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Rockport090415A

I ended last week’s post by explaining the significance of getting all of the facts about our energy supply future as a first step.

Before deciding whether or not to accept the realities of a depleting finite resource and the impact this will have on our society—or ignoring it for whatever comforting alternative explanations suit one’s needs—understanding the implications and those realities is a more beneficial approach.

THE FIRST CHALLENGE IS NOT THE ONLY ONE

The corollary to an appreciation for what a less adequate, less affordable, and less available supply of our primary energy resource is the transition itself. That effort will not happen via magic. Not only will the research, development, and planning require more effort, time, and contributions than we’re likely considering now, putting everything into place is no easy assignment, either.

Just to keep things interesting, the transition from an oil-based industrial economy to Whatever-Plan-B-Will-Be will have to be achieved using that same declining measure of supply to design and construct and transport and put into place the infrastructure we’ll need to support and maintain this as yet unidentified and not-planned-for-yet Plan B, thus making less available to us for all of our ‘normal’ demands and needs, creating its own set of problems. We’re talking about using a lot of declining energy supplies that’s a lot more expensive, over the course of a lot of years to put into operation a lot of new industrial and economic and civic foundations to (we hope) enable us to maintain some semblance of growth and prosperity—all while using new energy resources that simply will not be as efficient or inexpensive or dependable as oil has been.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook and the Seneca Cliff

May 19, 2016

EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook and the Seneca Cliff

The scenario above shows an Oil Shock Model with a URR of 3600 Gb and EIA data from 1970 to 2015 and the Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) 2016 early release reference projection from 2016 to 2040. The oil shock model was originally developed by Webhubbletelescope and presented at his blog Mobjectivist and in a free book The Oil Conundrum.

The World extraction rate from producing reserves must rise to 15% in 2040 to accomplish this for this “high” URR scenario. This high scenario is 100 Gb lower than my earlier high scenario because I reduced my estimate of extra heavy oil URR (API gravity<10) to 500 Gb. The annual decline rate rises to 5% from 2043 to 2047 creating a “Seneca cliff”, the decline rate is reduced to 2% by 2060.

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The scenario presented above uses BP’s Energy Outlook 2035, published in Feb 2016. This outlook does not extend to 2040, maximum output is 88 Mb/d in 2035 at the end of the scenario. This scenario is still optimistic, but is more reasonable than the EIA AEO 2016. Extraction rates rise to 10.6% and the annual decline rate rises to 2.5% in 2042 and is reduced to under 2% by 2053.

A problem with the BP Outlook is the expectation that US light tight oil (LTO) output will rise to 7.5 Mb/d from 2030 to 2035, the BP forecast for US LTO from 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 is shown below.

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A more realistic forecast would be a peak of 6 Mb/d in 2022 with output declining to 3 Mb/d by 2035. The scenario below shows roughly what World output might be with this more realistic, but still optimistic scenario. There is a plateau in output at 85 Mb/d from 2025 to 2030 with annual decline rate peaking at 2.1% in 2044 and then falling under 2% per year from 2048 to 2070.

blogchart/

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Where To Begin?

May 18, 2016

Peak Oil: Where To Begin?

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The unpleasant truth now and soon is that the ready supply of oil and gas which we almost always take for granted [the occasional price spike notwithstanding] is on its way to becoming not-so-ready. A host of factors now in place are steadily converting possibility into likelihood. Thinking that we’ll just implement a few crash programs to straighten out that potential mess is a nice thought, but we simply do not have the means to make that happen—not the technological capabilities, not the personnel, not the industries, not the leadership … yet. Clearly, we do not have enough time to do it all with effortless ease and minimal disruptions.

The farther we continue to travel down that path which relies on fossil fuels to sustain us rather than on a new one marked “new future with new and necessary alternatives”, the longer and more difficult will our backtracking be. What supplied us on the front part of the journey will no longer be there for us on the ride back. We’re going to have to create entirely new systems and infrastructures and modes of production and transportation—or at the very least re-build extensively—in order to adapt to new sources of energy. So relying on current conditions and practices and customs and tinkering only along the edges simply won’t work because we are going to be dependent on entirely different energy resources.

A recent article highlighted the fact that many oil producers are continuing production efforts even though they are operating at a loss. Many factors obviously contribute to such an incongruous decision, chief among them the costs associated with resumption. How long should we expect those trends to continue?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 7

May 14, 2016

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 7

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I began last week’s post with a variation of these questions:

How do optimistic projections from ExxonMobil’s “The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040” report—which I highlighted in that post—square themselves in the face of the oil production challenges suggested by the news excerpts which were also included in that piece? How long do those opposed to climate change and peak oil implications dance away from the unpleasant truths?

What is the benefit beyond avoiding painful discussions today? At what point do those contrarian viewpoints give way to a recognition that there is more than enough evidence already in play to make those challenges both very real and quite formidable now?

How does postponing not just acknowledgment but any and all efforts to come to mutual understandings and a commitment to work cooperatively in addressing these matters make it any easier or better for anyone?

At what point does the single-minded pursuit of any and all efforts to oppose, deny, or obstruct the efforts of one’s political opponents give way to a recognition that repeatedly shooting oneself in the foot has limited benefits? A question I’ve raised numerous times in the past is just as relevant today: if you have to mislead, misinform, distract, omit, or even lie outright to support your opposing viewpoints or policy proposals, how valid are they to begin with?

What’s the point? What happens if you “succeed”?

Today’s reality about fossil fuels—oil in particular—and production thereof is no different than it was several months ago and no different than it will be in the days ahead: it is still a finite resource. Production of conventional crude oil, responsible for most of our technological marvels and economic progress over the course of a century-plus, peaked a decade ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 6

May 7, 2016

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 6

I suggested at the outset of this series that I did not want it to turn into yet another exercise in mocking those who do not accept the implications of peak oil. A legitimate argument could be made that I’ve failed in that objective.

I view the tone adopted in a number of comments I’ve offered not as mocking so much as it is an attempt to point out that there is a communication problem emanating from the Right [not a news bulletin], and by doing so in the manner I’ve chosen—more wry, in my mind, than mockery—I’m trying to suggest that “the opposition” consider how their tactics and failure to substantiate their positions carries risks for them as well.

Actions and words create impressions and responses and outcomes. If the objective of one’s behavior—individually or in abiding by the expectations of one’s group—is to produce a satisfactory objective however defined or relevant to the issue, ignoring the impact on those who do not share the same considerations, values, or goals is a risk rarely considered to the degree necessary.

Reality will not be impressed by efforts to ignore it or deny its impact. Uttering statements as if their mere appearance online is sufficient to refute opposing viewpoints cannot sustain itself as a strategy for much longer. What Happens Then?

It may not be a message many wish to hear, but when it comes to peak oil and climate change—among other critical issues of at least national scope—we are all in this together.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Time To Get Serious Pt 4

May 4, 2016

Peak Oil: Time To Get Serious Pt 4

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A fossil fuel-driven-and-made-possible life is all any of us have ever known. There are virtually no aspects of commerce, leisure, transportation, or consumption which do not depend in some part on inexpensive, readily-available and easily-produced fossil fuels. That is most certainly not going to change dramatically overnight, but the situation we’ll soon be facing simply isn’t going to get any better if all we’re counting on for many more years is even more inexpensive, readily-available and easily-produced fossil fuels.

So what to do? Do we want a voice in the solutions or not?

Who among us wants even more problems and worries to contend with now? Plates are still full and then some. For issues like peak oil—where it’s not at all clear that problems with fossil fuel supplies exist today or tomorrow or next month—that challenge very quickly slides down our list of priorities.

Aided by determined efforts to shade the truths about current and future production challenges makes it that much easier to pay no attention at all to what a declining base of our primary energy source might mean for all of us.

All duly noted and a perfectly reasonable determination to make … today. The underlying concerns voiced by proponents of peak oil and its impact remains unchanged notwithstanding. A future with diminishing fossil fuel resources—our future, more specifically—is going to be so different and in so many ways, and so much more constrained by that fact, it’s unlikely anyone can legitimately wrap their mind around that eventuality at this moment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”

April 28, 2016

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”

In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom’s economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent on air power. It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective, never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback.

Meanwhile, in a cheap-oil, belt-tightening moment, in an increasingly edgy country, the royals are reining in budgets and undermining the good life they were previously financing for many of their citizens. The one thing they continue to do is pump oil — their only form of wealth — as if there were no tomorrow, while threatening further price-depressing rises in oil production in the near future. And that’s hardly been the end of their threats. While taking on the Iranians (and the Russians), they have also been lashing out at the local opposition, executing a prominent dissident Shiite cleric among others and even baring their teeth at Washington. They have reportedly threatened the Obama administration with the sell-off of hundreds of billions of dollars in American assets if a bill, now in Congress and aimed at opening the Saudis to American lawsuits over their supposed culpability for the 9/11 attacks, were to pass.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Where did all the oil go? The peak is back

April 25, 2016

Where did all the oil go? The peak is back

Solar power has grown exponentially and the target of 50 percent renewables by 2028 to avoid a 2C world is achievable

An extensive new scientific analysis published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy & Environment says that proved conventional oil reserves as detailed in industry sources are likely “overstated” by half.

According to standard sources like the Oil & Gas Journal, BP’s Annual Statistical Review of World Energy, and the US Energy Information Administration, the world contains 1.7 trillion barrels of proved conventional reserves.

However, according to the new study by Professor Michael Jefferson of the ESCP Europe Business School, a former chief economist at oil major Royal Dutch/Shell Group, this official figure which has helped justify massive investments in new exploration and development, is almost double the real size of world reserves.

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIRES) is a series of high-quality peer-reviewed publications which runs authoritative reviews of the literature across relevant academic disciplines.

According to Professor Michael Jefferson, who spent nearly 20 years at Shell in various senior roles from head of planning in Europe to director of oil supply and trading, “the five major Middle East oil exporters altered the basis of their definition of ‘proved’ conventional oil reserves from a 90 percent probability down to a 50 percent probability from 1984. The result has been an apparent (but not real) increase in their ‘proved’ conventional oil reserves of some 435 billion barrels.”

Global reserves have been further inflated, he wrote in his study, by adding reserve figures from Venezuelan heavy oil and Canadian tar sands – despite the fact that they are “more difficult and costly to extract” and generally of “poorer quality” than conventional oil. This has brought up global reserve estimates by a further 440 billion barrels.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil Is Back

April 25, 2016

Peak Oil Is Back

Where did all the oil go? The peak is back

An extensive new scientific analysis published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy & Environment says that proved conventional oil reserves as detailed in industry sources are likely “overstated” by half.

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIRES) is a series of high-quality peer-reviewed publications which runs authoritative reviews of the literature across relevant academic disciplines.

Jefferson’s conclusion is stark: “Put bluntly, the standard claim that the world has proved conventional oil reserves of nearly 1.7 trillion barrels is overstated by about 875 billion barrels.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 4

April 22, 2016

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 4

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I’ve mentioned in the prior posts of this series that there were two articles posted online a number of weeks ago * which caught my attention for reasons which at first puzzled me. No disrespect intended either author, but the contents of each were fairly routine offerings by those who clearly have not accepted the rationale of Peak Oil [and/or climate change] and have a decidedly anti-liberal/progressive perspective about … probably everything. Not exactly unusual these days, is it?

But as I suggested in the second post of this series, what struck me about the combination of the pieces [and the commentary from quite rabid believers in all things Right] was not the messages conveyed. They were what is by now standard fare from the Right. Perhaps it was nothing more than I had finally maxed out on the same vague, boilerplate, stay-with-the-message contributions to public discourse on matters of more than passing significance.

They each and both highlighted just about everything that’s not only “wrong” [disheartening and pointless, more accurately] about public policy and social issues discussions, but they also managed to encapsulate how each side in our ongoing Left-Right war talks past the “opposition.” They have no use for what we on the Left are trying to convey. From our perspective, the light-on-facts-if-they-even-bother approach seems more ludicrous by the day.

Given that our understanding of facts suggests we have some serious challenges ahead, the completely dismissive attitude of our perspective has flown past “just annoying” and landed on the “what the f*ck are they thinking?” square. Ignoring every bit of evidence offered in order to remain true to their foxhole partners carries the potential for significant consequences that will land on all of us. That makes us a bit edgy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years

April 20, 2016

Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years

British MPs launch landmark report on impending environmental ‘limits’ to economic growth

A report commissioned on behalf of a cross-party group of British MPs authored by a former UK government advisor, the first of its kind, says that industrial civilisation is currently on track to experience “an eventual collapse of production and living standards” in the next few decades if business-as-usual continues.

The report published by the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Limits to Growth, which launched in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening, reviews the scientific merits of a controversial 1972 model by a team of MIT scientists, which forecasted a possible collapse of civilisation due to resource depletion.

The report launch at the House of Commons was addressed by Anders Wijkman, co-chair of the Club of Rome, which originally commissioned the MIT study.

At the time, the MIT team’s findings had been widely criticised in the media for being alarmist. To this day, it is often believed that the ‘limits to growth’ forecasts were dramatically wrong.

But the new report by the APPG on Limits to Growth, whose members consist of Conservative, Labour, Green and Scottish National Party members of parliament, reviews the scientific literature and finds that the original model remains surprisingly robust.

Authored by Professor Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey, who was Economics Commissioner on the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, and former Carbon Brief policy analyst Robin Webster, the report concludes that:

“There is unsettling evidence that society is tracking the ‘standard run’ of the original study — which leads ultimately to collapse. Detailed and recent analyses suggest that production peaks for some key resources may only be decades away.”

The 1972 team used their system dynamics model of the consumption of key planetary resources to explore a range of different scenarios.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Time To Get Serious Pt 2

April 19, 2016

Peak Oil: Time To Get Serious Pt 2

If nothing else, we’ll need to recognize that, like climate change, Peak Oil is not some event looming on a distant horizon. Peak Oil is happening now.

We must guard against the notion that Peak Oil’s impact (like climate change) is just a one-time, cataclysmic episode “scheduled” to happen but only at some random time at an indefinite point sometime long into the future. That thinking suggest we can put off dealing with it until “later.” Conventional crude oil production peaked a decade ago. The short-term bump from tight oil production in recent years changed the totals for a brief period, but the the main issue is unchanged.

Media and industry spin may alter the perceptions of reality, but the efforts won’t change the reality. Peak Oil is already here! It’s not just about barrels of production totals. It’s what happens to a modern society powered by a finite fossil fuel resource drawn down every day to provide energy for a nearly-infinite number of needs, products, and demands.

The B team cannot match what conventional crude oil has provided all of us for more than a century. We’re now cruising along atop a somewhat steady (?) plateau of crude oil supply while feverish exploration continues, but a finite resource is still finite.

And inferior substitutes with their assorted financial and production challenges are still inferior substitutes.

The fact that peak oil’s impact won’t be obvious to all but the most rigidly delusional by next week, or next month, or next year, or for several years thereafter won’t alter the fact that what has powered modern society over these many decades will not be as available, affordable, or plentiful to power modern society in the years ahead. If we’re all waiting for a one-time collapse, then we’ve got a long wait ahead.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Personal Appreciation of M. King Hubbert

April 18, 2016

A Personal Appreciation of M. King Hubbert

A recent vacation afforded me the opportunity to read The Oracle of Oil, Mason Inman’s excellent new biography of Marion King Hubbert. I strongly recommend it. But, rather than writing a standard book review (which might cover much of the same ground as this one by Frank Kaminski), I’m inspired instead simply to offer a few words in appreciation of Hubbert himself.

Born in Texas in 1903, Hubbert earned his Ph.D. in geology at University of Chicago, then taught at Columbia University. He later worked at Shell’s research laboratory and for the U.S. Geological Survey, and occasionally lectured at Stanford and UC Berkeley. His contributions to geophysics included a mathematical demonstration that rock in the Earth’s crust, because it is under great pressure over large areas, behaves in some ways more like a liquid than a solid. He earned every relevant scientific award short of a Nobel prize, and won lasting fame as the father of “peak oil”—the theory (by now more of an observation) that oil production in any large area will inevitably start from zero, reach one or more high points, and decline back toward zero. (Here is a brief video clipof Hubbert in 1976 explaining the very basics of peak oil).

For years I’ve had a photographic portrait of Hubbert, given to me by his nephew, hanging just above my computer in my home office. I described Hubbert’s best-known accomplishments—his mathematical modeling of oil depletion and his successful forecast of a decline in U.S. petroleum production beginning around 1970—in my 2003 book The Party’s Over, and I have spent most of the last couple of decades reading, writing, and speaking publicly about oil depletion and its consequences, so I could fairly be described as a longstanding Hubbert devotee. After devouring Inman’s meticulously researched and entertainingly written biography, I feel even more indebted to the great man than before.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Time To Get Serious Pt 1

April 12, 2016

Peak Oil: Time To Get Serious Pt 1

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The truths, unpleasant though they may be, are the truths: inexpensive, readily available oil is slowly but surely becoming less readily available, more expensive, and harder to come by. Current conditions [ultra-low prices; curtailed/canceled oil production and exploration projects; over-supply; declining investments; high debt] only highlight that the problems of maintaining an adequate, affordable, accessible supply of fossil fuel needed to power modern society aren’t going away.

We can pay homage to and wish for all the magic technology in the world; ignore every single environmental consequence; disregard the fundamental differences and considerations regarding conventional crude oil production and tight oil production; ignore all the geopolitical and geological realities; pretend that oil will still be ours for the asking as often and for as much as we want; or hope that Someone Else is going to rescue us, but delusion and denial will only take us so far.

Those who know but have worked much too hard to mislead and misrepresent must now devote some of their prodigious efforts and considerable knowledge to not just truth-telling, but taking a vital leadership role in exploring how we plan for a future where fossil fuel resources will no longer serve as the primary energy supply for our society.

Recognizing the awesome complexity and widespread impact of that fact merits serious effort and honorable leadership. Are we going to find it? Soon?

The sooner we accept the evidence before us, the sooner we begin to plan intelligently for new methods of powering modern society. Anyone deluding themselves into thinking it won’t be all that difficult or will develop in anyone’s definition of a reasonably short period of time needs to step away from the conversation until the facts and realities settle in. We’ve had plenty of senseless denial as it is.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

World Crude plus Condensate Decline Rate

April 7, 2016

World Crude plus Condensate Decline Rate

There is concern that World C+C may decline steeply after the peak, I believe those concerns are over blown. There is always the possibility that there could be a severe recession due to high debt levels, high oil prices or potentially due to both problems in combination. War and environmental damage due to overpopulation are also potential problems which may lead to a crisis.

If none of these problems arises in the near term (say for the next ten years), and demand for oil is high enough to keep annual average oil prices above $75/b from 2018 to 2025, then the average annual decline rate of oil (C+C) output will remain under 2%.

For simplicity in the analysis that follows, I assume the peak in C+C output is 2015 and that output will decline at a relatively steady rate from 2015 to 2025. This in unlikely to be the case in practice and the actual path of future world output is unknown, the intention is to determine a likely trend line for World C+C output. Using quarterly C+C output data from the EIA, I constructed the charts that follow.

Data is from the International Energy Statistics page at the EIA website.

The “Big 14” oil producers from 2002 to 2015 are (in order from largest to smallest): Russia, Saudi Arabia, United States, China, Iran, Mexico, Canada, UAE, Venezuela, Kuwait, Iraq, Nigeria, Norway, and Brazil. The Rest of the World (ROW) is all other oil producers besides the “Big 14”.
All charts below (except the natural log charts) are in kb/d.

declinepost/

The Big 14 increased C+C output by about 8 Mb/d from 2010 to 2015.

declinepost/

For the ROW C+C output decreased by about 3 Mb/d from 2010 to 2015.

declinepost/

To consider decline rates we look at the linear trend of the natural log of output. For the ROW the average annual decline rate was 2.69% from 2010 to 2015.

declinepost/

The C+C output of the Big 14 increased at an average annual rate of 2.71% from 2010 to 2015.

declinepost/

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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