Posted on 07/31/2004 1:48:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Chief among the pessimists is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, a group of European scientists who estimate that maximum oil production around the globe will peak in 2008 as demand rises from developing economies such as China... Others believe, like Maugeri, that the number of glasses is virtually limitless. John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, argues that peak oil- production estimates are so far off that for all practical purposes we might as well act as if oil will flow forever. "Ever since oil was first harvested in the 1800s, people have said we'd run out of the stuff," Felmy says. In the 1880s a Standard Oil executive sold off shares in the company out of fear that its reserves were close to drying up. The Club of Rome, a nonprofit global think tank, said in the 1970s that we'd hit peak oil in 2003. It didn't happen.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
It's been reported that U.S. oil refineries are operating at capacity, and that no new refineries have been built in years.
Yes, I know, there are lots of regulations. But I wonder if the oil industry, quite prudently, isn't well aware that oil is a dead end? After all, it would be dreadfully irresponsible to spend lots of money on a new refinery if the additional capacity wouldn't be needed.
While this is undeniably so, there could still come a time when such an 'investment' in energy is still feasable. For example, nuclear fusion is not known for it's mobility, yet it is reasonably economical for generating electricity, and heat. If oil is needed for some applications, it may well be extracted at negative efficiency at some point in the distant future.
Peak Oil would be of passing interest if it weren't for these reports of higher and higher oil prices. If the price per barrel drops back to $22 for a couple years we will all calm down.
Sure. There are lots of possibilities, if (a very big if) we develop technologies that generate a large net energy surplus. Nuclear reactors (the fission variety) may not offer a very big payoff; the energy invested to build the facility is large, and so is the energy investment to cart off and store the waste.
Fusion - if achieved - might offer a way out.
True...and it surely could happen. Still, the long term chart for crude suggests a long term uptrend to me. See what you think.
Oh, we will run out of oil and probably soon enough, but never underestimate the power of the free market. Someone will invent an alternative pretty dang quick when the demand is high enough. Right now, even at $2.05, oil is cheap as dirt especially when viewed as a percentage of our income historically, so there's no real demand for an alternative.
Throwing tens of billions of federal dollars into finding an alternative won't speed up the process at all, either.
The first one, by the title I cited, is the one I was talking about. The second one does not seem that promising. Fueling about 50k cars is no big deal, and that is at full scale. Hazelnut shells are not the future.
poop don't cut the gas
volume says gold was/is right
engineers flame away...
Well, I think I've read and posted on nearly every oil thread that's been on this forum in the last few years, and I see people whom I know are in the oil industry saying the same thing I'm saying:
We aren't going to run out of oil!
Why is it so difficult to believe the people who work in it every day?
We see more production charts, look at more seismic plots and read more trade journals about the oil and gas business in a month than you will in a lifetime.
The reason no new refineries are being built is because it's not economically feasible to install the necessary scrubbers to comply with EPA regulations.
The return on the investment is not there.
I've been in this business for over forty years, and I've never talked to anyone in the business who thought that our worldwide supply of gas and oil was going to end.
There are huge reserves we haven't even tapped yet, both foreign and domestic.
Did Iran actually discover a 40 billion barrel oilfield last year? Maybe they did, but that adds only 10% to the ME reserves.
Yeah, but what else, Sir Arthur?Arthur C Clarke demands cold fusion rethinkThe author and visionary Sir Arthur C Clarke says society has made a huge mistake in rejecting out of hand the idea that cold fusion may be possible and mocked editors and journalists at the British Association's Festival of Science for not giving the technology serious consideration. Cold fusion first hit the headlines in 1989 when researchers Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons suggested it was possible to generate heat through the fusion of atoms at normal temperatures. But when leading scientists failed to reproduce their results and Fleishmann and Pons retracted some of their early claims, cold fusion was dismissed as nonsense. However, the research has gone on, with little funding and largely underground, and Sir Arthur said the results coming out of some labs demanded attention. Sir Arthur also said he believed we were entering the Carbon Age. He prophesised that the discovery of molecules like C60 - the soccer ball-shaped cage of carbon atoms - would lead to extraordinary new materials.
by Jonathan Amos
Monday, 11 September, 2000
BBC New Online
...at the same time calling "stupid" anyone who doubts that the Moon landings took place.Arthur C. Clarke Stands By His Belief in Life on MarsClarke spoke last night, June 6, via phone from his home in Sri Lanka as key speaker in the Wernher von Braun Memorial Lecture series held here at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Pouring over images on his home computer taken by the now-orbiting Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Clarke said that there are signs of vegetation evident in the photos. Clarke repeated several times that he was serious about his observations, pointing out that he sees something akin to Banyan trees in some MGS photos.
by Leonard David
Monday, 11 September, 2000
Space.com
Clarke"s Believe It or NotAldrin said, "To put this into a perspective where Arthur and I agree: It may take 200, 300 or 400 years, but it's going to take zero-point energy to get us to Alpha Centauri." Turning to Clarke, he added, "Correct?" "I'm glad that Buzz has raised this rather controversial question," Clarke said. "A lot of my scientist friends [think I'm] crazy to believe there's anything in this. It started with this so-called cold fusion business, which everybody laughed out of court. But I'm now convinced that there are new forms of energy, which we are tapping, and they make even nuclear energy look trivial in comparison. And when we control those energy sources, the universe will open up."
by Andrew Chaikin
27 February 2001
Space Illustrated
No, oil is used for too many things, forget fuel, think medicine and anything using carbon as a basic building block.
You can start with benezene (eco-wackos hate it) and built just about an organic compound.
Well #*&^% my Y in any got lost in cyberspace.
If Oil-per-Barrel is at a record high, how come when I filled up today, gas was 20 cents cheaper than 2 months ago? Everybody complains about "as soon as the supplier price goes up, the pump rice goes up.....but that's not what I'm seeing this week. No news stories about THIS are there? Why?
Professor decries use of ethanol in gasolineEthanol costs more energy to make (from plowing to harvest plus) than it contains. It would be one thing if the fuel used to do the chores were otherwise wasted (IOW, made from various slop that had to be disposed of some other way), but the same problem exists there.
Ithaca Journal ^ | Saturday, August 2, 2003 | By JESSICA KELTZ
Posted on 08/02/2003 6:46:51 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA -- A Cornell University professor has published a study he says cements his assertion that ethanol is a less efficient, more environmentally harmful fuel than gasoline.
David Pimentel, an emeritus professor of ecology, has been studying ethanol for about 25 years, leading a Department of Energy study on the subject in 1980. Ethanol is a corn byproduct that is combined with gasoline to make gasohol, a gasoline substitute that proponents claim lowers pollution and eases demand for foreign oil.
Because corn production uses more pesticides than any other field crop, and because millions of dollars in government subsidies are required to make the fuel profitable, he says it's inefficient, expensive and harmful to the environment.
"It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get out of it," Pimentel said. "The reason they're producing it is taxpayer money has been increasing. This is what makes it profitable."
Pimentel said he looks into the issue periodically because subsidy levels and technology change. This time he found that gasohol costs more and gets less miles per gallon. He said $1.4 billion in taxpayer subsidies support the fuel and food prices go up because corn used to feed cattle costs more as an result.
Excerpted - click for full article ^
Source: http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20030802/localnews/573036.html
Predicting reserves is the job of reservoir engineers, and they'll be the first to tell you that a lot of witch doctoring is involved in any projection of size.
There was a large reserve discovered in Iran, but I don't remember the size.
When I look at reserve figures I class them in a relative sense rather than as a finite figure.
The gas you pumped today was probably cracked a month ago.
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