David Archibald
A finite resource supplying a deep market tends to have a production history that is symmetrical around a peak. This is exemplified by the UK’s history of coal and oil production:
The rate of production tends to fall as fast as it rose. In 1956, Shell geologist King Hubbert used that relationship to predict that US onshore oil production in the lower 48 states would peak in 1973, which it duly did. The mathematical process he used to achieve that is now termed ‘Hubbert linearisation’. Another factor to bear in mind is that the operating cost of extraction starts rising once half of a resource has been consumed.
World peak oil production was predicted to peak in 2005. The US was short of natural gas and a few LNG import terminals were built by 2005. Then the tight oil and shales gas booms started and the US supplied all the growth in world oil demand for the last 20 years. The LNG import terminals were repurposed to LNG export plants. US natural gas production of 40 TCF per annum has the energy equivalent of 18 million barrels per day of oil and so has an energy content 38% higher than current US oil production of 13 million barrels per day.
Applying Hubbert linearisation to US oil and gas production has enabled the following forecasts to be made:
Traditionally the natural gas price in the US followed the No. 2 fuel oil price and so tracked the oil price. The oversupply from shale gas had driven the price down to US$2.86 per thousand cubic feet currently. This is the energy equivalent of oil at US$17 per barrel. Cheap and abundant natural gas has been a boon to US industry, displacing coal in power generation and being the glue that holds the power grid together in the face of fluctuating wind and solar power generation.
The US continues to consume about 20 million barrels of oil per day which is 20% of world production. US oil production was down to five million barrels per day in 2007. Tight oil production from the US has provided all the growth in world oil supply since then at an average annual increase of 430,000 barrels of oil per day. From the production peak this year the annual average decline in US production will be 870,000 barrels per day until 2040.
Adding the natural gas production profile to the oil production outlook shows the totality of the energy decline facing the US. It amounts to 1.7 million barrels per annum for 15 years to 2040. Luckily the US has plenty of coal which can be applied to making liquid fuels via the Bergius process.
The decline in US oil and gas supply will coincide with a decline in Chinese coal production. In 2023, China produced 4,400 million tonnes of coal and imported a further 437 million tonnes. This is a daily consumption rate of 53 million barrels per day in energy equivalent terms. They wouldn’t have imported any coal at all if they could have produced it themselves, suggesting that peak coal for China is now in the rear vision mirror. In fact coal production in China appears to have performed exactly as predicted by these Chinese academics:
China is now facing a coal production decline of 75 million tonnes per annum for at least 50 years, equating to 0.8 million barrels of oil per annum in energy equivalent terms.
Now past peak production, the cost of mining coal in China will rise inexorably. So will the cost of everything produced using energy from that coal including solar panels and wind turbines. Production of polysilicon in China, used for making solar panels, has already moved to the province of Xinjiang in far western China because that is where the cheapest coal is.
The oil and gas from shale boom gave the US another 20 years to get its house in order to prepare for the tight energy market to come. Instead of doing that the party continued and we are now on the edge of the energy abyss. Nigh on 70 years ago Hubbert realised the need for humanity to leave oil before oil left us:
In a 10,000 year slice of human history, the fossil fuels are with us for only a brief moment. It is now going to be painful to do the requisite nuclear fleet buildout while our energy supply is contracting.
Support for this view comes from an unlikely source given that he is a big proponent of global warming and the need to eschew fossil fuels. The average size of domestic propane tanks in the US is 500 gallons. Former President Obama has increased the propane tankage on his Martha’s Vinyard property to 2,500 gallons. No doubt he is well informed and would rather be comfortable than virtuous.
David Archibald is the author of The Anticancer Garden in Australia.
Why are governments forcing 2050 net zero at great cost if supply and demand curves already guarantee it.
Because they are insane, or part of a brainwashed cult, or because they are part of an insane, brainwashed cult.
Or because they are corrupt puppets for special interests.
They see an opportunity to control stuff that might go to waste if they don’t hype it…bureaucrat’s aphrodisiac and all that…
Don’t expect Archibald to give a rational answer to such a logical question.
Why is it assumed that 2023 is the peak year? Did I miss where it was written “assuming this year is the peak year blah blah blah”?
Until recently the peak oil year would have been 2019 iifc, but then a nice rebound in 2023 that will more than likely continue into the future under more sane leadership in DC, and increasing demand throughout the world keeping prices up.
So much of pricing, demand and supply depend on politics these days that easy analysis and predictions are impossible.
What happened was that the COVID pandemic in 2020 caused a huge drop in transportation fuel consumption. Much oil production was curtailed if not stopped altogether to match with demand. By mid-2021 as the world recovered from the effects of the pandemic, the demand was back to near pre-pandemic levels, but production cannot be ramped up as fast as demand ramped up. Consequently, oil and gas prices skyrocketed in 2021-2022, but by 2023 production and demand reached a near balance with prices having dropped back down again to near pre-pandemic pricing.
The year long downward blip in demand delayed the point at which oil and gas production will begin drop off.
The law of supply and demand cannot be repealed. Politics is easily repealed, and constantly flips back and forth (see Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden and possibly back to Trump again this year). But supply and demand are inexorable, no matter how much politicians wish they could overcome it.
What the author is discussing here is the supply side. If supply cannot be maintained to match demand, prices will always rise.
Past predictions of “peak oil” in the 1970s thru the 2000s were based upon known recoverable reserves and existing technology, pre-fracking. Fracking provided a large bump in production, but it is inevitable that some day production must fall, even if delayed for a few years or even a few decades by new technology that makes oil recoverable that is not feasibly recoverable today.
By the end of this century if not much sooner, mankind will be forced to develop replacement energy sources. The only such source that appears feasible today is nuclear. But nuclear also means all-electric. So for all of the caterwauling about the deficiencies of EVs today by the critics of the warmunists, the fact is that eventually we and/or our descendants will all be driving EVs, if driving at all. We’re only arguing about the speed of the transition.
Oil, or lack of oil isn’t going to do anything to improve most of the “deficiencies of EVs today”. The physics of Li batteries isn’t going to change, Cu and Co aren’t going to rain down from the heavens. The West has zero interest in ramping up the industrialization required to either source, manufacture a/o deploy the grid elements absolutely required to create and distribute power (and believe me, central planning of determining projects will be profoundly political in today’s weaponized bureaucracy)
Quite frankly, the West has embarked on a campaign of creating truly drugged-up, stupid and slothful population that is largely incapable of designing, manufacturing a/o installing the infrastructure. The governments are utterly corrupt and the legal system beyond any redemption such that projects will have all of the pathologies usually associated with dysfunctional soviet systems. Lots of fiat money being created and landing in the kleptoligarchies’ bank accounts.
Its a race against time. Do all of these near impossible things before the generation that can do it are still alive and willing to work.
You may wish to rephrase this last statement. As it stands, it makes no sense. lol
Biden’s war on U.S. domestic hydrocarbon production had a lot to do with constraining the supply side of the equation. Blocking leases, blocking access, and blocking new refineries has a big impact on supply. Get rid of those policy impediments and the supply side will grow a great deal.
The supply side is already rampeding up except for the 1B in the Western world. The rest of the worlds 7B people are building thousands of coal plants, dozens of LNG terminals, and hundreds of nuclear plants. In 2021 the world use of fossil fuels grew 6 times faster than the use of solar plus wind grew. At that rate renewables can never catch up with demand. The sooner we start ramping up nuclear to extend fossil fuels the better.
According to geologists we have several hundred years of oil left, and over 1000 years of coal.
Which geologists?
Is this why you are such a big fan of EVs? Your mistaken belief that oil is close to running out? Yes, oil will run out someday, but that day is hundreds of years in the future. Let the people of 200 years from now worry about the problem and use the technology of 200 years in the future to find solutions.
Think about how technology has advanced over the last 200 years. Why do you assume that technological advancement is going to stop?
Impoverishing ourselves today, in order to delay the onset of a problem that won’t appear for several hundred years is beyond stupid. The best thing we can do for our many times great grandchildren is to create wealth, so that all of our children and grandchildren will have the resources to find solutions to the problems of their day.
You’re taking the long view and using common sense and wisdom. I doubt this view will go far.
Great comment, Thanks.
Every year since 1970 has been declared the peak year. Until the next year topped it, then it was the peak year.
“They” are making these declarations from the mountaintops, that’s all.
Our earth’s mineral hydrocarbon stores greatly exceed the quantities considered in this author’s and similar analyses:
According to Prof V. Smil’s encyclopedia of Energy sources, which cites the authoritative geochemistry reports, the global deposits of kerogen* are estimated at —
1.5 x 10^16 cubic meters (~ metric tonnes) of mineral hydrocarbon
— easily sufficient material to fuel a world of 10 billion persons at a rate equal to that used in the most developed parts of today’s world, for the remainder of this millennium.
To use just 10% of that total, over a single thousand-year period, i.e. within 10^13 person-years, would mean an average rate, per capita, of 150 tonnes-hydrocarbon per annum.
To ignore or dismiss these resources ‘on economic grounds’ may be as unwise as similarly disregarding shale oil (or gas), tar sands, etc. Isn’t it the case that such resources always appear ‘uneconomic’, until the need emerges to spur their development, as a great & unexpected technical advance / ‘miracle’ to be most grateful for.
Long live the ‘Bottomless Well’, or ‘Super-Abundance’, far beyond the span of anyone alive today. One can steadily advance the nuclear fission (& fusion) reactors without invoking a crisis on the hydrocarbon side. Net-Zero 3025 A.D. is soon enough.
kerogen had look that up. Kerogen is defined as hydrocarbons that are insoluble in normal solvents, such as carbon tetrachloride, but which yield liquid or gaseous petroleum when heated.
It’s a bad day when you don’t learn something new.
That’s why I come here regularly.
It is foolish to believe in a bottomless well of any mined substance. As the author pointed out, once a resource reaches some particular depletion point (he wrote 50%, maybe more, maybe less), then both the cost of production and prices inevitably rise. Depending solely or mostly on a what will eventually become non-recoverable resource simply locks in humongous shortages and price increases at some as yet indeterminate future date. Given that developing new resources takes decades, the only intelligent thing to do is to start a transition to a source that is vastly below the 50% depletion point – which is nuclear (considering both uranium as well as thorium known recoverable deposits).
You can claim today that you’re peachy keen relying solely upon fossil fuels for transportation, space heating, and manufacturing (a large part of current oil production is dedicated to industrial materials production, such as thermo plastics) … that’s easy to say … but when it costs you $25 a gallon to fuel your car, $3,000 a month to heat or cool your home, or when a gallon jug of milk costs $25 of which three quarters is the cost to package it and transport it to your local store … then you’ll be singing a different tune.
The warmunists are also foolishly wrong in believing that “renewables” and vast energy storage banks can totally replace fossil fuels in the next two or three decades.
If we want to go from where we are with nuclear now, supplying around 20% of US demand today, to say 70% of demand, it will take at least 5 decades to plan, license, and build the necessary plants. Maybe longer. There are some steps that have been taken in the last decade to develop next gen nuke plants, but we are investing nowhere near enough in drastically increasing nuclear production so that our grandchildren are not forced to live in impoverished circumstances, pining for the “good old days” when energy was cheap and abundant.
“… then both the cost of production and prices inevitably rise…”
That’s right – called supply/demand curve which affects price.
As price increases = more profit = the cost of supplying more is affordable = suppliers find ways to supply more and make more profit.
As price increases = demand falls = innovation to find ways to use less or find an alternative.
All resources are finite, but finite can be a long way off.
The problem with the author’s report is that it is based on very bad data and even worse assumptions.
Excellent article, thanks. It certainly shows that the ‘renewables’ years have just been money down the drain.
I was a bit surprised by your assessment of China’s ‘peak coal’, OurWorldInData suggests that it is not peaking. Maybe your information is from a different source.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by-country?country=USA~CHN~IND~AUS~RUS~IDN
Bear in mind that a number of sources say that China’s usable coal reserves were 140 billion tonnes three years ago. That amount to 29 years worth at the current consumption rate. The graph I used was produced by Chinese academics. There is a similar sort of graph in this one: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17583004.2019.1577177?src=recsys
Given the amount of coal that China is importing that figure is likely a clear underestimate, assuming of course that China doesn’t start using twice as much coal as at present or it completely stops importing altogether.
Is it possible/probable that China is importing coal at what to her are ‘charitable’ prices, and saving some of her own coal for ‘the future’? Didn’t the USA import oil for years while ‘saving’ its own for better prices/or something?
Say 1 tonne of coal is approximately equiv to 5 barrels of crude oil.
In the coal production graph above therefore, 75 million tonnes should be equiv to 75 x 5 million barrels of oil. ie 375 million barrels of oil, (not 0.8 million barrels) big difference please check me . .
Most growth phenomena follow the logistic curve…and Hubbert’s Pimple is merely the graph of the derivative of the logistic curve….The actual logistic curve depends, for any given commodity, on the total reserve of the commodity– assuming we know that total. Cf- Peak Oil prediction changed as North Sea and then Gulf of Mexico oil fields came to be exploited….We do need to make plans for the day when the supply & price of fossil fuels prohibit their further use…
The first steam locomotive made its first run in 1808. Luckily, President Jefferson wasn’t a progressive and didn’t regulate hay out of production and force everyone to buy a steam engine by 1825.
1802 (Trevithick). Although the first one produced to haul cargo was produced in 1804 (Trevithick) after a number of low pressure prototypes were tested from 1784 onwards.
In 1900, the British Admiralty was reluctant to use oil to power warships “because there isn’t enough oil in the world to do so”. Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s we were told that oil reserves would be exhausted, usually about twenty years ahead of the particular pronouncement. The boy has cried “wolf” too often. As Sheikh Yamani-or-your-life said, the oil age won’t end because we run out of oil, and the same can be said of gas.
It’s not calling wolves … it’s technology. Fracking and other current gen exploration and production technologies have greatly extended the amount of fossil fuel reserves that are financially feasible to recover. Sure, if you don’t mind paying $100 a gallon of gasoline or diesel a couple of decades from now, there is probably a practically infinite source of the stuff. But you’d go broke and the economy would necessarily contract. Our modern economy is not built upon oil and gas, rather it is built upon cheap oil and gas.
Is it possible that technology coming in the next several decades will be sufficient to maintain the present rough balance between supply and demand? Sure, it is possible. Go ahead and hope for that outcome.
But hope is not a plan.
Going nuclear requires a plan.
Keep in mind that no matter how much or little fossil fuel is consumed by electric power generation and transportation demands, we will still need large stores of recoverable hydrocarbons just to maintain our present standard of living (i.e., the production of goods and services that our economy depends upon, and we as individuals depend upon). Use it all up for power and cars and trucks, then what do we do?
Fear is not a plan either. Especially when all of the real world data shows that your fears are irrational.
Duane: “Going nuclear requires a plan.”
Today in the year 2024, adding more nuclear is strictly a public policy decision. In the absence of Net Zero public policies, the US power grid would move decisively towards gas-fired generation, leaving coal, nuclear, wind, and solar in the dust..
In the current political and economic environment, we would consider adding more nuclear only because we place high value on its energy security and energy reliability benefits — not because it is the cheapest method of generating electicity. That title goes to combined cycle gas-fired generation.
Here in the decade of the 2020’s, if we want nuclear for its energy security and energy reliability benefits, then we must be willing to pay an up-front cost premium over what gas-fired generation costs.
So the questions now become:.
— How much of an up-front cost premium should we be willing to pay for nuclear? 50% more than CCGT’s up-front costs? 100% more than CCGT’s up-front costs? In other words, how much do we value energy security and energy reliability?
— How much effort should we be expending on reducing the cost premium we must pay for nuclear, knowing that it will be difficult if not impossible to reach a point where nuclear’s up-front costs are cheaper than CCGT’s up-front costs?
We learn how to drill in deeper waters.
This is a bad assumption. They import high quality met coal from Australia for their steel production.
They can get thermal coal at lower cost from Russia and Indonesia than mining it internally.
Reserves have been static at around 30 years for the last decade. The resource is good for about 1000 years. But they will probably eye US coal resource before they deplete their own.
There is a current plan to build inventory internally so they do not caught out by cold weather.
The notion that China will reduce coal consumption any time soon is wishful thinking by climate botherers who think CO2 alters Earth’s energy balance.
“The notion that China will reduce coal consumption any time soon is wishful thinking”
Yep,
The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics recently said China’s coal production reached a record high in 2023 at 4.66 bn tonnes.
In December 23 the IEA said it expected China and India to account for more than 70% of global coal consumption by 2026. Earlier in the year it said coal production in China had increased by 11% in 2022.
Draining America First—The Beginning of the End for Shale Gas
https://www.artberman.com/blog/draining-america-first-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-shale-gas/
All the more reason to go back to coal !!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_wagon
Show us land transport using wind turbines. !
And WT* have old steam lorries got to do with gas?
Transport mostly uses diesel, not shale gas.
You are an idiot !!
Thanks for the Wonderful link with comprehensive data on natural gas production!
for almost all of the last 16 years the US government has been hostile to any drilling on federally controlled land. Almost all of the production over that time has been on privately owned land, and that will continue to be the case for most of the next 4 years even if TRUMP! is reelected since the deep state will again be extremely resistant to change. Wholesale termination of every federal employee shown to have direct connections to environmental lunatic fringe groups will be essential.
The amount of oil in Alaska that at this point can not be obtained due to leftist obstruction is massive and without production SOON, the Alaskan pipeline will shut down sue to insufficient flow.
Other examples of the leftist self fulfilling prophecy of NO MORE OIL abound. Blocked leasing in violation of law, magic whales used to stop drilling in the gulf where there are no whales, states blocking offshore drilling while demanding offshore wind, etc.
Prudhoe Bay Oil Field has around 25B barrels of oil.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudhoe_Bay_Oil_Field
Globally, we use about a hundred million barrels per day or about a billion barrels of oil every 10 days or so.
So 25 billion barrels is about 250 days of oil.
So massive? Sure, but not in the context of fossil fuel longevity. Its not even a year’s worth, globally.
Berman has been predicting that shale gas would be a massive failure since 10 minutes after the very first successful frack.
I didn’t realize that Great Britain’s fossil fuel production had dropped so much. The sad part is, North America could provide enough energy for not only ourselves, but Europe as well, but the party in power won’t allow it…
Europe could produce enough fossil fuels for their own needs, but the left won’t allow that either.
Conclusion: We need to stop wasting coal, oil and gas to produce worse-than-useless windmills and solar panels.
Confusing production with consumption.
Projections are not reality.
Computer models are not evidence.
Supply is determined by demand, not mathematical formulæ.
If demand exceeds supply, price goes up and this stimulates increased supply – by making it worth while to develop new technology and/or to extract resources previously not economically viable.
Free market capitalism turns scarcity into abundance. (250 years evidence from observation.)
UK coal production is not the same as UK coal consumption. Most UK coal was from State-owned deep shaft mines. Being State-owned meant inefficiency, heavily unionised work-force meant over paid, deep-shaft meant more expensive to bring coal to the surface as the mines got deeper and more expensive. The result was, UK electricity generators increasingly used cheaper imported coal.
A similar curve for UK iron & steel production or ship production can produced for the same reasons: inefficient, State-owned, unionised, expensive work forces unable to compete with low cost producers like Japan and S. Korea.
Coal use in power stations did decrease as nuclear power increased and North Sea gas came on stream and power stations converted. Less coal was needed to make coke to produce steel.
“UK coal production is not the same as UK coal consumption. Most UK coal was from State-owned deep shaft mines. Being State-owned meant inefficiency, heavily unionised work-force meant over paid, deep-shaft meant more expensive to bring coal to the surface as the mines got deeper and more expensive. The result was, UK electricity generators increasingly used cheaper imported coal.
A similar curve for UK iron & steel production or ship production can produced for the same reasons: inefficient, State-owned, unionised, expensive work forces unable to compete with low cost producers like Japan and S. Korea.”
Wasn’t this ‘method’ introduced many years ago in Russia(The Soviet Union), and didn’t it work so well that many starved?
A legit case can be made that we have finite reserves of fossil fuels and use that to justify cutting back to conserve.
But the resulting CO2 emissions are beneficial to life.The increase in CO2 is greening up the planet and feeding an extra 1 billion people. CO2 is the building block for life.
The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere at 420 ppm is barely half the optimal level for life. Most life is begging for more CO2, NOT dying because of it.
The only scientific and biologically authentic green energy sources are the fossil fuels greening up the planet.
The political world has manufactured a fake climate crisis, during the current climate optimum for most life. Manufactured a definition of fake green energy that tells us the energy sources wrecking the planet, especially wind and batteries…..are saving the planet.
Fossil fuels are the concentrated, organic remains of life from the past that have been sequestered deeply in the ground.
Burning the energy stored in them (which came from the sun) is releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere that once helped fertilize and feed abundant life, millions of years ago.
Freeman Dyson was worried that we will become “addicted” to CO2 fertilizing our food plants, and when we run out of coal, oil and natural gas, our food supply will crash.
You can worry about anything.
The industrialized West is so wealthy, blinkered, and complacent that many of our highest-paid celebrity newspersons worry publicly for a living, and stoke panic among the peons. When the newspersons take their vacations, they do the same things big shots have always done: zoom off to expensive, secluded getaways where panicky peons can’t bother them.
In several hundred years when oil starts to run out, we will probably be able to build fusion plants and use the energy from them to break down limestone in order to release more CO2 into the atmosphere.
Or perhaps we will have the resources to enclose farmlands in shelters where we can artificially increase CO2 levels.
I don’t know what technologies will be available several hundred years from now, and neither does anyone else. The best strategy for the here and now is to increase over all wealth so that we and our descendants have the resources necessary to solve whatever problems do crop up.
Why do you say there are several hundred years of oil left when proven reserves haven’t been significantly increasing for decades and conventional wisdom says about 50 years?
That “conventional wisdom” has been exaggerating its knowledge for decades.
The “conventional wisdom” is based on taking the known reserves and projecting on usage. Its not rocket science to get in the ball park. There’s a world of difference between 50 years and “several hundred” years.
Several hundred years into the future, fusion will still just be 20 years away with continued funding.
A long time in the future, I can see nuclear power being used to release CO2 from limestone. In the mean time, China, India, and soon, other developing nations with keep the carbon cycle going.
A better case can be made that the use of fossil fuels generates wealth, and that wealth can be used to solve the problems of the population.
Impoverishing the population now, over a problem that won’t manifest for over 100 years or more is not smart.
Lots of untapped resources out there in the US that have not even been seriously evaluated for political reasons. Eastern Gulf. most of Alaska, most of the west coast, all of the east coast.
At some price point and technology advancement clathrates become recoverable and recoverable gas increases a couple of orders of magnitude. Likewise, kerogen for oil, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to make liquid fuels from gas or coal, etc.
Will energy get more expensive? Yes; but each increment in price makes previously uneconomic reserves and methods economic and expands supply to meet a new supply-demand balance.
Green Crude will be part of this equation, a hydro carbon replacement for oil made from
algae. That will take energy to the nutrient availability to grow the algae. Just what
is dumped into the streams in this country in waste water is immense. It will be
an everything quotient energywise IMO. Disruptive Innovation in play before our eyes
in real time.
At least they are consistent: consistently cherry-pick; consistently incorrect; consistently lie; consistent fail.
And once again, David returns trying to preach his silly belief that we are in the process of running out of fossil fuels.
And as usual, Dave assumes that any drop in production must be caused by a drop in supply.
David assumes that oil taking over for coal is proof that we are almost out of coal, just as he has for years tried to convince everyone that natural gas taking over for oil is proof that we are almost out of oil.
He’s been pushing this nonsense for years, and it doesn’t appear he has any intention of stopping.
Oil replaced coal in transportation and home heating because it was a better fuel for those purposes. As a result, demand for coal dropped. Because demand dropped, production dropped. It had nothing to do with how much coal is still in the ground, in fact actual geologists will tell you that there are hundreds if not over 1000 years worth of coal still in the ground.
The same goes with natural gas and oil.
Thanks to frakking, the cost of natural gas fell sharply. Because of this, those who could, shifted from oil to natural gas. Once again, it had nothing to do with how much oil is left in the ground.
I really struggle with the peak oil, peak gas, peak coal peak anything really.
The last couple stories here on WUWT have talked endlessly about how much production we had this year or that year. It can scare the bejesus out of a guy. The one thing I haven’t seen is the influence of politics on the production activity. Without including the politics the talk of peak anything is not telling the whole story. That is a bad thing.
Now the question is could or will we run out of retrievable coal, oil or gas? There is a better than even bet we will, but I don’t know. For the time being politics is controlling our production of energy more than availability.
The reason that China is importing coal is they can not supply the coal where the demand is.
This is why they are building nuke plants.
It is not an indication of peak coal in China.
My last job was at a nuke plant in China. Just down the road was a modern 5000 MWe coal plant running on imported coal.
Oh Lord. Please spare us from the ghost of King Hubert. We heard nothing but Hubbert from the peak oilists before the fracking revolution kicked in.15 years ago.
US production may go down in the coming years, but it will have nothing to do with Hubbert and everything to do with the demented fruitcake in the White House.
Fossil Fuels are not in short supply, and will be plentiful in the future. Good sense and clear thinking are in short supply our political class, especially in the political class, and, looking at our collapsing educational system, may well be in the future.