Stories tagged with "peak oil"

Insights Regarding Future World Oil Production Based on ASPO Denver Presentations

"Peak oil can be a very tricky topic, the way I talk about it and deal with it at the end of the day is: We need to revolutionize the way we consume and produce energy... We need to really be the leaders in saying: the future for our children and our grandchildren as far as energy consumption and as far as production, it looks like this" with those words Colorado Governor Bill Ritter started his closing speech at the ASPO conference in Denver that took place from 10 to 12 October 2009.

Telling our children and grandchildren where they will draw their heat, electricity and liquid fuels from was not a topic of discussion in Denver. Nonetheless, much information was conveyed on the relationship between the economics crisis and the future of oil. This post is an attempt to summarize the main points on oil and the economy from the conference presentations--concluding that there are three distinct future trajectories as we go forward.

At the Denver conference, world oil production was discussed from both the supply side (what flow rate can be reached) and the demand side (how much can the economy afford). It is really the combination of the two that is important--so I bring together both in this post.

Hubbert's Peak - John Kinhart's Comic

John Kinhart gave us permission to repost this cartoon from Sorry Comics.

Abqaiq Revisited - Some Geological Analysis of Potential Saudi Depletion

This is a repeat of JoulesBurn's post on Abqaiq from May 2008, which may be of interest to those reading Heading Out's post. -- Gail

Abqaiq, an aging super giant Saudi Arabian oil field, has yielded over 11 billion barrels of oil since it was discovered in November of 1940. Its past provides us with the poster child for easy oil. The first well flowed at 9720 barrels per day, a far cry from today's land finds where multiple horizontal laterals are necessary to coax lesser quantities from stingier reservoirs. But Abqaiq's more recent past paints a more muddled picture, as efforts to extract the remaining oil have produced mixed results. More advanced recovery methods have been successfully employed in some parts of the field, but these have likewise revealed unexpected geological complexities which have in turn hindered recovery in other areas. Many of the new challenges encountered in Abqaiq are relevant to the future prospects for other fields, particularly Ghawar and Khurais. This article will evaluate the development status of the field using satellite imagery to identify recent drilling in correlation with several recent technical reports on new developments and strategies for maintaining production.

Report on ASPO Switzerland, September 26th, 2009, Conference at University of Basel

This report concerns the second annual General Assembly of ASPO Switzerland held in conjunction with its annual Peak Oil Conference.

Dancing at the Edge of the Precipice - After Peak Oil

This is a guest post by Alexis Ziegler. Alexis is a communitarian, builder, orchardist and environmental activist living in central Virginia. He is the author of a recently published book, "Culture Change: Civil Liberty, Peak Oil, and the End of Empire". More information can be found at conev.org.

In the couple of years since Culture Change was first published, much has changed. Culture Change predicted that in 2007 we were "at or near" global peak oil production, and that we would face a "large economic contraction" as a result.1 In July 2008 oil production hit an all-time high of 74.8 million barrels per day and oil prices reached an unprecedented height of $147.27 in daily trading.2 Since then, the global economy has collapsed into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Oil prices have oscillated wildly, and oil production has declined as global demand has decreased.

Meanwhile, production from the giant oil fields which make up the lion's share of global production has continued to decline. There is a growing consensus, at least among those concerned about peak oil, that the July 2008 peak of production will probably remain as the all-time historic high for global oil production.3 As of the most recent measure, more than 60% of global oil fields are past peak and are now in permanent decline.4


World Oil Production from August Oil Watch Monthly

And the response has been.... silence.

Is the Global Oil Tank Half-Full, Is It Half-Empty …or Are We Running on Fumes?

This is a guest post by Richard Heinberg. Heinberg is Senior Fellow with Post Carbon Institute and author of several books on resource depletion, including The Oil Depletion Protocol and Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis. He will be speaking at the ASPO-USA conference in Denver, October 12.

In his article in the New York Times September 24, "Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries”, staff reporter Jad Mouawad cites oil discoveries totaling ten billion barrels for the first half of 2009. The Tiber field in the Gulf of Mexico alone accounts for four to six billion barrels of crude that may eventually find its way into the world oil system. Indeed, this year has seen discovery results that could end up being the best since 2000. But, the article notes, the new oil was expensive to find, it will be expensive to extract, and both exploration and production are only possible because of high levels of investment and sophisticated, expensive new technologies.

Peak Oil Not a Problem According to NY Times; Scientific American - Our Response on the Financial Aspects

Recently, we have had two new articles aiming to put to rest people's fears about peak oil. One is from the New York Times:

Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries

It talks about the many discoveries this year, and how, if they continue at the pace they have in the first half, they will be the best since 2000.

The other is from the October Scientific American, called

Squeezing More Oil from the Ground.

It is behind a pay wall (you can get it for $5.95). There is also a draft version available on line. Its premise seems to be that there are a lot of promising areas that we have not yet explored. When you put this together with advances in drilling and the promises of secondary and tertiary recovery, there is a good chance that oil production will not peak for many years.

In this post, we will look a little more at these articles, and see why peak oil, and perhaps the financial issues associated with peak oil, are still an issue, regardless of what these articles may suggest.

Mind-sized Hubbert

The bell shaped Hubbert curve is commonly observed when a non renewable, or slowly renewable, resource is exploited in a free market. But what is the origin of the curve? Ugo Bardi and Alessandro Lavacchi have recently published a simple "mind sized" model of the Hubbert behavior in "Energies" . Fat cows and lean cows are not included in the equations of the model, but come as a logical consequence of it.

(Note: I made the figure above using two cow images that I had downloaded from the internet long ago. If someone owns these images, please alert me or the editors. We'll be happy to give due credit or to remove the images if so requested.)

Renewables Transition 3: The Precautionary Principle

In the first two posts in this series (1 and 2), I discussed the requirements and challenges of transitioning our global economy to renewable sources of energy. My interim conclusion was that there are serious doubts about our ability to affect any significant transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Much of this uncertainty is the result of uncertain systemic energy return on energy invested. In other words, when all inputs are taken into account—as must be done where we’re talking about shifting energy sources on a civilizational level—can a world powered by solar and wind power itself the way it has on oil, gas, and coal?

The key take away is precisely this uncertainty: we simply don’t know if renewables—either current or potential future technology—will be up for the job. Where does that leave us? This discussion—and many others related to Peak Oil—is really a matter of what is known as the “Precautionary Principle,” or what degree of consensus is required before we embark on a course of action that may result in irreversible harm. Because the Precautionary Principle has such broad application in discussions of Peak Oil, I’ve modeled this post as a discussion of the principle itself, using the issue of renewables transition as but one example of its application.

Hawaii: Peak Oil Canary in a Coal Mine Revisited

This is a post that I wrote in June 2008. Since today is a US holiday, we thought we would run something relating to a vacation spot.

Hawaii seems to come up often in the thinking of people aware of peak oil. On one hand, it seems like an ideal place to relocate after peak oil - no need to worry about heating a house; clothing is mostly for protection from the sun; and crops can be grown year around. On the other hand, it produces no fossil fuel itself, and it is at the end of the supply line for both food and fuel. Hawaii's biggest industry, tourism, is already declining, and with rising fuel costs, can only decline further.

Many of you know that I was recently in Hawaii. After visiting, I thought I might post a few of my thoughts about the situation.

Hawaiian Islands location

Figure 1: Location of Hawaii - Wikipedia