[meemoe_uk]

Willis doesn't mention kerogen in his article. He mentions that oil has been labeled unconventional due to it being extracted with horizontal drilling rather than vertical, or being shale oil. Neither of these are kerogen.

[Dybbuk]

As someone with a statistics background, it seems like the mistake Hubbert made was in thinking he knew the right shape of the curve for worldwide production. Just because individual wells and fields take on a logistic shape, doesn't mean that worldwide production would.

That being said, he was way ahead of his time for the simple reason that he acknowledged that there would even be a production peak, when that was an alien concept to pretty much everyone else. You can quibble about the details that he may have gotten wrong, but faulting him for not having perfect foresight is like expecting him to know who would win every World Series for the next 50 years.

As to this argument about whether peak oil is "about" price or about production rates...it seems to me that the basic concept is about production rates. But the whole reason that peak oil is even a topic worth discussing is the impacts that it will have, and price is the main direct visible impact. Lower production leads to more scarcity which leads to higher prices, which in turn leads to every other unfortunate effect. So watching prices is sort of a shortcut for watching the possible peak and decline of production. If A leads to B, and B is what you really care about, no need to pay too much attention to A when B is right in front of you.

[ennui2]

"watching prices is sort of a shortcut for watching the possible peak and decline of production."

Which is in itself an oversimplification, due to the impact of oil-speculation, which was a major factor in the spike of 2008, something that, to this day, peak-oilers (like pstarr) have a hard time accepting.

Suddenly we have creative notions of what peak-oil really is, and before you know it, catch-phrases like "peak-oil caused the credit crisis" get thrown around, and it all just paints a picture of peak-oil as a cult rather than based in science as it was originally (under Hubbert).

And since it IS based on science, that science needs to be held up to scrutiny rather than merely accepted as dogma. Even Newton's theories had to be reviewed when Relativity came around.

Likewise, Hubbert didn't know about fracking or the way we're going about the horizontal drilling and tar-sands stuff as we're doing it in the 21st century. His theories were based on conventional oil. While it's true that the unconventional stuff has lower EROEI, it seems to me that it's quite a bit higher than peak-oilers would like to admit, and flow-rates fast enough to act as a backstop for a while. How long is anyone's guess, but Hubbert's curve is really playing out more like an effective plateau as far as total available liquids and while it isn't allowing the world economy to return to the glory days of the late 90s, it is at least keeping Mad Max twiddling his thumbs.

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', 'L')ikewise, Hubbert didn't know about fracking or the way we're going about the horizontal drilling and tar-sands stuff as we're doing it in the 21st century. His theories were based on conventional oil.

[dissident]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dybbuk', 'A')s someone with a statistics background, it seems like the mistake Hubbert made was in thinking he knew the right shape of the curve for worldwide production. Just because individual wells and fields take on a logistic shape, doesn't mean that worldwide production would.

[Dybbuk]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dissident', 'I')t's not such a bad assumption if you consider the Central Limit Theorem

[dissident]

http://www.math.duke.edu/~wka/math135/central.pdf

In the above proof of the CLT it is clear that there is no restriction of the sort you are claiming. It is irrelevant that oil field production curves are time series. At the end of the day they can be treated as distributions since the math does not care where the distributions come from as long as they don't have infinite tails.

http://math.uchicago.edu/~may/VIGRE/VIG ... okhmal.pdf

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') random variable is a function X that assigns a rule of correspondence for every point z in the sample space S (called the domain) a unique real value X(z).

[Xyricolev]

Of course POdebunked was right JD...was there ever really any doubt?

The *reason* it was right was that you took the (quite logical, sensible) position of NOT trying to refute that a finite resource is finite, and if used (at all) will eventually run out, but rather, stuck with the notion of poking fun at all the end of dayz hysterics that sites like these hype hand in hand with the fairly innocuous math.

Kudos! (ps: I never went back to see...you went on the doomer diet for a while, right? How'd that go?)

-=Xyr=-

[Buddy_J]

So...if I understand, peak price in 2008 wasn't really peak price because of speculators in the short term?

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/0 ... ?mobile=nc

Still, some seem to have attached quite a bit of importance to peak price, price appears to be synonymous with peak oil itself. So does that mean it isn't peak anymore when price goes down?

[Xyricolev]

Nahhh Buddy, you got it all wrong...see, Peak Price DID happen in 2008 (if it's convenient to the doomer argument of the moment).

If it's not, then today's sub $96 price is a "record high" and we will write the 2008 peak off as unimportant "because of teh speculation" (if THAT fits the doomer argument of the moment).

In other words...it's important only if it can be used to "prove" you wrong if you don't buy into the Doomer Mythology Deluxe Package (tm).

See how it works?

(we now return you to your regularly scheduled doomer hysteria)

-=Xyr=-

[Xyricolev]

Okay troll...I'll give it a shot.

Price is a function of supply and demand. At any given moment, there are numerous factors impacting both.

During the runup of the price shown in the graph, a number of things were happening, including:

1) an enormous asset bubble, worldwide that was hyperinflating demand for everything (including dollars, which oil is priced in), and overheating most of the world's economies. That stopped rather abruptly in december, 2007.

2) oil supplies were somewhat constructed due to war and instability in oil producing regions (some caused by us, and some not)

3) the effect of speculators being allowed to play in the market not unlike they did during the days of the robber barons

4) the enormous growth of China/India and their increasing demand for oil

and a few others besides (but painting with a broad brush, that outlines the greater bulk of the factors acting to drive price up...supply interacting with demand in entirely predictable ways)

Predictably, when world credit markets froze up, demand dropped sharply, and (gasp!) oddly enough, the price of oil plummeted--you didn't see it drop back to $20 a barrel because of the constricted supply and the addition of new, large players to what had mostly been a western + Japan game (China/India).

this is neither mysterious or rocket science, tho I understand why you struggle with it. Do you need a tutor?

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xyricolev', '
')2) oil supplies were somewhat constructed due to war and instability in oil producing regions (some caused by us, and some not)

[Xyricolev]

right...the only difference being, I don't see end of the world scenarios at the end of the train ride...that's what makes me a "cornie" innit?

See...I get it. I follow the chain of logic, and yes...I accept the completely innocuous idea that a finite resource, when used, will eventually run out.

I just don't see a zombie apocalypse at the end, and for that, I must be branded "teh enemy!!!" right? cos that's what your programming dictates, don't it?

PS to dorlomin...re-read what I wrote...you can see the rise in price clearly on the chart...supplies were becoming constricted all during that period...nothing magically happened to change that in 2008...the reason for the big drop then and there had everything to do with the sudden demand destruction brought about by the...you know...Great Recession? Second largest economic calalmity in world history...or did you miss it?

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xyricolev', 'r')ight...the only difference being, I don't see end of the world scenarios at the end of the train ride...that's what makes me a "cornie" innit?

See...I get it. I follow the chain of logic, and yes...I accept the completely innocuous idea that a finite resource, when used, will eventually run out.

I just don't see a zombie apocalypse at the end, and for that, I must be branded "teh enemy!!!" right? cos that's what your programming dictates, don't it?

PS to dorlomin...re-read what I wrote...you can see the rise in price clearly on the chart...$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 's')upplies were becoming constricted all during that period

[Xyricolev]

Because....supply is only half the equation?

Seriously, if you have to ask the question, you prolly ought not be participating in the discussion.

Are you ACTULLY trying to argue that production didn't shatter the old record? Seriously? Are we getting ready to dive head first into one of the global conspiracy theories then?