From American University via Eurekalert, professor Matthew Nisbet demonstrates that the impact of peak petroleum on public health may be a way to unite conservatives and liberals in an effort to move away from fossil fuels and towards alternative forms of energy.
Peak Oil & Public Health: Political Common Ground?
WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 8, 2011)—Peak petroleum—the point at which the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached, after which the rate of production begins to decline—is a hot topic in scientific and energy circles. When will it occur? What will the impact be? While geologists and economists debate the specifics, American University School of Communication professor Matthew Nisbet believes peak petroleum and the associated risks to public health may provide an opportunity to bring conservatives and liberals together in the move toward alternative forms of energy.
“Somewhat surprisingly, conservatives are more likely to associate a major spike in oil prices with a strong threat to public health,” said Nisbet—an expert in the field of climate and energy communication. “This could present a gateway to engagement with conservatives on energy policy.”
In a forthcoming peer-reviewed study at the American Journal of Public Health, Nisbet and his co-authors find that 76% of people in a recent survey believe oil prices are either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to triple in the next five years. A dramatic spike in oil prices is a commonly recognized outcome of peak petroleum.
Even more telling is that 69% of respondents believe a sharp rise in oil prices would be either “very harmful” (44%) or “somewhat harmful” (25%) to the health of Americans. According to the survey, strong conservatives were the most sensitive to these possible risks, with 53% believing that a spike in oil prices would be “very harmful” to human health. Similarly, in a separate analysis of the data, those who were strongly “dismissive” of climate change (52%) were the most likely of any subgroup to associate a sharp spike in oil prices with a negative impact on public health.
According to Nisbet and his co-authors, this creates a challenge and an opportunity for the environmental and public health communities. Peak oil and energy prices are often talked about in terms of economic and environmental impact, but rarely as a public health concern. Nisbet argues that his findings show reason to reframe the debate.
“These findings suggest that a broad cross-section of Americans may be ready to engage in dialogue about ways to manage the health risks that experts associate with peak petroleum,” said Nisbet. “Peak petroleum may not currently be a part of the public health portfolio, but we need to start the planning process.”
The study was co-authored with Edward Maibach of George Mason University and Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale University and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 11th Hour, and Surdna Foundation.
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You are correct about abiotic oil… And even if the oil came from the mantle and picked up those biogeochemical markers as it migrated through organic-rich shales, it would still have to become trapped in reservoir rocks for it to be found in sufficient quantities to produce. An abiotic origin of oil would not alter how we go about finding and producing it.
“But in absolute terms, Russia, using your source, is currently above the peak of the Soviet system.”
Yes, that’s why I posted it!!! The issue in that link is the effect of that previous peak of flow rate had on their economy. But what is happening now in Russia? http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3626 also google: russian oil production decline
For refining purposes, it’s oil. It will be booked as oil, just like the Athabasca tar sand oil is. It’s a high-grade refinery feedstock…
“Kerogen can be converted to superior quality jet fuel, #2 diesel, and other high value by-products.”
It is superior to Atahbasca tar sand oil.
“Yes, by all means, look at that chart. Hubberts peak is hit, but then something goes wrong—Flat for twenty years, then climbing, headed for an all time high”
Headed to? You’re sure of that? Of all the literature I have read about shale gas shows it will be short lived. Wells deplete to 20% within 6 to 8 years. None of the companies are making a profit from shale gas at these prices. Search The Oil Drum on shale gas, lots of articles showing flow rates are not as is claimed.
examples:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7075
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7253
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6785
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7087
Unlikely Texas will reach higher than the 1970’s.
Richard: your
Yes, that’s why I posted it!!! The issue in that link is the effect of that previous peak of flow rate had on their economy.
No, you misread the article. You were saying the Russians had hit peak oil. Let me quote you:
Russia appears to have also hit peak in oil production.
It is obvious, from your source, that they have NOT hit peak oil.
And, I believe that the Soviet political system had more to do with the tanking of the economy…..
Richard Wakefield says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:58 am
“Oil fields can be traced to the origin sedimentary rock by chemical markers in the oil.
Example 1, the Bakken deposit is in situ, it is oil that formed in the originating rock. The rock is too tight to have oil migrate into it. Oil always migrates to more porous rock.”
Well Richard, at least we agree on something, even though you confuse porosity and permiability.. All the shale gas, the Bakken oil, is simply production from fractured organic source rocks. Because of the low permiability, it is difficult to move hydrocarbons in or out. They were formed in situ from deposited organic matter, and are removed by hydraulic fracturing and pumping. Biomarkers alone prove that, but there is simply no way abiotic oil could come out of some magical mantle source and get into those tight shales.
The fact that we can now produce directly from source rock will end this peak oil hysteria.
Richard: your
Studies done say no.
I would LOVE to see those studies. Links?
“For refining purposes, it’s oil. It will be booked as oil, just like the Athabasca tar sand oil is. It’s a high-grade refinery feedstock…”
At what flow rate? The Alberta Tar Sands (ATS) current production is 1.5mb/day. Small. The MOST they expect to get in the next 20 years is 3mb/day (the limiting factor is the availability of natural gas). Still small. Of the entire deposit, only 15% is minable.
The issue for the kerogen is where the ERoEI comes into play. The ATS is 6:1, that’s official from the industry. What will the ERoEI be for the Green River? It will have to be mined because it’s shale and kerogen doesn’t flow. Hence the suggestion that nukes be used to cook the kerogen into oil and mobalize it. So what’s the ERoEI for the Green River? So far is negative. Will it come on line fast enough to curb the depletion of other fields? Will there even be capital available to put the Green River into production? The phrase, “don’t count your chickens” comes to mind.
““…Peak Oil has nothing to do with RESERVES & has everything to do with rate…” That is categorically wrong. Go look at M. King Hubbert’s original definition of the term – it is in fact the cumulative production – of the reserves (an economic term) – that define peak oil.”
Hubbert’s curves are all about flow rate. The entire premise of the Hubbert Curve is that flow rates will rise then peak, then fall. The area under the curve is the total possible extractable oil. Yes, it is all about flow rates. Don’t believe me? Then have a look at flow rate profiles for the North Sea and Cantarell.
http://ior.senergyltd.com/issue13/talking-point/Fig1.gif
http://gregor.us/oil/cantarell-finally-slips-below-500-kbpd/
It also hard to argue that Russia hit “peak” oil because of production after the fall of the wall. The reduction in Russian production matches almost exactly with the drop in Russian internal consumption. Reduced demand = reduced production. Increased demand = increased production. Classic.
You are not the first to mistake the drop in demand for peak oil. It happens every recession.
You’ve got hold of the right stick, just the wrong end.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=5&aid=2&cid=RS,&syid=1980&eyid=2010&unit=TBPD
Richard: your
Of the entire deposit, only 15% is minable.
15% of 1.7 trillion bbls is a large number, of about 255 billion bbls. That’s 232 years of production at 3 million/day.
The other 85%? Its accessible by in-situ techniques. No peak oil there, for a few centuries.
For the record, its bituminous sands, or oil sands, not ATS. Tar is a different product, from a different process. Please try to keep your chemistry straight.
Richard: you still don’t understand the economics. If the price per bbl to extract oil sands or shale oil is less than the price it sells for, the ERoEI is moot.
There are mulitple definitions of ‘peak anything’
My favorites –
1) Maximum extraction and delivery rate to market at current prices.
2) Maximum price and extraction rate before substitution occurs.
At some price either substitution will occur or conservation will occur. When oil was 29 cents a gallon perfectly decent middle class families rode around in cars that got 5 or 6 MPG. My father owned two cars that got 6 MPG. When the price of gas hit $1/gallon my father could no longer afford to drive a car that got 6 MPG. He rides around in a car that gets 20+ MPG now.
“The reduction in Russian production matches almost exactly with the drop in Russian internal consumption. Reduced demand = reduced production. Increased demand = increased production. Classic.”
Chicken or the egg? Are you sure the drop in demand was not because of drop in production? That’s the claim of the link I posted.
“At some price either substitution will occur or conservation will occur. When oil was 29 cents a gallon perfectly decent middle class families rode around in cars that got 5 or 6 MPG. My father owned two cars that got 6 MPG. When the price of gas hit $1/gallon my father could no longer afford to drive a car that got 6 MPG. He rides around in a car that gets 20+ MPG now.”
And we have reached the limit havn’t we. Hybirds are trying to get more, maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell. I hope we can get more from cars, as the only other option is less driving, which is already happening.
“Richard: you still don’t understand the economics. If the price per bbl to extract oil sands or shale oil is less than the price it sells for, the ERoEI is moot.”
So when it takes a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, ERoEI is moot? I understand the economics quite well. That’s why I have shifted because the effect the 2008 price spike in oil had on the economy, throwing us into this recession. Now the debt crisis is taking over control of the economy, and as people loose their jobs, they will have less money to buy energy, which will kill off some demand, and the price of oil drops, which it now has. If you recall, my first post had that in it.
Oil reserves have been steadily increasing, since 1980. Well, really, since the first well was drilled in the 1800s, but lets not quibble.
In the last 30 years, oil reserves has increased in 24 of the 30 years. The total increase in global reserves over this period is over 100%, from 641 billion bbls in 1980, to 1341 billion bbl sin 2009.
All of the years with decreases were following recessions (1981, 1991, 1998 Asian Crisis etc) or crashes in the price of oil (1986, 1998). In other words, reserves fell, when demand did.
This is just oil in the ground. It does not count LNGs or oil from coal.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=57&aid=6&cid=ww,&syid=1980&eyid=2011&unit=BB
There was no peak oil in 2005. There is unlikely to be peak oil in the near or medium future, barring shortages from political action.
I can’t help but wonder. Why is it that some people are so desperate to believe that we are about to hit some kind of disaster, unless people start listening to them, and doing what they tell us to do?
“15% of 1.7 trillion bbls is a large number, of about 255 billion bbls. That’s 232 years of production at 3 million/day.
The other 85%? Its accessible by in-situ techniques. No peak oil there, for a few centuries.
For the record, its bituminous sands, or oil sands, not ATS. Tar is a different product, from a different process. Please try to keep your chemistry straight.”
ATS = Alberta Tar Sands, i know it’s bitumen. Tar sands was the original name for the deposit, google it. It was renamed to oil sands to make it more palatable to the public. It’s niether, it’s bitumen.
Yes, 230 years of minable. Again, you are missing the point. I NEVER said we will run out of oil, I said we will lack sufficient FLOW RATE. So how log it will last is irrelevant. 3mb/day is Canada’s total oil consumption, so for us yes, it would last that long, but most of the synthetic oil is exported to the US, who consume 21mb/day. So again, it will not be sufficient to offset depletion from other fields.
In situ? Oh, I’ve read up about that. There are a number of schemes being proposed. So far not one has a positive ERoEI. All of the current in situ tries are costing more energy than they produce. One scheme I saw was to burn the bitumen using high pressure O2 injected under the field and letting it burn to mobalize the bitumen to flow up a well. They expect to burn up to 90% of the bitumen in place to get 5% up the well. Another idea thrown out by one company is to build 1000 nuke reactors to inject steam into wells to mobalize the bitumen. The host of the show had to ask the CEO twice about the number of nukes, yes 1000 reactors to pump 3mb/day.
There is one thing that is clear, if we were not in depletion of conventional oil we would not be scurrying trying to extract the difficult stuff, would we.
Richard: your
So when it takes a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, ERoEI is moot? I understand the economics quite well.
If it took a bbl of oil to extract 1 bbl of oil, then it wouldn’t be done. If oil was only used for energy content, it would be silly to take 2 boe of even coal to extract 1 bbl of oil. But if oil is used for things besides energy; or used for energy because its highly portable; or used for energy because new infrastructure has to be built for the other energy source.
Example: how much ERoEI does your cell phone get? I bet its negative…..what is the ERoEI of plastics? Negative? How much infrastructure would have to be built to use coal to power cars? And how portable is coal as a fuel for transport?
So, no, you don’t understand the economics at all.
“Oil reserves have been steadily increasing, since 1980. Well, really, since the first well was drilled in the 1800s, but lets not quibble.”
Yes, let’s not: http://www.planetforlife.com/oilcrisis/oilsituation.html
Technology solving peak oil?
Simulating the discovery rate implications of technological innovation in oil and gas exploration
Abstract
Technological innovation has been an important source of continued improvements in the discovery rate of oil and gas. Previous work, however, has suggested that there were diminishing returns to successive improvements in exploration technology. The effects of introduced technological innovation were studied using a simulation modeling framework that relies on geologic data. The modeling framework treats the probability of discovery as being proportional to pool size, the number of pools remaining to be discovered, and conditions predictions of future discoveries on the number of previous discoveries. The framework includes a discovery efficiency parameter which represents the degree of technical advancement possessed by exploration firms. Increments were made in the parameter at varying stages in the exploration history of a hypothetical area of interest, and the resulting cumulative discoveries, average discoveries, and average finding costs were calculated. The pattern of results suggested that while early introductions of technological advancements were capable of improving discovery efficiency, in terms of the amounts discovered per unit of effort, they were not capable of maximizing total discoveries. Similar technological changes introduced later in the discovery history of an area of interest, however, had the reverse effect: they decreased discovery efficiencies but maximized total discoveries.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/004016259290061W
Richard: your
In situ? Oh, I’ve read up about that. There are a number of schemes being proposed. So far not one has a positive ERoEI. All of the current in situ tries are costing more energy than they produce.
There are THOUSANDS of wells currently producing oil from in-situ production. Cyclic steam and SAGD are the most popular. SAGD is projected to do 2,000,000 bbls per day by 2020. Cyclic steam slightly less.
Methinks you need to read on this some more. Especially on air injection, not O2 injection. THAI (toe-heel air injection) gives very high ERoEI (20-50).
http://www.iseof.org/~netenergy/node/5183
And it is not TAR. Tar is a different process, from a different source.
May I recommend that before anyone else comments or challenges peak oil should at the minimum read this UK report put out a few years ago. http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=283 Everything discussed here, all your claims about this or that deposit, are addressed in this report.
Richard: your
The host of the show had to ask the CEO twice about the number of nukes, yes 1000 reactors to pump 3mb/day.
I would love a reference for this as well. But I won’t hold my breath.