Report Blasts "Peak Oil" Theory 640
Rei writes "Today, the Cambridge Energy Research Associates released a report dismissing the Peak Oil theory, suggesting that world oil production will continue to increase for the next 24 years, and then only level into a plateau. The report, which suggests that world reserves are enough to last 122 years at our current rate of consumption, also blasts Peak Oil theorists for repeatedly making unscientific predictions and then shifting them whenever their predictions fail to materialize."
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:5, Interesting)
Make of that what you will..
Here's a way to produce infinite amounts of oil... (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, not every agrees with CERA (Score:3, Interesting)
A silly assumption (Score:1, Interesting)
Who in their right mind thinks the current rate of consumption is going to remain at a plateau for the next 122 years?
Re:No increase in oil demand? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's pretty hard to predict future consumption and production patterns. The best evidence we have is historic, which has naturally formed the basis for their argument.
Speaking as a climate change pessimist.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry to be depressing, but I find the prospects very depressing.
Re:No increase in oil demand? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Accurate" theoretically but practically useless. That is like saying: "If I keep saving a dollar a year, I will be a BILLIONAIRE in just a billion years!".
Unfullfilled predictions (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair enough.
Unfullfilled climate predictions:
Can you think of any prediction that has come true?
Re:From the first link (Score:5, Interesting)
They want the current supply of oil to seem scarce so prices are high, but they want the hypothetical, future supply to seem infinite so that you never have to stop using oil.
Which is pretty much what we have now. The price of oil goes up based on fears about Middle East stability, damage to refineries on the Gulf Coast from Katrina, and so on, threatening the immediate supply. On the other hand, off-shore oil deposits and ambiogenesis promising that the oil supply will never actually run out. They make massive profits, but everyone still feels comfortable with their oil-based ICEs.
Peak oil has nothng to do with the environment (Score:3, Interesting)
It's an economic issue. How expensive is energy going to be. And the peak oil people aren't saying oil is going to run out, it simply gets more and more expensive to extract as the conventional supplies go into decline.
It doesn't matter what anyone reports anyway, that's just market manipulation from one side or the other. What matters is the actual amount pumped. If it declines or remains static then prices are going up.
Question I asked during peak oil lecture (Score:4, Interesting)
Today there was a talk in Beckman Auditorium by Kenneth Deffeyes [princeton.edu], Princeton professor emeritus and author of one of the more popular books on that ever-popular meme, peak oil. He discussed his belief that we had hit peak oil sometime around this past Thanksgiving, and that oil prices are going to fluctuate wildly and rise in the next 5 years of so.
During the Q&A period I went up to the microphone and asked the following: During your talk you briefly mentioned the futures market. Currently on the oil futures market, you can purchase a contract for a barrel of oil to be delivered in, say, the year 2010 or 2011 which is actually cheaper than a barrel of oil today [edit: nowadays it's actually slightly higher, 62 vs. 58]. What are your thoughts on why this is the case?
In his response, he had mentioned that he had been asked a similar question after he gave his talk at Merrill Lynch, basically: "If you really think oil prices are going to rise, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and buy up futures contracts?" He said to them that he wasn't too knowledgeable about futures contracts, and afterwards read up on them a little and found some of their intricacies bewildering. He said that he would want to purchase futures options for the coming few years, due to the extreme price fluctuations he expects, followed by regular futures in the longer term.
I'm not sure I bought his answer. Although I'm not sure about how far ahead one can purchase futures options, regular futures can definitely be purchased for 2012 [tradingcharts.com], which should be well into the period of soaring prices he predicts.
Re:OK... (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually that is precisely what peak oil predicts. Peak oil is ONLY about the fact that oil production will peak out at some point and will thereafter decline. It will keep declining until there is no more oil that can be economically extracted -- in essence, we will run out. Peak oil doesn't really say anything about demand; it is all about oil production.
See this link [energybulletin.net] for a much more detailed, less biased analysis of the pros and cons of peak oil theory. Down at the bottom you'll find a table with predictions of when we'll reach the global production peak. Note that some of the predictions putting peak production in the next few years are from people who work (or worked) for oil companies.
This group CERA has a prediction on there, too; in 2004 they believed in peak oil theory and thought the world would peak in 2020. Their new "oil plateau" idea basically says that as traditional oil becomes more scarce, technology will bring new sources (tar sands, oil shale, etc.) on line, thereby increasing reserves. Whoever they work for, they have some interesting, if not compelling, points.
Read the Hirsch Report (Score:4, Interesting)
Its the best rebuttal to Yergin and CERA.
The Hirsch report, written by Robert Hirsch of SAIC, was commissioned by the Department of Energy in 2005. To try and avoid some of the controversy around the exact date of 'peak', he sidestepped it, and rather tried to perform an objective analysis of what effort would be required to mitigate such a peak, in three scenarios.
Re:Well, let's take a look at the speakers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumst
Re:Should Have Previewed (Score:4, Interesting)
Daniel Yergin also wrote and hosted a PBS production called "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy". This 3-part television production was an advomentary (advocacy documentary) which made the case for free markets by interpreting the economic history of the 20th Century from a capitalist perspective. Yergin interviewed many high profile free-market advocates such as Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Robert Rubin who presented economic history as a battle between centralized command economies and free market economies.
If he is seriously suggesting that Dick Cheney is interested free markets why does Halliburton [halliburtonwatch.org] get no-bid contracts... DOH! Next they will be telling you the 30% water cut on the Saudi Ghawar oil field [energybulletin.net] is nothing to be concerned about, oh and remember Saddam has WMD and is helping AQ and global warming doesnt exist, oil companies don't conspire with corrupt governments and oh yes fairies and elves really do exist.
Check peakoildebunked.blogspot.com (Score:3, Interesting)
"Current rate of consumption" fallacy (Score:2, Interesting)
While making estimates based on the "current rate of consumption" may be easy, it's a fallacy. Consumption never stays constant, and will increase unless we do something.
One of the reasons the price of oil has shot up in the past few years has been the increased demand for oil in China and India. More demand for a finite supply. And the world's population grows exponentially. More consumers all the time.
The good news is we are still finding reservoirs, and we are developing better ways of getting hard-to-reach oil from existing reservoirs. But it's all just methadone for our addiction. We need to accellerate R&D of new sources storing and transporting energy. Let's not get complacent here just because we've gotten a reprieve.
Where are the new dinosaurs coming from? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Question I asked during peak oil lecture (Score:3, Interesting)
But let's say that you firmly believe that by Dec 2008 oil will be trading around $80. If you are right, does that mean you will make a big profit by going long the Dec 2008 future?
No. The reason is that futures contracts have daily settlement to mitigate default risk. It is not good enough for the price of oil to end up where you want it on Dec 2008; it must also not decline on the way there. If it goes down to say $40 on the way, you will have to close out your position at a loss or else face bankruptcy (assuming that your position is large enough to have significant gains in relation to your wealth.)
This is not just a theoretical risk: a famous example is Metalgesllschaft. In their case, they didn't have to guess what the future price of oil would be because they had already sold it! They wanted to lock in their profits by hedging in the futures market, but they miscalculated the forward/futures basis when applying their hedge. The result was that they were killed by margin calls - even though their overall position was above water.
If there was only responsibility for belief (Score:1, Interesting)
It is sad that the downside effects of peak oil would only apply to the people who choose not to believe in the effects of peak oil.
Odds are the non-believers will be knocking on the door of my warm and PV powered home, asking for me to feed their sorry asses too.
who is behind CERA? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Should Have Previewed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WTF (Score:3, Interesting)
Or use current, PROVEN technologies like biofuels (biodiesel and ethanol/methanol) to stretch the reserves out for a longer period while we develop those new and better resources.
Re:Various forms of solar power (Score:2, Interesting)
Biodiesel and/or thermal depolymerisation might qualify as a "sustainable" oil-creating process as long as the net costs to create new oil through those processes are low enough to satisfy a significant part of our society's oil hunger, otherwise we will experience the full force of societal change that the Peak Oil theory is predicting.
At the moment, I don't believe our alternative energy infrastructure is large or efficient enough to blunt the effects that a worst-case Peak Oil scenario will have on our society.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Interesting)
- many reservoirs have poor to crap permeability characteristics, which reduces maximum (let alone optimum) flow rates, and severely impacts the economics of projects. That's inherent to the rock that the oil is in, and is only improved as the square root (approximately) of the pressure differential that you put across the reservior. At best.
- most new discoveries are small. A couple of hundred million barrels in place, maybe 40~60 million produceable. That's 5 to 8 days of consumption at todays rates. Which means that you can't justify the cost of pipelines and infrastructure to produce the stuff.
Look at, if you care, the "Last Great Hope" oil province of the late 1990's - the Falklands province. Review it's history - a significant war fought over it's control delayed exploration drilling for a decade and a half. There's a basin, source rocks (second best in the world), and reservoirs of moderate quality; tectonics and timing of thermal events within the tectonics are good for producing accumulations, and indeed accumulations have been found. But they're not big enough to justify building the necessary platform-based infrastructure, and the distance to shore is too long to flow the oil in a pipeline (we're back to the back-pressure as anything flows ; it all adds up from the valve at the surface separator all the way back through the pipes to the reservoir-completion interface). Net result - a "stranded" oil province. OK - that's one province I've had a professional interest in. Oddly enough, that's a common set of problems. Same goes for the potential stuff in the Arctic outside Alaska : no route to market, and building the necessary railway lines and pipelines across Siberian tundra is a 20-year project (don't suggest using the - - (sorry for my spelling, my atrocious Russian is getting rusty) line - it's stuffed to capacity already (as anyone who's used it would know) and it doesn't get within 2Mm of the necessary areas.) with a very uncertain prospect of success at the end.
Some of the biggest components of the "anticipated reserves" part of the future oil extrapolations are based on finding whole provinces with similar productivity to their geological counterparts elsewhere in the world. But there is no (zero, nil, zilch) well control on a lot of these anticipations. It's an easy mistake to make - I tried to get involved in the Falklands drilling campaign (first job application I'd written for 4 years), on that basis. Thought there was a big potential. Busted after the second well (of 6 in the campaign). East Greenland is "booked" as a huge gas province, extrapolating from the geological and thermal history of the Norwegian coast; zero well control. Laptev sea is "booked" as a light oil and gas province; one well and only 14000km of seismic. East Siberian-Chukchi Seas similarly booked; zero wells and 7000km. Sea of Okhotsk, several pinprick wells with no discoveries on the best prospects from the very limited seismic. Sea of Japan I haven't received data on, yet; some political difficulties over exploration. Sea of Bohai has proven prospects, but similar political difficulties.
You can look at models of reserves projected, but you've got to read the definitions of "proven", "likely" etc that go for the different classes of "reserve". As Shell discovered publicly a couple of years ago (and everyone else knew privately), a reserve isn't a reserve until it's been drilled, tested and produced. And e