Bracing For Peak Oil Production By Decade's End

[4dsc]

Forbes: But a bind is clearly coming?

Maxwell: A bind is clearly coming. We think that the peak in production will actually occur in the period 2015 to 2020. And if I had to pick a particular year, I might use 2017 or 2018. That would suggest that around 2015, we will hit a near-plateau of production around the world, and we will hold it for maybe four or five years. On the other side of that plateau, production will begin slowly moving down. By 2020, we should be headed in a downward direction for oil output in the world each year instead of an upward direction, as we are today.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/13/suncor-energy-oil-intelligent-investing-cenovus_2.html

Interesting that Forbes is getting into the act now about peak oil.

[kristopher]

1. That is expected due to economic conditions flowing from global policy trends

The International Energy Agency has been predicting for years that the failure to invest in new exploration and extraction is going to lead to reduced supply. With the global focus on AGW and the petroleum industry's roll in the problem, it is predictable behavior for the oil industry to curtail investment in expanding supply at this time.

Just remember, they are the assholes that have been engaged in a concerted, full blown propaganda campaign to discredit AGW in the public mind by lying about AGW for nearly 20 years. To think that they have been able to manage their campaign without being aware of the truth of the matter isn't credible, in my view. They *know* the time remaining for present level of demand is limited since both the truth and the economics of viable alternatives are pressures they can no longer contain.

EV's and PHEV's are here to stay.

[4dsc]

3. You don't understand the truth

I have asked repeatedly how you are going to build EV and PHEV when society is using less oil, a lot less oil?? I have ask about the dependence of oil and your beloved EV's and PHEV but got no answer.

[kristopher]

6. What I don't understand is how your reasoning proceeds.

I'm guessing it is due to a bias you've acquired that distorts what information you process.

Let me ask you to track down a piece of information that I am certain you lack:

1) How much of the petroleum consumed is used for personal transportation?

[4dsc]

7. Nice strawman, now answer the simple question put to you

Are your beloved so called alternatives DEPENDENT upon oil?? When you can answer the question honestly you'll see how there is little future for them in our society. They will not replace oil in any meaningful way.

[kristopher]

8. I did answer the question, you just didn't want to hear the response.

When you know what portion of our petroleum is used for personal transportation, then you will have PROOF that your assertion is false. We are are indeed dependent on energy, but it doesn't have to be fossil oil that makes the world function. We can provide for our personal transportation needs with battery EVs. That leaves plenty of petroleum to feed industrial processes and the heavy transportation sector even at a greatly reduced volume of production.

However, we don't WANT to use petroleum for ANY sector because of CO2 emissions. Therefore we will ALSO eliminate its use in heavy transport by moving to biofuels. If we had to we could meet that sectors needs with current biofuel technologies; but there are far more efficient technologies on the horizon and something has to come first. We do EVs, smart grid, and wind now; advanced biofuels, widespread solar, fuel cells, wave energy systems, ocean current energy systems, geothermal, and storage would follow next.

And in the final analysis, energy is energy. It may come in many forms, but if I have some form of energy I can turn it into almost any other form with the characteristics that are most appropriate to the application. There are many noncarbon options to provide our energy; and thinking that "OUR ENERGY MUST COME FROM A DIRTY DEEP HOLE IN THE GROUND OR WE WILL DIE!!!!! is little more than spectacularly uninformed paranoia.

The renewable option: Is it real?
SUNLIGHT: 100,000 TW reaches Earth’s surface (100,000 TWy/year = 3.15 million EJ/yr), 30% on land. Thus 1% of the land area receives 300 TWy/yr, so converting this to usable forms at 10% efficiency would yield 30 TWy/yr, about twice civilization’s rate of energy use in 2004.

WIND: Solar energy flowing into the wind is ~2,000 TW. Wind power estimated to be harvestable from windy sites covering 2% of Earth’s land surface is about twice world electricity generation in 2004.

BIOMASS: Solar energy is stored by photosynthesis on land at a rate of about 60 TW. Energy crops at twice the average terrestrial photosynthetic yield would give 12 TW from 10% of land area (equal to what’s now used for agriculture). Converted to liquid biofuels at 50% efficiency, this would be 6 TWy/yr, more than world oil use in 2004.

Renewable energy potential is immense.

From a presentation by John Holden, Presidential Science Advisor

[4dsc]

15. Still lost I see

You make the statement "We are are indeed dependent on energy" and this is a where you go take the wrong turn. We are dependent upon oil and nothing you have stated, outside a lot of wishful thinking, will change the FACT that we are an OIL based society. You somehow believe that when the world is producing 50% less oil that we will somehow be replacing that amount of energy we get from that 50% with less efficient wind, solar and EV.

But here is where you're assumptions are wrong, all you so called alternatives are DEPENDENT upon oil and will need REPLACED every 20-30 years. Build a wind farm today, replace it in 20-30 years. Build solar panels and replace it in 20-30 years and so on and so on.

Sorry but oil is indeed a transportation fuel and all your so called alternatives are not.

[kristopher]

16. Sorry but you are still wrong...

can you point to ANY peer reviewed literature that supports your assertions? I can tell you now that you can't, because what you are saying isn't true. It is based a a completely uninformed view of what energy is and how we got the system we now use.

The concept you are arguing isn't even a thought anymore. It is so backward to anyone with the least bit of knowledge that reading your post is like reading a screed from Christine O'Donnell telling everyone that mice with human brains are proof of the evils of science and that evolution is a myth.

Your arguments are on that level it is just that the topic is energy.

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Terry in Austin]

17. The actual assertions are yours. He's just not buying them.

>> peer reviewed literature that supports your assertions

Surely after a dozen years in college, you would have learned some of the basics of argument. The burden of proof is on the positive -- for one thing, you can't prove a negative, so whoever says "this is so" about something is the one who has to make a persuasive case.

Your particular assertion is that some combination of renewables can provide the amount of energy we now get from fossil fuels, with the policy implication that because this is possible, we should devote all the necessary resources to such a program. There are of course those who don't agree, and it really doesn't matter what their reasons are.

It's for you to make the case, and when people remain unpersuaded, you don't help it any by disparaging them for what is essentially your failure to convince.

Rather than present a well-made case, you often resort to a kind of intellectual bullying -- not only abusing anyone who doesn't share your views, but insisting on the authoritativeness of your chosen experts as the last word that must not be contradicted, on pain of a lot more table-pounding from you.

I would think that you, as a scholar, would have more confidence in making your own case, and more maturity in conducting your part of the dialog. Clearly, you have a lot of valuable intellectual gifts to share, but the petulance is really getting in the way.

'Nuff said.

[kristopher]

19. You have misapplied the axiom

Negatives can certainly be proved. You can't prove that untestable claims like "God doesn't exist" are true, but you can prove beyond question that a cow cannot naturally reproduce and give birth to an elephant.

We likewise can examine the CHARACTERISTICS OF ENERGY CARRIERS and the demands of various applications and determine whether there are or are not viable alternative energy carriers. In this case, such examination has long demonstrated that petroleum's primary advantage is it's characteristic high energy density. However, when we factor in the efficiencies of electric drive and compare that to the efficiencies of internal combustion engines, the energy density characteristic becomes far less important.

Electricity used in battery electric drive vehicles is a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Finally as to this: you wrote, "I would think that you, as a scholar, would have more confidence in making your own case, and more maturity in conducting your part of the dialog. Clearly, you have a lot of valuable intellectual gifts to share, but the petulance is really getting in the way."

It isn't petulance nor lack of confidence. The proposition that there is no substitute for petroleum in personal transportation has been proven so many times the claim that it can't is on a par with claims such as we faked the moon landing or that evolution is a myth.

The real question is why you are attacking ME instead of teh stupid ideas that nuke nuts keep pushing.

[Terry in Austin]

10. Renewables: the awful truth

I'm with you here, 4dsc. Putting aside for a moment the odd urge to "make the world safe" for electric vehicles -- rather like a passenger on the Titanic working out how to get deck chairs into the lifeboats -- we can get to the nitty-gritty.

The basic proposition for alt-energy is this: some combination of renewable energy sources can and will replace the entire amount of energy we currently get from fossil fuels.

It turns out that's a pretty tough case to make. Petroleum is so huge, the numbers for fully replacing it are staggering.

• Wind: Currently 160 GW, or 2% of world energy use. At 1.5 MW for a typical mill, that's about 80,000. Spacing requirements are about 60 acres per mill, so a quick trip to the calculator will give an idea of how big and how many are the wind turbine fields that need to be identified and reserved. Just for the US, we'd need an Indiana-sized total area.
  
• Solar: A Rice University study several years ago came up with similar estimates for solar, only the state they picked for comparable area was Oklahoma. Again, that's just for the US.

These are the two technologies that scale up fairly well, although arguably not far enough. Less so for other renewable technologies like geothermal and wave.

It's one thing to believe that we can turn to solar and wind energy sources to whatever extent they're available -- we can and we should -- but it's quite another to demonstrate that all of these technologies put together can deliver the same magnitude of energy we get from coal and oil.

Bottom line: we learn how to live well on less energy. A LOT less.

[kristopher]

11. Learn to live on a lot less...

That is the energy efficiency leg of the solution, and it is huge since our current system is built on profit motivated, deliberate efforts to discourage efficiency.

Electric vehicles are an excellent example of how improved efficiency will contribute. By switching our personal transportation fleet to electric drive we reduce total domestic energy consumption by (IIRC) around 17%.

The fact is the antirenewable contingent on DU knows as much about energy as your typical teabagger knows about the Constitution. So in that grand tradition, don't let the fact that all the academic energy experts have concluded you are wrong discourage you from believing what you've arbitrarily decided is true.

[Terry in Austin]

12. Renewables, pro- and anti-

I can't imagine that it would possibly matter, but I'm very much pro renewables. I'm also very much pro realistic expectations.

> all the academic energy experts have concluded you are wrong

You mean they all showed up and had to set me straight? Even George and Ernie? Damn! I sure didn't mean to make them nervous!

B-)

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Terry in Austin]

14. You sure it's not validity-free facts that are not opinions? Wait--

Maybe opinion-free DUers who are energetically valid?
No, that can't be it...

Maybe no-good evil other people without a clue who teabag the system of knowledge?
Nope, not that either...

Maybe can't get no satisfaction?
Nope, been there...


Dude. It's okay. Really.

[Terry in Austin]

4. Economics vs. geology

> for the oil industry to curtail investment in expanding supply at this time.

The economic slant on the future of oil tends to miss the point, IMO. It generally talks about "supply" that's already pumped and in the tanks. Yes, if you show up with enough cash, you can get oil out of the ground and into the tanks faster. Yes, that expands the "supply."

The point that's missed by economists is that the supply that matters is the supply that's in the ground.

Geologists pretty much know where it is, and there's less than half left. The difficult, expensive, slow, low-yield half.

Economists would have us believe that if you show up at the window with enough cash, God will put more oil in the ground. I'll pass, thanks.

[pscot]

5. And the dangerous half

The half the ends at the Macondo blow out.

[GliderGuider]

2. Interesting that we've already been on a plateau for over 5 years

But Maxwell refuses to call it what it is...

[happyslug]

9. The debate is about who you believe

If you believe OPEC is telling the truth about how much oil is in their reserves, Peak oil will NOT occur till 2030.

If you believe the Seven Sisters (Exxon, BP etc, I know many of the Seven sisters have merged but it is a good name for the group) were telling the truth about those same reserves BEFORE those reserves were nationalized in the early 1970s, then you believe it is about 2010.

If you believe that the Seven Sisters, after the fight they had involving the earlier Nationalizations of the Mexican (1938) and Iranian (1954) oil fields, were also LYING when they controlled most of the oil fields of OPEC Pre-1970s, then peak oil hit in 2005 and we saw the first rapid price raise in 2008. Prices are down today do lack of DEMAND do to the recession NOT do to excess production.

Side note: Prior to Reagan the US had a reputation for very strong anti-Trust law enforcement AND strict rules as to valuation of Corporations. At the same time the Seven Sisters remembered the Mexican and Iranian offers for the oil field they owned in Mexico and Iran. Those offers reflected what the Seven Sisters had put on their books as the "lower of cost or market" valuation, even if that valuation was way less they any of the Seven Sisters would pay for those same oil reserves even of held by someone else. Thus the dispute between Mexico/Iran and the Seven Sisters when both countries took over their oil fields. Mexico and Iran wanted to pay what the Seven Sisters were reporting to the US Security and Exchange Commission as the value of those fields (Which were held on the books at cost NOT what it can be sold for), while the Seven Sister wanted a much higher price for those same fields (Based on the expected profits from those fields). This disputed lasted over ten years when it came to Mexico and a lesser time when it came to Iran (Iran had a coup that overthrow the Government that wanted the takeover, but the Shah who took over at that point kept the oil fields but agreed to pay a much higher fee to the Seven Sisters for those fields).

My point is that after 1954, the Seven Sisters had good reason to over value the remaining over seas oil fields and if that is true Peak Production occurred in 2005 NOT 2010.

As to OPEC, OPEC used the Seven Sisters numbers till the mid 1980s, when do to the oil glut (do to the opening up of the last three "Elephant" size oil fields, the North Sea, The North Slope of Alaska AND a field in Siberia), oil prices dropped drastically. OPEC to keep up the price of oil, ordered oil production curtailed based on a formula that used as a base total oil reserves of any member. This did NOT help keep production down (Everyone cheated excepted Saudi Arabia) for everyone started to overstate their oil reserves, going from a most probable recovery prediction to a best possible production capacity. This doubled reserves in theory. No one believed this was anything more then an accounting trick to increase each country's legal production but if these higher reserves are true then Peak oil will occur in 2030. If these increase reserves are NOT real, and most people do NOT think so, then 2010 (Unless you go by the above two paragraphs were even the Seven Sisters were lying then 2005).

[phantom power]

18. Everything I've seen since ~2005 seems consistent with...

having reached peak production. Oil prices have backed off and reserves have risen, on the other hand that appears to be due to worldwide economic recession. Which is completely consistent with the peak oil concept that oil is an economic limiter. From here on out, we can have cheap(er) oil or strong economic growth: pick one.

Far as I can tell, any oil exporting nation, or cartel of such nations, has every motivation to avoid announcing to the world "Hey, our production has peaked, sorry about that." That, coupled with the fundamentally secretive nature of any oil accounting, leaves me with no particular reason to believe any claims that "peak oil is decades away."

:shrug:

[NickB79]

20. If the 1973 oil embargo was any indication, even a small reduction will have major impacts

The 1973 oil embargo reduced global supplies by only 5%, yet oil prices quadrupled.

If a similar event were to occur in the next decade, the effect on the global economy would likely be catastrophic.