Modeling Oil Depletion Using EIA Data - The Tiger Chasing its Tail?
Posted by nate hagens on June 13, 2006 - 12:22pm
On this site and others, we spend a lot of time dissecting the monthly and yearly production numbers looking for signs of a peak. But it appears that unless the EIA changes their definitions, what we are currently calling "Peak Oil" will be obfuscated (and delayed) by increasing amounts of alternative energies that are now being definitionally included as 'oil' in the headline number.
As long as we use EIA production numbers as the benchmark, Peak Oil will silently morph into Peak Liquids. This is relevant because the definitional layers we add on top of 'crude oil' are not equal in what they provide to society. It is also relevant in that the logistical heuristic used by M. King Hubbert was not intended to include corn and sugar cane derived ethanol, tar sands, or Natural Gas Liquids in its predictive theory of oil basin depletion. The concept of Peak Oil, already not widely believed, will start to be very confusing, and probably even more combative. In essence, we need to either a) adjust EIA data to exclude growing biofuel, NGL and coal liquid inputs or b) recognize that for practical 'peak oil societal impact' purposes, we really do primarily care about 'net liquid fuel' available and the costs of same, which would require categorical adjustments and handicapping for energy quality.
Other Liquids are defined as "Ethanol, liquids produced from coal and oil shale, non-oil inputs to methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), Orimulsion, and other hydrocarbons." And finally, other hydrocarbons are defined as "Materials received by a refinery and consumed as a raw material. Includes hydrogen, coal tar derivatives, gilsonite, and natural gas received by the refinery for reforming into hydrogen." Although currently a small number primarily in Europe, biodiesel feedstock presumably is a refinery 'raw material' (I am uncertain whether the 26 million tons of palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia is included in the EIA data and have assumed that it is not)
Last year, the world produced over 12 billion gallons of ethanol. At 42 gallons per barrel, that equates to 290 million barrels. The world (specifically South Africa) also produced 160,000 bpd of Coal-to-liquids which was 58 million barrels for the year. So of the 30.66 billion barrels of 'oil' produced in 2005, about 350 million of them were ethanol and coal derived, or about 1.2%.
1.2% is not a big number (yet). But keep in mind that total oil production for 2004 was 30.3 billion so the 'record setting' 2005 was higher by about the amount of ethanol and CTL. Ethanol production is up 300% since 1997 and has doubled in just the last 4 years. Continued growth at a similar pace will begin to make a meaningful contribution to the EIA totals. If ethanol advocates and alternative energy proponents get their way, these numbers will increase dramatically, and certainly outpace increases in oil production on a percentage basis. Also, the Hirsch and Bezdek report (slide 84) assume five 100,000 bpd coal-to-liquid plants a year starting in year 4 of a mitigation scenario. One could argue we are in the early stages of this now as numerous corporations are exploring syncrude options from coal. CTL is a liquid fuel, but it is not oil.
This post has 2 main points:
- Natural gas plant liquids (NGPL) counted as 1 for 1 in the headline crude oil production figure, only have 60% of the energy content of crude oil. Also, irrespective of ethanols energy input/output balance, ethanol only has less than 70% of the BTU per gallon as gasoline. It also requires liquid fuels (in addition to natural gas for fertilizer and nat gas or coal to steam) to harvest, transport and distribute. So the 290 million barrels of ethanol made in 2005 actually used quite a bit of oil to produce. Was the EIA correct to increase crude oil production from 30.37 GB to 30.66 GB for 2005 because of ethanol? If we are tracking "Peak Oil", or the maximum amount of oil available to a growing, demanding planet, we should care about the net (I'll save the net energy/EROI argument for a subsequent post - here I just mean net liquid fuels).
Clearly, real businesses and individuals used some of the 30.37 GB of non-ethanol oil to produce the ethanol. So the greater the % of 'indirect oil' in the EIA totals, the more we scale up both the assets and liabilities of the planets energy balance sheet. (an extreme example would be an EROI of 1:1 for ethanol (with all energy inputs being liquids), then we might produce 50 mbpd of crude oil and 50 mbpd of ethanol for a total of 100 mbpd of EIA 'oil'. In this example however, every single drop of crude oil would be needed to produce the ethanol, so society would only have 50 mbpd of production (ethanol) at a 70% BTU rating. Obviously non-sensical. This is an extreme example, but at what point from it and our current situation (1.2%) does it become important...? (*In this example, notice that the reported production would be 100mbpd but only 50mbpd of ethanol would be available to society - at that moment we couldn't just instantaneously choose the *better* crude oil and abandon the ethanol because infrastructure would already be in place - there is a large societal time lag for Product A to Product B transformation decisions)
Energy is the ability to do work. Our society is highly dependent on liquid fuels to do work. To trade one form of liquid fuel for another and include them both in production doesn't make sense.
- Though it hasnt mattered a whole lot until now, using EIA data for any predictive heuristics based on geological regions may be inappropriate, as it increasingly includes biofuels, NGL and CTL (as well as orimulsion). The EIA can do whatever they want- they don't care if their reporting of liquid fuels conforms to bloggers doing depletion analysis, but should those of us who study and care about energy descent really include corn ethanol, soy diesel and Fischer-tropsch CTL in future 'oil' analyses?
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Lately, Jean Laherrere try to apply the Hubbert approach on the forecasting of the "all liquids" peak that could include conventional oil, CTL, biomass liquids, etc.:
In 30 years petroleum will have become a little-used energy source (pdf file)
I personally find his article not very convincing.
First of all Laherrère has data individually for each fuel source, something neither IEA nor EIA show us (at least monthly).
Secondly, Laherrère uses two different scenarios, a probable and an optimistic one (like Hubbert did in 1956). What you get from modeling things this way is peak around 2015, either with 1 TB or with 2 TB for all liquids minus crude.
Another thing worth mentioning is this: Laherrère, Deffeyes and Campbell are all putting the 50% Qt mark for Conventional Oil in 2005. And each of them is using different source data: Laherrère - IHS, Deffeyes - O&GJ, Campbell - Exxon(?).
By the way, cool blog.
So, not enough CHANGE in "other liquids" to affect the curve that much. Maybe in the future.
Also tar sands are going up and they are a "non-Hubbardian" oil.
But second, look at this from the peak oil skeptic perspective. Skeptics have long predicted that as oil became scarce and prices rose, we'd see several effects. One is moderation of demand, which is coming into play now. The second is increased production of conventional oil, which may or may not be happening. And the third is increased production of alternatives, which is definitely going on, with tar sands, coal to liquid, work on biodiesel, and of course ethanol.
All these are the reasons why skeptics said that the core predictions of extreme peak oilers, of social and economic collapse, "die off", all these apocalyptic scenarios, were false. Skeptics predicted that society would adapt and find alternatives. And this is reflected in the issue you raise. As we continue to develop alternative liquid fuels, a higher precentage of our total production will be in this form. If skeptics are right, this will allow us to smoothly adjust to the decreased availability of conventional oil by finding ever more efficient ways of producing these alternatives. The magic of the market will do its work and we can sail right through the classical Hubbert peak without even noticing it.
otoh, demand continues, especially in asia but here, too. Prices seem unlikely to decline much in the near future.
Which measure equates to crude? Neither... Crude is probably regular plus deepwater and polar - which wouldn't be anything like as late as 2010.
No, it doesn't. My bet is that what will happen is people will crowd together. It's only very recently that the 2,000 or 3,000 or 5,000 SF home has become the standard for a family of three or four. My parents had 4-5 siblings, and grew up in two or three bedroom houses. With one bathroom. Amazing but true.
When people have lost their jobs or can't afford gasoline to drive to work, the last thing they are going to be doing is buying new homes. No, instead they will be moving in with friends or relatives. The extended family living together in a fairly small house used to be the norm. It will be again.
Already, people in my office with long commutes are hinting about renting the spare room in my small apartment. (I live walking distance from the office.)
The inner burbs must increase in density for those that rely on feet, bikes or public transport. Zoning and codes are obstacles to density, but they can be adjusted - formally or informally. I'm wondering about infilling between houses. I used to draw townhouses, and the site planners always left addresses for the spaces between row house blocks. I couldn't imagine anyone filling in back then, but I can now.
I'm also wondering which buildings will be adapted to serve as local schools for kids too far from the mammoth schools we've been putting up.
I could see the outer suburbs becoming a spacious paradise for those that can still afford to drive that far. Exurban highways might become less-traveled and convenient for long commutes, but maintaining them will be expensive. Alan would want money for urban rail while Mr. Big would want the highways kept smooth for his Rolls-Skoda.
I suspect that many of the empty nesters will see their kids coming home out of necessity. This will boost communal meals, carpooling, per capita heating/lighting efficiency, etc. That is another way of demand destruction. It's very common in Europe to have kids staying at home until they get married or well into their 30s.
The single person household will be one of the first causalties of PO.
Interesting reading material:
http://realestate.msn.com/improve/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=353659
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05080/474759.stm
http://www.ci.cambridge.ma.us/~cdd/data/demo/city/hhsize_2000.html
The advent of suburbia is a result of more land (and secondarily resources) available for a smaller number of people. Granted, US population has still increased overall, but our surplus of land still remains.
Your concept of the extended family moving in together is reasonable, but I wonder whether you have taken into account the counterbalance that as it gets more expensive to commute long distances, suburban houses will become cheaper, ironically being a great place to live for those who don't have to commute. We're not just going to tear the suburbs down. And neither can current urban environments support all of the people living in suburbia (even if they move in with family members, there are limits). I guess we could live like people in India or something, but I find that to be unlikely.
I think we'll see a move toward some consolidation. Suburbs that are an extreme distance away from urban centers will languish and die (I guess those who can afford to live out there will be able to have a massive estate, rather than a small 1/4 acre plot), but those within reasonable distance 20 miles or so, will not. Greatly we're going to see increases in transportation efficiency. We can improve our transportation system by a lot and reduce a lot of our use of fossil fuels. People haven't even really started to move away from gas guzzlers. We clearly have much room for improvement.
Much, if not most, of the new housing in the US is suburban or exurban, but there are already some counter-trends happening around the country. A number of cities, especially along the West Coast and in New York and Chicago, are seeing lots of new high-rise residential towers go up. "Transit villages" are springing up around inner-urban and suburban communities. Some of the mature "Edge Cities", like Hacienda Business Park in the Bay Area and Tyson's Corner in Virginia, are diversifying their land uses beyond just offices to add dense housing, hotels, and the like. Finally, a number of suburbs which have an old-fashioned district are trying to revitalize them by "main street"-type programs. These trends, along with the others people mentioned, could become more pronounced as the oil peak (or the liquid peak) is passed. A traditional virtue of cities, which is to maximize access while minimizing energy and transport costs, may once again shape urban form much more strongly than in the past 50 years or so.
It is true that we have a huge fixed capital investment in suburban buidings and infrastructure, but it is also true that that infrastructure will require huge ongoing investment if it is to stay in a state of good repair. If oil peaks, transportation investments (of whatever is left to invest) could be shifted from highways to reviving rail services, as many of the rail lines still exist. Transit routes could be established, or reestablished, between new nodes.
Buildings, too require reinvestment; Stewart Brand, in his "How Buildings Learn", noted that buildings need a big reinvestment at an age of about 40 years, as roofs, siding, plumbing, and other components wear out. Post-peak, some buildings, expecially the most remote and energy-intensive ones (i.e. offices without operable windows) may no longer be worth the trouble, and abandoned or dismantled to build other buildings. Other single-use buildings may be adapted to new uses, and "grayfields" -- suburban parking lots -- may become the sites of new mixed-use settlements.
Let's hope so!
A traditional virtue of cities, which is to maximize access while minimizing energy and transport costs, may once again shape urban form much more strongly than in the past 50 years or so.
Let's hope so!!!
Flying over southern Jersey, I'm struck by the Cookie-cutter Housing Webs that cover old farm-fields.. There will be some bizarre Ghost Towns, and if the population shrinks (as it must), then the material wealth in these hollowing places will become a new 'Raw Material' for salvaging into later waves of new-home construction. Miles of Copperwire, Steel Studs, Aluminum Doorframes, Glass, PVC
I have to wonder if the scraps from this great overproduction we've been part of might not allow a smaller population to have a somewhat abundant supply of many necessary resources for the materials we commonly work with. Will we have to mine for more HardDrives, or are the trillions of used and dead ones going to be reworked into the next ones?
Will there be a new industry in Mining Landfills for all the precious material we looked on as junk over the last 60-80 years?
Odd. I would have called it a boring topic that is constantly being discussed - even in posts about Hubbard linearization.
Just as one example, the stock answer says you have live close enough to shopping to walk or bike. But outside Denver, where the sun shines and the wind blows, most suburban houses have enough energy available to them if they could capture and store it to run a small, efficient electric vehicle the several miles needed for shopping every couple of days. What technologies make that possible? How soon will they be available? Or you could consider it in reverse. There's lots of energy available on the roof of the Safeway, is it enough to run electric delivery vans to take groceries to the customers who order online?
Another stock answer is that suburban housing requires too much energy for heating and cooling. Ground-source heat pumps are very efficient, are feasible retrofits in the Denver suburbs, and use electricity from any source in place of today's common natural gas heating fuel. Combine that with much better insulation. Is it good enough?
Suppose electrification is possible. Colorado is rich in potential wind and solar resources, has enough coal to meet that augmented electricity demand for decades, and significant uranium and thorium that could run CANDU reactors (thorium needs a bit of seeding); does suburbia survive in Colorado but not in New Jersey? Not to pick on New Jersey in particular, but they seem to have a lot of people and darned few energy resources. Still, is balkanization of the US along energy-rich and energy-poor lines possible?
However for more significant programs, be they oil shale, tar sand, nuclear power, CTL or whatever, there is a very significant lead time required to acquire the funds, get the permits etc etc. Without the awareness and incentive to initiate and accelerate those programs, there is quite likely to be a period where supply available will fall and there will be considerable pain in the world economy.
Personally, I think of "peak oil" as conventional oil + condensates. That's it. As the world moves toward substitutes, as it is doing, we are open to all sorts of monkey business regarding "peak liquids". Now, nothing compares with the EROEI of conventional oil. This fueled the creation of industrial civilization. However, in order to define conventional oil, you need to be quite specific, for example, about the API. Is Saudi heavy crude that can't be as easily refined "conventional oil"? Depends on what your agreed upon definition is.
The EROEI of all liquid substitutes, including "extra heavy oil" like that from Orinoco, is worse both in the production & refining. Same with the tar sands and ethanol. It was the cheapness of conventional oil that made all this "progress" possible. Everything else (eg. GTL, other examples already mentioned) is more expensive. So the substitutes all have a lower payback.
Probably, TOD should track both. But even with all this miracle technology (ethanol, GTL, tar sands, etc.), what is truly impressive is that we seem to have peaked anyway even with these substitutes added in. OGJ raised Canada's proved reserves to 180 Gb.
Source here. Like I said, all sorts of monkey business is possible with liquids accounting practices. But monthly production figures don't lie even when you throw in ethanol & the kitchen sink.Nice article, lastsasquatch.
As I understand it, wind generated electricity has an E-ROI of 80:1. That's certainly in the ballpark with oil.
Thin-film solar is probably in the neighborhood of 20:1, and is likely to improve.
I'm not saying that there will be a painless transition to renewables. Wind and solar will be a big, big project to implement. The US, and others, could certainly have a hard time borrowing enough money to get through the transition, among other problems.
But, there's no theoretical, technical basis for pessimism. No limits dictated by the laws of physics. Just the social difficulty of re-engineering our society.
Probably not. The logistic peaks for alternatives are going to look a lot worse than a Hubbert curve. Alternatives, be it CTL, ethanol, etc, take more investment, take longer construction times, and the equipment does not last any where near as long as a simple hole in the ground does. You're going to have logistic curves for anything; and they will be on a lot shorter time scale than decades. At some point all your effort is going to be in keeping your existing capacity running; there will be nothing extra available for additional. Market magic or not.
Michael Lynch is a thoroughly self-critical guy. I think that beard is a testament to his ability to be introspective while an effective trumpeter of truth.
Ethanol, particularly if built as part of an existing sugar refinery, takes less investment and has a much, much shorter construction time than the equipment required to produce gasoline. In the time it would take to just get a permit for an oil refinery, you could probably build an ethanol plant.
In some states the refinery will actually be easier to permit too; mainly because of the water discharge for the ethanol plant. Nimby for either will be the determining factor.
I'm dubious of corn-based ethanol and can't argue with you in that regard. Building a facility to create ethanol from sugar, particularly at an existing sugar mill, would certainly be a much simpler and quicker process then any oil refinery that someone would actually build. The ones being built near me take one year. I understand that in the case of sugar, there is no water discharge as it is all recycled.
I haven't seen comparisions of operating costs, but would be surprised to find out that ethanol costs more per gallon than any modern facility refining crude.
I will be able to provide numbers on this in a month or so.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/topworldtables1_2.html
If you believe in magic, Halfin, you will be sorely dissapointed in how this plays out. To take your argument to the extremes, do you think alternatives can magically take over from fossil fuels (eventually) and continue to increase indefinitely? Now that would be magic.
Tony
To really reduce condumption, say 2%/year, would require far higher prices. Referring again to the 70's, prices rose 9x in 9 years. We wont languish much longer in double digits. Think about it like this: at $10/gallon, overall cost of driving/mile will remain under 1/2 of total driving costs (based on $300/month lease rate, $100/month insurance, and driving 12k miles/year). Many will insist on their suv's and single passenger commuting at that cheap price.
I think that's what worries me most...
A while ago, I decided that the lowest "correct" price of fossil fuels should be the theoretical cost of the cheapest renewable alternative. Theoretical would take account of its cost after we'd devoted the requisite, substantial quantum of fossil fuel to perfecting the process of gathering it.
This also made me realise that Peak Oil can also be considered to be an over-population problem. Diminishing EROEI allows for fewer fat bastards living off the fat of the land.
I personally prefer your option a) where the Hubbert is only applied to regular oil. I don't think that the Hubbert approach should be applied to the biofuels because they are not subject to depletion and are supposed to be renewable ressources. For CTL and tar sands also, the application of the Hubbert approach is problematic because these sources are infrastructure intensive and heavily dependent on economic and technological factors (i.e. capital invested, current crude oil prices, etc.). Every liquid fuel sources should be modeled separetely and added to forecast the "all liquid" peak. Even the inclusion of NGL, which is related to the depletion of natural gas fields, makes the prediction difficult. In addition, some modeling technique such as the Parabolic Fractal Law are well verified for oil fields but not necessarly valid for other sources.
We were given price signal's of a coming peak (see $70+ oil). We reduced oil consumption growth in the US, but never actually reduced demand in anticipation. Some nations did cut back (3rd World, EU, Japan) but not overall. So now, we are heading into a recession, one sure way to cut demand.
Recession = Lower Oil Demand = Lower prices if demand drops more than supply.
Some producers (SA, Iran) may cut back production (real cutbacks, beyond depletion) to preserve higher prices.
We pass Hubbert's Peak (a geological concept) at, say, $58/barrel.
Then the economies of the world adjust, and start a rebound. Oil demand goes up, the few oil wells shut in come back on-line, and Demand > Supply > $120+ oil. Back to recession, lower demand, lower prices, shut in wells, etc.
Rinse and repeat.
precisely, just as alternatives to oil will only slow down the rate of inevitable depletion rates.
I agree with Alan's premise. The onset of an initial decline in world production may be (temporarily) overwhelmed by declining consumption because of a slowing of the world economy.
In regard to "oil" versus "oil," I always thought that it made more sense to just use the crude + condensate production numbers. The unconventional stuff is a probably not a big factor right now, but as time goes on it will become a bigger percentage of production.
IMO, unconventional world oil is to conventional world oil as unconventional US gas is to conventional US gas, in the sense that unconventional US gas has slowed but not really reversed the decline in total US gas production.
This is exactly the way I see it. Once we enter the right side of the Hubbert curve, demand will be constrain by supply and will repeatedly bang its head on production limits until a recession trigger a demand contraction. Even if alternatives can be scale up rapidly, oil price volatility may kill their business case before they have the chance to have a significant impact.
Hubbert was thinking mostly about the lower 48, and he got it right. Now we're thinking about the whole planet as one big oilfield. But there's a difference when you go from a single oilfield, or a single continent, to the whole planet, namely, how capital behaves. If your own personal oilfield declines, you face the choice of whether to scrape out the dregs or, on the other hand, to invest your ill-earned dough in exploring and developing some other lucky region of our helpless planet. But when we're talking about the whole planet at once, that's not a choice anymore -- you scrape out the dregs, even if it takes a lot of capital, because there aren't any greener pastures to be had. Doesn't that change the shape of the downside of the Hubbert Curve?
We already are scraping out the dregs by using 3rd generation dreg-scraping technologies like horizontal drilling and large-cut water injection, CO2 injection, etc.
It is the dregs part of the extaction process that gives Hubbert's curve it's gentle downslope. Otherwise extraction of a nonrenewable resource would look like a right triangle: continuously sloping up --and then, when our straws make that slurping noise at the bottom of the soda cup: straight down.
For different reasons I would like conventional oil liquids and other liquids kept seperate. I see it as important that we really track the increases in other fuels as oil output slows/peaks going forward.
I don't belive that renewable/unconventional liquids will ever equal the volume of oil consumed currently. I do believe we will always need some liquids. My fear is that we will make great strides in the alternative areas before peak oil and not be able to increase them much after peak. Ramping up renewables, early, allows total consumption of energy to remain high when we should be conserving, driving for energy efficiency, and trying to get off liquid fuels as much as possible.
Maintaining a plentiful supply of liquids (via non petroleum) is a dis-incentive for a new Holistic energy approach to running society. The economy currently runs on transportation liquids, we need to figure out how to run it on something else before those liquids become very scarce.
This approach of changing society gradually in the face of peak oil doesn't seem to get much traction in the MSM. Many posters here advocate this but the debate on air and in print appears to be "no change in fuel consumption" vs "there won't be anything to consume" going forward.
I like to think that there is going to be much less liquid fuel consumed in the future, but society will go on because we won't need to burn all that fuel. There will probably be less total energy per person consumed but we will have structured our lives to deal with that reduction in energy use. The problem is getting from where we are today to that future, when few articulate that vision of the future but many hide all the reasons we need to change.
From the chart regularly posted by Stuart Staniford, it looks like May 2005 might have been the peak (just) for both IEA corrected and EIA data. What are the actual numbers?
Tony
As i've said before at TOD, all talk of a Spring 2005 oil peak and Economic Peak for the USA was mindless babblings that ignored published data and trends. There is far too much cherry picking by the doomsters going on...
Silliness again overwhelmed tod'rs with the discussion this weekend on the W model with the 81-mbd peak. It has been shown on many forums that this amateur attempt in the ME was for all-liquids ... not conventional oil. It's clear in the source documents. And then there's those that took glee in the prospect of an energy production disruption in the Gulf of Mexico...
A few of us have to "get a life". They are mired in chronic depression and hopes of calamity spreading to others. This is clinical; not technical.
Our May Report is at http://TrendLines.ca/economic.htm and we take glee in the revelation that no Peak nor Recession is in sight!!
Deffeyes was a little bit fuzzy in the past, but last year he put the 50% of Qt mark in December, 2005, presumably for crude + condensate.
Since December, the EIA reports have shown falling world crude + condensate production.
Based on the HL method, Saudi Arabia is at the same point at which the prior swing producer, Texas, started its decline.
The Saudis have admitted to a 5% production decline since December.
Using only production data through 1984, Khebab generated a (HL based) post-1984 production profile for Russia. The post-1984 cumulative Russian production, through 1984, was 95% of what the HL method predicted that it would be. Russia has now pretty well caught up with where it should be, based on the HL method. (Post-1970 cumulative Lower 48 production was 99% of what the HL method predicted.)
EIA reports show Russian production falling since December, and Western oil companies appear to be headed for the door, trying to unload Russian oil fields.
The four largest producing fields in the world all appear to be declining. The second largest producing field in the world, Cantarell, is probably going to be declining at up to 40% per year, since its oil column of 825' is thinning at the rate of about 300' per year.
This final point is what puzzles me so much about people who are putting the peak years to decades in the future. Just how are we are we going to replace Ghawar, Cantarell, Burgan and Daqing?
IMO, it looks increasingly like we are facing both the Peak and a recession. As I have said before, I advise everyone to economize, localize and produce. If I am wrong, the people following my advice will have more money in the bank, less debt and a lower stress way of life. If you are wrong . . .
I don't know how anyone could say the global economy is in a healthy state, irrespective of potential energy problems (in the form of depletion) the US economy is on very shaky ground ATM. The dollar is taking hits. government debt is at all time highs, with Congress recently raising the debt ceiling to $9 trillion. Personal debt is at all time highs while we have a negative savings rate. Inflation is much worse than the government states, it is pretty clear to any rational observer--and one can see this in the Fed's hawkish attitude as of late that things have gotten out of hand. The Fed has just as much indicated that it will sacrifice the economy in order to save the dollar from imploding, not to mention stave off further sustained inflation. In 1929 the US experienced a market crash and a great depression without any physical energy-input problems in the economy... If PO is indeed right around the corner, or if there is even slight indication that might be right around the corner (which I think there is), I don't see why someone always objects to preparing for hardship or at least thinking about ones options for the future.
I happen to believe the crash scenerio is somewhat likely, but it's not bound to happen. Remember, people are sheeple, and ad campaigns, the MSM and the wind-me-up-collegen-lip-implanted-foxnews-fuckme-dolls can do wonders. Normal joe-sixpack-schmoe or Jane-suburb will be easily manipulated by the different (and incorrect) explainations for price fluctuation and economic troubles.
Alas, what do I know either... not much... But as Steve Colbert elegantly said "My gut tells me so," and that folks, is a wrap.
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/1/10/112632/519/34#34
He also refuses to accept global warming/climate change.
Just ignore him.
Freddy's website is decent. He needs to lose the black background and tiny font, though. And I don't quite get the obsession with Campbell. I mean, Freddy, you're right, but enough already.
The other thing that is confusing is that (I believe) Freddy has actually dated 'Peak' to February 2005. It would be great if Freddy could straighten me out on this point, but, like I said, he probably has better things to do.
So are you saying that Stuart's graph is wrong? What was the May (or was it April) 2005 figure and has any month beat that, in either EIA data or IEA (corrected) data? From Stuart's graph, it sure looks like a plateau, rather than the optimistic "peak is nowhere in sight".
Tony
And what part of 4.5% Real GDP and still rising Bank Rates is misunderstood (by those who see Recession?). Central Bank models are working impecably. The Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios illustrated at our site prognosticate magnificently. Oh, except for ASPO. But the next Update will include ASPO's revision of URR to 2.450-Tb from 2.4-Tb following the Campbell upward revision of Production in December. Thus the most pessimistic Depletion modeler continues to "upward revise" to play catch-up to the Averages of the other ten dozen modelers (for the 12th year). At TrendLines, we appreciate sincerely Colin Campbell's readiness to accept the obvious despite its effect on his group's agenda and the resultant criticism of his previoius data by skeptics. He has shown a willingness to admit errors and revise his projections for almost two years now. Others are more stubborn...
Which is precisely the correct approach. If total usable transport energy declines in 30 years, we need to start adapting now. If it starts to decline next year, we're in deep trouble now.
But which month has been the peak month so far, in corrected data? That was my original question.
Thanx to Stuart (and Sofistek) once again. I would not have caught this had not been for the IEA revision graph!! Great attention to detail.
Even if it was 84.72, it looks like we are in an undulating plateau region, though we can't know if it's the peak until maybe a few years hence.
Tony
"and we take glee in the revelation that no Peak nor Recession is in sight!!"
Deffeyes was a little bit fuzzy in the past, but last year he put the 50% of Qt mark in December, 2005, presumably for crude + condensate.
Since December, the EIA reports have shown falling world crude + condensate production.
Based on the HL method, Saudi Arabia is at the same point at which the prior swing producer, Texas, started its decline.
The Saudis have admitted to a 5% production decline since December.
Using only production data through 1984, Khebab generated a (HL based) post-1984 production profile for Russia. The post-1984 cumulative Russian production, through 1984, was 95% of what the HL method predicted that it would be. Russia has now pretty well caught up with where it should be, based on the HL method. (Post-1970 cumulative Lower 48 production was 99% of what the HL method predicted.)
EIA reports show Russian production falling since December, and Western oil companies appear to be headed for the door, trying to unload Russian oil fields.
The four largest producing fields in the world all appear to be declining. The second largest producing field in the world, Cantarell, is probably going to be declining at up to 40% per year, since its oil column of 825' is thinning at the rate of about 300' per year.
This final point is what puzzles me so much about people who are putting the peak years to decades in the future. Just how are we are we going to replace Ghawar, Cantarell, Burgan and Daqing?
IMO, it looks increasingly like we are facing both the Peak and a recession. As I have said before, I advise everyone to economize, localize and produce. If I am wrong, the people following my advice will have more money in the bank, less debt and a lower stress way of life. If you are wrong . . .
I belive most of the audience does not feel a short timeframe peak can be shown from the available data, which is of poor quality. Likewise; you can't debunk peak-now by picking a convenient timeframe for production data, anyway; in a high price climate there have been a plateau in production since late 2004, haven't it? Not that it "proves" anything, i know the common explanation.
The logistic equation for limited resources, despite its limitations in factoring in human ingenuity, is not questionable. It IS getting harder to extract resources,exponential growt will stop.
And as i'm sure you know, the Saudis is having trouble finding buyers for their oil. Not very reassuring retorics as far as my jugdement.
Furthermore, I would use the official GDP statistics with caution when making your case for continued economic expansion. John Williams at the website Shadow Government Statistics has shown conclusively (despite his occasional shrillness) how the accuracy of US economic reports has been slowly diluted over the last twenty years, one adjustment and one footnote at a time. The revisions to the series almost always make for greater output and less inflation than exist in economic reality. According to Mr. Williams, inflationary recession has in fact been underway since last year. http://www.gillespieresearch.com/cgi-bin/bgn/article/id=720
The effects of higher oil prices are certainly part of this picture. They cause inflation while dampening economic activity.
Retail sales are down big time. I just attended a business overview meeting last Friday. Our company is directing ANOTHER 140 million dollar cut from the overall operations budget by EOY 2008 after having massively cut last year.
We have 5 large "transformation" teams scouring the company, holding "brain-storming" issues about how to cut costs. All ideas were entertained, no names were taken.
I had a bull session lunch with a Sr. Vice President two weeks ago along with 12 other employees pulled from my Division to discuss how for the first time that he can remember, we are playing "catch up" with smaller companies.
I speak with retailers from all over the country every day and if this year's sales don't come through for them...they are done.
I have closed more stores than I have opened this year (I manage an inventory system for this company). It kills me to see the Mom and Pop operations that have been in business for 50 years or more (stores passed down through the families) go down the drain.
No one, absolutely no one, can tell me we are not doing poorly in this country.
He is right.
That someone else is the local gas station.
They are soaking up all of Mr. & Mrs. Customer's last discretionary dollars.
Last summer i explained in several forums that it would take two years of $70 oil to bring forth a Recession. I stand behind that analysis which was based on the Fed model, assertions and projections.
Oh, Thank God. I knew all those other assholes on CNBC were full of it. Peak? WTF is a Peak?
What about one year at $65 and one year at $76? Is that kinda like the same thing? And a second question - how long will oil stay at $70 per barrel? The reason I ask is because you are the master of prediction. You da man. Yergin, Browne, and Forbes have all been SUPER wrong, but I still have faith in you.
Was that the Yukon Fed, or the Fed Fed? Link Please. If you've read this far, you can actually bust me on this one.
Since 1994, the Fed has been a master at using monetary policy to guide the Economy thru natural and economic hiccups. And has been able to lessen the amplitude of the business cycles. Thus, no more Severe Recessions and at the other end, no more unsustainable real growth rates.
Other central bankers are all on the same song sheet as the FED, but having much more success as their economies have not had the major "hits" as your nation has seen.
U're site is basically a linear interpolation of whatever the latest values are. Please get someone to do some real analysis like Khebab, Stuart, or myself at http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com.
TrendLines is truly an embarassing cesspool of crap.
How's that for provocation, TOD'rs?
If we use 21 million barrels of oil per day, we are refining that much. We get 21 million barrels worth of product that we sell, buy, and consume - then we get another 1 million barrels of Refinery Processing Gain which we count again as our own production. If that RPG can be turned into lighter, consumable products - count those products, not the RPG.
Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe someone can explain how this makes any sense.
*
I gotta disagree with you on this one. What is important is what comes out of refineries and is useable. If technology enables us to more gas out of each barrel of oil, then we have more gas to use.
RPG is the result of advanced technologies producing more gasoline and less fuel oil. If the question is how are we going to meet demand for petroleum products, one answer is producing more from each barrel. It is gasoline that consumers demand, not oil.
Volumes don't matter, it are BTU's. Oil CEO is perfectly right, RPG isn't crude. EIA provides the heat conversion factors for both crude and refinery products. After refining the total BTU's of final products are always inferior to the initial heat content of crude.
However fuel oil sells for much less, so it is by my definition the inferior product. Yes, volumes don't matter. Use does. Vehicle fuel is the product that we are running short of. If we get more gasoline then fuel oil, we are better off.
Fuel oil burned in power generation just offsets coal BTUs. BTUs in asphalt laid on the road never gets burned.
A gallon of gasoline that was converted from fuel oil is as useful and worth counting as one that was distilled from crude.
But Oil CEO was asking for how to account the consumption of crude. I really believe that you cannot count RPG as BOE (barrel of oil equivalent). This is simply dishonest. RPG has almost always been positive because gasoline is less dense than crude. Point. You cannot compare apples and pies.
I guess my point is a slightly different one. I did want to note that RPG is not a meaningless term. It does represent a real source of useful energy.
I would guess that RPG did not exist in the first generation of refineries, since they distilled products out of crude and did not use cracking. It has steadily grown since and presumably will continue to do so - resulting in more and better products from the same input.
However fuel oil sells for much less, so it is by my definition the inferior product.
Fuel oil is part of shelter. Shelter is one of the 'core human needs'.
To look at 'pump price' ignores taxes.
Oh and from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel
"Petro Diesel is considered to be a fuel oil"
And from Canada
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gi/ep-001/ep-001-e.html
"Subsection 2(1) of the ETA defines "diesel fuel" to include,
any fuel oil that is suitable for use in internal combustion engines of the compression-ignition type, other than any such fuel oil that is intended for use and is actually used as heating oil."
So when you say 'Fuel oil has more BTUs per gallon than diesel' and wikipedia is calling 'em the same.....clarity is needed from someone.
I think your focus on technology is spot on.
I don't know what the deal is, but at 2 million barrels per day, I'm curious.
This is a "100% Area" chart. I lopped-off the top 86% of Crude+Condensate so we could focus on the "other stuff."
As you can see, the 1.2% of "other liquids" has been that way since about 1993. It is actually down slightly from its highs in 2002 and 2003, as is the percentage of NGPLs and RPG.
Actually the crude + condensate figures are much more precise and these are the ONLY figures where we can track each nation's production because the EIA does not bread "all liquids" down nation by nation but they do for "crude + condensate".
I have a database where I track each nation month to month. Crude + condensate is the only data I use.
I used the crude+condensate-only data for this graph:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/11/9302/16595#186
Even if you just use the straight-crude figures, it won't tell you anything substantially different from the all-liquids numbers. I took a look at this issue some time ago. I constructed a spreadsheet for all 75 oil-producing nations using both the EIA's and BP's numbers. Whether one thinks crude supply is 73 mil or 85 million, the percentages and trends are all the same.
Although the EIA doesn't break-out countries in their all-liquids number on a monthly basis, they come up with a total. It's pretty easy to see how they do it. Reverse-engineering it gives you what you want.
P.S. Never admit your shortcomings here. This is an extremely tough crowd.
P.S. #2) Is Brazil going to take it this year, or no? What about Schumacher and Ferrari?
I have been trying to make this argument about biofuels to folks for some time, but was not sure what liquids counted as oil production and also the breakdown of total liquids. Your 100 M brl argument is great.
Also: The EROEI for oil production is decreasing each year and the biofuels production will be using more and more fossil fuel each year. This may already exceed both depletion and demand. So we now have 4 components effecting price and availability for the consumer.
1. EROEI for oil production
2. increasing biofuels production
3. field depletion
4. Demand
I'm gonna let RR take the frontline on that one. I love Robert, the guy is frickin bullet-proof.
I told Leanan I was going to quote some stuff from Malcolm Gladwell, yesterday - I gotta do that now. It relates to what you say as well. You are absolutely right, 4 components - probably many more.
Complication is our friend?
The WSJ article a few weeks ago had a range of predicted production declines over the next three years or so. The most pessimistic, i.e., probably the most realistic, resulted in a 40% decline rate, which makes sense given the rate at which the oil column is thinning.
"Like all good things, massive flows of cheap oil must one day come to an end, so only four years after getting production up to over 2 million barrels a day, PEMEX announced the end was in sight and Cantarell was going into depletion. Last year, they announced the decline had actually started and that 2005 production would be down to 2.0 million barrels a day-- 5% lower than in 2004.
There the matter rested. However, as we know in Washington , you simply can't keep a really good secret very long. Last week, somebody leaked the top secret PEMEX Cantarell Depletion study, and guess what? The situation might just well be a whole lot worse than the Mexicans have been letting on.
An energy consultant in Mexico City published parts of the study and later the Wall Street Journal got to examine the document. It seems there is only 825 feet between the gas cap over the oil and the water that is pushing into Cantarell from the bottom. This distance is closing at between 250 and 360 feet per year.
The more pessimistic of the study's scenarios have Cantarell's production dropping from 2 million b/d to 875 thousand barrels a day by the end of next year and 520 thousand barrels a day by the end of 2008.
PEMEX, while refusing to release the study comments the pessimistic scenarios will only happen if they do nothing and they are taking aggressive steps to mitigate the situation.
Outside experts are not so sure....."
http://www.fcnp.com/550/peakoil.htm
It does mean that corn ethanol is to a great extent an expensive way to convert NG to a liquid fuel, not nearly as good as direct burning of NG, but still, that's a different problem.
It's also important to keep in mind that ethanol can be burned at a higher temperature than gasoline (higher octane), which compensates for the 30% lower BTU's. One car company has a model which has a 12% loss. Still a loss, but not 30%, and there seems to be the potential to raise this efficiency to parity, primarily I think in a vehicle tuned just for ethanol.
I'm not real enthusiastic about ethanol, partly because it seems likely to destroy a lot of 2nd & 3rd world rain forest (in the same way that I'm not happy about GW from CTL), but we have to be accurate in our energy accounting...
That's pretty close. The number I have seen quoted on pro-ethanol sites and in some USDA studies is 6:1.
It's also important to keep in mind that ethanol can be burned at a higher temperature than gasoline (higher octane), which compensates for the 30% lower BTU's. One car company has a model which has a 12% loss. Still a loss, but not 30%, and there seems to be the potential to raise this efficiency to parity, primarily I think in a vehicle tuned just for ethanol.
This is another reason I favor biodiesel over ethanol. If we are going to start boosting compression ratios, why not just step up to a diesel and get a 35% efficiency boost?
RR
If there's not enough sunlight where the ethanol is produced, then why not transport the liquid to the desert, distill it there, and use the water for local agriculture?
Chris
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/5/21/163438/784#86
My take-away was that it requires too much solar investment, and requires fully redundant boilers for days the sun don't shine. The alternative is an idle plant.
Better to use the solar for the grid, and hopefully electric cars.
I certainly don't plant fence posts in the pouring rain. I take what wind and solar I can get and learn to live with it.
There's a mindset here I'm not comfortable with. I really do see generation on a catch as catch can basis, and not this "oh my gawd we built it, it has to run a full tilt all the time.
Seems way too much like business as usual.
Now, if you are talking about small scale production for private use, at the other end of the spectrum, you may be able to wait a week ...
Anybody have better info on this?
That would mean that as the industry matures, and operators begin to realize how much they're spending on fuel (and that expensive nat gas is here to stay), they'll start to develop better designs that use much less gas.
... and it is interesting that as EROEI falls (whether with ethanol or deep offshore) the oil production numbers are going to diverge from the end-user consumption numbers. I predict "missing barrels" posts in the future.
I scanned the posts and saw no one challenging the outrageous claims of the biofuel people. Biofuels saving our planet? Our automobiles? Our energy rich lives? I think not.
The use of biofuels to continue this untenable lifestyle is both laughable on its poorly reasoned face and pathetic for its wishful techno thinking.
The truth is the continued serach for something, anything to fuel a perpetual economic growth engine is, well, criminal. Somewhere on the lines of a war crime, more like genocide, except it isn't a particular subset of the species the technos are trying to kill, it is the entire species.
Everyone here just blithely ignores the physics of the situation. THERE IS NO FREE ENERGY. AND, economics have as much substance as an invisible sky being. And, when the global warming disaster starts its exponential unfolding, no amount of palm oil or ethanol or CTL is going to fix the planet.
It like watching engineers from the Corp of Engineers standing on the about to fail dykes arguing about which grade of concrete they will use even as Katrina bears down on them.
Newsflash. WE LIVE ON A SPHERE. Damn. Like dealing with L. Ron Hubbard's lunatic fringe.
Pollyannas are such dips.
Scan through a few of my posts, or visit my blog. :^) I am a tenacious debunker.
But challenging outrageous biofuels claims wasn't the purpose of the OP.
RR
I think it's hubris, actually, to think you have a line of the future, or even think you have a line on me.
One can accept that PO will mean the end of the world as we know it without having the believe it is the end of the world.
Nice one, phineas!
Living on the coast of an island on the pacific rim (and in fact directly over a fault line) I take the threat of a tsunami very seriously, but I do not let it rule my life.
Now, if there is a tsunami coming, I want to know about it, but I need to know details before I run around like a headless chook.
For example, a few weeks ago a tsunami warning was issued by the early warning system here in the pacific that predicted a tsunami was going to hit the coast here at a specific time. Unfortunately, the BBC and CNN picked up on this warning and broadcasted it (we get over twenty similar warnings every year without event). Many people in the UK and the US phoned us up to say that we needed to get up (it was 4am at the time) and get away from the coast.
Now many people heeded these secondhand, un-informed warnings and literally drove many miles inland to get away from the incoming wave. However, some of us took time to get proper information about the warning before losing our heads. The warnings were quickly scaled down to only minor changes in sea level that were not noticed by anyone here.
Here at TOD we have many different opinions about when the 'tsunami' is going to hit and how big it is going to be.
While you and other like Cherenkov may be convinced that a 100m wave is only a few kilometres off the coast, there is the other extreme from people like Freddy Hutter who believe the 'tsunami warning' is just a hoax!
Somewhere in between lies the truth and that is what the editors here at TOD are trying to find. How big is it and when is it going to hit?
For me, it is definitely not a case of IF but more a case of WHEN.
Of course, we should all make sure we have our tsunami escape plans worked out (and our recent 'false' warning here was very good at getting people to think about their plans), but I'm not heading for the hills until I know what's coming.
While I concede that you may have a different opinion to me about the arrival and effects of PO, just stating that opinion and then calling the rest of us 'dips' is not a very persuasive argument.
"One can accept that PO will mean the end of the world as we know it without having the believe it is the end of the world."
"While you and other like Cherenkov may be convinced that a 100m wave is only a few kilometres off the coast, there is the other extreme from people like Freddy Hutter who believe the 'tsunami warning' is just a hoax!"
I think it's funny, actually, that my (in my mind) somewhat noncontroversial statement that "exponential growth in populations and resource depletion cannot be sustained" gets read as I can predict the future or believe that the end of the world is near, neither of which I would ever have the hubris to assert.
Bargaining? Clever people using their rhetorical skills to persuade us that things will turn out fine? Terms like sustainability thrown around without understanding ... and "understanding" of what?
A "rehtorical" position that since exponential growth cannot continue forever, the future is therefore determined?
For example, I feel no personal hubris in predicting that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning (an irrefutable fact), or that I will eat a bowl of cereal and drink a hot bitter beverage for breakfast at about the same time (an informed prediction, based on accumulated knowledge).
I share both DuncanK's and Seadragon's assessments of TOD, plus my own. This website serves as an early warning system, as a place for "bargaining" by those who have, for the most part, passed the denial phase of peak oil, and as a place for intellectual stimulation and news/information sharing, as we are for the most part all in this mess together.
In the abstract, this can't be argued. However, the statement implies more than that. For instance, it implies that the world is in fact currently on track for unlimited exponential population growth. That's not the case. Population growth is decelerating, and current trends will stabilize population around 2050, and cause a decline thereafter.
We can argue about the sustainability of the level of population in 2050, but that's a different argument. We've got to come to agreement on the basic facts before we can have a good, intelligent discussion.
We just can't leave the biosphere alone, can we. Biofuels are just another available way for us to destroy what is left of the planet and its non human inhabitants, which we don't hear much about.
As to how long it is maintainable, that might depend on how soon natural gas prices spike. I certainly don't think it can go on very long term. High diesel and natural gas prices will swamp any attempt at subsidy ... I'm guessing within 5 years.
Where on this post do you see people advocating continued growth and business as usual? If noone is actively challenging the glowing promises of biofuels here today, it's only because that has been done regularly over the last, couple weeks. Reading the intent of the initial post, I would say that this thread is, however, entirely about distancing the biofuels from the calculations, since they dilute the understanding of how our Oil inputs are really being affected.
Still, there is a place for biofuels in the mix, since we do derive energy from them. That is not to say they will justify the current status quo, but they are there and will be part of the equation. And I believe you do get a positive eroei from Woodfires, from Cogen and landfill methane.. and I have to believe that reusing Fryer oil as biodiesel, though negligible on a global scale, is better than throwing that used grease into our waste system. But read the leaves, man. You're tipping your hand by preaching to this group, and I don't know if you've got the cards to back it up.
Ah, sure there is. It's called sunlight. Despite our hubris about our advanced civilization, we still get 99% of our energy from the sun.
Most of our light is still sunlight. More importantly, if the sun went out tomorrow, it would be about 450 degrees below zero. That's the point about zero-energy homes: they're not zero-energy, they're just zero net MAN-MADE energy.
Fossil fuels, wind, hydro, all are from the sun. Every hour the sun drops more energy on the planet than humanity processes (hard to find the right word here, given that we don't really create energy, we just use it) in a year.
The only question is whether we can as a society can get organized quickly enough to use solar energy. It's here, storage methods are here, though both still take more work than we're willing to do(labor is by far the biggest cost, fi you go through the whole supply chain). We could implement them now, if we were willing to do the work. They're getting less labor-intensive, and eventually will get cheaper than fossil fuel, even with traditional accounting.
The question is timing, and getting change organized. Not small questions, but not technical..
The problem with renewable energy and even nuclear is its not for everyone.
The great thing about oil is its cheap movable energy it allowed a lot of people to have wealth no other solution is really allowing the key power of peak oil. For example we could have decent all electric cars today with or without a small on board generator. There is a very good chance that advances in nanotech will result in high density batteries or capacitors since the core problem is simply providing a regualar large surface area. I discussed for example with a friend making cars out of carbon fiber to reduce weight so the overall efficiency is much higher its doable today but very expensive.
Rail will certianly play a big role but for the US especially and even for Europe it means large shifts in population back to the city centers and near the rail lines not to mention the huge expense of putting the rail in.
This is especially troublesome for the US.
My point with these examples is yes we can and will have a modern lifestyle for a few but that the problem its a few.
In reality its only been the last 30 years or so that western Europe and the US have had a relatively wealthy middle class with a small lower class. The rest of the world does not work this way. For most of the world and most of history there has generally been a large pool of poverty stricken labors that fuel the basic economy.
Powerdown means mainly that the western nations Europe and the us will make a painful transition back to the have and have not's just like its been for thousands of years.
Until or population drops back to say a few billion we won't see another real golden age for a looong time.
The sad thing is this pool of semi wealthy individuals are the ones that went to college and contributed to our technical success. The old model of aristocrat and peasant did not produce the large pool of educated people that is needed to drive technical innovation.
No the only bright point in this is that we can draw from the entire pool of middle class people throughout the world to fill needed technical and research positions there there will probably still be plenty of people working to improve our technology just they will be from everywhere and the universities will have to get back to doing real research.
Anyway I know this post is rambling a bit but I'm trying to make the point that at the end of the day peak oil is a social problem. I think thats missed on this website.
Sounds like you are getting very touchy. Maybe biofuels are beginning to look like a threat to your precious doom fantasies.
I also think you are flailing at imaginary Pollyannas. What percentage of the posts on this site has said that they are sure everything is going to work out just fine? 1%? The only people who have the near religious conviction that has set you off are the doomsters.
I like people and am happy seeing those in the third world rise above the poverty that has plagued them for centuries. If they want cars, children and a middle class life - that's great.
I do regret that limited oil supplies are going to make this quest harder on them and am glad that biofuels will play a role in helping humanity to move forward.
What is laughable is people who are sure they alone know the future and mock those who may disagree as fools.
I see the world differently than many of the posters here, but I don't think they are stupid or that I can't learn from them.
*
I already expressed these same worries, but the fact is better data is hardly available for us common mortals.
If you have the time please check out one of the latest Laherrère's papers, where he models all-liquids with several curves (Khebab has a link in the very first comment). Modeling all-liquids like we are doing might not be that bad, because we have no reason to believe that it won't follow a logistic curve.
The thing is: if Peak All-Liquids is 10 years away we might soon became `the boys (and girls) that cried wolf'. This plateau we have been watching could just be a delay in getting new liquids (like those from Coal) on-stream.
I dont have much to add to the thread - just wanted to raise the point that once we pass the true peak in crude oil, awareness will skyrocket - starting at that point it wont be a theory anymore and what we'll care about it all usable liquids. And at that point we wont have the luxury of being sloppy with net energy/energy quality accounting and reporting. Just wanted to draw an imaginary line in the sand so in 2010 we're not counting ethanol in our oil columns.