From Fortune:

Massive oil profits may not last

Although industry leader Exxon  has long shown extraordinary discipline in finding more oil year after year, rivals like Shell and Chevron  are lagging badly. Despite earning $14 billion last year, most of Chevron's production and reserve increases came from its acquisition of Unocal, not what oil insiders call 'the drill bit.' And while Royal Dutch Shell  earned more than $25 billion, its daily production fell from 3.7 million barrels a day in 2004 to 3.5 million last year. Even worse, the Anglo-Dutch giant replaced only 70% to 80% of the oil it pumped out of the ground, despite spending billions on new projects.

"This is the big story for these companies," says veteran industry consultant and occasional gadfly Matthew Simmons. "They're so big, they're having a very hard time growing. The only thing they really know how to do well is buy back stock." Simmons, it should be noted, is convinced the world is entering a period of tight oil supplies that will drive prices much, much higher. That's debatable -- but he's on to something here. Because if the oil giants can't find new fields, going forward they'll essentially be liquidating the source of future profits. Smaller, independent oil firms have had much more success in growing production, which leads Simmons to wonder if maybe the giants wouldn't be better off splitting themselves up. "I think one of these days, one of the Big Oil companies is going to break itself up like AT&T and the Baby Bells."

Oil analyst Neil McMahon of Sanford Bernstein agrees the production numbers are a challenge, although he's a bit more sanguine about the future of Big Oil than Simmons. "Still, at the end of the day, it's not great," he admits, adding that production schedules of big projects like BP's  Thunderhorse in the Gulf of Mexico and Chevron's Gorgon field off Australia have also been slipping.

I thought I would re-post this from Thursdays thread since it got somewhat buried and no one responded.

I was trying to read up on how oil is used in the US. I found this data  The data is barrels of oil used a day. The percents are each categories percent of the total.

I was curious how much oil gets used as an input for the manufacturing of products. I always thought things like plastics, synthetics, pharmacuticals, etc. contained had oil derivatives.

So does anyone know which products below go into manufacturing?

US Oil Production              7,649    
Oil Imports                    13,145    
Total                          20,794    

NGLs and LRGs                  2,264     11%
Other Liquids                  (30)    0%
Finished Petro Prods            
    Finished Mogas             9,105     44%
    Finished Avgas             17     0%
    Jet Fuel                   1,630     8%
    Kerosene                   64     0%
    Distillate Fuel Oil        4,058     20%
    Residual Fuel Oil          865     4%
    Naphtha Petro Feed         390     2%
    Oth Oils Petro Feed        366     2%
    Special Naphthas           27     0%
    Lubricants                 141     1%
    Waxes                      15     0%
    Petroleum Coke             524     3%
    Asphalt & Road Oil         537     3%
    Still Gas                  704     3%
    Misc Products              53     0%
Total                          20,730    

I have a procedural question to the blog editors regarding the restriction not to edit one's posts. I'm answering Prof.Goose's argument here, not to spoil the excellent SS thread with side discussions:

I must admit I don't know what are the fundamental differences between blogs and forums that require such restriction. I'm writing in a hurry sometimes as a take-away from work, and therefore the mistakes which I suspect are pretty annoying to the public here (being highly educated in general). Overall IMO, the confusion element from typos, factual errors etc. is higher than it would be if they could be corrected right away from the commenters instead of posting a "correction" post.

Of course I grant the editors the right to have a final word on such questions, but still hope they change their minds...

http://www.energybulletin.net/12563.html
It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both
Robert Newman, Guardian
Summary:
Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change
published February 2, 2006.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the one hand, capitalism has been a flexible, durable system that has re-invented itself many times over the centuries.

On the other hand, the current unresponsiveness and denial lead one to believe that Robert Newman may be right.

Newman is an English writer-comedian, currently appearing in his show "Apocalypso Now" (review).

He is also the author of "The Fountain at the Center of the World," about which Salon says:
The anti-globalization movement may not quite have found its Dante or its Homer in British writer Robert Newman, but it's found something, all right -- maybe its Theodore Dreiser. Newman, the author of two previous novels published in the United Kingdom, makes a splashy, messy American debut with The Fountain at the Center of the World, an ambitious and occasionally thrilling book that takes you from a NAFTA-impoverished Mexican village to the sleek corporate hallways of the City of London to the now-legendary street demonstrations at the World Trade Organization's 1999 Seattle meeting.
(Review by Andrew O'Hehir)
 -BA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chris Matthews discussion with Don Evans on "oil addiction" is now up at this MSNBC site

Hello, does anyone know a link which shows the expenditures of developing countries for foreign oil? What percentage is paid for this today and how was paid 10 or 20 years ago? The consequences of 65 $ a barrel must be fatal for the trade balance of such countries in Africa or in some parts of Latin America. matthias, berln

(Note the reference to converting prime farmland into housing developments and shopping.)

Del Monte to Stop Growing Pineapples in Hawaii

By JAYMES SONG, AP

Excerpts:

HONOLULU (Feb. 3) - Pineapples have long been a proud symbol of Hawaii, along with hula dancers, palm trees, Diamond Head, surfers and the spirit of aloha.

 The future of Hawaii's top agricultural product is now in question as Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. announced it will cease pineapple operations here in a little more than two years.

 Del Monte said it was no longer economically feasible to grow pineapple in Hawaii because it can be produced for less elsewhere.

Fred Galdones, president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 142, said about 700 pineapple workers will lose their jobs. Galdones said he was also concerned with the future of the two remaining pineapple companies in Hawaii, Dole Food Hawaii and Maui Pineapple Co.

 "I hope it's not a domino effect like it did with the sugar companies, where one had closed and the others followed suit," he said.

 Hawaii's once thriving sugar cane industry is barely a presence now as companies found it cheaper
to operate elsewhere.

 Tens of thousands of acres of former sugar cane fields on the densely populated island of Oahu, where about 75 percent of the state's 1.3 million population reside, have since been developed into master-planned residential communities and shopping centers.

I've been on this board for several months, and have seen it go from 20 comments per post to 200. That's not sustainable. And we're starting to repeat ourselves.

I suggest that we put that energy into a set of Wikipedia articles. Everything from "peak uranium: myth or fact" to "what kinds of demand will be destroyed first" to whatever else we've been talking about.

The amount of time we've been spending just to read these comments could write a book a month. Many of us are good writers. Let's go for it.

I think half the threads I've seen in the past two weeks could be either "take it to Wikipedia" or (after just a few weeks of work) "that's already on Wikipedia."

There's already a "peak oil" category. It takes maybe 10 minutes to learn to use the software. And anyone can add an article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Peak_oil

For an example of what an article looks like in source form, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Haber_process&action=edit
Note the line at the bottom: "[[Category:Peak oil]]" Include that in any article you write for that category, and the web site does the rest.

Just go here to start a new page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Starting_a_new_page

Let's go for it!

Chris

USGS on peak oil: they admit that yes, it's about to get scarce. They call it "The big rollover" and refer to US and Soviet rollovers.
http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of00-320/ and click on the PDF document.

The latest cite is in 2000, so it appears this was written a while ago.

Quoting from the poster:

Q! What's THE BIG ROLLOVER?
A! It's when the demand for oil outstrips the
capacity to produce it.

Q! Wouldn't it be better to get started solving this
problem before THE BIG ROLLOVER is upon us?
A! Absolutely! There's no substitute for planning and
implementing that plan before the oil shortage
occurs. We can turn a lose-lose situation into a
win-win situation if we start now.

Q! What about Saudi Arabia?
A! Saudi Arabia has about 3 million barrels a day of
excess production capacity (Figure 3, G).
Depending upon world oil demand, it could last
a few more years, but then what?

Q! So when is THE BIG ROLLOVER?
A! Nobody is sure, but those willing to forecast say
somewhere between 2003 and 2020 (Table 2, J).
Most everybody seems to agree that it will most
likely be within our life time, and possibly
quite soon (Figure 1, K)!

I just read the Farrell et al. article article in Science retrospectively analyzing studies of ethanol as an energy source.  Doesn't anybody find the graph showing that gasoline has a negative net energy completely bizarre?

They were comparing the fossil fuel inputs to gasoline production and ethanol production.  In order to get a negative net energy for gasoline (-0.2 MJ/L), they subtracted the entire energy content of the input petroleum, which is, of course, a little more than the energy content of the refined gasoline you get out the other end (34 MJ/L).

Then they compare this negative net energy with their calculated positive energy for ethanol (e.g., 6 MJ/L) and criticize Pimentel for not accounting the other non-ethanol outputs of corn ethanol production.

Now if I was doing such a study, I would try to measure the amount of fossil fuel inputs to drilling, transporting, and refining oil and compare that the the energy you get out of the gasoline.  I wouldn't subtract out all the energy you get out of the gasoline as 'not counting' and lump it in with the much smaller subtraction of the energy cost of refining, which is certainly fair to subtract!

I think their point is that by using some fossil fuel to plow fields, you can harvest solar energy via ethanol and get a little more total energy than if you just burnt the gasoline directly.  That's OK, if you believe calculations and assumptions.  But phrasing things they way they did in a generalist journal like Science is sure confusing and misleading for the general scientific reader, much less the general public.

(disclosure: I knew Dan Kammen, the senior author, when he was a post-doc with Christof Koch when I was at Caltech, and I like Science since I have two publications in it :-} )

I think mcain6925 has made a really important point, that often seems to disappear under the carpet at TOD. Simplistically there are two types of energy. High density, easily packaged fuel energy which is ideal for transport (such as liquid hydrocarbons etc.) and less conveniently packaged energy such as electricity. As we've been living in the age of cheap oil, we've forgotten the distinction. However pre the oil age there always was (and is) a premium on energy dense fuel. The price difference between oats and hay (for horse fuel), or the difference between plant food energy and more energy dense meat. A future economy will place a price premium on energy dense fuels, and so EROEI becomes only part of the calculation. It may be economically viable to manufacture a negative EROEI fuel if the price differential between electricity and a dense fuel is sufficiently high.

For instance if you calculate the cost of lead acid EV car batteries per kilometre (deep discharge ~ 1000 times lifecycle), its close to the price of the fuel you'd burn in an infernal combustion engine to go the same distance (thats not including the price of electricity to recharge it). So transportable electricity (frozen in battery chemistry) has quite a premium compared to the stuff that comes out of the little holes in the wall.

Another example is solar powered oil wells, a way of converting low density energy into high energy density stored energy:
http://www.thebluerepublic.com/images/post/solaroil.jpg

Peak Oil Debunked has an article about the possibilities for oil in Greenland:

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2006/02/229-oil-in-greenland.html

The USGS estimates that offshore Greenland has the 2nd greatest potential for undiscovered oil in the world (the greatest is the Iraq/Iran region). Little exploration has yet been done there, but the rock formations are similar in size and structure to the North Sea.

A big problem is the sea ice in the region, which interferes with shipping and other operations. If only there were a way to get rid of all that pesky ice! Luckily Stuart has some ideas along those lines...

February 3, 2006 latimes.com  

THE WORLD
Attack Jolts Iraq Oil Business as Civilian, Troop Tolls Rise
By Solomon Moore, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD -- A mortar attack set ablaze a major petroleum facility in the northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday, stopping refining at the plant and further damaging Iraq's beleaguered oil industry.

Iraqi oil workers were still fighting the fire late Thursday, and U.S. officials held high-level meetings in Baghdad to assess the damage. An Iraqi executive with the North Oil Co. called the incident the "most severe attack we have ever faced on an oil installation." The mortar rounds also hit an important pipeline to Turkey that was already out of commission and was being repaired, the executive said.

Shell President Forced to Address 'Peak Oil' Theory

I asked whether Shell had done any detailed modelling on this question, said Strahan. Mr. van der Veer replied that his argument basically was that the world will not [arrive at a peak oil situation]. He said that peak oil is correct as applied to regional areas of production like the North Sea, Texas or the Lower 48, but does not apply to the world as a whole.

Van der Veers actual reply to Strahan on Shells webcast was That is a great question it is much more complex than many people think. That (peak oil) is not how we will go. Because peak oil theory itself is correct, if one takes easy oil close to the markets. If you look at West Texas the oil has gone, or even the North Sea but if you look at oil sands you don't know where the peak will come. if you think about coal there are huge reserves. If you assume we can develop clean coal technologies, [then] there will not be one peak.

So there is no one peak. There will be many peaks [for different fields, regions and fuels] and they will be in many different time frames and how that will develop, we don't know.

We think [for prices] that it is prudent for our company to evaluate projects in a very [many] differing pricing scenarios.

this was extracted from right here

alright, whats the "low down" on this? Is this just a type of senior executive Spin?

He says there is No one peak, there will be many peaks...etc

But, this is one GLOBE, and we all use oil. And while this may be true to specific regions,  this planet is more inter-connected today than it was 30 or yrs ago or more.

Is he saying the truth? bending the truth? in denial?

Confusion is starting to set in!

Anyone on the Oregon/Washington Coast, ready for the "big storm"?

Ouch!
Loop here.
These things look like Hurricanes these days.  I have never seen a Westcoast storm spin this fast.  The damn thing has an eye for heavens sake!

90+ wind expected.

i have never trusted wikipedia. on paper it sounds like a great idea but in practice all you get is editing wars, look around there are groups of people of all political sides going about editing the wikipedia entrys to slant them to their veiws. do you realy want the same thing to happen here on this?
a simple solution would just be to code the page so that no one but the person who made the original blog entry can edit the whole thing and preventing anyone else from editing.
you post a mistake, too bad.

looks like the nesting of comments is broken folks, keep them at the top level for now and refer, I guess.