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The media, governments, world leaders, and public should focus on this issue.
Global crude oil production had been rising briskly until 2004, then plateaued for four years. Because oil producers were extracting at maximum effort to profit from high oil prices, this plateau is a clear indication of Peak Oil.
Then in August and September of 2008 while oil prices were still very high, global crude oil production fell nearly one million barrels per day, clear evidence of Peak Oil (See Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of "Oil Watch Monthly," December 2008, page 1) http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/1....
Peak Oil is now.
Credit for accurate Peak Oil predictions (within a few years) goes to the following (projected year for peak given in parentheses):
* Association for the Study of Peak Oil (2007)
* Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of “Oil Watch Monthly” (2008)
* Tony Eriksen, Oil stock analyst and Samuel Foucher, oil analyst (2008)
* Matthew Simmons, Energy investment banker, (2007)
* T. Boone Pickens, Oil and gas investor (2007)
* U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2005)
* Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Princeton professor and retired shell geologist (2005)
* Sam Sam Bakhtiari, Retired Iranian National Oil Company geologist (2005)
* Chris Skrebowski, Editor of “Petroleum Review” (2010)
* Sadad Al Husseini, former head of production and exploration, Saudi Aramco (2008)
* Energy Watch Group in Germany (2006)
Oil production will now begin to decline terminally.
Within a year or two, it is likely that oil prices will skyrocket as supply falls below demand. OPEC cuts could exacerbate the gap between supply and demand and drive prices even higher.
Independent studies indicate that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. There is no plan nor capital for a so-called electric economy. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”
"By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame."
With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.
It is time to focus on Peak Oil preparation and surviving Peak Oil.
http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
****-"Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. There is no plan nor capital for a so-called electric economy. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”
"By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from OTHER FOSSIL, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.""****
There is no capital/credit for coal to liquids. There are no plans to build these plants. The National Coal Council has a proposal before the DOE to subsidize the construction of the plants, and DOE/Congress have not responded. Even if the 5 proposed plants were built, they would yield only 3 million barrels per day at maximum by 2015. But they will never be build. Soon Congress will be using the little funds available to subsidize the production of petroleum. It is detailed in the report: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
The Next Big Future is that Peak Oil is now.
The enhanced oil recovery makes existing/older wells more profitable with paybacks of a few months. There is not a funding problem if payback is fast and makes reserves higher thus increasing stock prices.
Same goes for microbes to make natural gas mines from coal more productive and profitable.
All of the trends of higher oil prices would make these projects more attractive not less. the new EOR is solidly profitable in the $60-120 per barrel range and would be putting a significant percentage of the oil in place but not economic (260 billion barrels in the USA) into play. 10% of that is 26 billion barrels.
Previously coal to liquid was more expensive but the Sasol project could turn those economics around.
So, like most enhanced recovery methods, there are limits, and there is no evidence that this one is working.
The 3 million barrels per day is more than the expected additions in Canada from the Oilsands out to 2020. It is 60% of current US oil production.
If the price goes back to $100 a barrel then the 3 million barrels per day is making $300 million per day. And would make $40 billion costs back in less than 140 days in revenue.
Coal to liquids looks highly profitable.
For countries with a lot of coal that need energy security and a hedge against the export land model then they would definitely pay for it.
Modifications of the Sasol process and microbe processes can also work with Shale.
Countries have differing security needs and situations. It is why Germany went at coal to liquids so hard in WW2.
The 2007 U.S. General Accountability Office examined the potential of alternative energies for replacing liquid fuels (liquid fuels are vital for transportation and food production):
“The technologies we examined [ethanol, biodiesel, biomass gas-to-liquid, coal gas-to-liquid, oil shale, and hydrogen] currently supply the equivalent of only about 1% of U.S. annual consumption of petroleum products, and DOE projects that even under optimistic scenarios, these technologies could displace only the equivalent of about 4% of annual projected U.S. consumption by around 2015. Furthermore, because oil production could decline even more each year following a peak, the amount that would have to be replaced by alternatives could also increase year by year.”
Coal Gas-to-Liquid
In 2006, the U.S. National Coal Council proposed a program to develop a coal gas-to-liquid (GTL) plant that could generate 2.6 million barrels per day by 2020 and use an additional 475 million tons of coal per year. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has not accepted this proposal, and it is not in a planning stage of development.
The 2007 GAO study identified significant problems with the coal GTL program:
“This fuel is commercially produced outside the United States, but none of the production facilities are considered profitable. DOE reported that high capital investments—both in money and time—deter the commercial development of coal GTL in the United States. Specifically, DOE estimates that construction of a coal GTL conversion plant could cost up to $3.5 billion and would require at least 5 to 6 years to construct. Furthermore, potential investors are deterred from this investment because of the risks associated with the lengthy, uncertain, and costly regulatory process required to build such a facility. An expert at DOE also expressed concern that the infrastructure required to produce or transport coal may be insufficient. For example, the rail network for transporting western coal is already operating at full capacity and, owing to safety and environmental concerns, there is significant uncertainty about the feasibility of expanding the production capabilities of eastern coal mines. Coal GTL production also faces serious environmental concerns because of the carbon dioxide emitted during production. To mitigate the effect of coal GTL production, researchers are considering options for combining coal GTL production with underground injection of sequestered carbon dioxide to enhance oil recovery in aging oil fields.”
Future coal GTL is limited by the availability and rising cost of coal. The German based Energy Watch Group reported in Coal: Resources and Future Production (2007) that global coal production would peak in about 2025 “in the best case” and that,
“The U.S. passed peak production of high quality coal in 1990 in the Appalachian and the Illinois basin. Production of sub bituminous coal in Wyoming more than compensated for this decline in terms of volume and – according to its stated reserves – this trend can continue for another 10 to 15 years. However, due to the lower energy content of sub bituminous coal, US coal production in terms of energy has already peaked 5 years ago – it is unclear whether this trend can be reversed. Also specific productivity per miner is declining since about 2000.”
The Institute for Energy (IFE) of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, reported in The Future of Coal (2007) that (excerpts):
“The supply base of coal is being continuously depleted. World proven reserves (i.e. the reserves that are economically recoverable at current economic and operating conditions) of coal are decreasing fast. Coal production costs are steadily rising all over the world, due to the need to develop new fields, increasingly difficult geological conditions and additional infrastructure costs associated with the exploitation of new fields.”
OIL SHALE
The World Energy Council makes the following assessment about the potential of oil shale energy:
“If a technology can be developed to economically recover oil from oil shale, the potential is tantalisingly enormous. If the containing organic material could be converted to oil, the quantities would be far beyond all known conventional oil reserves. Oil shale in great quantities exists worldwide: including in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Estonia, France, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the USA.
The term ‘oil shale’ is a misnomer. It does not contain oil nor is it commonly shale. The organic material is chiefly kerogen and the "shale" is usually a relatively hard rock, called marl. Properly processed, kerogen can be converted into a substance somewhat similar to petroleum. However, it has not gone through the ‘oil window’ of heat (nature’s way of producing oil) and therefore, to be changed into an oil-like substance, it must be heated to a high temperature. By this process the organic material is converted into a liquid, which must be further processed to produce an oil which is said to be better than the lowest grade of oil produced from conventional oil deposits, but of lower quality than the upper grades of conventional oil.
There are two conventional approaches to oil shale processing. In one, the shale is fractured in-situ and heated to obtain gases and liquids by wells. The second is by mining, transporting, and heating the shale to about 450oC, adding hydrogen to the resulting product, and disposing of and stabilising the waste. Both processes use considerable water. The total energy and water requirements together with environmental and monetary costs (to produce shale oil in significant quantities) have so far made production uneconomic. During and following the oil crisis of the 1970’s, major oil companies, working on some of the richest oil shale deposits in the world in western United States, spent several billion dollars in various unsuccessful attempts to commercially extract shale oil.
Oil shale has been burned directly as a very low grade, high ash-content fuel in a few countries such as Estonia, whose energy economy remains dominated by shale. Minor quantities of oil have been obtained from oil shale in several countries at times over many years.
With increasing numbers of countries experiencing declines in conventional oil production, shale oil production may again be pursued. One project is now being undertaken in north-eastern Australia, but it seems unlikely that shale oil recovery operations can be expanded to the point where they could make a major contribution toward replacing the daily consumption of oil worldwide.
Perhaps oil shale will eventually find a place in the world economy, but the energy demands of blasting, transport, crushing, heating and adding hydrogen, together with the safe disposal of huge quantities of waste material, are large. On a small scale, and with good geological and other favourable conditions, such as water supply, oil shale may make a modest contribution but so far shale oil remains the ‘elusive energy’.”
The 2007 GAO study concluded that, “it is possible that in 10 years from now, the oil shale resource could produce 0.5 million to 1.0 million barrels per day.” But the GAO noted that the development of oil shale faces key challenges, including: “(1) controlling and monitoring groundwater, (2) permitting and emissions concerns associated with new power generation facilities, (3) reducing overall operating costs, (4) water consumption, and (5) land disturbance and reclamation.”
Walter Youngquist of the Colorado School of Mines provides a detailed history and analysis of attempts to develop Colorado’s oil shale. After spending billions of dollars, industry has terminated oil shale operations due to a low net energy recovery and a lack of water resources.
And who knows why Shell is buying water rights in Colorado? Maybe some executives have an excuse to travel to Colorado to summer/winter sports. They sure are not going there to mine shale oil as it will never be profitable as it uses too much oil. As the price of oil goes up, the cost of "mining" oil shale increases.
Read more here about why alternatives will not yield much: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
And here is some more info on Sasol in South Africa, it does not look promising with the cost, pollution, and declining coal reserves: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:YTO-roAs6sg...
Sasol is already at about 100,000 barrels per day with their coal to liquid world wide. The Indonesia project looks to make sense for Indonesia. Plus Indonesia is going big time into seaweed and algae biofuels.
I disagree with the technology assessment of you and your site. Also, do not post the same link to your site again in this thread and never more than once in a thread. I have let you dump the same link several times now, please control your spamming.
There are many technological approaches to converting the Shale to useful purpose. their is microbial approaches, microwave and the Shell process.
also, you are going 14% of current US consumption and then saying that nothing will work and their will be decline. How much difference would 3 or 6 million barrels per day make if there is a decline of 20%. And this offsets that decline by 14% ? -6% instead of -20%.
Your own analysis is inconsistent. If there is big decline then being able to moderate it matters. If we have a lot of oil or biofuels or other energy then this does not matter so much.
Also, since oil is the main energy used for coal mining and transportation of coal, the cost of coal will increase with the price of oil. Peak Oil = Peak Coal, no matter how much coal exits. Oil is the precursor of all other energies. Most coal workers get to work by driving, for example.
See also: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/6/16575...
and http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4810
As I said at the outset, Peak Oil is the Next Big Future.
I did adjust my Sasol assessment as I think the $10 billion is for only the 80,000 bpd first phase. But the profitable project price is $35/bbl for oil.
The biofuels looks at algae but does not look at seaweed (which looks to get to Brazil sugar cane levels in Japan and other places in Asia).
Nuclear, whether fusion or fission is useless, as it does not yield the liquid energy that we need for transport, nor does it supply fertilizer (or if so it depends on oil), nor does it supply raw materials for plastics, medicines, and thousands of products made from oil.
Seaweed production is still in R&D and pilot projects, and seaweed production depends on oil for collection, processing, and transport. Thus Peak Oil = Peak Seaweed.
Here is comment from Bart Anderson, editor of Energybulletin.net, regarding seaweed:
"Nothing about the environmental impacts. It seems that any attempts to power our large and growing energy demand from biofuels is doomed to failure, without intensive efforts at efficiency and conservation."
@ http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47023
http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/h...
it is shown to be possible via the large scale energy potential of nuclear fission to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and with this CO2 methanol can be manufactured and George Olah's Beyond Oil and Gas : The Methanol Economy explains how methanol is a prime feedstock for basically all liquid fuels. Ammonia can also be manufactured from nitrogen pulled out of the atmosphere (air is mostly nitrogen after all) hence no problem with fertilizers. Lest you object that supplies of uranium are limited note that breeder reactors, both fast and thermal, are capable of utilizing vast quantities of uranium 238 and thorium 232.
Breeder reactors are still in research and development. There is no capital for more nuclear power. For the U.S. there is only one application in at the NRC for a nuclear power plant, and it takes 10 years to build a plant, and the capital is not there. Soon the federal government will spend the little capital it can on subsidizing oil production (extraction) and oil for home heating so people don't freeze to death in their homes. As oil production declines, building a nuclear power plant will become 10X and then 100X more expensive.
Some of what I write in my report about oil depletion and the impacts of Peak Oil has not been addressed by anyone before. The best report on energy policy was the National Academy of Sciences study of 1977, cited in my report, which is cited above. But the NAS and Limits of Growth do not go into the detail that I do about Peak Oil impacts.
there is still money being spent on new energy infrastructure and a fair bit of that spending is accelerating as part of various global economic stimulus efforts
there are 26 combined licensed applications received at the NRC
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col.html
the Russians continue to operate a 600MW breeder reactor. Beloyarsk 3 and they are finishing an 800MW breeder Beloyarsk 4 for 2012. china is in talks to buy a copy of the 800MW breeder.
75% of the new reactors are not going to be in the US or Western Europe unless there is a change in the US like some new technology or some big change in the procurement/policy area. But it also appears like the US will get 2-3 dozen reactors.