Have We Really Hit Peak Oil? And if so, we had better prepare to change the way we live.

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Have We Really Hit Peak Oil?

By Richard Heinberg, TruthOut.org. Posted May 20, 2008.

And if we have, we had better prepare to change the way we live.



Last week, Senate Democrats introduced legislation that would halt a U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia worth $1.4 billion. The implication is clear: no more war toys for the Saudis unless they agree to up their oil output.

The same day, the House approved a Senate plan to suspend oil deliveries to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in hopes of diverting that oil to the market, thus lowering the pump price a tiny amount. A week earlier, a handful of Senators proposed a bill threatening a trade dispute with members of OPEC if the organization doesn't stop "its anti-competitive practices and illegal export quotas on oil."

It's understandable that our elected leaders would want to do something about the meteoric rise of gasoline, diesel, and heating oil prices that are now bankrupting independent truckers and forcing many folks in colder states to choose between being able to stay warm and being able to drive to work. Yet efforts like the ones just mentioned are based on a profound misperception of why oil prices are rising. The real problem is summed up in the phrase "Peak Oil."

Petroleum is a finite substance and we have reached the inevitable point at which it simply isn't possible to increase the rate at which we extract it from the ground. Most oil producing countries, including the US, have already seen their glory days and are now watching output from their wells gradually dwindle. Only a few nations are early in the production cycle and able to ramp up the rate of flow. Here is a concise definition of Peak Oil from my colleague Chris Skrebowsi, the editor of Petroleum Review in London. He says: "Global oil production falls when loss of output from countries in decline exceeds gains in output from those that are expanding."

Well, how are we doing? Who's winning, the decliners or expanders? ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/85842/

[lapfog_1]

1. yeah... sometime in 2006.

Peak Oil isn't about running out of oil... it's about running out of cheap oil.

[whistle]

11. How much oil does the U.S. military at all levels demand? How much oil

...does the U.S. government demand at all levels? How much oil does U.S. industry demand? How much do U.S. consumers demand?

[GliderGuider]

15. The USA overall uses 20 million barrels of oil a day.

That's about 850 million gallons a day. The US military uses about 400,000 barrels/day, or only about 2% of the total American consumption.

The US military oil consumption

[whistle]

21. Interesting, yet the U;S. military budget under Bush/Cheney has grown to nearly one trillion dollar

....or 7.5% of GDP. Is there not a direct relationship between energy consumed and product/service used? Planes, trains, vehicles, ships, missiles moved and buildings, bunkers, warehouses, camps air-conditioned and heated, supercomputers, pcs, electronics, radar/sonar, etc. everything requiring energy by the military has to amount to much more than 2% of oil.

[GliderGuider]

22. I suspect that electricity is counted separately.

Other sources confirm that US government oil consumption is about 440,000 bbl/day, so 2% is about right. The US military is the largest single oil-consuming entity in the world.

[Finishline42]

23. Air Force budget for fuel

Here's so info on the US gov use of fossil fuel:

The Air Force consumed 3.2 billion gallons, or 12.1 billion liters, of aviation fuel in the 2005 financial year, which was 52.5 percent of all fossil fuel used by the government, Pentagon statistics show. The total Air Force bill for jet fuel last year topped $4.7 billion.

Although the share of national energy consumption by the U.S. government and military is just 1.7 percent, every increase of $10 per barrel of oil drives up Air Force fuel costs by $600 million per year.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/14/business/air.php

IIRC, I read somewhere that the USAF spent around $1 billion in 2001.

[whistle]

24. So that was about 194,825 barrels per day back three years ago based on 45 gallons to a barrel

...at least that's what the military wants to public to believe. Now the strategic reserve is 750,000 barrels of crude oil correct? And the rest of the military uses another 200,000 barrels a day giving our country in the event of war or a national emergency just 45 hours of oil reserves. Wow!

[GliderGuider]

25. The SPR holds about 720 million barrels.

That would keep the US military going for 5 years, or the entire US economy running for a month.

[izzie]

2. We knew this in the 70's but no one wanted to face it.

What happened to all the good work done then on lower speeds and better cars? Congress said we did not need to do any of it. So we just went on with this business. 8 lanes for cars and trucks and no new trains and hell to pay if you said put some of the money into bike paths. As the people build bigger homes and out in the country even more. Silly but when the oil Corp. landed in Alaska and cut the amount of oil pumped because they were not getting enough profits I saw the writing on the wall and got a small car and stayed with them even as every one I knew bought SUV. I was called out of it for doing it. But you only had to read around about the Middle East and things to know this was coming.

[ramapo]

5. You are exactly right

This is the tragedy of our times. Had the lessons of the '70s been heeded, the world might've been very different. I've been expecting this moment for a couple of decades and am now afraid we might be in for some wrenching times. For the most part, people still seem to be oblivious and/or expecting a magic fix. I don't think there'll be any magic. We are all pretty much unprepared for what might await us, even if we've been watching and waiting for years. Reality can still be a bitch.

[whistle]

8. Right, but now it is crystal clear, so what is the plan of action to be moving forward

...We must give the next president who must be democratic a clear mandate to implement a sound alternative energy program for the next two generations or 40 to 50 years.

NO MORE REPUBLICAN/RELIGIOUS RIGHT WING/NEOCONSERVATIVE DARK AGES THOUGHT DOMINATION of this country's political agenda

[whistle]

3. I read in another DU post that the world sustain the current demand for oil for at least 100 years

...and perhaps far longer. That ought to be more than enough time to develop alternative energy producing sources.

However, the oil price gouging and windfall profits which are being channeled away because of the Bush tax breaks provide no means to a coordinated direct effort to develop those alternative energy sources. Even worse, these oil and opium wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have directly sucked away over $650 billion away from the U.S. economy while oil prices have quadrupled and may well hit $200 per barrel by the time Bush leaves office.

What is needed is a JFK "Land a Man on the Moon" program for national alternate energy development and independence from foreign oil within ten years

[marmar]

4. "sustain the current demand for oil for at least 100 years"

I've got to think that someone fabricated that from whole cloth.

[GliderGuider]

6. That's simply untrue.

While the world will be able to extract oil for the next 100 years, and even longer, the rate at which we are able to extract it is about to fall precipitously. The flows of oil already can't meet existing demand, let alone provide for any future growth. Credible projections indicate that the global oil supply could fall by 25% within the next 10-15 years. Even worse from the US perspective, the international oil market could dry up completely within 25 years.

Whoever posted the information you refer to doesn't have the first clue as to what's about to happen to the world's oil supply. Here's the sort of oil supply curve that is being worried about these days:

[whistle]

9. What is "Mtoe"?

[GliderGuider]

12. "Millions ot tonnes of oil equivalent"

It's a measure used to get some commonality between different energy sources. In this context it just means "millions of tonnes of oil".

The article that graph came from is World Energy to 2050.

[whistle]

18. It's not just oil then, but all forms of energy production and thus makes the assumption

...that civilization will NOT develop alternative forms of energy to meet demands. Do the projections take into account conservation? Does it assume that the economic laws of deminishing returns kick in? Do they fail to see the benefits of 3rd and 4th generation nuclear electrical power generation and ultimately the feasibility of fussion power which is potentually unlimited?

<snip>
Fusion Power in the Next Five Years!?
Written by Hank Green
Monday, 11 February 2008


A prominent venture capitalist, Wal van Lierop, of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, has begun to invest in companies (such as General Fusion) who are providing patents and technologies for economical fusion power. In a recent interview at the Clean Tech Investor Summit (which we're very sad we're not attending), van Lierop said that he expects large energy companies to start thinking about building fusion plants within the next five years.

As we've noted before here at EcoGeek, the best way to track down that technologies are going to (very shortly) change the world is to watch what the venture capitalists are doing. These are people who basically make ridiculous sums of cash by predicting the future...and investing in it. And since they've got so much riding on their bets, they like to do a lot of research.

Often this is research that people like me (because I don't have billions of dollars to invest) can't do. So I follow the VCs, and pay attention to what they're saying.

And what van Lierop is saying seems almost crazy, on the surface. But dig a little deeper, and things start looking exciting. Despite sounding like a comic book hero, General Fusion's technology is very realistic. In a world where we're all used to hearing that "Fusion power has been twenty years away for twenty years" hearing that it's five years away is pretty remarkable.

General Fusion hopes to create small fusion reactors that cost around $50 million a piece and generate roughly 100 megawatts allowing for roughly 4 cent / kwh electricity. That's about the same cost as coal.

The fusion system the use, called Magnetized Target Fusion which uses lithium as a fuel. The lithium is heated and mixed with intensely pressurized plasma. The lithium then breaks down into tritium (hydrogen with two neutrons), which is then mixed with deuterium (hydrogen with one extra neutron.) In the high energy environment, the tritium and the deuterium fuse to form helium, and create a whole lot of heat.

The heat captured is significantly greater than the energy used to run the device and the only byproduct is helium and other harmless gasses.


<MORE> http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1364/

[GliderGuider]

20. That article is about energy supply only

It makes no statements or assumptions about demand, it deals only with the probable limits to the energy supply over the next 40 years.

It explicitly doesn't consider energy technologies that don't exist yet, like controlled fusion or Zero Point Energy.

One reasonable critique is that the projected supply curves for solar and wind might be too pessimistic.

[Dead_Parrot]

14. Mega-Toe!

(Sorry, must be getting late here)

[whistle]

19. Oh, send me your email addy please especially if your right foot matches!

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Much as I admire Richard Heinberg...

...No shit, Sherlock.

[GliderGuider]

10. He's not preaching to this choir

There are a lot of people out there who don't know shit from Shinola about Peak Oil and need a basic education.

But I do think he goes a little light on the topic sometimes. And I thought his "Oil Depletion Protocol" was the worst sort of Tinkerbell nonsense.

[Dead_Parrot]

13. I'm guesing alternet regulars have a clue.

I suppose he's trying not to be Kunstler (which is fair enough), but there are times I wish I could reach down the internet and slap him.

[whistle]

16. So, shaaa we all look forward to living in Olduvia within 22 years?

<snip>
THE PEAK OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION AND THE ROAD TO THE OLDUVAI GORGE
Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D.1
Pardee Keynote Symposia
Geological Society of America
Summit 2000
Reno, Nevada
November 13, 2000

ABSTRACT

The Olduvai theory has been called unthinkable, preposterous, absurd, dangerous, self-fulfilling, and self-defeating. I offer it, however, as an inductive theory based on world energy and population data and on what I’ve seen during the past 30 years in some 50 nations on all continents except Antarctica. It is also based on my experience in electrical engineering and energy management systems, my hobbies of anthropology and archaeology, and a lifetime of reading in various fields.

The theory is defined by the ratio of world energy production (use) and world population. The details are worked out. The theory is easy. It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030.

World energy production per capita from 1945 to 1973 grew at a breakneck speed of 3.45 %/year. Next from 1973 to the all-time peak in 1979, it slowed to a sluggish 0.64 %/year. Then suddenly —and for the first time in history — energy production per capita took a long-term decline of 0.33 %/year from 1979 to 1999. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. More to the point, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years.
Should this occur, any number of factors could be cited as the 'causes' of collapse. I believe, however, that the collapse will be strongly correlated with an 'epidemic' of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks — worldwide. Briefly explained: "When the electricity goes out, you are back in the Dark Age. And the Stone Age is just around the corner."

The Olduvai theory, of course, may be proved wrong. But, as of now, it cannot be rejected by the historic world energy production and population data.

1) Institute on Energy and Man
5307 Ravenna Place NE, #1
Seattle, WA 98105
[e-mail]

To read the full presentation go to the following link:

http://dieoff.org/page224.htm

[GliderGuider]

17. I disagree with Duncan on some of the details

But the thrust of his argument is approximately correct. One way or the other we'll be living in a very different world within 30 years.

I've come to understand why Duncan is so fixated on electricity. Think of how your life would be impacted if the grids started to fail for a few hours a day, let alone for weeks at a stretch. Without electricity, things ... just ... stop.

Now, the windmill brigade is absolutely sure that won't happen here, but the problem as I see it is one of infrastructure rather than generating capacity. Oil depletion and financial destabilization could make it very, very difficult to maintain the grid. Connecting a shiny new wind turbine to an old, rusty, under-maintained grid isn't going to help much.

[Ganja Ninja]

26. I'd love to change the way I live but ...

How do I change? Do I move closer to my job when my job may be gone in 6 months?

Do I buy a new small car when I may not be able to pay for it because my job won't last another 6 months to a year?

I would make the changes tomorrow if only I knew what to expect over the next 2 to 5 years.