Peak Oil Update

April 16th, 2008, 11:16 AM

Come on.....I'm talking all autos, not a few select models. If you think auto makers couldn't have come up with a fuel efficient engine other than smart cars up until this point there is something wrong. After the oil crisis of 73 the government increase the corporat average fuel economy standards......and waalah.....the auto industry magically met those standards. There is no reason why "all" autos on the road today are not getting more than50+ miles to the gallon. NO REASON AT ALL. Back yard mechanics all over the country are tinkering with their engines and creating more fuel efficient motors.......Are you telling me that GM can't figure this out but a back yard mechanic can.

April 19th, 2008, 01:49 AM

Hey Lesta', geologically speaking oil finds run out. That's geological fact. Then economic principles and laws become irrelevent for these facts under the ground.

In the Georgia Straight this week there was a good article about peak oil. I noticed the economists were slamming the geologists and saying there was lots of oil and the magic of the market will solve the problem. Economists like Michael Walker are all talk, marketers for fading laissez-faire capitalism.

You see, economists don't find oil or fix cars. Nice soft hands but loud voices being drown out by physical reality. They are out of the loop now, beyond their expertise on this topic. Oil runs out, how sad. Sniff.

April 20th, 2008, 01:17 AM

As you said in you OP - Cheap Oil Is running out- There's plenty of expensive oil...Oil innovations pump new life...

Lester

April 30th, 2008, 12:16 PM

I certainly wouldn't want to be on the highway in one. I'll stick with my pickup, thank you.

April 30th, 2008, 12:20 PM

We need to question why oil company profits are so high, and why they are ripping the public off. Something doesn't smell right...

Also whatever happened to Harper's election promise that if the price per liter went over $1.00, he would reduce the tax on gas???

April 30th, 2008, 02:01 PM

Why oil prices are so high? Because consumers refuse to relent in their consumption, or turn their noses up at fuel efficient vehicles. Consumption is the problem, not the oil companies. So many people simply expect the government to step in and fix things. The price is set on the commodity markets, in London and New York. The driver of the price besides supply and demand: hedge funds, speculators, and commodity flights. Love the free market when prices are good for consumers, hate it when they aren't.

April 30th, 2008, 02:23 PM

I disagree Tonnington, consumption has never been a problem, it's what makes the capitalist pig sty rock. Now if you can manipulate/control the supply of that commodity and they do, then you can also dictate the price, and they do. There have been repeated attempts for over forty years to mass market inexpensive fuel efficient vehicles and to build vast puplic transit projects all to benefit the environment and the consumer and the single roadblock to all of that progress has been the fossil fuel industry. There will never be mass marketed fuel efficient vehicles nor mass transit while private capital controls oil, only nationalization has any real chance of making these necessary changes. Check the oil company profits for the first quarter of 2008, if you threaten that gain you forfeit your life. Fuel prices are high and consumption is high because that is what makes huge returns on investment. Do we see the EV1 buzzing about our streets and highways? No we don't, and if you investigate why not you find out it's because they did not consume enough oil and therefore were a definite threat to profit.

What government? We long ago turned our governance over to those same private market forces that throttle any public attempt to curtail the destruction of the capitalist wreckers.

April 30th, 2008, 02:53 PM

You can't divorce supply and demand, which wasn't my intention. Consumption is demand, and it continues to grow. Sure, the OPEC folks can curtail production, and they do. But, this society is built on cheap and plentiful energy, and that is a problem in a world with finite resources, and a world with a growing middle class. More demand makes the product more expensive. Harder to extract resources make it more expensive. But it's not all bad, these situations create opportunities.

Partly yes. The public had no appetite for more expensive vehicles when fuel supply wasn't a problem. The 70's oil shortage necessitated legislated CAFE requirements. Now, we need them even more. Why? It's back to excessive consumption in an era with few large reserves being found, and large reserves that require more processing like tar sand or shale. It's not necessary to have a vehicle that reaches 100 km/h in 6 seconds from a standstill. But people still want to have that cake, and eat it too.

Consumers in Europe have been chugging along with fuel prices double what we have. They use vehicles with much better fuel efficiency, use public transportation much more, and change their driving habits to limit the number of trips they make. That attitude hasn't caught on yet here in NA, and that's ridiculous.

There are EV's on the streets. Though, very few. California had requirements for zero emission vehicles. But then they slashed the requirements. Now, the auto makers have electric vehicles slated for release in the next 5 years. I was lured by the Hydrogen fuel cells, but now I think they're a minor player, and probably will lose to electric in the long run.

April 30th, 2008, 03:23 PM

I used to think the same way. But, when I stopped to actually think about it, I only know of one car accident in my personal life that ended in death. The other 4 deaths were pickups. Seems to me, thinking on it, that false sense of security does people a pretty big disservice.

April 30th, 2008, 03:50 PM

http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t021full.pdf
I couldn't find anything for Canadian statistics, or more recent than 2002, but here's a report that breaks down risk by vehicle, as well as driver categories (young males/elderly.)

Table A5 shows the risk by vehicle to both driver, and to other drivers on the road, as well as a combined risk factor.

Crash tests for the Smart car are exceptional. The size doesn't matter, as much as the design parameters like shape and materials used do.

April 30th, 2008, 04:06 PM

Thanks T, that was a neat read.

April 30th, 2008, 05:07 PM

FT. WORTH (Fortune) -- Welcome to Texas's newest boomtown, a city of 686,000 that just happens to sit on top of a giant natural gas field known as the Barnett Shale. With demand for natural gas rising (due in large part to demand from utilities) and the price spiking (it's doubled in the U.S. since last summer), exploration companies have kicked off a drilling frenzy in Fort Worth.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/30/news...worth.fortune/

Guess what? I already have two friends who have cashed in on this big find and are getting rich. Actually one is my niece by marriage. No oil or gas? Just give us some time to develop this gas field. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Uncle

April 30th, 2008, 05:15 PM

Shale formations fall under the umbrella of 'expensive oil' that the OP addresses in the closing sentences. It's not a new discovery (much like the Bakken shale formations), it just wasn't practical or worthwhile to go after it before. The cost of extracting from these formations is much higher, and from what I understand, refining it is much more expensive as well.

May 1st, 2008, 02:33 PM

Karrie - no one asked my niece what kind of drill it was when she deposited her first check.

As the old saying goes: "Where there's a will, there's a way." There is the "minor" problem of 6 million people living on top of it...but if anyone can drill it, Texas can do it. We have
a lot of experience with problems such as this.

"So what is going on here in Texas is extremely different because every operator and producer here is a pioneer in the most advanced cutting edge and active play in the world."
http://www.thebarnettshale.com

Uncle

May 1st, 2008, 02:51 PM

The point isn't that it can't be drilled or done Uncle, we've been drilling shale formations for a while now. The Bakken Formation in Saskatchewan is one such example. The point is that it's expensive oil that wasn't gone after before, not a new reserve that will solve the problem. It's not the end of peak oil, it's a symptom of it. And as they keep going after more and more difficult deposits and extracting more and more of this stuff that isn't quite crude oil, then the price is going to keep driving up higher and higher and higher.

May 1st, 2008, 04:07 PM

I think you had better come up with something more recent before you start throwing around statistics. There have been great improvements in vehicle safety since 2000. I'll still stick to my 2003 pickup. No matter what you say about the smart car, i think in a confrontation between the smart car and a transport truck, the transport truck would win...

May 1st, 2008, 04:08 PM

Peak Oil - True or False


By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, March 6, 2008



The German-based Energy Watch Group (EWG) believes peak oil is real. It's an "international network of scientists and parliamentarians" that published an October 2007 report with that view. It stated world oil production peaked in 2006, output is now declining by several percent a year, and by 2020 to 2030 global oil reserves will be substantially lower than today and a supply gap will exist.
Daniel Yergin's Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) disagrees. Its analysis finds that "the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels - three times as large as the (claimed) 1.2 trillion barrels by (peak oil) proponents." CERA argues further that peak oil reasoning is faulty and, "if accepted, (may) distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future." It states as well that the "global resource base of conventional and unconventional oils....is 4.82 trillion barrels an

A Peak Oil Contrarian
F. William Engdahl once accepted peak oil analysis, but no longer does. He explains why in his writing, and this section summarizes his reasoning. It's based on the Russian-Ukrainian theory that oil originated from deep carbon deposits dating as far back as the earth's formation. It's not a fossil fuel or of biological origin, and its potential may be far greater than current hydrocarbon estimates.
According to Engdahl and others sharing this view, peak oil adherents believe oil is a fossil fuel, its origin is biological, its supply finite, and it's only found in areas where it was "geologically trapped millions of years ago....in underground reservoirs (around) 4-6000 feet below the surface of the earth." At times, large amounts may also be in shallow water offshore rock formations in places like the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea or Gulf of Guinea. In any event, prevailing reasoning is that it's running out, and it's a just a matter of deciding how much is left and when it no longer will be available in amounts needed to sustain world economies. Peak oil proponents believe the time is fast approaching.



In 1951, Nikolai Kudryavtsev proposed the first modern deep abiotic oil origins theory at the All-Union petroleum geology congress. He discounted claims about oil's biological origin and was joined by other Russian and Ukrainian geologists, including Vladimir Porfir'yev.
In 1956, Porfir'yev announced their conclusions that even now are largely unacknowledged in the West: that "Crude oil and natural petroleum have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the earth." They're "primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths," and believing their supply is limited is a hoax to keep prices high at times like now.
The theory rests on the abiotic origin of oil. It's mirror opposite orthodox geology, and, if right, here's what it means - that available oil is only limited by deep earth organic hydrocarbon constituents at the time of the planet's formation, and technological advances will eventually tap them in ultra-deep reservoirs and from old fields believed to be barren.
The theory defies conventional science, but it's paying off. It let Soviet Russia develop huge oil and gas fields in regions previously thought unsuitable. In the 1990s, it was also successfully used in the Dnieper-Donets Basin between Russia and Ukraine in areas considered barren. Sixty-one wells were drilled of which 37 (60%) proved out. Engdahl compares this to US wildcat drilling that produces 90% dry holes.

Russia's success was largely unknown in the West until Pentagon strategists, just recently, considered a disturbing possibility - that the country's geophysicists might know "something of profound strategic importance." If Russian energy know-how exceeds the West, it holds "a strategic trump card of staggering geopolitical import." It also explains why Washington surrounds the country with military bases and targets it with anti-ballistic missiles and radar for offense, not defense. It's "to cut her pipeline and port links to western Europe, China and the rest of Eurasia" as part of a new millennium Great Game to control the world's resources.
In the 1990s, Russia extended its technology to the West, but its offers were spurned and then withdrawn after the US attacked Iraq. Nonetheless, ExxonMobil nearly got a $25 billion stake in Yukos Oil that only unraveled after its chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest and conviction quashed the deal. Had it gone through, Exxon would have had access to the world's largest resource of abiotic-trained deep drilling experts, now unavailable to their scientists and the West.
It now comes down to this. Western technology is built around fossil fuel development. If the future is abiotic, as Engdahl and Russian scientists believe, "Moscow holds a massive energy trump card." It also faces a hostile US and possible new Cold War confrontation for its advantage and unwillingness to be accommodative the way Boris Yeltsin was in the 1990s.
If abiotic theory proves false or overrated, however, and orthodox geology is right, then controlling world oil reserves is even more important. It means peak oil is real, cheap oil is running out, heavier oils are more important, and cornering what's left will be Priority One for all major world powers.
There you have it - peak oil or vast untapped amounts of the abiotic kind awaiting new technology to access it. Readers can weigh the evidence, find more on their own, and decide what's true or false. In the fullness of time we'll know, but for now we must rely on our best judgment with plenty of ammunition on both sides of the argument to consider.

May 1st, 2008, 04:10 PM

that doesn't mean a pickup would be victorious either though now does it? Besides, it seems to be the guys in the pickups who toss it into 4 wheel drive and whip down the highway like there's no ice, that end up smoking the semis anyway.