Peak oil - Apr 5 - resilience

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Hirsch responds to Swedish PhD thesis on peak oil
ASPO
Fredrik Robelius, member of the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group, UHDSG, Uppsala University in Sweden, defended on March 30 his thesis http“Giant Oil Fields – Highway to Oil”. The university had appointed Dr. Robert Hirsch to be the official opponent in the oral defense of the thesis. Fredrik Robelius presented in the thesis a forecast model for global oil production based heavily on a field-by-field analysis focusing on giant oil fields. A giant field will ultimately produce more than 500 million barrels (0.5 Gb) of oil. In his worst-case scenario global oil production may peak next year and in the best-case scenario 10 years later, year 2018.

Although giant fields represent only about one percent of all oil fields in the world, they account for more than 60% of total production. The trend is heading downward when it comes to new giant-field discoveries, both in terms of the number of fields and the volume of the fields located.

Fredrik Robelius developed a model based on historical production, the total exploitable reserves of the giant fields, and their rate of decline. The model assumes that oil fields have a constant rate of decline, which Robelius has verified by studying a number of giant oilfields where production has waned. His analysis shows that an annual rate of decline between 6 and 16% is reasonable.

To be sure that the future production of a field will wind up inside the interval of the model, Robelius used both pessimistic and optimistic estimates. The best-case scenario requires peace in Iraq and that 7 giant oil field in the country will be re-developed. The thesis also include a field-by-field analysis of the deep water production, major oil field developments on the horizon, and future production from the Orinoco belt in Venezuela. Then he combined the results with forecasts from oil sands in Canada that UHDSG has presented in Energy Policy.

In the final remarks Dr Hirsch concluded that the peak oil debate has now reached a new level. The fact that the forecast openly can be studied in detail and that limits are given it’s now up to CERA and others to explain in detail why they end up with other forecasts. If not, the forecast from Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group is the one that the world should use for future planning.
(April 2007)
Emphasis added to Dr. Hirsch’s remarks, in which he throws down the gauntlet to CERA. Thanks to “ace” for pointing out this article in a post at TOD.

Despite belief in peak oil, Pickens still believes in oil and gas
Mella McEwen, Midland Reporter-Telegram
After 56 years in the oil and gas business, T. Boone Pickens still believes in the business.

“All I can see is the future of the oil and gas industry as we know it is good,” he said. “The biggest problem we have is finding oil and gas. I see a great future for energy and oil and gas will be there. We’re all going to live in the hydrocarbon era.”

But the native Oklahoman sees numerous changes in store for the industry, where he began his career with Phillips Petroleum in 1951.

In town to speak at Midland College’s Chaparral Center Wednesday, Pickens told the audience he is convinced the world has reached its peak oil production.

“Yes, I believe in peak oil,” he told moderator Hoxie Smith, director of the college’s Petroleum Professional Development Center. “(Longtime peak oil predictor) Matt Simmons and I talked today and we’re on the same team. If, as (oil analyst and author) Daniel Yergin believes, there’s so much more oil left, why doesn’t oil production move up instead of staying flat? Global demand is 85 million barrels, or 31 billion barrels a year. The world hasn’t replaced the oil it’s been producing since 1985. So if there’s so much oil left, I don’t understand why production hasn’t gone up. All the big fields are declining and all the current drilling does no more than hold off the decline. So the next step is decline. We can’t hold on to 85 million barrel a day production.”
(5 April 2007)

When the oil runs out … in Sacramento
Kel Munger, Newsreview
Sacramento has long stolen good ideas from Portland. Maybe it’s time to heist another one in preparation for the effects of peak oil.

Early last month, the Portland, Ore., City Council adopted a resolution to cut in half the city’s oil and natural gas usage by 2032. That resolution came after the Portland Peak Oil Task Force recommended some radical solutions to an oil-less world: foster alternative transportations, improve community cohesion to brace for change, decrease planning for roads and airports while increasing mass transit and walkable city centers, limit free parking to discourage cars, tax people for driving alone, incentivize commercial composting, increase urban farming, and prepare energy plans that can help people survive everything from short-term fuel shortages to economic collapse.

So what’s Sacto doing to prepare for the day when the oil wells go dry? Amy Williams, public information officer for the city, told SN&R that the city addresses energy issues in its sustainability master plan, which was scheduled to come before the City Council on April 3.

While Sacramento’s report does not reference peak oil directly, it does recommend reducing fossil-fuel use and a 25-percent reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. Several of the sustainable proposals for public health and nutrition also will reduce the amount of oil and natural gas used within the city. the effects of peak oil.

The world is approaching the ‘peak’ of global oil production. Will communities like ours be able to stave off a dramatic shift in our way of life, or are we destined for a painful era of change?

I don’t recall seeing this story before. It’s a long in-depth look at what peak oil would mean for the local region. -BA

Energy Alarmism: The Myths That Make Americans Worry about Oil
Eugene Gholz and Daryl G. Press, Cato Institute
Executive Summary

Many Americans have lost confidence in their country’s “energy security” over the past several years. Because the United States is a net oil importer, and a substantial one at that, concerns about energy security naturally raise foreign policy questions. Some foreign policy analysts fear that dwindling global oil reserves are increasingly concentrated in politically unstable regions, and they call for increased U.S. efforts to stabilize-or, alternatively, democratize-the politically tumultuous oil-producing regions. Others allege that China is pursuing a strategy to “lock up” the world’s remaining oil supplies through long-term purchase agreements and aggressive diplomacy, so they counsel that the United States outmaneuver Beijing in the “geopolitics of oil.” Finally, many analysts suggest that even the “normal” political disruptions that occasionally occur in oil-producing regions (e.g., occasional wars and revolutions) hurt Americans by disrupting supply and creating price spikes. U.S. military forces, those analysts claim, are needed to enhance peace and stability in crucial oil-producing regions, particularly the Persian Gulf.

Each of those fears about oil supplies is exaggerated, and none should be a focus of U.S. foreign or military policy. “Peak oil” predictions about the impending decline in global rates of oil production are based on scant evidence and dubious models of how the oil market responds to scarcity. In fact, even though oil supplies will increasingly come from unstable regions, investment to reduce the costs of finding and extracting oil is a better response to that political instability than trying to fix the political problems of faraway countries. Furthermore, Chinese efforts to lock up supplies with long-term contracts will at worst be economically neutral for the United States and may even be advantageous. The main danger stemming from China’s energy policy is that current U.S. fears may become a self-fulfilling prophecy of Sino-U.S. conflict. Finally, political instability in the Persian Gulf poses surprisingly few energy security dangers, and U.S. military presence there actually exacerbates problems rather than helps to solve them.

Our overarching message is simply that market forces, modified by the cartel behavior of OPEC, determine most of the key factors that affect oil supply and prices. The United States does not need to be militarily active or confrontational to allow the oil market to function, to allow oil to get to consumers, or to ensure access in coming decades.

The complete report (PDF)
(5 April 2007)
Ah, where to begin? It would have been helpful if the authors had studied the literature on peak oil and oil depletion, since their argument rests on the assumption that it isn’t a problem. On the other hand, their conclusion shows a surprising openness:

The coming decades may present serious energy-related challenges to the world. Global warming may require collective action on a global scale to reduce emissions, a daunting task. Furthermore, even though oil is nowhere near running out [sic], the world’s growing demand for energy and the finite nature of the petroleum reserves suggest that in the long term petroleum prices will rise. People will therefore need to develop alternative energy sources to supplement the energy reaped from current sources. Dispelling the myths that make Americans worry about the wrong energy issues is the first step toward confronting those real concerns. The United States does not need an activist foreign policy to ensure U.S. access to affordable energy.

UPI ran a story on the authors: Experts: Energy security fears overblown.

The Cato Insitute is a libertarian think tank, espousing: “Individual Liberty, Limited Governments, Free Markets and Peace.”
-BA

The politics and reality of the peak oil scare
Andrew Flood & Chekov Feeney, Anarkismo
…Peak Oil Theory tends to come as part of a package which is about more than the production and consumption of oil. It also expresses fears about how society will be affected when the oil runs short. In essence, Peak Oil Theory is both about the economics of oil and a pessimistic vision of the future. In many cases Peak Oil is a theory that catastrophe is about to hit humanity. In the first half of this article, I ask if our future is inevitably pessimistic.

In the second half of the article I will examine the peak oil claims themselves. How bad do things really seem to be? This article will demonstrate that the depth of polarisation over this issue is such that even claimed ‘scientific facts’ cannot be trusted to be accurate but rather tend to reflect the ideological point of view of those offering them. On the one hand, a decreasing number of people deny there is any problem with oil supply. On the other are a growing number who predict peak within a few years and a cataclysmic effect on civilisation as a result.

Why should anarchists care about this argument? Well, if such a crash were to happen it would be a disaster, not only for the world’s population but also for the anarchist project. Oil provides most of the energy that makes current standards of living possible. The nature of the crash would set worker against worker in the fight for access to the limited resources the ruling class would allow to trickle down. And, as the various national ruling classes fought to gain control over the resources of other nations, workers would be pitted against each other in more and more destructive wars.

Before we panic though we need to consider how real all of this is.

…The problem for anarchists is that these two separate possible futures are so different that it is hard to know how to judge where the truth might lie. The worst-case scenarios argued for Peak oil theory are essentially the end of civilisation as we know it. On the opposite extreme, there are still those who deny the possibility of any future long-term energy shortage. The complete lack of agreement even on the ‘facts’ that would seem to be straight forward – the EROEI’s for convention and unconventional oils, solar and wind power – illustrate the great difficulty in choosing between these scenarios.

For understandable reasons, some anarchists have embraced peak oil theory because they simply believe the corporations are lying and cannot be trusted. However, for the reasons already outlined, even if this was the case we would expect individual greedy capitalists to be buying up ‘cheap’ oil futures, and so far there is no evidence for this.

So far the evidence is not there to uncritically support the peak oil predictions. Anarchists need to maintain a critical attitude to the whole debate. In the meantime we can use the debate itself as an educational tool. For instance, very few if any of the peak oil proponents seem to have thought about what the impact of peak oil would be on class society. The most common presentations of the outcome seem to see everyone suffering equally. But the reality that we know from every natural disaster is that most of the suffering falls on the working class, and that the cost of any solutions will also be imposed on the working class.

The fact that the likes of the BNP [British far-right political party] see something to be gained from creating a panic around peak oil should also give us pause for thought. Panics are not the atmosphere in which a libertarian society can easily be built. Rather panic and the fear of collapse of civilisation are precisely the requirements of dictatorship and fascism when it comes to forcing populations to accept that the boot on the neck is better than the alternatives.
(5 April 2007)
Long essay, better than most from the left. The authors seem to understand and agree with most of the peak oil analysis, but point out that political implications are ignored. It’s hard to tell offhand what the politics of the authors are — anarchist, yes, but apparently a mixture of leftism and libertarianism. -BA