A friend of mine who is involved in the oil industry recently pointed out something I consider important in understanding the future of oil. He said that we are running out of cheap oil rather than running out of oil. There is still a lot of oil out there, but it's harder and more expensive to get at than the oil we've extracted so far. That means that while oil prices will undoubtedly bounce around, in the long term they are going to trend up. That's pretty much inevitable barring some kind of breakthrough in extraction technology, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing. High and unstable oil prices may help wean us off of oil gradually, so that the transition doesn't leave large parts of industrial society starving in the dark.
First, we are running out of cheap oil. We used the cheap oil that was easy to get to first. That only makes sense. Now we're increasingly using the oil that it didn't make sense to use when cheaper sources were available. For example, it didn't make sense to extract oil from the tar sands up in ALberta until the price of a barrel of oil got to around twenty dollars per barrel. Now it makes sense to extract that oil, and oil companies are doing so in a big way.
High oil prices have an odd impact on demand for oil. Remember the bit about supply and demand you learned back in school? According to that, if prices rise, supply goes up and demand falls. Well, it sort of works that way with oil, but with some complications. In the short term, high oil prices don't have much impact on demand or supply. Think about how you would react if gas prices went up to $5 per gallon. Well, if you are anything like me you would drive as little as you could, but you've got to get to work, and you have to get groceries. There is a limit to what you can do to reduce your demand in the short term. The same is true with supply of oil. It takes years and billions of dollars to expand supply. Getting that oil out of the Alberta tar sands takes a lot of investment before the first barrel of oil flows.
So, is this supply and demand thing a bunch of baloney when it comes to oil? No, not in the long term. High prices have a small immediate impact on demand, but if they stay high long enough they have much larger long-term impacts. If prices go high, people initially drive less and fly less. If those prices stay high long enough, people buy more fuel-efficient cars. If average miles per gallon goes from 20 to 35, that has a huge impact on demand for oil. In the even longer term, with higher prices eventually people find that high commuting costs more than offset lower housing costs in the suburbs. Urban sprawl slows down and reverses if prices stay high long enough. Industrial processes get reworked to use less energy. New houses get a lot more insulation. Prices aren't high enough yet to trigger major overhauls in energy efficiency, but they'll probably get there.
Oil prices do respond to supply and demand, but they take a while to do it. If oil prices stay high long enough, people make capital investments to off-set those costs: buying a smaller car, buying a smaller and better insulated house closer to work. Companies and governments also invest in increased supply—reopening wells that weren’t worth operating at the lower costs, investing in tar sands, building solar cell manufacturing plants. All of that means that if oil prices stay high long enough that people decide the higher prices are here stay, demand goes lower and supply of alternatives goes higher.
Normally, high oil prices would be self-correcting, and oil prices would eventually drop below where they would have been without the price spike. That's what happened in the early 80's. Oil prices peaked at $35 a barrel in 1981 and then dropped below $10 in 1986 before starting back up. As the example of the early 80's shows, prices fall to a point lower than they would have been without the price spike. Not only that, but they stay depressed relative to what they would have been without the price spike for ten to twenty years or longer. Once people have invested in a fuel-efficient car or house, they don’t throw those things away if energy prices go down. They don’t usually tear out added insulation.
If a company has already invested in oil wells or alternate energy sources they don’t necessarily shut those investments down if oil prices go down to the point where they aren’t going to get all of their investment back. The prices have to go down to where they are not getting any of their investment back and probably down to where they are actually losing money on day-to-day operations.
In the long-term, demand for oil should fall and so should prices. Nothing to worry about in the long term, right? Normally that would be true, but this time it may not be. China and India are industrializing quickly, and unfortunately their growing middle classes seem to equate wealth with the very inefficient Western style of using energy. In order for overall demand to shrink, demand in already developed countries would have to more than offset the increased demand in China and India. If two billion Chinese and Indians start to use natural resources, including oil at the rate the US, Japan, and Western Europe use it, then it gets very difficult to see supply and demand coming into balance without some wrenching changes.
Fortunately, we do have some options that may help out. We are nowhere close to as efficient in using oil as we will be forced to be if oil prices go high enough. We tightened up in the 70s and early 80s, but then got sloppy again when oil prices collapsed. Just buying smaller, more fuel efficient cars would help a lot. As hybrids get less expensive they'll help too. A new generation of 'plug-in hybrids may have even more impact. The idea is that you charge up a battery overnight and run exclusively on battery power for the first 30 miles or so before you have to start using gas. Since most people commute less than 30 miles to work, that sort of thing could have a huge impact on oil consumption if it can be done inexpensively enough. The economics of hybrids will undoubtedly look a whole lot better if gas is sitting at five dollars per gallon, and seem likely to stay there.
Of course the electricity for plug-in hybrids has to be generated somewhere, but our sources can be much more flexible there. Interest in nuclear power seems to be increasing again. Solar cells are finally starting to get close to competitive economically.
What's the bottom line on all of this? Oil prices will probably trend up in spite of decreased demand from the US and Western Europe, but in the long run that will help us make a much needed transition, first to more efficient use of energy, and then to newer, more sustainable sources of energy.
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Comments: 64
It is turue that interest in nuclear energy has increased in the last few years.
That has caused the commodity price of uranium to double in less than a year.
Energy, no matter where we get it, will get more expensive.
We also have biodiesel options for cars and solar for houses to consider. Plus some great strides in Europe with wind.
More expensive? Not necessarily. We will have to use more than one source to cover the loss of oil, but it dosn't mean it will be more expensive. The price of solar panels (based on supply and demand) will only come down when it starts to catch on here, and the same goes for soy-based fuels and other biodiesels. Especially if you use used veggie oil from restaurants - its free!
With Chavez nationalizing oil things could get interesting with gas prices.
There is a silicon wafer shortage, which is causing the price if solar panels to go up.
In some areas you can still get used vegetable oil for free from restaurants, but that won't last if there is any consistent demand for it.
If we covered every tillable acre with crops we cannot grow our way out of our energy problems.
I'm not saying that these alternatives are a bad idea, I'm just saying that increased demand is already driving up cost in every facet of energy generation.
My point is that oil is virtually free. Until relatively recently it was under $10 a barrel ... through much of the 60s and 70s about half that.
What has made oil prices go up is politics, pure and simple.
One thing I know is that we are not running out of oil, or even cheap oil. The price is going up because of hysteria like this that the oil industry is pushing ... the end of oil, there is a whole book propaganda industry around this.
If we were really running out of oil why is it so critical for the secret of oil reserves to be kept secret. So secret in fact that in places like the Middle East it is a capital offense to reveal estimates of oil reserves ... the only reason that would be is because they are all trying to fool us, plain and simple, period.
Global Warming is another one, a hysteria. First, at the level of response that they are telling us most scientists say it will be a hundred years before we even stop the INCREASE in CO2 ... let alone we are not even talking about the other elements of Global Climate change.
The thing that is bad about Global Warming in the long term is that we have manhandled nature and this planet so badly that it may not recover. Nature is so brittle now, there is no place for plants and animals to go when climate changes,
nor time for them to adapt. In the million year grid that the Earth exists in, it doesn't care ... even if we kill everything and ourselves off something will survive and evolve again ... the crime we are committing is against ourselves and life that is in our hands.
Why do we continue to dump waste into the land, air and water and think that it is OK. How long do we pave over wildlands so people can have single family dwellings and malls and industrial parks until there is nothing left? We are cutting the genetic diversity of even our critical foodstuffs so much and even replacing them with GMOs that who knows what they will do in the long run.
I am tired of Americans and the world being manipulated into spending money and time on things that make lots of money for groups that run the world incompetantly.
NO ... oil is not becoming scarce, and neither is energy. All industrial processes that exist are becoming less expensive, that is the nature of industry. Oil is now found by satellite and computers instead of going around with a drill poking holes. It is refined at scales that boggle the mind and that are cheaper than they have ever been. It is used more efficiently too.
OK ... have I convinced you that I know what I'm talking about or wanna argue about it? ;-)
And the author pointed out new developments that can skirt the silicon (hopefully), so disagree with my hopes is baseless.
Last I checked EVERY McDonalds, Chinese restaurant, etc... in my area will give veggie oil away, very few people actual take advantage of this right now. They have to pay to dispose of it otherwise. And to recycle that would cost very little once there was demand for it. (and how much land does recycled veggies use?).
Can rich liberals pay for indulgences?
And this is why now is the time. A molecule of CO2 exists in the troposphere for 100 years. That's why the lag time is so slow. It's no hysteria.
realclimate.org
Don't think I know what I'm talking about? Try me. Because I've done my homework on the subject. My novel here is about it. I'm afraid you have nuggets of truth buried in a conspiracy theory couple with denial, although not of everything.
You know, I would not be surprised if the weight gain and energy increase from pushing around all of the fat ass fast food eater would actually lose us energy in the balance of using recycled cooking oil in cars.
Does anyone have any sense anymore or are we just grasping at any fantasy and saying yes yes yes to anything with glazed over smiles? Sheesh!
Let's talk. First, there is now and always was a finite amount of crude oil. We are getting somewhere near where we will have used half of the crude oil that existed in the globe. Are we together so far?
There is frozen hydrocarbons under the sea in vast amounts. Venezuela says it has huge reserves of oil, and most other countries are not talking about it. Where are the numbers people are using for these calculations ... they are made up. There is a lot of oil that has not been found, and when the price rises .... NATURALLY DUE TO SCARCITY ... investors will pay the extra to get that hard to get oil ... but they are not ... know why ... because the oil supply is artificially suppressed by OPEC to screw the west for the most amount of money so they use it to spread militant Islam.
First, I want to say that just becuase I am questioning global warming does not mean I do not think we should clean up our act .. but our act is so monummentally toxic to this planet that talking about one aspect of it in CO2 and global warming is even counter productive in my eyes. Population is the biggest problem.
So ... ?
Personally when I was a kid I have always believed that we have no right to carry out experiments on the planet and ourselves where we make and put things into the environment and have no idea what they are doing ... and in many case we know damn well what they are doing ... the are putting nature in irreversible decline for the profit of a few who say they are working for the benefit of the many to keep their lights on or whatever.
My main beef with this whole effort is that they are propagandizing the stupid to agree with them through fear ... the only think that will save us and our planet is to actually teach people through science .. but we do not do that because our whole damned society is built on taking advantage of stupid people ... making them smoke, making them eat stuff and buy stuff that they do not need and that is bad for them. If we cannot stop that, Global Warming is just another scam.
Okay, one step at a time. We agree that there is a finite amount of oil. There have been a series of calculations for about five decades now, by many different people, estimating the total amount of oil in the earth. One of the earliest of these was King Hubbard. Are you familiar with his work?
First I question the Peak oil mania. If you want to enlist the globe in a whole worldwide movement that will change everyone's lives ... for the better in my regard, then get the oil companies to release their real reserve data ... or fund real studies of how much oil there is that are independent of the oil industry lackeys.
And Tyler ... I know there is a lot of oil that has not been found because if you pay attention to the news every few months there is a article about large reserved being found.
What I am saying is that the reason oil is so expensive is a geopolitical scam by the oil producing countries ... as well as our own upper crust investment and finance communities that have been sucking in the money from these oil producing countries about as fast as they can scam it from our pockets.
They have spent billions plating everything in the arab palaces with gold, buying expensive cars, gambling and prostitution, liquor, slaves, terrorism ... one of the tenets of economics is that money is supposed to breed deveelopment. What we have now is just corruption ... which is the biggest reason we have all this pollution anyway.
Getting back to your point ... there is a lot of oil, but what you and others are really arguing with nothing but speculation to back you up is that we are in a certain spot on this Hubbard curve thing .. that the sky is about to fall - specifically due to the amount of carbon in the air.
There are other greenhouse gases, and there are other scientific reasons for why the planet might be warming ... here is one that has been proven scientifically:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece
Check it out.
I think you are forgeting that the U.S. is no longer the only energy hungry nation, and we now must compete with other buyers for world oil supplies.
It is not some scam or conspiracy, it is simple supply and demand. Limited supply and growing demand will raise the value of any commodity, from airline seats to corn to oil.
Whoa, slow down. You jumped me when I went from finite oil to we will have used half at some time in the not too distant future. So let's take it one step at a time, huh? So you are familiar with Hubbard? You do know how his estimates, and by the way lots of others that followed him, were made? If you do, then you know where we stand total consumption wise vis a vis the finite amount of oil that exists, huh? Let's just stay away from terms like peak oil, cause that term is too emotional to help a rational discussion.
If the market handles everything what are the major auto companies doing in a complete shock that oil is running out. They have had 30-40 years now to engineer better cars and American cars are still crap and these companies are going out of business or in deep doodoo.
There is not limited supply of oil .... or when there is it is simply because the oil companies take offline a refinery, of the Ahmadinajad makes another saber rattling statement about nuclear weapons and blowing Israel off the map.
I can guarantee you if the western world had the guts to go in and put these arabs in their antiquated place and pump the oil to everyone - including china and russia that there would be plenty of oil ... but they cannot resist the huge windflalls they make in a crisis ... and armageddon is the best crisis of all.
Putting energy production in private hands has f*cked America more than about any other thing. We are over the barrel and to avoid taking the blame for it government and industry is pushing globla warming as the big evil.
Why do the arab get to hold the world for ransom ... this would have never happened if there were not billions of dollars going to a very rich minority in countries all over the world that see to it that we all get fantasy storise like
this told to us then it suits them.
Look into your supply and demand theory ... the supply is not ow because there is not oil ... there is plenty of oil ... just like the did to california when there was plenty or electriticy, we are being extorted from because of fake shortage.
You don't "Know" anything, any more than me or even oil exec's about future oil that has yet been found.
Regardless of the global warming, there is still pollution and allergens etc.. that can be reduced because of switching. What are people (not saying you) so concerned about holding on to their toys and they will fight it no matter what?
> Hume, read it. Just because we have evidence that we
> found (past tense) oil, doesn't mean it continues forever.
Oh please ... I am not arguing that .. the end of oil people
are arguing the opposite ... while at the same time making
lots of money ... that doesn't raise and suspicions for you?
What do you suppose the reason is that many different companies have not jumped in and made money off this huge opportunity?
I think it is because anyone willing to risk their own money and not just puff out hot air believes that oil prices could drop down in a nanosecond and drive them out of business if they needed to - precisely because there is lots and lots of oil.
But don't you think the oil companies would have just as much interest in covering up the oil if there was very little left? If we "knew" there was very little left we would be in a panic to switch, and they wouldn't make the money on the remaining oil. Isn't that just as plausable as your theory?
Venezuela says it alone has about 200 years of world demand and projected usage. There is lots of oil and yes some of it is cheaper to get than others.
That would sort out in the market if this was a market driven thing .... this
is like when you dicker for a car and the salesman goes back to the manager's
office to figure out how they are going to screw you for the most amount of money.
What would work best for them is to convince us there is no alternative ready for decades so keep using oil, so they can drain every ounce before having to swich.
You haven't answered my inquiry about Hubbard and other estimates. Total recoverable oil production in the entire world has been estimated between 2,300 billion and 3,900 billion barrels, by governments, scientists, oil companies, the whole schlemiel. Are you in agreement or disagreement with that range?
Mr. Abdallah S. Jum'ah, President & Chief Executive Officer of
Saudi Aramco, address to OPEC, Vienna, Austria, Sept. 13,
2006 says we have probably used 18% of the current amount
of existing oil.
I do not believe that ... but you want numbers ... you have people
all over the world pulling them out of their asses, and most of them
It doesn't matter what I think about how much oil there is, there
is no pending crisis in supply now, it is a political sky is falling
trick. I believe that we are possibly as much as 150 years
away from any supply crisis.
My response to that fact is not that we do nothing, we are
just talking about how much oil there is.
>> there is no alternative ready for decades so keep
>> using oil, so they can drain every ounce before
>> having to swich.
That isn't going to happen, but it is close to what is
and has been going on. The real cost of a barrel of
oil is less now that it ever has been .... and in the
70s it was $3-4 a barrel ... imagine the profit?
Can you imagine that? Can you think about what that
amount of money hidden from most of the world has been
doing in the background for 40 years?
Wonder why we have terrorism of the Islamic family
states are starting to get belligerent?
Everytime the price of oil goes up, everything else
does too, and when people start working on
alternatives, the price goes back down ... this
is exactly what the US government broke up
Standard Oil for doing in the early 1900s.
You clearly have an axe to grind and are not interested in any facts that differ from the impressions you carry. What were the Aramco guys numbers? If I understood you correctly, that guy said we have used 18% of the oil in the world. Well maybe that is the same as almost 50% of the RECOVERABLE OIL in the world, huh????? Since recovery rates are a lot less than 100%, huh??? But I guess you KNOW all this because you are an expert, huh?
I am going on a holiday now, but leave you with this thought---we still have quite a bit of oil left, more than half of what we have already used, can still be recovered. The PROBLEM is that the ENERGY required to recover a barrel of oil has been steadily increasing since the first barrels were produced. We used to get about 4 barrels for every one that went into obtaining them. Now we are down to about 2, or less, and every barrel we recover from this point forward will cost more energy. It is basically simple energy economics that we will not put more energy into obtaining a barrel of oil than we wil get back, huh? That is what is driving the cost up, not some guy, in some dark room, plotting conspiracy theories! Huh? You shouldn't pretend you KNOW something when you only have a group of unbaked theories.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/13/channel-4s-problem-with-science
I love when a woman has a little of babies, like 6, and people come out of the woodwork to give em a house, college education, etc. What crap. Every single one of them will want a house and pampers for their kids, drive cars .......
Now the average person in the US uses 8 times the natural resources that a person living in india does. So we export capitalistic consumerism to them and China... now you have a bigger problem. Humans just kinda piss me off.
Dale is technically correct in saying that running out of oil is not the problem but running out of cheap oil is. Oil is a finite resource, because nature no longer makes it. But a couple of things disturb me. One is that the rest of the human race is catching up with the wasteful habits of the United States, and as a result the demand for oil is going up sharply at a time that the discovery of new economically viable fields is slowing. That is a recipe for trouble- as in possible price spikes that could rock the world economy.
The second bit is that climatologists largely agree that burning oil and especially coal is resulting in billions of tons of carbon emissions entering the atmosphere and warming through the greenhouse effect. We can argue about climate change, and we obviously do, but scientists do not argue nearly as much as we do. They are very concerned about the long term future of the human race.
Does it have to do with the number of humans currently living? Sure it does. A million humans driving Hummers would be no big deal. But there are 6.5 billion humans now living, and hundreds of millions of them are driving something, and many other hundreds of millions want to drive something and will as soon as they have a down payment in hand.
As to alternative energy such as biofuels, solar cells, hydrogen cars, wind turbines, hybrids, ethanol, we could talk for weeks about any one of those. The problem is that even though you hear lots of hype on these things, not one of them is the prevailing energy source of their chosen area, be it transportation, home heating, commercial electricity generation, whatever. Most of them are short term more expensive, though they may wel be cheaper long term especially when you factor in the dreadful future we may face in a planet without winters.
I still feel that this is a slow-motion train wreck. That's the worst kind really. In a fast motion train wreck, either you jump out of your car in time or you die fast, either way it's relatively painless. In a slow motion train wreck, it's so beautifully nightmarish in a twisted Tarantino sort of way that you probably will not even try to move until the onrushing hunks of flaming metal take you out.
"what I am saying is that we simply do not know what the CO2 is doing, and in what proportion compared to other things."
And as scientist myself, I'm telling you we do indeed know these things. Don't confuse your lack of knowledge as the truth. It doesn't hold up.
Here's your lesson of the day. We know the CO2 forcing the warming in the troposphere is the cause of the current warming and not the Sun, because the stratosphere is cooling. In a top down scenario that wouldn't be possible. I'm sure you'll move on to some other nonsensical fallacy. Let's see?
That is not a productive way or looking at it. People want to have comfortable
lives. Americans would not be so wasteful if we had sensible government or real free-enterprise. I would be buying and electric car today if there was one out there. Despite an attempt by California to legislate cleaner cars, the auto industry spend billions fighting that while apparently doing nothing to build better cars.
Many things have been clear for a long time now, and the masters of American industry continue to thumb their noses at market forces and ignore the facts continuing to build products no one wants. Cars are an example, housing and cities are another. Rather than invest in making a better mousetrap American industry would rather litigate the continutation of the status quo.
Some have tried to influence this for the better. See the movie "Who Killed The Electric Car" for a great story on how our system does not work.
Americans and Europeans have said over and over they do not want hormones in their food or genetically modified foodstuffs ... yet the vision of the rich elite and the government is that we are going to have it shoved down our throats is they literally have to shove it down out throats.
The people with all the money keep going around the world and making life miserable for most of the people. There is no reason energy should cost so much,other than we need it, and we can afford it, and the producers want as much money as possible for it.
I repeat it does not cost that much to find, drill, refine and transport, there is the most efficient network that ever existed in place for that ... the real costs for a gallon of gas have got to be under $5 a barrel I would bet ... how do you like being ripped off and stolen from based on this hype about Global Warming, Dwindling Supply, and Nuclear Armageddon? I sure don't.
You are not an authority on Global Warming, I can tell that because scientists who know about these things never talk with the certainty you are ranting with. They are full of qualifications and analogies, but no one knows the truth, because as many have said, we are "experiementing" on a grand scale with our planet.
By the way where did you get that the Sun was the cause of global warming?
Who said that?
It is simply what the vast majority of climatoligists have decided based on their research.
>> a barrel of oil has been steadily increasing since the
>> first barrels were produced.
So then George, you are saying that the cost of oil, a gallon
of gas in my car costs more because it takes more energy to
get it out of the ground ... NOW!
You are talking out your ear dude ... oil is coming from the same
sources that it has always come from, and the technology to get
it out is getting better and going down in price. What we pay for
oil has very little to do with the cost of the oil, refining or transport,
it is taxes, and politics and fear. Factor in the taxes you pay to
support a monster military that we hardly even use effectively
and it even makes the cost of the gas itself almost trivial.
The biggest problem we have on the planet is that most if not all people believe we can continue to do what we are doing and that we will pay no price, the Earth will bear it. I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting that we have huge problems and like a noose around around our collective necks something will loose the trap door one of these days and we will be swingin' like Saddam a while back.
Thinking that we are solving the problem by spending all the resource of the politicians, litigators, scientists and engineers and lots of everyone's money is in my opinion not going to help us one bit. Not one bit.
Climatologists have never had such huge popularity, just life environmentalists a while back ... has anything changed once they start getting some money they become part of the status quo like everyone else.
As far as oil goes, the supply is finite, emissions from oil are pollutant, oil companies do swindle us, therefore we should develop alternate non-polutant sources of energy for manufacturing of electricity and transportation. But I point out that bio-fuels use both oil and water in their making, and we also have a finite supply of water. It can get scarce enough to kill us. Lack of water and the struggle to get it is killing people in the Sahara area right now. Whatever is causing the climate to change, this year we have an alarming decrease in snow pack, and the ice in both the north and south poles is melting rapidly which affects the salinity of the seas which has other effects like the power of the Gulf Stream, which causes more climate change in Europe. The facts are that the planet has been heating up the last few years so that diseases, fungi, germs, birds and animals are moving to where they have not existed before, and that will make a difference in our lives, and the lives of wild animals. We can die of strange diseases that we have built up no immunity for. There are a lot of very dangerous factors in play right now. The greed of oil companies just compounds them.
Everyone else is invited to join in the discussion as well.
>> The facts are that the planet has been heating up the
>> last few years so that diseases, fungi, germs, birds and
>> animals are moving to where they have not existed before,
This is the second biggest environmental problem, animals and plants
cannot migrate anymore. Nature is very "brittle" at this point. The
migrations and interactions that used to be taken for granted are
gone. When your habitat changes farther north or south, the nature
preserves do not move with it. If the climate does change and we
continue to strangle nature with our grid of concrete and fences
and huge tracts of farms .. nature will just disappear.
The current population growth is overwhelmingly from Africa, the Middle East, and some of the less developed countries in Asia. Latin America is still growing, but birth rates there are falling to a more reasonable level. Birth rates generally fall off a cliff when women gain access to birth control mechanisms and when they approach economic and political equality.
Probably the single most important factor in bringing down population growth would be to somehow bring some of the least secular Arab countries out of the Middle Ages in terms of their attitudes to and treatment of women. That's tough when those attitudes are so intertwined with some interpretations of their religion.
(2) On the size of the current oil reserves: I agree with Bruce K that we don't really know what the size of the current reserves are. However, I disagree with him on the causes and implications of that lack of knowledge. The numbers we are getting out of OPEC countries are almost certainly too high rather than too low. OPEC production quotas are set based on proven reserves (unaudited). That means that when prices fall, as they did in the 80's, countries with larger reserves had to cut back production less as OPEC tried to support or raise the price. That in turn meant that every OPEC country had an incentive to exaggerate the size of their proven reserves, and most of them almost certainly did.
(3) On electric cars: I would love to see a practical and economical electric car, but I suspect that pure electrics are still a ways off for most of us. Last time I looked at it seriously, there were several problems with electrics. First, while range is improving, it still isn't enough for really long trips in the several hundred mile range. Second, batteries go bad and have to be replaced long before the hundred thousand miles that we've come to expect from cars, and replacing them is a multi-thousand dollar proposition. Third, battery performance drops dramatically in cold weather. If you've ever tried to start a car in 20 below zero weather you've seen that in action. A cold battery just doesn't have the power of a warm one. Fourth, most auto repair shops don't have the training or equipment to fix an electric car if something goes wrong with it. That's kind of a chicken and egg situation because they won't get the equipment and training until there is a population of electric cars out there, but the fact that you're sort of on your own on repairs means that electric cars are a less attractive option.
I get the impression that some of those problems are on their way to being solved. For example, a couple of companies have recently come out with much-improved batteries aimed at the electric car market, and it sounds as though GM is finally getting serious about plug-in hybrids.
(4) I noticed a couple of very perceptive comments on how hard climate change will hit animals that are currently restricted to nature reserves. Will nature disappear with climate change? No, but it will become more weedy. Believe me, if you leave a piece of land untouched for even a couple of years the weedy part of nature will take it back. One of my aunt's farms was tied up in a lawsuit for a couple of years, and when she was able to get access to it again the place was overgrown with scrub trees, many of them roof-high or higher, and chest-high fields of thistles.
Now if you left that place alone long enough it would go back to a less weedy nature, but it might take close to a hundred years.
In any case, an interesting bunch of comments.
Thanks
Dale C.
"So then George, you are saying that the cost of oil, a gallon
of gas in my car costs more because it takes more energy to
get it out of the ground ... NOW!
You are talking out your ear dude ... oil is coming from the same
sources that it has always come from, and the technology to get
it out is getting better and going down in price. What we pay for
oil has very little to do with the cost of the oil, refining or transport,
it is taxes, and politics and fear. Factor in the taxes you pay to
support a monster military that we hardly even use effectively
and it even makes the cost of the gas itself almost trivial. "
Let's try this very slowly, since you appear to have a lot of incorrect ideas you think are facts....
First, when oil was first discovered and produced in PA how hard was it to get out of the ground and to the market? The stuff was almost on the ground and the market was, well, right around the corner, in the US. So you could get lots of oil out of the ground and to the market without spending very much energy to accomplish this. Right? With me so far? Do you disagree with this?
Okay, now today, oil is harder to get out of the ground, on average. Let's take a few examples. You have to go to the Alaska North Slope, you have to build a long pipleline from the producing area to Valdez, you have to transport from Valdez to refineries 1000's of miles away. Similarly in the North Sea. Similarly in Louisiana offshore, you have to drill lots of deep wells to get the oil. And in all of these cases you don't get as much oil as you used to get relatively easily, in PA, in TX, and yes in the Middle East. And, a good deal of the oil today needs more refining than it did years ago. Why? Contaminants such as sulfur and metals need to be removed. Product specifications have increased dramatically. Remember we used to have lead in gasoline. Not any more. So we need more / better refining to achieve less gasoline from the same bbl of crude. Ditto for clean diesel fuel. Ditto for clean fuels for stationary combusion, like power plants. Then on transport to markets, the population of the world has continued to sprawl, so we need to move the products much farther from the sources (Alaska, PNG, Africa, ME, North Sea) to the markets than we used to. You might want to take a look at the numbers of ships, trucks, peipelines involved in moving products today vs the numbers from say 50 years ago, and see for yourself? Okay so far?
Further, for example, in 1982, oil production had declined from about 200 barrels per foot drilled to 8 barrels per foot drilled. Deeper wells fewer barrels. Still with me????
I direct you to the EIA website, along with the MKingHubbert website, among many others, for further information.
Bottom line--we are putting more energy to recover a barrel of oil and get it to you the final consumer than we did when oil was first produced in NW PA more than 100 years ago. And in the future, the energy input to energy output ratio will only get worse.
So to make it cheaper, will require that the energy input cost less than the cost of oil, and so far we haven't discovered this miracle source of energy!
It's really not that hard, if you just take a minute and think, instead of simply reacting!
Happy now?
To keep it relatively easy for you, here is a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain
I had a close relative that was an oil industry executive and I have heard all of this propaganda before and am very used to the whole state of mind of energy companies not to mention ARAMCO, etc.
Your link about net energy gain also says nothing substantive about oil, it is only a measure of energy "profit" so to speak ... pretty obvious for you think you are keeping it easy for me ... so I assume you are just trying deliberately to be insulting because your cherished ideas have been challenged and are not as rock solid as you thought.
Dale,
The one thing that almost everyone who comments on Arab oil reserves says unanomously is that they are underreported. This comes from the Arabs trying to find multiple reasons to justify limiting production and raising prices ... after all it is the only think they say they have. If it is in short supply they can charge more for it and have excused to lower production. I posted a link above somewhere above, even ARAMCO's CEO says this.
I also think you will find when electric cars hit the market they will take off very fast. From the limited experience that owners have had, they never beak down, there are very few battery problems, batteries are getting better and recharge time at 220V can be as little as 20 minutes for certain technologies. The gas hybrid is a good idea ... but I would forgo the benefit of a gas engine to generate electricity when the batteries dischanrge to get rid of the problems of the internal combustion engine ... maintenance and repair as well as pollution. The super-capacitor is another fact charging way to store electricity that will be here soon.
I think if you read something like Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs And Steel" and hear what he says about the importance of LATITUDE, you can realize what when a climate changes say for polar bears, they have no where to go, or where
they do go will conflict with man. This will throw most systems into destruction ... what we will have left will be some hardy plants, and small animals ... forests are the same. If cloud cover changes the coniferous trees like redwoods and sequioas along the california coast will dry up and die. Nature itself will always come back ... but we will have lost billions of years of evopulations diverse expressions and if we continue to destroy habitat it will just continue to decline until there are only a few small areas .... one can hardly call that wild.
To address all of these problems to me means understanding that overpopulation is the main problem. Because we think we are surviving at current rates does not mean it is sustainable in reality. Fisheries are declining, read anywhere about how many species of fish that used to be hauled in by tons are now gone. The fish left are smaller, the industry makes up for that by imporiving technology. Then we have fish farming which is being affected by toxic runoff from the land.
The way to solve these problems really is to agree globally on population reductions goals ... but as with climate change we are not likely to see this, or agree on it, and so the crisis will be solved with wars and famines.
And one more thing George ... statistics are deceiving. I was a IT metrics analyst at my last contract and it is really hard to make truth out of statistics, much easier to gnerate nice fictions for investors and managers, in fact they demand it. Barrels per foot could mean anything as in there are less feet drilled because technology has helped streamline the oil exporation effort. There are virtually no dry holes anymore. And many undersea locations are becoming technically feasible now as well that were unthought of before.
they do go will conflict with man. This will throw most systems into destruction ... what we will have left will be some hardy plants, and small animals ... forests are the same. If cloud cover changes the coniferous trees like redwoods and sequioas along the california coast will dry up and die. Nature itself will always come back ... but we will have lost billions of years of evopulations diverse expressions and if we continue to destroy habitat it will just continue to decline until there are only a few small areas .... one can hardly call that wild."
Well I can agree with this.
But not this: who do you think you are Dr. Science or something. [?]
Well I'm a biological scientist but not a Ph.d and my entry here in the contest, Warm Front is about global warming. Burning more oil at any price is a fool's errand.
"You are not an authority on Global Warming, I can tell that because scientists who know about these things never talk with the certainty you are ranting with."
Oh really? Ultimate certainty and false doubt are two different things.
I know more than you and any ten others you can bring. My sources know as much as can be known and are working on more. Deniers are hopelessly misinformed
realclimate.org Talk to them.
I'm an endangered fish biologist. Salmonids mostly, and amphibians. Worked on it for 20 years. Grim stuff really. Bad land use: clearcut logging; cattle grazing welfare; mining polution, the whole deal. Climate change just makes it worse. It's real. And happening now.
realclimate.org Cheap oil isn't the problem. Oil is. Cheap will never happen again. In the long run that's the good news.
The real argument here is our (global human concensus) whole vapidity on the question of why we create, eat, use and discard all these toxic molecules into our environment and often right into ourselves over and over when we can see what some of the negative results are.
You also seem to have forgotten that "Doctor" Science knows more than you do, because he has a "Master's" degree ... in SCIENCE!
You seem to read my posts but your scientific arrogance does not let you get that I am not DENYING that we have a problem with carbon dioxide, or climate change, I am denying what is said to be a concensus on 90% of scientists on this issue. It is like saying 90% of people believe in God, and then comparing the descriptions of the God's they believe in and finding them totally different. Any sensible responsible person who is educated given the choice of saying yes or no to Global Warming is going to say yes, because something needs to be done about pollution ... it is like voting for a Democrat or Republican, as voters we can just choose the big picture not the details.
There was an interesting conversation, actually a debate on this on NPR the other day, with Michael Crichton for one, and some others. The link is here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9082151
It is very interesting to listen to, because ultimately this is not a scientific debate, it is a political one driven by what scientists can convince the people of. Judging by the current state of the Christians verus the scientists on evolution I am not too optimistic, so my POV is that scientists choose their words very carefully ... which probably accounts for some of my shortness with you and your rhetoric.
You could be 100% right, but how is anyone supposed to know that? I heard scientists talking about many things with the same ferver, certainty and arrogance, cold fusion for one ... and they have been dead wrong.
There are multi-levels to this. Facts and science. Politics. Economics, and human psychology. My own choice would be to educate people on what is taking place in technology ... where we now stand, and any falter or mistake on that affects people's views on science very badly. Why do you suppose people are so quick to trust Christian ministers before they will listen to scientists? Interesting question. You guys who brought us all the nuclear era, among other things are not seen as the most honest brokers of information, are seen as being able to lie and manipulate the facts to serve whatever ends you want.
If you get a chance you might listen to the NPR debate, it is pretty good really. And I really dislike Micharl Crichton by the way who is very much against Global Warming.
The motion was: Global Warming Is NOT a Crisis
For:
Michael Crichton
Richard S. Lindzen
Philip Stott
Against:
Brenda Ekwurzel
Gavin Schmidt
Richard C.J. Somerville
In the beginning of this particular conversation you posted:
"NO ... oil is not becoming scarce, and neither is energy. All industrial processes that exist are becoming less expensive, that is the nature of industry. Oil is now found by satellite and computers instead of going around with a drill poking holes. It is refined at scales that boggle the mind and that are cheaper than they have ever been. It is used more efficiently too.
OK ... have I convinced you that I know what I'm talking about or wanna argue about it? ;-) "
It appeared to me you made two fundamental assertions, (1) oil wasn't becoming scarce and (2) you knew what you were talking about!
So I said yes, I would like to talk about it.
And after I responded, you came back with "George ... and how do you know this? I'll agree that there is finite oil, do not take leaps of faith. I just love how you go from there is a finite amount of oil - to trust me we have used half of it?"
Then I said ok let's go one step at a time, and began to develop how much oil actually existed, how much was recoverable and about where we were in terms of having consumed the amount that was recoverable. To which you responded:
">> The PROBLEM is that the ENERGY required to recover
>> a barrel of oil has been steadily increasing since the
>> first barrels were produced.
So then George, you are saying that the cost of oil, a gallon
of gas in my car costs more because it takes more energy to
get it out of the ground ... NOW!
You are talking out your ear dude ... oil is coming from the same
sources that it has always come from, and the technology to get
it out is getting better and going down in price. What we pay for
oil has very little to do with the cost of the oil, refining or transport,
it is taxes, and politics and fear. Factor in the taxes you pay to
support a monster military that we hardly even use effectively
and it even makes the cost of the gas itself almost trivial. "
You moved the conversation from the amount of oil that exists to the cost of oil, or at least tried to. I tried to bring it back to the original conversation, ie how much oil existed and how much we might still have, and how much we might be able to afford to get out of the ground. In the end I proved that it is taking more and more energy to get the oil out of the ground than it did say 100 years ago. I gave simple examples to show that. It is a demonstrable fact, not conjecture, not falsehoods put up by oil co's or ME sheikhs. Reserves discovered and produced now are smaller, deeper, harder to get to than they were when Col Drake and later the ME oil fields were discovered. Like any natural resource, you tend to get the easy stuff first, and then have to work continuously harder to get each incremental remaining portion.
Then you last said:
"George, give it a rest, we disagree. I think I'm right, but you are happy paying the extra money, so cheer it on bro. You are so wrong on some things I have to impeach your whole POV. We put lead in gas because it helped the gas burn better and reduce knocking, premature detonation, not as you say because it was an impurity and we had to spend money to remove it.
I had a close relative that was an oil industry executive and I have heard all of this propaganda before and am very used to the whole state of mind of energy companies not to mention ARAMCO, etc.
Your link about net energy gain also says nothing substantive about oil, it is only a measure of energy "profit" so to speak ... pretty obvious for you think you are keeping it easy for me ... so I assume you are just trying deliberately to be insulting because your cherished ideas have been challenged and are not as rock solid as you thought."
And now, once again, you confuse the impurities statement I made about crude oil with the lead in gasoline comment. I'm not sure if you did this purposely, but I am begiinning to wonder because you seem to want to change subjects midstream. So here goes once again on the two sub issues of why producing a gallon of product has gotten more expensive. First, on the subject of crude oil. That which is being found and produced has more impurities in it and tends to be more difficult to refine than crude oils which were produced earlier. Good examples of the former would be the oil produced from offshore Loouisiana and that from West Africa. Both relatively good crude oils, not much in the way of impurities, and both produced a relatively high proportion of gasoline from crude oil. A good example of the less valuable crude oils would be some of those you have mentioned from Venzuela, Bachaquero for example, or some of the Mexican Crudes. These contain impurities as well as produce less gasoline per barrel.
On the other hand, lead in gasoline had nothing to do with the type of crude oil, but rather was an 'octane' improver. That's the reason it was in gasoline. You were correct in part that it was sold as an anti-knock additive, because an engine will knock if it hasn't a sufficiently high octane gasoline to fuel it. Typically lead was used to improve octane number by 1 or 2 points, in other words from say 85 to 87 octance, as an example. The problem with lead was that it was (a) an environmental contaminant and (b) it has a deleterious effect on health. So we took the lead out of gasoline--by the way also out of paint, and other materials. since we took the lead out, we had to find another way of increasing the octane of gasoline back to the level that was required by auto engines. Engine manufacturers did their bit, by reducing octane requirement and redesigning engines to run on lead free fuel--not an octane issue but more of a lubricating issue. You may or may not be old enough to remember the very high compression ratio engines had into the early 1970's. These required very high octane.
To get the octane levels back up to where normal cars could operate, we used various additives, Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether, MMT, were just a few and now alcohol. We also increased the amount of refining that we did to crude oil to make the gasoline. All of this meant that the amount of gasoline we got was less per barrel than we got earlier. The point I was making, again, was that the amount of energy to get the product to you the customer, from the hole in the ground to your house, gas tank, whatever, has increased over time.
For some reason, you chose to interpret this as an argument that the cost of gasoline was driven mostly by the cost of crude oil. I am unsure why, since I never said that. I was attempting to engage you in a dialog responding to your intial post where you said "NO energy is not becoming scarce....." but you continuously changed that to a discussion on the cost of gasoline.
You apparently went to the one link I provided, but no farther, and evidently did not understand the basic point the link was making; also, you apparently did not go, as I suggested to either the EIA site or to the MKHubbert site, both of which would provide you with information basically supporting the point I was making, ie that you have to use more energy per barrel of product delivered to the customer (all the way from the hole in the ground) today than you had to back in the beginning). You said the link was a demonstration of 'profit'. How?
Should you wish to return to discuss the amount of recoverable oil we have, let me know.
"You also seem to have forgotten that "Doctor" Science knows more than you do, because he has a "Master's" degree ... in SCIENCE!"
No I have a double BA degree in journalism and science and a Doctor has a doctorate. I have many on my team if we're calling this a team debate. The answers are on the link I provided. Crichton is confused on the issue and his book is Exhibit A.
See Michael Crichton's State of Confusion.
Confused
CO2 is well-correlated to climate change. Oil products are the primary cause of this spike to 380 ppm. The only thing that can change this is us. You seem to be pulled in oppositie directions. You can't have both.
Minor issue, but as a scientist, you KNOW that there is a world a difference between a correlation--ie "CO2 is well-correlated to climate change", and CO2 is the cause of global warming. I would be interested in a complete analysis of the termperature changes on the globe since its beginning. Do you know of one? I am under the 'impression' that the globe was much warmer say in the time of the dinosaurs than it is today, and that, for example, England was warmer four or five hundred years ago, than it is now. What are the best estimates for the amount of global warming caused by fossil fuel combustion versus say sun spots, and other contributors, versus contributors to cooling?
Thanks.
The main questions was, is oil scarce. I have to say that I still think oil is not scarce, we are pumping and using huge amounts of oil everyday, it is not declining, in fact Canada and Australia in 2003-2004 found more huge reserves. You say oil costs more, but inflation adjusted it actually costs us less now that it did 30 years ago, oil is always getting cheaper, except for the marketing aspect, ie. taxes and artificially induced shortfalls. That is what I believe, and referring to yourself as a "scientist", an "authority", and pointing to your own websites is not going to change.
Global warming is the same story, there is a huge number of jobs and grants available to you scientists and the more hype you give this subect and airs authority you can assume the more power you gain in society, in this case the power the disrupt the whole economy of the world. So far I think most of these are crackpot schemes.
You really ought to take a listen the PBS Intelligence Squared debates because your debating strategy is to call yourself an expert and demand people believe you. Can I remind you that there are still plenty of scientists who are wrong or just plain liars.
The appeal to authority or concensus is - as was mentioned in the debate - is something that is usually used when a clear proveable answer is not available. The story that was told of Hitler publishing German scientist "consensus" that Einstien was wrong is a good one. When Einstein was asked about it, he said, consensus, ha, in science they need only one of them to prove me wrong.
There are other factors in global climate change than only CO2, and other effects of pollution than climate change. There are other reasons not to burn so much oil than global warming, like we are handing trillions of dollars to closed hostile imperial societies that aim to destroy us.
The problem with these problems is that no one has yet simplified and arranged priorities, causes, effects, and stratgies in a reasonable way that people can get behind. While I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" it did not make its point scientifically, it was emotional plea standing next to melting glaciers. The point is that the meaning of a melting glacier is unclear at this point, and watching it melt away and appealing to sentimentality is not objective. Gore's movie was propaganda, meant to convince and get action. Funny that Gore does not have the courage to run for President again. When Gore did run for President and won, he did not have the courage to fight for his victory.
Personally, I think the only way to really solve this problem is to get the governments and industries of the world to respect the Earth. Because they are making so much money and it gives them so much power, they will not do it unless the people demand it, and the people will never be able to understand and prove what happens in complex systems like the weather, or in cancer, or in ecology, so the logical thing to do is to say, we do not know, but our planet is the most important thing in the lives of every human that has ever lived and probably will ever live until we get inducted into the Federation of Planets of something ... so lets restore the Earth to the best level that we can and not screw it up again.
Yup. And they all don't beleive global warming is real and are on ExxonMobil's payroll to say so. And even they Exxon?M have reneged lately. A good sign. I see the same fallacious cliches used here. When you have an original argument try again.