peak oil production in 2009? - what next? 18

[davefitz]

There are rumblings that the peak in world oil production may occur in 2009, and that the demand for oil is increasing very rapidly in developing countries ( China , INdia) .

There does not seem to be any effort being made in the USA to reduce the rate of consumption or to reduce demand. Simple efforts such as the following are not being used :
a) increase CAFE ( auto gas mileage )
b) improve mass transit in major cities ( Seatle, Houston, LA, etc)
c) propaganda which is aimed at changing attitudes toward energy consumption.

What is the most likely end result in 2009 if noone takes steps to prepare for this event?

 

[jmw]

RDK,
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the supply of oil is infinite. I would suggest that we will never use it all. We still have trees, though back in the 18th/19th centruies there was a shortage of trees in the UK because of all the shipbuilding, smelting etc. and as for coal, a sizable proportion is still where it is because we moved on. We will move on from oil. It isn't a question of should we or shouldn't we, it's a question of when and what to. Frankly, the more oil we use the bigger the market for it and the more likely there will be investment. Getting oil demands a lot of investmenmt and a high level of technology, more than is needed for coal, especially deposits like the open cast mining of brown coal in Germany. Countries like Greece have an abundant supply of lignite but what are they doing? they are moving to gas from the pipelines. Why? it's certainly cleaner, it's definately more convenient. Is it the cheapest fuel around? No. Coal is. Then heavy fuel oils. I guess orimulsion fits in there somewhere with coal and HFO. I am hard put to consider the significance of wind turbines. Wind energy is definately not cheaper than gas. Changes in government legislation and taxation make it, if not viable, certain to be source of energy for some countries for some time. 12% of energy in Europe by 2010, i think. My concern is will this hinder the serach for something better or enhance it? Ditto SUVs. if we knew, 100% that there was nothing else, not a return to fossil fuels, no to nuclear, no to fussion then i guess we would be in real trouble because we would definately need to take stock of what energy can be derived from, how much and who gets it. Frankly it may be easier to suggest that we will want an ever expanding supply of cheap energy. Cheap depends on market size. SHutting down or controlling demand may just shut down a number of development channels that require a substantial investment but which could solve our pollution problems (except for heat). It is easier to get people to accept alternative fuels than it is to stop them using energy.

 

[RDK]

jmw

If I follow your reasoning, you are saying that we should use all the oil, make major investments in the infrastructure and technology to do so because that will create a huge demand for energy and that when we run out of oil this huge unsatisfied demand for oil will cause new technologies to be created to satisfy this demand.

My position is that there should be more development of alternate fuels NOW and not in 10, 20 or 100 years when we run out of oil. Running out of fuel will do to our economy what running out of fuel does to a car. It will bring it to a sudden and complete stop.

In a car this might not be a big deal since more fuel is only a gas can away.

In the economy the sudden stop will bring about anarchy and severe hardship to the population.

The investment can be in many forms and these are not mutually exclusive. Conservation is one of these forms. Increased fuel taxes to fund alternate fuel development will foster conservation and provide some funding for research into alternate fuel sources.

Here in Canada we dismantled our national rail service in favour of increased truck usage. This was short sighted since the increased fuel consumption, wear on the roads and overall cost increases due to increased manpower has more than offset and savings. Governments can and should structure the economy to produce some desired benefits. Taxation is one main way to do that. Tax fuel inefficient technology and products and give tax breaks to alternate fuels and fuel-efficient products.

Most of the wars in the last 40 years have been in oil producing regions. Japan started WW2 in the Pacific to secure resources to fuel its economy. What do you think will happen when the last few barrels of oil are left?

(Also please use your enter key a little more, some white space between paragraphs will make your posts more readable, especially for longer and more complicated posts.)


Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[jmw]

And are we not looking for new energy sources now?
If we run out of oil before we discover them we have a huge problem, we have a society dependent on energy and with no way to satisfy it.

Perhaps we need a few frights, perhaps we do need to scare people about a future without oil. Perhaps that is what is happening now.

It would be nice to think that somewhere, someone is providing a direction.

It would be extremely concerning to discover that governments with their short attention spans and their gift for vote related descision taking were only concerned with the short term and had no concept of the long term or were conciously or inadvertently creating an environment in which a long term goal is sacrificed for a short term dead end.

Governments are all too susceptible to the wrong sorts of pressure and their policy is based on this. We should realise that "wind turbines" are a great sop to the voting population but not a long term solution.

We have seen governments in the past pay attention to the green parties but only for so long as they represent a threat to the establishment status quo. The reduced effectiveness of the green parties in Europe is beginning to show, but we nonethe less have a commitment to 12% wind energy in Europe.

Wind energy is not a global solution. It is not limitless. It is not even that convenient. It may be clean but how much conventional resource goes into producing the equipment? Is this resource that could be better spent?

For longer term developments we must rely on more powerful forces than government. It may be that that means "market forces". More subtlety is required and clearer long term vision. I would be concerned to discover that there is no long term objective and that there are no long term investments.

Time has come for us to determine just where we are likely to find our energy "philosphers stone" and what we need to do to breathe life into it.

 

[davefitz]

Again, the reduced supply of oil combined with increased demand will mostly affect our habits related to transportation. Those habits will be forced to change due to the impostion of economic messages to that effect, viz, it will be too damn expensive to commute to work in a SUV occupied by one person, it will be commercially unsustaninable to ship most food produce by truck,and flying around the world on a whim will become impossibly expensive.

IN terms of structural damage to the economy, the effects on the production and distribution of food seems critical, and its effect on most anything else is just background noise that we can afford to accept.

 

[sacem1]

Just a few days ago I was reading that the 3rd world farmers where being hit hard by the subsidiced export crops from the US/Canad/EC countries, why not try to shift some of your surplus agricultural production to the production of renewable energy sources.

Brazil for one has a very interesting ongoing program for using alcohol for fueling cars, and its a cheaper fuel than oil based fuels.

About 40 years ago here in Peru the Grace company had a agricultural complex based on sugar cane production than had PVC as one of its final products, besides, sugar, paper, soda, alcohol all starting from sugar cane and sea salt, the technology is there, it should just be put into production and refinement to increase the yields, but back then PVC pellets made starting from sugar cane where cost competitive with oil based alternatives.

Right now there is big talk, but few actions, to implement alternative crops on Coca leave growing areas to produce alcohol and replace at least partially the use of oil in automotive use fuels.

Sure there are a lot of other solutions, none is the right one, all are, just how much of each one is implemented will be a matter of economics but you all are right we should be starting to develop and refine them NOW.

So gentlemen lets start working on it.

SACEM1

 

[DDT77]

It's about the energy;
I've read that the energy payback on energy invested in the oilsands projects in Canada is about 5. Is this in the ballpark? Can a petro engineer give us some guidance on this number?

Contrast that to the energy payback time of 3-4 years for PV, or 3-4 months for utility size wind, with expected lifetimes of 20-30 years, as well as the USDA estimate of 1.25 energy payback ratio for corn derived ethanol. Now if we wanted to get the most energy out of the energy we have available today, what do we choose? But this does not count the convienence factor of the various sources.

davfitz has a good point, it's the transportation system that will be section effected the greatest by this change. And that seems to be a huge basis for the JIT economy.

I have to cringe whenever I hear a political type spout off about reducing the US's dependence on foriegn oil, thus open whatever area to drilling, but when will that oil be more valuable, now (prepeak) or later (postpeak)? Our resources (relative to demand) are miniscule compared to global resources, and we want to further deplete what we have left?

comments?

darren

 

[CanEngJohn]

I recall reading many years ago that the transportation system (with both oil and gas requirements as a fuel and lubricant) was actually only 32% of the overall demand for oil.

Now I know that number has shifted with the increase of automobiles in Japan and China but I would hate for us to limit our focus on transport only to get burned when the Sales team can't buy any polyester suits.

Being ignorant I would ahve to ask what other products do we need to look at that we haven't mentioned yet?

 

[jmw]

Take a look at the household shopping, electrical goods, in fact, almost anything these days has some component or other made from fossil fuels! That is, both oil and gas.
It is all very well blaming transport and SUVs but if you can think of any more frivolous use of fossil fuels than for through-away wrappings, disposable water cups, the absolute mania for packaging 3 woodscrews in plastic blister packs, and so on.

I am all for recyclable materials and especially one time packaging. Cars are increasingly manufactured with 80-90% recyclable components.

The fad for mineral water (which is arguably just an expensive way to drink water with no benefits over tap water in the developed world) means that we are paying top money for 05l of water and a plastic bottle used only once and thrown away.

Why not return to glass bottles with money back deposits...?

Why do we appear to lack the technology to have street lighting that only comes on when its needed? How much energy is wasted on lighting up streets when no one is there? If we need to develop new light technology, then let's do it and switch the things off and only bring them back on when people are near enough to benefit.

 

[sacem1]

jmw is right, we as engineers know that oil is not going to last for ever, so let us put our brains and efforts towards a more rational use of it, so that what we have will last longer and give humanity more time to be able to switch to an oilless society.

Increasing efficiency of use is one way, decreasing useless waste is another, finding alternative ways to do things to save or replace energy, finding new sources of energy or of not needing energy are other.

Even if market forces drive waste down, by increasing cost of oil, thr trend to reduce waste/ icrease efficiency will be too slow to really start the shift in user habbits enough to make a dent in oil use, a clear sign should be sent by goverments all around the world by stablishing taxation over missuse/inefficient use/waste of energy and redirecting those funds towards developing better ways to use energy and recycle/replace oil based materials.

I would like to be starting a thread to compile all suggestions to save or replace fossil oil use and maybe start a trend towards more rational use of our world oil resources but it should be opened in another forum, any suggestions about in which one?

SACEM1

 

[rhodie]

..."Cold Fusion" was such a great idea while it lasted.

 

[jmw]

Is it dead then? I thought they were now looking at cavitation as an initiation mechanism...

 

[DDT77]

from:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/..._petroleum_status_report/current/txt/wpsr.txt

Total Prod Supplied for Domestic 20,773

Products Supplied
Finished Motor Gasoline (4) 8,666
Kerosene-Type Jet Fuel 1,562
Distillate Fuel Oil 4,541
Residual Fuel Oil 969
Other Oils (8) 5,035

Total Products Supplied 20,773

Total Net Imports 11,451

[in millions of barrels/day, numbers from last week]

How many of you have seen the following:
A person that brings their own bags to carry their groceries home...
But purchased (almost exclusively) single serving containers

These people may have the right intentions, but some are truly clueless...

 

[GregLocock]

A while back we had a rather acrimonious debtae on this. One piece of 'evidence' was Hubert King's graph of oil consumption, which, as I remember, gave us about ten years until it peaked, and then halved in about 25 years time.

On holiday recently I was in a hut in the wilds of New Zealand. The only reading matter was a National Geographic from 1974. It had an article all about the likely shortage of oil, and featured a curve demonstrating that oil production would peak in 1984, and would halve by 2005.

I'll leave you to guess the name of the 'authority' in the article.

While I am far from convinced that oil production and the greenhouse effect are linked, I prefer efficient solutions to inefficient ones. It seems to me that nuclear technology is the safest and most convenient way of generating electricity, and that efficient oil powered cars are still the most cost and energy effective form of personal mobility for most people.





Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[funnelguy]

JMW,

This story seems to coincide with your "cavitation" post about cold fusion.

http://www.azom.com/news.asp?newsID=1073

So, is this for real? Could it replace fission in the near future?

 

[jmw]

Funnelguy, thanks for the link. Interesting reading.

I had the recollection of a much lower temperature when a cavitation bubble collapsed but then, they are talking about bigger bubbles. The bigger the bubble the higher the velocity of the molecules when it collapses.

I certainly hope for fussion power in the future and this is one path that, thankfully, hasn't been closed down. Work has been going on for decades to develop fussion reactors. The big worry for me is that they will design big. I'm with Schumacher, Small is beautiful.

 

[rhodie]

Yeah, jmw, there are a few empty supercollider superconductor sites around that speak volumes about the idea (necessity!) of small reactors.

The cavitation article was neat, wish I knew more.

 

[jmw]

Very Interesting. I decided to do a search, "Cold fusion" on goggle imedaitely threw up this quote:
``It is difficult to imagine a more profound reversal of scientific fortunes than what has been emerging in the "cold fusion" field. One of the most disputed anomalies in the history of science is inexorably heading toward acceptance by the scientific community.''
-- Dr. Eugene Mallove
and a link to this site:

http://www.infinite-energy.com/

Of course, i am not sure how legitimate this is, it could be L Ron Hubbards web site for all I know. For some reason, i am a bit suspicious of very professional web sites... i wonder if the appearanceof the web site is meant to suggest the veracity of the material within it.

I will explore with interest, be pursuaded of what i want to believe and then, possibly, be disillusioned by the smarter brains in this forum.

 

[jmw]

Well, i am a little happier.
This link (

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html)

reveals that it isn't Hubbard behind Infinite Energy but Arthur C Clarke. Well, he is a contributor.

But this page does set out some of the current position with JET and Cold fusion.

 

[2dye4]

I wonder

What would the long term consequences have been if
we had spent the money for the gulf war ($80 billion)
on nuclear fusion research. Just think of the spin off
technology even if we never fuse hydrogen.

 

[davefitz]

2dye4:
The main spin off of spending more billions on fusion will likely be a few more BMW + Lexus dealerships in Princeton NJ and a few more 5000 ft2 mansions in the same area. This was the primary result of the billions spent in the 80's + 90's at the Princeton Tokomak.