I asked who much oil and gas was being set aside. They didn't have a clue and didn't want to know.
Turns out, the local politicians had made it a point of blocking scientific assessments to support local environmentalist groups.
Let's make sure our own house is in order before knocking the Sauds or the Norge.
Politicians, at least in the US, do not get elected by shoving the electorate's face in a steaming pile of truth laying before them.