Below is a slide presentation given by David Archibald in Melbourne on February 5th. He’s asked me to repeat it here for the benefit of all. I’m happy to do so. He covers climate issues, oil and coal, plus Thorium reactors in this presentation of 110 slides.
He also touches on his upcoming book, which we’ll have more on later. In the meantime, his current book is still available here
Slides below, be patient while they load. There is a wealth of information here. A PDF is also available. – Anthony
Archibald NCC 5th February 2010 (PDF file 6.2 MB)
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The “peak oil” scare has been going on since oil was first discovered. But it has always been a false alarm.
Peak oil isn’t about how much is in th ground, it’s how fast it can be extracted and ERoEI.
– 260 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in Saudi Arabia (EIA)
That is a lie. That number hasn’t changed in decades of continuous production. Google saudi oil overstated
- 80 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in Venezuela (EIA)
If all was extracted that’s just 2 years of world consumption. So the rest of your tiny numbers are just that, tiny.
Canada’s tar sands could have as much as a trillion barrels, but only 15% of it will ever be extracted, the rest is too deep to mine. It will never produce more than 3mb/day (Canada’s yearly consumption) because the limiting factor at the tar sands is natural gas.
The numbers you show are all in ground (in place), does not mean it’s extractable. For example that “32 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in ANWR, NPRA and the Central North Slope in Alaska (USGS)” is scattered throughou hundreds of small fields. That means difficult extraction, it also means only a small percent (10-20%) will be recovered. Typical conventional fields recover only 40-60%. Bakken will liberate, maybe, 1%.
@jrwakefield,
“Just remember that our petroleum consumption grows at 3% per year”
No, that statement is simply not supported by the data. The world demand for oil has increased at a linear rate of 1 million barrels per day per year, from 1986 through roughly 2006. Yet, from 2004 to 2009, the world demand for oil has been flat at 80 to 81 million barrels per day.
The 3 percent compound growth rate per year is simply false.
(supporting data is from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2010, from their website)
Not sure where the comment “China coal reserves are 4 times that of the U.S.” comes from. The last I researched world coal reserves the U.S. had the most by far. Is this an artifact of “Proven Reserves” versus “Probable Reserves”?
Looking about for sources I see the U.S. has about 2 times the proven reserves – if the sources can be trusted, including the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_by_country
In any case, the U.S. has vast amounts of Coal, Gas, and Thorium. If we apply just a wee-bit of common sense, we are sitting pretty for a long, long time. We also have more forest now than we did 100 years ago. And cleaner water. And cleaner air. The only really dangerous shortage we seem to be running up against is enough water to support population growth (and agriculture growth to feed everyone).
my favorite plants seem to do best at 1200 ppm co2. here in indiana we have a lot of limestone laying around. i’m wondering if we could burn some of these rocks in those thorium reactors.
why US oil production peaked: cheaper oil was found overseas. It became far more advantageous for the US to import foreign oil rather than drill and produce it domestically. There was no shortage, it did not run out, there was no Peak Oil causation.
Really? That’s why US oil fields are all in decline including Alaska? They are physically producing less oil now.
Re not finding any more oil: of course not, not at $80 per barrel for world price. Many untapped oil deposits are known, and have been for many decades.
You got a list of those fields? The IEA claims we need to find 5 or 6 Ghawar EVERY YEAR to meet demand.
One may consider the Earth’s crust to be like a stack of pancakes, and our drilling to date has been much like sticking a fork into the top pancake. There are many, many layers yet to explore. Where drilling is accessible, price alone has prevented such drilling. Where drilling is off-limits due to political reasons, no price is high enough. Many, if not most, areas of the globe have never been explored, especially those areas under the seas.
You need to read the book Oil 101. He goes into detail on what is required for an oil field to form. They are rare because the conditions required to from oil is a rare event. All oil comes from narrow specific periods in geological history. Petroleum geologists understand this, which is why no super giant field has been found since the 1960’s.
Many more areas with known oil deposits have never had modern extraction technology applied, thus there is a huge amount of oil yet to be extracted.
Care to list them? I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject including detailed reports. There are no such fields.
jrwakefield,
Once again I have to point out that you’re selling bird blenders, as we can see by clicking on your name, so you’re probably biased in your cherry-picked opinions.
No, that statement is simply not supported by the data. The world demand for oil has increased at a linear rate of 1 million barrels per day per year, from 1986 through roughly 2006.
Hard to understand how oil consumption has been flat with a growing Western population which has doubled since 1986.
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx
By the way it looks bad for “Peak Oil” again: New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-10/new-drilling-method-opens-vast-oil-fields-in-us.html?nstrack=sid:5038680|met:100|cat:675991|order:1
And this method is cheap and available too.
You are making the same mistake as others do about peak oil. It’s not what’s in the ground, it’s how fast it can be extracted and the ERoEI. Notice the rate they hope to produce,2mb/day. The US consumes more than 20mb/day.
This is a great achievement, it will push off US peak oil a bit, a decade, but eventually that field will peak (shale deposits deplete faster). The key will be the ERoEI.
Once again I have to point out that you’re selling bird blenders, as we can see by clicking on your name, so you’re probably biased in your cherry-picked opinions.
You have a problem with my wind turbine blog?
Don’t look now, but light sweet crude is at about $85/b, the price generally rising because world oil production has not been able to keep up with demand.
Even though all predictions of peak oil may have been early, eventually peak oil will arrive. Perhaps production above 80 mbpd can be sustained for some several years or even decades. Perhaps it can even be raised toward 90 mbpd, but if production falls below 80 for a year or two, most will know the answer re: peak oil.
Even if there is some abiotic oil formation mechanism, reservoirs are being depleted faster than they can be refilled.
jrwakefield says:
“You have a problem with my wind turbine blog?”
Yes.
Mr. Wakefield, you can download the data for yourself from this site,
http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622
and download the full excel workbook from 1965-2009 under Historical Data.
There simply is no compound annual growth rate of 3 percent. Instead, as I wrote above, there is a simple linear growth rate of 1 million barrels per day per year. I would also note that the leveling off of world oil demand since 2004 coincides with the rapid growth in oil consumption of India and China.
I applaud your zeal, Mr. Wakefield, but there is simply no cause for alarm regarding Peak Oil. The data simply do not support any cause for alarm. You have apparently been seriously mis-lead.
You question my assertion that “Many more areas with known oil deposits have never had modern extraction technology applied, thus there is a huge amount of oil yet to be extracted.”
“Care to list them?” The former Soviet Union comes readily to mind.
Best regards.
jrwakefield says:
February 12, 2011 at 6:55 pm
. Petroleum geologists understand this, which is why no super giant field has been found since the 1960′s.
================================================
You would think Petrobras would have hired at a least one……(insert eyeroll here)
Brazil, Falklands, Namibia, Turkey, Africa, the entire south Atlantic margin….
Texas and North Dakota are becoming the models for oil and gas shale development.
Wakefield, this is the internet, people know how to use Google and Bing…….
Mr. Wakefield, again, not a true statement:
“The US consumes more than 20mb/day.” (where 20 mb/day means 20 million barrels of oil per day).
No, actually, the US consumption was 18,686,000 barrels of oil per day in 2009, and is on a steady decline since 2005. (see the above-mentioned source, BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2010).
I can’t comment on the energy parts, but all the slides with respect to climate science are horrendously wrong. Archibald should really have passed them to someone who understands climate science to review before publishing them.
Section 1 of the slides that has the title “Is the world warming?” yet no answer is given and the choice of slides in the section makes no sense. Why not show a graph of GISTEMP or UAH global temperature? Why dance around the question by instead showing regional climate statistics and graphs of sea ice?
Hi Dr. Archibald,
There was a person on theenvironmentsite.org/forum that claimed that “he was David Archibald.” Was that person you?
This is the most thorough and rational exposition of energy policy I have yet seen, and it puts AGW in its proper minimal place. One can argue about the specific numbers, but the predictions will seemingly come to pass eventually. I know nothing about thorium reactors, so cannot comment on that aspect; but coal to liquids and natural gas to liquids is known technology. Between Canadian tar sands, USA oil and gas from shale, and its coal reserves, North America could become self-sufficient in energy for a long time if it had the political will to do so. Unfortunately, we are being diverted down the garden path of inefficient “green” energy by lawyer-politicians and media fellow-travelers who have little understanding of technology or global geopolitics. In 1940, the Austrian economist Hayak described how the Socialists became so enamored of “the fatherland” that they would do anything (including atrocities) in the belief that they were furthering the ultimate good. It now seems that many of our politicians and scientists have fallen into the same trap with regard to global warming, and will do anything, no matter how foolish, to save the earth from all kinds of ridiculous catastrophes.
onion2 says:
February 12, 2011 at 7:37 pm
all the slides with respect to climate science are horrendously wrong.
I agree, but such is Archibald’s spiel. One could add a similar comment on solar activity.
Peak oil is a myth. Supply and demand are always balanced by price. When the cost goes up we find replacements or use less.
Not to get in the middle of a good mud-slinging contest… 🙂
But…Oil production will lag slightly behind oil prices. As prices go up, the oil in the ground that is economically recoverable goes up quickly. It takes a while to develop production, lay new pipe lines, and get the oil into production so prices can spike – but make no mistake, there is a LOT of oil in the ground if prices support the extraction. The primary hinderance to increased oil production is unstable prices. No one wants to spend a few billion dollars developing oil extraction only to find its not profitable.
So if you are arguing that peak oil production at less than $80 dollars a barrel is in site – I agree. If you start looking at the proven reserves for $150 dollars a barrel, there’s a whole lot more oil waiting extraction.
It’s very confusing to most people to understand what is meant by “Proven Reserves”, which is the estimate most used. It represents the resource available using CURRENT technologies at CURRENT prices. In other words, “Proven” to make a profit right now. Just as advances in Fracking has increased Proven Gas Reserves in the U.S., so will other new technologies increase oil reserves. (I am not addressing impact to the environment here, just commenting on available resources).
The Barnett Shale under my house is a good example of a new proven resource. There is a lot of gas in shale in the U.S., and we have hardly even started the extraction of it. All this gas was known to be there, but no one knew an economical way of getting it out. Now take oil shale… Or methane hydrates… Eventually those will become new reserves of energy.
I know many visitors of this site are anti-biofuel opinionated, but I think there is a real future there as well. Genetically enhanced algae growing in saline water converting the energy of the sun into high-density energy (bio-oil) just seems obvious to me…in another 20 to 30 years. Meanwhile, oil demand will likely sag as prices go up – I do not buy into the oil demand goes up forever model.
@Robert of Texas on February 12, 2011 at 8:26 pm — well said, sir.
The most curious thing, to me, regarding oil production and Peak Oil discussions, is why did Saudi Arabia choose $32 per barrel for their oil after the 1979 embargo? The answer, of course, is that the US had just then completed an economics study of coal-to-liquids technology. $32 per barrel was just below the break-even price for the US to convert coal to oil.
It is even more interesting to consider the present price of oil, which the Saudis have repeatedly stated should be $70 to $80 per barrel. Adjusted for inflation, that $32 in 1980 is almost exactly equal to $80 in 2010. The Saudis are no fools. They know exactly what they are doing, and will keep the price of oil below the coal-to-liquids incentive point. There may be temporary excursions above $80, but these will not last long. The price spike in 2008, driven by speculators in the oil market as the real estate prices collapsed in the US, is a good case in point. The price rapidly declined again to the $70 to $80 range.
This is nothing new, as it is common in many industries to maintain prices at or just below a threshold point at which a competing technology becomes attractive. The system fails if and when an innovation occurs that makes yet another technology much more attractive. Genetically engineered microbes to produce synthetic oil from sunshine and aqueous nutrients could very well be such an innovation. It will be interesting to watch the Saudis to see if they reduce the price of oil to make such an innovation un-attractive economically.
Yet another interesting aspect is the resolve of an oil importing nation to subsidize such innovations in technology, when they cannot stand alone on their own merits. The USA has chosen to subsidize many such technologies – wind, solar, hybrid vehicles, green buildings, all are examples. Such subsidies weaken the economy unless there is some way of advancing the individual technology to become self-supporting within a reasonable time frame. Again, the Saudis know all this and price their oil accordingly.
onion2 and Lief S,
It is contingent upon you to state explicity what is factually incorrect with his slides. Name the slide number and the fact. All you did was throw mud, no specifics, so most of the mud blew back onto you. Asking why he did not use your favorite chart is beside the point… it is HIS presentation, not yours.
For instance, I have stated that I felt the oil production declines were too draconian. Specifically, slide 77 is completely unrealistic about Est. Ultimate Recovery of 57 BSTB for China For anyone to to post this as a ‘known’ value with little uncertainty really detracts from their credibiltiy. We don’t know the US’s EUR, much less that of China.
P99 for China might be 55 BBO, but it’s P10 could be >120 BBO
@JRWakefield, etl all. I’m not going to quibble about whether we have passed Peak Oil for the first or four time. Let’s just say that we passed Peak Whale Oil in the late 19th century and we survived the crisis. We passed Peak Pennsylvania Oil and found East Texas. We passed Peak US oil, but found a lot more internationally.
Back in 1982, at the SEG convention, I made a statement: “We are not running out of oil. we are running out of $30 oil. But with Athebasca, Orinoco, Oil Shale, we know today where there are TRILLIONS of Barrels equivalent of hydrocarbons, which can be brought to market AT THE RIGHT PRICE. ” That was almost 30 years ago and the situation is nearly the same.
The deep water discoveries were only dreams, but giants have been found there. They are expensive and the elephant hunt there is getting tougher. Brazil is doing well. But ten years ago the shale gas boom was also a dream. In a decade we have added 100 years of undeveloped gas reserves in the US.
It is unrealistic to belive the oil and gas is inexhaustable. We may very well have had Peak Oil. But it is also completely unrealistic to expect production to fall off a cliff. Price will rise, more supply will be made available and demand will drop to restore the market equilibrium.
With the expectation of rising prices, people will develop alternatives, be it Gas to Liquids, Coal to Liquids, Fission-to Hyrodgen, or some other portable energy source.
” Leif Svalgaard says:
February 12, 2011 at 8:15 pm
onion2 says:
February 12, 2011 at 7:37 pm
all the slides with respect to climate science are horrendously wrong.
I agree, but such is Archibald’s spiel. One could add a similar comment on solar activity.” unquote.
Slinging mud doesn’t wash it here for either of you, no matter who you are. Please elaborate your criticisms with data so everyone can see and discuss, rather than pontificating from on high. This sort of dismissive attitude without backup arguments, is why people are distrustful of AGW proponents.
I have no opinion either way on the slides, but I have strong opinion on people making dismissive comments without being prepared to argue their case.
Stephen Rasey says:
February 12, 2011 at 10:25 pm
onion2 and Leif S,
It is contingent upon you to state explicity what is factually incorrect with his slides. Name the slide number and the fact. All you did was throw mud
It should be clear to most people what is wrong. The mud flowed freely from Archibald himself.
But here are some specifics. Undoubtedly you can find more things that are wrong:
3: Is the World warming: most of the red curve since 2004 is below the line, so there has been change [less ice]
5: What has happended in Alaska: cherry picked regional data
6: US Record High Temps: ‘66% … are before 1940’. Were there no records before 1880? Bad statistics
8: Perth 1910-2009: single location only
9: Central England: Dalton Minimum not outstanding in any way. Record truncated so not to show recent warming
10: December Central England: single data point doesn’t mean anything and an upwards trend is visible, anyway
11: Much Warmer 1000 years ago: no source or scale
12: Borehole: very poor match to 11
16: Vostok interglacials: shows Holocene was unusual [land use, perhaps]
25: More logical reason: cycles 24 and 25 are just extrapolations [perhaps based on analogy with 5 and 6]
27: The Be10 Record: poor match: E.g. Spoerer Minimum. Only one record [Dye 3] which correlates poorly with other Be10 records
28: aa index: is known to be too low below 1957 [artifact]. Values 2007-2010 as low as 1901-1902, but temperatures very different
29: Oulu: cherry picked station, most other stations do not show the latest minimum as much higher
31: Dalton Minimum: just extrapolation by analogy. No physics
32: Cycle Length: Regional only. Comparing with Northern Hemisphere shows no correlation [or statistically insignificant opposite correlation]
33: Hanover: One locality only
34: Norway: regional only [that there are many stations doesn’t mean much as nearby stations are strongly correlated]
35: Consequential Climate Shift: very shaky conclusion
36: Solar physics community: self-agrandizing
37: Ability to look forward: cycle 19 suspiciously left out. The model has a very short cycle 24, hence a very warm period is coming
43: Lake Victory: years where it didn’t fit left out
44: Colder is driver: just one locality
harrywr2:
“The price of steam coal FOB Newcastle, Australia is currently $120/tonne.”
I believe the article is referring to Lignite coal (brown coal) – a much lower grade and somewhat better than compressed peat moss. It is a fraction of “steam” bituminous coal’s price. One may purchase it for $40-$50/T out of the Karachi port: http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/101420065/Lignite_Coal.html
This fuel is not worth transporting and these plants would need to be built “in situ”. GK