Peak Oil is You
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Page added on October 19, 2011
Peak Oil, Entirely Nonsense,Technology will save us
One of the things that really rather annoys me about the peak oil (and in the UK, there’s a similar one about peak gas) argument is that it entirely ignores the impact of changing technology. The point is indirectly made here at The Guardian:
The Earth’s crust is riddled with fossil fuels. The issue is not whether there is a shortage of the stuff, but the costs of getting it out. Until recently, the sheer abundance of low-cost conventional oil in places like the Middle East has limited the incentives to find more, and in particular to go after unconventional sources. But technical change has been driven by necessity – and the revolution in shale gas (and now shale oil, too) has already been transformational in the US, one of the world’s biggest energy markets.
And to make the point more directly. Once we invent a new technology to extract oil or gas (or indeed any other mineral you might like to think of) this does not mean that we’ve just found that one new field that we’ve developed the new technology to extract oil or gas from. It means that we’ve just created a whole new Earth, an entire new planet that we can prospect for similar deposits that can be exploited with the new technology.
To take a few examples, BP’s Macondo well was the first to drill down to 5,000 feet below the sea bed. Previously we had only been drilling perhaps a couple of thousand feet below the sea bed. Now it is true that that particular well didn’t work out so well (sorry) but the basic point still stands: that we now have the entire planet to prospect again at 5,000 feet down, not just the 2,000 feet down that the previous technology afforded, to see how much oil there is.
The Bakken Shale in North Dakota. This has propelled the State into the number three oil producing State in the nation. But now that we’ve found the technology to get oil from oil shales this does not mean that we’ve only found the Bakken Shale. This means that we want to scour the entire planet for other oil shales that can be exploited using the same technology.
The Marcellus Shale, the technologies developed to exploit that gas shale: this does not mean that we’ve only got the gas from the Marcellus Shale. It means that we’ve now got the whole Earth o explore again for shales that we can exploit using that same fracking technology. As Cuadrilla Resources has just found out in Lancashire. As most people don’t know as yet, British Gas had explored that very same shale some 20 years ago. They knew the shale was down there, there was just no way of extracting the gas at that point. Now there is and there are other fields in Poland, China and so on as well.
In fact, what seems to be becoming a consensus among some geologists is that shales are abundant (oil shales come from terrestrial plants, gas from marine) and what we’ve been thinking of for a century or two as oil or gas deposits are just those few places where geology has done the fracking and collection for us already. Now that we’ve developed fracking, to do what geology hasn’t done in the far more numerous shales, there just really isn’t any long term, long term meaning century or more, shortage of oil and or gas.
This does pose other problems to do with atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions and climate change but that’s a very different argument. What shale has really done is destroy the whole Peak Oil, and peak gas, argument.
13 Comments on "Peak Oil, Entirely Nonsense,Technology will save us"
DC on Wed, 19th Oct 2011 10:00 pm
Worst article
Ever
Really
Windmills on Wed, 19th Oct 2011 11:07 pm
Indeed, this article is entirely nonsense. The only way to “destroy the whole Peak Oil, and peak gas, argument” is to declare your belief in an infinite Earth with infinite amounts of natural resources.
C. Paul Davis on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 4:55 am
You and Daniel Yergin must be smoking from the same pipe. Utter nonsense.
Mike Byron on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 6:20 am
This is batshit! What is ommitted from this analysis is the concept ot EROI, which is an acronem for Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Drilling at say, 5,000 feet requires the investmet of more energy to obtain oil than does drilling at, say, 2,000 feet. Thus the net energy return from 5K drilling is necessarily less that that from 2K drilling. These fools need to learn bout the laws of thermodynamics. Unless they haeve the technology to override the laws of thermodynamics, they (the views espoused in this article) are simply batshit crazy. Ignore this BS.
Mike Byron on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 6:21 am
This is batshit! What is omitted from this analysis is the concept ot EROI, which is an acronym for Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Drilling at say, 5,000 feet requires the investment of more energy to obtain oil than does drilling at, say, 2,000 feet. Thus the net energy return from 5K drilling is necessarily less than that from 2K drilling. These fools need to learn about the laws of thermodynamics. Unless they have the technology to override the laws of thermodynamics, they (the views espoused in this article) are simply batshit crazy. Ignore this BS.
jaki on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 6:41 am
in your fu#@*^g dream !
Grover Lembeck on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 6:43 am
Right on, Englishman! Sacrifice the groundwater for fossil fuels!
We can get another 100 years of awesome lifestyle out of this energy, since these rigs are so cheap and the wells just keep flowing for decades!
Oh, wait….
Btritt on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 7:43 am
What a waste of space…
Using his logic, if we run low on iron ores all we have to do is tap the Earth’s core that is mostly iron. The fact that it is about 1,000 miles below the surface and several thousand degrees in temperature, will be ‘solved by technology”. BS!
Yes, the Earth is riddled with oil and gas, BUT…we also have to obey a certain other FACT…EROEI..or energy return on energy invested. So far, the only oil and gas we have found recently, require ever closer ratios approaching 1:1. Long before it gets to that point, the wells will shut down and the Age of Petroleum will be over. Billions, maybe trillions of barrels will still be in the Earth, and there they will stay.
Jerry McManus on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 6:14 pm
Fossil fuels are like buried treasure, except the more of it you spend the faster you have to dig, and the faster you dig the more it costs for buckets and shovels.
Bob Owens on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 6:54 pm
This is an alluring argument that almost makes me believe in the Tooth Fairy. Hide a little new technology under your pillow and you will have an oil gusher in your back yard the next morning. Sorry to say it doesn’t work that way. The whole world has been examined looking for oil and most of the world is barren; all good fields have been found. Only a few dregs are left in some of the most God-awful spots one can imagine; under salt domes in 5000 feet of water off the Falkland Islands; Drilling off Antarctica. Or we can frack oil shale to get a few gallons while contaminating our underground water, lakes and streams that we will need to grow FOOD! Why not just do some real conservation projects? Put all our out-of-work construction workers to work insulating all buildings in the US in return for unemployment checks? Or reduce the speed limit to 55 on all our highways? Wake up World! Stop being stupid.
WhenTheEagleFlies on Thu, 20th Oct 2011 7:33 pm
When it comes to S&T, Forbes is on the level of a tabloid.
hehe on Fri, 21st Oct 2011 4:38 am
…it hurts to know that nobody will ever hurt him…
Kenz300 on Fri, 21st Oct 2011 5:13 pm
Consider the source. Forbes, FAUX NOISE, the WSJ have all turned into infomercials for the oil, coal and gas companies. Independent media has turned into agenda driven propaganda. Snake oil salesmen selling to the gullible.