Posted on 04/12/2007 12:07:08 PM PDT by grundle
OTTAWA — You will have noticed the marked decline these days in the number of "peak oil" people making cataclysmic pronouncements. Global oil production set records throughout 2006 -- for all-time highest production day, month, quarter and year. For the single-year record, production reached 31.3 Gb (billion barrels), an average of 85.2 million barrels a day. Affirming the trend, production set a new global single-day record before the end of January, 2007.
Along with record-setting production came record-setting increases in reserves -- moving "peak oil" deeper into the century and ultimately beyond.
The "peak oil" hypothesis, relentlessly propounded for decades, holds that the world has passed (or will momentarily pass) the highest point it can ever reach in oil production -- at the halfway mark in the depletion of global oil resources. It holds that this imminent peak necessarily marks the start of an irreversible decline in production. It holds, in other words, that the end of oil is nigh. The principal problem is that the hypothesis is demonstrably wrong -- and is vigorously proven wrong year after year.
In 1979, the "life-index" of global oil reserves was calculated as 35 years -- suggesting, superficially, that known oil reserves could support the current level of production only through 2007. In 2003, after decades of accelerated production, this index had risen to 40 years. It has now risen further to 45 years -- moving us safely through mid-century. Indeed, the record-setting oil production last year marked the umpteenth consecutive year that "peak oil" theorists have found it necessary once again to run the numbers and once again to postpone the end time of oil.
It was in 1989 that Colin Campbell, the prominent Irish champion of "peak oil," proclaimed that the global peak had already occurred -- a declaration he found it expedient, almost immediately, to amend; "peak oil," he said, would instead occur in 1995. He now opts for 2010. Yet global oil production, since 1989, has risen by 20 per cent (13.8 million barrels a day), global oil supply by 28 per cent (18.9 million barrels a day).
The production records set last year were significant for a number of other "peak oil" prophets, including Marion King Hubbert himself, the American geophysicist who devised "peak oil" analysis in the mid-fifties and who accurately predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1979. In 1956, he determined that global oil would peak "in about 50 years" -- in other words, 2006. At the pinnacle, he said, the world would consume 12 Gb of oil a year.
In 2004, Mr. Campbell increased this number, almost doubling it, to 23 Gb. For his part, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has held that oil would peak at 30 Gb -- a level exceeded last year.
Yet the world's most comprehensive measure of oil resources keeps right on growing -- higher, yes, but at a faster pace as well. TrendLines, the Canadian statistical research company, confirms this assertion in its February report on URR -- "ultimate recoverable reserves." In an analysis of optimum reserves, TrendLines concludes that the world's URR is now increasing, depending on the period you select for comparison, at twice or thrice its historical pace. From 1957 through 2006, it says, URR grew at an average annual rate of 2.4 per cent.
From 1979, it grew at an average annual rate of 4.2 per cent. From 2000, it grew at an average annual rate of 6 per cent. "Peak oil" prophet Mr. Campbell, TrendLines says, has underestimated the actual rise in URR by tenfold.
In 2000, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) calculated that global URR would increase by 2.4 per cent a year for the foreseeable future -- rising from 1,669 billion barrels in 1995 to 3,345 billion barrels in 2025. (A billion barrels -- one Gb -- is roughly the amount of oil that the U.S. keeps in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve.) "Peak oil" proponents dismissed the USGS analysis as impossibly optimistic. As with all apocalyptic manifestations, peaks must necessarily be imminent. Yet the forecast has proven significantly understated.
Driven by smart technology, global URR now increases each year at unprecedented rates. It has now (December, 2006) reached 3,288 Gb, not far off the USGS calculation for 2025. It increased last year by 114 Gb, compared with a historical annual average increase of 47 Gb. Sustained at this rate for another 20 years, the world's ultimately recoverable oil could increase by another two-thirds to 5,568 Gb, or three times the resource when "peak oil" proclamations began. Assuming consumption of 30 Gb a year, this URR could sustain production for something approaching 200 years. Once again, the end is not nigh.
Okay, then how are the Russians getting oil out of wells almost 42,000 feet deep. Really, I want to know. Thomas Gold may be a loony toon, but he is not the ONLY proponent of the theory. All the antagonists to the theory have a vested interest in it being incorrect; kinda like the DeBeers folks and those “scarce” diamonds in the bottomless Kimberlite formation.
“How much oil is still used for providing electrical power? That’s what I’m pondering at the moment? Hopefully not too much... What I’d love to hear is that the only way to prevent global warming is to switch all our power generation to nuclear plants.”
Don’t know how much oil is used to produce electrical power. In my area coal is used. The only way to prevent global warming is to put a shield between the earth and the sun. Since global warming and cooling are natural processes, it would probably be best to adapt rather than tinker.
LOL. Classic.
bump
Peak Oil is BS, as is the Run in price... its being driven by Hedge fund futures traders manipulating a relatively inelastic good... not a lack of supply or a radical run up in demand.
Pure and simply, you are getting hosed, and no one is going to do anything about it.
Oil is rarely used for electrical generation.. Coal is far more efficient and pleantiful. Enviro wackos have caused your home heating bills to spike because they demanded power generation plants use natural gas to run plants... this is a wholesale stupid idea that has caused home heating prices to skyrocket needlessly over the past 10 years.
Even if it’s not a fossil fuel, it’s a big jump to conclude that the reserves are growing. They certainly aren’t growing as fast as the demand. And they don’t seem to be growing in the places where it matters, like Texas and Oklahoma. It’s getting harder and harder to find oil in those places, certainly.
They're not.
But even if you find oil at great depths, it doesn't mean it's coming up from the earth's core.
Peak Oil isn’t compatible with Global Warming...so one of them had to go.
I was just messing with you Dog Gone. My Dad was an old wildcatter and I was raised in the middle of the Thompson River Oil Field. Any theory that has gotten lots of time on WoldNetDaily must ALWAYS be taken with a grain of salt. Her is an abstract from an article that sliced and diced the abiotic theory of oil formation.
RESOURCE GEOLOGY, vol. 56, no. 1, 83–96, 2006
Review
Abiogenic Origin of Hydrocarbons: An Historical Overview
Geoffrey P. GLASBY
Laboratory for Earthquake Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033,
Japan [e-mail: g.p.glasby@talk21.com]
Contact address: 42, Warminster Crescent, Sheffield S8 9NW, U.K.
Received on October 6, 2005; accepted on October 26, 2005
Abstract: The two theories of abiogenic formation of hydrocarbons, the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum
origins and Thomas Gold’s deep gas theory, have been considered in some detail. Whilst the Russian-Ukrainian theory
was portrayed as being scientifically rigorous in contrast to the biogenic theory which was thought to be littered with invalid
assumptions, this applies only to the formation of the higher hydrocarbons from methane in the upper mantle. In most other
aspects, in particular the influence of the oxidation state of the mantle on the abundance of methane, this rigour is lacking
especially when judged against modern criteria as opposed to the level of understanding in the 1950s to 1980s when this theory
was at its peak. Thomas Gold’s theory involves degassing of methane from the mantle and the formation of higher hydrocarbons
from methane in the upper layers of the Earth’s crust. However, formation of higher hydrocarbons in the upper layers
of the Earth’s crust occurs only as a result of Fischer-Tropsch-type reactions in the presence of hydrogen gas but is otherwise
not possible on thermodynamic grounds. This theory is therefore invalid. Both theories have been overtaken by the
increasingly sophisticated understanding of the modes of formation of hydrocarbon deposits in nature.
Keywords: abiogenic hydrocarbons, Russian-Ukrainian theory, Thomas Gold
You dirty dog! I thought I was going to get into a familiar argument with the umpteenth million Freeper over Gold’s book.
Methane from the earth’s core is a possibility. It’s probable that some natural gas has a non-organic origin, although that’s still difficult to assert for reservoirs that contain significant NGLs.
We know it exists on other planets and moons in our own solar system.
It might be noted that RBOB gasoline is now $2.19 which is up 4 cents over yesterday. You would need to buy 42,000 gallons at once to get this price.
About 3% of electricity is provided by fuel burning plants. That does not include natural gas, but just oil.
Coal provides about 55% of our electricity.
Proven Reserve Numbers do not include oil shale.
Most of this article numbers deals with actual production. Almost no oil shale in the world is currently produced so the amounts of past production do not include oil shale in a noticeable amount.
It’s really a crime, a bad one, how badly there is no ‘free market’ in the oil business. We’re getting completely hosed for certain.
But oh well, lots of people own Exxon stock so don’t mind overall I guess.
There are oil wells in the US and especially Latin America and who knows where else that sit on massive amounts of oil that is deemed 'non recoverable'.
Some of that is due to economics some of it due to geology.
I have heard of oil feilds in specific countries that literally sit on billions in oil--but production has waned in the last 15 years. Why? Technology.
They are using technology from the late 1960's and early 1970's to pump the oil.
Now, if they refit the hole that is already in the ground and has already produced oil with this new technology, they can go deeper, they can go multi directional, and a whole other lot of things.
What was previously considered 'non recoverable' using 1970's technology is now standard procedure to bring that oil up just like with the easy stuff.
Oil doesn't always sit in neat little pools under the earth where you tap it and it gushes out. You gotta figure out how to get it out of there.
Apparently renewability is not relevant to oil, not in this century. It keeps increasing. Dependence on ME sources is our own masochistic fault and if we ever determine that we need to produce our own oil we will. There are many more fields off our coasts and in Alaska, not to mention the tar sands already in production in Canada and the shale in Colorado and Utah that will be in production. There is also a tremendous amount of shale in Venezuela that we can get when we decide we need it.
That is as big a no-no as oil. The end of this game is NOT ecology or Global Warming or anything so idealistic. The end of it is Elite managed totalitarian socialism. The old ways fell into disrepute ca. 1989 and the commies had to come up with some cover to continue their drive. Well Ecology and Golbal Warming is it. Global Warming is beginning to lose its luster as more and more actual scientists are saying enough of this tripe. Something new will come up which will kill us all in horrible ways if we do not turn over the world economy to the Left.
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