Peak oil – Sept 27

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…To Grandmother’s House We Go: Peak Oil Is Here
Glenn Morton, The Oil Drum
I have intentionally paraphrased this wonderful Christmas song because it has much to say about the future after peak oil which I am now ready to say has already happened.

As energy declines, we will indeed go to our grandmother’s house–one without electricity and running water, sewer or septic and deep, mechanically pumped water wells. At least that was MY grandmother’s house. She lived on the Kansas prairies of the 1890s.

In the 1960s I asked my grandmother what the greatest invention of her life had been. She said electricity because before they had lights, everyone went to bed shortly after sun down because it was simply too dark to do to much. There was no air conditioning, so the summers were very hot. In the winter, trips to the outhouse were cold (and brutally awakening if during the middle of the night).

While she had wood where she lived, about 100 miles west of her home, people had to burn dung as is done in Tibet today. See the picture below of the dung plastered against the house. When one wants to cook, one retrieves a patty.

Without cheap energy, we go back to my grandmother’s house or one quite like it…

Yes, folks, peak oil is here, that thing that politicians don’t speak of; that event which cornucopians (those who believe that we will not run out of energy) believe is a fraud or misunderstanding is here. The cornucopians believe we are wrong because many have predicted that we would run out of energy before and have been wrong. What they lacked was the 20-20 that hindsight gives one. Today, we can see the peak behind us.

First, how do we recognize when peak oil is about to happen or has happened? The first thing is that it always comes with a gradual decline in production. Steep changes in production curves are due to political or economic decisions. Let’s look at Saudi production from 2001 to the present.

Glenn Morton is a geophysicist in the oil industry. For Kerr-McGee Oil and Gas Corp., Glenn served as Geophysical Mgr Gulf of Mexico, Geophysical Mgr for the North Sea, Dir. of Technology and as Exploration Director of China. Currently he is an independent consulting geophysicist, and you might know him as seismobob.
(26 September 2007)
My father-in-law grew up on a Kansas farm about the same time as Glenn’s grandmother. Although he liked technology, I think he would have been puzzled by our fears at losing modern conveniences. -BA

ASPO 6. In Praise of… #4. Eamon Ryan.
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
Eamon Ryan is a Green TD, and now Ireland’s Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. I first met him in 2005 when he came to speak at the Fuelling the Future conference in Kinsale. At that stage the Greens were just a small opposition party, and Eamon, already on board with peak oil having attended ASPO 4 in Lisbon, gave a compelling presentation about Ireland’s energy options. Two years later, having also attended ASPO 5, following a Fianna Fail’s failure to win an overall majority, the Greens are now in a coalition government, and Eamon is Energy Minister.

At the end of ASPO 6, Eamon gave a speech which I thought was electrifying. He has evolved into a great statesman, and must be, I think, the first European energy minister to use the word ‘powerdown’ in a speech. He spoke of the need to make energy security a central policy aim, and stressed that energy resilience and the building of a renewable energy infrastructure need not be a grind and an imposition, rather that it should be seen as an opportunity to put Ireland at the forefront of sustainability.

He told the history of Ireland, from the founding of the republic, talking about how Eamon DeValera laid the foundation stone of Cork City Hall, where the conference took place, and that perhaps the ASPO conference could be seen as laying the foundation of Ireland’s preparation for a post-peak future. Ireland has had an extraordinary recent history, building a booming economy in a short period of time, and Eamon spoke of how the Celtic Tiger was one huge step in the evolution of the country, and the journey away from oil will be the next.

I was very impressed with his talk, and with his overall vision. To have a government energy minister who is not only peak oil literate, but up with and enthusiastic about Transition Initiatives and powerdown is quite something, especially compared to Malcolm Wicks, the UK’s energy minister whose peak-oil-dodging nonsense was so ruthlessly exposed in David Strahan’s book ‘The Last Oil Shock’. I have never been around many politicians who can hold a hall so well, who speak from passion and conviction; I was reminded the presence of Collins and DeValeras, perhaps in the same way that they were so pivotal in Ireland’s transition from a colonial outpost to a Republic with self-belief, perhaps he will be the politician that will help Ireland through the energy transition with the kind of political leadership such a transition will so desperately require.
(26 September 2007)
Related by Rob Hopkins: In Praise of… #5. Michael Dittmar (the case against nuclear).

Shell Oil’s John Hofmeister dismisses peak oil on WWL, New Orleans (MP3)
Garland Robinette, WWL (radio)
Contributor Wag the Dog writes:
Garland Robinette interviews Shell Oil’s John Hofmeister for his “Think Tank” segment. Robinette brings up the issue of peak oil early in this 25 minute interview. Hofmeister invokes the usually defence of unconventional oil, alternative energy technology, future discoveries, enhanced recovery, and blames above ground political factors for his companies lack of access to foreign sources of oil.

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPTION:

Robinette: I read through voluminous publications every day all over the world. Peak oil. There’s a lot of theorists out there that say Saudi Arabia has hit their peak and they’re going down. We don’t even know what their reserves are because they won’t tell us. The combination of peak oil, threats from Venezuela. Russian may decide they’re gonna start controlling their pipelines more because they get more political power. India, China, and Africa bidding on more oil much more than we are. Politically they can get into it. All these forces coming together, I keep reading from peak oil to all those categories we’re in trouble. Are we?

Hofmeister: Well. The geopolitics of oil keeps a lot of people in dialogue all over the world. But let’s start with peak oil. I think peak oil theory is generally based on what Shell would consider to be too narrow assumptions. It primarily addresses conventional oil and gas that is already known, and there are suppositions…

Robinette: You mean the reserves that are already known?

Hofmeister: The reserves that are already known on the basis that there are not that many new reserves to be discovered. We’re not sure we agree with that because there’s a whole lot of the world that we have not been to yet. So let’s leave that for the future explorers. But when your assumptions are too narrow it leaves out advances in new technology such as enhanced oil recovery. If you look at some of the fields in the US that are basically decomissioned and not producing any longer, there’s still tremendous amounts of oil left in those fields. Enhanced oil recovery, where you repressurise a field that has lost pressure creates whole new volumes of oil that can be produced due to new technology.

I also think that existing oil fields are proving to be more prolific than originally thought. so that we are getting more life, more oil that is, from existing oil fields. What the peak oil theorists tend not to include are the unconventional sources of oil and gas, such as the oil sands and Canada or the oil shale of Colorado, where the estimates are in the trillions, not billions, but trillions of barrels. More unconventional oil and gas between Canada and the US than all the conventional oil that exists, for example, in the Middle East.
(25 September 2007)
Contributor Wag the Dog writes:
This radio interview happened during Mr. Hofmeister’s recent stopover in New Orleans which was covered previously here.

Something I didn’t know: Mr. Hofmeister’s degree is in political science. -BA

ODAC News — Wednesday 26 Sept
Douglas Low, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre
Global Oil Production Summary Report
1/ Oilwatch Monthly – September 2007 (The Oil Drum: Europe [ASPO Netherlands], Mon 17 Sep)

Big Oil – BP’s Performance
2/ BP faces shake-up as boss warns of ‘dreadful’ results (The Times, Tue 25 Sep)

Economy – UK
3a/ ‘10% chance’ of house price crash [in the UK] (BBC News, Tue 18 Sep)
3b/ IMF fears over Britain’s sub-prime market (The Telegraph, Wed 26 Sep)

Nuclear Energy – New Build
4/ Yemen nuclear deal sparks security fears [five new nuclear reactors] (Arabian Business, Tue 25 Sep)

Oil Production – UAE
5/ UAE forced to slash oil output by a quarter (Arabian Business, Sun 23 Sep)

Dubai – Tower MegaProjects
6/ Samsung lines up next tower megaproject (Arabian Business, Sat 15 Sep)

Natural Gas – Nabucco/ Turkmenistan/ Iran
7a/ Turkey defends energy ties with Iran despite U.S. opposition (Tehran Times, Tue 25 Sep)
7b/ U.S. officials woo Turkmenistan’s president (International Herald Tribune, Tue 25 Sep)
7c/ EU initiates Nabucco gas pipeline planning (Oil and Gas Journal, Thu 20 Sep)

Energy Intelligence – various
8a/ Oil Price Forecasts from Goldman Sachs (Energy Intelligence, Tue 18 Sep)
8b/ Demand Runs Ahead Of Supply As Oil Inventories Fall (Energy Intelligence [Energy Intelligence Briefing], Tue 18 Sep)
8c/ New Taxes May Hit Tar Sands Production (Energy Intelligence, Thu 20 Sep)
8d/ Venezuela Outlines Plans to Build Petrochemical Industry (Energy Intelligence [Oil Daily], Tue 25 Sep)
(26 September 2007)