Peak Oil is You
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Page added on November 5, 2016
Could oil demand peak before oil supplies?
According to some industry analysts, “peak oil” could actually be just around the corner. Not peak oil as it has been predicts for decades – a steadily increasing demand and a dwindling supply – but just the opposite. Royal Dutch Shell now believes that abundant supplies will outpace demand.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the world’s second-biggest energy company by market value, thinks demand for oil could peak in as little as five years, a rare statement in an industry that commonly forecasts decades of growth,” Bloomberg reports. “Shell’s view puts it at odds with some of its biggest competitors. Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest publicly traded oil company, said in its annual outlook that ‘global demand for oil and other liquids is projected to rise by about 20 percent from 2014 to 2040.’ Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer, with enough reserves to last it 70 years, has said demand will continue to grow, boosted by consumption in emerging markets.”
But Shell is looking at some disruptive factors, including renewable energy sources and electric cars and trains. And the company could be right.
What’s clear is that the other peak oil – diminishing supplies and increasing demand – hasn’t happened.
Writing for Realclearpolitics.com last month, Bill Murray and Carl Cannon reported an interesting fact: It’s 2016, and peak oil hasn’t peaked.
“In 1957, Tulsa celebrated Oklahoma’s golden anniversary of statehood by placing in a concrete vault under the county courthouse a host of mid-20th century artifacts, including a 16mm movie, a six-pack of Schlitz better, and a woman’s purse with bobby pins, lipstick, and a pack of cigarettes that retailed for 50 cents a pack,” they wrote. “It was all to be unearthed in another 50 years, so the organizers included a commodity they figured might not be around in 2007: five quarts of motor oil and 10 gallons of gasoline.”
They based that selection on peak oil theory – a nearly religious tenet of the environmental movement.
“It became an underlying basis for everything from Jimmy Carter’s admonition to turn down the nation’s thermostats, the enactment of 55-mile-per-hour speed limits, and federal mandates on gasoline standards for cars and trucks,” Murray and Cannon wrote. “Today, the question is how policymakers should react when the conventional wisdom is proven so spectacularly wrong, as is the case here.”
How wrong were they?
“The theory itself was promulgated and then popularized by M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil Co. geologist who predicted in a 1956 scientific paper that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s at 10 million barrels a day – and then begin a long inexorable decline,” they write. “But an unexpected development occurred in the 21st century, a century that the naysayers had said would be one with scarce crude oil resources: The supply instead exploded.”
We now produce 97 million barrels of oil per day.
The Obama administration is a true believer however. In a speech in 2011, President Obama declared, “we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.”
Wel, of course we can. And we are.
19 Comments on "Could oil demand peak before oil supplies?"
Boat on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 11:43 am
Over 22 million new vehicles every new year. This is what drives new oil demand. 5 years isn’t enough time for plugins to scale up. 2030 seems like a more realistic guess.
Davy on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 12:52 pm
The elephant in the room is demand destruction. It is seldom spoken about by status quo’ers but it is the real reason for peak demand. Technology and efficiency are a small part of it that these folks want to inflate to the reason for it. Peak oil dynamics is part of this demand destruction and peaking of demand. All of this is very simple that is unless you are in existential denial to macro decline.
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 12:57 pm
What a scam. Repackaging peak oil
depletion into ‘demand has peaked’.
Yeah right. So oil consumption went down
because nobody wants oil anymore.
That kind of word manipulation, is as sick as
Hillary calling illegal aliens the
‘undocumented immigrants’.
Also known as ‘undocumented democrats’.
Vote Trump. Burn it all down, man.
Apneaman on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 1:02 pm
A call to arms from the techno prophet. LMAO
Elon Musk thinks we need a ‘popular uprising’ against the fossil fuel industry
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-popular-uprising-climate-change-fossil-fuels-2016-11
peakyeast on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 2:10 pm
““The theory itself was promulgated and then popularized by M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil Co. geologist who predicted in a 1956 scientific paper that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s at 10 million barrels a day – and then begin a long inexorable decline,” they write. “But an unexpected development occurred in the 21st century, a century that the naysayers had said would be one with scarce crude oil resources: The supply instead exploded.””
and
“We now produce 97 million barrels of oil per day.”
Well… If you think the US produces 97 mbpd (and btw meaning real conventional oil and not mboe) then you shouldnt be writing about who is right and wrong.
tahoe1780 on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 2:49 pm
“We now produce 97 million barrels of oil per day.” NET, not so much. And Peaky’s mboe comment well taken.
onlooker on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 3:47 pm
Well if and when the energy needed to attain a certain amount of energy is greater than the attained energy then certainly demand should plummet and disappear even though supplies still exist. So even before demand destruction could be outpacing supply depletion
Boat on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 4:01 pm
The world may have set a new oil peak in production in October. If not, very close.
bahamased on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 5:11 pm
Peak Oil Demand = People no longer able to afford products made from oil.
GregT on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 5:37 pm
“The world may have set a new oil peak in production in October. If not, very close.”
In barrels perhaps, but not in energy available to our economies, and not in energy available per capita.
jjhman on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 6:54 pm
What kind of an idiot thinks cigarettes cost 50 cents in 1957? More like 15 cents. When I started smoking, in about 1959, if you bought a pack of Luckies in a machine it cost two dimes and there were two pennies in the cellophane.
It sorta makes the rest of the story unbelievable too.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 8:12 pm
Go to mazma
http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/
From the dropdown menu select oil. Then look at China and look at India. The black line is consumption. Consumption is the portion of demand that is met. Perhaps they want more but can’t have it. They certainly don’t want less.
You can also select World from the dropdown menu.
Demand isn’t going anywhere but up. More and more people wanting more and more stuff. Peak demand is red herring thrown around by industry pundits to distract from the impending collapse. Most people are idiots. Especially American. If any mouth breathing knuckle draggers hear about peak oil and start getting worried they’ll soon run across a peak demand story and just go back to eating cheesies and watching Hogans Hero’s reruns. It’s called propaganda.
http://metanoia-films.org/the-power-principle/
Outcast_Searcher on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 8:30 pm
It probably depends on how quickly EV’s (both BEV’s and PHEV’s) are adopted.
Lots of people have strong opinions about that, but they’re just guesses.
The doomers often like to pretend like EV miles can’t happen, even as car models providing those for the middle class (especially PHEV’s) multiply — from quite a few automakers.
The greens like to pretend that physics doesn’t matter and that some how, magically, all oil will be redundant in just a few years, or perhaps a decade.
Neither view seems to embrace the available data, and trying to predict that unknown future, including the economics, accurately — is impossible.
Since every year we don’t have a big global economic downturn, oil demand increases, given the huge supplies technology are making possible, surely demand will continue to increase until EV miles make SIGNIFICANT penetration into the global pool for cars.
I would project (and yes, it’s a guess, but at least I’m looking at trends and data) that it will take between a decade and two to hit that point. (Barring a big carbon tax, which I don’t see the vast majority of politicians (or their constituents) having the courage or foresight to embrace).
makati1 on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 8:37 pm
Outcast, do you have a huge financial investment in EVs? That can only be the excuse for your blindness to reality. If you do, I suggest your dump it now and buy some good farmland well away from any city.
EVs are NEVER going to be even a high SINGLE digit percentage of vehicles. And eventually even those will be decomposing along the highways that have turned to rubble and holes, or in driveways of vacant, rotting homes.
Financial systems are the major deciders of the future, not oil or tech. Think about it.
makati1 on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 8:52 pm
Outcast:
“Tesla, ‘World’s Safest Car,’ Explodes Like a Bomb”
“The end of the great industrial power: France’s car production halved”
“U.S. auto sales drop 6 percent despite discounts, GM off 1.7 percent”
And on and on…
“How Much Time do we have Before the Next Economic Crisis?”
Did you see that last one? LMAO
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 12:11 am
EVs is just another magical thinking fantasy circle jerk. There’s plenty of data. The EV enthusiasts would do well to read it and get tuned into the real world. I’m not justifying it. I’m just explaining it to you.
http://energypost.eu/can-battery-electrics-disrupt-internal-combustion-engine-part-1/
tita on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:03 am
Peak oil or peak demand is the exact same problem. It’s the volume producers are able to provide for the price consumers are able to pay. Nothing else.
yoshua on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:48 am
The net energy in a barrel determines the goods and services that can be produced. The usd value is an expression of the goods and services that can be produced. As the net energy in a barrel declines so does the usd value.
mx on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 8:39 am
Can anyone compete with $10 per barrel Russian oil. What you might see, even as we transition to better cars with electric motors, is a price war as OPEC and the US get wiped out with cheap Russian oil.
Remember Russia devalued it’s currency. Their internal costs to produce are now much lower.