PeakOil is You
Article: "A Nosedive Into the Desert"
Re: A Nosedive Into the Desert
by Twilight » Sun 11 Mar 2007, 00:29:42
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'W')e keep merrily operating under some nebulous and likely innacurate assumption oil numbers will remain steady, with growth, for the next twenty or thirty years. Who here actually thinks that is going to happen? If you do, i suggest you check out Albert Bartlett's missives concerning growth and the state of energy worldwide.
Like Campbell says, all the numbers are wrong, the question is by how much. We know it's BS, but we don't know by how much. The "controversial" consensus is 0-5 years more plateau, the official line is 15-30 followed by phased introduction of undiscovered technologies. Interestingly, no-one wants to occupy that middle ground. There isn't a continuum of opinion out there, you're either working with one model or the other. So we wait and see, assume we're right and minimise personal exposure to some limited effect.
As for Iraq, here is one reason why the numbers are BS:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The Guardian', 'T')he Iraqi government is in danger of being brought down by the wholesale smuggling of the nation's oil and other forms of corruption that together represent a "second insurgency", according to a senior US official. Stuart Bowen, who has been in charge of auditing Iraq's faltering reconstruction since 2004, said corruption had reached such levels that it threatened the survival of the state.
"There is a huge smuggling problem. It is the No 1 issue," Mr Bowen told the Guardian. The pipelines that are meant to take the oil north have been blown up, so the only way to export it is by road. "That leaves it vulnerable to smuggling," he said, as truckers sell their cargoes on the black market.
Source
I don't think a lot of the oil is even being metered, or if it is, it's a local effort with no attempt at collation of data with any integrity. Iraqi export data is probably a guesstimate extrapolated from what they are able to count. I would be surprised if the local authorities are bothered about OPEC and international accounting standards anyway, they want money. Once the oil is in Turkey, it could have come from Syria or Iran, some other country, or just disappear into the internal market. By the time it hits the stocks of a country which bothers to publish inventories, it could be attributable to anyone, so effectively it gets counted twice, and the original count was a guess. Let's see someone account for that in their model.
The icing on the cake is the drivers probably have to pay off every roadblock they encounter, so the insurgency receives export duty paid in cash.
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Re: A Nosedive Into the Desert
by pup55 » Sun 11 Mar 2007, 08:06:08
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'w')hy bring new production on-line
People do this kind of thing in industry all the time. They start an expansion project during the time that they are short on capacity, and by the time they get finished the business slows down. I guess it's human nature. Anyway, what do you want them to do? Keep producing even if they do not need the oil? Stop right in the middle of the expansion and shut down the field before it is completed? The best choice is to debug the field for a couple of months, and then either shut down other capacity or shut down the new field, it does not matter which. Maybe one of the downstream people that inhabit this forum can tell us how this is accomplished.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')audia Arabia will produce at around current capacity until about 2025.
So the 8% decline theory is stretching it a little. Anyway this is bad enough. They need to grow to about double their current size to allow us to maintain our current lifestyle.
Obviously things will not keep growing like they are, but if they did, there would be 30-40% more cars on the road by 2025 than there are right now, which will tick even more people off.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f oil breaks through 100$/barrel and SA is still producing less than 9 million barrels/day than we can be sure they have peaked though.
Unfortunately, you are right. The train wreck will have to actually hit before we know for sure what their production capability is.
We will get a suggestion earlier than that. When OECD inventories get below about 78 days usage, and Saudi does not respond with higher production, then I will believe we are in trouble. Maybe this will happen pretty soon, at the current rate of "inventory adjustment".
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')atthew Simmons believes he has worked out something no-one can check, and everyone else led by ASPO is guessing in an information vacuum
Agreed. What Simmons is really saying is that there is no publicly verifiable system of auditing what is going on. In any other business, relying on a raw material source from an unaudited supplier (potentially shady) would be considered corporate malfeasance. Basing your corporate growth plans on the verbal assurances of a few former rug traders would be considered crazy. But, we have based the whole US economy on it. When TSHTF the trial lawyers will be the first in line with their shareholder fraud lawsuits.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') flat out challenge the Iraqi production on that graph
A rosy scenario based on an idealized version of the future (kind of like Disney). As of December their officially stated production is just over 2 mbpd, which if true is utterly miraculous in an environment like that.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't think a lot of the oil is even being metered
