Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dramatis Personae:
The “EIA” is the US Energy Information Agency, the US agency in charge of data about energy production, consumption, and use. It has just released its January 2014 Short Term Energy Report, with current and projected oil production figures.
And “M. King” is Marion King Hubbert, the man who famously predicted in 1956 that US annual oil production would peak in 1970, and after that it would gradually decrease.
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So why is the King meeting the EIA? Figure 1 shows why.
Figure 1. US crude oil production. Data from 1965 to 2013, projections for 2014 and 2015. As is customary, “crude oil production” includes what are called “natural gas liquids”. Data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy and the EIA.
Now me, I see that as a testament to human ingenuity, as fantastic news for the planet, and as another example of the futility of betting against said ingenuity. As my dear dad used to say, “Imagination is free.”
I don’t really have much more to say about this great news, other than I see it as a huge opportunity for the poor. The implications are clear. Cheap energy is the salvation of the poor, and this can only be good news for them … not to mention good news for the rest of us as well.
Best regards,
w.
PS—Folks, don’t bother telling me it is “unconventional oil”. That is a meaningless distinction, invented by supporters of Hubbert’s peak oil theory, to try to salvage Hubberts moribund claims. For example, when fracking was done in vertical wells for fifty years, it was counted as “conventional oil” … but now that the drilling is done horizontally, suddenly fracking produces “unconventional oil”. And given that for many centuries oil was collected from surface seeps, in historical terms all modern oil production is “unconventional”. See my post Conventional Wisdom, Unconventional Oil for a full discussion.
PPS—If you disagree with something that I or someone else said, please QUOTE EXACTLY WHAT THE PERSON SAID in the comment where you discuss your objections. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been attacked over things that I never said … so quote it if you want to discuss it. I’m going to get more hard-headed on this one, I’m tired of picking spitballs off the wall. I’m happy to defend my words if I know which ones you are talking about … but I can’t defend your interpretation of my words. Quote it or lose it.
Dancing on the head of a pin. Conventional, unconventional, tight, loose, renewable or not, Hilary Benn at the Bali Conference made the only honest statement a socialist MP has ever made that at our current rate of extraction of finite resources we need three planets and we only have one. The arguments are confused, not thought through by politicians or greens by deceit or design who knows but what is true is that at some point in time our planets precious finite resources will become extinct, fact. What is also true is that you cannot manufacture a replacement to fossil fuel without having access to finite resources metals, chemicals and fusion if possible the same is true. What we care to describe as economics is a euphemism for financial manipulation which if practised by banks means you would go to jail, semantics. To try and manufacture sufficient volumes of synthetic equivalents to fossil fuel would most likely consume whatever finite resources of metals and rare materials currently remaining. Now you could say I am a pessimist that technology will find and answer, sorry that argument might satisfy your concerns using the green argument what about our children and our childrens children but it does not resolve the absolute fact that you cannot make something out of nothing with nothing. As a planet we are in denial, the Earth is finite its like China wanting to become as powerful as America militarily speaking picking a fight with Japan over some rocks seemingly forgetting that if they supplant America they also lose their biggest customer and $17 trillion in the process which would sort of upset financial markets for just a moment. We like to think we really are quite bright but of course we have always live a fantasy existence and green BS just adds to the mix. Provided its about increasing air quality then we can consume huge quantities of finite resources as though they were not but burn fossil fuel to keep warm in winter and you are committing a crime against humanity. Who gives a flying f.. about Hubbert and his curve, when its gone its gone and unless there is some genius out there who genuinely magic oil from the wind and p… that Obama flogs to the planet on a daily basis then yes at some time the gave is up. Is what we are experiencing now extreme weather or just weather, its just weather, if you get hit by a flood you get hit by a flood get over it at least most are still around to complain, whinge and moan about the consequences of being alive. With about 7 billion left think if a few billion were to be consumed by a huge crack in a tectonic plate every bleeding heart hand wringing twit from Oxfam, FOE, Greenpeace, UN EU and LibDem crackpots would be on the BBC and CNN 24/7 weeping and moaning and asking stupid questions about “how do you feel about losing 50 million relatives” whilst out of the corner of their eye watching their ratings. It was and remains a fact that you have to live in whilst you are here but of course most don’t even those who have huge amounts of cash currently lent to every country on the planet to maintain each and every political system and bribe people with their own and inevitably someone elses money to maintain their green and the economy, they just want more cash. Warren Buffet is a classic example he has lived in the same house and drives the same car whilst having $50 billion plus, even refused to buy his own daughter a new kitchen wouldn’t even lend her the money but wants to give it all away when he dies so he can go home every night and count his gold and persuade himself that his pathetic little life has not been wasted. At some point in time planet earth will be consumed I just hope it waits until my existence is up but it will happen one way of the other the laws of physics will prevail they travel in one direct only from birth through life to death it is happening as I write, being green is just a road sign along with way to extinction, get over it.
just wait until i get my Flux capacitor is up and running, it will run on all house hold goods.
Most people think of oil and gas only as energy sources but they are much more than that. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an interview with Jim Ratcliffe, chairman and CEO of Ineos Group Holdings …
Most people think of oil and gas as fuels, but to Ineos they’re “feedstocks” for making things. Ineos turns petrochemicals into plastics and related materials in massive plants known in the business as “crackers.” Cracking is the chemical process by which natural gas and crude oil are broken down into ethylene. From ethylene, Mr. Ratcliffe says, “you produce polyethylene, polyester, PVC—all the world’s biggest plastics,” which make up the stuff of modern life. Everything from soda bottles and fleece jackets to car bumpers and computer cases comes ultimately from the natural gas or oil that petroleum companies pull out of the ground.
Oil and gas and human ingenuity are fuels for jobs, economic growth and better lives. Unfortunately, the good news isn’t evenly distributed because some countries don’t think that fracking is a good thing.
Extractive industry curves, Gaussian curves, extraction costs are all irrelevant as David Middleton cogently points out. We won’t ever run out of oil, we’ll just run out of the need to burn it. Innovation trumps Cassandra repeatedly, and as Willis has pointed out, smooth curves suddenly get interesting.
Run out of the need to burn oil, in your dreams. Tell me how you feed 7 billion people with harvesting raw materials moving them across oceans even allowing greens to pose as the saviours of our planet whilst consuming vast quantities of kerosene in the process, you are in denial. Oil is 95% of everything we do from synthetic materials for Dreamliners – lighter weight supposedly to save burning fossil fuel. Even more disturbing is F1 saying its cars need to be more relevant so they become hybrid machines again forgetting the huge volumes of kerosene used to airfreight the cars, components and teams across the continents and oceans. Given two slices of bread we still seem unable to make a sandwich. Oil is not replaceable there is no other form of fuel which provides the portability necessary to find the raw materials we need to support our current civilisation unless of course reverting to the stone age is your solution.
Natural gas liquids are condensible higher molecular weight hydrocarbons. Economics dictates whether they are collected and sold or flared off.
Video of King Hubbard
Willis, I will not pick apart your words. However, I will comment as follows.
I have spent most of my career in the energy industry and my technical and fiscal initiatives have made major contributions to the North American economy.
Nobody that I know of predicted the huge drop in North American natural gas prices caused by shale fracking. Many thousands of financial commentators and industry analysts missed this “sea change” in our industry..
The same goes for the recent spike in North American oil production from oil shale fracking. Almost nobody predicted it would happen significantly before it actually did.
I regard King Hubbard as a true genius, and I do not use that description more than once every decade or so.
Hubbard was a practical man, and came up with a practical hypothesis:
“The Earth’s endowment of crude oil is finite, that the rate of oil production reaches a maximum (i.e., peaks) when approximately half of the original resource remains, and thereafter goes into irreversible decline.”
So, if you develop a new unforeseen technology that makes a previously untapped resource economic, then you just start another Hubbard’s curve.
Popular criticism of Hubbard is usually based on people extending his hypothesis beyond what he actually said.
Jakehig: “we know today – with almost 100% certainty – where to find three or four times more than the entire oil production to date.”
And if our energy use is increasing at a modest 2.3% per year (some sources say 2.9%, but let’s remain modest for now), then our energy use DOUBLES every 32 years. So that 3x-entire to-date production will last us 64 more years — one “entire to-date production” between 2014 and 2046, and two from 2046-2078 . If it is 2.9%, that knocks it back to 48 years.
Speed: “some countries don’t think that fracking is a good thing.”
Some people don’t believe any technology could ever be toxic; or, even if it is, that “toxic” is a bad thing. They’re like the guy who cooked me a marvelous gourmet meal — while managing to use and dirty every single utensil, spoon, fork, cup, bowl, knife, pot, pan, grill and flat surface in my kitchen. I got a lovely 1000 cal out of the meal and spent 2000 cal cleaning up so I could use my kitchen again, but it wasn’t his problem, was it?
“Shut up and drink your 4-methylcyclohexane methanol — at least you’ve got an electric light, you ingrate!” OK, that’s not fracking, but the fracking chemicals are not identified for proprietary reasons, yah?
Are the energy costs of cleaning up (including medical treatments) included in the “how much energy does it cost to obtain a barrel of usable energy” calculation, or do we just ignore those like my chef friend?
Corexit, the oil-cleanup chemical, attempts to destroy the oil. One simple oil-mining technique might be to use, say, straw to absorb the oil, sweep the straw into a facility, and recover the oil. Cheap AND nontoxic. Say what you like about human ingenuity, you’ll always have human stupidity working against you.
“Cheap energy is the salvation of the poor”
What a crock of shit, sorry but if you think oil companies are doing this for the poor or that the poor will benefit in some infinitesimal way I feel sorry for you as you’re deluding yourself, oil companies will sell to the highest bigger full stop, even if it mean shipping that oil overseas.
Secondly I’m sure that when Hubbert made his predictions he made clear it was a just a model, with assumptions, it does not include the spike in oil price, of course there are reserves out there, vast reserves but at what cost do you get them out! It use to be you stuck a pipe in the ground and out it came. That’s what’s made this resurgence possible – the oil price http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif not some great ingenuity of man
Without the spike none of what’s happening now would ave happened… and that’s why I’m so pessimistic about fossil fuels, what renewable will do in the near future is put a ceiling on energy pricing, the moment they start lowering energy, fossils will be in big trouble, renewable like wind and solar are now mostly cheaper than new coal and gas plants, in the future they will be much cheaper, would you still think expensive oil will be good for the poor then?
The curve in the Figure is also affected by the price of crude oil, which dictates the amount of oil production, the source of oil and the techniques used to recover it. Directional drilling and fracking were known technologies and oil shales and sands were known repositories. It wasn’t economical to recover that oil, other oil was easier and cheaper to get. In 1980 I was involved in a crash program to develop, produce and ship enhanced oil recovery chemicals. Within two years we pretty much went out of that business and assigned 3-4 dozen rail tank cars to other service. The price of crude oil dropped and economics ruled. Some of the drop in US production between the early ’80’s and the 2000 was due to crude oil price.
Willis, you said ” … in historical terms all modern oil production is “unconventional”” … totally agree. I have to wonder how the fracking bans are going given that ‘well servicing’ has been part of oil and gas extraction … forever. My bet is they are marginal areas and political expedience feeding ignorance is the order of the day there. The combination of a couple of old techniques done in a specific manner was an evolutionary process. It’s like the Cambrian in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin … suddenly old is new again and the relative success leads you to causal ‘short cuts’ and slogans, like ‘fracking’ … which has simply been part of drilling an oil or gas well where I live for decades. Another example would be the Bitumen deposits which with a couple of tweaks to pump technology can simply be pumped out of the ground … suddenly deposits with a low enough viscosity and no cap rock are accessible, should we call that ‘pumping’? … and make broad declarations on the subject?
“Once upon a time, Marion King Hubbert made a presentation to an oil industry gathering about ‘peak oil’…”
The key phrase is ‘once upon a time’!
At the time Marion King Hubbert made his presentation, he had the data, he had the calculations to back his prediction up. He shocked and woke up the oil industry! M King’s words were unwelcome and confrontational, at the time!
At that time, oil seekers sunk wells in potential fields; many were dry wells. The oil industry learned to listen to scientists of the geological, physics, electronics, etc… They’ve developed and purchased quite an array of search mechanisms; some of which are now being used for others minerals, (e.g. gold, diamonds). Science did not stand still, shake with fear and cry alarmingly for government to ‘do something, anything just so it’s expensive’.
Are the sources finite? Yes! Do we have a clue what finite means, definitively? No! Earth is a terrifically big ball of minerals. After that, then their are sources within our solar system. Can we mine these source today? No. But in twenty – thirty years, who knows what science will yield?
That is, so long as we humans find ways to keep science honest.
Great article Willis! Alarmist twists and turns when trying to invoke public fear are always best fought with honest knowledge presented concisely!
North Dakota is now producing 1.0 million barrels of oil per day from the horizontal, fracked wells in the Bakken oil shale. In the year 2000, ND only produced 87,000 barrels per day. The Bakken was know about in 1953 but thought to be inaccessible.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/historicaloilprodstats.pdf
Meet the man who revolutionized oil and gas production around the world. Richard Findley, who decided to try horizontal drilling and fracking in a near-by related formation at Elm Coulee, Montana.
And this was just the year 2000. Although horizontal drilling and fracking has been done for decades, it was Findley who decided to try both together. The result is the reason for the fracking revolution.
http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/968299281.shtml
This new methodology is only 13 years old. Almost every single oil and gas field in the world will eventually get the same treatment. On my grandfather’s farm, there is 8 wells which have been producing heavy oil for more than 50 years (no, don’t have the mineral rights and 50 years is a long, long time). One of the wells was recently re-drilled horizontal and fracked. The oil company is planning to do the rest now and they just bumped up the surface rights lease payments without being required to do so.
mellyrn wrote, ” I got a lovely 1000 cal out of the meal and spent 2000 cal cleaning up so I could use my kitchen again, but it wasn’t his problem, was it?”
In the International System of Units, energy is measured in joules (J) or its multiples; the kilojoule (kJ) is most often used for food-related quantities. An older metric system unit of energy, still widely used in food-related contexts, is the calorie; more precisely, the “food calorie”, “large calorie” or kilocalorie (kcal or Cal), equal to 4.184 kilojoules. (It should not be confused with the “small calorie” (cal) that is often used in chemistry and physics, equal to 1/1000 of a food calorie.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy
Using your numbers, it wasn’t his problem, your problem or anyone’s problem.
More here …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie
This post is likely redundant at some level, but as a geosciensist and petroleum industry insider I feel compelled to add my 2 cents. First, as so many others have opined, Hubbert did his evaluation based on rates of new field discoveries and economic divers evaluated for that time period. Times change and this “prediction” has proven to be premature or even wrong. Many “predictions” suffer similar fates when the underlying factors change (see Matthaeus,Club of Rome, Al Gore, etc). Second, the terms “conventional” vs, “unconventional” are mostly geojargon; primarily used to distinguish petroleum hydrocarbon accumulations that fit a traditional oil field definitional, such as “pool”, “trap”, etc.(conventional) and opposed to continuous accumulations (unconventional), where no real “trap” contains the resource. Tight oil and natural gas (shale gas) as such unconventional resources, as is coal-bed methane, oil-shale (US Green River Formation) or even offshore gas- / methane-hydrates, for example. Essentially we are now manufacturing oil and gas reservoirs with improved technologies, as opposed to tapping a “pool” The media mostly do not understand these terms or the technological changes and often spread misinformation. Third, resource volume is always changing based on the economics. Gold, for instance is a relatively rare resource based on current value. But if economic were of no issue, the amount of gold extractable from seawater would make gold plentiful. The ‘real world”; however, is constrained by economics. If you pay more for the resource than you ever recover when compensated, you fail. The recent explosive growth in US natural gas and oil production is a reflection of economics. Geologists has long recognized these “tight” resources but the economics to produce them where not there.
BTW – The domestic O&G industry is responsible for 3% of current GDP (around $500 billion, if my math is correct). Due to new production, we have decreased oil imports approximately 10% and with continued domestic production growth, recent new opportunities with Mexico, and continued favorable oil trade with Canada, we may actually see US involvement in trading with OPEC countries (those unstable places that we waste money on) ending.
I’ll vouch for Allan MacRae’s contributions…our paths crossed some three+ decades ago when Alberta’s Oil Sands were much less of a sure thing. He helped us move forward.
What strikes me about this “Peak*.*” debate is that we can each take approximately the same facts and reach different conclusions from them. The limit seems to be more about the spirit of the observer than anything else. MKH’s analysis was both bold and correct within his limits, and he can be forgiven for not knowing what was beyond his limits.
“M. King Hubbert’s discovery was that production of “naturally flowing” oil (i.e., outflow of oil due to internal pressure) follows a Gaussian curve”
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His theory was built upon nothing of the sort. It was an absurd hypothesis that drilling, and production (pumped or flowing) rates on the upside would be symmetrical to the decline on the downside, without any regard to the hundreds of technical, economic and geologic factors he was recklessly mixing together. I wrote on another board years ago that sustained high prices would warp his curves beyond recognition. I had no idea just how correct I was.
The only reason King’s ideas ever became so popular is that humans have some bizarre love of any doomsday crisis, hence we get the Club of Rome, Y2K, Peak Oil, AWG etc.
Miso says:
January 12, 2014 at 1:10 am
“…M. King Hubbert never stated that the oil production of the USA would reach its peak in the 1970s and thereafter decline. ”
—-l
Are you sure? He seems to clarify his views here – the following statement by Hubbert in 1974 seems pretty definite that petroleum production had reached its peak in the USA in the 1970’s:
From: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2007-02-27/hubbert-nature-growth
Testimony to Hearing on the National Energy Conservation Policy Act of 1974, hearings before the Subcommittee on the Environment of the committee on Interior and Insular Affairs House of Representatives. June 6, 1974.
” … What is most strikingly shown by these complete-cycle curves is the brevity of the period during which petroleum can serve as a major source of energy. The peak in the production rate for the United States has already occurred three years ago in 1970.The peak in the production rate for the world based upon the high estimate of 2100 billion barrels, will occur about the year 2000. ”
Notice the use of the word petroleum. He might have started out with conservative predictions about oil wells, but by 1974 he seemed quite comfortable with such a sweeping statement. Not that I feel his work was not useful, but his predictions seem to have taken on a Messaiah-like quality to many people, which I think is not a good thing. Perhaps Willis is doing something useful when pointing out the falsification of one of Hubbert’s predictions?
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Unfortunately, M. King Hubbert’s name has become associated with predictions of global peak of oil production from all possible sources.
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If you read the rest of his testimony, it does seem that he makes predictions in regard to the global peak of oil production. Perhaps you could clarify this seeming discrepancy between his statements and yours? If you feel that the above statements are not from an authoritative source, please supply one you consider better.
Of particular interest is the QA session:
” Mr. UDALL. Do you foresee, even with the best scenario, the most optimistic luck offshore, turning to oil shale, these kinds of things, do you think we will ever again exceed the rate of production, domestic production of oil from all sources that we had in 1970?
Dr. HUBBERT. I doubt it. The argument is made, wait until Alaska comes on stream, and all that. More than likely that will merely slow down the rate of decline. The amounts of oil that are postulated to be discovered off the Atlantic seaboard I am very, very dubious about. And so my best guess is, on the basis of the information at hand, that the peak of 1970 is the all time peak. And the other things that we would do would be merely to slowdown the rate of decline rather than to reverse it. I won’t say it is impossible to reverse it, but I am very dubious that we can. ”
You will note that he actively discounts the possibility of reversing the USA oil production trend, even considering resources such as oil shale. I think he answered the questions honestly and to the best of his capabilities, but in the final analysis I would say Willis is right: Hubbert’s opinion, that the USA will never again exceed the rate of domestic production of oil from all sources that it had in 1970, was not correct, as indicated by the top graph.
This does not detract from the useful work that he did for oil companies.
I see some of the Running Out!!!! Casandras are starting to fret. OK, you have shown you can put an exponential next to a linear growth curve and show the exponential grows faster. Now you ought to take a look at the real world.
In the real world, resource demand does not grow exponentially. It grows in an S curve. In the real world, population does not grow exponentially (or even linearly…); populations grow in an S shaped curve too.
Now the start of an S shaped curve can LOOK like an exponential, so it’s understandable that you get mislead; but do look further.
Now, resourseS are NOT LIMITED. Any given resource can have a limit (such as easily mined copper) but the total resource pool constantly changes. New things become resources, old things stop being resources. It’s all very dynamic. What is a resource, and how much of it we “have”, is a direct function of price. As easily mined, harvested, or manufactured resources rise in price, we find more and better ways to make it and, presto! There is more economic resource created. So, for example, the price of oil rose and TRILLIONS of barrels of “oil” became available. It was always there, only it turned from a non-resource into a resource. (There is actually a pedantic difference between a resource, a reserve, a … but since nobody but a few Engineers and Economists seems to care, I’m skipping over that. In this usage “resource” is being used to mean ‘economically recoverable’ or ‘reserve’ as most common use is that way.)
One simple and one complicated example:
Copper. When we have “used up” all the copper, where did it go? It didn’t leave the planet unless we put it on a rocket. The simple fact is that the copper didn’t leave the planet. It is all still here. That copper can be used until the end of the planet. As often and as long as we like. The ore being used today was NOT a resource in the past. Over time, we find ever better ways to get copper out of ever more dilute source at an economic return. Heck, as of now, we can get more energy from a ton of granite than from a ton of coal. (U vs C) We don’t do it because the coal is cheaper to mine; not because the Uranium is unavailable to us.
Hydrocarbon: Above we have the usual EROEI argument, but hiding without the name of it used. This ignores the point that petroleum products are the desired result. It does not matter if we “waste” energy creating them. The EROEI of an oil refinery is negative. LESS energy comes out in the products than went in as crude.
We simply do not care that the “Energy return on energy invested” is negative. Similarly, oil in California is pumped with electric motors in many cases. Until recently, they used a lot of nuclear to make that power. Now it is in ever larger amount based on hydro, solar, wind, etc. etc. So that gasoline and oil product I buy has an ever larger component of solar and wind in it. Do I care? Nope. I would be quite happy to have a negative EROEI as long as the gasoline is cheap enough as a product to give me the transportation service I desire.
In fact, we could look at the carbon and hydrogen from those hydrocarbons and realize that they don’t “go away” either. They get recombined into new HC compounds by plants. The whole biofuel industry is an existence proof that the H and C didn’t go away.
So we can re-create those petroleum products by any of several means whenever the prices justify it. Biofuels can be run through zeolite catalysts and turned into real gasoline. We do not need to re-make all our cars to use methanol or ethanol; nor do we need to put up with sputtery engines and fuels that are more corrosive than hydrocarbons. We can take coal, or tar sands or oil shale or natural gas or land fill trash and turn it into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, plastics, “whatever”. ALL that technology exists today and much of it is in use, or has been in use at some time in the past. It is just a question of what is cheapest and most reasonable to do at this time.
Now this inevitably causes the Energy Casandra’s to start moaning about “running out” of energy and limited energy supply. There is no limit on energy supply unless we choose to put one in place politically. Yes, that’s a big statement. It is also true.
Nuclear power is functionally unlimited. Doesn’t matter if you are talking Uranium or Thorium. (I’m fond of Thorium, but it doesn’t need whole new reactor designs to work. Like the MSR. It can be put into CANDU reactors today – and has been.) The limit case is using up all the relatively cheap land based Uranium Ore. What happens then? Well, remember that granite? The world has a lot of it. It erodes. The U washes into the oceans (as does Th). Some clever Japanese have figured out a way to extract it using plastic mats. It is HIGHLY positive on energy gain, and only slightly uneconomical at present due to very low yellowcake prices. Let the U ore rise just a bit, total “Uranium Resources” become infinite for all practical purposes. ( More U erodes into the ocean each year than would need to be extracted each year to power the entire planet).
Now realize I am NOT advocating for a Uranium driven total energy system. (I think a free market driven one is better with a lot of supply diversity). I AM pointing out that functionally infinite energy is available at about present retail electricity prices for much of the world. With that, we can make all the “fresh water” we want, all the gasoline and Diesel fuel we want (even if from trash as is presently being done near Los Angeles), all the plastics we want, and with that make all the greenhouses we want to have food for another 20 Billion people.
The fantasy of “running out” and “overpopulation” is just that. It is an unfounded fear.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/ulum-ultra-large-uranium-miner-ship/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
Now, per King… I’ve read his stuff. He very clearly stated that the advance of future technologies was an unknown and that the curve would need changing over the years as tech developed. Even made a couple of suggestions about how the predictive method might be changed. He also clearly understood that if we ever found a way to extract shale oil that would be a new “field” and start a new curve. It is a bit wrong to paint HIM with the brush of “being wrong”. It is the folks who seized on his work about predicting production curves and warped it into a “running out” scare, and promoted it as a proof of “limited resources” that were wrong; and they DO deserve the ridicule. That comes close to happening in pointing out that I really don’t care if my gasoline comes from conventional or unconventional or even synthetic oil.
But though I would defend the man as not deserving of the attack, the attack on Peak Oil as commonly pushed is well justified.
In essence: We will never run out of “stuff” or of “energy” or energy products as long as Engineers are allowed to work and politicians are kept in check. If you would like a decent life, reward the Engineers and tell the politicians to shut up and sit down. Like your modern conveniences and cushy life? Kiss an Engineer…
In terms of “cheap” oil, oil $$ over the next few years will be more a product of the types and quantity of autos people in China and India buy. That is, the demand will prob’ly still outstrip demand, and our fracking oil will as expensive as ever.
In terms of the US fracking spike, I look at it sort of as licking the bowl after making a cake…and we have a lot of used bowls at the moment. The real question is how quickly will the fracking peak fall?
Willis Eschenbach, E.M Smith and Richard Courtney, bravo.
cd says:
January 12, 2014 at 2:30 am
“…given current technologies and known resources…”
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when predicting the future, technology is not longer current, it is future technology and resources are no longer known resources, they are unknown resources. thus both givens are inherently false when talking about the future.
Your chart is nonsense and not backed by the eia… the current oil production is about 2/3rd’s of it’s peak in the 1970’s. compare to the actual chart oil production. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus1&f=a
To the layman rationale behind Hubbard’s peak oil prediction will be difficult to discuss, but suffice to say that Hubbards model was limited to existing petroleum basins of the lower 48 states with existing recovery costs and technology. In short, in a virgin basin the bigger oil fields are found first because they are bigger and easier to find (Duh!). Once these fields are fully developed and begin to decline then the smaller fields will be unable to produce enough to offset the declining production production rate from the large fields.Adding in a new basin, Prudoe Bay, does not change this analysis as Hubbard’s study was limited to the lower 48 states onshore production.
The advent of the “shale oil” is like adding a virgin basin to the curve and is therefore not applicable to refute Hubbard’s analysis. However the Hubbard analysis is applicable to the “New” basin discovered by the application of combining old technology-directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing. I refrain from calling it “fracking” as this term is not industry standard and is used by the greens because it starts with “F” and ends in “K” implying another verb. If one observes the production trends of the shale wells then the Hubbard analysis will shortly become not only true but accelerated, because of the rapid decline rate that the “shale” wells exhibit. Although not due to large discoveries being replaced by smaller discoveries the rapid decline rates will reach a point at which continued drilling will only be able to maintain the increase in production and it will no longer continue to increase at the current pace, unless there is an increase in well completions equal to the total number of accumulated producing wells . Since the “shale wells” have 80-90% first year decline decline( 1000 bopd=100 to 200 bopd in 12 months), then to sustain production they must all be replaced every year. As is currently occurring the replacement of the “old” wells with new wells has continued such that we are actually drilling more wells that currently exist. As the number of old wells adds up and exceeds the capacity to 100% replace (i.e. it is possible to drill 1000 wells per year, but not possible to drill 10,000 wells per year) then the rapid rise in production will cease and at best flatten out and begin a decline. The result will be an accelerated Hubbard projection, since conventional reservoirs did not decline at the extremely high rates experienced by shale wells. Since the projects are also expensive an oil price drop causing the drilling to stop will result in a rapid production decrease as rapidly as it increased.
Here’s the most interesting oil story I’ve seen lately:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/
http://defensetech.org/2012/10/02/converting-sea-water-to-navy-jet-fuel/
Willis, you confound the conventional/unconventional oil definitions. Conventional oil of all grades (light, heavy, sweet, sour) is extracted from a reservoir where it pooled after formation, but where it did not form. Unconventional oil is one of two things: bitumen (Athabascan tar sands) which is not any longer oil but can be upgraded back into syncrude via hydro treating, Or oil from source rock (I.e. shale). Source rock has much less permeability and porosity than reservoir rock. After EOR, the average OIP technically recoverable from conventional reservoirs is 24% (IHS survey of 11,000 fields to 34% (IEA survey of 800 largest fields). The present average TRR for all five producing US tight oil shale fields is 3.5% with best practices fracking. Geophysics.
The newest 2013 EIA estimate of total US tight shale oil TRR is 24-29bbbl, which less than half of the remaining 1P reserves of the Ghawar field alone. That estimate overstates anything remotely resembling 3P for US tight oil by about half, since it includes 15bBbbl for California’s Monterey shale ( the source rock for most Califonia oil fields). That is because the Montereynis folded and faulted, so horizontal drilling is not possible.
And, if you read further into the newest EIA estimates for US crude production by type, you will see that tight oil is projected to peak between 2017 and 2020, with a steep falloff thereafter because of the steep decline curves to such wells (the Bakken is presently 85-90% decline in 3 years to stripper status).
Your EIA chart is correct for the moment, but says nothing about either global or US long tern annual production of crude from all sources. Most authorities including BP expect peak,global production between 2020 and 2030; there is debate about the rate of ensuing decline. Right now global conventional existing fields have peaked, and are declining at a rate of 6.7% pa. The balance is being made up by new deep water (Brazil’s Campos basin), Athabasca tar sands, and US fracked shale. But just to offset the existing conventional decline, new economically producible reserves equivalent to 4 Saudi Arabia’s (9.6 mbpd) need to be found and put into production by 2030. There are three ways ( best is the hyperbolic creaming curve) to show that will not be possible. And that reeplacement reserve ignores future growth in demand from BRICs, especially China.
When you dig into CERES data looking for tropical cloud thermoregulation, you do magnificent work. Taking a short term US projection and extrapolating tothe world without the above context is not so good work. Sort of like confusing weather with climate. You seem to fall into some of the same fact error traps that Maugeri did in his grossly erroneous report from Harvard last year. You can read a detailed critique posted over at Climate Etc. Also an exhaustive analysis of what the 2008 IEA survey and subsequent annual outlooks actually said when you strip away all the subsequent PC stuff they did for damage control–Peak global production about 2020.
Regards