Guest post by David Archibald
Mike Jonas’ recent post (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/03/peak-oil-the-rp-ratio-re-visited/#more-54146) has prompted me to revisit the subject of US energy independence. The best report on the subject of peak oil was produced by the Australian Government and then suppressed by the Australian Government. This is Report 117 written by Dr David Gargett of the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics. As I say in this post on Jo Nova’s site: http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/inconvenient-energy-paper-vanishes-from-government-site/, it is the best report on peak oil I have seen. While Report 117 was issued with an ISBN number, it is only available from a French website: http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/Australian_Govt_Oil_supply_trends.pdf
Figure 13.9 from the report sums it up:
Figure 1: Figure 13.9 from Report 117, page 350
The red line is the discovery rate per annum from 1870. It peaked two generations ago in the early 1960s. The dark blue line is the production history of conventional oil to 2007. It peaked in 2005. The greenish line is predicted production, which is now in permanent decline for the balance of our lives.
The oil price is determined by the interplay of demand, supply and the demand-response to price. The demand-response to price is difficult to model, but it does set a trend.
Figure 2: Oil Intensity of the US Economy 1980 – 2020
Figure 2 shows the dramatic decline in the intensity of us of oil in the economy. Consider that the 1980 figure of 6.1 barrels of oil per thousand dollars of GPD would mean spending $612 at the current WTI price. In 2011, US households spent an average of more than $4,000 on gasoline. That represents about 8.4% of the median household income. At the 2011 oil intensity of 1.1 barrels per thousand dollars of GDP, the current oil price results in a similar percentage.
Figure 3: US Oil Consumption 1980 – 2020
As Figure 1 shows, world conventional oil production peaked in 2005, which is also the year that US oil consumption peaked at 20.9 million barrels per day. It then went sideways for a couple of years before starting a dramatic contraction at 1.1 million barrels/day/year. The demand reduction to date is 4.5 m BOPD from the peak. This is oil that the US used to import but is now available to other countries. If the demand reduction rate established over the last four years continues, US oil consumption will be down to the projected level of US oil production by the end of the decade. The US will then be in the very happy position of being energy independent.
The rate of US demand contraction of 1.1 million barrels/day/year is a bit more than the modelled rate of decline of World conventional oil production, requiring that a high proportion of World demand contraction due to price is in the US even as demand from some other countries rises as their economies grow. This is understandable given the different tax rates between countries. For example, Germans currently pay 1.58 Euros per litre for gasoline. That equates to $7.73 per gallon or $324 per barrel. Another $100 per barrel on the oil price will increase German gasoline prices by about one third.
Figure 4: US Oil Production and Imports 1949 – 2024
Figure 4 puts the projection in Figure 3 into the longer term context of US domestic conventional oil production and oil imports since 1949. The anticipated contribution from the Bakken Formation of North Dakota is also shown. Traditionally, oil and gas production has been from reservoir rocks such as sandstones and limestones that host oil and gas generated from a source rock and migrated from that source rock to the reservoir rock. New well completion technology and sustained higher oil prices now mean that production is economic from some source rocks that have high organic carbon contents. With respect to natural gas from shales, it is estimated that 400 TCF of gas will be able to be produced from shales in the US. In terms of energy content, that is equivalent to 67 billion barrels of oil, which in turn is 21 years of the projected 2020 US oil consumption rate of 8.5 million BOPD. The Bakken Formation will provide a further 6 billion barrels of production, giving another 2 years of supply at the 2020 demand rate.
Figure 5: US Natural Gas Production 1900 – 2040
This figure assumes that production of shale gas rises from the 4.35 TCF in 2011 to a plateau production rate of 10 TCF per annum. The average breakeven production cost of US shale gas is calculated to be about $5.20 per thousand cubic feet. In energy content terms, this equates to an oil price of $31 per barrel. US shale gas production is almost wholly unprofitable at the current gas price of $2.99 per mcf. The drilling is being conducted to secure acreage positions.
Figure 6: Potential Louisiana Gas Production Profile 2011 – 2041
This figure is derived from Kaiser, M.J. and Yu, Y., “How Haynesville shale will lift Louisiana’s gas production profile” Oil and Gas Journal, November 2011. It is included to show the short term impact that shale gas drilling will have regionally as a result of the more profitable formations being drilled out first. This production profile assumes that 800 wells are drilled in the Haynesville Shale annually for ten years with an average gas recovery of 3.4 BCF per well. Plateau gas production of 2.44 TCF per annum equates to 1.1 million barrels per day on an energy equivalent basis. On this basis, the Hayneville Shale in Louisiana will be producing about 20% more energy at plateau from 800 wells per annum than the Bakken Shale at plateau from 1,000 wells per annum.
Figure 7: Payback period relative to oil price for CNG vehicles at the average US shale gas production cost
Natural gas in the US used to trade at the No 2 fuel oil price in energy terms, and was thus linked to the oil price. At $2.99 per mcf for natural gas and $102 per barrel for oil, natural gas is currently 18% of the price of oil in energy content terms. That will drive the adoption of compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles. Assuming an increased capital cost of $5,000 for an OEM CNG vehicle (retrofitting starts at $12,000) and a natural gas price at the average for future US shale gas production of $5.20 per mcf, Figure 7 shows how the payback period for that capital cost is projected to fall as the oil price rises.
Back on the subject of Report 117, why did the Australian Government suppress such a well-researched document? I believe that Report 117 tells a rather inconvenient truth for a Government that recently legislated a carbon tax, which in turn is based on things being rosy in the garden. Please don’t laugh too much, but one of the supposed reasons for the tax was to set an example for the rest of the World to follow. At the same time, the Australian Government is well aware that it is not meeting its oil stockholding requirement under the International Energy Agency treaty. With rapidly declining domestic production, the Government would have to spend $300 million per annum to fulfill its obligation.
@MarkW
I find it funny that someone named “kaboom” is pushing CNG.
++++++++++
It is called nominative determinism. You become what you are named.
According to the 2011 issue of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, U.S. petroleum consumption in 2010 was 19.15 million barrels per day.
That figure contrasts and conflicts rather starkly with the data given in Figure 3 of Mr. Archibald’s post.
I’m sure there’s an explanation; what am I missing ?
The entire article fails to address (or at leas mention) the taxes that would be levied on CNG fuel or modifications to fund the roads, and other political dreams.
These would be wholesale level, distribution level, and retail level. This can alter the math, depending on the funding that comes from the lobbyists.
@theBuckWheat
I mostly agree with you. Peak coal is a possiblity (forecast to be 2070 by Willem Nel). Coal is without doubt a fixed quantity resource. It does not appear that crude oil and natural gas are fixed in the quantum of supply. There are good reasons to believe they are both manufactured under heat and pressure in the crust of the earth, and rise to be near enough to access at major fracture zones at the edges of plates. One can puncture the covering (Deep Water Horizon) or drill into the cracks (Haiti, California). Sometimes the covering fractures suddenly releasing a motherlode of trapped, accumulated oil (Athabaska oil sands) .
Peak oil is an artifice of economic opportunism. The price of gasoline is dominated by available refining capacity not feedstock. There is no reason for the oil industry to invest in additional capacity because the selling price rises if they do not. Have a look at when the current refineries were built. On the whole, oil is a self-serving cartel. If it gets too expensive, SASOL will be building coal to liquid (CTL) plants all over the place including Mongolia and Brazil. Maybe even Virginia, who knows? But that feedstock is limited. Oil may literally flow forever and ever amen. Limestone and water under enough heat and pressure make natural gas very nicely thank you. Natural gas endothermically polymerises into oil and tar. All SASOL does is to do it above ground. Any idea how many SASOL plants China is building right now? Two I heard about…
I paid $1.65 per gallon of gasoline in 1980 when, for example, the spot price for Brent was $36.83 per barrel. In late 1999, I paid $0.99 per gallon when the spot price for a barrel of Brent crude was $17.97. Recently I paid $2.34 for a gallon of gasoline. Who is going to tell me what I will pay even next year with any confidence?
And to add to the uncertainty, how many groups who are not end users are affecting the prices of crude and gasoline based on current events?
And Pennsylvania is a major producer in the energy industry now. Who predicted that?
Assuming an increased capital cost of $5,000 for an OEM CNG vehicle
In India a CNG Chevy Aveo costs $1100 more then the gasoline model.
ferd berple says:
January 5, 2012 at 12:30 am
“The US could cut oil consumption even more if all 300 million lived in a country half the size of Texas.”
—
(original comment by) James Sexton
January 4, 2012 at 11:27 am
”If the US went to German vehicle efficiency, they would halve their oil consumption.”
—
We can’t change the size, or geographical expanse, of the United States, but we could save quite a bit of fuel if we changed the way we haul freight. Trains are much more efficient than trucks for this purpose:
http://www.fra.dot.gov/Downloads/Comparative_Evaluation_Rail_Truck_Fuel_Efficiency.pdf
~
And ‘sorry to belabor the point, but everyone talking about Peak Oil really needs to read, and understand, David C. Lynch’s brilliant analysis of this misleading notion.
Please read PDF linked by bionuclearguy on January 4, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Experts with the most data are increasingly warning of shortages and declines in oil production. See:
Oil will decline shortly after 2015, says former oil expert of International Energy Agency
Posted by JoulesBurn on January 5, 2012 – 11:46am
John Garrett
See EIA data: U.S. Weekly Product Supplied , especially US Product Supplied of Petroleum Products history, and the graph.
Be careful to distinguish between total “liquids” (all fuels, sometimes labeled “oil”) versus petroleum crude oil.
This is a really bad time for “magical thinking.”
I agree. I also agree that there are untapped reserves in moderate abundance that aren’t being exploited for political/environmental purposes, most likely (cynic that I am) to preserve them so that in 20-30 years we have oil as the oil supply of the rest of the world is being sucked dry.
As for “abiotic oil” — perhaps, possibly, but far from proven, don’t you think? Consider where, and how, most oil is found, ditto coal. And even if oil is partially or even completely abiotic in origin and leftover from when the planet was first cooling, well, we still have to be able to get it and most wells do run dry eventually and the replenishment rate “from below” may not be great enough to keep up with demand.
This is actually a rather excellent and informative report, and is the kind of thing that should be out there driving the entire public discussion on energy. The real point of these figures is that — if true — there is no CAGW problem at all! due to CO_2, simply because within the next decade, we’re all going to be producing a lot less CO_2 no matter what.
The bad thing about the report is that it focusses too strongly on “just oil” (and natural gas, because the two are often found together). A better report would consider oil, NG, coal, nuclear, solar, and wind. The reason all of them need to be considered together is because there are easily understood crossover points as supply shrinks and demand continues relatively unabated, causing the price to fairly systematically increase. At some point it becomes cheaper to mine coal and turn coal into gasoline than to mine oil. Oh, wait — that point is now. The first US coal-to-gas production facility is just now breaking ground in West Virginia (Adams Fork Energy).
As I have often pointed out on this site, which seems to contain some “haters” of solar energy, hate it or love it solar energy is already at the leading edge of the crossover point where it is more or less break even as a way of getting energy to dump into the electrical grid (and thus reduce the cost to utilities relative to more expensive fuel-based electricity). There are decades of growth in this process where storage doesn’t matter and the fact that the sun doesn’t shine at night doesn’t matter — daytime, unstored electricity will simply be cheaper than fuel-produced electricity, which will increasingly be used just to manage and smooth production and demand variation. And then there are a lot of people working on solar plants that can “bank” heat and provide smoothed output and nighttime output. Not all of the pilot generating facilities being constructed are profitable yet, but as the technology is worked out the construction and operation gets cheaper, and the projected continuous rise in the cost of oil and coal makes crossover to solar, driven by pure capitalist profit advantage, nearly inevitable.
At the moment, solar-cell derived electric has an amortized payback time of roughly 20 years in North Carolina (less in the southwest where insolation is highest, taxes on alternative forms of energy are the greatest). That’s just a bit too long for most people to want to pop for the substantial investment involved, even with interest rates as low as they are. But the cost of solar cells has an exponential halving time of roughly 10 years, and the rising cost of fuel based energy is pushing in the other direction, reducing its comparative cost even faster. As this process continues, solar implemented on both large and small scales will become increasingly attractive until it is a no brainer, costing half as much as fuel-derived energy.
Biofuels are also a form of “solar” energy, and it is not terribly unlikely that we will see research-driven breakthroughs here that permit e.g. solar plants to produce carbohydrate-rich algae, ferment it, convert it, and produce gasoline that way as well (or produce bio-diesel from high fat strains). It isn’t all about corn or deforestation — there are really exotic technologies out there that people are investing in and any one of them could turn out to be an “oil killer”, yet another alternative way of getting gasoline without mining oil (alternative to coal-to-gas, already possible at or around break even). It’s just a matter of coming up with a natural bio process that creates organic, fixed carbon at a cost per derived joule that competes with the cost of mining those derived joules out of the ground either in the form of coal or oil. This completely solves the problem of storing the sun’s energy for later use, and has the considerable advantage of letting us continue to drive gasoline-fuelled cars. Gasoline simply has an enormous energy density compared to nearly any alternative. Note that biofuel is a “carbon neutral” solution. It just re-fixes atmospheric CO_2 to be burned again, and it might give all of our NC tobacco farmers something to grow that doesn’t kill people but will still be worth a fair bit of money…;-)
Even wind isn’t to be sneezed at as energy prices rise. Cost-benefit analysis doesn’t give a damn about global warming scares — what matters is that a free society is going to harvest energy the cheapest way they know how, and if it turns out to be wind, well hell then, let’s make electricity from the wind! In the meantime (before we reach the break even to win a bit point) let’s ensure that we work on the technology itself so it is there, as cheap and debugged as possible, as an alternative for when we might need it.
IMO, the energy production profile we are likely to have in the year 2050 will have well over half of the world’s (not just the US’s) energy production derived directly or indirectly from the sun, unless we work out fusion first, with nuclear, NG, and coal making up the differences. I won’t be alive at that point to see it (probably) but I expect to see massive solar plants being built for most of the rest of this decade, initially partly subsidized but as time passes we’ll see more and more of them being just plain built straight up as the cheapest way to get more, cheaper, electricity. Large parts of the world are ideal for making solar energy, and a second technological problem that could revolutionize its production in those places is the development of cheap ways to transport the energy to places where the sun does not shine so much, so often, so consistently. A comparatively tiny patch of the Earth’s surface in Arizona or the Sahara somewhere could produce all of the energy used by the entire world, if one could get it from there to here, if one could use it as easily at night as during the day. Hybrid technologies — using solar electricity as the energy source for converting e.g. plant matter to biofuels that can later be burned in conventional plants — or improved transmission lines might do the trick here.
This is why I consider CAGW to be such an enormous non-problem. We know that in the year 2050, let alone 2100, we aren’t still going to be burning fossil fuel for energy the way we are today. It wouldn’t matter if somebody discovers that there’s a bubble of oil with the volume of lake superior just a few hundred meters further down than has ever been explored right under my house right now — there are too many problems associated with mining and burning fuels for energy and in any case burning fuel for energy doesn’t scale and continue into the next millennium — we will have to come up with alternatives to achieve a steady state civilization that doesn’t risk collapse back to barbarism or conversion into a “water monopoly” Imperium, substitute energy resources for water. We can even clearly identify the eventual replacements for oil (and yes, for coal as well). In the end, conversion will be driven not by ideology or politics but by humans, acting in their own self-interest. It will simply be cheaper not to use oil for fuel, because non-oil derived energy will cost less and be increasingly abundant because, well, it costs less, which will make it even cheaper. Very little in the curves above suggest that oil is ever going to get to be much cheaper than it is right now — 30% variations up or down sure, but we’re not likely to see gasoline prices of $1/gallon for oil derived gasoline in any future Universe I can foresee.
rgb
How do we calculate peak oil when certain environmental groups are attempting to pay countries like Ecuador to keep their oil IN THE GROUIND.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/28/ecuador-requests-internat_n_742178.html
This used to look like a good idea to protect a unique environmental area but it appears to have morphed into a scheme to extort money from various sources as it has expanded to other areas including off shore along with huge fines for small leaks in the whole area …. which can be ameliorated through discussions with an appropriate representative of the government – according to a report I just listened to on CBC. That was not their spin, but it is what I took away. They were questioning how billion dollar law suits could develop out of a small oil spill. Apparently if you were to contribute to their environmental funds that the charges on the oil spills might be adjusted …..
Isn’t International work fun? One of the reasons I quit working overseas. I hated the guns and being asked to pay to leave a country. Gotta pick the right countries I guess.
Robert Brown – good comments covering many of my own thoughts. Interesting that you also noted some oil reservoir areas seem to being reserved. Good well thought out comments. Thank you.
Again, E. M. Smith, I failed to see that you made the same answer, only better. Hats off to you, sir. I agree, for moving cars gasoline is as good as it gets, and there are lots of ways to get gasoline as soon as the right price points are reached (and that point is pretty much “now”, although oil companies still have plenty of reserve capacity to hold the price just under the point where this gains momentum and economy of scale for some time still).
I am still unconvinced about abiotic oil, although I am certainly open minded about it. T’would be lovely were it so, but I still somewhat favor subduction of millions of years of organic crap on the ocean bottoms at tectonic plates and gradual conversion under pressure (which can still produce very deep deposits and deposits in non-sedimentary rock). AFAIK there are no “biotic” signatures likely to survive such a process — C14 has far too short a half-life, although there may be other things that could be used. I’m not just talking about the last 500 million years, also — there is evidence that there has been organic life on Earth for almost the entire 4 billion years of its age, so there are billions of years of primitive oceanic life living, dying, and depositing on bottoms and being swept down into the crust to account for. In part, as I understand the issue, the question is just where and how carbon precipitated out as the molten Earth cooled. AFAIK the answer to this question is not well understood, although the carbon being vented at certain places very, very deep under the ocean may hold a clue. Curiously, I “work for” one of the people who studies this, among other things, at Duke’s marine bio lab. There are amazing ecosystems at those deep vents, driven by free energy sources that are not, I believe, solar! Even indirectly. Nutrients are locally given up by the vents, energy is the heat of the vent itself. It is geoenergy and geobiology, and may represent a lot of the evolution that went on early on before things moved up in the water column. Or not — not my area of study.
Either way, building and using cars that consume less gasoline makes pure economic sense (especially with relatively high gasoline prices) and it will be interesting to see what happens when solar-derived garbage-fuel (where solar will probably be cheaper than nuclear, don’t you think, in around a decade or at most two?) starts to undercut most of the alternatives.
rgb
“Either way, building and using cars that consume less gasoline makes pure economic sense (especially with relatively high gasoline prices)” ~Robert Brown
Replacing useful machines which people purchase for both utility and enjoyment, with cars which are much less useful and which people do not wish to purchase, does not make any economic sense at all. It is government make-work and results in worthless products.
Robert Brown says:
January 5, 2012 at 8:30 am
Just for the sake of argument, Robert, how did you (not we) arrive at your conclusion?
Solar, Wind, and Nuclear all have major technical and/or environmental problems, but we have plenty of coal, and we know how to burn it very cleanly these days. As for oil, or “Peak Oil,” please read Lynch.
You also wrote:
I could not agree more, Zeke’s equivocation notwithstanding. High efficiency always makes sense. The same is no less true with words.
@_Jim says:
January 4, 2012 at 7:03 pm
R. de Haan says:
January 4, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Nice ‘egg head’ recitation of the advantages of CH4 vs coal, et al, but, there is the matter of convenient transport CNG for passenger vehicle use, the retrofitting of existing vehicles et al.
He doesn’t explain the economics of that process.
Say, Ron, do you ever use the trunk in your present vehicle, for say, grocery transport? Kiss that function goodbye in the case of fueling via CNG …”
Jim, thanks for the question and the remarks.
1. I see shale as an excellent fuel for electricity generation.
You don’t need and extensive costly grid, no smart meters as you can simply scale up or down the power plant. Same for natural gas. I always say that natural gas is good for cooking, not for driving.
2. Coal, natural gas, shale gas can be converted into gasoline and sulfa free diesel
Coal to liquid is already in use in South Africa and China.
Gas to liquid is already in use in Qatar (Shell Plant)
3. As said I see nothing in the application of shale or natural gas for automotive applications.
It takes too long to fuel up and you lack range. You need a high pressure system, it costs additional energy and the pumps/valves have short life cycle
In the Netherlands we have busses running on natural gas that are fueled up during the night.
But a test with taxi’s went bad because the time to fuel up was too much.
A taxi makes money when it’s moving not at the fuel pump.
4. I love LPG though.
It’s low pressure, high octane and if you use liquid injection this is absolutely superior to gasoline.
The tank is no problem because you simply build it under the floor without loss of boot space.
And fueled up with gasoline and LPG you can double your range.
Besides that. The engine runs smoother and the engine oil remains cleaner, less wear, less maintenance, just great and where I live very, very cheap.
Last year I bought a P92 Range Rover (8 cylinder) on the cheap with low milage and put an LPG installation in it just to have a 4WD for winter conditions and some heavy pulling.
At home I’ve build a power generator (for emergencies) in the basement based on a Smart 3 cylinder engine I bought for scraps and this engine also runs on LPG.
The exhaust gas is diverted to the greenhouse (tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers love Co2) and in the garden I have two big storage tanks. One of them has an electric pump so I can fuel up the cars at home.
I think I can bridge a 6 month oil boycott with full tanks.
And if that doesn’t work I simply move to another location.
We don’t have an energy problem, we don’t have a climate problem and CO2 is great stuff not a poison.
By the way, the company that delivers the best LPG injection system available with fuel tanks that fit under most cars is Vialle, just google it.
Steve P wrote:
“Just for the sake of argument, Robert, how did you (not we) arrive at your conclusion?”
Just look at a graph of renewable energy development over time. Renewables have already surpassed nuclear power in the US. You might also want to look at a graph of PV price over time. Looks a lot like Moore’s law doesn’t it? This is why CSP projects are being replaced with PV.
It’s also intersting to note that the actual number for climate sensitivity directly attributable to CO2 is only 1 degree C. At our current rate of 2ppm/yr, it would take 200 years to double CO2 levels.
E.M.Smith says:
January 5, 2012 at 3:38 am
The US DOD are well aware that there is a problem with future oil supply. Observe this:
http://www.dod.gov/ddre/doc/Jul08_Synthetic_Fuel_Utilization_Report_to_Congress.pdf
But they are stymied by legislation passed in 2007: “the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 required that any alternative and synthetic fuels bought by federal agencies for “mobility-related use” must have lower greenhouse gas emissions — or at least no greater — than those
of conventional fuels.
Most of the Republican contenders have now renounced AGW but have yet to go to the next step which is to promise to repeal that 2007 legislation and let the DOD use Fischer-Tropsch from coal.
harrywr2 says:
January 5, 2012 at 7:47 am
Thanks for the information.
One thing you cannot blame me for is “equivocating.” Implicit in my post is point that government mandating milage and emissions standards, and “investing in car technology” is the quickest road to worthless cars and worthless companies making them.
David Archibald says:
January 5, 2012 at 2:08 pm
“Most of the Republican contenders have now renounced AGW”
This is totally false. Mitt Romney supports a carbon tax and has a long history with ghg initiatives. For example, he passedCO2emissions standards 30% stricter than nationwide standards.
Where has Romney renounced AGW? There are statements that he has made which you can construe any way you like, but his past and his present positions involve carbon tax, vat tax, and worldwide emissions reductions agreements. Look it up.
ChE: When I was in engineering school, I was advised by a professor to avoid the oil industry as there was only a fifty year supply of proved reserves. Now in my 80s, I know that it does not pay to prove reserves more than fifty years ahead. And, while there may be a finite amount of oil and gas, as the supply shrinks, prices go up, and new sources of supply become financially viable.
In short, we won’t run out of oil and gas in my lifetime (in my 80s, remember), or those of my children, or grandchildren, or (when they arrive) my great-grandchildren. Peak oil is, then, mostly an academic concept.
‘Nother ChE
How many would contend that there exist more oil on this “feeble and weak” little planet than there is water in the Great Lakes in US and Canada?
Imagine our 160 years use of oil. That’s a lot of oil!
Take a world map and look at the Great Lakes. They’re some big lakes right, at least on the surface, but still just specks on the chart compared to everything else. Banded together, though, they’re like the size of Ireland.
Imagine the thousands of oil drilling sites. Put the reserves together, do they rival the great lakes in size in your imagination?
They should, because spread all that oil out, the area would be H U G E !
But of course it would be so deep. Apparently there’s more an 14 times more water in the Great Lakes than the oil we have used for 160 years, and the Great Lakes aren’t all that deep.
No matter the hubris or ego, but it’ll probably take more ‘an a couple of hundred years to extract a billion years of natural oil production. After all, when all is said and done, our planet is only small compared to the sun, otherwise it is friggin ginormous compared to man(n).
Zeke says:
January 5, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Yes, you’re right. I should have said “strawman.” My bad; ‘sorry ’bout dat.
Useful machines, utilitarian and enjoyable, could also be made more fuel efficient, no?
~
John Bronson says:
January 5, 2012 at 1:06 pm
(What the heck is CSP?)
John, as I mentioned above, wind and solar both have serious technical and environmental problems. In any event, neither solar nor wind can provide the base-load power.we need to run our civilization.
We have plenty of coal, and we have learned how to burn it quite cleanly.Coal is safe, reliable, relatively inexpensive, and probably cleaner – all things considered – than either wind or solar.
Coal-fired power plants are certainly safer than their nuclear counterparts. The fall-out from Fukushima will be with us for a very long time. It really is worse than we thought.
“Peak oil is, then, mostly an academic concept.”
Wow, I guess you missed making millions of $$$$ on owning small oil companies that went up 10 fold?
next time, pay attention to the academics!
@JimBrock
Yes, we’ll never run out of oil – everyone agrees on this, even the Peak Oilers.
The question is not when we will run out of oil, but “When will oil become so expensive that we start using less of it?” Eventually, it will be more expensive to get more oil out of the ground than it will be to grow biofuels, or to make gasoline from coal, or to bicycle to work, or to use an electric vehicle, or whatever.
“Why restrict the analysis to “conventional” oil?”
Easier to generate hysteria so that they can raise taxes.