[ROCKMAN]

John - "Wish you had been around to set everyone straight in 2005 Rock". I'm not as hard on those folks as you. First, I would not have tried to push the quantitative envelop as hard as they tried. I give them some credit for trying to do something that's very difficult IMHO. The biggest mistake was not specifying the assumptions behind those predictions. Had they stated their assumption of oil prices in the $20-30 per bbl range it would have been easy to understand the error in predicting future US oil production. Same is true today of folks predicting increased US oil production...only if oil prices stay high.

My "insight" was more qualitative. And not based upon any great intellectual ability but painfully acquired via first hand experience. As mentioned before my first mentor at Mobil Oil in 1975 explained PO to me in detail. But he called it the "reserve replacement" problem and not PO. But the same animal. There was constant pressure inside Big Oil even earlier due to the struggle to replace depleting oil fields. The timing was close but the surge in hiring by Big Oil preceded the jump in oil prices by a few years. I can't guess how many managers and staff I've seen run off for failing to replace reserves. My first bonus at Mobil came from convincing auditors that we had more reserves in several fields that weren't really there. IOW I increased reserves without drilling a single well. In 1980 I worked for a pubco that owned a piece of a 1 billion bbl oil field in Indonesia. And I watched them go bankrupt and liquidated after spending a half $trillion in a failed effort to try to replace those depleting reserves. They tried to do so with an aggressive and very flawed drilling program in the US. The collapse of oil prices at the time only accelerated their demise.

So for all of my 38 years I've periodically sat in staff meetings and listened to management beg/threaten folks to find more reserves. There is a good reason pubco managers are chasing the shales so hard: essentially the same dynamic of "publish or perish". Essentially drill or "you're fired!" as Trump would say. LOL. Many of the pubcos survived over the years only because of the increased price of the more easily developed NG reserves. But even that wasn't enough for some of the Big Oil's...that's how Mobil became ExxonMobil. And how many youngsters here know the names Gulf Oil, Texaco, Arco, Getty Oil and so on? That was the faith of oils big and small over the last 30 years as a result of the inability to replace their depleting reserves. When you have a front row seat for more than three decades to the periodic slaughter even a dumb geologist will eventually understand the dynamic.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', ' ')My first bonus at Mobil came from convincing auditors that we had more reserves in several fields that weren't really there. IOW I increased reserves without drilling a single well.

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('John_A', '
')Well, reserves have been replaced pretty well, globally speaking, over that same time period. Matter of fact, if we hadn't, we wouldn't have ANY left, having produced more than was reserves back then.

[Subjectivist]

I must not be a youngster because I remember when gasoline went from $0.32/gal to $0.51/gal. I was too young to drive but it sure freaked my parents out. That was when my dad installed a fuel system on the farm so we could buy fuel whole sale instead of retail and we didn't have to pay road taxes on the farm fuel. Before then it wasn't worth the hassle because we only used a few hundred gallons a year and the commercial gas station was just a mile from the house. Back then you only had to be 14 to drive farm equipment down the right of way beside the paving on the highway, I thought it was great. You could drive at a speedy 12 mph down to the station and fill your 20 gallon tank for $10.00 and get change back. Today if I buy fuel I will pay more in taxes for one gallon than we paid for the gallon of fuel when I was a kid.

Lord knows what we have now is about ten times what we had in 1972 but the only advantage I see is it doesn't have tetraethyl lead in it any more.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MD', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('John_A', '
')Well, reserves have been replaced pretty well, globally speaking, over that same time period. Matter of fact, if we hadn't, we wouldn't have ANY left, having produced more than was reserves back then.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'I') must not be a youngster because I remember when gasoline went from $0.32/gal to $0.51/gal. I was too young to drive but it sure freaked my parents out.

[Gordianus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('John_A', '
')rinse and repeat....wait a generation...grow some new prophets....start it up all over again....

[Strummer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gordianus', 'O')K, but you can't repeat the cycle indefinitely, because in each cycle the energy returned on energy invested diminishes. And when it goes below 1 (or the lower limit for economic recovery, which is a little higher than that) the whole system stops. At this point, oil doesn't just get incrementally more expensive, it becomes economically useless. Any reserves remaining will simply stay in the ground.

[ROCKMAN]

"Did you know that fracking companies are willing to truck water into private residences that complain about gassy water?" Yep. I've done a number of similar kind acts when I wasn't responsible for a land owners particular problem. Especially if it meant using expensive earth moving equipment I had to put on the lease any way. Just common sense to be agreeable with slightly unreasonable requests. I may have a hand on the lease for 1 hour per day watching over $250k of sensitive production equipment while that land owner is out there 24 hours per day. BTW did you know that counties in many parts ox PA have delivered potable water to rural residents who had aquifers that were considered unfit for consumption years before oil/NG drilling began in the area? Again, not that some problems haven't resulted from drilling but there are many fresh water acquirers in PA, Texas and other rates that are contaminated by the natural migration of methane. Last yet I drilled a well that found a 20' thick NG sand just 46' below ground level. Not just a contaminated aquifer but a pure methane reservoir that would flow all gas and no water. Just like Texas there are many water wells in PA that have belched flammable NG long before the first oil patch activity was conducted. And gain, there may well have been a number of oil patch induced problems in PA but just because such activity has been conducted in an area where methane is a known contaminant doesn't automatically mean that activity caused the problem. That's been the problem with many of the complaints: no base lines established before drilling/frac'ng activities began.

[Shaved Monkey]

It may not be half but even if its a few its the flow on effect of PO
Mental health and physical health are linked to economic prosperity and the possibility of achieving our expectations.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')'HIV rates and heroin use have risen significantly, with about half of new HIV infections being self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of €700 per month and faster admission on to drug substitution programmes'.
Greece's prolonged economic crisis – the nation is now mired in a sixth straight year of recession – has sparked a public health crisis that has seen infectious diseases soar.
The HIV rate has nearly tripled over the past decade, according to the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention .

Last week, in one of the most dramatic signs yet of the toll the debt drama is having, the National School of Public Health announced that the life expectancy of Greeks had dropped from 81 to 78 years since the outbreak of the crisis four years ago.

Suicides and homicides have also shot up as Greeks grapple with record rates of unemployment (at 27% the highest in the eurozone) and deepening poverty.

"In a climate that is very negative drug users in particular have become ever more self-destructive," said Babis Poulopoulos, Greece's leading authority on drug rehabilitation.
"To say that people are deliberately injecting themselves with HIV, however, is absurd.
It's not benefits which are their incentive, it's life.
They have lost the motivation to live," he told the Guardian.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MD', 'T')he real energy crisis is a slow growth crisis.

[ROCKMAN]

Reserve replacement? Yes indeed, Big Oil has done a bang up job. Except, of course, for Mobil Oil, Texaco, Arco, Getty Oil, Tenneco, Conoco, etc. etc. Not only did they not replace reserves but were cannibalized by the companies that acquired them. Consider the year that ExxonMobil acquired XTO. About 80% of the reserves that XOM "added" that year were due to that acquisition and not done with the drill bit. And then add the amount of reserves in the ground that were known for years but weren't counted because they weren't economic due to lower oil prices. Prices boom and those reserves are created by shifting them from the proved non-commercial column to the proved commercial column. Of course, if oil prices drop those reserves slide back to their previous position. But there is a silver lining to the 3X increase in oil prices: we are doing more exploration which does add some previously unidentified reserves.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gordianus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('John_A', '
')rinse and repeat....wait a generation...grow some new prophets....start it up all over again....

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Strummer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gordianus', 'O')K, but you can't repeat the cycle indefinitely, because in each cycle the energy returned on energy invested diminishes. And when it goes below 1 (or the lower limit for economic recovery, which is a little higher than that) the whole system stops. At this point, oil doesn't just get incrementally more expensive, it becomes economically useless. Any reserves remaining will simply stay in the ground.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'R')eserve replacement? Yes indeed, Big Oil has done a bang up job. Except, of course, for Mobil Oil, Texaco, Arco, Getty Oil, Tenneco, Conoco, etc. etc. Not only did they not replace reserves but were cannibalized by the companies that acquired them. Consider the year that ExxonMobil acquired XTO. About 80% of the reserves that XOM "added" that year were due to that acquisition and not done with the drill bit. And then add the amount of reserves in the ground that were known for years but weren't counted because they weren't economic due to lower oil prices. Prices boom and those reserves are created by shifting them from the proved non-commercial column to the proved commercial column. Of course, if oil prices drop those reserves slide back to their previous position. But there is a silver lining to the 3X increase in oil prices: we are doing more exploration which does add some previously unidentified reserves.

[Quinny]

Whale oil

You are quite a joker are'nt you!

We didn't move from whale oil to a product that gave lower EROEI it was much higher.

The point has made several times that previous transitions have involved a move to more energy intensive products/systems. As Pop said we are already moving backwards down the hierarchy.

The question he posed is valid and some here believe we have LENR or fusion or something that will save us. What's your solution?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('John_A', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gordianus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('John_A', '
')rinse and repeat....wait a generation...grow some new prophets....start it up all over again....

[ROCKMAN]

"'Excellent collective job, and your understatement of your industries success". Yes indeed...very successful. We've gotten the global economy to increase its oil bill from about $2.3 billion per day to about $7.5 billion per day in just the last ten years or so. A tad shy of $2 TRILLION more per year. Damn successful. Oh...wait...did you mean successful for the oil patch or the consumers? Sorry...sometimes I forget about those "little people". LOL. Reminds me of the story about the world's most successful suicide expert...he was damn good at it but did a poor job at repeatability. Sorta like Mobil Oil, Texaco, Gulf Oil, etc. etc. etc. LOL.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Quinny', 'W')hale oil

You are quite a joker are'nt you!

We didn't move from whale oil to a product that gave lower EROEI it was much higher.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', '&')quot;'Excellent collective job, and your understatement of your industries success". Yes indeed...very successful. We've gotten the global economy to increase its oil bill from about $2.3 billion per day to about $7.5 billion per day in just the last ten years or so.

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('John_A', 'S')ee previous comment on why EROEI isn't relevant. At least not until someone turn off the local nuclear furnace anyway.