Peak Oil

[Makalakumu]

http://scienceweek.com/2004/sa040702-6.htm

http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/energypmp/maugeri%20science%20may04.pdf

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04142/319678.stm


http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Focus/FJ20Dh01.html

Peak Oil does not mean running out of oil. Peak oil means running out of cheap oil. All of these articles imply that "doomsayers" say we will run out of oil. That is not true. Please check the above graphs posted. Cheap Oil is the Key. When Peak Oil hits, all of the cheap oil is gone. From that point on, oil becomes more and more expensive...until our economy which depends on cheap oil collapses.

These articles are nothing but "head in the sand" disinformation remininiscent of the "smoking does not cause cancer" type. They talk about extraction of the bottom fifty percent like it will be some technologic wonder, yet NONE of these people have actual experience with the industry like ASPO.

Technology be damned, we cannot do some of the things suggested cheaply... :whip:

The articles all agree, Peak Oil will happen. The most "liberal" estimate I saw was 2030 and this was from an Italian agency... I've seen "estimates" as far as 2040. This is truly the optimistic fringe and it is still within my lifetime. My children will have to live through the post carbon era...

 

[Tgace]

Peak oil is a myth propagated by the Bush administration to garner support for world domination!!!

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/312864.shtml

 

[Makalakumu]

Peak oil is a myth propagated by the Bush administration to garner support for world domination!!!

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/312864.shtml

Nice theory... :asian: Where's my tin hat emoticon!

This is from the above article.

By 1951, what has been called the Modern Russian-Ukrainian Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins was born. A healthy amount of scientific debate followed for the next couple of decades, during which time the theory, initially formulated by geologists, based on observational data, was validated through the rigorous quantitative work of chemists, physicists and thermodynamicists. For the last couple of decades, the theory has been accepted as established fact by virtually the entire scientific community of the (former) Soviet Union. It is backed up by literally thousands of published studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Regarding the abiotic oil theory...

Abiotic Oil theory states the following...

1. In the mantle of the Earth, calcium carbonate from subducted ocean sediments undergoes chemical reactions under the high heat and pressure. These reactions strip the Ca and O off the molecule to create molecular C. Further reactions combine molecular C with H to form hydrocarbons.

2. These hydrocarbons, less dense then the surrounding material, drift upward to replenish the undersides of anticlinic traps that form oil fields.

3. According to abiotic oil theory, oil is not a fossil fuel. Nor is oil a nonrenewable resource. Abiotic oil theory links the production of oil to the inorganic carbon cylcle, so we will always have oil.

Problems with this theory...

1. The chemical reactions claimed have never been performed under laboratory conditions.

2. No oil feild has ever been observed to repressurize and replenish itself. In all oil fields, it has been observed that production peaks and then falls off.

3. In low quality crude oil, the skeletons of fossilized plankton have been observed.

So, what is the deal???

The abiotic oil theory has been falsified by modern petroleum geologists. Soviet scientists, at the behest of the communist government, created this theory to placate public worry about oil. Russian oil production was peaking in some areas and was falling off. The public was worried that they would run out. Currently, this theory is being used by multinational oil companies to stave off worry about a global oil production peak.

 

[Makalakumu]

Check out this regarding Abiotic Oil...

Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics?

By
Ugo Bardi

www.aspoitalia.net

[Ugo Bardi is professor of Chemistry at the University of Florence, Italy. He is also member of the ASPO (Association for the study of peak oil). He is the author of the book "La Fine del Petrolio" (the end of oil) and of several studies on oil depletion.

Ugo Bardi offers a simple assessment of the abiotic theory. His logic is so clear, and the culmination of his argument is so cogent, that even a child could understand it. And the conclusion is inescapable - at least to honest enquiry - abiotic theory is false, or at best irrelevant. -DAP]

OCTOBER 4, 2004: 1300 PDT (FTW) -- For the past century or so, the biological origin of oil seemed to be the accepted norm. However, there remained a small group of critics who pushed the idea that, instead, oil is generated from inorganic matter within the earth's mantle.
The question might have remained within the limits of a specialized debate among geologists, as it has been until not long ago. However, the recent supply problems have pushed crude oil to the center stage of international news. This interest has sparked a heated debate on the concept of the "production peak" of crude oil. According to the calculations of several experts, oil production may reach a maximum within a few years and start a gradual decline afterwards.
The concept of "oil peak" is strictly linked to a view that sees oil as a finite resource. Several economists have never accepted this view, arguing that resource availability is determined by price and not by physical factors. Recently, others have been arguing a more extreme view: that oil is not even physically limited. According to some versions of the abiotic oil theory, oil is continuously created in the Earth's mantle in such amounts that the very concept of "depletion" is to be abandoned and, by consequence, that there will never be an "oil peak."
The debate has become highly politicized and has spilled over from geology journals to the mainstream press and to the fora and mailing lists on the internet. The proponents of the abiotic oil theory are often very aggressive in their arguments. Some of them go so far as to accuse those who claim that oil production is going to peak of pursuing a hidden political agenda designed to provide Bush with a convenient excuse for invading Iraq and the whole Middle East.

Normally, the discussion of abiotic oil oscillates between the scientifically arcane and the politically nasty. Even supposing that the political nastiness can be detected and removed, there remains the problem that the average non-specialist in petroleum geology can't hope to wade through the arcane scientific details of the theory (isotopic ratios, biomarkers, sedimentary layers and all that) without getting lost.
Here, I will try to discuss the origin of oil without going into these details. I will do this by taking a more general approach. Supposing that the abiogenic theory is right, then what are the consequences for us and for the whole biosphere? If we find that the consequences do not correspond to what we see, then we can safely drop the abiotic theory without the need of worrying about having to take a course in advanced geology. We may also find that the consequences are so small as to be irrelevant; in this case also we needn't worry about arcane geological details.

In order to discuss this point, the first task is to be clear about what we are discussing. There are, really, two versions of the abiotic oil theory, the "weak" and the "strong":
- The "weak" abiotic oil theory: oil is abiotically formed, but at rates not higher than those that petroleum geologists assume for oil formation according to the conventional theory. (This version has little or no political consequences).
- The "strong" abiotic theory: oil is formed at a speed sufficient to replace the oil reservoirs as we deplete them, that is, at a rate something like 10,000 times faster than known in petroleum geology. (This one has strong political implications).
Both versions state that petroleum is formed from the reaction of carbonates with iron oxide and water in the region called "mantle," deep in the Earth. Furthermore, it is assumed (see Gold's 1993 paper) that the mantle is such a huge reservoir that the amount of reactants consumed in the reaction hasn't depleted it over a few billion years (this is not unreasonable, since the mantle is indeed huge).
Now, the main consequence of this mechanism is that it promises a large amount of hydrocarbons that seep out to the surface from the mantle. Eventually, these hydrocarbons would be metabolized by bacteria and transformed into CO2. This would have an effect on the temperature of the atmosphere, which is strongly affected by the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in it. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is regulated by at least two biological cycles; the photosynthetic cycle and the silicate weathering cycle. Both these cycles have a built-in negative feedback which keeps (in the long run) the CO2 within concentrations such that the right range of temperatures for living creatures is maintained (this is the Gaia model).
The abiotic oil-if it existed in large amounts-would wreak havoc with these cycles. In the "weak" abiotic oil version, it may just be that the amount of carbon that seeps out from the mantle is small enough for the biological cycles to cope and still maintain control over the CO2 concentration. However, in the "strong" version, this is unthinkable. Over billions of years of seepage in the amounts considered, we would be swimming in oil, drowned in oil.
Indeed, it seems that the serious proponents of the abiotic theory all go for the "weak" version. Gold, for instance, never says in his 1993 paper that oil wells are supposed to replenish themselves.1 As a theory, the weak abiotic one still fails to explain a lot of phenomena, principally (and, I think, terminally): how is it that oil deposits are almost always associated to anoxic periods of high biological sedimentation rate? However, the theory is not completely unthinkable.

At this point, we can arrive at a conclusion. What is the relevance of the abiotic theory in practice? The answer is "none." The "strong" version is false, so it is irrelevant by definition. The "weak" version, instead, would be irrelevant in practice, even if it were true. It would change a number of chapters of geology textbooks, but it would have no effect on the impending oil peak.
To be sure, Gold and others argue that even the weak version has consequences on petroleum prospecting and extraction. Drilling deeper and drilling in areas where people don't usually drill, Gold says, you have a chance to find oil and gas. This is a very, very weak position for two reasons.
First, digging is more expensive the deeper you go, and in practice it is nearly impossible to dig a commercial well deeper than the depth to which wells are drilled nowadays, that is, more than 10 km.
Secondly, petroleum geology is an empirical field which has evolved largely by trial and error. Petroleum geologists have learned the hard way where to drill (and where not to drill); in the process they have developed a theoretical model that WORKS. It is somewhat difficult to believe that generations of smart petroleum geologists missed huge amounts of oil. Gold tried to demonstrate just that, and all that he managed to do was to recover 80 barrels of oil in total, oil that was later shown to be most likely the result of contamination of the drilling mud. Nothing prevents others from trying again, but so far the results are not encouraging.

So, the abiotic oil theory is irrelevant to the debate about peak oil and it would not be worth discussing were it not for its political aspects. If people start with the intention of demonstrating that the concept of "peak oil" was created by a "Zionist conspiracy" or something like that, anything goes. In this case, however, the debate is no longer a scientific one. Fortunately, as Colin Campbell said, "Oil is ultimately controlled by events in the geological past which are immune to politics."

 

[Makalakumu]

Take a gander at this...

Iraq and the Problem of Peak Oil
Friday 6th August 2004

by F. William Engdahl
Today, much of the world is convinced the Bush Administration did not wage war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein because of threat from weapons of mass destruction, nor from terror dangers. Still a puzzle, however, is why Washington would risk so much in terms of relations with its allies and the entire world, to occupy Iraq. There is compelling evidence that oil and geopolitics lie at the heart of the still-hidden reasons for the military action in Iraq.

It is increasingly clear that the US occupation of Iraq is about control of global oil resources. Control, however, in a situation where world oil supplies are far more limited than most of the world has been led to believe. If the following is accurate, the Iraq war is but the first in a major battle over global energy resources, a battle which will be more intense than any oil war to date. The stakes are highest. It is about fixing who will get how much oil for their economy at what price and who not. Never has such a choke-hold on the world economy been in the hands of one power. After occupation of Iraq it appears it is.

The era of cheap, abundant oil, which has supported world economic growth for more than three quarters of a century, is most probably at or past its absolute peak, according to leading independent oil geologists. If this analysis is accurate, the economic and social consequences will be staggering. This reality is being hidden from general discussion by the oil multinationals and major government agencies, above all by the United States government. Oil companies have a vested interest in hiding the truth in order to keep the price of getting new oil as low as possible. The US government has a strategic interest in keeping the rest of the world from realising how critical the problem has become.

According to the best estimates of a number of respected international geologists, including the French Petroleum Institute, Colorado School of Mines, Uppsala University and Petroconsultants in Geneva, the world will likely feel the impact of the peaking of most of the present large oil fields and the dramatic fall in supply by the end of this decade, 2010, or possibly even several years sooner. At that point, the world economy will face shocks which will make the oil price rises of the 1970’s pale by contrast. In other words, we face a major global energy shortage for the prime fuel of our entire economy within about seven years. Peak oil

The problem in oil production is not how much reserves are underground. There the numbers are more encouraging. The problem comes when large oilfields such as Prudhoe Bay Alaska or the fields of the North Sea pass their peak output. Much like a bell curve, oil fields rise to a maximum output or peak. The peak is the point when half the oil has been extracted. In terms of reserves remaining it may seem there is still ample oil. But it is not as rosy as it seems. The oil production may hold at the peak output for a number of years before beginning a slow decline. Once the peak is past however, the decline can become very rapid. Past the peak, there is still oil, but each barrel becomes more difficult to exploit, and more costly, as internal well pressures decline or other problems make recovery more expensive for each barrel. The oil is there but not at all easy to extract. The cost of each barrel past peak is increasingly higher as artificial means are employed to extract it. After a certain point it becomes uneconomical to continue to try to extract this peak oil.

Because most oil companies and agencies such as the US Department of Energy speak not of peak oil, but of total reserves, the world has a false sense of energy supply security. The truth is anything but secure. Case studies

Some recent cases make the point. In 1991 the largest discovery in the Western Hemisphere since the 1970’s, was found at Cruz Beana in Columbia. But its production went from 500,000 barrels a day to 200,000 barrels in 2002. In the mid-1980’s the Forty Field in North Sea produced 500,000 barrels a day. Today it yields 50,000 barrels. One of the largest discoveries of the past 40 years, Prudhoe Bay, produced some 1.5 million barrels a day for almost 12 years. In 1989 it peaked, and today gives only 350,000 barrels daily. The giant Russian Samotlor field produced a peak of 3,500,000 barrels a day. It has now dropped to 325,000 a day. In each of these fields, production has been kept up by spending more and more to inject gas or water to maintain field pressures, or other means to pump the quantity of oil. The world’s largest oil field, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, produces near 60% of all Saudi oil, some 4.5 million barrels per day. To achieve this, geologists report that the Saudis must inject 7 million barrels a day of salt water to keep up oil well pressure, an alarming signal of near collapse of output in the world’s largest oil kingdom.

The growing problem of peak oil has been known among oil industry insiders since the mid-1990’s. In 1995, the leading oil consulting firm, Petroconsultants in Geneva, published a global study, ’The World Oil Supply.’ The report cost $35,000, written for the oil industry. Its author was petroleum geologist, Dr. Colin Campbell. In 1999 Campbell testified to the British House of Commons, ’Discovery of (new oil reserves) peaked in the 1960’s. We now find one barrel for every four we consume ...’ No new giant discoveries

After OPEC raised oil prices in the 1970’s, non-OPEC oil projects began to be profitable in the North Sea, Alaska, Venezuela and other places. Oil production increased markedly. At the same time, in response to the higher oil price, many industrial countries like France, Germany USA, Japan dramatically increased the energy from nuclear power plants. The combination gave the illusion that the oil problem had vanished. It has not, far from it.

If in fact many of today’s major sources of oil have peaked, and are about to fall off drastically, and at the same time, if world energy demand continues to grow, and not enough oil is found even to replace existing depletion, the global economy faces a crisis of staggering dimension. This would also begin to explain the shift of US foreign policy in the direction of a crude neo-imperial military presence globally, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, from West Africa to Baghdad and beyond.

Obviously, the easiest, most economical solution is to find new giant or super giant oilfields where large volumes of oil can be extracted and brought to world markets at low cost. That is just what is not the case today. According to a recent report from the Colorado School of Mines, ’The World’s Giant Oilfields,’ the world’s ’120 largest oilfields produce close to 33 million barrels a day, almost 50% of the world’s crude oil supply. The fourteen largest account for over 20%. The average age of these 14 largest fields is 43.5 years.’ 1

The above study concludes that ’most of the world’s true giants were found decades ago.’ Over the past 20 years despite investment of hundreds of billions dollars by major oil companies, results have been alarmingly disappointing.

The world’s major oil companies - Exxon-Mobil, Shell, ChevronTexaco, BP, ElfTotal and others - have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in finding enough oil to replace the existing oil supply sources. Between 1996 and 1999, some 145 companies spent $410 billion to find enough oil only to keep their daily production stable at 30 million barrels a day. From 1999 to 2002, the five largest companies spent another $150 billion and their production grew only from 16 million barrels a day to 16.6 million barrels, a tiny increase. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, western oil companies placed high hopes on the oil potentials of the Caspian Sea in Central Asia. Disappointing Caspian results

In December 2002, just after US troops took Afghanistan, BP, a major oil company announced disappointing Caspian drilling results which suggested that the ’oil find of the century’ was little more than a drop in the ocean. Instead of earlier predictions of oil reserves above 200 billion barrels, a new Saudi Arabia outside the Middle East, the US State Department announced, ’Caspian oil represents 4% of world reserves. It will never dominate the world’s markets.’ PetroStrategies published a study estimating that the Caspian Basin contained a mere 39 billion barrels of oil, and of a poor quality. Soon after this news, BP and other western oil companies began reducing investment plans in the region. Interest in West Africa

One of the most active areas of new exploration is in the offshore region of West Africa from Nigeria to Angola. President Bush made a high profile trip to the region earlier in the year, and the US Pentagon has signed military basing agreements with two small strategic islands, Principe and San Tome, insuring a military presence should anything threaten the flow of oil across the Atlantic. Yet, while the volume of oil is important, it also is hardly a new Saudi Arabia. Geologist Campbell estimates that if all deepwater oil, perhaps 85 billion barrels, were produced from fields off Brazil, Angola and Nigeria, it would meet global demand for 3-4 years. Growing energy demand

Against the prospect that many of the largest oil fields today are in a marked decline in output, world demand for oil is rising ruthlessly, marked by the growing economies of China, India and Asia. Even at today’s weak GDP growth rates, economists estimate that world demand for oil at today’s prices will rise by some 2% per year.

Ten years ago, China was not a factor in world import of oil. It produced most of its limited needs domestically. Beginning 1993 however, China began to import oil to meet its economic needs. By end 2003 China has surpassed Japan to be the second largest oil importer next to the USA. China now consumes 20% of total OECD industrial country energy. China oil imports are rising now by 9% a year and this is predicted to rise significantly in the coming decade, as China emerges as the world’s largest industrial nation. China currently is growing at 7-8% a year. India has recently emerged as a rapidly growing economy as well. Combined they account for some 2.5 billion of the world population. Little wonder that China vehemently opposed the US unilateral war against Iraq in the UN Security Council. The China National Petroleum Company had long sought to secure major oil supply from Iraq. What Cheney knew in 1999

In a speech to the International Petroleum Institute in London in late1999, Dick Cheney, then chairman of the world’s largest oil services company, Halliburton, presented the picture of world oil supply and demand to industry insiders. ’By some estimates,’ Cheney stated, ’there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.’ Cheney ended on an alarming note: ’That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.’ This is equivalent to more than six Saudi Arabia’s of today’s size.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Cheney, as Vice President, was given as his first major assignment the head of a Presidential Task Force on Energy. He knew the dimension of the energy problem facing not only the United States, but the rest of the world.

Cheney is also well identified as the leading Iraq warhawk in the Bush Administration, together with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Repeatedly it was Cheney pushing for military action against Iraq, regardless of which allies support it.

When we examine what is known about global oil reserves, and where they are, in light of the above ’peak oil’ analysis of much of today’s existing oil production, it becomes clearer why Cheney would be willing to risk so much in terms of America’s standing among allies and others, to occupy the oilfields of Iraq. Cheney knows exactly what the global oil reserve situation is as former CEO of Halliburton Corporation, the world’s largest oil services company. The Achilles heel of the US?

The burning question is where will we get such a huge increase of oil? In the decade from 1990 to 2000, a total of 42 billion barrels of new oil reserves were discovered worldwide. In the same period, the world consumed 250 billion barrels. In the past two decades only three giant fields with more than one billion barrels each have been discovered. One in Norway, in Columbia and Brazil. None of these produce more than 200,000 barrels a day. This is far from 50 million barrels a day which the world will need.

Is the era of cheap, abundant oil to fuel the world economy about to end? One most important issue in the entire debate over why Washington went to war in Iraq is the question of how much oil remains to be found in the world at today’s prices. The debate has been remarkably little over an economic issue of enormous consequences.

According to the estimates of Colin Campbell and K. Aleklett of Uppsala University, five countries hold the overwhelming bulk of the world’s remaining oil and could potentially make up the difference as other areas pass their peak. ’The five major producers of the Middle East, namely Abu Dhabi, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (including the Neutral Zone), with about half the world’s remaining oil, are treated as swing producers making up the difference between world demand and what other countries can produce...’2.

These five countries - Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE - through circumstances of geology, contain the oil and gas reserves vital to the future economic growth of the world. In an article in the January 7, 2002 issue of Oil and Gas Journal by A. S. Bakhtiari of the National Iranian Oil Company, noted, ’The Middle East (is) simultaneously the most geostrategic area on the globe and the ultimate energy prize: Two-thirds of global crude oil reserves are concentrated in five countries bordering the Persian Gulf.’3

In a paper published in November 2001, eminent Princeton geologist, Kenneth Deffeyes wrote, ’The biggest single question is the year when world oil production reaches a Hubbert peak and then declines forever. Both the graphical and the computer fits identify 2004 as the probable year. The largest single uncertainty is the enormous reserves of Saudi Arabia.’4

If the peak oil analysis is accurate, it suggests why Washington may be willing to risk so much to control Iraq and through its bases there, the five oil-rich countries. It suggests Washington is acting from a fundamental strategic weakness, not from absolute strength as is often thought. A full and open debate on the problem of peak energy is urgently needed.

Footnotes:

1 ’The World`s Giant Oilfields’, Matthew R. Simmons, M. King Hubbert Center for Petroleum Supply Studies, Colorado School of Mines, January 2002.

2 Aleklett, K. and Campbell, C.J., ’The Peak and Decline of World Oil and Gas Production,’ published by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, www.asponews.org .

3 Bakhtiari, A.M. Samsam, ’2002 to see birth of New World Energy Order,’ Oil and Gas Journal, January 7, 2002.

4 Deffeyes, Kenneth S, ’Peak of world oil production,’ Paper no. 83-0,Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, November 2001. gsa.confex.com .

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ENG408A.html

 

[Tgace]

http://www.peaceredding.org/Never Cry Wolf--Why the Petroleum Age Is Far from over.htm

 

[Makalakumu]

Peak Oil will happen. There is only one solution. We waste too much energy. That needs to stop or it will be stopped for us.

http://www.peaceredding.org/Never Cry Wolf--Why the Petroleum Age Is Far from over.htm

The Hubbert curves do not delineate the complex and dynamic nature of oil production and reserves in the world, because they are the product of a static model that puts an unjustifiable faith in geology and does not consider technology and cost/price functions. The model's success in predicting U.S. peak production merely reflected the peculiar nature of this area, which is the most intensively explored and exploited in the world. Elsewhere, the pattern of production is not rendered by a bell curve but is marked by large discontinuities.

Science is only good when it tells you what you want to hear...Hubberts model has been used by Ken Deffeyes to make repeatable predictions of other peaks. In all instances, the bell curve shape held when more data is analyzed. Oil fields are statistical. The bell curve in Hubbert's model is an average.

Nearly all of the estimates of the world's oil URR, including those by oil doomsters, do not take into account the so-called "nonconventional oils"--such as Canadian tar-sands and Venezuelan and Russian heavy oils--even though the availability of these resources is huge and the costs of extraction falling.

Yes, they do take this type of oil into account. Anyone who says this, hasn't read the literature. The technology required for extraction from these other sources only becomes viable when the price of oil becomes astronomical. By then, its too late. The other peice of this is that the cost of extraction depends on the price of oil! As the price of oil rises, so do the costs. Have you ever seen some of the gargantuan mining equipment they use out west? The amount of energy it uses is out of this world. That is the type of mining equipment is what will be needed in order to extract the alternative sources.

The Age of Coal began when declining supplies of wood in Great Britain caused its price to climb. Two centuries later, oil took the place of coal as "the king of energy sources" because of its convenience and its high flexibility in many applications, but coal was neither exhausted nor scarce. Oil substitution is simply a matter of cost and public needs, not of scarcity. To "cry wolf" over the availability of oil has the sole effect of perpetuating a misguided obsession with oil security and control that is already rooted in Western public opinion--an obsession that historically has invariably led to bad political decisions.

The peaks happen and the decline always follows despite new technology. Once you pass the peak, the oil becomes exponentially (in the mathematical sense) harder to get out. According to Hubbert's model technology can keep up for a while near the top, but as you slip down the side of the parabola, there's not much one can do.

Of course, the writer can keep on dreaming that his "market solution religion" will toss him a Hail Mary or two...

 

[Makalakumu]

Here is the story on NPR...

Morning Edition, August 25, 2004 - The summer's record high oil prices and tight supplies raise questions about how much oil is left. Though oil companies are seeking new discoveries, industry veterans agree oil production will hit a peak -- though estimates on when vary from 10 to 40 years. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep.

Click here.

 

[dubljay]

As part of my research job last summer I attended a Solar Energy conference in Portaland, OR. This subject was brought up.

One speaker (I can't remember his name or credentials I went to 8 presentations in 2 days) pointed out that as our technology has gotten better we are finding more and more oil fields, the problem is that these fields are not producing as much oil as the ones discovered in the past. The life expectancy of an oil field is getting shorter and shorter, reducing the profit for drilling.

IMO if this trend continues the oil industry will no longer want to search for new fields to put up new drilling rigs, the cost will be too great for oil companies to make it worth their effort. A shift away from fossil fuels will not be directly related to dwindling resources, but dwindling profits for the resources at hand.

As a side note, I have been told that BP no longer stands for British Petroleum, it now stands for Beyond Petroleum. Also that BP is one of the worlds largest manufactures of Photovoltaic arays (solar cells). Again I have yet to confirm this information. Also I have seen billboards in the Sacramento area, for Arco (in the BP network) that claim research into alternative energies.


Thats my two cents,

-Josh

 

[Makalakumu]

As part of my research job last summer I attended a Solar Energy conference in Portaland, OR. This subject was brought up.

One speaker (I can't remember his name or credentials I went to 8 presentations in 2 days) pointed out that as our technology has gotten better we are finding more and more oil fields, the problem is that these fields are not producing as much oil as the ones discovered in the past. The life expectancy of an oil field is getting shorter and shorter, reducing the profit for drilling.

IMO if this trend continues the oil industry will no longer want to search for new fields to put up new drilling rigs, the cost will be too great for oil companies to make it worth their effort. A shift away from fossil fuels will not be directly related to dwindling resources, but dwindling profits for the resources at hand.

As a side note, I have been told that BP no longer stands for British Petroleum, it now stands for Beyond Petroleum. Also that BP is one of the worlds largest manufactures of Photovoltaic arays (solar cells). Again I have yet to confirm this information. Also I have seen billboards in the Sacramento area, for Arco (in the BP network) that claim research into alternative energies.


Thats my two cents,

-Josh

Hey, Josh, thanks for jumping in... :asian:

The problem with solar cells is that they are expensive (although the price is falling. Futher, solar cells are made with petroleum based products and they require petroleum energy to make. As the price of oil rises, so too will the price of solar cells.

Then, there is the fact that our energy in to energy out ratio for solar cells is so much lower then petroleum. During the petroleum blowout of the late twentieth century, we were getting 100 calories of energy for every 1 expended (this has fallen dramatically in the last few years which leads me to believe the bottom has already dropped out) For solar cells, this ratio is close to 1 / 1.

What does this mean?

We will not find a resource to replace petroleum. We will not be able to maintain our current lifestyles. WE MUST CHANGE. The simple fact of the matter is that we waste a rediculous amount of energy...and we flaunt this fact to the rest of the world! This cannot and will not continue. We could put off most of this chaos and give us more time to change in a rational way by cutting our energy usage by 50%, but our psychologic expenditure in this way of life is too great. We will defend it far into necrocity, I'm afraid...

Anyone who says that capitalism increases efficiency needs to stop drinking the kool-aide.

 

[dubljay]

Hey, Josh, thanks for jumping in... :asian:

The problem with solar cells is that they are expensive (although the price is falling. Futher, solar cells are made with petroleum based products and they require petroleum energy to make. As the price of oil rises, so too will the price of solar cells.

Then, there is the fact that our energy in to energy out ratio for solar cells is so much lower then petroleum. During the petroleum blowout of the late twentieth century, we were getting 100 calories of energy for every 1 expended (this has fallen dramatically in the last few years which leads me to believe the bottom has already dropped out) For solar cells, this ratio is close to 1 / 1.

What does this mean?

We will not find a resource to replace petroleum. We will not be able to maintain our current lifestyles. WE MUST CHANGE. The simple fact of the matter is that we waste a rediculous amount of energy...and we flaunt this fact to the rest of the world! This cannot and will not continue. We could put off most of this chaos and give us more time to change in a rational way by cutting our energy usage by 50%, but our psychologic expenditure in this way of life is too great. We will defend it far into necrocity, I'm afraid...

Anyone who says that capitalism increases efficiency needs to stop drinking the kool-aide.

I am aware of the costs and effeciencies of PV arays as spent a summer working with them. Capialism is not for effecincy, however, the costs of oil production will increas, we already feeling the pinch. With the arival of hybrid and fuel cell cars the consumer will have a choice in how to power their vehicle. At the current rates of increasing price for petrol, these will be viable options as the technology becomes more stable. Even a drop in 5% in profits due to alternative energy and hybrid vehicles will cause the oil industry to sit up and take action while they still have the financial resources to do so.

For home use the prototype house I worked on used 2 kw PVs and was tied to the grid. The goal was to have an energy bill of zero over the time span of one year. At times you will draw from the grid, others you will be supplying the grid with excess. The total prototype system was about $200k for equipment and install which included a ground loop installed for heating. I really don't want to give out too much detial out of repect for the head or the research project.

My point is that out of self preservation Oil compaines are begining to see the light from alternative energies, perhaps too late in the game, we will see.

 

[Makalakumu]

The Hooverization of Bush

James Howard Kunstler

March 27, 2005

Poor Herbert Hoover, the round-faced Stanford-educated wonderboy of the 1920s boom, who got elected president in 1928 on the strength of his performance as an economic management wizard, was corn-holed by the 1929 stock market crash and humiliated by several years of depression that followed it. Hoover's reputation never recovered, and he lived a long life -- another three decades -- under a cloud of ignominy.

A similar, though probably much worse, fate now awaits George W. Bush. The Great Depression, however, was milder than what Bush (and America) now faces.

When Franklin Roosevelt came on board in 1933, he remarked that we had "nothing to fear but fear itself." This now-hoary phrase was much more precise and astute when first uttered than it seems after seven decades of recitation. The Great Depression was indeed a mystifying event because, as Roosevelt further observed, it happened in a society that was so fundamentally wealthy -- suffering "want amidst plenty," as FDR put it. We had barely begun pumping our stupendous oil endowment. We had productive farmland in abundance (even with the dust bowl happening) and plenty of food. We had loads of manpower, oodles of mineral resources, fabulous new industries like radio, motion pictures, cars, the world's most dynamic cities -- you get the picture. And yet the nation was on the ropes in 1933.

The Great Depression was a crisis of credit, capital formation, and markets, not of fundamental resources. It was a crisis of the abstract markers of real wealth, not the wealth itself. It was also a symptom of the diminishing returns of industrial hypergrowth, a kind of economic hormonal disturbance. It produced strange, unanticipated consequences. Hypertrophy in manufacturing led to saturated mass markets. The industrialization of farming led first to over-production of commodities and then to the dust bowl (thanks to that novelty, the Ford tractor). The system seized up. Money (credit) was scarce to an extreme. Farmers went broke. Factory workers were laid off. Essentially, it was intermission in the great industrial meta-drama. Everybody went out for a smoke.

After the convulsion of World War Two, we went back to confidently marshalling our resources with a vengence. We took all that oil, all the mineral wealth, the raw land, the timber, and other riches and directed it into the dubious-but-profitable project of building a suburban utopia. We're now in the final act of the industrial pageant, a few minutes to curtain. The Long Emergency that we're about to enter as the world passes the all-time oil production peak will be about the depletion and scarcity of things we used to have in plentitude: energy, electricity, food, water, minerals, with a new crisis of money and credit like a cherry on top.

Herbert Hoover was vilified for doing nothing about the depression that followed the stock market crash. When we look back on the years of George W. Bush we will marvel at his failure to lead, especially his failure to inform the public that our habits of daily life would have to change, that we could not continue to burn twenty million barrels of oil a day, and spend money we hadn't earned; that we desperately had to reform our suburban land development habits, that the WalMarts and other predatory corporations had to be restrained in their systematic destruction of local economies, that our railroads needed to be rebuilt, that our borders needed to be defended, that our local small farmers needed to be supported, that our industries needed to be re-scaled and retained here, that corporate chiseling had to be policed, that finance had to be qualitatively different than a craps game in some casino.

The Hooverization of George W. Bush has begun. Only it will go much worse for Bush. His fall could be so hard, swift and awful that he may not be allowed to finish his second term. That's how stunned the public and even their entrenched oligarchical elites will be as the economy tanks and our national life begins to unravel. The Republican majority will go down with him, including such arrant villians as Tom Delay and the hosts of corporate CEO chiselers who sold out their workers and their country. They can pray all the want. It won't help.

A friend of mine said that in 50 years, we'd look back on the Bush presidency and we'd see him as a hero. I laughed and drank more beer...

:drinkbeer :drinkbeer :drinkbeer

 

[Crom]

Has anyone given a timescale on the decline? I realise that it'd be hard to predict such a thing but when will supermarkets cease to be viable? For how long will people be driving to their service sector workplaces?
Should i move back to the countryside and buy a few feilds?

(Sorry if this has been mentioned in any of the previous articles, i read most of them honest)

 

[Makalakumu]

Has anyone given a timescale on the decline? I realise that it'd be hard to predict such a thing but when will supermarkets cease to be viable? For how long will people be driving to their service sector workplaces?
Should i move back to the countryside and buy a few feilds?

(Sorry if this has been mentioned in any of the previous articles, i read most of them honest)

Check the graphs I posted earlier and buy some fields...

 

[Ender]

World may hold vast untapped reserves of oil and gas
Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)

Washington (dpa) - Vast untapped reserves of oil and methane may exist 20 miles below the Earth's surface - and could keep the world supplied with energy long after conventional gas and oil fields have run dry, scientists believe.

The question of whether large amounts of hydrocarbons really are trapped in the Earth's mantle is unanswered at present, but new research has shown that fuel sources produced by volcanic activity could in theory exist at great depths.

Oil has been drilled since 1859 from wells that penetrate no deeper than three to five miles into the Earth's crust.

The oil and natural gas obtained commercially today is formed organically from the crushing of decomposed vegetation.

Methane, the most abundant hydrocarbon, is the main component of natural gas and often accompanied by liquid petroleum. But many scientists believe there may be reserves of hydrocarbons made without living material within the inferno of the Earth's upper mantle much deeper underground.

American scientists have now mimicked the conditions that exist at depths of between 12 and 37 miles under the continents.

Team member Dr Russell Hemley, from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said: "These experiments point to the possibility of an inorganic source of hydrocarbons at great depth in the Earth - that is, hydrocarbons that come from simple reactions between water and rock and not just from the decomposition of living organisms."

The scientists described the work recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Common materials such as iron oxide, calcite and water were squeezed to pressures ranging from 50,000 to 110,000 times that of the atmosphere at sea level.

The samples were also heated to temperatures as high as 1,500 degrees Celsius.

The researchers found that methane formed from chemical reactions involving the carbon in calcite over a wide range of temperatures and pressures.

Dr Freeman Dyson, from the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University, New Jersey, who reviewed the research, said: "This paper is important, not because it settles the question whether the origin of natural gas and petroleum is organic or inorganic, but because it gives us the tools to attack the question experimentally.

"If the answer turns out to be inorganic, this has huge implications for the ecology and economy of our planet as well as for the chemistry of other planets."


Copyright 2004 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

 

[Makalakumu]

World may hold vast untapped reserves of oil and gas
Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)

Washington (dpa) - Vast untapped reserves of oil and methane may exist 20 miles below the Earth's surface - and could keep the world supplied with energy long after conventional gas and oil fields have run dry, scientists believe.

The question of whether large amounts of hydrocarbons really are trapped in the Earth's mantle is unanswered at present, but new research has shown that fuel sources produced by volcanic activity could in theory exist at great depths.

Oil has been drilled since 1859 from wells that penetrate no deeper than three to five miles into the Earth's crust.

The oil and natural gas obtained commercially today is formed organically from the crushing of decomposed vegetation.

Methane, the most abundant hydrocarbon, is the main component of natural gas and often accompanied by liquid petroleum. But many scientists believe there may be reserves of hydrocarbons made without living material within the inferno of the Earth's upper mantle much deeper underground.

American scientists have now mimicked the conditions that exist at depths of between 12 and 37 miles under the continents.

Team member Dr Russell Hemley, from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said: "These experiments point to the possibility of an inorganic source of hydrocarbons at great depth in the Earth - that is, hydrocarbons that come from simple reactions between water and rock and not just from the decomposition of living organisms."

The scientists described the work recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Common materials such as iron oxide, calcite and water were squeezed to pressures ranging from 50,000 to 110,000 times that of the atmosphere at sea level.

The samples were also heated to temperatures as high as 1,500 degrees Celsius.

The researchers found that methane formed from chemical reactions involving the carbon in calcite over a wide range of temperatures and pressures.

Dr Freeman Dyson, from the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University, New Jersey, who reviewed the research, said: "This paper is important, not because it settles the question whether the origin of natural gas and petroleum is organic or inorganic, but because it gives us the tools to attack the question experimentally.

"If the answer turns out to be inorganic, this has huge implications for the ecology and economy of our planet as well as for the chemistry of other planets."


Copyright 2004 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

Elsewhere, the abiotic oil theory has been addressed. This theory is incorrect because it is insufficient in explaining all of the data. This idea that the earth has something like a creamy nougat center filled with oil is a pipe dream...

 

[Ender]

Solar cells: The new light fantastic
By Olga Kharif
Source: Business Week Online

One day last July, Ted Sargent was typing away in his office at the University of Toronto when a graduate student rushed in. His excited visitor explained that he had just shone infrared light -- invisible to the human eye -- onto a tiny sample of a special material Sargent and his researchers had developed, and the sample actually converted the light into energy. Always the skeptic, Sargent asked, "Did you turn the [overhead] lights off?"

Soon, however, it became clear that this research group had stumbled onto something big. Sargent and his team describe their discovery -- the world's first plastic solar cell able to absorb infrared light -- in the February issue of the prestigious industry journal Nature Materials. Their little sample could bring about a sea change in the energy industry, making solar energy so cheap that it becomes a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Solar cells in commercial production today are expensive, around $6 per watt. To understand what that means, consider this: If you install $600 worth of solar cells, you can power a typical light bulb for 25 years, figures Ron Pernick, co-founder of renewable-energy consultancy Clean Edge in San Francisco. That's about twice the cost of coal-based electricity.

Through various technological improvements, solar-cell prices have typically fallen by 5% to 6% a year -- but no more, because cells are manufactured through complex processes similar to those employed for making PC processors and memory cards.

 

[Ender]

Energy Dept. notes fuel-cell breakthrough
Source: United Press International

WASHINGTON (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A major milestone in the development of fuel-cell technology was announced Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Department.

The agency said in a release Delphi Corp. had reached a power density level in its fuel-cell program that will greatly reduce the cost of the technology and make fuel cells competitive in the commercial market.

The breakthrough means fuel cells can now conceivably meet the government's energy-production target of $400 per kilowatt hour -- about one tenth of the cost of energy produced by current fuel cell models.

The auto industry has committed itself to commercially developing fuel cells as an alternative to gasoline engines; however, the carmakers insist quality and cost goals must first be met before fuel cells can gain the large market share needed to have an actual impact on smog levels.


Copyright 2005 by United Press International.

 

[Makalakumu]

Solar cells: The new light fantastic
By Olga Kharif
Source: Business Week Online

One day last July, Ted Sargent was typing away in his office at the University of Toronto when a graduate student rushed in. His excited visitor explained that he had just shone infrared light -- invisible to the human eye -- onto a tiny sample of a special material Sargent and his researchers had developed, and the sample actually converted the light into energy. Always the skeptic, Sargent asked, "Did you turn the [overhead] lights off?"

Soon, however, it became clear that this research group had stumbled onto something big. Sargent and his team describe their discovery -- the world's first plastic solar cell able to absorb infrared light -- in the February issue of the prestigious industry journal Nature Materials. Their little sample could bring about a sea change in the energy industry, making solar energy so cheap that it becomes a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Solar cells in commercial production today are expensive, around $6 per watt. To understand what that means, consider this: If you install $600 worth of solar cells, you can power a typical light bulb for 25 years, figures Ron Pernick, co-founder of renewable-energy consultancy Clean Edge in San Francisco. That's about twice the cost of coal-based electricity.

Through various technological improvements, solar-cell prices have typically fallen by 5% to 6% a year -- but no more, because cells are manufactured through complex processes similar to those employed for making PC processors and memory cards.

If a solar cell can convert infrared photons to electrons, this would mean that the cell could operate at night...a major drawback of conventional solar cells.

The problem with all solar cells is that they are expensive and rely on hydrocarbons for their peices as well as the energy to produce them. As the price of hydrocarbons rises, the price of solar cells will also rise.

We need to be making the decisions NOW to convert to solar, and it would take a decade for any effective system to be produced. And then, we will only get a fraction of the power that we do from oil...

It will not solve the problem. The problem is our waste. The problem is how we have constructed our society to maximize waste. The coming energy cruch will cure this whether we like it or not...

 

[Ender]

Circuit Uses Photosynthetic Plant Proteins


Source: United Press International

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (United Press International via COMTEX) -- U.S. scientists have developed an electronic circuit that harnesses a plant's ability to convert sunlight into energy.

Dubbed a "spinach sandwich," the circuit utilizes microscopic proteins from spinach and is the world's first photosynthetic solar cell, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report in NanoLetters.

The circuit consists of a bottom layer of transparent glass coated with a conductive material. A thin layer of gold sits on top of the glass and is where the spinach proteins reside. A soft organic semiconductor and a layer of metal are the top of the "sandwich."

Previous attempts to integrate the photosynthetic molecules of plants with electronics have been unsuccessful because biological materials require salt and water, which are destructive to electric devices. The researchers overcame this by using specially designed nanomaterials that enable the spinach proteins to function without water.

The device is still in the developmental stages, but researchers hope to get the efficiency up to 20 percent, which would make it a highly efficient power source.