Comprehensive Projection of World Oil Exports

Prof. Goose writes, "This article is a comprehensive assessment of world oil exports, defined has the total amount of liquid hydrocarbons that are surpluses in producing countries. This assessment is made by projecting into the future fixed change rates that reflect current trends in liquids production and consumption in all countries where presently the difference between the two factors is positive. The outcome of this assessment is rather worrisome." Here is the money graph through 2020.

Re:Who is FSU?

[ZombieWomble]

"Former Soviet Union", I suspect. Or in other words, Russia (I am unsure of how much the other countries under that umbrella term contribute, as Russia by itself is the 2nd largest exporter of oil)

Re:Worrisome?

[Ignignot]

It is actually even worse than that. It uses the data from BP and the ASPO:

This assessment uses as data sources the Statistical Review of World Energy, published yearly by BP, and the monthly newsletter published by ASPO, where assessments for future oil production are available for more than 40 individual countries.

Now, why would a site that seems to be focused on a scarce energy outlook use these two sources? Probably because BP and the ASPO both have huge energy holdings. Their reports will show that energy is going to be more valuable in the future. The only way for it to be more valuable is if it is scarcer.

The real question is, why didn't they use data from the IEA [iea.org] or EIA [doe.gov]? (I know, very similar letters)

The EIA suggests cheaper energy prices long term and a probable energy glut short term because we've had unreasonably high oil prices (high prices means that you drill for more oil... but our consumption has been basically flat = too much oil!) and the IEA is more moderate.

Not saying that this slam dunk bullshit but you have to question the source.

I know everyone loves the "running out of oil" story, but if that were true then why is oil barely above $60 when we have 2 huge suppliers threatening to cut back production, and North Korean bomb tests? If we were really running out of oil and some people threatened to cut us off plus some negative diplomatic news, we would be over 100 easily.

If they want people to read their report...

[Old Man Kensey]

...they need to invest some time in readability. Squashing a bitmap to a smaller size and leaving it unreadable (on the front page, no less) is a big red flag that this was thrown together by people who aren't bothering to do a thorough job. Sure, maybe if I click through I'll get the full-size bitmap in all its pie-wedge glory, but given the obvious lack of thought and review signaled by that graph, I'm not very inclined to read any further.

Re:Brutal Graph

[Rei]

My father is a pres. of Shell USA and a VP of Shell Intl. Early last year, I was talking to him, and he mentioned that they were working on 4xing their tar sands production. It's becoming very profitable. It was a gamble when they started putting money into it, but it's looking to be a good investment.

no, that's not quite right...

[Gooseygoose]

Just an fyi, we're not one-sided, we're not partisan (I would point you to our press release: http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/4/26/121441/8 91 [theoildrum.com]), and we encourage empirical/scientific study of these phenomena.

In other words, we're not your daddy's peak oil site. Read the site at least a bit (and know what you're talking about) before you spout off like that, eh?

Re:Silver

[Anonymous Coward]

There's plenty of exploration going on for new silver right now, but the point you make is valid: our consumption vastly exceeds the rate of discovery. Additionally, the areas where silver can be found are increasingly inaccessible and politically unstable.

And its not just medical equipment. Silver is an incredible conductor and used for high end electronic circuitry. ... and its widely used as a catalyst in oxidation reactions for a wide variety of industrial materials.
(You can't make polyester without silver. Imagine a world without polyester! Noooooo!)

Re:Who is FSU?

[Cyberax]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_Soviet_Union [wikipedia.org]

Re:I'm not worried - Bio-diesel

[OakDragon]

On "The Mythbusters," I was amazed to see how ordinary strained vegetable oil would power a diesel car [youtube.com]. I was under the impression that you had to do a lot more to the old oil. I do understand that some (rubber?) parts of your engine will have to be changed for long-term use, but I am still impressed.

Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical libertarianism. Over-simplifying a complex issue with free market bollocks.

The problem with peak oil is not that it'll run out, it's that demand will exceed supply and the price will spike like a bastard. Biodiesel, hydrogen power and all other 'alternative' energy sources are currently an absolute joke. Almost everything depends on oil, most notably transport, which is utterly vital to the economy. Push the price of that up, and the price of everything else follows. Or maybe we're going to convert every lorry on the planet to hydrogen power? (incidently merely a method to store energy, not a supply of it). I won't even go into the cost of switching everything from oil power to another form.

This isn't going to happen any time soon, but unfortunately it's inevitable.

Problem is production rate

[homer_ca]

There may be a large *amount* of reserves in the tar sands of Canada and the heavy oil of Venezuela, but it's useless if you can't produce it at a rate fast enough to keep up with global demand and the decline of old fields. I really do hope that new sources of energy can replace oil because the alternative is a doomsday collapse scenario. The risk here is the time lag between the market signal of high oil prices and the commercial availability of alternative transportation fuels in useful quantities. Even with rising oil prices, there will be a few boom and bust cycles where low oil prices make alternative energy unprofitable, and private investment will be risky.

Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous.

[electroniceric]

Wait a minute. You are well within your rights to claim that peak oil theorists are wrong, but they represent a set of pretty heavy-hitting geologists, including, I believe one who worked for M. Hubbert King. King was, despite being mocked, famously right about peak oil in the US. Like spot-on right. Yes, I think these predictions need to be taken with a grain of salt, but I would also be sanguine about how much more oil will necessarily come on line. One of the key points made here, which a number of people have addressed is that Saudi Arabia's reserves numbers are almost entirely uncorroborated, and basically have been so since they ran the Westerners out of Aramco... All we know is that they have the oil to keep increasing production now.

Plus, spend a little time with the economics of resource scarcity. That nice smooth convergence to a new supply and demand intersection is a classroom fiction. In the real world when commodities become scarce, price shocks are common (especially now with the rapid propagation of information and disinformation), and wars and such are fought over the scarce commodities. Humans are good at a adapting to big shifts in environment and resources eventually, but history's pretty clear that they don't always pick a pleasant way to get there. As long as you accept that there is a peak of petroleum, which is hard to dispute, then it makes sense to get a jump-start planning for transition in the lifeblood of our economy. The question posed by peak oil people is fundamentally a valid one, whatever you think of their specific predictions now.

Re:Whats a fair price

[geekoid]

interesting fact:

There are 4 times more cars on the roads in Los angels, but only half the pollution.
Most of that pollution is caused by the reamining older cars.

Re:Brutal Graph

[Rei]

Pease, not Piece. I never said anything about the board of directors, so I'm not sure why you're looking at them. I stated that he was *A* president of Shell USA, and *A* VP of Shell intl. Shell Trading is a shell subsidary that does their -- wait for it -- trading. ;) It's a member of the Shell Group of Companies that is "a business organisation integrating Shell's world-wide trading activities and possessing an unsurpassed global portfolio in crude oil, refined products, natural gas, electrical power and chemicals" As usual, there's somewhat of a tangle of companies; in recent years, he's also held executive positions in Motiva and Equilon, two more Shell subsidiaries that are (from my limited information on the subject) less closely tied with the parent than his current position.

Why did you come here anyways? To argue semantics over oil executive job titles?

Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous.

[Martin Blank]

Where are you going to get the ethanol to make all of this E85? Without some really major changes, the land required for this would be prohibitive. Some back-of-the-envelope numbers from a post I made elsewhere:

Gasoline consumed by United States annually: 140 billion gallons
Average energy of gasoline: 114,000 btu per gallon
Annual energy from gasoline in the United States: 16.0 E+15 btu

Average energy from ethanol: 76,100 btu per gallon
Volume of ethanol required to meet gasoline energy needs: 210 billion gallons
Volume of ethanol per bushel of corn: 2.7 gallons
Volume of corn required to replace gasoline use: 78 billion bushels
Volume of corn per area of farmland: 150 bushels per acre
Volume of ethanol per area of farmland: 410 gallons per acre
Area required to replace gasoline use: 520 million acres, or 2.1 million km^2

Total land area of United States: 9,161,000 km^2
Fraction of land required to meet gasoline energy needs: 23%

That fraction declines with other, more efficient stocks, but there are sometimes other expenses involved depending on the particular crop. Corn is the most widely-known and -used input, but sugarcane and sugarbeets are also possible. Switchgrass can reportedly yield as much as 1200 gallons per acre (though the energy efficiency is debated) and would thus significantly reduce the area required, but 8% of the country is still almost the size of North and South Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas combined.

To put this in further perspective, according to the CIA World Factbook, the total arable land for the United States is about 18%, so even with switchgrass, nearly half of the arable land would be devoted to fuel use, putting a massive dent in the ability of this nation to feed itself.

This is for straight ethanol use with no gasoline, but E85 barely dulls the edge of that blade.

Re:Silver

[popo]

Also worth checking out:

http://news.silverseek.com/TedButler/1160149628.ph p [silverseek.com]

Re:Including "innovation" is dangerous.

[Perdo]

"We could easily do a 70-80% replacement of petroleum as a motor fuel source in only 10 years based n bio-fuels like ethanol and bio-diesel."

USA centric figures:

Easily? So how much bio-diesel can you get from an acre of land? Well, if all the vegetable oil you used was post-consumer, oil from deep fat fryers and the like, you could replace about 15% of the required diesel, or about 3% of our total energy needs for transportation.

If you converted every arable acre of land to oil production, rape seed (canola) has the highest oil per acre figure, and used modern fertilizers and industrial farming, then we could meet 80-95% of our diesel requirement, or about 20% at best of our total transportation energy needs.

All fertilizers are made from natural gas. A resource that is in decline in North America.

Currently in fact, we use 8 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy.

SO, the actual amount of oil you can get from farming, especially when you can't afford to fertilize the ground, or use energy intensive industrial farming methods will likely only provide at best 10% of our transportation energy needs, and only if we decide not to grow any food.

The figures for sawgrass, the best source for ethanol, are much worse.

And where do your plastics come from?

Lubricants? Pharmaceuticals? Catalysts such as sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide used for biodiesel production?

Easy?

As natural gas becomes scarce, where does your food come from? Argentina? Tomatoes all year around shipped to you in what kind of ship? Sail powered?

And your consumer goods from China? That's going to be easy when we are in a contest with China over the last remaining oil reserves. No more Nikes, iPods, computers, toilet seats, Walmart, Target, Kmart, Home Depot, Safeway, Bed Bath & Beyond, Pfizer, Comp USA, Best Buy...

What? Made in China.

We have not left oil because it is HARD.

Oil is leaving us. It is going to be HARD.

And without the political will... It's not going to happen.

You are going to starve to death within 15 years. That is EASY. Just stop eating.

Re:No, we're running out!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's a "hot deep biosphere" theory [amazon.com] that perhaps oil is continually replenished by subterranean bacteria. It sounds crazy, and I'm inclined to suspect it is, but it's the brainchild of respected scientist Thomas Gold and apparently there is some evidence for it.

Re:No, we're running out!!

[PhysSurfer]

Your "insightful" comment betrays a lack of economic understanding. There will be no discontinuity, no moment in the future when we run out of oil and everything grinds to a halt.

You seem good at doling out insults and thumbing your nose, let's see how your rhetoric withstands close scrutiny.

As supply decreases, the price will increase, and at some point something else will reach the cost/benefit ratio of oil. Rising prices will speed that along.

You seem to understand that oil will get more expensive in the future, yet you fail to comprehend the implications. According to Peak Oil theory [wikipedia.org], once the rate of oil production hits its peak, we will have extracted half the available supply. The remaining half will be more expensive to extract. The problem, which you seem to miss, is that we have no cheap energy source to replace it, nor will one be available in the forseeable future. Once costs rise enough to make other energy sources preferable, energy will be far too expensive to make modern western society feasible. The problem is compounded by the fact that world energy demand is rising and places like China and India want their citizens to have the same quality of life as people enjoy in the US. If we continue to increase our consumption of oil without a suitable cheap replacement, economic and political catastrophe could result.

But even giving you the benefit of "as supply decreases" is not borne out by history. Enviro-types have been telling us for decades that supply is dwindling, yet it increases every year.

Again, you just don't seem to understand the situation. In Hubbert Peak theory, supply will continue to grow until the peak is reached. The problem is that the rate of growth is decreasing, as is easily discerned from this graph [wikipedia.org]. From the rate of growth we can predict the approximate year of production, which is 2006-2010 based on current trends (see above wikipedia article).

So on balance, I have no trouble with society using as much oil as it's worth for us to pay for.

On the balance of what? Poor economic understanding? As I've demonstrated, our current rate of oil consumption could lead us to catastrophe. By conserving, we have the power to change that. Even if you don't think about Peak oil, there's reasons to conserve. The US currently accounts for about 25% of the world's oil consumption, yet only accounts for 5% of its population and 9% of its production. Importing 64% of our oil costs us a lot of capital, and gives countries like Saudi Arabia power and a hold over us that they wouldn't have otherwise. In addition, hydrocarbons are very useful for other things besides energy. Polymers are a cornerstone of our technology, and its in our best interests to keep oil cheap for further breakthroughs.

People like you make me sad. You think the market will magically rescue us and use that to justify a greedy and ignorant lifestyle. I hope that it doesn't come back to bite us in the ass.