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Peak Oil: IEA Inches Toward the Pessimists’ Camp
Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal (Environmental Capital blog)
What’s up with oil prices? Well, it’s not speculators, and there’s no relief in sight, meaning at least five more years of high prices with no easy fixes. The ugly truth? Peak oil isn’t fringe anymore-it’s going mainstream.
That’s the reading from the latest oil market report from the International Energy Agency, the rich-country energy watchdog. The IEA’s latest x-ray of the oil market includes plenty of disturbing nuggets.
The fact that there are no growing stockpiles of crude around the world, for example, suggests speculators aren’t behind crude’s dizzying rise this year (much to Paul Krugman’s satisfaction and Congress’ chagrin.)
And while U.S. drivers fret and worry over how to pay for the Prius, the sad truth is that it doesn’t matter: By 2015, developing country oil demand will outstrip the rich world’s. They’re already in the driver’s seat: 90% of the demand growth over the next five years will come from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, the IEA said.
But the juiciest nugget? The conservative IEA appears to be inching ever-closer to the “peak-oil” crowd. Supply simply can’t keep pace with demand-everybody with an oil well has the taps open, but there’s not much left in the keg. Oil fields are aging quicker than free-agent pitchers, and the global oil industry has to run faster just to stay in place.
(1 July 2008)
R. James Woolsey, former DCI, on energy security (video)
Marc Strassman, Etopia News
R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence and now a Venture Partner with Vantage Point Venture Partners, discusses the need to provide U.S. energy security by displacing the oil transportation monopoly, recorded from Aspen, CO.
(1 July 2008)
Mr. Woolsey was profiled in a recent Wall Street Journal article as one of four public figures drawing attention to the energy crisis. In this interview, he gives a knowledgeable explanation of peak oil.
Very interesting interview. I think Mr. Woolsey is one of the best energy thinkers among the U.S. power elite. -BA
Khurais Oil Field Journal: Saudi Oil Project Brings Skepticism to the Surface
Robert F. Worth, New York Times
For mile after mile, there is nothing but flat and unrelenting sand on every side, with a few black camels wandering in the desert glare.
Then, suddenly, it rises into view, like some vast industrial mirage. The Khurais oil field’s processing plant resembles nothing so much as an oversize Erector Set, its unlikely vertical tubes and steel scaffolding gleaming in the sun.
But this remote patch of desert could hold the key to the soaring price of gasoline around the world.
Khurais, about 90 miles east of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, is one of the planet’s last giant oil fields. The Saudis say that it holds 27 billion barrels of oil – more oil than all the proven reserves of the United States – and that it will significantly bolster the kingdom’s production capacity once it starts pumping a year from now, easing global need.
Some oil traders and analysts doubt that. Their pessimistic forecasts of dwindling oil supplies have helped propel the current increase in prices, which pushed past $140 a barrel last week and seem to be heading higher.
(1 July 2008)
Scott Chisholm Lamont writes:
How much output, how quickly, how close to the projected timeline, and most importantly, how will we really know the answers to the previous questions given the current lack of transparency? What is ultimately available to the export market is what will drive prices in the foreseeable future, not how much any particular field can ‘produce’ according to it’s owners.
Energy Transitions Past and Future
Cutler Cleveland, The Oil Drum
… The changes wrought by fossil fuels exceeded even those produced by the introduction of fire. The rapid expansion of the human population and its material living standard over the past 200 years could not have been produced by direct solar energy and wood being converted by plants, humans and draft animals. Advances in every human sphere – commerce, agriculture, transportation, the military, science and technology, household life, health care, public utilities-were driven directly or indirectly by the changes in society’s underlying energy systems.
In the coming decades, world oil production will peak and then begin to decline, followed by natural gas and eventually coal production. There is considerable debate about when these peaks will occur because such information would greatly aid energy companies, policy makers, and the general public. But at another level, the timing of peak fossil fuel production doesn’t really matter. A more fundamental issue is the magnitude and nature of the energy transition that will eventually occur. The next energy transition undoubtedly will have far reaching impacts just as fire and fossil fuels did. However, the next energy transition will occur under a very different set of conditions, which are the subject of the rest of this discussion.
The Magnitude of the Shift
The last major transition occurred in the late 19th century when coal replaced wood as the dominant fuel. Figure 2 illustrates this transition for the United States, a period often referred to as the second Industrial Revolution (the first being the widespread replacement of manual labor by machines that began in Britain in the 18th century, and the resultant shift from a largely rural and agrarian population to a town-centered society engaged increasingly in factory manufacture). …
ENERGY QUALITY …
Energy Density …
Power Density …
Energy Surplus …
Intermittency …
Spatial distribution …
THE ENVIRONMENTAL FRONTIER IS CLOSED
The transition from wood to coal occurred when the human population was small, its affluence was modest, and its technologies were much less powerful than today. As a result, environmental impacts associated with energy had negligible global impact, although local impacts were at times quite significant. Any future energy transition will operate under a new set of environmental constraints. Environmental change has significantly impaired the health of people, economics and ecosystems at local, regional and global scales. Future energy systems must be designed and deployed with environmental constraints that were absent from the minds of the inventors of the steam engine and internal combustion engines.
Air Pollution and Climate Change …
Appropriation of the products of the biosphere …
The rise of energy markets …
Energy and poverty …
CONCLUSIONS
The debate about “peak oil” aside, there are relatively abundant remaining supplies of fossil fuels. Their quality is declining, but not yet to the extent that increasing scarcity will help trigger a major energy transition like wood scarcity did in the 19th century. The costs of wind, solar and biomass have declined due to steady technical advances, but in key areas of energy quality-density, net energy, intermittancy, flexibility, and so on-they remain inferior to conventional fuels. Thus, alternative energy sources are not likely to supplant fossil fuels in the short term without substantial and concerted policy intervention. The need to restrain carbon emissions may provide the political and social pressure to accelerate the transition to wind, biomass and solar, as this is one area where they clearly trump fossil fuels. Electricity from wind and solar sources may face competition from nuclear power, the sole established low-carbon power source with significant potential for expansion. If concerns about climate change drive a transition to renewable sources, it will be the first time in human history that energetic imperatives, especially the the economic advantages of higher-quality fuels, were not the principal impetus.
Professor Cleveland previously wrote “Energy From Wind – A Discussion of the EROI Research”, and “Ten Fundamental Principles of Net Energy” posted on theoildrum.com. Cutler Cleveland is a Professor at Boston University and has been researching and writing on energy issues for over 20 years. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Earth, Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Energy, the Dictionary of Energy and the Journal of Ecological Economics.
(1 July 2008)
Comment by mir in the discussion that followed:
ummm, the whole thrust of this article (in case you didn’t read it) is to point out the difficulties inherit in the “you can just _____” fixes.
I agree that electrifying agricultural machinery would be great (I was quite fond of Jason Bradford’s “Case for the Electric Tractor” article), but it shan’t happen overnight, or without considerable, perhaps insurmountable, difficulty. Also, I think Americans regularly forget that the whole world is not the United States — today is Canada Day after all 🙂 — and that fixes vaguely feasible there, are not so feasible elsewhere. We’re all in this together.
I don’t necessarily ascribe to the ‘our standard of living will be worse’ camp, but I am a firm believer that it will be different. Recall the Einstein quote: “The thinking it took to get us into this mess is not the same thinking that is going to get us out of it.” Let us think outside the box a little and not rely on the “you can just substitute x for y” game. After all, that’s why I love the oil drum and its merry peak oil pranksters.
Will Wartime Mobilisation Address Peak Oil?
Chris Vernon, The Oil Drum: Europe
I frequently hear it suggested that we need a wartime mobilisation to address the challenges we face. The most recent being in the synopsis for Lester R. Brown’s new book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
The world faces many environmental trends of disruption and decline. The scale and complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent. With “Plan A”, business as usual, we have neglected these issues overly long. In “Plan B 3.0”, Lester R. Brown warns that the only effective response now is a Second World War-type mobilisation like that in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
What is a wartime mobilisation, what triggers one and what relevance does such thinking have to today’s challenges?
… The description is undoubtedly a powerful indication of what can physically be done. How the resources of a nation can be rapidly switched from one application to another. From this, it is reasonable to propose that it is physically possible to mobilise today’s resources and focus them towards the looming energy crisis.
The US production and sale of cars and trucks for private use was banned in 1942, releasing tremendous productive capability for the manufacture of armaments. Today the production of internal combustion engine vehicles, of aeroplanes, of flat screen TVs, of Playstations and Xboxs, of tungsten filament light bulbs etc. could be banned in a similar move and in their place renewable energy generation, efficiency improvements and electrified transport infrastructure deployed. Globally, we have never had greater manufacturing capacity. The problem is that it isn’t allocated to the problem at hand.
…Conclusion
Wartime mobilisation of available resources can go a long way towards mitigating the problem of peak oil. However, peak oil is unlikely to present itself in a way that triggers a national mobilisation on a wartime scale. The leaders will be somewhat isolated from the threat and the necessary popular support will be lacking. Peak oil erodes affluence from the bottom, not threatens the top like a war does. Nations just become poorer, affluent countries sliding down towards the less affluent countries of today.
Whilst this may be the case for peak oil, considering the wider energy depletion picture electricity provision stands out. It doesn’t have the ‘bottom up’ characteristic and as such could trigger an energy-led wartime mobilisation of resources.
(1 July 2008)
Many predictions about society’s response to peak oil assume that the political configuration will remain the same as it is now. It’s a reasonable assumption, given that most nations have been politically stable for the past several decades.
However, political systems can change suddenly and dramatically. The Soviet Empire fell in th 90s, China underwent a wrenching Cultural Revolution in the 60s, a host of European countries turned to fascism in the 30s. If peak oil and climate change bring with them the economic turmoil some foresee, then it is hard to imagine that political systems too won’t change. -BA
