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| 5/24 |
| 2007/3/4-5 [Science/GlobalWarming] UID:45867 Activity:high 80%like:45872 90%like:45879 |
3/4 So much for the peak oil myth
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html
http://nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/03/05/business/20070305_OIL_GRAPHIC.html
\_ I am NostraMotd. Oil price will peak in 2010. World War III
will happen in 2012 in a blink of an eye. -nostramotd
\_ So you went into a trance and your assistant recorded your
ramblings a la Casey or you hid in your attic scribbling little
rhyming poems with insufficient detail to ever be sure that any
of your predictions actually came true? Or did this come out of
the hidden messages in the Bible? Nostradamus didn't need no
stinkin' URLs!
\_ Yeah, I'm sure when gas price reachs $10/gal, much more oil will
become financially feasible to be extracted. No worries.
\_ It is certainly true that the amount of oil in the ground is
much larger than what we're currently able to extract. The
problem is, at some point it's not possible to ramp up new
production quickly enough to keep up with ever-increasing
demand. We won't run out of oil, but supplies will be
increasingly constrained. The only question is when that
will happen. -tom
\_ Refineries are easy but yes getting a new field started takes
several years. The fun part of all this is when you have an
.org like OPEC where members are allowed to sell a certain
amount based on their _claimed_ reserves. So by lying and
claiming higher reserves they can sell more. Their actual
honest estimates of their reserves are secret and likely
much lower than their public claims. Thus, unless new fields
are started sooner than the Saudis and friends would have us
believe we need them, then yes we'll be hosed.
\_ It's not only a question of how long it takes to start a
new field now; it's also that, as we start getting into
fields which require more effort/energy to extract
(like the Canadian oil sands), it will take even longer to
ramp up new fields. -tom
\_ The Canadian oil sands turn gold into lead. Clean
burning natural gas and freshwater are used to
create synthetic oil, sludge and greenhouse gases
on an insane scale.
\_ What is the process used to extract from oil
sands?
\_ Either way, OPEC is not a pro-Western friendly .org and
won't provide honest estimates of usable reserves so it
doesn't matter much if the world falls 5 years short of
getting new production online or 7 or 9 or 12.
\_ It's nice to know that our supply of greenhouse-gas-producing
petrolium is ever growing.
\_ its not that the supply is growing -- it isn't -- it is that as
the price goes up, we can use more efficient means to extract
all of it, and go beyond the easy-to-pump oil. It is still a
limited resource that will eventually run out.
\_ Then why has the production of oil in the United States
peaked back in 1970, and has gone down every year since
\_ Then why did the production of oil in the United States
peak back in 1970, and go down every year since
then, while prices have gone up and down and extraction
technology has greatly improved? I mean, it goes down
every year like clockwork (there was a tiny blip around
1986 due to Alaska but that's it). Note that there are
more oil wells operating in the United States than the
rest of the world COMBINED (500,000 pumping and 2,000,000
drilled). Oil production is no longer an economic problem,
it is a problem with physics and geology.
rest of the world COMBINED (500,000 pumping out of
2,000,000 drilled). Oil production is no longer an
economic problem, it is a problem with physics and geology.
\_ You may have noticed that the US gets a large percent of
oil from outside the US. Even if the US never had a drop
of native oil (like Japan, France, etc), then we'd just
be using nukes for power and likely have more advanced
electric cars. |
| 5/24 |
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| www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels. Reports of Oils Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated In Indonesia, Chevron has applied the same technology to the giant Duri oil field, discovered in 1941, boosting production there to more than 200,000 barrels a day, up from 65,000 barrels in the mid-1980s. Exxon Mobil expects to double the amount of oil it extracts from its Means field, which dates back to the 1930s. Exxon, like Chevron, will use three-dimensional imaging of the underground field and the injection of a gas in this case, carbon dioxide to flush out the oil. Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the worlds reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before. In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the US Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 33 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced. More recently, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultant, estimated that the total base of recoverable oil was 48 trillion barrels. That higher estimate which Cambridge Energy says is likely to grow reflects how new technology can tap into more resources. Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, who cited similar concerns in the 1880s, after both world wars and in the 1970s. Instead we had a boom and oil went to $10 instead of $100. There is still a minority view, held largely by a small band of retired petroleum geologists and some members of Congress, that oil production has peaked, but the theory has been fading. Equally contentious for the oil companies is the growing voice of environmentalists, who do not think that pumping and consuming an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuel is in any way desirable. Increased projections for how much oil is extractable may become a political topic on many different fronts and in unpredictable ways. By reassuring the public that supplies will meet future demands, oil companies may also find legislators more reluctant to consider opening Alaska and other areas to new exploration. On a global level, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has coalesced around a price of $50 a barrel for oil, will likely see its clout reinforced in coming years. The 12-country cartel, which added Angola as its newest member this year, is poised to control more than 50 percent of the oil market in coming years, up from 35 percent today, as Western oil production declines. Oil companies say they can provide enough supplies which might eventually lead to lower oil and gasoline prices but that they see few alternatives to fossil fuels. The oil industry is well known for seeking out new sources of fossil fuel in far-flung places, from the icy plains of Siberia to the deep waters off West Africa. But now the quest for new discoveries is taking place alongside a much less exotic search that is crucial to the worlds energy supplies. Oil companies are returning to old or mature fields partly because there are few virgin places left to explore, and, of those, few are open to investors. At Bakersfield, for example, Chevron is using steam-flooding technology and computerized three-dimensional models to boost the output of the fields heavy oil reserves. Even after a century of production, engineers say there is plenty of oil left to be pumped from Kern River. Were still finding new opportunities here, said Steve Garrett, a geophysicist with Chevron. Its not over until you abandon the last well, and even then its not over. Some forecasters, studying data on how much oil is used each year and how much is still believed to be in the ground, have argued that at some point by 2010, global oil production will peak if it has not already and begin to fall. That drop would usher in an uncertain era of shortages, price spikes and economic decline. Tips To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry. |
| nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/03/05/business/20070305_OIL_GRAPHIC.html March 5, 2007 Reports of Oils Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated Close Window Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company Print This Image &t=10&s=0&ui=&r=&u=nytimes%2ecom%2fimagepages%2f2007%2f03%2f05%2fbusi ness%2f20070305%5fOIL%5fGRAPHIC%2ehtml%3f DCSIMG |