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What do you know about peak oil?
Posted by ccRicers • 4/21/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: oil, peak oil, prices. gas
Nope, it's not oil that you can get from mountains. This is about oil extraction reaching its historical peak, and then once you are past that, oil progressively gets harder and harder to get out from the ground.
Many geologists think we are hitting the world's peak of oil extraction in a few years, or it may have just passed. Then it gets more expensive to drill out oil, refine oil, distribute it, etc. I think the effects are already here, with the rising price of petroleum barrels and certain crops are diminished by the need to make more ethanol. The pressure's on to get off the oil for better energy routes.
User Comments
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It sounds like no one yet. A pretty underground topic, huh?
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I thought the easily accessible oil supplies peaked about five years ago in 2005. That is why oil and gas are becoming so much more expensive.
www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/apr/21/oilandpetrol.news
It looks like there is going to be more drilling in Sudan, the Congo, Nigeria and other civil war hotspots. It will be a wonderful mess. The multinationals are going into Africa to get oil. Apparently, it has become worth the price to cooperate with places like Equatorial Guinea for their oil supply. My understanding that the oil companies are interested in building oil wells offshore to avoid the conflicts on the continental landmass of Africa. Maybe we can send exploration teams into Somalia. The midddle east will look like a picnic in the coming years. Africa is one of the few places where there is plenty of room for exploring for new wells.
I guess the Americans will like following the French into their trouble spots.
There is a real reason to encourage alternative energy especially biomass
and wind which are proving to be competitive with oil. We need to avoid
a long series of wars of attrition over resources like oil. Now is the
time to invest in clean technology. I am sounding a bit like a broken
record.
My politics are spilling out. I really do believe in things like the
Apollo Alliance. I see it as one of the few places where the United States
can reindustrialize.
www.apolloalliance.org/-
I hear that it will turn into force majeure for the oil supplies of those African nations. But I see your point. Once the "big guns" are drying out, we look for more places to drill, heated politics nonwithstanding, and the new reserves that are discovered progressively get smaller.
It's a common misconception that Saudi Arabia always had the most oil reserves. The USA was the world's biggest oil exporter before WWII.
A good analogy I have seen with presenting peak oil is this: Imagine you won a grand prize contest and a helicopter passes by and drops thousands of dollar bills on your house. You catch some falling through your window, but you soon go outside to your lawn where most of the money fell. This is the easy-to-get stuff. In just a few hours you can collect many thousands of dollars and put it in a bag. The lawn's almost empty, you get the ladder and go on the roof to collect more money. Requires more effort, but you can still find loads of cash. Then it gets tricky. Some dollars are stuck in the tree branches or wedged beneath rocks or bushes. The easy-to-find money is over. You still want to get every last dollar you can, but it will require more care. On top of that, you will only be able to collect a few dollars each minute.
Is it possible to get every last dollar bill? Maybe, but is it worth your time and effort? This is where oil is about to head at the moment. The easy-to-get sweet oil is running out, and you are left with the more expensive oil, with less returns on investment.
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As the environmentalist Murray Bookchin said, peak oil has been predicted since the 1920s and is a device by Big Oil to drive up prices artificially.-
But when you say predictions have been made since that 1920s, are you just implying that prediction dates have been revised greatly over the years?
The most trusted authority on this subject is geologist M. Ron Hubbard who predicted, since the 50's that the US will peak around 1970, which it did. He also went as far to say that the world will peak in the early 1990's. Here, he was wrong, since he couldn't foresee the political factors that limited the production to oil, such as Iran's oil embargo and the gas crisis of the 70's. This probably set that prediction 10 years further into the future.
Peak oil is something that can only be realized in retrospect, when you have already passed it. Some say we already passed that peak almost 5 years ago, though it's still to early to tell.
And peak oil being used as a device to inflate prices? The opposite seems more likely. Most "Big Oil" companies either deny that it exists, or, in recent times, give very optimistic predictions on when peak oil will occur (like 2050). A corporation that lives on profiting from oil will not address this topic directly. It will turn investors off from oil futures. It would be bad for their business.
The more likely scenario would be, as oil becomes more scarce we would see more and more big oil mergers in a game of last man standing. They might not disclose it to the public, but they know peak oil is imminent. By eliminating the competition, the larger companies are able to get a bigger share of the profits from a resource that is harder and harder to sell, until it will no longer be profitable. -
the oil companies control all the data used in predictions of peak oil.
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You can't seem to elaborate on your counter-points.
Anyways, OPEC nations are more responsible for controlling reserve data, since it is the source that oil companies get their oil from.
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"Peak oil" is a myth. It's something that cannot be quantified in this present system. I'ts like saying "intelligent blonde," I mean there's just no evidence.
boughettonews.blogspot.com/-
If peak oil is a myth, then finite oil is a myth.
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HERE HERE - spot on
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No, peak oil is not a myth. Oil companies would like to see their product become slightly less expensive long term. There is a point where wind energy becomes cheaper, biomass gasification, and other technologies. The point for ethanol to be competitive was $3.00 per gallon, also the point where electric energy for cars has passed as well making it cheaper to have a plug in car than gasoline. There will be a transition away from oil because it is becoming more expensive, harder to get at, and more politically sensitive. Also agribusiness is preparing to take on the oil giants. For example, ADM is hiring Chevron executives to run their ethanol business.
It is like the whaling industry when they hunted out most of the easy to get whales for oil for light. Kerosene became cheaper than whale oil forcing the closure of the majority of whaling companies as a source for lighting. The cycle is repeating itself. -
i know a smart blonde. wait...
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Not so quickly. This year there will be over 1 million alternative fuel vehicles produced and put on the roads in the United States. It will be a mix of Flexible Fuel Vehicles-- 750,000 Flexible fuel vehicles and Hybrid Cars-- 350,000 cars. We will start importing sugar cane ethanol from Brazil in quantity. Things are going to happen a lot faster than you think. It just isn't that fascinating of a news item...
Sugarcane Ethanol
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aUFpETqrGucs&refer=latin_ameri...
Flexible Fuel Vehicles --750,00 This year.
www.e85fuel.com/news/090407_2008_ffv_release/090407_2008_ffv_release.htm
Hybrid Vehicle Sales -- 350,000 Last year
www.greencarcongress.com/2008/01/reported-us-hyb.html-
US wheat supply was also cut short this year because more land was put aside to grow corn. Corn that was used to make ethanol. Oil is starting to affect food prices.
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Nobody as yet has mentioned 'abiotic oil' perhaps oil isn't finite after all, and is in fact a replenish-able fuel source!
However, I believe peak oil is indeed codswallop, just an excuse to drive oil prices even higher. In the UK it is now £1.06 per litre / unleaded. I am intrigued to see how far they are going to push us. £2/litre at a guess before shits hits the veritable fan.
This all ties in with the alternative agendas of the Illuminati, best not say any more for fear of being persecuted - nooooo :-)-
The Illuminati won't have the guts to get you, but the Scientologists will
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Best baton down the hatches, I'll have Tom Cruise chanting his voodoo Scientology at me. nanu nanu. Now where did I leave my tin foil hat?
OT7 to mini space man Tom - we have confirmation, an infidel is in our sites shall we zap him with the loony ray gun:-)
Religion... I ask you. Who'd have thought so many people would fall for that one.
Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in the spirit of religion, but I do believe in the spirituality of man. -
Abiotic oil is a pipe dream. It is an unproven theory in the same league as zero point energy.
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Zero point energy is a pipe dream??? Hmmm
So how do you explain the fact that the existence of ZPE has even been proven experimentally via the detection of the Casimir effect.
Maybe you should read more on the subject before being so readily dismissive. That or explain why you think ZPE is a pipe dream as you put it.
Regards
R
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end of suburbia
www.endofsuburbia.com/
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