More Signs Of ‘Peak Us’ In New Study Of ‘Peak Oil Demand’

Some argue that peak conventional oil production is imminent due to physical resource scarcity. We examine the alternative possibility of reduced oil use due to improved efficiency and oil substitution. Our model uses historical relationships to project future demand for (a) transport services, (b) all liquid fuels, and (c) substitution with alternative energy carriers, including electricity. Results show great increases in passenger and freight transport activity, but less reliance on oil. Demand for liquids inputs to refineries declines significantly after 2070. By 2100 transport energy demand rises >1000% in Asia, while flattening in North America (+23%) and Europe (−20%). Conventional oil demand declines after 2035, and cumulative oil production is 1900 Gbbl from 2010 to 2100 (close to the U.S. Geological Survey median estimate of remaining oil, which only includes projected discoveries through 2025). These results suggest that effort is better spent to determine and influence the trajectory of oil substitution and efficiency improvement rather than to focus on oil resource scarcity. The results also imply that policy makers should not rely on liquid fossil fuel scarcity to constrain damage from climate change. However, there is an unpredictable range of emissions impacts depending on which mix of substitutes for conventional oil gains dominance—oil sands, electricity, coal-to-liquids, or others.

4 Comments on "More Signs Of ‘Peak Us’ In New Study Of ‘Peak Oil Demand’"

ronpatterson on Thu, 11th Jul 2013 12:06 pm 



Eyeballing the chart on page one of the paper, then converting exajoules per year to barrels of oil per day leads to some very interesting conclusions.
1 exajoule = 174 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Eyeballing the chart I get about 155 exajoules of conventional oil produced/consumed in 2010. That works out to be spot on for the amount of 74 million barrels of crude+condensate produced per day in 2010. So then eyeballing their chart they have, as near as I can determine, they have “conventional oil” peaking at 210 exajoules per year in 2035. That works out to be just above 100 million barrels per day of crude+condensate, or about 35 million barrels per day above what we are producing right now. And if current reserves are depleting by 5% per year, that works out to be 85 million barrels per day of new oil added by 2935.
And the peak is only because demand peaks, not because of any scarcity of crude oil!

Naw…

But that is not the most optimistic thing in the report.. Quote:

For example, unconventional fossil resources
could provide >10 Tbbl of alternative liquid fuels from oil
sands, natural gas, coal, and oil shale,66 although climate
impacts could be profound.

Ten trillion barrels of liquid fuels? We have consumed about 1.2 trillion barrels of crude so far and there are estimates of almost that much left. But I believe we have less than 800 billion barrels left. But ten trillion? Of course that is unconventional fossil resources.

These guys are out to lunch.

BillT on Thu, 11th Jul 2013 12:35 pm 



“These guys are out to lunch.”

Got to agree with that ron. Probably a triple martini one at that. But, it’s a paycheck.

rollin on Thu, 11th Jul 2013 3:20 pm 



Definitely on the cornucopian drug with this article. Unconventional oil will hit near 40 billion bpa, lottsa luck on that one.

DC on Thu, 11th Jul 2013 6:34 pm 



Q/ We examine the alternative possibility of reduced oil use due to improved efficiency and oil substitution

Fail

The only way to ‘improve’ efficiency in a fossil-fuel only economy is to simply stop using it, aka curtailment. For example, walking, biking or demanding electric mass-transit to get to work, school, markets etc, is vastly more efficient than trading your 12 mpg gas-burner for one that gets 20mpg. The wests tepid investments in efficiency have had little to do with reduced energy use. Credible studies have concluded time and again, that ‘efficiency’ is such a minor factor as to be almost unnoticeable. Why? retrofitting our amazingly efficient CURRENT systems is hugely expensive and requires long pay back times. Of course, it never occurred to us to make things efficient in the first place did it? But the real kicker is we are in a depression you see, and few people have the money to spend on anything other than the cheapest improvements. Its actually far cheaper to curtail usage of energy than it is to spend piles of money in an effort to ‘save energy’. But we have a name for that too-demand destruction.

As for oil ‘substitutes’, these guys clearly dont know, or care, that almost all ‘substitutes’ for liquid oil are nothing of the sort. Most in fact, rely heavily on using oil to turn other stuff into non-oil alternatives. Think corn bio-fools for a good example. Other hoaxes like the hydrogen car\economy scam also propose using FF to turn H2 into a even more wasteful and inefficient fuel system than the current one. Examples abound-but all ‘substitution’ schemes being proposed are either heavily oil-based themselves, or are too expensive to compete with heavily subsidized auto and oil dependant infrastructure.

Fail again.