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Page added on September 15, 2015
“She Likes Gasoline”: On Latin America and the Coming Energy Crisis
Over the past ten years, reggaeton singers have changed the idea we’d long had about Latin American music. Their music videos are full of adrenaline, aggressiveness, sexual arousal, speed, fast motorcycles, sport cars, luxurious yachts and lascivious young men. One of Daddy Yankee’s popular pieces (where the title of this post comes from) offers us a clue as to the underpinnings of all this.
A few weeks ago, British Petroleum published its annual report [1] and, as it turns out, the reggaeton legend was right: we’re addicted to oil and its derivatives. Black gold accounts for nearly 50 percent of our energy diet, and we’re consuming more of it every year.
Latin American energy consumption by sources.
This is a dangerous and plainly unsustainable addiction. If we continue to “metabolize” this fuel at the pace we’ve set over recent years, our wells will be unable to quench our growing thirst in less than five years. Oil abstinence has an ugly face. If you don’t believe me, ask Greece, Syria and Yemen.
Production and consumption of oil in Latin America.
The long high-price season wasn’t enough to speed up the pumping of crude beyond a certain limit. Oil prices and oil production showed a rather stable pattern, confirming the thesis that the issue, rather than economic, is physical (geological and energy-related), and it’s harder to inflate statistics when you’re dealing with the laws of physics.
El deterioro de la industria petrolera en Latinoamérica es apreciable en lo concerniente a la refinería. Tanto la capacidad como el flujo de refinería cayeron escalonadamente a lo largo de la década; recuperarlas resultará difícil para una región cuya economía desacelera desde hace varios años.
Capacity and flow from refineríes in Latin America.
The decline of the oil industry in Latin America is evident in the refining industry. Refining capacity and flow dropped steeply during the decade. To recover past levels will be difficult for a region whose economy has been slowing down for several years now.
The loss of refining capacity translates into dependency: in 2004, we were net exporters of oil derivatives (600,000 barrels a day). A decade later, we are net importers, importing approximately 1.6 million barrels a day.
Net export of oil derivitives.
In the ideal world that neoliberals dream of, there would be nothing wrong with this. In the real world, where the energy crisis is about to become fact, depending on distant refineries, in addition to costly, is highly dangerous.
Differences Between Countries
The production of oil, the fuel essential to economic development, is unevenly spread across the continent: some extract a lot of oil, while others none.
Oil production by country.
Producers, as was to be expected, consume significantly more oil than the rest.
Oil consumption in Latin America: producers and non-producers
If such inequalities persist, the economic divide will become even wider in the future and we can expect inter-regional conflicts to intensify.
Renewable and Other Sources of Energy
Renewable sources of energy (under which British Petroleum includes wind, solar, biomass and geothermal sources), grew exponentially over the past few years. Even so, in 2014, their contribution to the energy mix was still insignificant (2.8 %). It is well worth recalling that renewable sources of energy are used only to produce electricity, which does not constitute the of the major energy needs of modern societies. In many sectors, fossil fuels cannot be replaced as sources of energy.
Bio-fuels also grew at a healthy pace over the past ten years, at the expense of natural areas of extremely high ecological value (among other values) and by snatching lands used to grow food crops. Following so much destruction, one would expect to find a source of abundant and irreplaceable energy, but no, bio-fuels have reported extremely low performance (Brazil, the longest-standing producer, manages to produce anywhere from 2.5 to 9 liters of output for every liter invested [2], and their contribution to total consumption is quite ridiculous (2%).
Production in 2014 and the growth rate of production since 2004.
Many are asking themselves whether bio-fuels, renewable or other sources of energy could compensate for the decline in fossil fuel supplies in the Latin American region.
The graph below shows energy consumption and production for all sources of energy and traces the predominant trends (assuming a linear behavior).
Energy production and consumption in Latin America.
The graph is designed on the assumption that current trends will continue, something very unlikely. It is very unlikely because the drop in oil supplies will bring all other energy sources down with it. In addition, bio-fuels, hydro-power and nuclear energy will be thwarted in the short term by the physical limits of the system.
Even if we assume these “disasters” will not take place, energy consumption will overtake production in a very short span of time. Or, to be more exact, consumption (and, with it, the whole of the economy), will begin to adjust to the rhythm and ups and downs of production, without much room to maneuver.
Population studies bring to light another serious problem. Despite chronic poverty, or perhaps because of it, Latin America’s population is growing faster than energy production is. Energy production per capita has reached its peak and has been in decline since 2006. Consumption per inhabitant appears to have reached a plateau. Its collapse will have a serious social impact.
Latin America: Energy production and consumption per inhabitant.
Conclusion
Despite having been well endowed by nature, the region’s energy panorama does not look too promising. If developments don’t change course (only a miracle could bring this about), economic and political crises will undo the precarious harmony the continent achieved in the past decade.
We need to look at the problem in the face and stop fantasizing about magical solutions. Neither the struggle against corruption or drug trafficking, nor renewable resources, nor fracking, nor progressive governments, will be able to avoid the unavoidable.
But it’s not all bad news. The high-voltage reggaeton music and consumerist culture that comes with it will meet the same end as gasoline, and, tomorrow or the day after, the survivors will once again be able to build a world that “dances and sings” at a more human pace.
17 Comments on "“She Likes Gasoline”: On Latin America and the Coming Energy Crisis"
Makati1 on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 7:55 pm
Finally an article that recognizes that the end of the Consumer Age is near and not a bad thing. Most 1st worlders don’t seem to understand that most of the world will not miss or even notice the loss. It will not significantly change the lifestyle of our neighbors at the farm. Nor most of the 3rd world’s inhabitants.
Maybe the lifespan will drop a bit over the next few generations, but then, they will have more of their life NOT spent chasing money and paying bills. Most do not realize, that, if you are of average income in the 1st world, you work one day per week for the ‘convenience’ of owning a car. Over 50 years, that adds up to about 2.4 years of your life that you could be enjoying the things you love. Or about 5 years, if you do not count sleeping time.
8 hrs X 52 wks X 50 yrs / 24 hrs / 365 days = ~2.4 yrs of your life.
Demián on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 10:02 pm
Thanks for posting PeakOil.com.
Makati1 Thanks for your words.
It is work done between a Cuban (Erasmo Calzadilla) and I, an Argentine, if you have any questions you can ask. Here we are.
Circles Robinson on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 11:06 pm
Dear Peakoil, glad to see the post but it would be ethically correct to credut the author at the top and the source of the post with the corresponding link at the beginning of the article. Best regards, Circles Robinson, editor, Havana Times
apneaman on Wed, 16th Sep 2015 2:00 am
How to Make a $1500 Sandwich in Only 6 Months
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE
Makati1 on Wed, 16th Sep 2015 4:55 am
Circles, i agree. I like to know whose work I am reading BEFORE I get to the end.
Demián on Wed, 16th Sep 2015 5:35 am
Gracias Circle por la traducción (o quien la haya hecho) que nos permite estar acá.
That’s the way PeakOil allways does, not just for our work, see Tverberg works, they put at the end “OUR FINITE WORLD” not her name.
Apneaman, I’m not sure why do yo put this link (very funny), but I hope many of us waste 1500 to do that, a good way to realize many problems:
We can’t cmake a transition in an individualistic way… many things are too expensive and not realy necessary (let´s start with corn and beans and some nutritive vegetables).
Davy on Wed, 16th Sep 2015 7:27 am
Demian, Yeas and no. You can’t make the final long term transition individually. I don’t think our modern civilized species can make the transition period in the very long term. We must return back to nomadic and semi-nomadic hunter gathers with a very small global population of 500MIL or less. We must make the transition individually as the act of conversion from status quo cornucopianism to the beginning of doom and prep.
This initial conversion is in lifestyles, attitudes, and orientation. Next one concentrates on a basic short term preparation and the learning of post status quo survival skills. Short term preparations are the gathering of all the necessities to get one through 3-6 months. Food, water, shelter, health, and security items.
Skills, knowledge, and tools are the next step. They include both short and the beginning of the longer term. Books, hand tools, individual skills developed. The longer term is molding a way of life for the transition out of the status quo that is surely going to end within the next 10 years probably sooner. The key to the longer term is community, location, and food. There will be few who succeed longer term without a community that will succeed. Community is the key. Man is a tribal animal. We have needs that can only be met in groups both with sustenance and social needs.
There will be few individuals or communities who succeed without proper location. For all this to work your seed must fall on good soil, fair sun and water as an analogy. Short term prep will allow you to survive a poor location for a time but it makes the long term doubtful. If you are in a poor location at least have the short term covered with plans for an alternative location. This included many on this site who live in urban areas. Most urban areas must depopulate. Population densities are a key variable in the equation of survival. This is the physics of doom and prep.
Food is part of the equation all the way through from the beginning to the end. I include water in this and shelter. Food must be sheltered and preserved. Food is the key weak link for society that is disregarded because we have been in fossil fuel food abundance for so long. We have been habituated to Walmart super centers or the like. We are a fuel shortage away from food insecurity. We are a famine away from two food harvest failures. In a time of depleting oil resources and abrupt climate change this should be the highest survival issue on the radar screen along with over population and over consumption.
Salvage is the final skill. We are going to transition if we are lucky from the modern to postmodern human history. The ability to do this will be a hybrid affair consisting of salvage of the old modern and the pre modern with the realities of scarcity in a world with less and a future with less. So that is the cycle of doom and prep in an intro.
I could write a book on the details. I have been living these ideas much of my life being as an early survivalist and Native American admirer. I then transitioned in the mid 80’s to the end of the world as we know it type with peak oil, ecological destruction, and climate change. I also saw overpopulation and wealth inequality as unsustainable.
In the last 10 years I have been a dedicated prepper. This shows the amount of time it takes to become a doom and prepper. You can become one quickly but it does take a life devoted to it to become an expert. This is the future become a doomer and prepper or go down with the ship. There are no guarantees but it will give you purpose and hope.
Demián on Wed, 16th Sep 2015 12:12 pm
I’m with you Davy… But this video is a metaphore, a good one, of some problems to try to do it alone. You have to learn all (loosing energy or money, in this case, $1500), you can’t do many things in the same time (so you need more energy or time, in this case 6 months)…
Anyway, better be a prepper by your self than wait ten years to create a group of doomers or a transition town with your community, cose maybe in five everything collapse.
Or not, enjoy the collapse all together trying to change a little the thing that you know that have effect in somebody else than you.
Thanks for the comment.
Davy on Wed, 16th Sep 2015 12:49 pm
Demian, I have the highest respect for Cuba and what Cuba has done especially post USSR collpase. Cuba can teach the world many skills and attitudes that will be vitally important as collpase gathers speed. I would go so far as to say Cuba is a model nation for transition.
Demián on Wed, 16th Sep 2015 9:02 pm
I’m not from Cuba, the other author is, I’m from the south of Argentina (Patagonia). I also put their way of moving as an example but my friend Erasmo that live there thinks different… Here is his vision of that special period when the oil crash came to the cubans (if you don’t speak spanish maybe the translator can help)…
http://crashoil.blogspot.com.ar/2014/04/el-periodo-especial-cubano.html
Davy on Thu, 17th Sep 2015 6:07 am
Demian, your Patagonia is on my fantasy bucket list of places to go but have no time to go. I am trying not to be a carbon whore these days by staying put on the farm. I still travel but not by choice. I travel now because of family obligations. You live in such a wonderful place how lucky.
I used to speak Spanish pretty well. My first wife was Spanish and French from Madrid. We split back in 90. She hated America especially the backward Midwest. She took my then 1 year old daughter back to Spain where she lived most of her life. I spent the next 16 years traveling back and forth to Spain to see my daughter until she finally started coming over to the States. I have been to Peru but that is it for South America.
I am now living in the Missouri Ozarks on a cattle and goat farm. My life has changed from those days in the 90’s. I was then believing in globalism and internationalism. Now I consider these ism’s a failure and believe in relocalization and the relative sacrifice of less with less. I believe in downsizing now with dignity. Most of us can easily live with less and still feel good about ourselves.
Back in the 90’s I thought education and development could eradicate poverty and lower ecological destruction. I was naïve and young then. I also thought peak oil and climate change where 40 years off. Well I guess I was not too far off anyway. Back then I thought we would have solutions by now. Currently I believe there are no solutions only efforts to live with the results of collapse the best we can.
Demián on Thu, 17th Sep 2015 11:06 am
“I believe in downsizing now with dignity. Most of us can easily live with less and still feel good about ourselves.”
yes, I think that is the main thing that a new philosophy of life must confront to the consumist way of life (the reggaeton way of life is still very pregnant in Latinamerica).
About Patagonia if you still travel, I live in the east coast, very dry place, that maybe collapse soon as every port that live with commodity exports (aluminium, fish, etc.) ant tourism (In that moment we see the whales from the city). Many people and a little river 70 km to the south…
i also lived in Spain (Barcelona) three years… now I’m again in contact with many spanish people talking in the Crashoil Forum (if you want to talk about this stuff in spanish you are welcome)
http://foro-crashoil.2321837.n4.nabble.com/
Davy on Thu, 17th Sep 2015 11:15 am
Damien, nice to place a name with a place. I will send the link to my daughter who is interested in the subject. 20 years ago I spoke German and Spanish not great but enough to get by. I no longer stay in practice. My wife wants me to learn Italian for when we visit her family in the Italian Dolomites but I tell her why should I when I married a translator. Anyway, drop in and visit PO dot com when you can. You can offer us some great persective from a region far to the south. BTW, I feel if the world really crashes hard the Southern Hemisphere is the best location to be as far as hemispheres.
Demián on Thu, 17th Sep 2015 9:55 pm
The South of South America sounds to be a good place to escape: not many people, too much arable lands, not so hot, and good climate in the future if goes up… but where I am, we are 1 million lving in a place that was inhabitated by just 10,000 people (the Tehuelches). Sometimes we have 6 months without rain… imposible to work in agriculture…
We will have to move to the Andes (where now there are de National Parks), the rest of the rivers are over exploted… and too much people. This lands goes up with the Oil, gas, hydroelectrics, some industries that need globalization to their mainteinance, and fishing (that’s the only thing that I think will not collapse, they are very inefficient to exterminate fishes)…
And I allways read PO, and once I wrote something… But I have to do many efforts to write in english (I read without problems bu write is different)
Davy on Fri, 18th Sep 2015 2:06 am
Damian, the southern Hemisphere I believe will have less issues with NUK plant poisons if there is a collapse and they fail. Many more people in the north too. All locations are in overshoot these days. Sounds like yours has some rebalancing to do also.
Kenz300 on Fri, 18th Sep 2015 8:33 am
Adoption of bicycles as a primary transportation option can be done. It is a safe, clean and inexpensive way to travel. Cities needs to become more bicycle friendly. It can be done.
Groningen: The World’s Cycling City – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWf5fbSUNAg
Demián on Fri, 18th Sep 2015 5:38 pm
Yes Davy, Here there’s no fear to the NUK plants in the future… but we have much uranium quite close to our river… A ten years ago law prohibite that kind of minning in my province, but now Argentina is decresing energy from oil and gas and all the candidates for presidence that can win wants to potenciate atomic energy, and with our own uranium.
And Kenz300 I use the bike as them, and my city has the same population… Here is the argentinian invention, the Bambucicleta (made up with bamboo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpXshjyeSCE (can use the youtube translator)