Peak Oil Update

[dumpthemonarchy]

The Globe on Mail newspaper in their Report on Business had an article on peak oil. Oh, they are so cool and casual at the GM.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080408.RPEAKOIL08/TPStory/Business

Background on the subject

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Peak oil is big because

- we've been using more oil than we've been finding since the 1980s

- no big new oil fields have been found, Brazil? with 10-15 billion barrels? A six months supply ten years from now, maybe. The world uses about 3 billion barrels per month (85m*365)

- the US is in recession and the price of oil has not declined

- the BRIC countries keep using more oil, China, India, Russia, Brazil

- oil nationalism, Mexico, Iran and Venezuela just aren't exporting more due to political or geological reasons

- peak oil is about geology, the oil is not going to last forever, sorry I erred, the cheap oil-most of which is gone. There is plenty of oil at $300-$9000 a barrel.

 

[Stretch]

Biofuels nothing short of disaster
It turns out the production of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel is likely to cause far more environmental damage than it prevents, not to mention triggering widespread famine and eating up more rainforest and grassland than beef production ever could.
Posted Apr 13, 2008 09:59 AM PST
Category: ECONOMY
, Category: SCIENCE/HEALTH
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjourn....html?id=7ac33c22-ff7f-4108-a61f-a24757c61776

 

[MikeyDB]

It makes far more sense to continue to pay extortionist prices so American petroleum countries can continue their reign over the government of the United States...and of course by proxy...Kanada.

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

Here is the article from the Sun newspaper


'Peak oil' crisis, and drastic change, coming our way


Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun

Published: Friday, April 11, 2008

In the 1990s the Vancouver Board of Trade's debt clock travelled the nation, delivering a doom and gloom message about Canada's $583-billion debtload.

The public's consciousness was raised, allowing politicians to impose change through hardship. Today, the debt is under control and attention has shifted to climate change.
In the U.S., Al Gore just launched a $300-million ad blitz to increase awareness about climate change, aiming to have his fellow citizens cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 90 per cent by 2050.

*
Something similar needs to happen on the so-called "peak oil" front because the world is running out of cheap oil.

So far, that something is not happening. Not here. Not in the U.S., which consumes 25 per cent of the world's oil. In the presidential campaign, none of the candidates is discussing policies to wean Americans off oil. But then, as one-time PM Kim Campbell said in 1993, elections are no time for serious issues.

Even as most politicians remain mum on the coming petroleum challenge, signs at Vancouver gas pumps advertise the crisis with a posted price of $1.25/litre.
Peak oil -- the point at which global demand for oil begins outstripping supply -- generally is targeted to occur some time between now and 2020.

The end of cheap oil is confronting society just as it's grappling with climate change which will make adaptation more daunting. After all, if climate change weren't a problem, we could turn to coal -- not an option when greenhouse-gas cuts have been mandated by an international protocol.

And so, "the age of the 3,000-mile Caesar salad is coming to an end," declares New York author James Kunstler in The End of Suburbia, Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, a documentary film produced in 2004 and being shown tonight in Vancouver.

Transport is fuelled 95 per cent by oil. And it's not just California lettuce that may not be viable. The North American way of life is on the chopping block. The film really strikes a chord when you contemplate that when it was produced gasoline sold for 89.9 cents/litre. The price has gone up nearly 30 per cent.

Kunstler observes that "America took all its postwar wealth and invested in a living arrangement that has no future." Canada did the same. Per capita, we consume energy at more than twice the European rate despite similar lifestyles.

The film focuses mainly on car dependency. Too many of us live far from city centres, in hard-to-heat homes with double garages. We shop at huge malls, commute to work along vast stretches of asphalt sparsely fringed with stores and takeouts, purchase goods from faraway places. It's a way of life that may well be doomed.

A 12-member citizens group, the Vancouver Peak Oil Executive, was formed recently in Vancouver to spread word about the necessity of change. It aims "to build awareness of the imminent peak oil crisis and its potential effects on the metro Vancouver area."
The VPOE is promoting "relocalization" -- getting people to walk to work, buy locally produced food and goods, shop at corner stores.

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

Newspapers across the country have to put together an Energy Page to inform Cdns on develop0ments regarding this issue. If electric cars replace the internal combustion engine, we will need more dams, windmills, solar power, and tidal power.

 

[Walter]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy when they drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to yield 700,000 barrels of oil that real excitement and money started to flow in North Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in Oil discovery since Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1][/SIZE][/FONT]
​

​

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

Right now, the US is in an economic slowdown and the price of oil reached a new high $111. The rest of the world is still growing.

Bakken will come online in ten years or so. Good, but its needed now. The key word here is "potential". A ways off.

OPEC isn't in the habit of squeezing supplies, not lately anyway, They love the current windfall. Saudi Arabia is pumping out all it can.

Bekken is dirty oil, and tough oil to get. Today the Alberta Oil sands only produce about 1 million barrels a day, and by 2015 3-5 million barrels. Despite many billions in investments and much more to come.

 

[earth_as_one]

Oil isn't too useful, if it can't be extracted.

...In April 2008 the USGS released this report, which estimated the amount of technically recoverable, undiscovered oil in the Bakken Formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels, with a mean of 3.65 billion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation

Now this is bigger news:

Brazil in 'major oil field' find
Tuesday, 15 April 2008

Brazil has discovered what could be the third biggest oil reserve in the world, according to the head of the country's National Petroleum Agency.

The deep-sea find by state-run oil firm Petrobras could yield 33 billion barrels in reserves.

Further tests are required to assess the scale of the find, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, but analysts say it could have significant implications.

Brazil announced sizeable new gas and oil discoveries last year as well.

'Big number'

In December 2007, Brazil said it had found a new reserve in the Espirito Santo region a month after a reserve in the nearby Tupi oil field of up to eight billion barrels was found.

According to the US Energy Department, Brazil's existing proven oil reserves total 11.8 billion barrels, while the US holds 21.8 billion.

Referring to the latest discovery, Citigroup analyst Tim Evans said: "It's a big, big number".

Petrobras said "more conclusive data" about the potential of the discovery would only be known after further evaluation.

A spokesperson for the National Petroleum Agency said the statement by its president Harold Lima about the find was based on unconfirmed sources.

Even if the reserves are proven, it is likely to take ten years before the latest find can be turned into significant supplies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7348111.stm

Peak oil hasn't been reached yet, but it is coming. As oil becomes more expensive, more oil becomes profitable to extract. It would be more accurate to say peak "cheap" oil has already come and gone.

 

[Walter]

Average wage in 1950 about $3000 and price of oil about $17/barrel.

Average wage 2008 about $40000 and the price of oil about $110/barrel.

 

[Albertabound]

It turns out the production of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel is likely to cause far more environmental damage than it prevents, not to mention triggering widespread famine and eating up more rainforest and grassland than beef production ever could.

Not to mention food shortages.....would you rather eat or drive?

 

[karrie]

Not to mention food shortages.....would you rather eat or drive?

food shortages... isn't that essentially the 'famine' that he mentioned in his post?

 

[Walter]

Drilling The Future

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, April 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Energy: America's energy crunch is sadly self-inflicted. While others around the world engage in a mad dash to find more oil reserves, the U.S. seems to think $111-a-barrel oil won't be affected by more supply.

Aline from the recent film "There Will Be Blood" reminds us of the spirit this country's original oil entrepreneurs once had. "There's a whole ocean of oil beneath our feet," bellows antihero Daniel Plainview. "No one can get at it except for me."
Such sentiment these days is in short supply. But not overseas. Take Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro. On Monday, it announced that its Carioca offshore oil field may hold up to 33 billion barrels — more than the estimated official reserves in all the U.S.
This follows Brazil's discovery last December of a huge new oil source, the Tupi field, also thought to hold billions of barrels. Haroldo Lima, head of Brazil's National Oil Agency, estimates that Carioca might be as much as five times the size of Tupi.
Why the spate of discoveries off Brazil? Simple: With oil topping $100 a barrel, it's now more economical to prospect for hard-to-get supplies, whether deep in the ocean or in remote regions of dry land. When prices soared, Brazil got busy.
This is happening around the world. As we reported in December, China last year made 10 major new energy discoveries in a bid to secure its energy future. India recently invited foreign companies to help it find more energy on its territory.
Europe continues to fully exploit its oil reserves in the North Sea, without worrying about hurdles such as the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases or concerns about damage to the ocean ecosystem. Yet "peak oil" advocates in the U.S. argue that we're already at the end of our large-scale recoverable reserves.
Conventional wisdom is that the U.S. has just 30 billion barrels of oil left, enough for just 10 years of pumping at current rates. Sounds pretty bleak, but that figure is ludicrously low. Just last week, a new report concluded that the Bakken oil basin, stretching from North Dakota and Montana into Canada, contains an estimated 4 billion-plus barrels of oil.
Colorado and Utah are estimated to contain as much as 1.2 trillion barrels of oil trapped in shale below ground. They're not counted as "recoverable" reserves because until recently they weren't economical. Today they are.
The 2006 discovery in the Gulf of Mexico by Chevron, Devon Energy and Norway's Statoil of an oil field containing as much as 15 billion barrels of crude is still another example.
Offshore U.S. sources hold as much as 10 billion barrels of untapped oil, while the 2,000 acres of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge have as much as 16 billion — enough to replace 30 years of Middle East imports.
Many estimate that just under 1 trillion barrels of oil remain to be pumped. But a U.S. Geological Survey four years ago put the amount worldwide at 3 trillion.
We need oil. It's the lifeblood of our economy. And fortunately we have lots of it. But because of Congress' unwillingness to go after it, we're leaving billions of barrels untapped, driving up prices and causing untold economic hardship. This madness must end.

 

[Lester]

When oil hits 150.00 or 200.00 bbl I imagine there will be plenty of oil- Saudi Arabia has plenty of old feilds that were capped just because it took more energy to get it out that it was worth. As long as the price stays up there will be oil, if it drops too low they won't make as much profit so they'll shut down the well.

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

I remember being told years ago as a joke, "That we'll start conserving oil when its all gone." End times are near.

Hey Lester, Saudi Arabia doesn't have more oil. They're pumping like the dickens. There ain't no silver bullet here. The world uses 3 billion barrels a month. Developing countries are villianized in our media, yet they have such huge political problems.

Oil companies love Canada, why? Because you think oil companies can make a 10% return in Iran, Russia or Mexico? But in Canada, that 10% is guaranteed.

We need massive renewable energy projects in the country. Save oil for plastic.

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

A slow burn, this is peak oil from the NYT.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/oil-numbers/

April 15, 2008, 9:02 pm
Oil numbers

By Paul Krugman


There are two basic facts that would seem to explain a lot about what’s happening to oil prices.
First, Gross World Product growth has accelerated — from 2.9 percent in the 90s to almost 5 percent in recent years, according to the IMF. All of this is because of growth in emerging economies, largely China.
Second, world oil production has stalled — after growing around 1.6% a year in the 90s, it’s been basically flat for the last three years.
So we’ve got rapidly growing demand due to industrialization in Asia colliding with stagnant supply, basically because oil is getting hard to find. (The demand shock is probably even bigger than the GDP number suggests, because China’s economy is highly energy-inefficient).
And the demand for oil is price-inelastic — that is, it takes big price increases to persuade people to use significantly less.
There’s probably more to the story, but that seems to be the basic thrust. And it seems to be a recipe for rising prices for a long time to come.
This is what peak oil is supposed to look like — not Oh My God We’ve Just Run Out Of Oil, but steady pressure on the economy and the way we live from rising energy prices and their consequences. And it doesn’t matter much whether we’re literally at the peak, or whether production can rise by a few million more barrels a day; unless there are big sources of oil out there, we’ll be feeling peakish for the foreseeable future.

 

[Albertabound]

I again ask. Why are we not driving 50+mile to the gallon vehicles? We can put landers on Mars, but in over 100 years, the auto industries can not create a fuel effecient automobile that gets over 30 miles to the gallon........give me a break.

Save oil for plastic.

And that's another thing. Almost everthing that oil is used for as a by product could have been made out of hemp, infact there are sooo many consumer products made today that could have been made out of hemp. If not for the propaganda created by the American government in the 30's http://www.thc-ministry.net/untoldstory/hemp_5.html many, many, many, products produced today using oil could have been produced using hemp. American farmers could be the princes of Saudi Arabia today.

 

[Lester]

Hey Lester, Saudi Arabia doesn't have more oil. They're pumping like the dickens. There ain't no silver bullet here. The world uses 3 billion barrels a month. Developing countries are villianized in our media, yet they have such huge political problems.

you are correct, they don't have more oil but as you deplete a field it costs more to pump it to the surface making it more expensive to produce- when the profit margins dip they shut the well down. when they rise it is then cost effective for that well to produce again.

 

[hermanntrude]

I again ask. Why are we not driving 50+mile to the gallon vehicles? We can put landers on Mars, but in over 100 years, the auto industries can not create a fuel effecient automobile that gets over 30 miles to the gallon........give me a break.

They can. it's called the smart car. Actually there are several cars which can beat the 50 mpg limit you set, but the smart car is the best example. It can reach 70mpg on the highway. the trouble is, people don't buy very many of them.

Don't blame the industry, blame the consumers.

 

[Albertabound]

They can. it's called the smart car. Actually there are several cars which can beat the 50 mpg limit you set, but the smart car is the best example. It can reach 70mpg on the highway. the trouble is, people don't buy very many of them.

Don't blame the industry, blame the consumers.

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.

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

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.