 | "120 million barrels per day will never be reached, never" | The Oil Drum: Europe | Royal Society, Energy... for the future: DAY 1 |  |
100 years of oil?
Posted by Chris Vernon on April 15, 2006 - 3:47am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: energy [list all tags]
Monday and Tuesday this week I was at the Royal Society in London for their conference Energy... for the future. I had high hopes for this event, expecting it to stimulate a forward looking, rigorous debate between internationally renowned scientific experts addressing the fundamental challenges ahead.
I was wrong.
Despite the description published before the event including this sentence:
This is timely as we face the global challenges of addressing climate change, providing a secure and reliable supply of energy and the depletion of oil.Oil depletion was mentioned a grand total of three times over two days - twice by myself in questions from the floor and once in a slide suggesting there's enough oil for another 100 years.
Update [2006-4-15 3:47:22 by Stuart Staniford]:
I put this on the front page as it seemed of more general interest.
Here is the slide:
Click to enlarge.
The data comes from Ian Vann:
Ian Vann was appointed Chief Technology Officer for BP in September 2001; he is also Exploration & Production Group Vice President. Since joining BP in 1976, Ian has served in a number of roles including Chief Geologist, General Manager of International Exploration, and Technology Vice President, Exploration.The light green blocks were said to represent unconventional oil, the eagle eyed might also have noticed the spelling of "Hubbert's". How could such an apparently smart guy subscribe to such a position?
It should be noted that Socolow's 10 year, $20 million project is supported by BP and Ford.
The subsequent two mentions of peak oil were mine. In the same session as Socolow, Sir David King, UK government's Chief Scientific Advisor gave a very good presentation on climate change covering the history of how anthropogenic contribution to the green house effect was first theorised 100 years ago when doubling the CO2 concentrations were predicted to create a 5°C increase in global temperatures. We now believe such an increase would create a 5°C ± 2.5°C increase! The physics was basically right 100 years ago.
My question to King was:
Chris VernonAudio clip available here: Sir_David_King.mp3 [1.26 MB]
Do you agree with the growing number of scientists and analysts suggesting oil will peak within a decade, possible by the end of this decade and secondly what impact do you think the inevitable peaking of oil will have on climate change?Sir David King
I think I'm going to answer that very cautiously. I believe there's a finite amount of oil around and I don't think the two of us would actually disagree with that, the question is how many additional wedges do you get into the Hubbert peak. I don't think anyone is in a real position to answer that, but I personally think the key issue here is whatever we do - for example we could use the Sasol process the Fischer-Tropsch catalytic reaction to convert carbon in the form of coal into oil for using as a fuel for transport systems.I believe if we went down that route we're heading towards carbon dioxide levels which are unacceptable for our planetary needs. So whatever happens I'm more focused on this requirement, if you like the wedges [a different type of wedge to that in the Hubbert curve above, CV], that we reduce emissions in every way we can and in doing that we ought to move our transport sector away from its current dependence on fossil fuels.
That's part of the whole process, so looking at bio-ethanol production but also looking at the hydro- one of the nice things about being here that's interesting is that in America it seems to be a Californian project and in this country it seems to be a Scottish project, but we tend to focus on the Peterhead-Miller field project. The importance of those two projects is that hydrogen is produced. Now in the first place they're going to use that hydrogen fuelling power stations, that's probably not the most effective use of hydrogen. Hydrogen can be brought forward towards that hydrogen fuel economy that we've all been looking at where in the future cars on the road will be fuelled with hydrogen and we'll have hydrogen fuel cells as the engine of the process. So I see this as a very important potential step and it's a non-linear feedback, it doesn't quite operate in the wedges, where the enabling of the hydrogen technology with zero carbon production may have a massive impact in the transport sector.
It seems King also subscribes to Socolow's graph above, wondering how many wedges we can fit into the Hubbert curve. I'm also extremely sceptical about a future transport system running on hydrogen fuel cells.
My second question was to George Couvaras, CEO of Sasol Chevron. His presentation covered the use of the Fischer-Tropsch process to manufacture synthetic transport fuels - the driver being lower CO2 emission and cleaner burning fuels in the vehicle. The main focus was his company's gas to liquids business.
My question to George Couvaras was:
Chris VernonAudio clip available here: George_Couvaras.mp3 [1.06 MB]
I've been listening to the proceedings with a growing amazement that at a conference titled Energy... for the future, the future prospects of our most important source of energy has hardly been mentioned. So to our 2nd speaker, from Chevron, Chevron have recently been running a high profile advertising campaign stating "The era of cheap oil is over". I welcome this public acceptance of peak oil.Can I therefore ask at what rate do you think that global extraction rate of conventional oil will decline now and how much of this decline can be offset by synthetic fuels.
George Couvaras
First of all I don't come from Chevron side, the joint venture that was formed Sasol Chevron is specifically focused towards the synthetic fuels side and ... the pronouncement that Chevron have made about - there's no cheap fuel around any more, is that correct? And to what extent synthetic fuel will displace the conventional fuels. I did show on my slides that in the next, we're looking at the next 20-50 [maybe 15? CV] years time, I can't see synthetic fuels taking any more than about 10% of the middle distillate markets at this point in time. Regarding the Chevron question unfortunately I'll have to refer back to Chevron parent companies.
Unfortunately I miss quoted the Chevron advertising campaign - it actually states the "The era of easy oil is over". There's not much of a practical difference between cheap and easy however. Disappointing that nothing was said on peak oil and decline rates. 10% of middle distillate market isn't very much - another figure given in the slides was 800,000 barrels per day of distillate product from GTL (across the industry not just Sasol Chevron) by 2015 and that is highly depended on availability of feedstocks.
Summary of the papers to follow.
Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor doggie a bone,
When she got there
The cupboard was bare
So the poor little doggie had none.
I don't pretend to know what the answer is, I guess we just keep plugging away with our own circles and hope something sticks and spreads (can you buy that in the supermarket? ;)) The anger and frustration will unfortunatly be all the greater once the pretence can continue no longer.
We think that your concerns about immediate preparations for peak oil is the most vital issue humanity is now facing. Below is the Cloud Forest Institute website. The CFI site is a "wiki" and we hope that you will use its interactivity to share your thoughts (and critiques) of these attempts to save some proportion of humanity, and the biosphere.
http://www.cloudforest.org/Economic_Localization
Below are other sites that CFI has been involved in or has found to be of practical use.
http://www.greentransitions.org/WEL/WillitsEconLoc.htm -- Brian Corzelius, a member of the WELL Energy group has posted extensive research about energy use here as well as many other recent writings by Jason Bradford.
http://www.willitseconomiclocalization.org/ -- The present incarnation of WELL
http://www.communitysolution.org -- Community Service is dedicated to the development, growth and enhancement of small local communities.
http://www.postcarbon.org -- Julian Darley's organization, author of High Noon for Natural Gas
http://www.fromthewilderness.org -- Michael C. Ruppert's website, author of Crossing the Rubicon
http://www.museletter.org -- Richard Heinberg's website, author of "Powerdown" and "The Party's Over"
http://www.oilscenarios.info/ -- Five scenarios to help you start thinking.
http://www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk/ -- A British Peak Oil site which is quite realistic.
http://www.peakoil.net -- The Association for the Study of Peak Oil
http://www.theoildrum.com/ -- A blog frequented by some very perceptive people.
http://www.ecotrust.org -- Ecotrust's mission is to build Salmon Nation, a place where people and wild salmon thrive.
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/ -- Excellent information about sustainable agriculture and community
Thanks for doing your part - we're all in the soup together, the folks at the Cloud Forest Institute
Check out this commentary in the middle of a review last month of some very large new Mercedes SUV.
**
Why, in the midst of a slow-rolling energy crisis, an unpopular war in a region of the world made strategic only by its oil, and the globe's climbing mercury, should precisely the wrong kinds of vehicles remain so popular?
One reason is surely the tax breaks associated with 3-ton SUVs: business owners get a $25,000 tax break on the purchase of full-size SUVs (scaled back from $100,000 in 2004) and five-year depreciation schedule. For people taking advantage of this cozy corner of Section 179, the GL -- with a base price anticipated to be about $60,000 -- will be virtually free. That makes your $4,000 hybrid tax break look pretty punk, doesn't it?
The tax code is the most obvious point of inflection between vehicle choice and public policy. Another knee-point is CAFE -- that's Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, in case you forgot, and who could blame you?
Last year, the Bush administration proposed raising the light-truck standard -- long frozen at about 20 mpg -- to 24 mpg by 2011, an incrementalism that is marvelously measured, to say the least. Meanwhile, the administration plans to scrap the current CAFE structure in favor of a size-based regime co-written by the automakers, with larger vehicles required to achieve lower mileage.
Incidentally, some SUVs are so large that they transcend fuel-economy standards altogether. Vehicles with a gross-vehicle-weight rating over 10,000 pounds -- such as the Hummer H2 and the heavy-duty version of the Suburban -- are not counted among fleet ratings that automakers need to hit.
We have been told recently that we are addicted to oil, but we seem to be unable to do much about it. California's clean-air bureaus are trying to regulate carbon emissions from vehicles and are being sued by manufacturers and the federal government for their trouble.
Raising fuel taxes cannot be accomplished, no matter the mood of national urgency and no matter the obscenity of oil companies' profits. Fuel taxes are doubly problematic: For one thing, they are regressive, hurting lower-income consumers; for another, buyers of luxury vehicles are less likely to be dissuaded from their giant purchase.
What about all the alternative vehicle technologies we've been promised? Thanks to a decade-long stonewalling by Big Oil and the trucking industry, it has taken until this year to phase in clean-diesel requirements that will give automakers the slightest hope of meeting 50-state emissions requirements (diesel-powered vehicles can be 25% to 40% more fuel-efficient than gas-powered vehicles). Other technologies -- bio-diesel, hybrids, ethanol, plug-ins, fuel-cells -- can in the near term only nibble at the edges of our 20 million barrels per day of oil consumption.
If we were serious about oil dependence, we would dramatically raise fuel economy standards, impose gas-guzzler taxes on noncommercial light trucks and lower the national speed limit.
None of that is going to happen.
So, in the face of this enormous governmental and regulatory inaction, this paralysis and denial, a curious new market equilibrium has arisen. Call it the marketplace of shame.
*
*Maybe Dan Neil reads TOD!
What seems to be the case is that the UO needs a lot of work to convert it to useable crude. This usually means heat and this means fuel. Thus to say that Ven / Canada has enormous reserves at $60 oil price must include the cost of recovery and the main input to that would seem to be NG. As always the scale is the giveaway. NG is not, as previously discussed, exactly cheap or easily available wherever it is required. My guess would be that once you start demanding the sort of quantities that are going to produce a meaningful amount of UO then you will quickly affect the supply / demand balance in the NG market and have to push up the required crude price to justify it. And that supposes that the NG supply is available. Ah, but suppose having got the process started on gas you can use recovered crude to keep it going? Fair enough, but we need to know how much you burn to recover 1 barrel - dear old EROEI. Keeping the maths simple, if you need 0.5 barrel to recover 1 then the actual NET URR will be halved. If it is more than 0.5, say 0.75 then it is 1/4. Makes the central wedges, not to mention Chavez's boasting, a little less credible I think. I would welcome someone with a real background in this commenting.
The companies are said to be using both processes to see which one is the best for the bottom line. But You still need to use something to heat the water to steam the tar out of the sands, even if you use the in-the-ground methods.
For every barrel of Oil you extract from surface mining, the damage to water is said to reach 1,000 gallons.
I do not know if they are trying to recover the water for repeated use, and also cleaning it up before dumping it out.
If they recover it, they will use energy, and if they do not recover it, they polute on a massive scale. Water and NG is there in the area, but only for so long. In 10 years they could run out of both those needed items for the processes. Besides the fact that the world will need them to double or triple their production rates a lot faster than they have said they could.
In my opinion the Confernce was a Feel Good day of the Major players hoping to convince the public everything is fine, we can put the egg back together, just give us more more and a lot more time.
in other words, Shell did an analysis on Shale oil in say 2003, based on 2002 numbers and came up with a shale oil cost of $35 per barrel. At that time (i.e. 2002) oil cost $10 less than $35 per barrel, so they could not possibly turn a profit. Oil then went up to $50-60/ barrel by 2005. Yet the continued to quote the same number, $35/ barrel, and they started saying it more publicly at that time (bc/ now $35/ barrel sounds good) to try to get private and/or government investment. but now that energy and commodities went up several fold over the last few years, it is disingenuous to continue to use the 2002 number of $35/ barrel. Probably in today's market it still costs at least $10 per barrel more to produce shale oil than the cost of crude.
First, I do not go so far as to claim a "real background" in unconventional oil. I have studied it for several years, but have no experience actually producing the stuff, but, not that many people do!
On your first sentence, "Since they are making such a big thing of Unconventional Oil...", frankly I was surprised they did not make a bigger deal of it. This is the first model I have seen that, even if you removed Unconventional oil entirely, still sees no danger of peak until a window somewhat around the year 2060 or 2070, meaning that their "A View of World Oil Supply" chart is very optimistic on Reserves, Reserve Growth, and Exploration.
There are some interesting points in those three areas, to wit:
(a) Notice that the range on high/low reserves is the same (meaning the medium point is also the same, it would follow!), at 1.0 TB (trillion barrels).
This means they are taking reported reserve numbers as gospel. It goes without saying that most of the so called "peak oil" projections would debate this strongly, believing that OPEC and others have artificially inflated their reserves. This is the core of Matthew Simmons argument, it is the core of Colin Campbell's argument.
Reserve misjudgment proved very great in the case of the USGS projections used to attempt to discredit M. King Hubbert (no "d") when he correctly predicted U.S. peak oil production. Reserve overestimation seems to have already proven to be a real problem in the peak of the Burgen field in Kuwait, and in peak of the British North Sea.
So if we take Reserve estimates to be questionable, it follows we must take reserve growth to be equally so. These then become "shots in the dark" if you accept the reserve/reserve estimates to be questionable, and one could make a valid case that one of the TB wedges could be taken out if those numbers are suspect, a case that any "Peaker" would make.
But that still puts you out to 2070 before "peak" becomes a major fear. That's where the remaining pieces of the chart shown become important, those being exploration and non-conventional oil (we will return to the "production" section of the chart in closing)
Non-conventional is a bit of a catch all phrase, usually but not always meaning "tar sand" and "heavy oil". These can surely be of use in making "heavy oil" products, i.e., asphalt, lubricating oil, certain coking agents for industry, etc., much easier than they can be used for "light sweet" and clean motor fuels, although they can contribute here too, and it would be interesting to see how much "vapor capture" can be used to make the "ane's", that being propane, butane, hexane, etc.
But our poster Jamie, to whom I am replying touches upon the problematical issue in producing the unconventionals, that being energy put in to get the oil out.
The tar sand industry is already and will continue to be even more so, natural gas intensive. Projections are that for the tar sands to produce the amount of "oil" they are committing themselves to (which would still be at most 6% of the U.S. motor fuel market) they will need one fifth of Canada's current natural gas production! This is gas that is badly needed by industry, homes, and electric power producers. This must put some type of price pressure on North American natural gas, which is already at non-hurricane impact historically high prices.
The "heavy oil" extraction and processing is likewise energy intensive, so much so that in both Canada and Venezuela some have proposed nuclear plants to handle the processing requirements (!), while most accept natural gas and unconventional oil be cycled in heavily to produce the oil.
Either way, this makes unconventional oil as much a "fuel switching operation" as a "fuel production operation", and it is would be somewhat misleading to insert a "wedge" into the chart shown of 1 TB without mentioning you need to remove a considerable sized energy wedge from somewhere else (in the case of Canadian Tar Sand, that somewhere being the Mackenzie Bay natural gas, long awaited in the U.S. and Canada, but now slated to go almost exclusively to the Tar Sand fields of Alberta. Can it actually be done? Technically, almost certainly, but the technology, economic and logistical challenges are staggering, given the need to build two complete "infra structural systems" at the same time, that being the natural gas supply and the tar sand/heavy oil facilities. Overcoming the strain of providing technical staffing, workforce, steel, pumps, valves, cookers and boilers, and most of all, money, would be a monumental undertaking. Given this, assuming anymore than the "low side" number of .25 TB for many years to come would be a case of hope over experience.
This means taking out another .50 TB, and this moves us backward to around year 2050 when we encounter confrontation with "peak".
Now we come to the real dark art, estimating "Exploration". This one could be the surprise in either direction, but it is very dangerous to assume that we will suddenly "luck" into a giant find. That is not to say it cannot happen. But, for our purposes, we will be fair, given the vast unknowns here, and take the middle path of .50 TB. In the last three decades, this would be an extremely generous number. The improvements in exploration technology have made the Earth a much more "explored" place, but we can pray for luck.
Now we return to the beginning, Production. As the author of the report that began this strings says, the authors of the chart shown seem to take no interest in "depletion", although it is a historical fact in U.S. 48, Alaska, Kuwait, the North Sea, now seemingly Mexico, and for the moment Canada, plus a few dozen smaller nations. Instead, the chart seems to hold steady at the 1 TB range, as each of the new "wedges" join in. However, if we assume the new wedges are having to make up for, as many "peakers " project, a 35% drop in production between now and say 2030 or so, we see the full peaking point coming back into even a baby boomers lifetime, at 2040 or so, and easily in the middle age period for our children.
If there are major holdups of any geopolitical, economic, or technical kind, we see that become 2025 or 2030 rather easily.
If the world economy does what the optimists want it to, i.e., boom times, then consumption shoots further upward, and....(?), we see we would only have about the 20 window recommended by the Hirsch report to make the MAJOR CHANGES needed. Somehow, with only a few changes at the margins of our projections, 100 years of oil becomes about 20 or 30 at most. If the Reserve numbers or the Reserve growth numbers are too optimistic, or the production depletion moves as fast as it has in some historical cases (10% plus per year in the North Sea, something like that in Alaska) then time gets very short indeed.
We are leaving out ALL OTHER BIG ISSUES, (greenhouse gas and global warming, the fact that the remaining oil is almost all in hostile or simi-hostile hands, the depletion of natural gas, the logistical problems, investment, etc.)
and simply talking about a straight "no problems", no Murphy's law scenario. That again is an example of hope over experience.
Still, it would not be as bad as some make it out: The modified example I give of the projections indicated by the authors of the chart would be somewhat close to the IEA (International Energy Agency), EIA (Energy Information Agency) and Daniel Yergin's CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) view....something along the lines of "o.k. to about 2015 to 2020, then, undulating plateau to peak around 2030", to paraphrase their rather involved arguments.
I do not find that to be completely unbelievable, but it leaves out two MAJOR ISSUES mentioned above in passing, so let's mention those:
(a) geopolitics, and (b) logistics and investment
This is why the words of Christophe de Margerie of the the French energy multinational Total, in the prior topic on TOD UK ("120 million barrels per day will never be reached, never" by Chris Vernon) were so important, and why I made a particular case of trying to understand the exact nature of his understanding of the exact "epistemology" of the "peak oil" idea, for lack of a better word...in other words, how did he know what he knew, and why he was sure of it (businessmen seldom use the word "never"), and what he thought the "peak oil" theorists knew. I was not being argumentative for the sake of an argument. It is not hard to accept as valid the idea that the real geological limit could be some 20 to 25 years away regarding Peak "oil" (conventional and non-conventional, and the broader category of "all liquids" further confuses the matter) in the geological sense, but we could be MUCH closer to a real crisis in the political/logistical/investment sense.
In the difference in perception between "imminent" peak oil true believers, and the theorists at the Royal Society Conference in London, we see the difference between a purely "geological/physical" view of peak oil (Royal Society) and the "Peak is now" group, logistical/geopolitical/economic view ( of which Christophe de Margerie and Matthew Simmons seem to be allied with)
As a passing note, it should be noted that de Margerie actually had some real suggestions as to how we should proceed given this type of crisis, and in another albeit very controversial way, so does the Bush/Chaney/Rumsfeld group!)
So where does this leave us? It actually gives us a framework to build with:
(a) The international strategic game becomes of extreme importance, with little room for clumsiness.
(b) EXTREME careful examination of the "non-conventionals" should be undertaken. If I am going to burn natural gas to make tar sand oil, would it be more efficient just to burn the natural gas in CNG cars? Can we convert conservation in homes (better appliances, better insulation, solar hot water) into transportation fuel, by freeing up natural gas and propane to use as motor fuel?
(c) Financial arrangements have to become fantastically creative and efficient, i.e., in what ways can investment be leveraged to maximum effect (should we perhaps let the Middle East keep it's natural gas for Asian pipeline use, and spend the money that would have gone to LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) tankers and terminals instead be used to produce more easily shippable propane, and encourage that as a motor fuel instead? Should U.S. oil companies fund "oil worker/technician schools in India and China to create a smart strong young workforce for the demands of the world oil patch? Management and Logistical arrangements are going to have to be PERFECT to avoid an emergency.
(d) Alternatives. Advanced batteries, hybrids, hydraulic hybrids, propane, CNG, some bio-fuels from waste, fast moving search for the most workable and applicable technology, and APPLIED SCIENCE as the new art form. (Technical Design as THE STATUS ART, at MIT, at Cal Tech, in cooperative design studios internet connected from Stuttgart to L.A. to to Tokyo to China and India)
The difference between a imminent logistical structural peak that is at hand and a geological peak that is some 20 to 30 years (or if every projection turns out to be on the upside, 100 plus years away!) may sound like a theoretical philosophical debate, but it is much more pressing than that: It may be the difference between the life or death of nations and millions of people.
It is not an argument for arguments sake, but a spotlight to find the path on which we should already now be marching.
I am Roger Conner Jr., or known to you as ThatsItImout
Thank you for your interest.
I am more than a little surprised that Robert Socolow wasn't laughed off the stage when he produced a chart with three nice rectangles [flat production / consumption] illustrating a long plateau between the steeply sloping triangles representing the past rise and future decline of the age of oil. In fariness, if I got the gist of what Chris Vernon wrote, the presenter was actually defining a range. The point remains that a chart of that nature is bound to provide comfort to who believe that the end of oil is not an immediate problem.
Here are a couple of thoughts that came to my mind in reading it: First, in 2005, total world liquids usage was 30GB, while total new conventional discoveries were a staggeringly miniscule 5GB (if I remember correctly). Does this fact alone not severely call into question any optimism regarding future exploration and discovery in the conventional domain?
Second, a thought-experiment involving the "purely geologic vs. logistical peak" distinction. It seems to me that we have arrived at the logistical peak right now (see Stuart Staniford's continuing tracking of the now-18-month-old "undulating plateau" averaging a bit over 84MB/day). However, it is useful to think about how different this would be had the US NOT decided to make Iraq an enemy in 1990. That alone would have significantly shifted the historical shape of the "logistical Peak," because Iraq would probably be pumping at 6MB/day right now following 15 years of aggressive, world-class investment, rather than sputtering along at 1MB/day as it currently is. Very roughly speaking, this would have had the following effects in reshaping the "logistical peak:"
I keep trying to remain optimistic in spite of everything. Unfortunately, I find it harder and harder.
Personally, I think the 'logistical' problem is real and a relatively well-understood product of 'free market capitalism.' Were talking about 'bottlenecks' here aren't we? There have always been 'discontinuities' in the labour market, witness the cronic shortage of plummers, electricians and carpenters in the London area. We have to import them from Eastern Europe. This is only an illustrative example of some of the evident shortcomings or our 'free market' system. This is meant to be a political or ideological criticism of 'free markets' or 'capitalism' per se. I'm just concerned that these structural problems which afflict highly complex and dynamic systems, could have really serious consequences for are ability to mitigate the worst affects of Peak Oil.
I'm particularly interested in what you term, 'the international strategic game' and how little room there is for 'clumsiness.' I may have said this before. I think our political/social systems will begin to exhibit the 'effects' of Peak Oil long before we actually begin to 'run out of oil' unless one believes were already 'running out of oil.' The general, mainstream concensus, is that we are not running out of oil and we won't be for decades.
I think our 'answer' or 'strategy' in relation to the Hersch report, has not been to 'ignore' it, on the contrary. I believe the 'Whitehouse' has read and studied and understood the report, and they fully understand the need to ameliorate the effects of the decline in oil production well in advance. However, their 'solution' would appear to be to grab as much oil as possible using military force if necessary. Soon the United States will attack Iran, then probably Venzuela will be the next candidate for 'regime change' and 'democracy.' It would be a mistake to underestimate the intelligence or ruthlessness of people like Dick Cheyney and Don Rumsfeld. They regard the American way of life as being 'non-negotiable' and they are deadly serious when they say this. They are fully prepared to fight a decades long war to defend this way of life, even if this means resorting to 'the way of death' for hundreds of thousands of other people.
Anyway, keep up the good work and let's have more of it!
I wanted to address some questions and points concerning some of the sentences in my post, the points that replies asked about:
My remark:
" (a) The international strategic game becomes of extreme importance, with little room for clumsiness."
This is simply a reference to the fact that many feel that if there is a real geological peak, the only option is to move to an aggressive game of "Last Man Standing." This assures that international cooperation on finding and developing energy will suffer. It even makes all the more possible destructive wars that could further reduce stability in energy discovery, production and price, and keep needed investment capital away from the energy industry.
I want to quote at lenth, in relation to this issue, more from the interview with Christophe de Margerie, of the French energy giant, Total:
Christophe de Margerie, head of exploration at the French oil giant, talks to our correspondent about going beyond the old petroleum practices
"The oil price has become a monster, he says, feeding on its own entrails. If we want to produce more oil, we need to stop lecturing and take the trouble to persuade producing countries that it is in their interests to do so and let the oil majors through the door.
Why should sovereign nations build more capacity to use up more of their oil reserves just to benefit us when they don't need the money, he asks.
"Definitely, nationalism and the price of oil are linked. At $17 per barrel, nationalism was not there. They were asking us for help and it was easy to explain they needed foreigners because they needed money. Today it is difficult for them to say they need the help of foreign oil companies."
"Offering technology is not enough, de Margerie says,because few countries will admit they lack skills. "Can you imagine a politician in France saying I need help from the UK because they have expertise?" In a thinly veiled reference to the shrill cries in Washington against the regime in Caracas, de Margerie says the harangue against Opec producers can only make matters worse. "Everybody is criticising Chavez. I would criticise some others. How can you order them to produce more. They have the right to do what they want. They have their own people, their own interests. They cannot just take into account the concerns of the West."
"So, what should Total be saying to Venezuela? De Margerie admits the conversation is not going well. "I am not saying it is easy, but it is what we have to do."
"We need to go beyond old petroleum practices, which is different to beyond petroleum." What he means is participating more actively in a country's development, using the project management skills of oil companies in other areas for the benefit of host countries. He admits that it is non-core to the business and potentially very expensive. Beyond old petroleum means coping with the new price of oil, which is not just so many dollars per barrel but complex geopolitics in which small communities, such as in Nigeria, where Total has a large position, can bring operations to a standstill and move global markets."
What Christophe de Margerie is discussing is international cooperation being very sensitive of the national pride and cultural issues. This is a great deal different than "Last Man Standing" strategy, and I believe for good reason:
de Margerie is discussing a logistical/economic and development of resource issue, rather than a "geological peak", which could only be confronted with "a fight to the last drop" strategy. What de Margerie seems to be pointing out should be self evident: Force can only do so much. In the case of our current policy in Iraq, it is impossible to demenstrate that our war policy has enhanced Iraqi oil development and production, which would be the developmental logistical goal. HOWEVER, if you percieved the problem as almost completely geological, then our force sitting on top of the undeveloped oil would be seen as something of a victory (albeit a very painful and expensive one) and we could view the oil as "ace in the hole" in the "Last Man Standing" game. How we view the problem determines how we plan the solution. The view of de Margerie is that logistical development is the issue. Thus, he take international cooperation as a needed condition to develop the remaining resources.
Another point asked about:
"The wider point is as you mentioned, what happens to the climate if you burn, in whatever way, these reserves of UO?"
The Canadians are already confronting this, and frankly, the prospects of Canada ever getting anywhere near making the Kyoto targets that they themselves almost invented are very poor. The Kyoto agreement was formed when Canada and others were still deluded about the natural gas situation. With a belief in the theory that "we can always go to gas", they felt the abandonment of coal would be an easy prospect.
I know of NO ONE who claims that greenhouse gas can be reduced in Canada if the tar sand industry reaches the potential full capacity it has promised,
But in the end, this may never be a danger. Surprising many, Tar Sand Oil production has been going down not up if you count back 5 years. The profit points are now further away than ever, given the rise in machinery costs, and of greatest importance, the rise in natural gas price. Without stranded gas in the area (which is peaking fast), there would be no possibility that the tar sand operation would not have already collapsed, and if natural gas prices stay in the $8.00 per M/BTU range (a hair above where they now are) then it would pay the tar sand companies much better to sell natural gas that to waste it trying to produce tar sand. Personal opinion here, but I think we will never see more than a trickle of tar sand oil, and we may have already seen peak production. China has recently lost interest, some of the companies that were in early have backed down on their willingness to spend and investors are extremely nervous.
Next point, a replier said:
"The RS is the heart of the scientific establishment in Britain. When I was a boy I used to dream about being there too, as a member, not an observer!"
"Unfortunately, we've developed increasingly rigid and inflexible social structures that fear change or criticism."
That is somewhat true, however, it is a known fact of history that organizations like the Royal Society are by their very nature extremely conservative. It is their perception of their role to act as "gatekeepers" of what they see as acceptable social arrangements and alternatives, and their science will often reflect that. That they had the conference at all indicates progress, even if the discussion was of extremely narrow mindset. They essentially stated the "accepted" position on energy availability. Note this: They see greenhouse gas and global warning as now non-controversial and a subject that must be addressed. Do you realize how much of a radical difference that is from some 10 to 20 years ago?
In closing, I must issue a caution: So great is the expectation of catastrophic collapse on the part of many "Peak Oil Aware" people, that if it does not occur in a VERY BIG WAY, AND VERY SOON, they will be left somewhat lost.
I see on these and other peak oil sites predictions of complete doom literally in a matter of monthes, and remarks such as "stone age by 2030" by even the most public figures of the Peak Oil Aware, that we must be cautious of being so absolutely certain. Just as those who believe in a world of plenty in regards to energy can be extremely rigid in their refusal to accept possible errors in their projections, so many "Peak Oil Aware" writers and thinkers simply DO NOT ACCEPT the possibility of error in their thinking. The recent remarks by certain Peak Oil Aware luminaries predicting crude oil production drops of 35 percent by say 2025 or 2030 but then projecting an "all liquids" drop of only 5% are an example of how hard it is for even the most aware to try to get a grip on exact numbers, and therefore, exact timeframes.
It would not take a great deal of change on either the demand or the supply side to move so called "Peak" (whatever that is defined as, all liquids (?), crude oil (?) comparable fuel alternatives (?) by a decade or more...and several changes together completely change the projected time points. In other words, GTL (gas to Liquids) alone depends almost entirely on the investment/logistical/political issues...there is still A LOT OF NATURAL GAS out there...and what if the world just gave up on Kyoto? There is no doubt that coal to liquids or coal to gas could be made to work, at least for a couple of decades, And the heavy oil/tar sand could be done for a while (the question is why, given the natural gas is more valuable than the oil produced from it, but technically it could be done), Plug Hybrid cars can be done, and if the batteries don't get better soon, hydraulic hybrid can be done, combined with Diesel, promising fair sized vehicles at 30 or 40 miles per gallon (if batteries get better fast, then all projections are out the window as plug hybrids would completely change the demand picture for liquid fuels)
Now do any of the above technologies by themselves "solve" the problem?
Of course not.
But,
Fast moving developments like the ones above could make the most strident "doomsayers" who are now assuring the world that "Peak Oil" catastrophe is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, and even more risky to say, ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN VERY SOON (MONTHES EVEN!) look like complete idiots and destroy the credibility of those who are certain that even if Peak will not occur for 10, 20 or even 30 years, the change must be being made NOW.
Remember the 1970's. When the predicted calamity did not appear by the early 1980's, people went on a consumption spree, because, LOOK, THEY WERE WRONG, THERE IS NO PROBLEM! We could make that error again. If we predict doom before 2010 and it doesn't happen, we will be left completely defenseless in 2015 or 2020 if it does. And like those who now refer back to the 1970's to prove that predictions of doom are NEVER RIGHT, if we make the error a second time, even the Peak Aware folks will have wandered away from the cause and not accept the alarm.
We must confront the energy issues facing humankind in a long range view.
The core fact remains: Oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, are finite.
The problem, if it does not cause collapse tomorrow or next month, will still be with us.
So how do you explain the total denial? What did they actually spend the time talking about?
It's like the UK government assuming that oil will be cheap and plentiful then on the back of that making all sorts of forecasts about aviation and airport expansion etc... The aviation analysis is of high quality - based on the assumption about oil. If that assumption is wrong then the analysis isn't worth the paper it's written on.
It's all about the assumptions and unfortunately hardly anybody assumes anything but continued access to reasonably prices oil for decades to come.
The RS is the heart of the scientific establishment in Britain. When I was a boy I used to dream about being there too, as a member, not an observer!
At times I wish I hadn't turned my back on that dream and become an 'artist' instead. However, I would never have 'made it' as I cannot keep my mouth shut. I never wanted to climb the 'greasy pole' I wanted to cut the damn thing down! or at least grab and shake it!
I think it's a problem that so many of our best scientists have become 'politicians' too. Rather than encouraging 'dissent' we are afraid of it. This is probably natural in all organisations. I think it's also unhealthy and dangerous. The role of the 'court jester' has a value far higher than most of us realize. Closed groups are subject to 'group-think' and they continually need to be 'challanged' by 'idiots' who seemingly 'know nothing'. Unfortunately, we've developed increasingly rigid and inflexible social structures that fear change or criticism.
I like the project, there is only one problem I have with it - it requires natural gas, which brings us back to the conferences failure to address depletion in any meaningful way.
I am glad that Chris was present to at least raise the question, it may be that some present will have taken note and dig deeper. I had thought that with the coverage recently given to PeakOil on the BBC and in the Indy and Gruaniad the subject was becoming more widely known and debated within the UK. It is worrying that a gathering of presumably some of the best educated scientists within the field of energy failed to address this issue properly - if only to build a well argued case against it. Instead of that we have that incredible slide presented by Socolow. Did that really go unchallenged? Are members of the Royal Society too polite to stand up and question obvious bullshit that probably wouldn't survive in a school classroom?
Chemists find more efficient coal-to-diesel conversion
I suspect this paragraph is the most important, though: