by shortonoil » Wed 05 Apr 2017, 10:55:06
"I've been reading the SRS Rocco report and recently heard an interview in which the Steve
St. Angelo predicts that increasing EROI = falling production (which makes sense to me) and also a falling nominal oil price (which does not make sense to me)."
We have been communicating with other authors via email for several weeks while we build a site that is less susceptible to attack from outside sources. We have also found most sites to be very antagonistic toward our posting. Because of that very little has actually been explained to the general reader as to why falling ERoEI, and falling crude price must be part of the same process.
Most commentators on petroleum concentrate on the extraction portion of the process. Extraction, however, is just a small part of the entire production process. It actually only consumes about 20% of the energy, or money required to deliver finished product to the end user. Concentrating on the extraction portion, while ignoring the remainder is like dodging the guy on the bicycle, and ignoring the Mac Truck coming up behind you.
The majority of the energy, and cost used to deliver finished product takes place in the processing sector. It is there that we can see the major impact of depletion taking place. The raw material costs for the sector has been growing relentlessly for the last 13 years. According to EIA data in 2005 it required 1.08 barrels of crude to deliver 1.0 barrels of finished product; by 2016 that had increased to 1.63 barrels. At the present rate of refinery yield decline that will be 3.35 barrels by 2026. By 2026 it will requre production of 195 mb/d to delivery the same quantity of finished product that is used today.
As 85% of a refinery's operating cost results from the cost of the crude, for them to reach breakeven and stay in business, either the price of finished products must increase, or the cost of the crude must decline. In a market that is well over supplied, as this one has been for the last several years, the price of crude must go down.
This is occurring as part of the depletion cycle that must take place, and it is described very accurately by the Etp Model. We expect to have all the data and graphs posted to a safe location in a few days. For anyone who is willing to objectively analysis that data it will be readily apparent that the entire petroleum industry is getting into dire straights very rapidly!