Peak oil summary -- here's my first draft (not even spell checked, but it's based on my rantings online) of a summary of what I've been reading about peak you know what.
Nothing that everyone here probably doesn't already know (and more) but feel free to use it, suggest changes, laugh at it, draw pictures of mice in the margins, etc. You'll all recognize I borrowed at lot from here. :)
- Charles
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Eventually the world will reach the maximum amount of oil it can produce. After that oil won't disappear, not for many decades. But each year we'll have less, no matter how much we drill. At that moment, the world will have "peaked." This could be no big deal. There are many possible alternatives (coal, nuclear, wind, and many more exotic things in the works) and we waste so much energy we could handle declines for years just by conservation. I, for one, would not mind seeing a country of trucks replace by trains (which use 1/5 the energy to move the same cargo).
Or this could be the biggest crisis that industrial civilization has ever faced:
1. We don't know when peak might start. Some very credible people think it *has* started, or will start soon.
2. We don't know the rate it will decline. Because we deplete wells faster now with modern technology, the falloff might be very fast. Our Alaska fields deplete at 6% a year. Some wells in the mid-East deplete at 14% a year -- ever year. That's a lot.
3. Economic theory (shortages lead to higher prices lead to more exploration) doens't work when there is no more oil to find. Consider:
-- The peak in *discoveries* of oil was in 1964, and has fallen since; and
-- Since 1981 the world has used each year more than it finds (now 1 barrel found for every 6 consumed).
4. 10 years after oil peaks, natural gas is expected to peak, and it may disappear much more quickly than oil (it's gas --- there's nothing to stick to the inside of a well). That will affect home heating, and much of our electrical production.
5. Oil in the USA is used principally for transportation; but also for plastics, drugs, contruction machiner, all sorts of things for which there are no easy substitutes. Modern agriculture produces more than 7 times as much food per acre as it did in 1920 largely because of fertilizer and insecticides from oil and from natural gas. Oil shortages become food shortages.
6. That stuff about how we have "300 years of coal?" Not true. It doesn't reflect population grown, or additoinal uses if we need use it to replace oil and natural gas. And, as with oil, we've already used a lot of the "good stuff" (easy to mine, low moister, high energy).
Here's the problem: building substitutes for oil use a lot of energy. It takes many years to build railroads, coal plants, power efficient and lighter cars. The bigger job -- of buidling a living arrangement more sustainable than suburbs -- would be much more expensive, and take much longer. If we don't start doing all that before peak hits, we're not going to be able to do it. Consider:
- if after peak, oil supplies drop only 2%, we need to conserve more than that -- in apart to have energy to start building windmills or whatever
- the next year it's 2% again, and on and on...
The oddest thing about this is... it's not a suprise. A geologist prediced in 1956 that the usA would peak in 1970 and the world would peak in the 1980s. He was right about the first one (regarding our domestic oil supply), and may only have been wrong about the second because of Carter's conservatoin efforts back then. President carter talked about it in 1979.
For more information:
Official view [peak is real but not soon - USA Dept. Of Energy Administration]
fe.doe.gov
The website of a conservative Republican (!) Roscoe Bartlett (search for "peak oil")
bartlett.house.gov
Other good sources
peakoil.net
energybulletin.net
Matt Simmons (investment banker)
globalpublicmedia.com
simmonsco-intl.com
odac-info.org
More cheerful view
rmi.org [Lovins on efficiency, hydrogen]
freeenergynews.com [research in energy]
gulland.ca ["peak oil" is bunk]
The darkest view
hubbertpeak.com [beautifully written!]
Peak coal
fromthewilderness.com
Has Saudi Arabia Peaked?
pnionline.com
"This is a new era," Mr Simmons told a conference of oil industry analysts, government officials and academics in Edinburgh. "There is a big chance that Saudi Arabia actually peaked production in 1981. We have no reliable data. Our data collection system for oil is rubbish. I suspect that if we had, we would find that we are over-producing in most of our major fields and that we should be throttling back. We may have passed that point."
Depletion Rates
theoildrum.blogspot.com
..so if we are drawing the oil out at a much faster rate, there is a downside. And the downside is that when the oil starts to run out, the drop in production can be a lot faster than it would be from the straight vertical wells. Figures from Oman, for example, found that the rates could get up to around 14% a year. This technique is now becoming predominant in the Middle East and routine in Saudi Arabia.
Excerpt From Official Department of Energy View
fe.doe.gov
The growing dependence of the United States on foreign sources for its liquid fuels has significant strategic and economic implications. The United States has been a net importer of oil for more than 50 years, and today, imports nearly 60 percent of its liquid hydrocarbon needs (Figure 1). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects that U.S. imports may double, to 19.8 MMBbl/D by 2025. By then imports will exceed 70 percent of demand, the vast majority coming from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). As imports rise, America’s vulnerability to price shocks, disruptions, and shortages will also increase.
The expected increase in demand for imported oil comes at a time when other consuming countries are also increasing their demand for oil, primarily from OPEC. Is such a growing dependence on imports and on OPEC accept able? Is it even possible for OPEC to meet the ever-increasing world demand for oil? And if it is possible, is increasing dependence on OPEC oil in the best long-term interests of the United States?
Adding urgency to these questions is the indication that world oil production may peak sooner than generally believed, accelerating the onset of inevitable competition among consumers (and nations) for ever-scarcer oil resources. Figure 2 illustrates the supply peak concept, first espoused by Dr. M. King Hubbert (Ref. 1), and now being debated by a number of respected petroleum experts (Ref. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8). All of these experts agree that world petroleum supply will peak; the question is when? When the petroleum production peak occurs, the consequences will be severe if import-dependent nations have not prepared for it.
Googling Matterial...
The words "Peak oil" (in quotes) plus any of the following
Boone Pickens
Matt Simmons
"David Goldstein" Caltech
Kenneth S. Deffeyes |
