Fossil Fuels

Peak oil – now or later? a response to Daniel Yergin

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Over the years there has been significant convergence between the peak oil and business-as-usual camps, each hopefully learning from the other. Yergin, whilst attempting to debunk peak oil, appears to have been converted to a late peakist. I can certainly relate to many of the concepts described by Yergin – price influencing supply and demand, technology, innovation and new plays etc – but wonder when these are going to result in new production capacity (supply) that exceeds annual declines?

The stakes are high. Should policy makers listen to Pulitzer Prize winning historians? Or should they listen to geologists and a growing band of economists who can see the dependency of economic growth upon increasing supplies of cheap energy that quite simply do not appear to exist? Most important of all, will the WSJ publish a modified view of the oil world than that presented by Daniel Yergin?

“The Quest” questioned: Yergin wrong on peak oil

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Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and energy analyst, is one of the world’s greatest optimists about oil supplies. In “There Will Be Oil“—his article in the Wall Street Journal to plug his new book, The Quest—Yergin sums up a chapter of his book, the one about fears that the world will soon reach its peak of oil production. Yergin argues, however, that “on a global view, Hubbert’s Peak is still not in sight.”

But the arguments in his article—and in his 800-page book—are full of gaping holes, so I’m going to dedicate a number of blog posts to sticking my head into a number of them. (First two parts in a series)

Book review: Daniel Yergin’s “The Quest”

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“The Quest” lacks the magisterial quality of Yergin’s earlier book,”The Prize,”, a meticulously researched, groundbreaking history that chronicled how the major events of the 20th century — both world wars, for instance — pivoted on oil, and delivered deeply etched personality portraits of those who counted. “The Quest” by comparison is a primer, based largely on other people’s books and articles, and does not attempt to tackle history on a similar scale, nor to introduce the actors in three dimensions.

Yergin is half-right about oil, but other half is what matters

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In “There Will Be Oil” (September 17, WSJ, Page C1), Daniel Yergin concludes that a peak in global oil production is “nowhere in sight.” By focusing on the timing of such a peak, however, he dangerously distracts attention from the monumental challenges facing the oil and gas industry today, and the new energy and economic reality the world has entered. With demand for oil and all forms of energy continuing to rise exponentially—including rapid growth in China, India, and other developing countries—and huge uncertainty whether fossil fuels can keep pace—the most foolish course of action would be business as usual.

Daniel Yergin’s letter to the peak oil community, and a rebuttal

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Yergin: "Things don’t stand still in the energy industry. With the passage of time, unconventional sources of oil, in all their variety, become a familiar part of the world’s petroleum supply. They help to explain why the plateau continues to recede into the horizon—and why, on a global view, Hubbert’s Peak is still not in sight."

Brown: "Contrary to Mr. Yergin’s assertion that advocates of Peak Oil have been wrong at every turn, six years of annual global production data show flat to declining crude oil and total petroleum liquids production data. … I suspect that just as Mr. Yergin was perfectly wrong about oil prices, he may be confidently calling for decades of rising production, just as we come off the current production plateau and just as an accelerating decline in Global Net Exports kicks in."

ODAC Newsletter – Sept 16

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This week we are taking a break from the usual format to publish a new piece by ODAC trustee Chris Skrebowski. In the article Chris argues that the long running debate over peak oil between geologists and economists is a distraction. There is a price at which oil becomes unaffordble to consume and therefore to produce. The affects of this are already beginning to play out in the global economy.

Adam Smith got it way, way wrong!

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I love the way John Michael Greer’s latest book, The Wealth of Nature, opens, with a good skewering of the premise on which the modern pseudo-science of economics depends. Exposing 18th century philosopher Adam Smith’s thinking in The Wealth of Nations as flawed, Greer goes on to explain what Smith missed, why it’s important, and how we can turn the error in history around. (book review)