Posted on 10/16/2007 6:11:57 PM PDT by SJackson
“Peak oil” is becoming the latest doomsday buzzword. What is it? It’s a well-thought-out theory that predicts that the rate at which we find and recover oil is soon going to fall behind the rate at which we consume it. The point at which that happens is the “peak.” Prior to this peak, prices will have been relatively stable and reasonable, and the economies of the world have grown because the supply of energy outpaced the demand. But there is coming a time, and some say it’s here now, when the world’s oil fields cannot produce as fast as we consume. Demand will exceed supply, oil prices are going to skyrocket, and the world’s economies are going to begin to fail as the oil fields themselves fail.
Oil today is important to civilization. We use it to produce electric power and to make gasoline, heating oil, fertilizer, chemicals, plastics, and more. Eighty-four percent goes to power and fuel, and only 16% to other things. What happens if we run out? Tidy little doomsday scenarios have been woven and show how transportation will stop running, food production will drop because of less fertilizer and pesticides, currency markets will fail, prices of everything will take off, and this will mean both the end of civilization as we know it and an irreversible decline in the human condition. It’s all very neat, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate.
(Excerpt) Read more at backwoodshome.com ...
Lets leave aside externalities. That would take me a day
Internally we need serious Federal support for clean Western coal development programs and more. Coal is our salvation from foreign oil suppliers
IOW Jimmy Carters pessimism was correct. We should strive for energy independence. We have lots of clean coal to develop. Look at Canada. It's an energy superpower today with no trade deficit. Canada dollar now equals the US dollar. Even though they are socialist today's oil/energy prices wash away their sins &stupidity
We should be shooting for 80-90% energy independence instead of trusting Arabs and Hugo Chavez
Heard some peak oil talk this morning on radio WSJ. Seems world oil production has peaked. It might be a partial reading of the oil industry report or a partial understanding of what the Saudi oil minister said last week.
Would that be the Global 2000 report?
The news today is that world oil production has peaked; even though OPEC could possibly increase production they aren’t planning to do so.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/25/markets/oil_record/index.htm
Oil prices have gained nearly 30 percent in the last month and more than quadrupled since 2002. Analysts say surging global demand combined with limited new supply is the main underlying factor.
“We will never get Saudi oil for $2 a barrel. $30 per barrel is about what oil costs out of the ground in Colorado so this is competitive. What the US does not have because of the wackos is enough refinery capacity.”
Is that why they are producing oil sands in Canada at $30 per barrel?
The world will not suddenly run out of oil while it is at its peak production. Production will fall gradually to 1/2 present level in the next 20 years.
I think production will not fall, I just think we will have to use more expensive sources for oil. Does anyone doubt that oil could double in the next 10 years?
Production is already over the peak. It’s down from here. Production of process oil as replacement is not cheap and will dampen the demand.
If production falls, I’ll be a rich man in 10 years.
Could well be. Changes are coming no doubt. The Big Oil companies will be right in the middle of the new stuff, too. BP, Shell, Conoco, Exxon, etc.
That’s good. Oil has zero value until produced. Right now NYMEX Crude is $91.88. Price is a term for scarcity. When the price is low the commodity is not scarce; when the price is high the commodity is scarce. $91.88 might seem high, but RBOB gasoline is also at it alltime high, and so is heating oil (jetfuel, diesel). Alaska Airlines is adding $5 to each ticket because of fuel cost; fuel cost is larger than the personnel budget, which is apparently a seismic shift in the industry. Oil is becoming scarce, which is not to say that the quantity being produced is any different. Some seem to believe that when we hit peak oil we will suddently run out altogether, but we might remain at the peak for several years before gradually declining volume to 1/2 in a decade.
I agree with you, that’s why I say peak oil isn’t the end of oil or even that we will run out of oil any time soon, its the end of cheap, easy to recover oil.
Yeah, that’s what it seems to me. We’ll have oil, and petro products for a long time to come. The products will cost more but they will be available. For our houses we will use electricity and for our cars we will use more electricity and the electricity will come from the municipal grid, which I hope will be nuclear powered. My investment is uranium—up 20% this week—, but it fluctuates and is back where it was a year ago.
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