Peak Oil

[wintler2]

Welcome Monk, my first post was on peak oil too! The drop in demand in OECD countries is apparently because of 'peak demand, we don't need so much oil any more, nothing to do with being broke of course. Once our plebs start to notice that they aren't alone in not being able to afford oil, i predict more talk about political impediments (nations refusing to bend over for Big Oil) and regime change.

[wintler2]

There are inevitably some people who use the facts of peak oil to push a selfish agenda. The British National Party is a well known one, another that flies much closer to the maintream is Tom Whipple, a 'retired CIA analyst' and husband of US Senator Mary Margaret Whipple. TW is a regular author on Falls Church News Press and of the 'Peak Oil Review/Notes/News' associated with ASPO-USA that get republished on The Oil Drum and Energybulletin.net .
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6300
http://www.energybulletin.net/authors/Tom+Whipple

TW is an 'hawk' on Iran and consistently incorporates propaganda that Iran is a lunatic theocracy trying to build nuclear weapons and must be stopped (hattip to DK on roeoz). I think anglosphere agitation against Iran is just another step in the fourth world war for resources and am holding on for the day everyone realises we can't loot our way out of this. Whipple isn't helping and TOD and EB should drop their support/republishing of his texts.

[druff]

Nobody cared about Peak Oil anymore until that graph started making the rounds. So suddenly it's an emergency again. Like it was 5 years ago, until gas prices stopped exploding. There are ways to mitigate peak oil just like there are ways to mitigate economic collapse. None will be employed to any significant degree.

Energy prices could stay consistent and still the global economy is on its way down. (Whichever worsens faster will get the most blame.) However, it's worthwhile to keep in mind that peak oil can serve as a useful excuse for those in power who aren't averse to a widescale collapse. Who knows what it could be used to justify. Not least, depopulation.

(Cryptogon has some good posts in the archives about the very viable energy alternatives that are routinely swept under the rug or kept secret. Geothermal, wave power, solar, even just fucking re-tooled civics that get 70 mpg on regular old gas.)

[ninakat]

Everyone Missed It, But The EIA Just Totally Confirmed Peak Oil
Joe Weisenthal | Jun. 3, 2010, 6:48 AM

We covered the EIA's release of its annual energy outlook, and noted the fact that the organizations' demand estimate had been lowered.

But Steven Kopits of Douglas-Westwood writing a guest post at EconBrowser notes something that everyone's missed, and argues that EIA has gone "hardcore" peak oil.

As recently as 2007, the EIA saw a rosy future of oil supplies increasing with demand. It predicted oil consumption would rise by 15 mbpd to 2020, an ample amount to cover most eventualities. By 2030, the oil supply would reach nearly 118 mbpd, or 23 mbpd more than in 2006. But over time, this optimism has faded, with each succeeding year forecast lower than the year before. For 2030, the oil supply forecast has declined by 14 mbpd in only the last three years. This drop is as much as the combined output of Saudi Arabia and China.

He notes that the EIA now among the most grim predictors:

But that's not the interesting part. The more salient development is the reduction in the forecast to 2020. Forecasts beyond ten years are highly uncertain and more subject to massaging and interpretation. Shorter term forecasts are more definite, and the forecasters are more accountable. As a consequence, the outlook for the short to medium term warrants greater attention. In the case of the EIA, the forecast changes most dramatically here. For the remainder of the decade, even though China would be expected to hit its stride for increased oil demand, the EIA sees no year in which liquids production will increase by even 1%. Petroleum liquids supply increases by an average of 0.6% per year from 2011 to 2020. In other words, the EIA is expecting the oil supply to be essentially flat for the rest of the decade. The supply will creep up from 86 mbpd today to approximately 92 mbpd to 2020, but that is not much growth, and indeed, is about the same as current global liquids production capacity. Moreover, it represents a reduction of nearly 4 mbpd from last year's forecast for 2020. On paper, the output of China has disappeared over the course of the last year.

Read the whole post >

[JackRiddler]

Nobody cared about Peak Oil anymore until that graph started making the rounds. So suddenly it's an emergency again. Like it was 5 years ago, until gas prices stopped exploding.

The biggest explosion in oil/gas prices ever happened two years ago, $144/barrel and $4+ at the US pump. Consumption has fallen off since, due to the economic decline. More recently barrel prices rose again into the 80s and 70s.

[Monk]

Welcome Monk, my first post was on peak oil too! The drop in demand in OECD countries is apparently because of 'peak demand, we don't need so much oil any more, nothing to do with being broke of course. Once our plebs start to notice that they aren't alone in not being able to afford oil, i predict more talk about political impediments (nations refusing to bend over for Big Oil) and regime change.

It like has to do with beng broke if demand went down together with the economy. The interesting thing is that demand is rising for China and other countries.

[Monk]

Nobody cared about Peak Oil anymore until that graph started making the rounds. So suddenly it's an emergency again. Like it was 5 years ago, until gas prices stopped exploding.

The biggest explosion in oil/gas prices ever happened two years ago, $144/barrel and $4+ at the US pump. Consumption has fallen off since, due to the economic decline. More recently barrel prices rose again into the 80s and 70s.

The effect should be the same if demand destruction is coupled with unemployment, etc., especially now that we're realizing that several industrialized economies are actually built on debt and consumer spending.

The problem is that production has at a relative plateau since 2005 and is set to drop after 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010 ... ion-supply

Couple that with increasing demand for resources from China and other countries....

[JackRiddler]

The 2008 (Sacramento) and 2009 (Denver) ASPO Association for the Study of Peak Oil conferences were the most diverse I've ever attended -- Wall Street investors, oil company people, post carbon / permaculture / transition town types, some mainstream media journalists, corporate representatives (Boeing, VW, etc.) and even a few "intelligence" operatives (openly admitting their affiliation). However, the environmental NGOs and the foundation funded alternative media were mostly AWOL. The only "alternative" media I saw at the Sacramento event was community radio station KBOO-FM (Portland Oregon).

I have had a number of foundation funded environmental staffers and alternative media journalists privately tell me (and other allies) over the years that "limits to growth" is not an acceptable topic to discuss when dependent on the graces of philanthropic foundations invested in the growth and debt money system that requires exponential consumption ad infinitum. There are a few exceptions to this self censorship, but they are mostly tangential. It is sad that the environmental movement's main concern about "oil" is that they're against it, but there's almost no admission of the fact that fossil fuels are more concentrated than the alternatives. A solar powered society would require a much smaller, steady state economy since sunlight and wind energy are difficult to store in very large scales. Solar power could run a decentralized civilization where long distance shipment of food would be rare, but our globalized production system cannot be run without fossil fuels. It even takes fossil fuels to make solar panels and wind turbines (and especially their control equipment), to move them, and install them -- since steel and concrete and mining rare minerals are energy intensive processes. Worse, since we've waited too long to make substantial shifts, it's going to be increasingly difficult to divert some of the remaining fossil fuels to construct "alternative energy" systems on the downslope.

It would be good to get some of the DC based Non Profit Industrial Complex type groups to attend. It's getting old to argue with them about whether Peak(ed) Oil is something to consider or not, I had hoped years ago that this would have been long settled, certainly once peak had arrived.

The industry representatives who understand Peak Oil need to learn from the ecologists and permaculture experts about pollution prevention and powerdown approaches (learning to live happily with less). And the environmental movement needs to learn from the Peak Oil experts about the interconnections between exponential growth, overshoot, energy density and depletion.

The European media is ahead of the US media in pointing out the reason anyone would drill for oil in a mile of water - such as the notorious BP drill that blew out off the Louisiana coast - is that the easy to get oil on shore is winding down. Neither the pro-offshore drilling supporters nor the anti-drilling environmentalists in the US talk about Peak Oil as the reason for offshore drilling.

[norton ash]

Deep offshore drilling and cooking dirt in Alberta. Nobody's desperate.

[wintler2]

Deep offshore drilling and cooking dirt in Alberta. Nobody's desperate.

Shhh! you want the plebs to wake up to how little is left!?!

Quick, get some more 'jam tomorrow!' out there: hey y'all, what about those zero point superconductor suppressed flying black triangle energy system abiotic oil market manipulation!

I'll bet the Jews marching into the Nazi's gas chambers had many and diverse speculative theories on what sort of 'jam tomorrow' awaited them.

[SonicG]

Nah mate, Jebus is bringing us some eternal magnetic energy!

[Nordic]

Nobody cared about Peak Oil anymore until that graph started making the rounds. So suddenly it's an emergency again. Like it was 5 years ago, until gas prices stopped exploding.

The biggest explosion in oil/gas prices ever happened two years ago, $144/barrel and $4+ at the US pump. Consumption has fallen off since, due to the economic decline. More recently barrel prices rose again into the 80s and 70s.

Well that spike was due to market manipulations, and in timing matched the food price spike as well, which Harper's has revealed to be the Goldman Sachs Evil Empire (and friends!) doing the same thing with edible commodities.

When they closed the "Enron Loophole" the prices fell. A lot. Fast.

Oddly enough, the $144 price tag is what Osama Bin laden said a barrel of oil should cost in one of his manifestos.

I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

[JackRiddler]

Nobody cared about Peak Oil anymore until that graph started making the rounds. So suddenly it's an emergency again. Like it was 5 years ago, until gas prices stopped exploding.

The biggest explosion in oil/gas prices ever happened two years ago, $144/barrel and $4+ at the US pump. Consumption has fallen off since, due to the economic decline. More recently barrel prices rose again into the 80s and 70s.

Well that spike was due to market manipulations, and in timing matched the food price spike as well, which Harper's has revealed to be the Goldman Sachs Evil Empire (and friends!) doing the same thing with edible commodities.

When they closed the "Enron Loophole" the prices fell. A lot. Fast.

Oddly enough, the $144 price tag is what Osama Bin laden said a barrel of oil should cost in one of his manifestos.

I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Neither was all market manipulation, which usually magnifies more than it creates whole cloth. In fact, most manipulation seeks to anticipate what's going to happen anyway, and make it happen on a timetable. It's about being first, thus the one to profit. Read the Harper's article again, you'll see the author describes a number of reasons why there was pressure on grain prices prior to the record harvest of 2008.

We can't afford to fall into the trap of seeing the speculators literally engage in banditry, and then assume there's no underlying reality to worry about. Hydrocarbon depletion has been seen to operate ever since the first mines and wells. Fields go dry, the easy stuff is mostly gone, consumption outnumbers discovery, and the multis are not spending big money to drill the ocean floor and frack the countryside just to make a show that enables the speculators.

[wintler2]

When they closed the "Enron Loophole" the prices fell. A lot. Fast.

But it is still 4 times what it was at the start of the decade.

Oddly enough, the $144 price tag is what Osama Bin laden said a barrel of oil should cost in one of his manifestos.

Link?

[Nordic]

We can't afford to fall into the trap of seeing the speculators literally engage in banditry, and then assume there's no underlying reality to worry about.

I didn't say that, and wasn't suggesting that.

As far as OBL wanting $144 oil:

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/05/bin-laden-144-oil/

In fact, the headline reads:

FLASHBACK: Ten Years Ago, Bin Laden Demanded Barrel Of Oil Should Cost $144

Sorry, sometimes I just assume certain things are common knowledge, and thusly don't provide links.