Home » Posts tagged 'peak oil' (Page 4)

Tag Archives: peak oil

A Practical Exercise Suggestion for Peak Oil Sceptics

(Translated from Spanish by Amelia Burke, originally published in two parts.)

When someone calls into question the existance of a peak in the production (extraction) of a non-renewable resource, which oil is, you should invite them to study carefully the curves of the Energy Export Databrowser. This Databrowser is formed using data from British Petroleum’s annual energy statistics. If necessary, round off with the data from the Hallock et al. document ”Forecasting the limits to the availability and diversity of global conventional oil supply: Validation” (Energy 64, 2014, 130-153). Then ask them to explain why —if everything depends on our human ingenuity and anything is possible given the amount money which is put into it, and given the God of Technology— there are already 50 oil producing countries that have exceeded their peak of production and are carrying on downhill. That is, except (temporarily) the U.S.A., specialists in rooting around in the filth of shale, with lots of technology and fabricated money.

And for those in our still relatively comfortable country who begin to worry that there might be actually be a peak and wonder what it could mean and when we think it might happen, I would confront them with a vision which is not quite so eurocentric as the one we are used to. I would invite them, with those calculations at hand, to do a little adding up in order to try and clarify it for themselves, based on counting the number of post-peak producer countries. Let them try by themselves to sketch out a possible date for the peak, or a slightly undulating plateau perhaps. I would tell them that more than 50 oil producing countries are already in decline, visible decline or terminal oil-bearing decline. In other words, the when, is something now in the past for no less than 50 countries…

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

Peak oil, economic growth and the big lie

November 9, 2021

Peak oil, economic growth and the big lie

In the commentary on Peak Oil recently published in the leading scientific journal Nature, James Murray (the founding director of the University of Washington’s Program on Climate Change) and David King (the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford) made the following statement,

Historically, there has been a tight link between oil production and global economic growth. If oil production can’t grow, the implication is that the economy can’t grow either. This is such a frightening prospect that many have simply avoided considering it.

Why do we find the idea of the end of economic growth so frightening? The reason is what I call, ‘The Big Lie’.

The ‘Big Lie’ of our economic system is that anyone can get rich. Most of the world’s population will not see wealth in their lifetimes, either because of the circumstances of their birth, or because they chose the wrong career path, did not work or study hard enough or did not think it so important to pursue personal monetary gain.

However we all take comfort from the idea that it might be possible to improve our lot or even that, if we make the right choices, we could become rich. Most of us believe that anyone can become wealthy if they truly work hard enough for it. But in a world where finite resources are passing their peak extraction rates this is no longer true: if it ever was.

The great majority of people in our society do not understand economics. Judging by economists’ ability to predict the behaviour of the economy, most of them do not understand economics either. Yet, most people believe they understand the idea of economic growth, or at least the “growth” part. The end of growth does not sound positive.

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

World Should Brace for Global Oil Shortage and Skyrocketing Price Due to Worsening Crisis

November 1, 2021

World Should Brace for Global Oil Shortage and Skyrocketing Price Due to Worsening Crisis

According to economists, chronic underinvestment in new oil supply since the 2015 crisis, as well as pressure on oil and gas corporations to reduce emissions and even “keep it in the ground,” would likely lead to global oil output peaking sooner than initially projected.

This would be a positive outcome for green energy proponents, net-zero agendas, and the environment if it weren’t for one simple fact: oil demand is recovering from the pandemic-induced dip and is on track to reach a new annual average record as early as next year.

Nearing Peak Oil Consumption?

Analysts have predicted that peak oil consumption will arrive sooner than envisaged just a few years ago, thanks to the energy transition and numerous government initiatives for net-zero emissions.

However, based on current oil and gas investment trends, global oil production may peak before global oil demand, creating a supply imbalance resulting in increased market volatility, price spikes, and perhaps fundamentally higher oil prices by the middle of this decade.

In a report published by Reuters this week, Morgan Stanley’s research department noted, “On present trends, global oil production is projected to peak much earlier than demand.”

“The planet establishes limits on how much carbon may be safely released. As a result, oil consumption must peak, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

The problem with the globe is that oil consumption is not peaking, despite wishful thinking, investment pressure, and other factors. According to most forecasts, it will not peak until the end of this decade at the earliest.

OPEC Report

According to OPEC’s latest annual estimate, global oil consumption will continue to climb through the mid-2030s, reaching 108 million barrels per day (BPD), then plateauing until 2045.

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

Robert Hirsh on Peak Oil

September 25, 2021

Robert Hirsh on Peak Oil

These Are The ‘Good Old Days’

September 25, 2021

These Are The ‘Good Old Days’

At tipping points like now, the steps we take in the present determine our future

If you prefer to listen to the author read this article, Click Here.

Bill was 48 when his wife stunned him with a request for divorce. Right up until that moment, he’d thought everything was fine.

He’d been pouring all his energy into his work to provide a very comfortable life for his wife and 2 children. But she was unhappy and fell out of love while Bill wasn’t paying attention to matters at home. He’d taken her for granted and forgot to be present for the most important people in his life, and to be grateful in the moment.

After she was gone, Bill was filled with emptiness and regret. All he wanted was to get her back, but it was too late. The damage had been done. What he had before was now in the past.

This parable of Bill’s loss serves as a reminder to all of us that, with all that’s awry in the world, it’s all too easy for those of us who are paying attention to gripe about everything that’s going wrong.

Yes, there are many trends that are headed on the wrong trajectory. But this tumultuous period of history also affords each of us the fantastic opportunity to contribute positively to the new future that’s on the way.

Please take this article an invitation to be grateful for what you have, and to notice just how wonderful our current lifestyle truly is. It won’t remain this way, as I’ll expound on in a moment.

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

The decline of oil has already begun

September 16, 2021

In 1961, when I was 14, working on a science fair project, my father – a geologist and petroleum engineer – explained oil depletion to me. To grow production, oil companies were drilling deeper and deeper wells, developing technologies to extract more oil from spent fields, and would one day tap into shale rock and the Canadian tar sands to extract the dregs.

Oil Spill and Burnt Forest Action in Brazil. © Adriano Machado / Greenpeace — Greenpeace activists protest oil in front of the Palácio do Planalto, in Brasília. © Adriano Machado / Greenpeace

Oil, he explained, was a finite store of condensed organic matter from the bottoms of ancient seas. The industry had been extracting the highest quality and least expensive oil, but over time, the quality of oil would decline, the cost of finding it would increase, and decades in the future, perhaps in my lifetime, oil would no longer be economic to produce.

Although we would not technically see the end of all oil on Earth, the cost/benefit ratio would begin to favour other forms of energy. He told me then, in 1961, that oil companies should be developing other energy sources, that they should consider themselves in the “energy business,” not just the oil business.

Since my father knew all this 60 years ago, I suspect that virtually every engineer and manager in the oil industry knew the same facts. They knew oil was a finite resource, and would eventually run out. They also knew that burning oil created carbon emissions, which would heat the planet. In 1965, the American Petroleum Institute warned that CO2 pollution could “cause marked changes in climate” with “catastrophic consequence.”

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

Can democracy survive peak oil?

September 1, 2021

Can democracy survive peak oil?

Preface. This is a book review of Howard Bucknell’s Energy and the National Defense. University of Kentucky Press.

Bucknell was amazingly prescient as you’ll see in this review, especially about why democracy might not survive the energy crisis.

Though it turns out the U.S. may not need an energy crisis to descend into totalitarianism. It’s been coming for a long time, the evolution began with the first cult religious settlers, “white trash“, Pat Robertson, Reagan, Phyllis Shafly, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, evangelism, FOX news and so on (for details read Dean’s “Conservatives without Conscience”, review here). But because of that, perhaps an authoritarian is even more likely to appear during an energy crisis, which in the U.S. means crony corruption rather than fair rationing for all…

Bucknell was once the director of the energy and national security project at Ohio State University. He graduated in 1944 from the U.S. Naval Academy and commanded a number of ships, including nuclear-powered submarines. He has a doctorate in political science from the University of Georgia.

This book is also about the energy crises of the 1970s. At the time, President Carter, Kissinger, Bucknell, and others thought this was the start of energy descent. It’s interesting to see what actions were taken, how energy was dealt with politically, the institutions created to solve the energy crisis, and the issues, failures, and problems encountered when trying to take action in what turned out to be the “dress rehearsal”.

Bucknell’s wrote this book partly to warn military planners that lightning raids on oil fields in the Middle East would be a bad idea, and to get two main efforts started: liquefied synthetic fuels to solve the transportation problem, and energy conservation.

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

Climate Change and Resource Depletion. Which Way to Ruin is Faster?

July 5, 2021

Climate Change and Resource Depletion. Which Way to Ruin is Faster?

What could bring down the industrial civilization? Would it be global warming (fire) or resource depletion (ice)? At present, it may well be that depletion is hitting us faster. But, in the long run, global warming may hit us much harder. Maybe the fall of our civilization will be Fire AND ice.

The years after World War 2 saw perhaps the fastest expansion and the greatest prosperity in history for humankind. Yet, it was becoming clear that it was exactly this burst of prosperity and expansion that was creating the conditions for its own collapse. How long could humankind continue growing an economy based on limited natural resources? How long could the human population keep increasing?

The discussion soon split into two main lines: one focused on depletion, the other on pollution. Over the years, the “depletionists” concentrated on fossil fuels, the main source of energy that keeps civilization moving. Initially, the disappearance of fossil fuels was seen simply as a necessary step in the progression toward nuclear energy. But the waning of the nuclear idea generated the idea that the lack of fossil energy would eventually bring down civilization. The collapse was often seen as the result of “peak oil,” the point in time when oil production couldn’t be increased anymore. It was estimated to occur at some moment during the first 2-3 decades of the 21st century.

On the other side, the focus was initially on pollutants such as smog, heavy metals, carcinogenic substances, and others. Pollution was generally seen as a solvable problem and, indeed, good progress was done in abating it in many fields. But the emerging idea of global warming soon started to be seen by “climatists” as an existential threat to humankind, or even to the whole planetary ecosystem…

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

The implications of collapsing ERoEI

May 22, 2021

The implications of collapsing ERoEI

Judging by the relatively low level of interest the past few articles published here regarding the collapse of fossil fuel ERoEI (along with PV’s) have attracted, I can only conclude that most people just don’t get it……. How can I possibly fix this……?

When I first started ‘campaigning’ on the issue of Peak Oil way back in 2000 or so, 2020 seemed like a ve oileroei ry long way away. I still thought at the time that renewables would ‘save us’, or at the very least that energy efficiency would be taken up on a massive scale. None of those things happened.

Way back then, I gave many public powerpoint presentations, foolishly thinking that, presented with the facts, (NOT alternative facts like we have today…) people would wake up to themselves. I even foolishly believed that the Australian Greens would take this up as a major issue, because after all the ‘solutions’ to Peak Oil also happen to be the ‘solutions’ for Climate Change. Now you know why I have turned into such a cynic.

In that presentation, there was one important slide, shown above. It is indelible in my memory.

I’ve now come across a very similar chart, except this one has dates on it….. and 2020 no longer seems very far away at all….

COLLAPSING ERoEI IN ONE CHART

peakeroei

I have selected three years; 2017, in red; 2020 in black; 2025 in green.

Each year has two lines. One for how much energy is being extracted, and the lower one of the same colour shows the net energy available from that extraction. The ‘missing’ energy, lost to crashing ERoEI, is the difference between the two lines of the same colour…. Already, in 2017, we probably only have the amount of energy that was available mid 1980.

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

Peak demand? More like a supply crisis propelling oil to US$100

May 17, 2021

Peak demand? More like a supply crisis propelling oil to US$100

The world stands on the cusp of an oil supply crisis. Years of insufficient investment in offshore mega-projects combined with the end of U.S. shale hyper growth and a recent shift by global supermajors to preferentially invest in alternative energy over traditional hydrocarbons have resulted in an oil industry that lacks the ability to meaningfully grow its production in the years ahead.

Why does this matter when we read headlines every day prophesizing the end of oil due to the imminent mass adoption of alternatives such as hydrogen and electric cars?

This is our energy reality: the world is nowhere near peak oil demand. Global population growth of 1.2 billion people over the next 20 years combined with decades’ long runway for alternatives to reach critical scale mean that oil demand will grow for years to come.

Yet, the delusion of imminent peak oil demand is having a profound impact on the willingness of companies to invest today in large, extremely expensive projects that often take four to six years to come onstream and a further four years to recoup initial investment.

How can a CEO justify sanctioning a multi-billion dollar project that takes 10 years to reach payout when the demand outlook a decade from now is so uncertain? The fear of peak demand is leading to the reality of peak supply.

As a result of seven years of falling investment and given the hugely capital intensive nature of the oil business, global offshore production (about 1 in 4 barrels produced) has now entered a period where new projects cannot offset existing declines and at best production will stay flat for the next several years.

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

BP peak oil (UK decline, asset sales and decommissioning Part 1)

May 11, 2021

BP peak oil (UK decline, asset sales and decommissioning Part 1)

West of the Shetland Islands, the battle against oil decline is over for BP. SPGlobal reports:

BP halts production at oldest West of Shetland oil facility Foinaven on asset decline

15 Apr 2021

London — BP has halted production at its oldest West of Shetland oil facility, Foinaven, citing the age of the facility [Petrojarl] and operational challenges, as several BP facilities in the region suffer output setbacks.

Fig 1: FPSO (Floating Production Storage Offloading) Petrojarl Foinhaven, 250 m long, 280 kb storage

https://www.teekay.com/petrojarl-foinaven/

Production from the deepwater field dropped sharply again last year, to 12,000 b/d, far off its 2002 peak of 113,000 b/d.
BP said the field could still contain up to 200 million barrels of resources, which could still be extracted with further investment in alternative facilities, but the current facilities were no longer viable.
“Work had been underway to consider options to extend the life of the vessel out to 2025,” BP said. “However, it has now been concluded that, due to its age and the demands of operating West of Shetland, even with material further investment the Petrojarl Foinaven is not the right vehicle to recover the remaining resources from the Foinaven fields.”
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/041521-bp-halts-production-at-oldest-west-of-shetland-oil-facility-foinaven-on-asset-decline

Let’s have a look at the Foinhaven production, using data from the UK Oil and Gas Authority (OGA):

Fig 2: Foinhaven oil production history
Underlying image: https://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/foinaven/
Off the continental shelf at 400-600 m water depth

Using above OGA data, 393 mb have been produced until January 2021. In BP’s 1998 Form 20-F, Foinhaven’s BP share of reserves(72%) were given as 193 mb, i.e. a total of 268 mb. That oil was extracted by 2007 when production had dropped to half its peak. The reserve growth was therefore 125 mb, but at a much lower and still declining production level.
Foinhaven is located 190 kms west of the Shetland Islands as shown on this map:

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

A Sense of Déjà Vu

April 14, 2021

A Sense of Déjà Vu

Déjà vu—the sudden insistent feeling that you’ve encountered the present moment before—can be one of the oddest of human experiences. Sometimes, though, it happens for perfectly prosaic reasons. Right now, as I look at headlines and certain other indicators, I’m having a very strong case of déjà vu for reasons that require only the simplest explanation. Sometimes, after all, you really have been there before.

Twenty years ago, for example, I could look back at the energy crises of the 1970s and see a certain pattern unfolding with great clarity. I’ll summarize the pattern for those of my readers who weren’t born yet at that time. All through the 1950s and 1960s, a handful of people had been warning that petroleum is a finite resource and that the breakneck extraction of petroleum at ever-rising rates was sooner or later going to slam face first into hard limits. They were of course dismissed as cranks by all right-thinking people. They were also correct.

In 1973, declining production from US oilfields combined with political instability in the Middle East to slap the United States with a sudden shortfall in petroleum. The government and the Fed responded clumsily, expanding the money supply, which drove up prices, not only for petroleum products but for everything that was made and shipped using petroleum—that is to say, pretty much everything bought and sold in the country. The result was stagflation. Meanwhile renewable-energy advocates convinced themselves that their time had come, and rushed a great many poorly conceived products to market, while the apocalypse lobby—those people who are constantly on the lookout for reasons to insist that everything is about to crash to ruin and we’re all going to die in the next few years—embraced the oil crisis as their cause du jour.

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

Oil and Debt: Why Our Financial System Is Unsustainable

February 25, 2021

Oil and Debt: Why Our Financial System Is Unsustainable

How much energy, water and food will the “money” created out of thin air in the future buy?

Finance is often cloaked in arcane terminology and math, but the one dynamic that governs the future is actually very simple.

Here it is: all debt is borrowed against future supplies of affordable hydrocarbons (oil, coal and natural gas). Since global economic activity is ultimately dependent on a continued abundance of affordable energy, it follows that all money borrowed against future income is actually being borrowed against future supplies of affordable energy.

Many people believe that alternative “green” energy will soon replace most or all hydrocarbon energy sources, but the chart below shows why this belief is not realistic: all the “renewable” energy sources are about 3% of all energy consumed, with hydropower providing another few percent.

There are unavoidable headwinds to this appealing fantasy:

1. All “renewable” energy is actually “replaceable” energy, per analyst Nate Hagens: every 15-25 years (or less) much or all of the alt-energy systems and structures have to be replaced, and little of the necessary mining, manufacturing and transport can be performed with the “renewable” electricity these sources generate. Virtually all the heavy lifting of these processes require hydrocarbons and especially oil.

2. Wind and solar “renewable” energy is intermittent and therefore requires changes in behavior (no clothes dryers or electric ovens used after dark, etc.) or battery storage on a scale that isn’t practical in terms of the materials required.

3. Batteries are also “replaceable” and don’t last very long. The percentage of lithium-ion batteries being recycled globally is near-zero, so all batteries end up as costly, toxic landfill.

4. Battery technologies are limited by the physics of energy storage and materials. Moving whiz-bang exotic technologies from the lab to global scales of production is non-trivial.

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

Olduvai: Excerpt read by author, Steve Bull

February 24, 2021

Olduvai: Excerpt read by author, Steve Bull

Tag Archives: peak oil

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts