The Oil Drum

And CO2 emissions... Oh My!

That means an enormous investment in new mines, new miners, coal mining tools and technology, etc. And not only production, the infrastructure for transporting it has to be ramped up, as well as whatever technology is going to convert it to oil.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhh! It will be a nightmare trying to replace the oil we need once depletion starts to set in.

On the other hand, we could drive less.

We could drive a lot less. And be happier doing it.

A lot of discussion at TOD reminds me of a super-obese character in the habit of eating daily: 12 buckets of fried chicken, 3 trays of mashed potatoes, 2 gallons of ice cream, half a cow, a bushel of baked beans, 5 cakes, 9 big gulps, and 2 pans of collard greens ... raising a huge hullabaloo because due to reduced circumstances he's going to have to switch to a more sensible diet.

I just don't think we need to use anywhere near the amount of oil we're using. My response to peak oil is "bring it on."

Maybe I'm wrong and we really do need to use that much oil. I'll have to see that with my own eyes (thru events unfolding) to believe it, though.

The Big Stone power plant usually has an emergency stockpile of 200 thousand tons of coal. But it was a much smaller pile Monday, and those who work at the Big Stone plant say they haven't seen a situation this serious in a while.

Plant Manager Jeff Endrizzi says, "Nothing like this where it's an extended period and we don't see an end in sight as it sits today."

The Big Stone plant runs almost completely on coal. And right now, the plant only has 10 days worth of coal stockpiled, compared to the 30 days it usually has on hand. Coal from Wyoming's Powder River Basin is in high demand because it is low-sulfur.

http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail5440.cfm?Id=0,46855

(1)  We do not need to maintain current rates of production, but we would need to GROW production, every year, year in and year out.  Which means doubling consumption after a known period of time (depending on the average rate of growth).  If rates of energy consumption flatlined forever, we would be in permanent recession (with massive annual dieoff worldwide, given current birth rates world wide).  The planet cannot have more people and more economic growth every year with flat energy inputs (even with increased intensity as has been the case for the US for some time)

(2) As Halfin points out, we would not need to just continue with current INCREASING rates of coal consumption, we would need to ACCELERATE it, to make up for the loss in energy from declining rates of oil and gas production.

(3)  Useable energy is more concentrated in oil than in coal [I am not sure I am saying this correctly], so to get those useable BTU's from coal to replace BTU's lost from oil and gas ain't no easy trick.

(3) Jevon's paradox remains in effect.  The per capita rate of energy consumption in North America has been essentially flat for decades, yet our individual use of energy is much more complex today than it was thirty years ago.  We have made great strides in the efficiency of individual consumer products, but we made up for those savings by using more consumer products rather than less energy per person (we now have people with land line phones, cell-phones, pagers, blackberries, and a laptop -- thirty years ago, land lines were all that was practical).  Add population growth to the problem, and well, we have quite a problem don't we...

(4) North Americans live in low-density, unsustainable, suburban dorms and are ABSOLUTELY dependent upon cars for survival (enough said).

The problems we face are tremendous, much, much bigger than the health care crisis.  THAT really is an easy problem to fix. Unlike health care, people do not understand the energy basics.  There is a SEVERE lack of understanding of the basics I outline above.  This misunderstanding drives a lot of the silly, ignorant responses of Crooked Timber and others.

In POLITICAL terms, health care is going to be a much bigger issue than the fallout from peak oil, because when it comes to financing health care there are few obvious scapegoats except the tired old big pharma companies and maybe some evil HMOs. Thus the tried and true method of scapegoating will not work for, e.g. the huge generational conflict to come over financing Medicare.

By way of contrast, look at all the scapegoats we have to blame for high energy prices:
1. God, because of all those hurricanes hitting GOM, etc.
2. The Evil Arab terrorists for sitting on all that oil.
3. The Jewish conspiracy of financial manipulators.
4. Illegal immigrants.
5. The Chinese for being so numerous and having the gall to want to drive cars.
6. India for having so many very smart people working to work for lower wages than we do.
7. The Russians, for not producing more oil and gas.
8. The French, just on general principles;-)
9. The Republicans, for screwing everything up.
10. The Democrats, for screwing everything up.
11. Ralph Nader for giving us GWB.
12. Lazy welfare types for creating the budget deficit and sucking out resources we need to deal with energy problems.
13. The wealthy for doing well while the rest of us are screwed.
14. The religious right for preaching the coming Apocalypse and being right for the wrong reasons.
15. The media for blowing things all out of proportion and thereby creating the crisis.

Thus, Peak Oil is a demagogue's dream come true.

And, in the weirdest of ways, the idea that health care is a "bigger" issue (combined with the impossibility of keeping promises of retirement income for Baby Boomers) is actually correct, insofar as it is likely to be the number one perceived cause of social conflict over the next twenty years.

So the reasoning here is that if the economy could weather a multi-decade increase in health care costs, it could similarly handle an increase in energy costs. Of course, this assumes that energy will grow in cost at a moderate rate as health care has done. The danger I see is that a production shortage could cause an energy price spike, which would be much worse than what has happened with health care.

(take the space out of the above link, and it works):

http://exxonmobile.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/index.html

http://exxonmobile.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/index.html

Last week,  average daily oil imports into the US rebounded slightly to 10.1 mbpd, but the average for March, 2006 (9.9 mbpd) was down about 4% from the average for March, 2005 (10.3 mbpd).  

There is always the possibility of statistical variations, but the concerns that Khebab and I have about net export capacity are based on the Hubbert Linearization (HL) method--which accurately predicted 99% of the post-1970 Lower 48 oil production.    Therefore, if the HL method is screaming problems ahead for net export capacity, and if average daily imports into the US for March are down 4%, year over year, I think that we need to sit up and take notice.

I predict explosive increases in oil prices.

The "Export Land" Model:

 A critical point to keep in mind is that an exporter can only export what is left after domestic consumption is satisfied. Consider a simple example, a country producing 2.0 mbpd, consuming 1.0 mbpd and therefore exporting 1.0 mbpd. Let's assume a 25% drop in production over a six year period (which we have seen in the North Sea, which by the way peaked at 52% of Qt) and let's assume a 10% increase in domestic consumption. Production would be 1.5 mbpd. Consumption would be 1.1 mbpd. Net exports would be production (1.5 mbpd) less consumption (1.1 mbpd) = 0.4 mbpd. Therefore, because of a 25% drop in production and because of a 10% increase in domestic consumption, net oil exports from our hypothetical net exporter dropped by 60%, from 1.0 mbpd to 0.4 mbpd, over a six year period.

Note that car sales in Russia are up 15% year over year.