Peak oil phenomenon and how it is wrong - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

KylePavao · #1 09-01-2005, 12:58 PM

Oil is running out, but no one wants to talk about it.

Actually, lots of people have talked about it.

In 1914 ... When the US Bureau of Mines estimated reserves at 10 years.
In 1939 ... When the Department of the Interior gave a 13 year projection.
In 1972 ... When The Limits to Growth predicted we'd be out of oil in 20 years.
In 1987 ... When Paul Erlich said the oil shock would come in the '90s.

... and so on.

But that doesn't stop George:

... the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in denial.
Oil itself won't disappear, but extracting what remains is becoming ever more difficult and expensive. The discovery of new reserves peaked in the 1960s.

Actually, known world oil reserves, measured in terms of years of consumption remaining, have been steadily increasing since 1940 - even while consumption simultaneously increases. At current rates of consumption, the one trillion barrels of currently known reserves will last about 36 years. The same analysis done 36 years ago would have yielded somewhat lower known reserves.

As far as the expenses are concerned, the price of oil was essentially in same (in real terms) in 1963 as it was 36 years later (when OPEC began adhering to production cutbacks, artificially inflating the price).

Moonbat continues:

The most optimistic projections are the ones produced by the US Department of Energy, which claims that this [i.e. peak production] will not take place until 2037 ... Even if the optimists are correct, we will be scraping the oil barrel within the lifetimes of most of those who are middle-aged today
Well, despite my youthful appearance (see photo), I'm 43 this month, so I guess I'm middle-aged. I hope to still be alive in 2037, at the age of 77. According to the most optimistic projection, that will be the year of peak production - hardly a scraping of the barrel. But even if more pessimistic views are correct, I'd still be willing to bet that petroleum reserves, measured in terms of years of remaining consumption, will be significantly greater than my life expectancy at that time. In fact, if I had to pick a number, I'd bet on ... 36 years.

Monbiot goes on to dismiss what may be the best medium-term solution to the non-problem with two sentences:

there are plenty of possible substitutes, but none of them is likely to be anywhere near as cheap as crude is today. Petroleum can be extracted from tar sands and oil shale, but in most cases the process uses almost as much energy as it liberates, while creating great mountains and lakes of toxic waste.
"Nowhere near as cheap?" The American Geological Institute disagrees:

Traditionally a high-cost endeavor, mining for bitumen [the petroleum component of tar sand] has become much more feasible over the past two decades with the cost for producing a barrel of oil now roughly $8.
And there's a lot of tar sand out there: "Oil production from tar sands in Canada and South America would add about 600 billion barrels to the world’s supply" - at a price below $30, according to the US Energy Information Agency.

That's a 60% increase in known reserves (another 21 years), available at today's prices.

But that doesn't include oil shale resources, which exceed conventional resources by 50%, according to the World Energy Council.

The same report points out that: "the production of shale oil is competitive at crude oil prices above $25/bbl."

Even if these resources exceed conventional oil deposits by 50%, let's assume that the levels are equal. That gives us another 35 years of petroleum, bringing us up to almost 2100. This is a conservative estimate - Bjorn Lomborg's analysis concludes that a price increase to $40 will allow us to "exploit about 5 times present reserves."

George admits that "Natural gas is a better option, but switching from oil to gas propulsion would require a vast and staggeringly expensive new fuel infrastructure." I wonder if he'd concede that it just might be achievable within the next 100 years.

There's more, of course. Nuclear power is dismissed out of hand as "expensive and lethal." Another possible solution, underground coal gasification, may have some promise, but at a cost: The Likely Elimination of Life on Earth. So I guess we can't do that one then.

Unsurprisingly, Monbiot's ultimate point is that the "impending end of the Oil Age" is the motivation for Bush and Blair's evil war.

Given that this is still at least 100 years away, we should give The President and the Prime Minister credit for being very farsighted indeed.