Anyone heard of the phrase "Peak Oil"?

A._Badger

Kohoutek wrote: »

I wouldn't put too much weight on economists' understanding of oil and gas, considering so many of them failed to see the direction the global economy was going prior to the credit crunch.

There are many individuals and entities that believe global oil production will peak before 2020 that can hardly be dismissed as 'tin foil hatters':

Head of Exploration and Production (retired), Saudi State Oil Company
CEO of Brazilian State Oil Company
Chief Economist, International Energy Agency
US Military
CEO of General Motors
Chevron
Royal Dutch Shell
Petroleum geologist and consultant with 40 years experience
Former Chief Petroleum Engineer, BP

Perhaps. But can you spot the one thing they all have in common?

Incidentally, Ludwig von Mises is widely credited as the economist who predicted the Great Depression, and his followers in the Austrian school have had a pretty good record on recent events, too, so your point isn't quite as tenable as it may seem.

My real isue with the 'peak oil' myth is not that I disagree with the premise that we will, eventially, have less to go around (though not all scientists agree with that, of course - but I'm not a geophysicist, so can't argue the point either way). My problem is bandwagon jumpers: from eco-freaks to conspiracy nutters to end-of-the-worlders, who sieze on it with no apparent undeestanding of markets and how they work.

nearlynew

Modern agricultural methods - which feeds us all - has relied on turning oil into food.

Without oil the population of the earth would be much lower.

And as we run out of oil the population will be reduced.

100% guaranteed

frank_begbie

A._Badger wrote: »

The astonishing thing is that you breeze into a forum like this, asking if anyone has heard of this theory, as if assuming people interested in the economy wouldn't have done. Tme after boring time, after boring time.


I suggest you do a bit of research and look at what people who don't have tin foil surgically attached to their skulls, think.

You might try here, for a start (though I realise this might red flag the, um, red fag fraternity):

http://mises.org/daily/1717

Or here:

http://reason.com/archives/2006/05/05/peak-oil-panic

Or here:

http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=167656

You might want to consder whether the author the last piece could, just possibly, know a little bit about the subject.

I could have saves myself a lot of time by just reading this last bit of you're first link.

I don't necessarily trust technology, but I do trust human ingenuity. Civilization as we know it will grind to a halt without the energy we derive today from crude oil, and that's in and of itself is motivation enough to make sure that future energy is widely available at prices people can afford


Now to the second link.

The prophets of oily doom are opposed by preachers of energy abundance. Chief among the latter is the energy economist Michael Lynch, president of the Massachusetts-based Global Petroleum Service consultancy. “Colin Campbell has the worst forecasting record on oil supply,” says Lynch, “and that’s saying a lot.” He points out that in a 1989 article for the journal Noroil, Campbell claimed the peak of world oil production had already passed and incorrectly predicted that oil would soon cost $30 to $50 a barrel. As for Matthew Simmons, Lynch dismisses him with a sneer: “Petroleum engineers know a lot more about petroleum engineering than a Harvard MBA.”
One petroleum engineer— Michael Economides of the University of Houston—calls peak oil predictions “the figments of the imaginations of born-again pessimist geologists.” Like Lynch, Economides, who worked in Russia to boost that country’s oil production in the last decade, rejects Simmons’ analysis. Saudi Arabia, which currently produces about 10 million barrels of oil a day, “is underproducing every one of their wells,” he claims. “I can produce 20 million barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia.”


Michael Lynch seems to me, has a vested interest.


"figments of the imagination"?


Yeah, when you are feared of something, make fun of it.


Why would they underproduce? When they could sell it to the Chinese.




Third link....



[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Another equally-flawed proposition of Peak Oil is that it implicitly views the limits of oil supply independent of substitutes or alternative sources of energy. These include solar, wind, non-food bio-fuel, and nuclear energies. They also include natural gas. Further, they include ¡°unconventional¡± oil: Tar Sands, Heavy Oils, and Oil Shale. Although, with the exception of natural gas and nuclear technology, the use of these substitutes is sill quite expensive, and therefore, limited, technological advances are bound to reduce their cost and increase their sue. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Viewed in conjunction with the vast pool of substitutes, both actual and potential, oil limits would loom much wider than when they are considered in isolation from such energy alternatives. The constantly evolving newer and more efficient technologies are bound to further expand those limits far beyond the narrow, ¡°natural¡± limits set by the Peak Oil theory. [/FONT]


I can't remember the last time I saw a wind powered car?


I wish I had his faith.



If we wanted to do anything about the pending crisis we should have started at least 10 years ago.
We can still do the research but we are going to face a long time of hardship until we get there.
Meanwhile the lifestyle we all know now is going to come to an end in the near future.

I can understand the doubters...."its too horrible to think about"

I believe having the knowledge is far better than trying to ignore the evidence.

Kohoutek

A._Badger wrote: »

Perhaps. But can you spot the one thing they all have in common?

No...

A._Badger wrote: »

Incidentally, Ludwig von Mises is widely credited as the economist who predicted the Great Depression, and his followers in the Austrian school have had a pretty good record on recent events, too, so your point isn't quite as tenable as it may seem.

What do they know about petroleum geology and engineering? Economists follow a model where constraints on natural resources basically don't exist – so their musings are pretty irrelevant on a subject like when we will reach the maximum rate of oil extraction.

A._Badger wrote: »

My real isue with the 'peak oil' myth is not that I disagree with the premise that we will, eventially, have less to go around (though not all scientists agree with that, of course - but I'm not a geophysicist, so can't argue the point either way). My problem is bandwagon jumpers: from eco-freaks to conspiracy nutters to end-of-the-worlders, who sieze on it with no apparent undeestanding of markets and how they work.

Well, conventional economic thought of course says that the market will substitute petroleum when prices become too high, but that doesn't recognise the fact that there is no fuel that is as portable, easy to store and as energy dense as petroleum and the trillions of pounds of infrastructure throughout the world that only works with a petroleum based economy.

It also don't recognise that:

Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/oil_peaking_netl.pdf

Really2

Kohoutek wrote: »

, but that doesn't recognise the fact that there is no fuel that is as portable, easy to store and as energy dense as petroleum

I think rockets use liquid hydrogen not a tank of petrol.;)

edit, about 5X more powerful than petrol.

A._Badger

frank_begbie wrote: »

I could have saves myself a lot of time by just reading this last bit of you're first link.

And by the same token:

frank_begbie wrote: »

I can understand the doubters...."its too horrible to think about

I can understand the end-of-life-as-we-know-it brigade. People love disaster movies. Quite a lot of them frequent this forum, too - never happier than when prophesying doom.

frank_begbie

Kohoutek wrote: »

No...



What do they know about petroleum geology and engineering? Economists follow a model where constraints on natural resources basically don't exist – so their musings are pretty irrelevant on a subject like when we will reach the maximum rate of oil extraction.



Well, conventional economic thought of course says that the market will substitute petroleum when prices become too high, but that doesn't recognise the fact that there is no fuel that is as portable, easy to store and as energy dense as petroleum and the trillions of pounds of infrastructure throughout the world that only works with a petroleum based economy.

It also don't recognise that:



http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/oil_peaking_netl.pdf

Thanks for the last link.....looks to be some very interesting reading.

nearlynew

Really2 wrote: »

I think rockets use liquid hydrogen not a tank of petrol.;)

edit, about 5X more powerful than petrol.

And hydrogen is as easy to store as oil is it?

Kohoutek

Really2 wrote: »

I think rockets use liquid hydrogen not a tank of petrol.;)

Actually the energy density of hydrogen is much lower than petroleum:

Hydrogen is a less convenient energy storage medium than most liquid fuels, because of its bulk, whether stored as a high pressure gas or as a liquid (which requires a temperature of −253◦C). Even at a pressure of 700bar (which requires a hefty pressure vessel) its energy density (energy per unit volume) is 22% of gasoline’s. Furthermore, hydrogen gradually leaks out of any practical container. If you park your hydrogen car at the railway station with a full tank and come back a week later, you should expect to find most of the hydrogen has gone.

From the online version of the Cambridge physicist David McKay's book on sustainable energy.

There's also the problem that you cannot create hydrogen without an energy input (e.g. by treating water with an electric current) and there is no hydrogen energy infrastructure.

A._Badger

Kohoutek wrote: »

No...



What do they know about petroleum geology and engineering? Economists follow a model where constraints on natural resources basically don't exist – so their musings are pretty irrelevant on a subject like when we will reach the maximum rate of oil extraction.

Your original point was that, because some economists had failed to predict the current recession, that made them an unreliable source of commentary on this subject.

I pointed out that by no means all economists had been unreliable - which countered your argument.

What you are saying now, is something rather different though, I feel, equally contentious.

Any oil crises will be an economic crisis and it will be the tightening of the economic screw that shifts consumption to other fuels. Not that I'm waving a flag for wind/solar etc. As others have pointed out, there is shale oil in abundance and - just as economics predicted - it is at last becoming viable.

Beyond oil, who can say? Hydrogen? The fact is the tightening of that same screw will provide the incentive and to suggest there is 'nothing beyond oil' doesn't really stand up to analysis.