Peak Oil Is Coming

[FluffyBunnyMan]

Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash

Y'know, I never was the type of person to care about the world or anything like that but this... No matter who you are, how much money you make, where you live this will affect you so dramatically you may have to make extreme changes the very way you live.

You may also think that this is just another thing like Global Warming that wont affect you, but it will. Starting from as soon as 2010 sever blackouts will start happening.

After seeing the Zeitgeist movie and reading the thread I was a bit freaked out by it and thought about it a lot but Peak Oil by far is the most terrifying thing I have come across. Atleast in the Zeitgeist you could argue the good points about having a one world government, I know I sure can but Peak Oil, its all a spiral of downhill disaster.

Could you imagine thousands of industries closing down every day because they simply can't operate without that black stuff? The effects would just be so extreme and so fast that nothing any government could do would be able to stop it. The first page is extremely compelling but you may be one of the more intellectual people on NG and find some argument against it such as alternative energy sources and what not, the second page will change your mind.

After reading the first half page you may be thinking "Oh, the government will take care of it. They know what their doing" They sure are preparing, "In January 2006, the Department of Homeland Security gave Halliiburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown, & Root a $400 million dollar contract to build vast new domestic detention camps within the United States. The camps are ostensibly being built to house and process an "emergency influx of immigrants", which is exactly what the U.S. will be facing between 2008 and 2012 as Mexico's oil production collapses. "

The governments know this is coming but they simply cannot sound a alarm without creating one of the biggest scares in history.

I cannot summarize the enormous text in my link, all I can hope is that you are able to read through all of it and find out yet another truth of how our civilization is constantly in a state of total collapse and decline.

Please no TL;DR.

[FluffyBunnyMan]

It seems that the majority of NG cares not of doomsday...

A barrel of oil now costs about 1 USD to pull from the ground in Iraq, imagine that figure skyrocketing to $150+ overnight? Making gasoline prices go up to $5.

We need oil because it provides us with energy, and LOTS of it. There is no possible way for a large scale switch from Oil to alternative energy. In fact, alternative energy is more of a derivatives of oil. Think about it. Solar panels, to make them we need to mine the resources needed right? Now we have these resources, what are we gonna do with they? They aren't gonna magically change into solar panels, we need to put them into trucks and transport them to places to make them into other things needed for the construction of a solar panel.

"Few people realize how much energy is concentrated in even a small amount of oil or gas. A barrel of oil contains the energy-equivalent of almost 25,000 hours of human labor. A single gallon of gasoline contains the energy-equivalent of 500 hours of human labor. Most people are stunned to find this out, even after confirming the accuracy of the numbers for themselves, but it makes sense when you think about it. It only takes one gallon of gasoline to propel a three ton SUV 10 miles in 10 minutes. How long would it take you to push a three ton SUV 10 miles?

Most people drastically overestimate the density and scalability of solar, wind, and other renewables. Some examples should help illustrate the limited capacity of these energy sources as compared to fossil fuels:

Example #1: It would take every single one of California's 13,000 wind turbines operating at 100% capacity (they usually operate at about 30%) all at the same time to generate as much electricity as a a single 555-megawatt natural gas fired power plant.

Example #2: According to the European Wind Energy Association's Wind Force 12 report issued in May of 2004, the United States has 6,361 megawatts of installed wind energy. This means that if every wind turbine in the United States was spinning at peak capacity, all at the exact same time, their combined electrical output would equal that of six coal fired power plants. Since, as mentioned previously, wind turbines typically operate at about 30% of their rated capacity, the combined output of every wind turbine in the US is actually equal to less than two coal fired power plants.

Example #3: The numbers for solar are ever poorer. For instance, on page 191 of his book The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, author Paul Roberts writes: " . . . if you add up all the solar photovoltaic cells now running worldwide (2004), the combined output - around 2,000 megawatts - barely rivals the output of two coal-fired power plants." Robert's calculation assumes the solar cells are operating at 100% of their capacity. In the real world, the average solar cell operates at about 20% of its rated capacity. This means the combined output of all the solar cells in the world is equal to less than 40% of the output of a single coal fired power plant.

Example #4: In order to offset a 10% reduction in U.S. petroleum consumption, the amount of installed solar and wind energy systems would have to be increased by 2,200%.

Example #5: The amount of energy distributed by a single gas station in a single day equivalent to the amount of energy that would produced by four Manhattan sized city blocks of so equipment. With 17,000 gas stations just in the United States, you don't need to be a mathematician to realize that solar power is incapable of meeting our urgent need for a new energy source that - like oil - is dense, affordable, and transportable.

Example #6: It would take close to 220,000 square kilometers of solar panels to power the global economy via solar power. This may sound like a marginally manageable number until you realize that the total acreage covered by solar panels in the entire world right now is a paltry 10 square kilometers.

Unlike an oil pump, which can pump all day and all night under most weather conditions, or coal fired/natural gas fired power plants which can also operate 24/7, wind turbines and solar cells
only produce energy at certain times or under certain conditions. This may not be that big of a deal if you simply want to power your household appliances or a small scale, decentralized economy, but if you want to run an industrial economy that relies on airports, airplanes, 18-wheel trucks, millions of miles of highways, huge skyscrapers, 24/7 availability of fuel, etc., an intermittent source of energy will not suffice.

Without a cost-effective and scalable storage technology to provide power when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, large scale solar/wind farms must be backed up by things like oil pumps or natural gas/coal fired powered plants. For this reason, the expansion of renewables like wind power actually requires an expansion in the supply of fossil fuels.

Here is the real kicker: these shadow stations cannot just be turned on and off at will. In order to be ready to produce electricity when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, they must be fed a constant supply of natural gas or coal. "

The same goes for food. The average American plate of food has traveled over 1,500 miles to get to your dinner table. Now, add all that up and think about the oil it would cost to power that enormous fleet of trucks?

[DancingHitlur]

tl;dr.

damn illegal text.

[da-pope]

Yeah about Global Warming...

Might want to read that...

[He-Who-Never-Was]

At 8/24/07 10:13 PM, da-pope wrote: Yeah about Global Warming...

Might want to read that...

The Great Global Warming Swindle rips Global Warming (Gores) to shreds.

[Planky]

Global warming is not real silly.

[He-Who-Never-Was]

At 8/24/07 10:17 PM, Planky wrote: Global warming is not real silly.

Yes it is, but the way Gore wants to explain it? No.

The Earth is just heating up, in a couple of years it will cool down again.

[da-pope]

At 8/24/07 10:18 PM, He-Who-Never-Was wrote:

At 8/24/07 10:17 PM, Planky wrote: Global warming is not real silly.

Yes it is, but the way Gore wants to explain it? No.

The Earth is just heating up, in a couple of years it will cool down again.

Exactly. It's a natural cylce thats happend hundreds of time through out the earths history.
The oil thing, yeah we're pretty fucked. But I can garuntee once oil prices get to point that people will flat out not be able to afford to fill up, someone will come out with an alternative that the oil companies can still make money of off. Synthetic oil or something like that.

Fuck, I bet they already have something like that they're just keeping it under wraps until it's needed. Kind've like the little conspiercy theory that we have already developed a cure for cancer it's just to cheap to be profitable.

Not saying I believe that theory.

[FluffyBunnyMan]

Back to the point of Peak Oil! Its atleast is real and much worse than Global Warming.

[He-Who-Never-Was]

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.h tml#c

Some people thought we were going to run out of Oil in 2000, we are no where near running out of crude oil, and by the time we do, we will more than likely have no use for it.

[da-pope]

At 8/24/07 10:30 PM, He-Who-Never-Was wrote: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.h tml#c

Some people thought we were going to run out of Oil in 2000, we are no where near running out of crude oil, and by the time we do, we will more than likely have no use for it.

Yeah we still haven't even started drilling for oil at either of the Poles.
Why do you think that Russia is so crazy mad for Canada's artic? There's a ridiculous amount of untapped oil in them.

Plus once a well runs out of oil, you dig out the sand around it and extract even more oil from that.

[knifehunter]

ok....um why dont they just use coal?

[da-pope]

At 8/24/07 11:36 PM, knifehunter wrote: ok....um why dont they just use coal?

Coal is just as scarse as oil.

[hunt34]

why not use coal?

[hunt34]

then were screwed

[da-pope]

At 8/24/07 11:44 PM, CadillacClock wrote:

At 8/24/07 11:41 PM, hunt34 wrote: why not use coal?

It's an extremely heavy pollutant, more so than nuclear energy.

Nuclear is 100% clean.
It's the waste that we don't know what to do with. The gigantic towers release steam. Steam is just water.

[hunt34]

would we have enough nuclear energy for like everyone?

[da-pope]

At 8/24/07 11:49 PM, hunt34 wrote: would we have enough nuclear energy for like everyone?

Yes. It's just a chemical reaction. Well I'm sure that there's only so much of reactents on the planet but I'm pretty sure they can synthisize it?

The only reason that it's not widely used is cause it can be dangerous and we have no idea what to do with the stuff thats left over after the reaction.

My idea is to use the waste (It's a liquid) in the same way you use water in a hydro electric plant. Have it fall down like a very toxic, deadly, corrosive waterfall and spin the turbine. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this and that there's probably a billion things wrong with my theory but yeah it's just something I was thinking about that.

[PsychoticMind]

At 8/25/07 12:00 AM, da-pope wrote:

At 8/24/07 11:49 PM, hunt34 wrote: would we have enough nuclear energy for like everyone?

Yes. It's just a chemical reaction. Well I'm sure that there's only so much of reactents on the planet but I'm pretty sure they can synthisize it?

The only reason that it's not widely used is cause it can be dangerous and we have no idea what to do with the stuff thats left over after the reaction.

Why not store it underground in barrels, or in a underground warehouse. The crust of the earth is plenty large enough to hold it. The only problem I can come up with that is making so many and the fast that they would have to be big would cost alot of money.

[Rig]

There's a huge oil reserve under the arctic circle that's just BEGGING to be tapped. I wouldn't worry about peak oil for a century or two.

of course, we'll all be dead before it happens.

[FluffyBunnyMan]

At 8/24/07 10:17 PM, Planky wrote:

Exactly. It's a natural cylce thats happend hundreds of time through out the earths history.
The oil thing, yeah we're pretty fucked. But I can garuntee once oil prices get to point that people will flat out not be able to afford to fill up, someone will come out with an alternative that the oil companies can still make money of off. Synthetic oil or something like that.

Fuck, I bet they already have something like that they're just keeping it under wraps until it's needed. Kind've like the little conspiercy theory that we have already developed a cure for cancer it's just to cheap to be profitable.

Not saying I believe that theory.

Sorry for not responding earlier but I was banned for 5 hours.

As for synthetic oil...

"Coal can be used to make synthetic oil via a process known as gasification. Unfortunately, synthetic oil will be unable to do all that much to soften the coming energy crash for the following reasons:

I. Insufficiency of Supply/"Peak Coal":

The coal supply is not as great as many assume. According to a July 2004 article published by the American Institute of Physics:

If demand remains frozen at the current rate of
consumption, the coal reserve will indeed last roughly 250
years. That prediction assumes equal use of all grades of
coal, from anthracite to lignite. Population growth alone
reduces the calculated lifetime to some 90%u2212120 years. Any
new uses of coal would further reduce the supply. . . .The
use of coal for conversion to other fuels would quickly
reduce the lifetime of the US coal base to less than a human
lifespan.

Even a 50-75 year supply of coal is not as much as it sounds because coal production, like oil production, will peak long before the total supply is exhausted. Were we to liquefy a large portion of our coal endowment in order to produce synthetic oil, coal production would likely peak within 2 decades, if not sooner.

II. Falling "Energy Profit Ratio":

As John Gever explains in his book, Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in Coming Decades, the production of coal will be in energy-loser within a few decades:

. . . the energy profit ratio for coal slips to 20 in 1977,
comparable to that of domestic petroleum. While an energy
profit ratio of 20 means that only 5 percent of coal's gross
energy is needed to obtain it, the sharp decline since 1967 is
alarming. If it continues to drop at this rate, the energy
profit ratio of coal will slide to 0.5 by 2040.

In other words, with an EPR of .5, it will take twice as much energy to produce the coal than the coal actually contains. It will thus be of no use to us as an energy source.

III. Issue of Scale and Environmental Catastrophe:

The environmental consequences of a huge increase in coal production would be truly catastrophic. Caltech physics professor Dr. David Goodstein explains:

We use now about twice as much energy from oil as we do
from coal, so if you wanted to mine enough coal to replace
the missing oil, you'd have to mine it at a much higher rate,
not only to replace the oil, but also because the conversion
process to oil is extremely inefficient. You'd have to mine it
at levels at least five times beyond those we mine now-a
coal-mining industry on an absolutely unimaginable scale.

In his book, Out of Gas:The End of the Oil Age, Dr. Goodstein tells us that a large scale switch to coal could produce such severe global warming that life on planet Earth would cease to exist."

When oil gets to the price that people just flat out won't buy it. Economy in general will completely collapse, it doesn't matter if civilians don't buy it, modern society simply needs it to exist.

As for the conspiracy of the oil companies keeping their reserve oils under wraps to make more profit...

"If you want to know the truth about the future of oil, simply look at the actions of the oil industry. As a recent article in M.I.T.'s Technology Review points out:

If the actions - rather than the words - of the oil business's major players provide the best gauge of how they see the future, then ponder the following. Crude oil prices have doubled since 2001, but oil companies have increased their budgets for exploring new oil fields by only a small fraction. Likewise, U.S. refineries are working close to capacity, yet no new refinery has been constructed since 1976. And oil tankers are fully booked, but outdated ships are being decommissioned faster than new ones are being built.

Some people believe that no new refineries have been built due to the efforts of environmentalists. This belief is silly when one considers how much money and political influence the oil industry has compared to the environmental movement. You really think Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush were going to let a bunch of pesky environmentalists get in the way of oil refineries being built if the oil companies had wanted to build them?

The real reason no new refineries have been built for almost 30 years is simple: any oil company that wants to stay profitable isn't going to invest in new refineries when they know there is going to be less and less oil to refine.

In addition to lowering their investments in oil exploration and refinery expansion, oil companies have been merging as though the industry is living on borrowed time:

December 1998: BP and Amoco merge;
April 1999: BP-Amoco and Arco agree to merge;
December 1999: Exxon and Mobil merge;
October 2000: Chevron and Texaco agree to merge;
November 2001: Phillips and Conoco agree to merge;
September 2002: Shell acquires Penzoil-Quaker State;
February 2003: Frontier Oil and Holly agree to merge;
March 2004: Marathon acquires 40% of Ashland;
April 2004: Westport Resources acquires Kerr-McGee;
July 2004: Analysts suggest BP and Shell merge;
April 2005: Chevron-Texaco and Unocal merge;
June 2005: Royal Dutch and Shell merge;
July 2005: China begins trying to acquire Unocal
June 2006: Andarko proposes buying Kerr McGee
July 2007: BP-Shell "Mega Merger" rumored

While many people believe talk of a global oil shortage is simply a conspiracy by "Big Oil" to drive up the prices and create "artificial scarcity," the rash of mergers listed above tells a different story. Mergers and acquisitions are the corporate world's version of cannibalism. When any industry begins to contract/collapse, the larger and more powerful companies will cannibalize/seize the assets of the smaller, weaker companies.

If you suspect the oil companies are conspiring amongst themselves to create artificial scarcity and thereby artificially raise prices, ask yourself the following questions:

Question #1. Are the actions of the oil companies the
actions of friendly rivals who are conspiring amongst each
other to drive up prices and keep the petroleum game
going?

or

Question #2. Are the actions of the oil companies the
actions of rival corporate desperados who, fully aware that
their source of income is rapidly dwindling, are now preying
upon each other in a game of "last man standing"?

You don't have to contemplate too much, as recent disclosures from oil industry insiders indicate we are indeed "damn close to peaking" while independent industry analysts are now concluding that large oil companies believe Peak Oil is at our doorstep.

As the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently observed, even ExxonMobil is now "sounding the silent Peak Oil alarm." In their 2005 report entitled, "The Outlook for Energy", ExxonMobil suggests that increased demand be met first through greater fuel efficiency. The fact that ExxonMobil - one of the largest oil companies in the world - is now recommending increased fuel efficiency should tell you how imminent a crisis is at this point.

Equally alarming is the fact that Chevron has now started a surprisingly candid campaign to publicly address these issues. While the campaign fails to mention "Peak Oil" it does acknowledge that, while it took 125 years to burn through the first trillion barrels of oil, it will only take 30 years to burn through the next trillion.

[FluffyBunnyMan]

At 8/24/07 11:25 PM, da-pope wrote:

At 8/24/07 10:30 PM, He-Who-Never-Was wrote: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.h tml#c

Some people thought we were going to run out of Oil in 2000, we are no where near running out of crude oil, and by the time we do, we will more than likely have no use for it.

Yeah we still haven't even started drilling for oil at either of the Poles.
Why do you think that Russia is so crazy mad for Canada's artic? There's a ridiculous amount of untapped oil in them.

Plus once a well runs out of oil, you dig out the sand around it and extract even more oil from that.

The Antarctic oil reserves are probably a absolute last resort, most countries have promised not to go there and ruin it like we have ruined everything else. Even if we get that, it won't do anything but slow down Peak Oil for a couple years. We need 83.5 million barrels of oil a day, thats over 250 million barrels a month, just over 3 billion barrels a year. The "huge" oil field in the Gulf of Mexico is predicted to have 3-15 billion barrels. The most optimistic one of these the 15 billion barrel one would give us about another 3 years at most with our current oil demand growth. Then theres the fact that this oil field is almost 6 miles under the ocean. This should show how desperate the oil companies are getting for oil.

If there is so much oil in the world then why hasn't a single US oil refinery been built since 1976, yet all their current ones are working close to capacity. There may be oil in the world, lots of it remaing actually. but it is incredibly hard to get it, if you were a oil tycoon and were pulling a whole barrel of oil out of the ground in Iraq for a $1 would you rather continue doing what your doing till its all run out or spend billions of dollars aggressively pursuing alternative energy sources over the course of 20 years while no profit is made? They obviously wouldn't do that.

You may be thinking, then if oil is so scarce then they should just get it but sell it for a higher price, the laws of Supply and Demand state that if a commodity become this scarce, we simply sell it for a higher price as it is a more rarer commodity , but oil isn't just any commodity, its the stuff that all economic activity is based on so that wouldn't work, without it economies would collapse so fast you wouldn't know weather you were rich or broke.

But yea, lets say since we are desperate we try and get oil at any and all costs, we build a rig somewhere in the ocean, have a drill about 10 miles long and start drilling for oil through many more miles of earth, finally when we hit the oil field we start sucking it up but doing all that the cost a lot, so much in fact that no one in their right mind would attempt it simply because the profit-cost ration is just so off.

The thing that makes me angry about all of this is that we could save ourselves if we dedicated all our efforts into researching alternative energy sources but no, the only way the oil companies are even going to consider alternatives is when the price of a barrel of oil costs over $500/barrel and by the time everyone in the world is committed to saving ourselves it'll be too late.

[FluffyBunnyMan]

At 8/25/07 01:25 AM, RigAudio wrote: There's a huge oil reserve under the arctic circle that's just BEGGING to be tapped. I wouldn't worry about peak oil for a century or two.

of course, we'll all be dead before it happens.

In Saudi Arabia's it costs $2.50 to pull a barrel of oil from the ground. Thats because the country is just sitting onto of a gargantuan oil field. Now Antarctica may be sitting on top of a gargantuan oil field as well, but guess whats sitting between them? Miles and miles of ice and water, I'm have no idea what it would cost to pull a single barrel of oil through all that but I'm sure as hell certain its gonna cost more than $2.50...

[hongkongexpress]

Alberta has about 40 more years worth of oil (400, if you don't count India or China's car driving population increasing). There are billions and billions of dollars worth of projects being planned up North. However, Oil Sands is less profitable than drilling, and I believe, like Isreal's Oil Shale, (oil rocks). from what I read (don't quote me I'm not economic experct I'm just a dumb NGer), It's less profitiable to refine fuel from Bitmen (the "oil" that comes out of super washing tar sands). So there is plenty of "oil" however they'll be a bitch to get at.

With Alberta's oil sands, we have to strip mine the tar sands, then process them, both requiring great machinery, which uses oil (the HUGE HUGE trucks, like these trucks are fucking Huge! They're like the harvesters from Dune games, or those big trucks that transports the rockets). The other billions of barrels, are halfway around the world, like the operations in Vietnam, or Mexcio, or Dubai, and elsewhere so you need the oil tankers, again using oil.

It's not how much they can get out of the ground, but how much energy they have to expend to get it.

say if you have to use up 2 barrels worth of energy to just get at one. Then you've lost 2 barrels.

There is still abundant coal actually, World coal reserves (for the world 57 years, for America 200 years).

In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram (1 × 1015 kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining technology, approximately half of it being hard coal. The energy value of all the world's recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules,[28] which is expected to last 200 years.[citation needed] At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt,[29] there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57 years.

Automobiles are becoming more and more fuel efficent, so it would be reasonable for the cars of the future to be more fuel efficent, as well as heavy machinery. I saw a commercial by Hitachi and they're constructing a coal power plant, but using up to date efficent designs.

Anyways, back to Alberta's so called oil sands, although they provide billions of barrels worth, the bitmen is not usable until it's refined.

So it's not necessarily the running out of oil, but the running out of EASY to get to oil. Like with the Alaska drilling, there is need for a pipeline, and the Aborginals are being stubborn not to let some sectors of pipe go across their land. here's the catch 22, they want royalities from taxes, to pay for land claims and Treaty benifits, yet they deny the Canadian government the means to give them Treaty benifits (ie money goes to the Band, the band distrubutes to the people, aka keeps it for themselves). Like also the aborginals can open more casinos up north, as the unemployed Newfies and what not, cross into Northern Alberta, or Alaska, ect looking for work. Anyways, who knows. I'm headed to France where there is almost an energy independence.

I really don't want to be around, when Alberta runs out of drill wells (and they won't not for a very long time, as the Albertan government has put a cap on over production). because the easy money will be gone! the housing bubble will pop, and all these arrogant trades people who give me the finger often. Will be out of a job, as they're mostly in the carpenter field. It will be beautiful!

[trigger73]

Ok so that's another problem for our generation to worry about.
Global warming, running out of materials required for most of technology and Overpopulation wasn't enought problems it seems...

[da-pope]

At 8/25/07 07:06 AM, trigger73 wrote: Ok so that's another problem for our generation to worry about.
Global warming, running out of materials required for most of technology and Overpopulation wasn't enought problems it seems...

- The severity of Global Warming is very debatable.
- The only thing that we are heavily dependent on right now is oil.
- Overpopulation isn't even close to being an issue in the west. Especially once all the baby boomers bite the dust.

There will always be some group preaching that something we are doing is going to kill us all and every generation seems to have these threats. Our parents had the fear of being blown to shit during the cold war. Our grandparents had to worry about being blown up or ridiculed and murdered for believing something. There parents had to live through severe famine and drought.

There's always going to be problems that fuck everyone over. In reality we have it pretty easy as we won't live to see any of these threats actually come to forewishing. Our kids and there kids are the ones who are fucked over.