Weekend Open Thread...
Posted by Prof. Goose on November 26, 2005 - 2:48am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: oil, peak oil [list all tags]
Simply because it's threadalicious...
Posted by Prof. Goose on November 26, 2005 - 2:48am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: oil, peak oil [list all tags]
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2005-11-24-peak-oil-usat_x.htm
[see link for the rest]
It seems to be in our nature to think that bigger is always better which is, perhaps, why we end up consuming resources as fast as we can including oil. But is it? Here's the parable of the dinosaur and the mouse.
The dinosaur said to the mouse. Your nothing. You're not even a snack.
The mouse said that's your problem dinosaur.
And so it was. Which is why we have mice but no dinosaurs.
Of course the survivors of the dinosaurs, the birds, downsized until a mouse became a meal.
And that's the mouse's problem.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47529
How do I tell my friends I've been quoted by a kook?
I highly recommend the exhibit to all ages. Darwin's theories are complex and well argued and the implications of those theories continue to challenge us to see ourselves as apart of the natural environment as opposed to above or set apart from that environment.
http://www.ngvc.org/ngv/ngvc.nsf/bytitle/supplyfactsheet.html
We've been frequently discovering natural gas, so naturally it's safe to assume that we'll always continue to find enough natural gas.
That would be one fault of underlying logic. The other fault would be that it doesn't mention the likely costs to harvest the gas we find. Unless natural gas is an unlimited resource (do the abiotic oil people also believe in abiotic natural gas?), eventually there won't be any to find. Much more relevantly as we continue to drill for gas, the easy and large spots will all have been taken, and either we won't be able to supply enough (too few rigs to drill enough small wells), or it will become too expensive (the industry has to pass on the cost of the new rigs needed to drill more wells per year to keep up).
Natural Gas in North America has peaked. And just like when Texas oil peaked in the early seventies there's increasing drilling activity for natural gas. But all the wells are smaller, so there's less gas produced despite putting more effort into finding it.
Natural gas, just like oil, will not just disappear over night. However it will at the very least become more costly to find more as we harvested the cheapest gas first.
At 1 trillion barrels of oil left globally - that entire allocation is only 5,205 quads and the entire world natural gas reserves are 6,343 trillion cubic feet which equates to 6,507 quads.
So, the US has rooughly equivalent BTUS stored in its coal as the entire world has in oil or natural gas. Can you say Fischer-Tropsch in a big way? Hello, greenland ice sheet. (and I live in Vermont)
Currently the US imports 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas a month (if I read the EIA site correctly) or which only 43 billion is LNG and the rest is by pipeline from Canada and Mexico. (Exports are 55 billion of which 5 billion are LNG - to Japan.)
Now current production is about 1,600 billion cubic feet. The figures have trended up and down and there is no obvious trend to show that it has peaked greatly, that I can see. This is because, I suppose, you can't store natural gas.
If it is going to start decreasing rapidly, LNG supplies cannot be expanded to make up the short fall, as I see it.
Something that I have also noticed (and I have no doubts whatsoever about this one) is that hardcore fundamentalist Christians for the most part dismiss global warming and believe that concerns over environmental problems are nothing more than propaganda by godless leftists.
As I have said before, the True Believer is largely immune to facts.
They claim to have a "proven, patented and low-cost way to upgrade bitumen without using natural gas." If true, wouldn't they be a great investment? They're publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Their website, opticanada.com, says that they're developing an oil sands project in a 50/50 joint venture with Nexen.
To me, the drawbacks are: first, they're a start-up which isn't operating yet. There's a lot of construction still to go, so they could have big cost overruns. Second, they need to raise more money to provide their share of the construction costs. Thus, current shareholders could get diluted if new investors got better terms.
Basically they are getting the hydrogen needed using some of the heavier fractions of the tar, some to burn to give the required energy input, some to react with water to give syngas for the hydrocracking of the lighter fractions.
This lowers the yield and increases the cabon dioxide emitted per unit of sythetic crude produced but does eliminate the need for natural gas and does not produce the solid carbon produced by coking, the processes that raise the hydrogen/carbon ratio by removing carbon rather than adding hydrogen.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-venoil25nov25,1,1954579.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Is that true?
Is PO a "minority" view?
Do more than 60% of oil experts believe we have decades to go before hitting peak if ever?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
US anthropologist & popularizer of anthropology (1901 - 1978)
It won't stop the geology but it will stop the scrutiny. High prices will be blamed on speculation and above ground concerns as to supply. Irrational fears etc. Noisy PO minorities etc. We have heard them all before.
Can we really expect the Exxon Mobil chief to say yes PO its real and it will affect us all profoundly?
The term vocal minority says it all.
I expect this will be one of many battles we will have to fight. Expect the full weight of the oil industry and the USGS and fellow travellers to be used, to muddy the waters and smear all in sight.
To me indicates one thing its game on and peak oil is real and is beginning to cause angst to the elites.
He knows the oil people can't say otherwise, lest they damage the value of their own stock. And he knows that if things go south in a bad way, he can always fall back and say, "Well, it's not my fault, because those bad oil people lied to me and said everything was going to be OK!"
It is also good PR, in that it helps demonstrate that our rulers are 'Doing Something.' This is an exercise in producing fluff and consuming fluff.
The NAS paper mentioned an experiment (pnas.org) in which marble chips, ferrous oxide and some water were squeezed and heated, yielding a small amount of some hydrocarbon. Isn't marble ... or calcium carbonate generally, the product of biology? At least here on Earth?
And, even if supergiant fields (wikipedia) are waiting to be discovered, given this (reuters) kind of news, do we really want to keep exponentially increasing our carbon-burning activities?
One thing to bear in mind is that even if oil has an abiotic origin, one is still faced with the very real problem of how, where, and how fast it migrates to the surface and whether we can get at it. It will do us absolutely no good if this abiotic oil starts appearing at shallow depths a million or so years from now.
By the way, calcium carbonate can have both a biological and non-biological origin. However, the vast majority of calcium carbonate is non-biological.
capitalism as we know it.
http://www.bu.edu/cees/research/publications/beyond_oil/beyond_oil_contents/contents.html
In my opinion, older books like this one and Catton's - and also the Club of Rome study LIMITS TO GROWTH from the early 70s - are very useful in that they allow one to test the fundamental veracity of relatively recent peak oil predictions against longer range predictions emanating from the same basic set of assumptions. In other words: If longer range prophets going back 20-35 years were on the mark at least to a first order of approximation, there is then that much more reason to subscribe to the accuracy of more recent predictions - which may themselves then even be accounted correct to a second- and third-order of approximation, owing to refinements of methodologies, improved and more accurate data, etc. But their fundamental utility hinges on the accuracy of their basic assumptions, which older studies help corroborate.
Sasquach has it nailed.Until you change the paradigm
that is used to judge worth in a society,a society is
almost impossible to change.
Remember Jimmy Carter? We had the type of leadership
that would have made peak a non-entity,had his program
been followed.
Peak is going to hurt alot more due to our haveing followed the path of empire.I dont know how we now can change the culture at this point without major disrution and pain.I come into contact with many folks in my line of work.I speak the truth about peak oil,Tell the lists of sites,and try to raise public awareness,as much as I can.I even gave a presentation to the state legislature.{used the peakoil audiovisual from drydipstick}
I now know how Cassandra felt....
The only way out of this consumer consumption nightmare
is for it to become "fashion" to consume less,as well as treating efficiency as the be all and end all of design criteria...This,in itself can drive some of the change we will have to make.My only fear is that the powers that be have decided that the same sort of societal change that they initiated in Iraq would work here...and let"the market" design our new society,without such amenities as social security,worker safety ,and a whole bunch of other safety nets that have created our current lifestyle
in the end I think nature and human nature will sort it all out, but it won't be pretty IMHO. I view the rampant consumption in the U.S. and elsewhere as a form of self medication. Humans desperately trying to feed their soul through material consumption. Trying to nullify the pain that comes from being separated from natural world we come from. We perpetuate our psychosis believing that more stuff, new stuff will fill the that empty place in our hearts and souls. If only we could simple waking up and smelling the roses.......
By the way, it is a good time for us to review Al Bartlett's simple and excellent explanation of what unsustainable exponential growth is all about (ram file warning). Here's a quote--
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function".
enjoy, Dave
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index854.htm
The official holiday shopping season appears to have gotten off to a luke warm start, according to results announced Saturday by a national research group that monitors retail sales. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was one bright spot in the crowd, reporting its sales exceeded expectations.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/13264089.htm
I and several others have reviewed WalMart: The High Cost of Low Price here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473107/usercomments
My interpretation is that the money has decided that for the coming winter, we have enough crude oil and gas in the pipeline to see us through, but there will be no rest for the drillers. Indeed when you contemplate the coming push for coal bed methane there will be no rest for the drillers for decades, since so many holes need to be drilled to tap this resource. Want to get rich? Invent a driiling rig to emulate a sewing machine.
Khaleej Times
"New Technologies May Unlock More Oil" - in places such as Kuwait.
DOHA -- Recently developed technologies will help find and extract more crude from the Middle East, the world's richest-oil region, according to oil ministers and executives.
In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires at an oil technology conference here, Royal Dutch Shell PLC Executive Director Malcolm Brinded said he is seeing "more usage of advanced technologies in the region than is very often recognised."
If their use gets extended it will mean in the "long term, more supply, no doubt about it," through "more exploration success and more recovery from existing fields," he said.
"Raising average conventional oil recovery from 35 per cent to 45 per cent" by using new techniques in the Middle East and around the world "could add some 20 years of current production," Brinded said during an earlier speech at the conference.
TOD bloggers may wish to look at this article and see what they think.
From the EIA.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp
There has been much speculation about the year-on-year decreases in weekly petroleum demand data in the weeks following the production shut-ins and subsequent price increases accompanying Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Total petroleum products supplied for the 4 weeks ending September 30, 2005 were 19,940 thousand barrels per day, almost three percent lower than the same four-week average last year.
However, EIA has cautioned that weekly data may have overstated somewhat the degree of decline in product supplied, due to its preliminary nature and reporting difficulties experienced by some respondents. In fact, it is not uncommon for EIA's monthly petroleum data to show higher demand levels than estimated from weekly data.
So, what do the latest monthly data tell us about current oil market conditions? For gasoline, it indicates that demand did not drop as much due to high prices as preliminary data may have suggested, and with weekly data now showing some growth compared to last year, it confirms EIA's expectations that gasoline demand is still growing relative to year-ago levels, albeit by less than previous trend rates.
<<<<<< SNIP
No real demand destruction at $3.00 a gallon makes one wonder what price it is going to take.
Another interesting thing is the difference between the monthly and weekly data.
Something I have pondered is: Is it possible that with new techology that we may better understand that we don't actually have the reserves that we think we have? Because I have read that new technology doesn't always mean more production or discovery.
Which leads me to my second question. Proven reserves. How are they actually proven? Are the reserves proven in a several different ways? Are the reserves more of an approximation? With a tolerance of say plus or minus 100,000. Please explain in layman terms so that those visiting can understand.