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Page added on June 12, 2010
More Failure for Peak Oilers & Energy Dreamers
Despite the sharp decline in production and demand, the industry’s boom cycle investments in the search for more oil continue to pay off. Global oil reserves remained steady after a significant jump in 2008.
The reserve growth is more significant for the long period that consumption has exceeded production. In other words, the industry has been able to add reserves faster than the annual shortfall in production. As a result, and thanks to the decline in demand, global oil reserves have risen to their highest level in three decades. The world has 17 years of oil on tap without another drop being discovered.
Peak oil proponents, most especially Matt Simmons, will hold their ground about production having peaked. However, the peak oil doom and gloom has been wrong at every major inflection. The prior decade was notable for the widespread propagation of peak oil predictions which culminated in some consumers becoming so convinced of an imminent collapse that they tried to live “off grid”. And their fears of imminent catastrophe were stoked with alarmist claims about collapse in production of oil and gas.
Even gas reserves have recovered and reverted to the long run average around 62 years. Coal remains robust with more than a century of reserves in hand at the end of 2009.
There is similar disappointment in the dreamer camp.
Total combined installed renewable power capacity amounts to a pathetic 1.5% of the global aggregate. That is despite decades of subsidies and investments driven by policy makers rather than realists.
8 Comments on "More Failure for Peak Oilers & Energy Dreamers"
SilentRunning on Sat, 12th Jun 2010 7:56 am
Yes – given the wealth of *ahem* accurate, scientific information that BP has come out with since the accident in the gulf – they have shown themselves to be an impeccable source of data for all thing petroleum related.
IS THERE ANY WAY that a forum could be setup here for “Peak Oil Deniers”? Whenever somebody posts a news item like this that obviously comes from industry shills, then it could be moved to the “denier” forum for analysis. Otherwise, PO.com ends up looking schizophrenic.
DC on Sat, 12th Jun 2010 9:14 am
Actually, policy makers have continued to favor the massive expansion\subsidy of the dirty fossil-fuel system over these last decades as well. Considering the interferance from the dirty fuel cinterests, we should count ourselves fortunate we have what do. For every dollar invested in renewable energy, we can be certain it is completely dwarfed by the subdies and misguided investements handed over to fossil-fuels. If policy truely were being set by “realists”, we would have shut down the coal and gas plants years ago…
nano on Sat, 12th Jun 2010 9:23 am
I have no problem with this piece of news. It has a usefull graph. It has some commentry. No problem.
James on Sat, 12th Jun 2010 10:37 am
Oil reserves are the quantities of crude oil estimated to be commercially recoverable by application of development projects to known accumulations from a given date forward under defined conditions.[1] To qualify as a reserve, they must be discovered, commercially recoverable, and still remaining. Reserves are further categorized by the level of certainty associated with the estimates.[1] This is contrasted with contingent resources, which are those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially recoverable from known accumulations, but the applied project(s) are not yet considered mature enough for commercial development because of one or more contingencies.[1]
The total estimated amount of oil in an oil reservoir, including both producible and non-producible oil, is called oil in place. However, because of reservoir characteristics and limitations in petroleum extraction technologies, only a fraction of this oil can be brought to the surface, and it is only this producible fraction that is considered to be reserves. The ratio of producible oil reserves to total oil in place for a given field is often referred to as the recovery factor. Recovery factors vary greatly among oil fields. The recovery factor of any particular field may change over time based on operating history and in response to changes in technology and economics. The recovery factor may also rise over time if additional investment is made in enhanced oil recovery techniques such as gas injection, water-flooding[2], or microbial enhanced oil recovery.
Because the geology of the subsurface cannot be examined directly, indirect techniques must be used to estimate the size and recoverability of the resource. While new technologies have increased the accuracy of these techniques, significant uncertainties still remain. In general, most early estimates of the reserves of an oil field are conservative and tend to grow with time. This phenomenon is called reserves growth.[3]
Many oil producing nations do not reveal their reservoir engineering field data, and instead provide unaudited claims for their oil reserves. The numbers disclosed by some national governments are suspected of being manipulated for political reasons. So, even if they find new reserves, which is highly unlikely since all of the Earth has been cataloged for sources of oil, the well still has to be proven and rendered capable of producing. If you will note, most wells do not give most of the oil that they contain.
MikeRINO on Sat, 12th Jun 2010 11:11 am
With all due respect,
where’s your plot of Chinese and World Population Growth.
Where’s your plot of Chinese and India demand growth.
Where’s your projection of oil consumption after this “little correction” is over?
What are we in second grade here?
Jerry McManus on Sun, 13th Jun 2010 1:54 am
In the thirty year span of the graph the world has consumed roughly 750 billion barrels of oil, assuming an average global consumption of 25 billion barrels per year.
That is three quarters of a trillion barrels depleted from the energy trust fund stored in the Earth’s crust that will not be replaced anytime soon, perhaps sometime in the next few million years, if we are lucky.
The graph shows us that with heroic and hugely expensive effort those 750 billion barrels were accounted for, either with new discoveries or with new estimates of existing fields. How reliable those estimates are remains to be seen.
How difficult and expensive it will be to extract the next 750 billion barrels also remains to be seen, but if the Deepwater Horizon is any example it won’t be cheap or easy, if we can afford it at all. Either way, they better get crackin’ because demand ain’t slackin’.
It’s also worthy of mention that, in those 30 years, the wealth of trust-fund energy extracted from the Earth has enabled the human population to almost double, bringing with it all of the associated demands on other irreplaceable resources, as well as the devastation of vast swaths of forests and fisheries.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the burning of those 750 billion barrels of oil has contributed to an increase in the concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere to levels not seen in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. Levels most certainly not seen since well before this little 10 thousand year blip of temperate, agriculture friendly climate enjoyed be so-called “modern” humans.
So, yes, do let us sing the praises of wealth and abundance, of technology and human ingenuity. After all, the alternatives of war, famine, pestilence, and death are unthinkable. Are they not?
GP on Sun, 13th Jun 2010 2:06 am
Even the US military has admitted they expect supply to equal demand by 2012 & supply to be have a deficit of 10m BPD by 2015. We need to be transitioning to a combination of energy sources before then (wind, solar, nuclear, etc)if we are to make a smooth transition. OPEC reserve figures are suspect. Read “Twilight in the Desert”. Who would have thought that Mexico production was have had such a rapid decline as they are now having.
SilentRunning on Sun, 13th Jun 2010 6:56 am
Who can trust those left-wingnut communists in the Defense Department? The true patriots are the unselfish heroes at Big Oil corporations like BP, who would never lie to us. Would they? Why would they lie to us? They clearly have our best interests at heart.
The Peak Oil Deniers just have to let the Magic of the Market(TM) create several new Saudi Arabias and other “unidentified projects” out of thin air – and do it like – instantly – and they can show us what fools we were for believing in Peak Oil or any other bio-physical limits to infinite growth.