Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In oil, as in other extractive industries, you have what is called the “R/P ratio”. In the R/P ratio, “R” is reserves of whatever it is you are extracting, and “P” is the production rate, the rate at which you are extracting and using up your reserves.
Figure 1. World annual oil production in billions of barrels (blue line), and years left at that production rate (R/P ratio, red line). Right scale shows the proven oil reserves for each year, in billions of barrels (dotted green line). DATA SOURCE: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2011, a most fascinating Excel spreadsheet. PHOTO Spindletop Hill Gusher, 1901
When you divide the amount you have in reserves by the rate at which you are extracting the resource, you get the number of years the reserves will last at that rate of extraction. Accordingly, I include the R/P ratio in Figure 1 as “Years Left”
A couple of things to point out. First, the “Years Left”, the R/P ratio, is currently more than forty years … and has been for about a quarter century. Thirty years ago, we only had 30 years of proven oil reserves left. Estimates then said we would be running out of oil about now.
Twenty-five years ago, we had about forty years left. Ten years ago we had over forty years left. Now we have over forty-five years left. I’m sure you see the pattern here.
Second, this is only what are termed “proven reserves” (Wiki). It does not include “unproven reserves”, much of which is in the form of unconventional oils such as shale oil and oil sands. Even discounting the unproven reserves, while the rate of production has increased, the proven reserves have also increased at about the same rate. So the R/P ratio, the years left at the current rate of production, has stayed over forty years for almost a quarter century..
Now, at some point this party has to slow down, nothing goes on forever … but the data shows we certainly don’t need to hurry to replace oil with solar energy or rainbow energy or wind energy in the next few decades. We have plenty of time for the market to indicate the replacement.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to find a better energy source than oil. In fact, the huge new sources of shale gas will substitute in many areas for things like heating oil, and will burn cleaner in the bargain. And I do think we’ll find new sources of energy, humans are endlessly inventive.
I’m just registering my protest against the meme of “OMG we’re running out of oil we must change energy sources right now tomorrow!!”. It is simply not true. We have plenty of time. We have decades. We don’t have to blow billions of dollars of our money subsidizing solar and wind and biofuels. The world has enough oil to last for a long while, plenty long enough for the market to determine whatever the next energy source might be.
w.
NOTE: Oil figures, particularly reserves, are estimates. Oil companies are notoriously close-mouthed about their finds and the extent of their holdings. The advantage of the BP figures is that they are a single coherent time series. Other data gives somewhat different results. As far as I know the increase in proven reserves despite increasing production is common to all estimates.
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Smokey writes “The artificial restrictions on supply are in red. That is a HUGE restriction. Open those red areas to drilling, and the supply of oil will skyrocket, causing prices to plummet. Econ 101.”
Probably not as huge as you think. For example ANWR is estimated to be about 10.4 billion barrels or around 4 months “global supply” equivalent. And of course the actual production rate will be tiny compared to the ~82 million barrels per day needed globally.
@Michael Irwin
Please scroll up a few comments. You copied and pasted the graph from the J.O.E. (a link which I provided earlier). You used it to support your claim, which I rebutted, explaining how to read IEA documents.
In any event, all I can say is please read up on this topic before wading into the waters.
Here’s a book for you to read. It’s by Robert L Hirsch. Google him if you don’t know who he is.
“The Impending World Energy Mess: What It Is And What It Means To YOU!”
by Robert L. Hirsch, Roger H. Bezdek, Robert M. Wendling
Available on Amazon
RE: Brian H: (December 18, 2011 at 5:41 am)
“E.g.: if the project at LPPhysics.com succeeds, proof and engineering and initial implementation could be in place in under 5 years. In which case the high-quality cheap energy problem is solved until about when the sun goes Red Giant.”
It appears that the movement to develop or try to develop Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors is in a much more advanced state than any for fusion power. Here is one example promotional video:
“Thorium Fission Energy Future – A Repost
Uploaded by vengencefrom1979 on Mar 19, 2011
9 likes, 0 dislikes; 240 views; 4:15 min
“Thorium Energy Alliance Conference – check for the next one at thoriumenergyalliance.com.
“The Thorium Energy Alliance is a 501(c)3 [pending] organization that promotes the research and development of a Thorium Energy Economy.
“This preliminary video presents the core reasons that Thorium must be pursued as an energy source.
“We encourage viewers to join the Thorium Energy Alliance and to contact decision makers and promote this overlooked and proven technology.”
TTTT says:
“ANWR is estimated to be about 10.4 billion barrels or around 4 months ‘global supply’ equivalent.”
Thank you for proving my point. Note that there are at least 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil in only 3.13 square miles within the ANWR. If the hundreds of thousands of square miles off the U.S. coast including Alaska were opened for drilling instead of arbitrarily being placed off limits, there would be ample oil available.
You cannot prove that is wrong, because you would be trying to prove a negative; we don’t know the extent of our reserves because the Administration, goosed by the enviro crowd, will not allow any exploratory drilling. Ask yourself why not. And the answer is not over concern for the environment, otherwise the very same people would be howling about China’s drilling 30 miles off our coast.
Great article, Willis. Most interesting. Thanks as always to your contributions.
On a side note I was thinking the R/P Ratio meant the “Ron Paul Ratio”. LOL
RON PAUL 2012! 😉
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Spector;
Two points:
1) If you read the LPP material, you’ll see that the proton repulsion problem is dealt with by the microsecond “pinching” of intense magnetic fields into nano-sized “plasmoids”, so containment and temperature are not a problem.
2) Thorium reactors are fine, an order or two of magnitude more expensive per Watt capacity*, and plagued with the extreme corrosive power of combined molten flouride salts and heavy neutron flux.
*The LPP DPF process is projected at 5¢/W, produced by small 5MW generators. Place in shipping container, deliver, install in a small home garage-sized building, connect to local grid, link to remote monitoring station, done. Staffing said station and a few 1-2 day service calls per year constitute almost all of the ongoing costs. Never mind apples and oranges, this is pumpkins vs. grapes.
typo/edit: “are fine, but an order or two… “.
The LPP process is waste-free and aneutronic (doesn’t use or create neutron flux). It uses alpha and X-ray radiation to generate its energy.
Brian H says: (December 18, 2011 at 10:42 pm)
“… 2) Thorium reactors are fine, an order or two of magnitude more expensive per Watt capacity*, and plagued with the extreme corrosive power of combined molten flouride salts and heavy neutron flux.”
The corrosiveness of the fluoride salt appears to be a controversial issue. While the two components of the salt are extremely corrosive as acids or bases, the salts themselves are described as relatively inert. These salts are not mixed with water. This is something like the case of an attractive husband and wife that are so jealous of each other that they will not let anyone else get within arm’s length of their spouse. In another article, Gail Combs quotes sections of a 1969 Oak Ridge test report stating that tests on an 8-MWt Molten Reactor were completely successful.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/11/the-contribution-of-fossil-fuels-to-a-feeding-humanity-and-b-habitat-conservation/#comment-828426
It is true that the fusion process would be cleaner than fission as no unstable nuclei are ever produced. The continually cycling, Molten Salt Reactor does remove most the dangerous, transuranic wastes that can have half-lives of 250,000 years. The remaining short-lived wastes decay in a few hundred years. Unlike the traditional solid fuel, light water reactors, these continually recycling liquid-state reactors can achieve near one hundred percent fissile efficiency.
Here is a presentation given by Dr. David LeBlanc from Canada on diverse Thorium Fueled Molten Salt Reactor design options, including efficiency and cost advantages. His field is reactor core design.
David LeBlanc – Potential of Thorium Fueled Molten Salt Reactors @ur momisugly TEAC3
Uploaded by gordonmcdowell on Nov 27, 2011
30 likes, 0 dislikes; 1,164 views; 20:13 min
“Dr. David LeBlanc explores the diversity of Thorium Fueled Molten Salt Reactor design options, and their rational and value.
“Presented at the 3rd Thorium Energy Alliance Conference, in Washington DC.”
Smokey writes “If the hundreds of thousands of square miles off the U.S. coast including Alaska were opened for drilling instead of arbitrarily being placed off limits, there would be ample oil available.”
And if I drilled in my back yard would I be rich too? Sorry, but for there to be oil available in those areas there needs to be …well… oil available there. You originally said we were nowhere near peak oil but in fact you appear to be saying there may be more reserve than we know about in some locations that haven’t been properly explored. There is a huge difference.
Smokey Re ANWR
“U.S. Department of Interior – 1987. After several years of surface geological investigations, aeromagnetic surveys, and two winter seismic surveys (in 1983-84 and 1984-85), the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), in its April, 1987 report on the oil and gas potential of the Coastal Plain, estimated that there are billions of barrels of oil to be discovered in the area. DOI estimates that “in-place resources” range from 4.8 billion to 29.4 billion barrels of oil. Recoverable oil estimates ranges from 600 million barrels at the low end to 9.2 billion barrels at the high end. They also reported identifying 26 separate oil and gas prospects in the Coastal Plain that could each contain “super giant” fields (500 million barrels or more). ”
http://www.anwr.org/backgrnd/potent.html
The US consumes 7 billion per year. ANWR is puny.
jrwakefield,
You sound like a guy dying of thirst, and when offered a quart of water says, “No! I wanted a gallon!”
To call 10 billion barrels of oil “puny”, and use that as an apology for government interference shows where you’re coming from. You want the U.S. to run out of oil so you can win your unprovable argument. But we are still 40 years from runninog out of oil. And forty years from now folks like you will still be saying we only have 40 years left.
And TTTT, no one is saying there is oil under every square mile, that’s just your strawman.
The journal Science has an article you Malthusians may want to argue with.
@ur momisugly smokey
40 years left at what flow rate?
and 10 billion barrels when the world is using in excess of 70 million barrels a day is puny
run the equations, they aren’t difficult, r/p can stay constant while flow rate and reserves drop 🙂
Thanks, Smokey. Quoting from the paywalled article Smokey cited:
The article goes on to comment (emphasis mine):
w.
Regardless of where they happen to come from, carbon fuels are a highly flexible technical means of storing and transporting energy to serve the needs of a wide variety of fixed and portable devices — portable generators, cars, trucks, ships, airplanes, you name it. The most successful replacements for liquid carbon fuels would be those which have a similar range of flexibility.
What will happen over the next 100 to 200 years as conventional and non-conventional petroleum resources are consumed is that the marketplace for transportation fuels will experiment with a variety of petroleum replacement technologies and will choose through a process of trial and error which of those technologies have the best combination of price and energy delivery performance.
In the process of this transition, there will be some winners and some losers along the way. That is the way the world works. However, if the process of transition is allowed to proceed largely unfettered, there will likely be many more winners than there are losers.
Our choice as western societies will be to either allow the marketplace to do its job of efficiently choosing the most useful technologies from a price-performance standpoint, or else to meddle in that process in ways that allow us to deliberately choose the winners and the losers; but unfortunately, doing so in ways that most probably will hinder our ability to create new wealth nearly as efficiently as we have done in the past.
More likely than not, and in contrast with western societies, China, India, and other smaller nations in Asia and in Africa will reject a centrally-managed approach to making this transition as being directly contrary to their national interests, and they will pursue their own methods and means in figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
In any case, my personal speculation is that carbon fuels from a variety of sources will still play an important role even after the easy petroleum is gone. Moreover, most of the world’s population will continue to make whatever sacrifices and tradeoffs are necessary to keep the process of creating new wealth moving steadily forward.
Scott;
The watermelons have latched onto Peak Oil so they can say, “See, there isn’t enough anyway so you might as well get with the program and put all your useless exploration funds into our lovely windmills and ethanol plants, and since the CO2 would have been Bad, aren’t you thankful we’re saving you while starving you?”
It’s Big Lies in Bunches; none of the assertions, or their implications, is true. Which makes them all more ‘fit for purpose’.
Brian H,
Ethanol, Windmills, Hydroelectric and all other sources are pretty good and more that welcome. Fossil Based Fuels (FBF) would remain the Giants for years. You know very well that, it’s not only because of the Quality, but due to the Infrastructures made for this source. Hydrocarbon sources have been so far, and will be for many years in the future as the main focused effective source. Concentration on one source of energy depends on how the sources can be accessible / sustainable, but there must be variety in the sources of energy too. Time is a key issue here. As long as we have the “variety”, we would have more time to be well prepared for any shift from this main source of FBF, to new (source)s. Meanwhile, using the FBF effectively is an instrument to make more times to find our solutions, all these are “MUST” and “AS IS”. And If for example Eric J.Lerner “LPPhysics” succeeds, much better.
“However, the real issue is that neither major producing countries nor publicly traded oil companies are keen to invest money in substantial exploration campaigns. ”
If this is truly the “real issue” it is worrying considering:
an oil price over c.$80 seems to initiate recession, yet the oil companies and major producing countries are “not keen” to invest in the required exploration in order to increase production and reduce the oil price.
It seems to boil down to either someone opens the global production tap, or a massive exploration brings new production online soon, or we maintain the current plateau of global production in the face of increasing demand, meaning the end of global growth, leading to financial Armageddon.
Peak or no, the current situation does not seem conducive to BAU IMO.
No, ethanol, windmills, [and solar] are NOT “pretty good and more [than] welcome”. They are horrifically overpriced, horribly inefficient, disruptive, and distract from doing stuff that actually works.
Hydro, once you get over the consequences of flooding valuable valleys, and disrupting fish migration and downstream cycling of water supplies and wetlands, etc., is indeed very good. But there are fewer and fewer suitable sites. Not enough to make a global contribution.
You can’t avoid the costs. You always have to pay. No escape.
When I say Pretty “Good-More Than Welcome” it means:
1. This is the sound of confidence in something that never happens;
2.The so called resources, can never be a good substitutes for FBF;
3. The market should decide about a “COMMODITY” neither you nor me;
4. We let the market & conditions make decision what to do;
5. Cheap/Expensive/whatever are comparisons, when somebody likes to drive a Rolls Royce instead of BUS/Underground for a certain distance who’s going to stop this decision maker. It is clear that most the people are using the best that is not Rolls Royce for sure, but the BEST is of course, the Rolls Royce;
6. This is the meaning of VARIETY, why you and I should worry about what is cheap/expensive/… Windmills, Solar…I am okay because I know these are baby energy resources, so I let the thinkers do their best, in this jobless world you agree that this is an economical solution against inflation!, even I’ll help them to proceed and I’ll let them understand that, they should think better than ever.
In one word, OKAY DO IT if YOU CAN.
RE:La Miya Casa: (December 20, 2011 at 3:20 am)
“Ethanol, Windmills, Hydroelectric and all other sources are pretty good and more that welcome. Fossil Based Fuels (FBF) would remain the Giants for years. You know very well that, it’s not only because of the Quality, but due to the Infrastructures made for this source.”
It is my impression that solar-renewable energy sources can only supply a small fraction of the energy we obtain from earth-bound carbon. Solar-renewable energy is just too diffuse to economically make up for the energy of 85 million barrels of oil and perhaps the 20 million tons of coal that we use daily. Despite a very concerted effort by governments all over the world to subsidize and promote its adoption, renewable energy has never succeeded in displacing carbon power. “Not even close,” as Kirk Sorensen says.
If all nations in the world were persuaded to sign an international treaty outlawing all sources of energy that were not solar-renewable or geo-renewable, then I suspect, in a worst-case scenario, that this would doom the world to an eight-fold global population reduction, because only that reduced population level has been proven supportable by energy from such renewables.
I believe we have already done most the basic research on these renewable energy generation techniques, and I know of no method on the horizon that promises to obtain significantly higher energy collection densities from these sources than in the past. I do not think we should be spending public money trying to force-fit a technology that appears to be an inadequate carbon power replacement.
Note: I am using the term ‘carbon power’ here to refer to all sources of energy from carbon compounds entrained in the Earth’s crust, geochemical (abiotic) or biological.
Re: Spector :(December 21, 2011 at 5:41 am)
“I do not think we should be spending public money trying to force-fit a technology that appears to be an inadequate carbon power replacement”
This is something same as what Brian said earlier to me.
In reply, I say:
I am confident about FBF because there are huge, heavy, widely spread-ed, industrialized, market oriented, planned, explored, produced, under production and ready to producing ENERGY resource among all just the NAMES of the resources of energy so far.
When we say solar energy as a source it’s okay, but we know that it is just a name, I call it baby energy, there isn’t any strong background and a convincing future for it.
If someone likes to invest on such a resource ( solar/whatever) how can we stop it. Their investment would not be so much, it’s better than drinking beers. We should let the others who are interested in such cases proceed. And finally if they get any good results, that would be great for all.
There are more people to keep their money in successful examined fields of energy.
Important to say:
How can we prolong the FBF life time? This is a reliable resource too. The reply would be:
new standards for enhancing the Fuel Efficiency Rate of Consumption, (F.E.R.C).
La Miya Casa;
Solar and wind have had about 30 yrs of extravagant subsidies to get going. How many carbon-fired generators have they replaced so far? The answer is “approximately zero”. And that’s how it will remain.
Fortunately we have the same views here. If you may remember, my point was how can we solve air pollution in the cities that reportedly are in deep problem and cancer or other disease is seriously a major issue. We know what is happening now in greater cities. Concentration of GAS (CO2, SO2,…) with high density cannot be neglected. Electric Vehicles can be solution. This would not reduce CO2 neither if CO2 is considered as a value nor it is assumed as unwanted gas.
http://lamyacasa.wordpress.com
i am always amazed at the number of Luddites who oppose solar energy development or think it will fail as a serious energy source. these are the post-modern equivalent of those who thought that the automobile would never replace the horse. a hundred years from now people will look back at conversations like this one and laugh…. [unless of course we have a major war based in fighting over oil…]
Solar energy – something like 4 watts per m2 . Not sure how you can do better. ‘O’ yes, I forgot . 60 cents a KWH subsidy by real people trying to earn a real living.
Miko said:
“i am always amazed at the number of Luddites who oppose solar energy development or think it will fail as a serious energy source. these are the post-modern equivalent of those who thought that the automobile would never replace the horse. a hundred years from now people will look back at conversations like this one and laugh…. [unless of course we have a major war based in fighting over oil…]”
To my opinion, all resources are most welcome. If you see what I said to Brian H, then you would find out my real view. I make it easy for you to have it here:
I said:
“Ethanol, Windmills, Hydroelectric and all other sources are pretty good and more that welcome. Fossil Based Fuels (FBF) would remain the Giants for years. You know very well that, it’s not only because of the Quality, but due to the Infrastructures made for this source. Hydrocarbon sources have been so far, and will be for many years in the future as the main focused effective source. Concentration on one source of energy depends on how the sources can be accessible / sustainable, but there must be variety in the sources of energy too. Time is a key issue here. As long as we have the “variety”, we would have more time to be well prepared for any shift from this main source of FBF, to new (source)s. Meanwhile, using the FBF effectively is an instrument to make more times to find our solutions, all these are “MUST” and “AS IS”. And If for example Eric J.Lerner “LPPhysics” succeeds, much better.”
Now our gains from solar energy is just about 4Watts/ M^2. I like to see the time that every building and all the towers get the energy requirements from their facades by the sun. Now the reality is that no infrastructure for solar energy has been defined so far. I want to speak about just a dream as an example. If we get 4KWH/M^2 from solar resource, do you think the market would follow any other resources? When a single story 100M^2 house can produce 400KWH electricity, and it works same as a CATERPILLAR Generator that is more than enough for this scale building, just guess what would happen. All the refineries would come to a complete stop in one minute. Who cares about Oil & Gas or Coal.
This is impossible for now, but if you can do it, don’t waste your time to convince the people like me, the market would absorb your energy resource immediately. There are people working on this subject with confident. I like all the resources of energy, why should I say “NO”, when there are many “NO”s around it. You have my “YES”.
The automakers have made it possible to manufacture EV cars. The car is powered by electricity. So it can be refueled (recharged) at home/parking/wherever you may wish. This post is for the kind attention of Pro/Anti CO2 groups. What are the main results in such a change?
Basically, such a transfer is not possible in a short time and it’s not welcome everywhere. Infrastructural system of ordinary fuel network is one of the key reasons. Here we have some priorities ahead. There are cities around the world that have the worst deadly Air Pollution. Authorities have tried to reduce the pollution by setting up a limit on daily traffic. The outcome hasn’t been recorded as positive. There are other reasons that wouldn’t make it possible, such as wind directions, mountains around a city and local climate condition. To control and or eliminate this pollution, that is one of the most effective causes of CANCERS, EV cars can be good option. In underground railways, locomotives powered by DIESEL ENGINES are strongly prohibited, the required power is electricity from power plants located outside a city. Assuming the electrical/chemical energy consumption are the same for one km travel at a certain speed, the result would be:
1.The required electricity for charging the cars should be produced in power plants by chemical fuels;
2. The required chemical fuels for the cars would be changed from diesel or gasoline to something else for the power plants, and in this change, gasoline would be reduced effectively;
3. Assuming all the fuel stations inside a city are closed by law, the fuel distribution network would become useless;
4. The power transmission lines would remain unchanged;
So, why we should not transfer our systems where it is necessary, to EV?
If you are pro/anti CO2/global warming/climate change, do you agree in such a case:
1. CO2 production remains unchanged (approximately);
2. We hopefully should not have anymore cancers;
http://lamyacasa.wordpress.com
see the link:
Elektro-Autos1
Gee, I know it’s hard to keep track of all those zeroes, but … 4W/m^2 is 1/1000 of 4Kw/m^2.
Duh.
Aside from your confusion about watts and watt-hours, the actual output of your 100M^2 house is 400 watts. That’s 0.4kW. Enough for a few lightbulbs, or maybe a single home computer. While the sun shines.
Meko said:
solar energy is just about 4Watts/ M^2…..
Then I said:
“I want to speak about just a dream as an example. If we get 4KWH/M^2 from solar resource, do you think the market would follow any other resources? When a single story 100M^2 house can produce 400KWH electricity, and it works same as a CATERPILLAR Generator that is more than enough for this scale building, just guess what would happen. All the refineries would come to a complete stop in one minute. Who cares about Oil & Gas or Coal.”
Just talking about DREAMS, so I was not confused about “Zeros” at all, when you talk about a dream, there are no limits no DIMENSIONS.
paulC is a typical luddite who not only speaks against progress, but LIES about the science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/energy_technologies/how-solar-energy-works.html
if you guys would take off your blinders and LOOK at what china and germany and spain are doing, maybe you would learn something. (i know this is asking a lot… but PLEASE do some investigation!)
As for EVs, they’re great. But their advantage comes from the efficiency of electric motors delivering motive power to the road, which is about 3X that of an internal combustion engine. That advantage is multiplied by the vastly lower delivery cost of energy to the storage medium (gas tank vs battery). So it costs about 1/10 as much per mile to drive an EV.
RE: PaulC: (December 23, 2011 at 2:01 am)
“Solar energy – something like 4 watts per m2 . Not sure how you can do better. ‘O’ yes, I forgot . 60 cents a KWH subsidy by real people trying to earn a real living.”
Willis gave me a best-case estimate closer to 20 watts per square meter or 20 Megawatts per square kilometer for the maximum average energy that might be collected by a mid-latitude solar energy collection system, which I assumed to be a twenty-four-seven, average annual level. That assumption may be the difference between the two numbers.
BTW, I just ran across a new Kirk Sorensen video where he explains in great detail why the liquid fluoride thorium reactor was downgraded and cancelled in favor of the then high-priority plutonium fast-neutron breeder reactor project, which was then later abandoned. At the end, he touches on the advantages over solar power and lightly alludes to environmental advantages and carbon dioxide emission reduction if there is an early conversion to thorium nuclear energy.
The Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: Why Didn’t This Happen
(and why is now the right time?)
Uploaded by GoogleTechTalks on Dec 22, 2011
43 likes, 4 dislikes; 1,117 Views; 36:02 min
Google Tech Talk
December 16, 2011
Presented by Kirk Sorensen