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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Oil Depletion? It’s All In The Assumptions — Part 2
Ronald R. Cooke, Cultural Economist via EnergyPulse
Reality Check: CERA’s optimistic views are in the minority. [Cooke lists a half dozen petroleum and consulting firms that disagree with CERA] ….
Conclusion: Delayed projects and disruptions in the oil supply chain, coupled with current rates of depletion, could lead to temporary shortages long before “Peak Oil”.
Why? Because the issue is NOT how much oil do we have left in the ground. The issue is – How much oil can we produce? Sure. Calculating available reserves (proven, probable, and possible) is important because these projections give us a rough idea when peak oil production will occur. But when we talk about oil as a business, we have to include the challenges of exploration, production and transportation. It will be tough, for example, to find and pump this stuff from black holes in remote Siberia or the cold blue ice of the Artic.
Emerging technologies may permit us to drill 10,000 meters below the surface of the ocean, but it’s still an incredible operations headache. Producing oil from shale and sand is possible, but finding enough water and natural gas to sustain production will be difficult. And then there’s another problem. Most of the world’s remaining reserves and transport routes are located within the boundaries of nations that are politically unstable, have unpredictable regimes, may ignore their contractual obligations, or have a large faction of politically active extremists.
(12 October 2005)
Part 1 of this analysis is available online.
IEA report ‘Resources to reserves’ deeply flawed (AUDIO)
Oilcast #25
The International Energy Agency report, ‘Resources to Reserves’ comes under the Oilcast analysis spotlight this week. As well as a long look at ‘peak oil’ the report is also an interesting document, as much by what it omits as by what it contains.
Plus odd weather systems, price movements, American refining capacity and a possible Russian oil exchange…
(12 October 2005)
Previous Oilcast audios are also available on the site.
If oil is the problem, what are the solutions?
Jill Zobel, FM4 ORF
… Depending on who you talk to the day is coming when not only will gas for your car and oil for home heating become too expensive to pay for but sooner or later oil reserves will be depleted and the world supply will run out.
… Now, I don’t even drive a car and as I’m mostly out of the house my heating bills are relatively low. And, though I hate to admit it I am generally speaking too lazy to go heavy on conservation in any aspect of my life. So, getting my head around hybrids, hydrogen, non-oil fuel and energy alternatives wasn’t very easy. To make matters worse I really wasn’t very interested in the whole deal.
That is, until I heard about a guy in Iceland named Bragi Arnason, a University of Iceland chemistry professor people fondly call “Professor Hydrogen.” For more than 20 years he’s been pursuing a dream of making Iceland entirely fossil fuel free by 2030.
…The possibilities for reducing, if not replacing, oil in our energy futures seem limitless. The question is: is there the political will and will the industries react in time? These days it’s a fact that the big oil manufacturers like Shell and Chevron have invested heavily in these alternatives and some governments from Iceland to Japan and down to Brazil are working hard to end their fossil fuel dependency as quickly as possible.
It sounds boring perhaps to think about the chemistry, the physics, the mechanics involved but I guess at least some of us can be glad that someplace out there someone is doing the thinking.
(7 October 2005)
It’s interesting to see how peak oil awareness is spreading to different sectors. At least author Zobel is honest about her lack of knowledge/interest in the subject. “Free” at peakoil-dot-com fumes over this article. -BA
Energy independence requires a multifaceted approach
John Hughes, Christian Science Monitor
SALT LAKE CITY – The automobile has always featured significantly in my family.
My father as a young man brought the first automobile to his little Welsh hometown. He had to trade the family horse for it at the nearest big city. On the way back, the car broke down, my dad had to hike back to the big city, and borrow back the horse to tow the car home.
Cars were my father’s business for the rest of his life, and by the time I got my own first car they obviously had improved greatly. By the time my grown-up children were of driving age, cars had become sleek and powerful monsters, with one, and often two, in every garage.
Now my 14-year-old is looking forward to his appointment with the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine on wheels, and I’m wondering how much the era of the automobile is going to change in his lifetime or whether it will exist in its present form at all.
The problem is oil, and the shortage thereof.
…If the US is even to approach anything like energy independence, it will require extraordinary effort in conservation and the development of alternative fuels, as well as pumping more oil.
(12 October 2005)
This opinion piece starts out with a bang, but ends weakly.
Iran shutting down some heavy?
Stuart Staniford, The Oil Drum
Isaiah made a nice catch with this Bloomberg story that
Iran, OPEC’s second-largest producer, shut two oilfields in the Persian Gulf because of difficulties selling the heavy oil the sites produce, said Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which helped develop the fields.
Iran shut the Soroush and Nowruz fields less than three months after Shell handed their operation to Iran, said a Shell official, who declined to be identified.
As many of us know, the esteemed Saudi Oil Minister Mr Al-Naimi has been saying for some time that they can’t find customers for their heavy oil. With the exception of the Vanadium contaminated oil from the Manifa field, this hasn’t made sense to me. While light sweet crude may have peaked, and price spreads have been rising, prices for heavy grades of oil are still over $50/barrel for grades like Iranian Heavy (30 degrees). Even Mexican Maya (22 degrees) is over $50. However, this story tends to back Mr Al-Naimi up.
So the question is, why don’t the Iranians just lower their price, rather than shut the thing down altogether? Surely they’d be making money even if they were only getting $30/barrel for the Soroush oil? The obvious explanation to a peak-oiler is that they are pretty confident they’ll get more than $50 in the future, so they’re going to shut it in and wait rather than discount it more now. However, we need some actual evidence before we can be confident that is the explanation. I’d be grateful if anyone can shed any light on this.
(12 October 2005)
It’s hard for us to keep up with all the good postings at The Oil Drum, but here is one of their latest. -BA
Report on the Peak Oil conference in Ohio
Jan Steinman (Bytesmiths), peakoil-dot-com
…There were over 400 present, from 39 states and six countries, making this the largest energy resource depletion conference to date.
Richard Heinberg opened the conference on Friday with an overview of the problem and a survey of possible outcomes, from “Last Man Standing” (all-out resource war for the indefinite future) through “Powerdown” (voluntary reduction in population — VERY IMPORTANT in his opinion — and energy usage). He is working with the UN on an “Oil Depletion Protocol” to begin mitigation of the problem while providing widespread public understanding. This talk was very good and got a standing ovation.
Steve Andrews started off Saturday with more Peak Oil stuff. He’s a 25-year employee of NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) and former Intel exec. Like Heinberg, he stresses that “there is no silver bullet”, but is hopeful that there may be hundreds of “silver BBs”. Again, NOTHING is going to allow present energy, food, and population levels to maintain, but was hopeful that a graceful descent can be accomplished. In stressing post-peak production levels, he says the US is in a particularly dire situation: “If you view US oil as a six-pack, we’ve just popped the 5th can — and we must drink it with a straw.” By the time we get to the last can in the six-pack in about ten years, we’ll have to drink it through a hypodermic needle.
Next was John Ikerd, an economist specializing in agriculture. This was the best talk of the conference! He spoke of “sustainable capitalism” with the fiery rhetoric of an evangelical preacher…
(12 October 2005)
The report is about 7 entries down in the forum. Other reports on the conference are online at Energy Bulletin and The Oil Drum.
