Princeton University geologist Ken Deffeyes predicted that global oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. In 2005, daily global oil production averaged 85 million barrels per day. Daily petroleum liquids production in July was 96 million barrels per day.
For the past six months global oil prices have been falling steeply. Today West Texas Intermediate was selling for $43.20 per barrel. That means the price per barrel is just over $31 in inflation adjusted 2000 dollars. CNBC cite analysts who project that the price will fall further into the $30s per barrel range soon. Should the price fall to $30 dollars, that would be about $22 per barrel in 2000 dollars. That would be nearly back to what the price was 15 years ago.
NYMEX
dissident on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 4:55 pm
This is why coverage of science is crap. We have morons such as Ronald Bailey trying to infer reserves and field depletion based on oil price trends under the assumption that key parts of the global economy are not in a recession.
Any publication or group giving itself pretentious titles such as “Reason” is automatically suspect.
Plantagenet on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 5:01 pm
I meet Ken Deffeyes when we brought him to speak in Alaska in 2005. He made his famous prediction of peak oil in 2005. He’s not a con man—- just a guy who got it wrong
apneaman on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 5:04 pm
Ronald Bailey
“Ronald Bailey (born November 23, 1953) is an American libertarian science writer…”
“The Greenpeace project, “exxonsecrets.org” identifies the Reason Foundation, the CEI (where Bailey is an adjunct fellow) and the Cato Institute (where he is an adjunct scholar) as receiving funding from the U.S. Petroleum industry.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Bailey
I wasn’t aware there was such a thing as partisan science. Does gravity work different for them?
apneaman on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 5:07 pm
Why is it that libertarians are the ugliest looking apes around?
HARM on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 5:23 pm
Wow, does this mean that oil is no longer a finite resource? Have the laws of thermodynamics been officially repealed?
Cool, so when can we start drilling into the earth’s mantle for sweet abiotic nectar? And where’s that perpetual motion machine I’ve always wanted?
tahoe1780 on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 5:45 pm
“petroleum liquids production” now includes condensates from natural gas production and lots and lots of propane and butane (NGLs) – its all in the definition. Deffeyes was talking the old definition – crude oil.
Westexasfanclub on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 7:19 pm
Exactly. I think he just failed to predict the (probably very temporary) upkick in unconventional production. Conventional oil seems to have peaked in 2005. though it might not have been thanksgiving day.
Newfie on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 7:24 pm
Conventional crude oil production did peak in 2005, did it not ? (IEA)
theedrich on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 7:27 pm
Interesting that Bailey seems unable to distinguish between a deceptive blip in a pan and a long-term, slow-motion collapse caused by increasing global poverty. He’s probably a student of classical economics who regards depletion and political fakery as “externalities” that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the true costs of conventional oil and its extraction.
redpill on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 7:36 pm
Ah, the author of the 1994 “non-fiction” book “Ecoscam”. Available used on Amazon for $0.01. If you want a new copy, the price goes up to $0.24.
Westexasfanclub on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 7:42 pm
How much energy does that book contain for the money? Not that I’m in favour of burning books…
BobInget on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 10:09 pm
Slavery was outlawed in most countries in the 19th Century. Yet, in a single gallon of diesel —
apneaman on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 11:00 pm
“Ronald Bailey is a science correspondent at Reason magazine”
I’m the Doom correspondent at peakoil.com
Europe Heat Wave Sets All-Time Record in Germany, Again; Prompts Poland Power Cuts
“An extended heat wave is smashing all-time records in parts of Europe for the second time this summer, and may remain in place into the weekend.
Triple-digit heat prompted Poland’s national supplier to cut electricity to factories for several hours Monday. The combination of this extended heat plus dry weather has left rivers used to cool Poland’s power plants running low.”
http://www.weather.com/news/climate/news/europe-heat-wave-poland-germany-czech-august-2015
Roman on Wed, 12th Aug 2015 11:59 pm
Yeah “peak oilers” why are you informing these numskulls. The less sheep prepare the better preppers will fare. I hope that most of the sheep are addicted to drugs, pain and antidepressant pills by the time oil peaks. Like fish in a barrel.
apneaman on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 12:27 am
Oil patch battles double whammy: falling price and weakening demand
“Western Canadian producers are being hit by a double whammy that has driven the price they receive for their heavy crude below $30 (Canadian) a barrel, a low not seen since the recession of 2008-09.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/us-business/oil-steadies-as-bullish-iea-balances-chinese-yuan-slide/article25937109/
MSN Fanboy on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 6:10 am
Roman understands
Magenta Bernoulli on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 6:46 am
It is interesting how peak oilers rigorously adhere to their dogma in spite of the fact that events have panned out in exactly the opposite manner than they predicted.
The get out of the peak oil pseudo-scientific rut, I advise reading Part III of Daniel Kahneman’s classic book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” This chapter covers “Overconfidence,” including “The Illusion of Validity,” and describes how those who think they know something just dig in their heels when their predictions fail.
It describes the post-peak-oil movement to a T, without even mentioning peak oil.
rockman on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 6:53 am
But lets be fair: many needlessly brought on such criticism by focusing on the relatively unimportant date of global PO instead of keying in on the dynamics of dealing with a finite and depleting resource. $trillions have been pissed and many thousands have died in “oil wars”. And it continues today and into the foreseeable future. That’s a tad more important then some f*cking date IMHO. LOL.
Davy on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 8:03 am
Rome said “The less sheep prepare the better preppers will fare.” Catchy phrase Roman! Well, I am Doomer Davy the board dude doomer. My opine is locally I want as many preppers as I can possibly have. I want my nearest community with likeminded individuals. I want that community smallish. I want the nearest large city 2 hour or more drive away. I want no very large cities within 5 hours. What’s in your wallet?
Rome, you bring up a good point of die off and live on. Of course even the best made plans can come to naught. In a general sense those areas with manageable carrying capacities will survive all things equal. That is a no-brainer. Very few areas are not in some kind of fossil fuel induced overshoot.
We have overpopulation. Overpopulation is overpopulation is overpopulation. All there is for overpopulation is a rebalancing die off once complexity decays and energy intensity drops. You have overpopulation from having a living arrangement dependent on overconsumption. Then you have aggregate overpopulation in consumption overshoot. You have geographic overshoot. Think of how many large cities are located in inhospitable areas with fossil fuel needs for climate control systems, water supplies, and food supplies. You have the human nature element of overpopulation with hostile ethnic and cultural divides. In a population balanced situation where conflict would be disadvantageous these groups would remain peaceful. In an overshoot arrangement wars are inevitable. We are always looking for a scape goat for our misfortunes.
We may have a bottleneck coming. We may just have a population rebalance. The difference is degree and duration. If we can get to 1Bil in a generation without ugly die offs then that will be good. I doubt we can avoid some ugly die offs but maybe we can avoid apocalyptic die offs. People must die off by the nature of this arrangement. We must have excess deaths over births. We don’t have to have a bottleneck. This is where prepping comes in. This is where adjustment and mitigation policies are so important. No amount of prepping is going to give you the status quo unless your status quo is already less with and understanding of a future of less.
We are still in the status quo’s grip. Cornucopians still have the visible momentum. Dig deeper and you see a bumpy descent. Dig deeper and you see abandonment, dysfunctions, and the irrational creeping into all our living arrangements. We see this as vital resources deplete, population continues to grow, and the ecosystem degrades.
We see this decay with little if any adjustment and mitigation policies from the global leadership. Our global leadership is all in on the status quo of growth. This is probably because anything else will be an acknowledgement of an end to the status quo. An acknowledgment of descent will likely bring on the end of status quo through disruption. Our current system is irreversible and self-organizing which means unmanageable in a degrowth arrangement. Disruption brings on decay in a vicious cycle down the gradient of descent.
At some level we should be making some kind of arrangements. Most societies have a narrative of survival. None I know are cavalier and call for “live for the moment”. Some are less serious than others. Latins like to enjoy life more than others maybe. I believe we should live in the moment for our sanity but the future must come into play somewhere or life will be short. Some in the population are cavaliers. Most are not and find no meaning in it. We have to create meaning in the population in regards to descent. We have to educate for a descent. We have to stockpile tools and skills for a descent. We don’t have to pull the trigger and go into descent but we should have our backpack packed thoughtfully for the journey ahead.
joe on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 8:04 am
Date and time prediction of easy oil output has more or less been correct. Easy oil is peaking, supply margins are becoming increasingly thinner and strategic reserves are becoming important, that is, government makes a killing every time it tops up the reserve cheap, then sells high.
China is beginning to free fall and only Greek style banking is saving them. Cutting the yuan was smart, will reboot the world workshop but will ruin the Euro and prevent the fed from increasing rates. This good news for consumers except that wages are not rising in Europe so how will the Germans compete against the yuan without cutting workforce, if China stops supporting the yuan and thus the world economy.
Just seems like basic economic truths are stifling those who would bring back the reign of lehman, maddoff, enron, haliburton and housing bubbles mixed with exotic forms of debt.
Oil is merely an expression of the economy, let’s look at its history, the Saudi jihadists attacked the US on 9/11 then the US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, then by a curious chance oil prices spiked, forcing the Bush administration to deregulate the banking sector to pump money into the system while also delivering unprecedented tax cuts and cutting interest rates, then guess what? Disaster, people can repay such vast debt and the bottom falls out of the market, thus oil prices drop due to low demand and the Saudi attack on America ends in failure as they find themselves out flanked by a new US/Iranian détente.
So make hay while the sun shine, remove the tyrant in Libya and Egypt. Huge mistake, they popped the cork that was the African champagne bottle. Out flows the unstoppable fizz of humans yearning for socialism and free wifi hotpots in the cafes of the great capitals of now weak Capital cities. Europe is most likely assume the demographics of a large minority (heading to majority) muslim society in the next 50 years. Already in western Europe most people who worship god on a regular basis do so facing mecca, and alcohol consumption is decreasing in the capital of the global money market.
Oil is changing everything, it’s low cost is delivering an unexpected world, one where we must dance to the tune of the piper, or bomb him with stealth aircraft and drones.
ghung on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 8:50 am
Magenta Bernoulli, above, can’t admit that his/her post is simply the other side of the peak oil coin. Ignoring that oil IS a finite resource, and that the current oil oversupply (at or near all time peak production) is an artefact of peak oil dynamics. Yeast produce at their highest rate just before their numbers crash, and the recent all-out frenzy to produce tight oil isn’t much different; reeks of desperation, sort of like the marathon runner desperate to cross the finish line before he collapses, dead in the road.
Some folks conveniently skip over the part where much of this surge in production wasn’t economical; financially or energetically, and that this, above all, signals peak utility of liquid hydrocarbons to industrial civilization. More than anything, perhaps, a barrel of oil will resist true price discovery, until it can’t. Civilization’s addiction to the stuff will ensure that is the case. Where will folks like Magenta Bernoulli be then? Fucked, like the rest of us. Meanwhile, ongoing more-than-adequate supply will ensure that peak oil coincides with peak everything else. The down-slope gets steeper, day by day.
ghung on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 8:54 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSAeyAV85UM
peakyeast on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 11:17 am
They forget there is a big difference btw. BO and BOE. And that the accounting of BOE is at best a case of willfull misdirection.
Robert Spoley on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 12:29 pm
Time, time, time! That is all peak anything is about. If any resource is being used up faster than it is being re-created, it will run out on any number of planes at some point in time. Prior to the advent of the decline in availability, usage/production of the resource will “peak” and then decline. It will not be a smooth non-bumpy decline. That does not indicate that the decline is over forever. All peaks come and go, just like buggy whips.
BC on Thu, 13th Aug 2015 12:44 pm
Beating a rotting horse carcass for fun, Peak Oil is history, i.e., it is 10-11 years behind us PER CAPITA in the rear view mirror. Peak Oil “happened” (past tense).
US oil production PER CAPITA is down 45% since 1970 and will decline 50% by no later than the early 2020s. Get that, ladies and gents.
World oil production PER CAPITA is no higher than in 2004-05 (when Deffeyes made his prediction), and C+C is not much higher than the peak in 2000-01.
Thus, the world is where the US was in the late 1970s at the onset of deindustrialization and financialization that has resulted in unprecedented debt to wages and GDP, creating a permanent constraint on growth of real GDP per capita hereafter.
Again, “Peak Oil is history”. We are 10-11 years past the onset of LTG and into the post-Peak Oil epoch, but most of us don’t know it because we don’t understand Peak Oil.
Big sigh.
gdubya on Fri, 14th Aug 2015 12:13 am
“In 2005, daily global oil production averaged 85 million barrels per day. Daily petroleum liquids production in July was 96 million barrels per day.”
He worded this very carefully to be both accurate and misleading. Either he is clueless or he is totally aware of the situation and intentionally lying with statistics.
ennui2 on Fri, 14th Aug 2015 1:08 pm
‘Some folks conveniently skip over the part where much of this surge in production wasn’t economical; financially or energetically, and that this, above all, signals peak utility of liquid hydrocarbons to industrial civilization.’
No mutant zombie bikers = peak-oilers have egg on their face.
This isn’t the doom it was advertised to be. There’s no way to spin that away.
Apneaman on Fri, 14th Aug 2015 1:36 pm
“shut up forever”
“This isn’t the doom it was advertised to be. There’s no way to spin that away.”
More strawman bullshit. As if there was some official agreed upon day that every single flavor of peaker 100% agreed upon and now that it hasn’t, peaks in general and depletion no longer exist and it’s 1955 again and always will be. More tard pretzel logic just like it’s snowing so global warming is not real. Same as comparing Hollywood and religious Doomsday scenarios to warnings from the scientific community.
I don’t recall Hubbert mentioning the word doom.