October 20, 20204 yr Has oil peaked? By Richard Heinberg, originally published by Resilience.org October 8, 2020 https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-10-08/has-oil-peaked/ A few key excerpts, but lots of good points are made (Note: Resilience only posts Creative Commons content): "Numbers from the US Energy Information Administration’s Monthly Review tell us that world oil production (not counting biofuels and natural gas liquids) actually hit its zenith, so far at least, in November 2018, nearly reaching 84.5 million barrels per day. After that, production rates stalled, then plummeted in response to collapsing demand during the coronavirus pandemic. The current production level stands at about 76 mb/d... "Conventional oil production did plateau starting in 2005 [emphasis added] and oil prices soared in 2007, helping trigger the Great Recession. Afterward, however, there was strong growth in production of >unconventional oil from deepwater wells and Canadian oil sands, and especially from tight oil (also referred to as shale oil) extracted by horizontal drilling and fracking... "After 2010, the focus of the peak oil debate shifted from supply constraints to demand reduction... "In retrospect, by focusing so much on the dynamics of production, peak oil analysts largely failed to elucidate the subtler relationships between oil demand and the larger economy... "Commodity prices can give misleading signals with regard to future resource abundance... "Oil production levels are driven not just by geology and technology, but also by investment—and that adds another source of predictive uncertainty... "Between 30 and 40 small-to-medium-sized oil companies have gone bankrupt since the pandemic began; over a hundred more are teetering on the brink. The Fed has bought up $355 million in oil company debt to stanch the bleeding... "Some commentators suggest that, if the pandemic is resolved soon, planes will resume flying, business will return to normal, and oil demand will hit new highs. That scenario seems unlikely, not only because a full recovery anytime soon is unlikely, but also because oil supply constraints could reinforce demand limits in ways that will be hard for analysts to untangle. For example, the bankruptcy of the shale industry could help precipitate another financial crisis, thereby driving down oil demand. In the subsequent hand-wringing in the financial press, there would likely be relatively little reflection on the role of simple resource depletion in the complex chain of failures and defaults that followed... "The fracking business was always a bubble... "Fracking was an encore for the oil industry’s spectacular performance over the past century-and-a-half. But there isn’t likely to be a second curtain call..." Edited October 20, 20204 yr by gildone
October 20, 20204 yr 3 hours ago, gildone said: The railroads had a hand in it before the auto industry. Read: Trains of Discovery: Railroads and the Legacy of the National Parks by Alfred Runte. Did Burns cover this? The pop histories on park signage and in brochures are sometimes surprisingly candid regarding the auto industry's lobbying to form the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The western national parks were too far for the east's population to reach easily by car. The Smoky Mountains park was more of a concept than an actual place when lobbying began in the late 1910s. The eventual park boundaries were chosen because of its proximity to a future I-75 and I-40 (lines were drawn decades before the 1956 highway act) and because they could put half of the park in Tennessee and the other half in North Carolina, a political stunt similar to Ft. Campbell overlapping the Tennessee-Kentucky border. What's crazy is that we could have had two fantastic national parks in that area except we permitted the complete clear-cutting of what is no Pisgah National Forest. Nothing in Pisgah compares to the old-growth sections of the Smokies, which comprise only 1/3 of the park. Insanely, clear-cut logging was permitted in the Great Smoky Mountains national park until 1938, four years after the park was established, but in accordance with the government's contract to buy the land signed in 1928. The vast old growth forest that had stood for thousands of years was almost completely destroyed by mechanized logging between 1920 and 1938. There are many spots in the Smokies where you walk out of the old-growth and into the new growth and it's like going from a tropical jungle into a patch of woods behind an Ohio strip mall.
October 20, 20204 yr that reminds me, as one way to beat back big oil and auto, i think people near major urban areas could pretty easily become more aquainted with parks and nature in a more healthy way than driving there if we valued public transit enough to connect to it better. you can take rail from the city to nature and hiking areas in budapest and tokyo, for example, so it is done elsewhere. when the cuyahoga valley train is extended up to the flats, which it will be eventually, and akron/canton for that matter, it will accomplish this goal for cleveland and neo.
October 20, 20204 yr 2 hours ago, gildone said: Has oil peaked? By Richard Heinberg, originally published by Resilience.org October 8, 2020 https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-10-08/has-oil-peaked/ "Commodity prices can give misleading signals with regard to future resource abundance... No argument here.
October 20, 20204 yr 14 minutes ago, Gramarye said: No argument here. The full excerpt on this point: Commodity prices can give misleading signals with regard to future resource abundance. It had been assumed that petroleum depletion would inexorably lead to higher fuel prices. However, since world conventional oil production topped out 15 years ago, prices have seen all-time lows as well as all-time highs. If there is a general price trend at work, it seems to be for oil increasingly to become either too expensive for customers to afford, or too cheap to be profitable for producers. There is no longer a “Goldilocks” price that satisfies everyone. And that’s bad for both the global economy and for oil producers.
October 20, 20204 yr 1 minute ago, gildone said: The full excerpt on this point: Commodity prices can give misleading signals with regard to future resource abundance. It had been assumed that petroleum depletion would inexorably lead to higher fuel prices. However, since world conventional oil production topped out 15 years ago, prices have seen all-time lows as well as all-time highs. If there is a general price trend at work, it seems to be for oil increasingly to become either too expensive for customers to afford, or too cheap to be profitable for producers. There is no longer a “Goldilocks” price that satisfies everyone. And that’s bad for both the global economy and for oil producers. Except that as of the article posted on the previous page, from February, it seems like there is quite a Goldilocks range: On 2/6/2020 at 2:41 PM, Gramarye said: On 2/6/2020 at 9:20 AM, KJP said: FWIW..... Government Agency Warns Global Oil Industry Is on the Brink of a Meltdown We are not running out of oil, but it's becoming uneconomical to exploit it—another reason we need to move to renewables as quickly as possible. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8848g5/government-agency-warns-global-oil-industry-is-on-the-brink-of-a-meltdown From that article: The current economic system cannot sustain oil prices above $100 a barrel and keep growing, while producers for most new fields cannot sustain profits at prices as low as $45 a barrel without more borrowing. According to Dr. Michaux, the global economy is therefore caught between a rock and a hard place. “Oil prices will be held low for a time,” he explained. “The problem is all consumers at all scales in all sectors are saturated with debt. Costs are going up, while the ability to generate wealth is contracting.” This doesn't seem like an unsolvable quandary, assuming these numbers are correct (and they look reasonable enough that I'll assume they are for the sake of argument, though I'm no oil industry expert). That still leaves a $55 range between $45/barrel and $100/barrel in which there is room for the companies to have sustainable profits without sparking another Great Recession. I'm sure that the $2.11/gallon gasoline I saw at the pump last week flows from unsustainably low oil prices and people shouldn't bet on seeing prices like that for the next decade. But that doesn't mean that it needs to get back to $4/gal in order for the industry to survive. Oil just hasn't consistently stayed in that Goldilocks range. That's different than saying it doesn't exist. Also, considering the extraordinary economic expansion of the last 11 years, from the trough of the Great Recession to today, the notion that this dynamic has been "bad for the global economy" is overselling the point just a bit. As long as we don't do something precipitous like a sudden nationwide ban on fracking, we're going to be fine.
October 20, 20204 yr What I do not understand is why the Green Energy folks are not in favor of fracking? Fracking is a means to an end. Fracking keeps fuel prices affordable for the next 20 years while technology improves so that renewable energy sources like solar and wind actually become economical in most areas of the country. Without the cheap natural gas from fracking, people would have to decide between dirty coal or rolling blackouts because the sun and wind are inconsistent generators of power at this point. Fracking bridges the gap, provides much cleaner natural gas to get us there. It should be celebrated.
October 20, 20204 yr 3 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said: What I do not understand is why the Green Energy folks are not in favor of fracking? Fracking is a means to an end. Fracking keeps fuel prices affordable for the next 20 years while technology improves so that renewable energy sources like solar and wind actually become economical in most areas of the country. Without the cheap natural gas from fracking, people would have to decide between dirty coal or rolling blackouts because the sun and wind are inconsistent generators of power at this point. Fracking bridges the gap, provides much cleaner natural gas to get us there. It should be celebrated. Fracking leaks literal tons of methane (GWP of 86) into the atmosphere after a well has been capped. The cheap fuel encourages people to keep driving and burning fossil fuels, the logic I've heard is by slowly but steadily increasing the price of fossil fuels people will switch to green alternatives because it saves money. A ban isn't going to be something that happens overnight it'll be more like the California ban on gas and diesel cars, no new wells after X date and shut down all wells by Y date. Nobody wants brownouts or to burn coal, we need natural gas for a while longer. However, by putting an end date on fracking it discourages investment in new gas turbine power plants and other oil and gas infrastructure. This shifts investments in new power generation towards renewables and grid improvements instead of new pipelines and wells. It does not need to be celebrated, it's a necessary evil while we are transitioning away from fossil fuels and nothing more.
October 20, 20204 yr 1 hour ago, mrnyc said: that reminds me, as one way to beat back big oil and auto, i think people near major urban areas could pretty easily become more aquainted with parks and nature in a more healthy way than driving there if we valued public transit enough to connect to it better. you can take rail from the city to nature and hiking areas in budapest and tokyo, for example, so it is done elsewhere. when the cuyahoga valley train is extended up to the flats, which it will be eventually, and akron/canton for that matter, it will accomplish this goal for cleveland and neo. In other parts of the country that are more transit-friendly, this is being discussed. For example, Seattle Transit Blog recently wrote about what it would take to provide bus service to Mt. Rainier.
October 20, 20204 yr Just now, Henryefry said: Fracking leaks literal tons of methane (GWP of 86) into the atmosphere after a well has been capped. The cheap fuel encourages people to keep driving and burning fossil fuels, the logic I've heard is by slowly but steadily increasing the price of fossil fuels people will switch to green alternatives because it saves money. A ban isn't going to be something that happens overnight it'll be more like the California ban on gas and diesel cars, no new wells after X date and shut down all wells by Y date. Nobody wants brownouts or to burn coal, we need natural gas for a while longer. However, by putting an end date on fracking it discourages investment in new gas turbine power plants and other oil and gas infrastructure. This shifts investments in new power generation towards renewables and grid improvements instead of new pipelines and wells. It does not need to be celebrated, it's a necessary evil while we are transitioning away from fossil fuels and nothing more. Wind and solar are not efficient enough nor reliable or proven to carry the load. WE cant have rolling blackouts because we do not have efficient capacity to store electricity during the hours or times where sunlight or wind is not sufficient. Fracking is a bridge. Eventually, it will be used up too. But we have bought ourselves 20 years of these resources to figure out more efficient ways to generate and store green renewable energy on a mass level. Much more than we have now.
October 20, 20204 yr Just now, Brutus_buckeye said: Wind and solar are not efficient enough nor reliable or proven to carry the load. WE cant have rolling blackouts because we do not have efficient capacity to store electricity during the hours or times where sunlight or wind is not sufficient. Fracking is a bridge. Eventually, it will be used up too. But we have bought ourselves 20 years of these resources to figure out more efficient ways to generate and store green renewable energy on a mass level. Much more than we have now. We have the tech, it's just a matter of implementing it. From https://www.awea.org/policy-and-issues/u-s-offshore-wind "Our shores possess a power potential of more than 2,000 gigawatts (GW), nearly double the nation's current electricity use. This potential presents an enormous opportunity to deliver large amounts of clean and reliable electricity to the country’s largest population centers, where it’s needed most." With double capacity we don't need massive batteries or something like that because wind is pretty consistent off shore. Obviously we're not gonna get all our power from offshore wind on the coasts, the transmission losses to the interior of the nation would be pretty massive. Luckily for us the great plains are also a good spot for wind turbines. All of this will require a large investment in new high voltage transmission lines, to get power from where it's generated to where it's needed. We have the tech to do that as well High Voltage Direct Current Transmission lines, the down side is that have high capital investment costs, but are much more efficient over long distances than traditional High Voltage AC lines. We will need to build out some more grid scale storage but if we have enough excess power generation that areas with surplus can cover areas with deficits we won't need insane amounts of storage.
October 20, 20204 yr 21 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said: Wind and solar are not efficient enough nor reliable or proven to carry the load. WE cant have rolling blackouts because we do not have efficient capacity to store electricity during the hours or times where sunlight or wind is not sufficient. Fracking is a bridge. Eventually, it will be used up too. But we have bought ourselves 20 years of these resources to figure out more efficient ways to generate and store green renewable energy on a mass level. Much more than we have now. On the electricity side, I think you'd be surprised at how close wind and solar with battery backup are to being able to carry the load now. The economics are there (and are getting better), it's just that they only got there recently and we can't SimCity solar and wind farms into existence, they take time. The intermittency issues for solar can be dealt with by battery backup, and with wind, it comes from diversification. The cliche counterargument on wind is that the wind is not always blowing, but the fact is that it basically is always blowing somewhere, so as long as we have enough distribution capacity and enough distributed generation capacity, we can get it where it needs to go from wherever it is actually being generated. That doesn't work if you have twenty turbines in two places, but it works if you have twenty thousand turbines in a thousand places. But remember that peak oil is, as the name implies, mostly about oil, which means that electricity generation isn't the big use. Transportation is. The issue of wind and solar coming into their own is primarily an impetus for closing the era of coal as an electrical power source. It will take that plus electrified transportation to bring this to the sector where substitution of electrical for petroleum-based power can happen.
October 20, 20204 yr Not entirely on or off-topic, but the Zimmer coal plant near Cincinnati will be closing in the late 2020s. The story of this thing is epic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Zimmer_Power_Station
October 20, 20204 yr 5 hours ago, Gramarye said: In other words, to the extent peak oil only describes the bare physical fact that conventional oil supplies are declining in flow rates by 4% a year or whatever the number is, it can be acknowledged as completely true--and completely irrelevant. We can agree to disagree on relevance. A few additional points: – The price rise from 1998 to 2008 was only one act as this has been playing out. – Declining production is only one aspect of the overall issue (See the full Richard Heinberg piece that I posted the link to above). – Your view that we can simply switch out renewables and electric cars for oil and ICE cars misses an important point, because it assumes that renewables offer us similar energy density and energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) as oil. They don't. – The EROEI issue is leads us to the issue of net energy, because as EROEI declines (and it has been declining for far longer than we realize), so does the net energy available for productive use in the economy (It's best if you can look into the EROEI issue and how it inter-plays with the economy yourself). Bottom line: peak oil does not have to result in permanently high prices to be problematic, and the problems don't always have to be sudden or immediately catastrophic. That said, we continue to experience problems related to peak oil: declining net energy, increasing reliance on debt (both public and private) to finance economic growth. Energy growth is key to growing the economy and net energy growth is lagging. In 2018 Bloomberg reported that since the 2008 financial crash, debt has grown at twice the rate of GDP (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/global-debt-jumped-to-record-237-trillion-last-year). This speaks to your comment: "Also, considering the extraordinary economic expansion of the last 11 years, from the trough of the Great Recession to today... " When debt is growing faster than GDP, that signals other structural problems, a key one being the lagging growth in net energy. Covid19 threw some unexpected demand destruction into the picture and that may end up being beneficial in the long run. Gramarye also said: "But remember that peak oil is, as the name implies, mostly about oil, which means that electricity generation isn't the big use. " It's an issue when you consider the embedded fossil fuel energy in renewables. Long story short, the issue is more complex than it seems. Edited October 20, 20204 yr by gildone
October 20, 20204 yr 5 minutes ago, gildone said: We can agree to disagree on relevance. A few additional points: – The price rise from 1998 to 2008 was only one act as this has been playing out. – Declining production is only one aspect of the overall issue (See the full Richard Heinberg piece that I posted the link to above). – Your view that we can simply switch out renewables and electric cars for oil and ICE cars misses an important point, because it assumes that renewables offer us similar energy density and energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) as oil. They don't. – The EROEI issue is leads us to the issue of net energy, because as EROEI declines (and it has been declining for far longer than we realize), so does the net energy available for productive use in the economy (It's best if you can look into the EROEI issue and how it inter-plays with the economy yourself). Bottom line: peak oil does not have to result in permanently high prices to be problematic, and the problems don't always have to be sudden or immediately catastrophic. That said, we continue to experience problems related to peak oil: declining net energy, increasing reliance on debt (both public and private) to finance economic growth. Energy growth is key to growing the economy and net energy growth is lagging. In 2018 Bloomberg reported that since the 2008 financial crash, debt has grown at twice the rate of GDP (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/global-debt-jumped-to-record-237-trillion-last-year). This speaks to your comment: "Also, considering the extraordinary economic expansion of the last 11 years, from the trough of the Great Recession to today... " When debt is growing faster than GDP, that signals other structural problems, a key one being the lagging growth in net energy. Covid19 threw some unexpected demand destruction into the picture and that may end up being beneficial in the long run. Gramarye also said: "But remember that peak oil is, as the name implies, mostly about oil, which means that electricity generation isn't the big use. " It's a bigger issue when you consider the embedded fossil fuel energy in renewables. Long story short, the issue is more complex than it seems. I read the whole Heinberg piece and it doesn't change my view on relevance. In fact, he doesn't really assert much in the way of relevance until the very last paragraph ("Industries that depend on petroleum ... likely will be hard-pressed to regain their pre-pandemic vigor, and over time will have to adjust to ever-tightening global flows of fuel. As will the rest of us who like to shop, travel, and eat."). I'm unconvinced. The price rise from 1998 to 2008 was of course only one act. But it's a relevant one because it actually gave life to the peak oil alarmist scenario. The last 12 years have been a very different act. Maybe the next 12 will show a return to the 1998-2008 pattern, but even if they do, we have another 10 years to adapt to that--and we're already in the process of doing so. We will be much more prepared for an oil-scarce world in 2030 than in 2008. I did not miss the point about energy density, which is why I made the point about still needing oil for a longer period for aviation, nautical, and aeronautical uses, since those will be more dependent on favorable power-to-weight ratios. But we can live with that if the vast multitude of consumer vehicles and heavy commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses switch to electricity, all of which is already happening. It was not happening in 2008 and was not in a position to happen in 2008, which is why the 12 years that fracking has bought us are important and why it is important that they buy us 15-20 more. But we don't need to squeeze another 100 years out of the oil industry. After year after year of crying wolf ... On 7/24/2008 at 8:03 AM, gildone said: ^Peak Oil is about production rates and geologic limits, period. The technologies you mention won't change that. We don't have enough cropland to grow enough biofuels to replace oil the way we currently use it for transportation. ... The problem is, there is so much to be done and we're so close to depletion setting in and taking over, that the transition is going to be anything but smooth. You need 20-30 years for a smooth transition. We're likely looking at 2015 at the outside. We'll transition because we'll be forced to, not because we've had any foresight. And the ride will be rough. On 10/18/2007 at 5:41 PM, gildone said: This is resource problem that we needed to start preparing for 20 years ago in order to have the smooth and relatively painless transition. In other words, it needed to start well in advance of the price signals that we are only now beginning to experience. 20 years ago, this was a long term problem. It's not a long term problem now. Markets don't react to long term problems. They react after the prices change which in some cases, is too late. ... I just don't see why you can still have confidence in the notion that peak oil deserves any significant place in policymaking or future planning discussions. Note that almost all explanation posted on this thread in those days made no mention of specifically conventional production plateauing, ignoring fracking; it was asserted that total production would decline. So that is moving the goalposts on top of crying wolf.
October 20, 20204 yr ^Fracking upset the coal industry because it tapped huge reserves of natural gas, along with the higher-profile oil. Many U.S. utilities closed old small or mid-sized coal plants in the 2010's and in many cases rebuilt them as natural gas plants. What's crazy is that we're now seeing big modern plants like the Zimmer plant near Cincinnati (opened 1991) closing permanently. No word yet as to whether a new natural gas plant will be built on the Zimmer site and re-use its transmission infrastructure - but if one is built there, you can bet that its natural gas will be delivered by a pipeline rather than a barge like coal. Fracking disrupted railroad coal routes (the line through Athens, OH doesn't have any regularly scheduled trains anymore) and devastated the barge business. Coal was 50% of what the inland waterways did. The feds finally coughed up a few billion to expand the Kentucky Dam lock system and build the new Olmstead lock & dam near Paducah in anticipation of increased business and now it's going down.
October 20, 20204 yr Zimmer is an odd beast since it was originally supposed to be a nuclear plant. Didn't Beckjord close down too?
October 21, 20204 yr 3 hours ago, Gramarye said: I read the whole Heinberg piece and it doesn't change my view on relevance. In fact, he doesn't really assert much in the way of relevance until the very last paragraph ("Industries that depend on petroleum ... likely will be hard-pressed to regain their pre-pandemic vigor, and over time will have to adjust to ever-tightening global flows of fuel. As will the rest of us who like to shop, travel, and eat."). I'm unconvinced. Like I said, we can agree to disagree. Quote The price rise from 1998 to 2008 was of course only one act. But it's a relevant one because it actually gave life to the peak oil alarmist scenario. The last 12 years have been a very different act. Maybe the next 12 will show a return to the 1998-2008 pattern, but even if they do, we have another 10 years to adapt to that--and we're already in the process of doing so. We will be much more prepared for an oil-scarce world in 2030 than in 2008. The way I see it, we have been doing a lousy job of adapting. We keep building more highways. We keep underfunding transit and failing to modernize and expand our passenger rail system. VMTs continued to go up for the past decade, the covid pause notwithstanding (though the significant increase in teleworking could really help going forward. It has significantly cut my gasoline bil!). We are still constructing homes and buildings that fall way short of the energy efficiency that current technology is capable of (and without undue expense). We are still mandating in the vast majority of the country the construction of energy-inefficient, car-centric living arrangements. Quote I did not miss the point about energy density, which is why I made the point about still needing oil for a longer period for aviation, nautical, and aeronautical uses, since those will be more dependent on favorable power-to-weight ratios. But we can live with that if the vast multitude of consumer vehicles and heavy commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses switch to electricity, all of which is already happening. It was not happening in 2008 and was not in a position to happen in 2008, which is why the 12 years that fracking has bought us are important and why it is important that they buy us 15-20 more. But we don't need to squeeze another 100 years out of the oil industry. After year after year of crying wolf ... If you think we can just switch everything out to electric vehicles and run things at or near the same level we've been running them, then you really don't understand the point about energy density and declining net energy. Quote Note that almost all explanation posted on this thread in those days made no mention of specifically conventional production plateauing, ignoring fracking; it was asserted that total production would decline. So that is moving the goalposts on top of crying wolf. Did you really read Heinberg's piece? 😉 : Those forecasters were partly right and partly wrong. Conventional oil production did plateau starting in 2005, and oil prices soared in 2007, helping trigger the Great Recession. Afterward, however, there was strong growth in production of >unconventional oil from deepwater wells and Canadian oil sands, and especially from tight oil (also referred to as shale oil) extracted by horizontal drilling and fracking. AND Even though early peak oilers underestimated the rise of unconventional oil through the “magic” of easy credit, and thus miscalculated the timing of maximum overall production, they did improve the public’s energy literacy with two key observations... I followed the discussions pretty closely for well over a decade. The conversation was, in fact, about conventional oil. It may not have been spoken explicitly very often, but the production data that was being analyzed and discussed (at times in excruciating and mind-numbing detail) at The Oil Drum website and elsewhere was conventional production. Unconventional oil wasn't as much on their minds because it was thought that the high cost of exploiting the increasingly low-quality resources that unconventional oil represents would limit its role in global production. The magic of easy credit, brought about in part by the Fed's quantitative easing, and in part by overly-rosy financial projections by the drillers and others in the industry as it sought investors wasn't a logical conclusion to make at the time. Just after the '08 meltdown, it was a more logical conclusion that creditors and investors would be much more cautious. Thus it was thought that unconventional oil would play a minor role. That's why the peak oil crowd (including me) missed that. But there is more: the US Energy Information Administration kept issuing overly rosy production estimates for tight oil (and tight gas) that were consistently above what actually ended up occurring as the fracking decade went on. The number of times the US EIA had to walk back it's projections became laughable for a period of time. At one point and they got so desperate to extricate themselves from corner they backed themselves in that they actually said in a public statement: "Our projections aren't forecasts". Still, the US EIA is looked at by Wall Street and policymakers as a voice of authority, and that likely played a role in investor confidence. So yes, they missed it. I missed it. But let's look at how things turned out: more than half of the industry was in the red from the beginning and remained so. Rex Tillerson, when he was still Exxon CEO, talked about it years ago. Had "the magic of easy credit" not existed, it's debatable how much fracking oil development would have actually occurred and where we would be now. It surprised a lot of people, including me, how long the financial woes of the industry were ignored and how much good money kept being thrown after bad. The Fed is now bailing them out. What do you think this means for the fracking industry going forward? We're going to find out. Gramarye said: ... I just don't see why you can still have confidence in the notion that peak oil deserves any significant place in policymaking or future planning discussions. Because the underlying problems haven't gone away. The way I see it, the fracking bubble allowed us to paper over things for awhile and largely continue business as usual. But it doesn't change the reality of declining resource quality of unconventional oil and declining net energy. It doesn't change the long-running, abysmal financials of the fracking industry. I don't know specifically where things are going to go from here, but neither does anyone else. It's easy to play Monday morning quarterback and try to claim the peak oil crowd completely discredited itself, but that's a myopic viewpoint. Today, I've tried to point out many of the nuances involved and haven't gone away. We see things differently and that's fine. I'll continue to comment here, but there is probably no point in the two of us conversing on the subject much longer.
October 21, 20204 yr 11 hours ago, gildone said: The way I see it, we have been doing a lousy job of adapting. We keep building more highways. We keep underfunding transit and failing to modernize and expand our passenger rail system. VMTs continued to go up for the past decade, the covid pause notwithstanding (though the significant increase in teleworking could really help going forward. It has significantly cut my gasoline bil!). We are still constructing homes and buildings that fall way short of the energy efficiency that current technology is capable of (and without undue expense). We are still mandating in the vast majority of the country the construction of energy-inefficient, car-centric living arrangements. If you think we can just switch everything out to electric vehicles and run things at or near the same level we've been running them, then you really don't understand the point about energy density and declining net energy. Did you really read Heinberg's piece? 😉 : Gramarye said: ... I just don't see why you can still have confidence in the notion that peak oil deserves any significant place in policymaking or future planning discussions. Because the underlying problems haven't gone away. The way I see it, the fracking bubble allowed us to paper over things for awhile and largely continue business as usual. But it doesn't change the reality of declining resource quality of unconventional oil and declining net energy. It doesn't change the long-running, abysmal financials of the fracking industry. I don't know specifically where things are going to go from here, but neither does anyone else. It's easy to play Monday morning quarterback and try to claim the peak oil crowd completely discredited itself, but that's a myopic viewpoint. Today, I've tried to point out many of the nuances involved and haven't gone away. We see things differently and that's fine. I'll continue to comment here, but there is probably no point in the two of us conversing on the subject much longer. We don't have to see eye to eye (and clearly we don't) to keep conversing on the subject. As long as there are new issues or wrinkles worth mentioning, the conversation isn't dead. It's not Monday morning quarterbacking when I was saying this 12 years ago. The underlying problems have not gone away. I never said the underlying problems went away. I said those underlying problems are safe to ignore, or at least largely ignore, because at this point, a 4% or whatever reduction in annual conventional production is simply not a big deal. I read Heinberg's piece. That's from now, this year, when the discredited peak oil alarmists are trying to retcon the arguments they were making in 2008, when oil hit $166/bbl. I was talking about the articles you were quoting here in 2008, some of which aren't even good links anymore. There were people in this thread seriously talking about food shortages arising from fuel shortages. The notion that in 2020, the forward contract price of crude would go negative because of a global glut with nowhere to go would have been treated as lunacy by the doyens of the peak oil alarmist movement. And now we come to the real issue: The question of whether we can "switch everything out to electric vehicle and run things at or near the same level we've been running them," and whether "we have been doing a lousy job of adapting" because we keep building more highways and car-centric housing, and not enough rail. That's the real issue, because my entire thesis for the contemporary irrelevancy of peak oil now, in 2020, when it was not irrelevant in 2008, is that we have used the past 12 years very well, better than even I could have reasonably hoped, and I was a peak oil skeptic even then. That is because yes, we can switch almost everything out to electric vehicles (not everything, but the vast majority, which is enough to make the consumption rate of oil sustainable for a very long time for everything else that still uses it). I have been driving proof of that since 2018, in my Tesla, and I will never buy a gasoline car again. Almost no one who switches to an electric vehicle does. I'm not arguing the physics--gasoline still has a much higher energy density than a car battery, and while battery technology is improving, they will not get to energy density parity with gasoline anytime soon. The real point is that they don't need to. They just need to be good enough to give a car people can afford the range that they need for daily life. My Tesla is substantially heavier than a gasoline car of similar size, largely because the battery is much heavier than any gas tank, and in fact heavier than much of an ICE car's entire drivetrain. But it doesn't matter. The energy loss between the battery and the wheels is less than in an ICE car, and the energy density is sufficient to give me 300+ miles of range. It's true that a cheaper gasoline car might have 400+ miles of range, but again, that's irrelevant if you aren't in the small number of people who need to drive those kind of miles in a single day. My cost-per-mile is lower than gasoline, even at today's prices, which are lower than any peak oil alarmist would have believed possible in 2008. If gas goes back up to $4/gal, because the next decade looks a little bit more like 1998-2008 instead of 2008-2020, all that will do is accelerate the transition of the new vehicle fleet to electric propulsion, leaving only legacy vehicles reliant on gasoline. We have the technology to do that now. And that, plus the dramatic decline in solar power pricing, changes a great deal about the sustainability of suburban development, too, to your point about us allegedly adapting poorly by continuing to build car-centric development. Rooftop solar is still much more expensive than utility-scale solar, but it's still declining and it will hit an inflection point soon. Declining demand for oil from the declining need for its use as a transportation fuel will mean that its use in asphalt will remain economical. The future of the suburbs is people driving vehicles they charge at home from power from the sun. Again, nowhere near the concentrated generation capacity of any utility-scale plant--and again irrelevant, because the roof of a sprawling suburban ranch has enough surface area to use relatively cheap panels, constructed from readily-available materials (whereas previous generations needed certain rare earth metals), that are sufficient to either completely cover or at least largely cover the energy demands of a suburban home. The sustainability of suburbs will still be questioned on ecological grounds, of course, but peak oil is a resource-availability argument.
December 5, 20204 yr "That is because yes, we can switch almost everything out to electric vehicles (not everything, but the vast majority, which is enough to make the consumption rate of oil sustainable for a very long time for everything else that still uses it). I have been driving proof of that since 2018, in my Tesla, and I will never buy a gasoline car again... And that, plus the dramatic decline in solar power pricing, changes a great deal about the sustainability of suburban development, too, to your point about us allegedly adapting poorly by continuing to build car-centric development" Just because you and several thousand others are able to drive a Tesla today in no way, shape, or form proves that we will be available to run "the vast majority" of the 273 million or so ICE vehicles in the US on batteries. Not to mention two and three thousand mile produce from California, warehouses on wheels, 12,000 mile supply lines to China, etc. You really don't seem to understand how net energy/energy density. Net energy has been on the decline for decades now. The energy return on oil used to be 100:1. Now it's 17:1 to 30:1 depending upon who you read, but in either case, substantially lower than it used to be and still declining. Solar energy offers about a 7:1 to 9:1, depending upon the source your read. Wind is better at 15:1 to 18:1. Biofuels are under 5:1, except for sugar cane ethanol which is 8:1 to 10:1. Declining net energy means we're already expending more energy to get the energy we need to run society than we used to. The rate of economic growth is tied to the growth in energy production. I read somewhere, but can't recall where, that a 1% increase in GDP requires growth in energy production of 0.9% or 0.95%. As net energy declines, it chews away at the ability to grow the amount of energy available for economic activity. Efficiency improvements can help offset that, but there are limits to that over time as diminishing returns eventually set in. We've had some good advances in energy efficiency in recent years with things like LED lighting, and there more that can be done with changes in home and building design probably being one the biggest. But net energy decline is still on-going and ticking away in the background. Long story short: the only future available to us in terms of energy (unless we figure out fusion, but fusion has always been 30-years away ever since I was a kid) is one of less total energy available. That means some things are going to have to give, and the massive amount of car use in the US is probably one of them.
December 5, 20204 yr Peak Oil is Suddenly Upon Us A year ago, if anyone in the petroleum business had suggested that the moment of Peak Oil had already passed, they would have been laughed right off the drilling rig. Then 2020 happened. Planes stopped flying. Office workers stayed home. “Zooming with the grandkids” replaced driving to see family. A year of global hunkering yielded the sharpest drop in oil consumption since Henry Ford cobbled together the first Model T. At its worst, global demand dropped by a staggering 29 million barrels a day. As a once-in-a-century pandemic played out, British oil giant BP Plc in September made an extraordinary call: Humanity’s thirst for oil may never again return to prior levels. That would make 2019 the high-water mark in oil history. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-peak-oil-era-is-suddenly-upon-us/ Don't forget that Peak Oil can result in cheap oil.
July 19, 20213 yr Cars are an incredible waste of natural resources "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
August 1, 20213 yr I came across this interesting article from Public Herald, a non-profit investigative journalism organization. They are in the middle of a 3-part series about the disposal of radioactive fracking waste in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It appears there are lawsuits brewing against Pennsylvania DEP (and maybe the state of Ohio--I haven't read the full series of articles yet). Another in a long line of reasons why we need to be using a lot less oil and changing our transportation system. We are fracking because all the cheap, easy oil has been found: https://publicherald.org/investigation-uncovers-ohio-is-illegally-building-radioactive-mountains-affecting-26-waterways/
October 14, 20213 yr Glad I'd already restored my investment in the DBC index fund! "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
October 14, 20213 yr I am surprised the article did not mention how had Hurricane Ida hit offshore oil producing facilities. Shell won't be back to 100% until Spring. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2021/09/21/633009.htm
October 21, 20213 yr This is why we need a lot more investment in alternative energy and our energy infrastructure, and why obstructing the funding for it in the US Senate is a big economic rather than a political problem -- we've passed peak oil, we need to transition to alternatives quickly or face frequent energy supply disruption. Republicans are cheering on Senator Manchin for "owning the libs" as the country races toward chaos. Buy your backup batteries now. Quote A team of French government energy scientists are warning that the collapse of the global oil system is coming so rapidly it could derail the transition to a renewable energy system if it doesn’t happen fast enough. In just 13 years, global oil production could enter into a terminal and exponential decline, accompanied by the overall collapse of the global oil and gas industries over the next three decades. But this is not because the earth is running out of oil and gas. Rather, it’s because they are increasingly eating themselves to stay alive. The oil and gas industries are consuming exponentially more and more energy just to keep extracting oil and gas. That’s why they’ve entered a downwards spiral of increasing costs of production, diminishing profits, rising debt and irreversible economic decline. https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/20/oil-system-collapsing-so-fast-it-may-derail-renewables-warn-french-government-scientists/
October 22, 20213 yr 23 hours ago, Foraker said: This is why we need a lot more investment in alternative energy and our energy infrastructure, and why obstructing the funding for it in the US Senate is a big economic rather than a political problem -- we've passed peak oil, we need to transition to alternatives quickly or face frequent energy supply disruption. Republicans are cheering on Senator Manchin for "owning the libs" as the country races toward chaos. Buy your backup batteries now. https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/20/oil-system-collapsing-so-fast-it-may-derail-renewables-warn-french-government-scientists/ EROI is a very real problem that most people don't seem to grasp; however, as much as I respect Nafeez Ahmed, no one can predict with precision when the terminal decline phase will hit. The bigger issue (which Ahmed also discusses) is how much rising fossil fuel prices will be weaponized politically to falsely blame renewables for the price increases. Given the level of political dysfunction in the U.S., I can certainly see that happening here. Edited October 22, 20213 yr by gildone
November 7, 20213 yr "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 18, 20223 yr Not peak oil, but this is our only oil supply thread Drive Less, Fly Less And WFH To Avoid ‘Crippling Oil Shock’ From Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine, Says IEA https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/03/18/drive-less-fly-less-and-wfh-to-avoid-crippling-oil-shock-from-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-says-iea/amp/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16476076428370&_ct=1647607718252&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From %1%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Froberthart%2F2022%2F03%2F18%2Fdrive-less-fly-less-and-wfh-to-avoid-crippling-oil-shock-from-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-says-iea%2F "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
June 6, 20223 yr The world may be careening toward a 1970s-style energy crisis -- or worse https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/02/business/energy-crisis-inflation/index.html Excerpt: Current and former energy officials tell CNN they worry that Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the wake of years of underinvestment [sic] in the energy sector have sent the world careening into a crisis that will rival or even exceed the oil crises of the 1970s and early 1980s. The above excerpt links to this article about under-investment: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/perspectives/oil-2021-vaccines/index.html This is a perfect example of the media leaving out an important part of the story. During the roughly the first decade of this century, the exploration budgets of energy companies tripled over previous levels, yet new discoveries only increased known reserves by 12%. The fact that there is a difference between known reserves and recoverable reserves aside, that's not much of a return on investment. That's why they cut back on exploration. Another way to put it, they know there are no more significant reserves to be found. The embargo on Russian oil and gas has caused a sudden drop in supplies. Had this happened in the 1990s, it would have been less noticeable because the world was awash in oil then. Oil supplies have been tight for years now, so the world can no longer handle something like this without significant price spikes. Cross posted from a comment of mine in the Car Dependency thread on May 30: Electric cars may not save us. Sure, they help people who can afford them but replacing 287 million of them in the US (and over a billion of them in the world) is not only a huge task, it may not even be achievable: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-22/mr-lithiumalr-warns-there-s-not-enough-battery-metal-to-go-around Also, lithium prices are up 500%: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-25/lithium-the-hunt-for-the-wonder-metal-fueling-evs And there are other considerations besides supply: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01735-z Electric cars are here to stay, are a net positive for carbon emissions, and we'll see a lot more of them. Whether or not they will fully break fossil fuel dependency remains to be seen. Edited June 6, 20223 yr by gildone
June 9, 20223 yr I wish our country did things based on research rather than on money "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
September 5, 20222 yr The OPEC countries are not our allies. They never have been and they never will be. The only thing they understand is power. And when we transform into a clean energy country, they won't have any.... BREAKING: OPEC and allied oil-producing countries, including Russia, to cut their supplies to the global economy by 100,000 barrels per day, underlining their unhappiness with crude prices that have sagged because of recession fears. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-covid-health-economy-prices-89c2cf3eeecb02e9d01c3ed01e7d7506 "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
September 5, 20222 yr On 6/6/2022 at 4:09 PM, gildone said: And there are other considerations besides supply: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01735-z Electric cars are here to stay, are a net positive for carbon emissions, and we'll see a lot more of them. Whether or not they will fully break fossil fuel dependency remains to be seen. Another problem with cars is the amount of pollution from tires and brakes. Electric cars don't necessarily solve those problems either. https://carbuzz.com/news/ev-tires-worse-for-the-environment-than-tailpipe-emissions
October 14, 20222 yr ‘The world should be worried’: Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest oil producer — just issued a dire warning over 'extremely low' capacity. Here are 3 stocks for protection https://finance-yahoo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/world-worried-saudi-aramco-world-160000039.html?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From %1%24s&aoh=16656853718411&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Ffinance.yahoo.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-worried-saudi-aramco-world-160000039.html "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
October 14, 20222 yr ^ BS. Getting his talking points directly from the Kremlin. Mar a Lago is also being humored to make him think he’s involved. My hovercraft is full of eels
October 14, 20222 yr 11 hours ago, KJP said: ‘The world should be worried’: Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest oil producer — just issued a dire warning over 'extremely low' capacity. Here are 3 stocks for protection https://finance-yahoo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/world-worried-saudi-aramco-world-160000039.html?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From %1%24s&aoh=16656853718411&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Ffinance.yahoo.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-worried-saudi-aramco-world-160000039.html For years, OPEC was careful not to let the price of oil get too high so that we remained dependent. But the writing is on the wall that the world is moving rapidly to use dramatically less, at the same time that oil production is falling due to depleted stocks of easy-to-get oil. The oil producers will now take steps to maximize their profits in the time that they have left -- prepare for higher and more chaotic oil prices and supply disruptions. If that is a correct assumption, US stability would benefit greatly from dramatically reducing its dependence on foreign oil; and individuals would benefit by dramatically reducing their dependence on internal combustion engines and gas appliances. Even if this assumption is a gross oversimplification and oil will continue to be produced for decades, the big oil companies have stopped investing in new wells, so even if that were to change there will be a years-long lag until any new fields can be exploited. The poor will suffer either way.
December 2, 20231 yr Drill baby, drill "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
July 13, 2024Jul 13 Neither did the fuel everything on E85 hype play out. Kasich raised farmland property taxes 40-60% in anticipation of ethanol money that never came.
July 18, 2024Jul 18 The International Energy Agency reports that the rate of increase in world petroleum demand fell in the second quarter of 2024 to an 18-month low. Mainly due to reduced demand from China. https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-july-2024 New cars in China are more often EVs (the US is way behind on that front) and China's demand for oil is expected to drop in 2025. https://reglobal.org/china-could-surpass-a-50-ev-sales-share-by-2025-iea/
July 18, 2024Jul 18 On 7/13/2024 at 10:49 AM, Lazarus said: This thread is about to turn 20. None of its dire predictions came true. Just remember that if you predict the end of the world every day between now and when the sun goes red giant, you will ultimately be right.
July 18, 2024Jul 18 On 7/13/2024 at 10:49 AM, Lazarus said: This thread is about to turn 20. None of its dire predictions came true. That's why when someone asks me to predict what's going to happen with this or that real estate development, I tell them I can't predict the future any better than they can. But the fact is that oil is a finite resource and will get too expensive to burn before it runs out, and thus it never will. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
July 19, 2024Jul 19 20 hours ago, KJP said: That's why when someone asks me to predict what's going to happen with this or that real estate development, I tell them I can't predict the future any better than they can. But the fact is that oil is a finite resource and will get too expensive to burn before it runs out, and thus it never will. Where is the climate activist backlash against Taylor Swift for encouraging her fans to fly thousands of miles to see her dog & pony show?
July 19, 2024Jul 19 10 minutes ago, Lazarus said: Where is the climate activist backlash against Taylor Swift for encouraging her fans to fly thousands of miles to see her dog & pony show? Is that someone famous from the 21st century? I stopped listening to pop music on or about Dec. 31, 1989. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
July 19, 2024Jul 19 14 minutes ago, Lazarus said: Where is the climate activist backlash against Taylor Swift for encouraging her fans to fly thousands of miles to see her dog & pony show? Why is this in this thread? And how is Taylor Swift "encouraging her fans" to fly to Europe? She should only tour in America?
July 19, 2024Jul 19 3 hours ago, Luke_S said: Why is this in this thread? And how is Taylor Swift "encouraging her fans" to fly to Europe? She should only tour in America? Despite the ominous threat to international travel we feared 15-20 years ago, people in 2024 are able to cross the Atlantic in a matter of hours cheaply and for frivolous reasons.
October 16, 2024Oct 16 This is in line with predictions of a rollercoaster ride at the end of the Oil Age. As we transition to other fuels, we can still see supply gluts and price drops even as the cost to exploit new fields increases. Quote Fossil fuels could soon become significantly cheaper and more abundant as governments accelerate the transition to clean energy towards the end of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency. The world’s energy watchdog has signalled a new energy era in which countries have access to more oil, gas and coal than needed to fuel their economic growth, leading to lower prices for households and businesses. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/16/fossil-fuels-could-become-cheaper-and-more-abundant-says-iea Quote The cost of developing new upstream oil projects is continuing to rise as inflationary pressure and supply chain woes endure, according to new research from Rystad Energy. The research shows that the average breakeven cost of a non-OPEC oil project grew to $47/bbl of Brent crude, a 5% increase over the past year alone. Nevertheless, breakeven costs remain below current oil prices. https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/economics-markets/article/55171807/rystad-energy-cost-of-new-upstream-oil-projects-rises-further
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