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Whispers of the Fall

May 9, 2022

Whispers of the Fall

It’s been sixteen years now since I first started posting these weekly essays to the internet. Though I didn’t originally intend them to focus on the crisis of industrial society, that theme was impossible for me to evade, and I soon gave up trying; there was too much that had to be said about the future of our age, and too few people were saying it.  Over the years that followed, I watched (and joined in) the peak oil movement as it rose and fell, watched (and kept my distance from) the parallel movement of climate change activism as it rose and fell, watched (and dealt in my own life with some of the consequences of) the slow twilight of America’s global empire and the vaster twilight of Western civilization as a whole—and all of those got discussed in blog posts.

I sometimes get asked by readers what happened to all the fuss about peak oil, and now and again someone brings up one of the other topics I’ve talked about over the years and wonders what’s up with those. A glance back over those four themes thus seems appropriate just now. Partly, a retrospective look is a useful thing from time to time, and partly—well, we’ll get to that.

We can start with peak oil.  Starting in the middle years of the twentieth century, a handful of petroleum geologists began to point out that building a civilization on the breakneck extraction and consumption of nonrenewable fossil fuels would have an awkward downside once the fuels began to run short. Their concerns were brushed aside by almost everyone else.  When the United States—the first nation on earth to start extracting oil commercially…

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

Will the world ever reach peak crude production of November 2018 again? (part 1)

May 6, 2022

Will the world ever reach peak crude production of November 2018 again? (part 1)

According to EIA data global crude & condensate production peaked in November 2018 at 84.5 mb/d. The peak was short-lived: 2 months above 83 mb/d plus 3 months above 84 mb/d while the average for the remaining months was 82.2 mb/d.

Fig 1: Graph showing additional unconventional and Iraqi crude production after 2008

US shale oil (incremental from 2011), Canadian tar sands (incremental from 2011) and Iraq’s oil (incremental from 2008) contributed to an increase in production above the Dec 2005 peak of 74.2 mb/d. The 2005 peak caused the 2008 oil price shock (Chinese demand for the Olympic games also played a role) and the 2009 financial crisis. The response in the US was quantitative easing QE1-QE3, copied and repeated by many countries, creating a gigantic asset bubble.

Fig 2: Current oil price path compared to 2007/08

Oil prices went up already before the war in Ukraine which is changing the whole world, including oil supply and demand. Lockdowns from Covid, as now again experienced in China, complicate matters.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Demand-Destruction-Is-Delaying-An-Oil-Supply-Crisis.html

Fig 3: Crude oil production from the 3 big producers

Russia had been a steady producer over the last 15 years, slowly inching up production by 2 mb/d since 2005 but recently flattening out below 11 mb/d. A Rystad study predicted a peak in 2020. More details are in this previous post:

28 Feb 2022 Russian oil production update Nov 2021
https://crudeoilpeak.info/russian-oil-production-update-nov-2021

The Baker Institute for public policy did this analysis:

REROUTE, REDUCE, OR REPLACE?
HOW THE OIL MARKET MIGHT COPE WITH A LOSS OF RUSSIAN EXPORTS AFTER THE
INVASION OF UKRAINE
Mar 2022
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/3bf292f2/ces-pub-russian-oil-040822.pdf

Let’s have a look at the crude oil production changes in the last 5 years:

Fig 4: Countries with the largest changes are stacked on top

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

The world has a major crude oil problem; expect conflict ahead

May 1, 2022

The world has a major crude oil problem; expect conflict ahead

Media outlets tend to make it sound as if all our economic problems are temporary problems, related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, world crude oil production has been falling behind needed levels since 2019. This problem, by itself, encourages the world economy to contract in unexpected ways, including in the form of economic lockdowns and aggression between countries. This crude oil shortfall seems likely to become greater in the years ahead, pushing the world economy toward conflict and the elimination of inefficient players.

To me, crude oil production is of particular importance because this form of oil is especially useful. With refining, it can operate tractors used to cultivate crops, and it can operate trucks to bring food to stores to sell. With refining, it can be used to make jet fuel. It can also be refined to make fuel for earth moving equipment used in road building. In recent years, it has become common to publish “all liquids” amounts, which include liquid fuels such as ethanol and natural gas liquids. These fuels have uses when energy density is not important, but they do not operate the heavy machinery needed to maintain today’s economy.

In this post, I provide an overview of the crude oil situation as I see it. In my analysis, I utilize crude oil production data by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) that has only recently become available for the full year of 2021. In some exhibits, I also make estimates for the first quarter of 2022 based on preliminary information for this period.

[1] World crude oil production grew marginally in 2021.

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

Peak Oil Might Be Just Three Years Away, McKinsey Says

May 1, 2022

Peak Oil Might Be Just Three Years Away, McKinsey Says

Peak Oil Might Be Just Three Years Away, McKinsey Says
The energy transition continues to gain steam, with oil demand projected to peak in this decade – perhaps as soon as 2025, according to new research by leading global consultancy McKinsey & Company.

McKinsey’s Global Energy Perspective research was launched at a time when global energy markets are facing an unprecedented array of uncertainties, including the conflict in Ukraine. Nonetheless, the long-term transition to low-carbon energy systems continues to see strong momentum and, in several respects, acceleration.

Leading up to COP26, a total of 64 countries, covering more than 89 percent of global emissions, have pledged or legislated to achieve net-zero in the coming decades.

To keep up with these net-zero ambitions, the global energy system may need to significantly accelerate its transformation. The report projects a rapid shift in the global energy mix, with the share of renewables in global power generation expected to double in the next 15 years while total fossil fuel demand is projected to peak before 2030, depending on the scenario.

However, even with current government commitments and forecasted technology trends, global warming is projected to exceed 1.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, and reaching a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway is increasingly challenging.

“In the past few years, we have certainly seen the energy transition pick up the pace. Every year we’ve published this report, peak oil demand has moved closer. Under our middle scenario assumptions, oil demand could even peak in the next three to five years, primarily driven by electric-vehicle adoption,” Christer Tryggestad, a Senior Partner at McKinsey, said

“However, even if all countries with net-zero commitments deliver on their aspirations, global warming is still expected to reach 1.7°C. To keep the 1.5°C pathway in sight, even more ambitious acceleration is needed,” Tryggestad added.

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

Food shortages as the energy crisis grows and supply chains break?

April 4, 2022

Food shortages as the energy crisis grows and supply chains break?

Preface. This is a long preface followed by two articles about how supply chains and complex tractors may be affected by energy shortages and consequent supply chain failures in the future.Which we’re already seeing as massive numbers of ships sit offshore waiting to be unloaded, and a shortage of truckers to deliver goods when they do arrive.

Supply chain failures will only get worse, affecting food supply and making the prediction of 3 billion more people by 2050 unlikely.  We are running out of time to replace fossil fuels with something else that is unknown and definitely not commercial for transportation, manufacturing and other essential services and products. Even the electric grid needs natural gas to stay up, no matter how many wind turbines or solar panels are built (Friedemann 2016).

The reason time is running out is that global conventional oil, where 90% of our petroleum comes from, peaked in 2008 (EIA 2018 page 45), and world oil production of both conventional and unconventional oil in 2018 (EIA 2020).

In the unlikely event you don’t know why this is scary, consider that we are alive today thanks to heavy-duty transportation, which runs almost exclusively on diesel, four billion of us are alive due to finite natural gas derived fertilizer, 500,000 products are made out of fossil fuels, and much of our essential manufacturing (cement, steel, metals, ceramics, glass, microchips) depend on the high heat of fossil fuels. There is not much time to come up with processes to electrify or use hydrogen to replace fossil fuels, which don’t exist yet, let alone rebuild trillions of dollars of infrastructure and a new unknown energy distribution system, triple the electric grid transmission system, and replace hundreds of millions of vehicles and equipment to run on “something else” (Friedemann 2021).

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

As oil declines, the threat of a greenhouse earth & extinction from climate change decline

April 4, 2022

As oil declines, the threat of a greenhouse earth & extinction from climate change decline

Carbon sequestration, wind, solar, geo-engineering, and other remedies are trivial compared to the effect declining fossil fuels will have on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The natural rate of decline today is 8.5%, exponentially increasing, and offset by 4%, so the gap will continue to grow wider, with petroleum eventually decreasing by 6% and more a year in the future.

Climate change is also a symptom of overpopulation and overshoot of the planet’s carrying capacity. If family planning became the green new deal, there would be a chance for all problems to be reduced in severity.   “Renewables” are certainly not a solution since transportation and manufacturing can’t be electrified or run on anything else (see Chapter 6 and 9 of “Life After Fossil Fuels”).

Climate models developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show a range of greenhouse gas trajectories. The worst-case IPCC scenario is Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5. This predicts a rise of temperature by 5°C, and this is the scenario you read about daily in the newspapers as being the most likely “business as usual” future. But lately many scientists think around 3 °C (RCP 4.5 to RCP 6) is more likely (Hausfather and Peters 2020).

Geologists have a far more optimistic outlook.  Using realistic fossil fuel reserves in climate models, they predict an outcome from RCP 2.6 to RCP 4.5 (Doose 2004; Kharecha and Hansen 2008; Brecha 2008; Nel 2011; Chiari and Zecca 2011; Ward et al. 2011, 2012; Höök and Tang 2013; Mohr et al. 2015; Capellán-Pérez et al. 2016; Murray 2016; Wang et al. 2017).

The IPCC scenarios do not model fossil fuels at all, since their assumption is that we will be burning fossil fuels, at exponentially increasing amounts until 2400. The IPCC RCP 8.5 hothouse world scenario assumes a fivefold increase in coal use by 2100 (Ritchie and Dowlatabadi 2017), even though coal production may have peaked, or will soon (see chapter 6 of “Life After Fossil Fuels”).

So rather than becoming crisply well-done, perhaps we’ll scrape by with a medium rare sunburn.

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

Preparing for Peak Oil Part 1

April 4, 2022

Preparing for Peak Oil Part 1

100 Things You Can Do To Prepare Yourself for Peak Oil

April 4, 2022

100 Things You Can Do To Prepare Yourself for Peak Oil

Home:

1. If you live in a place where it gets hot in the summer, consider building a screen room (a room with screened windows all around or almost always around), either attached to your house or seperate. You can put a wood cookstove in the screenroom and use it as a summer kitchen for cooking and canning, avoiding adding heat to your house. You can also sleep in the screenroom when it is too hot to sleep inside, and reducing or eliminating the need for air conditioning. The room can double in the winter as a woodshed. If you cannot build on, freestanding screenrooms are also a possibility. For sleeping even a mesh camping pavilion or tent under the trees will be better than many houses.

2. For those in cold climates, consider a four poster bed. These were once not merely decorative – with heavy coverings for the top and the sides, they could be heated with your body heat, and provided a cozy sleeping space in an era when bedrooms were unheated. A frame can be added to many existing bedframes if you are at all handy, and curtains are easily made. You can also add wall hangings and tapestries as cheap forms of insulation to existing walls. They can be made from old blankets and cheap fabric, or can be as artful as you like.

3. Clean and organize your house, and get rid of anything you don’t need. Time is at a premium, and will only be more so in the future. For things that you wish to keep for the long term, pack them up and keep lists of where they are. You may need to find things quickly. Make sure emergency supplies, such as medical items, flashlights, etc… are readily available and can be found in the dark and under stress.

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

Food shortages as the energy crisis grows and supply chains break?

March 22, 2022

Food shortages as the energy crisis grows and supply chains break?

Preface. This is a long preface followed by two articles about how supply chains and complex tractors may be affected by energy shortages and consequent supply chain failures in the future.Which we’re already seeing as massive numbers of ships sit offshore waiting to be unloaded, and a shortage of truckers to deliver goods when they do arrive.

Supply chain failures will only get worse, affecting food supply and making the prediction of 3 billion more people by 2050 unlikely.  We are running out of time to replace fossil fuels with something else that is unknown and definitely not commercial for transportation, manufacturing and other essential services and products. Even the electric grid needs natural gas to stay up, no matter how many wind turbines or solar panels are built (Friedemann 2016).

The reason time is running out is that global conventional oil, where 90% of our petroleum comes from, peaked in 2008 (EIA 2018 page 45), and world oil production of both conventional and unconventional oil in 2018 (EIA 2020).

In the unlikely event you don’t know why this is scary, consider that we are alive today thanks to heavy-duty transportation, which runs almost exclusively on diesel, four billion of us are alive due to finite natural gas derived fertilizer, 500,000 products are made out of fossil fuels, and much of our essential manufacturing (cement, steel, metals, ceramics, glass, microchips) depend on the high heat of fossil fuels. There is not much time to come up with processes to electrify or use hydrogen to replace fossil fuels, which don’t exist yet, let alone rebuild trillions of dollars of infrastructure and a new unknown energy distribution system, triple the electric grid transmission system, and replace hundreds of millions of vehicles and equipment to run on “something else” (Friedemann 2021).

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

Matt Simmons on Peak Oil

March 7, 2022

Matt Simmons on Peak Oil

Russian oil production update Nov 2021

February 28, 2022

Russian oil production update Nov 2021


Pic 1: Druzhba oil pipeline, refineries supplied
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/7/4144/4136/Druzhba%20IEA.pngFig 2: Crude production peaked before Covid at around 10.6 mb/d

That this production level would be some kind of limit was known for a long time

April 2008
The IEA’s latest medium-term outlook, published in July, points to Russia as the third largest contributor to an expected 2.6m b/d increase in non-OPEC supply, just behind Brazil and biofuels. It said that Russia would increase its production to 10.5m b/d in 2012, about 600,000 b/d above last year’s level.
https://www.ft.com/content/967448f4-0b1e-11dd-8ccf-0000779fd2ac
.

Russian oil production might never recover to pre-coronavirus levels, the country’s Energy Ministry has forecast, according to the Kommersant business paper.
In a strategy document outlining prospects for Russia’s critical oil and gas industry, the government said its “base case” — or most likely — scenario, is that Russia’s oil production will never again hit the record levels recorded in 2019.
In the last full year before the pandemic, Russia produced 560 million tons of oil — equivalent to 11.3 million barrels a day. But output dropped for the first time in more than a decade in 2020 as Russia agreed significant production cuts with Saudi Arabia and other members of the OPEC cartel in a bid to support oil prices at the start of the pandemic — pushing production down 9% to 10.3 million barrels per day.
In the scenario labelled most probable, the Energy Ministry predicts Russia’s oil output will grow over the rest of the decade — but fail to hit the record output of 2019, with production hitting a post-coronavirus peak of 11.1 million barrels a day in 2029 before decreasing to 9.4 million barrels a day by 2035.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/04/12/russia-may-have-passed-peak-oil-output-government-a73558

The Norwegian energy consultant did this analysis:
Lack of field sanctioning drives long-term oil production decline in Russia
August 2019
https://www.rystadenergy.com/newsevents/news/newsletters/EandP/lack-of-field-sanctioning-drives-long-term-oil-production-decline-in-russia/
.

Fig 3: Rystad’s projection of Russian oil production to 2030

The red curve shows the impact of Covid with data from https://minenergo.gov.ru/en/activity/statistics

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

Is there a long emergency plan for peak oil?

February 12, 2022

Ever since I first learned about peak oil in 2000, the Master Resource that makes all other resources and activities possible, I’ve wondered what The Plan to cope with its decline and eventual disappearance was. So it wouldn’t be just a long emergency plan, but a permanent emergency plan.

There have indeed been plans: Nixon launched “Project Independence” after the oil shock of 1973 to wean the U.S. from its dependence on imported oil by 1980 with kerogen shale oil, hydrogen fuel vehicles, and nuclear power.

When that didn’t pan out, further government attempts were made to find alternatives for fossil fuels, for example (NRC 2009):

  • Richard Nixon’s “Project Independence” (1974)
  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory (1974)
  • Gerald Ford’s “Energy Independence Act” (1975)
  • Energy Policy & Conservation Act (1975) to restrict exports of coal, petroleum products, natural gas, petrochemical feedstocks, and supplies of materials and equipment for the exploration, production, refining, and transportation of energy.
  • Jimmy Carter’s “National Energy Plan” (1977)
  • Department of Energy (1977)
  • Ronald Reagan’s “Energy Security” report (1987)
  • George H.W. Bush’s “National Energy Strategy” (1991)
  • Bill Clinton’s “Federal Energy R&D for the Challenges of the 21st Century” report (1997)
  • George W. Bush’s “Reliable, Affordable, and Environmentally Sound Energy for America’s Future” report (2001).
  • John Kerry’s plan: “Kerry Aims to Reduce Foreign Oil Reliance,” Associated Press (2004).

But Senator Lugar pointed out in 2006 that despite Project Independence and other plans, the world has become more reliant on the three-quarters of reserves concentrated in unstable regions, where the risk of wars over remaining energy supplies will dramatically increase.

Or as Jay Hanson (2004) once wrote: “I am convinced thatafter the PROJECT INDEPENDENCE fiasco, our rulers reached the same conclusion I have: since no solution exists, there is no point in scaring Joe Six-pack…

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

Peak Fossil Fuels: overview of world peak oil, peak coal, & peak natural gas

February 4, 2022

Peak Fossil Fuels: overview of world peak oil, peak coal, & peak natural gas

Source: World gas peaks in 2040 roughly. Delannoy L et al (2021) Assessing Global Long-Term EROI of Gas: A Net-Energy Perspective on the Energy Transition. Energies.  https://doi.org/10.3390/en14165112

Preface. Below are overviews of peak oil, coal, and natural gas, each followed by additional reading material from my book “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, which explains why we are unlikely to be able to electrify transportation, or run trucks on anything else besides diesel, and why the electric grid will come down for good when there’s no natural gas to balance wind and solar as well as provide peak power.

And my book Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy explains why the manufacturing of cement, steel, smelting of metals, glass, microchips, ceramics and more requires the high heat of fossil fuels to reach up to 3200 F, which can’t be electrified, run on hydrogen or anything else (see chapter 9). Worse yet, even if there were an existing commercial solution, which there isn’t, we are out of time to replace fossil fuels, since oil, the master resource that makes all others possible, probably peaked in 2008 at 69.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) (IEA 2018 p45), or in 2018 (EIA 2020).

The good news is that the worst IPCC projections are less likely to be reached  (see chapter 33 of Life After Fossil Fuels).  And as oil declines exponentially faster, perhaps from now onward, CO2 will decline: About 50% of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and 30% more within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years (GAO (2014) CLIMATE CHANGE: Energy Infrastructure Risks and Adaptation Efforts GAO-14-74. United States Government Accountability Office).

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

Peak oil is here!

February 2, 2022

Peak oil is here!

Preface. Peak oil is here! The global production of crude oil happened in November of 2018 (EIA 2020), and has declined for four years, enough time to officially declare global peak oil production. Conventional crude oil production leveled off in 2005, and peaked in 2008 at 69.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) according to Europe’s International Energy Agency (IEA 2018 p45). The U.S. Energy Information Agency shows global peak crude oil production in 2018 at 82.9 mb/d because they included unconventional tight oil, oil sands, and deep-sea oil.  Below is a chart created by Tad Patzek from EIA data:

Nor will we ever reach “peak oil demand” because heavy-duty transportation (trucks, locomotives, ships), manufacturing, the 500,000 products made out of petroleum, and natural gas fertilizer that keeps 4 billion of us are utterly dependent on fossil fuels. Even the electric grid depends on fossil fuels to provide two-thirds of the energy, and nearly all of the energy to construct ReBuildables (they are NOT renewable).  This is explained in great detail in my latest book “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy” and previous book” When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”

The IEA forecast a supply crunch by 2025 in their rosy and very unrealistic New Policies scenario, which assumes greater efficiencies and alternative fuels and electric cars are adopted (Figure 1). By 2025, with 81% of global oil declining at up to 8% percent a year (Fustier 2016, IEA 2018), 34 mb/d of new output will be needed, and 54 mb/d if facilities aren’t maintained. That is more than three times Saudi Arabian production. The 15 mb/d of predicted U.S. shale isn’t likely — indeed, the IEA shows it declining in the mid-2020s (IEA 2018 Table 3.1).

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

Russia’s Oil Output Could Peak In 2023

January 30, 2022

Russia’s Oil Output Could Peak In 2023

  • There are growing doubts as to whether Russia can grow petroleum production to the volumes forecast by Moscow.
  • The world’s third-largest oil producer’s output will continue growing, peaking at 12.2 million barrels per day by mid-2023, according to Rystad Energy.
  • A combination of extreme climate, rising depletion rates and U.S. sanctions potentially blocking access to investment is weighing on the development of hydrocarbon projects.

Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer, has long been an unknown when it comes to the OPEC+ production agreement which caps the petroleum output of participants to support higher prices. It was Moscow’s spat with Saudi Arabia over production quotas in early 2020 which, combined with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, caused crude oil prices to plunge into negative territory for the first time ever. The North American benchmark West Texas Intermediate plunged to minus $37.63 per barrel before recovering, while Brent did not enter negative territory the international benchmark, plunged to an intraday low of less than $15 per barrel. During that time Moscow, Riyadh and other OPEC+ signatories were finally able to agree on production quotas. However, Moscow’s economic ambitions remain a threat to the agreement’s firmness, particularly with Washington threatening further sanctions. With OPEC gradually expanding production quotas set out in the agreement confirmed at the 19th ministerial meeting, there is considerable speculation as to how much global petroleum supply will expand and how that will affect crude oil prices. A key point of conjecture is whether Russia can grow its crude oil output as planned and allowed by its OPEC+ quota, with it speculated that the world’s third-largest oil producer is operating at or near capacity. For December 2021 Russia, according to the Ministry of Energy, pumped an average of 10.903 million barrels of crude oil and gas condensate daily…

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

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