Anyone heard of the phrase "Peak Oil"?

A._Badger

nearlynew wrote: »

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

Does it have to be?

A._Badger

Kohoutek wrote: »

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.

The lack of an infrastructure has never stood in the way of technology. In 1975 there was, in effect, no Internet. In 1835 there was no rail infrastructure in the UK. By the mid-1840s over 6,000 miles of track had been laid.

If there is a perceived profit to be made, the market responds.

nearlynew

A._Badger wrote: »

Does it have to be?

If you look to hydrogen as a relacement for oil (or its derivatives), then yes.

Mikeyorks

frank_begbie wrote: »

it just means we cannot increase our production in line with demand.

BP have identified a solution that gives you rapidly increased production. They've even linked it to a natural storage facility.

But, as usual, the ...... 'not invented here' ..... Americans are a bit livid about it. And, oddly it doesn't seem to have done much for the BP share price, so clearly the markets don't think this 'peak' problem is in need of solving?

Kohoutek

A._Badger wrote: »

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.

I can't see any evidence that shale oil is economically viable. Oil sands and heavy oil are becoming more economic, but producing oil from those sources is more mining that drilling conventional oil, so it's extremely unlikely that production can be raised to a level that compensates for a decline in conventional oil production.

Because extra-heavy oil and bitumen flow very slowly, if at all, toward producing wells under normal reservoir conditions, the sands must be extracted by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells by in situ techniques which reduce the viscosity by injecting steam, solvents, and/or hot air into the sands. These processes can use more water and require larger amounts of energy than conventional oil extraction, although many conventional oil fields also require large amounts of water and energy to achieve good rates of production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sand#Production

A._Badger wrote: »

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.

There are substitutes, but there is no one substitute that will replace oil as simultaneously a transportation fuel and chemical feedstock for agriculture, plastics and many industrial processes.

The main point is that the world economy runs on cheap oil, not expensive oil (e.g. tar sands, heavy oil) or expensive substitute fuels. The amount of energy contained in a barrel of oil is roughly equivalent to 25,000 hours of human labour. If you think it will be easy to find an energy source that gives the equivalent of 25,000 of human labour and costs $80 or less to produce, then I think you are being naive. As I said above, hydrogen is not an energy source – it's a carrier like electricity that requires and energy input such as coal, solar or wind to be produced.

frank_begbie

The main thing is, we are at least 10 years from where we should be as far as research and development goes.

You can't just snap you're fingers and hey presto we have the "alternative". And will it be a real alternative to oil? Or just enough to keep the essentials ticking along?

Imagine no more cars no more holidays in far off

countries

, just the bare amount we need to survive.

Unfortunately we are still attached by the umbilical cord to oil and that will only change when it becomes obvious that we have reached "peak oil".

Kohoutek

A._Badger wrote: »

The lack of an infrastructure has never stood in the way of technology. In 1975 there was, in effect, no Internet. In 1835 there was no rail infrastructure in the UK. By the mid-1840s over 6,000 miles of track had been laid.

If there is a perceived profit to be made, the market responds.

Maybe, but you can't say that the fact that trillions of pounds of capital equipment would become obsolete and require replacement (e.g. ships, planes, cars, industrial equipment) would be a minor issue, particular during a debt crisis.

Even if the new infrastructure could be rolled out quickly, there's the problem that in an economy based on petroleum transitioning to an economy based on alternatives requires enormous petroleum inputs to construct the new infrastructure, at a time when falling oil production could drive prices to very high levels.

Kohoutek

frank_begbie wrote: »

The main thing is, we are at least 10 years from where we should be as far as research and development goes.

Unfortunately we are still attached by the umbilical cord to oil and that will only change when it becomes obvious that we have reached "peak oil".

The sad thing is that if government had started preparing ten or twenty years ago, by imposing a carbon tax, by building more electrified public transport, by building more nuclear plants and renewables, by recognising there are limits to population growth etc, then we would have a reasonable transition away from oil.

Of course politicians (and many of the powers that be) don't think in the long term, so we're in a situation where it's very difficult to see how the transition will not have enormous economic and social disruption.

Generali

Kohoutek wrote: »

The sad thing is that if government had started preparing ten or twenty years ago, by imposing a carbon tax, by building more electrified public transport, by building more nuclear plants and renewables, by recognising there are limits to population growth etc, then we would have a reasonable transition away from oil.

Of course politicians (and many of the powers that be) don't think in the long term, so we're in a situation where it's very difficult to see how the transition will not have enormous economic and social disruption.

Why leave it to the pollies? The transition from a coal-based economy to an oil based one was managed perfectly well AFAK by the private sector. As oil becomes more expensive, people will be inclined to use other things.

Australia, for example, is a big producer of gas so will move in some part to LNG. Perhaps the UK will go back to Town Gas for cooking. There are generally alternatives to most things, the phrase 'ceteris paribus' that economists love to use (all other things being equal) is the biggest block for taking economics from classroom to real world as all other things aren't equal. If butter goes up tp $50/kg I buy margerine or olive oil. If running a car shoots up in price I eventually move closer to work or buy a cheaper car or move jobs closer to where I am or put pressure on my boss to let me work from home.

If food prices start to rise then more people will grow their own as indeed I am doing as a direct result of the outrageous prices charged by supermarkets out here.

Kohoutek

Generali wrote: »

Why leave it to the pollies? The transition from a coal-based economy to an oil based one was managed perfectly well AFAK by the private sector. As oil becomes more expensive, people will be inclined to use other things.

I think because the transition from coal to oil happened very gradually over decades but the transition from oil to alternatives will by necessity have to occur over a much shorter timespan to avoid huge economic dislocation hence it will require much more central co-ordination. We weren't running out of cheap coal when we were making the transition to oil, and in fact coal is still a considerable proportion of UK primary energy.

Alternative energy by nature usually requires huge subsidy – coal, oil and gas are extractive industries that require a relatively small investment of capital to harness the the enormous amount of chemical energy contained in fossil fuels. In terms of the return in energy and money on investment, wind and solar are fundamentally worse forms of energy than fossil fuels.

Another reason is that the best way to overcome peak oil, or peak resources is simply by having fewer people – and only government can direct policies on family planning.

Generali wrote: »

Australia, for example, is a big producer of gas so will move in some part to LNG. Perhaps the UK will go back to Town Gas for cooking. There are generally alternatives to most things..

There are alternatives, but both your examples are simply replacing one form of finite fossil fuel energy with another. If we were to replace the energy we derive from oil from natural gas and coal (Town Gas), then they we would simply face peak gas and peak coal within a decade or two. In some cases, like the UK, domestic reserves of gas and coal will be already very depleted within a decade at current consumption levels. It stands to reason that gas and coal producers will be using more of their production domestically to replace oil, so I think that there would not be enough available on international markets for the UK to import its energy in any significant amount.

Underground coal gasification is the best hope for the UK if it gets off the ground, because it uses coal that is too deep to be mined which exists in enormous quantities, although it's potentially a very dangerous process (setting fire to coal underground and collecting the gas):

http://www.britishcoalgasification.co.uk/

However in some cases, like the current agricultural model – oil in pesticides and natural gas in fertiliser, not to mention cheap oil for tractors and transportation of fuel – I don't see what the alternatives are. I think the only solution is a more local sustainable form of food production like permaculture.