[AndyA]

When planning for the future, it's helpful to have some idea of what the future may be. There doesn't seem to be much evidence for a fast collapse.
Peak oil is a process and it will be slow. Current oil production declines somewhere between 3-6% with guesses ranging between 2-10%. So even in a situation where everybody decided to stop drilling new wells, if we take a 5% decline then current production will still be around 50% of todays levels by 2030. Which is significant, but how likely is it that everyone would sit on their hands while oil production declines by 5% per year? More wells will be drilled, more resources will be used. Every effort will be made to keep production steady. LTO is a classic example of this, once price and technology aligned to make fracking viable a huge amount of oil has been produced in a very short time.
Proven reserves give a reserve production ratio of about 50 years. This is discovered oil that is economic to produce in the current economic conditions. There are yet more unproven hydrocarbons that could become economic if oil prices rise.
I think given the utility of oil to society, we can expect to see a lot more investment in production should oil production decline. While this may not stop the decline it will certainly slow the rate of decline.

[Pops]

A general argument against peak oil definitely doesn't belong in the forum dedicated to planning for PO, in fact the rules of the planning forum say just that.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AndyA', 'i')f we take a 5% decline then current production will still be around 50% of todays levels by 2030. Which is significant, but how likely is it that everyone would sit on their hands while oil production declines by 5% per year? More wells will be drilled, more resources will be used. Every effort will be made to keep production steady.

[Pops]

As mentioned, the thread was initially started in the Planning forum, which is for discussions of "doing Stuff" rather than speculating.

It was moved here to PO Discussion, which is for talking.

Catalog away.

[Paulo1]

re: Planning and Descent

I used to fly airplanes for a living; 10,000 + hours in the air before I packed it in. They had big radial engines...real gas guzzlers. And yes, they still fly them...just not me. Once in awhile, when I was busy with paperwork or looking out the side window I wouldn't notice the 'low warning light' blinking right in front of me. With a Beaver you had about 5 seconds to switch tanks before the engine quit and there was immediate silence. The passengers would wake up and I would laugh it off, quickly switching tanks and hitting the electric boost or hand wobble pump. It would start just as quick and away we would go. We might lose altitude, but usually didn't at all. I was only this complacent in cruise and at altitude....when the scenery and day dreaming took over. (I need to say I might have done this twice in almost 20 years of work. It was no big deal.) The big problem would be if you didn't catch the warning light after take-off, which I never did of course because the checklist is designed to make one be always being on the fullest tank at take off and landing. But sometimes other pilots didn't follow their checklists, or switched to an empty tank in the panic of the moment and SAR would go out looking for another missing plane. It happens. Other machines would blink a warning light for about 15 minutes, and you had to be deaf, dumb, and blind to miss it. In fact, we would often bleed out the emptying tank before switching over for weight and balance considerations or fuel management. In any event, the result was always the same. You either switched tanks on time or the engine quit. Sometimes you had lots of warning and sometimes you had seconds. If you switched to the wrong tank and you were too close to terrain, you died. It was all quite simple. All you had to do was want to stay alive and make the right decisions and you would probably be just fine; day after day until you hang it up.

This is absolutely analogous to the situation we are in. We have lots and lots of warning. The light is blinking. The effing fuel warning light is blinking and we are watching it blink and know that when it stops so does the machine of industrial civilization. We have some passengers sleeping in the back, oblivious....they are asleep. We have some other passengers blindly following authority thinking the pilots know what they are doing. They are simply in a place of blind trust. And then we have some others who are aware of what is going on and know what can happen. The smart ones know the pilot is keeping water under the floats and has some outs when the fan quits. The dumb ones don't have a clue.

Readers on PO.com are aware of the situation and have a pretty good idea of the 'possible' ramifications going forward. We can argue till the cows come home about when this is going to happen or how far the 'plane' can glide when the fan quits. You just have to decide whether you think this is the 5 second warning light or the 15 minute warning? The result is the same for the folks in the back.

As an aside, one day I was flying a load of folks over the Rocky Mt Trench, in northern BC. We were headed for town. One goof from St Louis was sitting up front next to me looking around and finally noticed that the nearest lake to land on didn't exist. I watched him looking at the rocks and peaks, and then he noticed we were in a single engine machine and he started to put two and two, together. Finally, he said on the intercom/headset, "say, Paul....whatta we goona do if the engine quits"? (For the unintiated this is not 'good form'. This is a question that is not to be asked and only the naive do so, for of course, there is not much one can do except glide to a spot that looks survivable.) I looked over at him and said, "I'm jumpin out and gettin' it over with right away, what are you going to do"? And that was the last I heard from him.

My question is this.....are we gliding yet, or is the warning light just blinking? Where do you plan on landing when the fan does quit? Me? I picked out 15 acres of field and woods with big gardens and a river full of fish. I have good neighbours able to pitch in and pull together. I have 6 years of heating under cover and stacked up. Regardless of the rate of descent, or the scale of the problem, we really have just one choice. Do you want to fly your own plane to the best of your ability or do you want to ride along with someone who looks like they might jump out because they are stupid and full of hubris? I know what I would do.

Regards....Paulo

[AndyA]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'A') general argument against peak oil definitely doesn't belong in the forum dedicated to planning for PO, in fact the rules of the planning forum say just that.

[sparky]

.
You are right Andy , and Pops maybe not so right
I didn't see the thread as an argument against peak oil , more of a musing on the rate of it

the big problem is that the oil extraction industry has a scale of decades , while human attention span is in minutes
it result in obsessively poring over data , exclaiming over trivial squiggles and debating
spurious or incomplete information .

WE can discuss the various form PO will take

I've mentionned before the three typical curves

- the Cliff ......... a sudden breakdown of the international economic fabric ,
very low probability , government would resort to emergency powers and they have the Army and the ammo

- the glide ....... things go along as before , a bit poorer, a bit colder , every year ,
hardly likely , a democratic society would be stressed to breaking point , an authoritarian might manage better

- the stairs , a succession of crisis , with not so bad bits in between ,
or the natural progression of Homer Simpson down a cliff , bouncing up after hitting each ledges
the economists will be trumpeting "the economy bounce back "

Each country and region will have a different profile following their circumstances and national inclination

[AndyA]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')y question is this.....are we gliding yet, or is the warning light just blinking? Where do you plan on landing when the fan does quit? Me? I picked out 15 acres of field and woods with big gardens and a river full of fish. I have good neighbours able to pitch in and pull together. I have 6 years of heating under cover and stacked up. Regardless of the rate of descent, or the scale of the problem, we really have just one choice. Do you want to fly your own plane to the best of your ability or do you want to ride along with someone who looks like they might jump out because they are stupid and full of hubris? I know what I would do.

[AndyA]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here is no doubt oil is valuable to society, 10 of the last 11 recessions have shown a correlation between rapidly rising oil prices and falling economic activity. When the cost of oil rises faster that the consumers' ability to adjust his consumption, he is forced to buy the oil and forego other spending until he can increase his ability to pay or reduce his oil consumption.
quote]
Needless to say correlation isn't causation. I'm sure you could name a few commodities that had high prices preceding a recession. It's a logical condition that when times are good (as in preceding a recession) prices will be high through inflation for all number of goods, housing etc. Most recessions can be more easily explained by debt cycles, or the economic cycle then an increase in fuel costs leading to a 1% drop in discretionary spending. No doubt some recessions have oil price spikes, combined with real supply shortages as a contributing factor.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'K')opits asserts we are in a supply constrained market and the cost of oil in such a market can only rise as much as the combined increase in global GDP and efficiency.

[AndyA]

Japan is interesting, declining oil consumption yet a pretty much civilised non collapse type country.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-da ... ips=JA#pet
25% decline in 13 years.

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AndyA', 'J')apan is interesting, declining oil consumption yet a pretty much civilised non collapse type country.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-da ... ips=JA#pet
25% decline in 13 years.

[Pops]

Sure sounds like a general argument against the effects of PO to me,
They'll just drill more
we'll just use less
30 years of stagnation in Japan hasn't been so bad
LOL

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AndyA', 'M')ost recessions can be more easily explained by debt cycles, or the economic cycle then an increase in fuel costs leading to a 1% drop in discretionary spending.

[Pops]

I like the prosaic bumper sticker scenarios too; oh, it'll be like this or that, stair step down, degrowth, long emergency, transition, blah, blah. I've been in just that camp for a dozen years regarding PO because there was no near term indication of a reduction in investment which would lead to a large reduction in new production.

But that has changed.

Let me repeat Kopit's point because no one has addressed it:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')Oil Companies and IOCs for that matter] are actually reducing investment in upstream projects, even in the face of historically high oil prices and falling production.

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')licking your heels together and saying "slo decline, slo decline" over and over doesn't alter the fact that marginal oil is becoming unprofitable. OIil extraction is a money making business, not an energy making business. When the customer can't pay to produce the most expensive oil, production of that oil stops, if another producer of less expensive oil can't make up the shortfall, decline takes over.

Just that simple.

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')Let me repeat Kopit's point because no one has addressed it:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')Oil Companies and IOCs for that matter] are actually reducing investment in upstream projects, even in the face of historically high oil prices and falling production.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')
Let me repeat Kopit's point because no one has addressed it:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')Oil Companies and IOCs for that matter] are actually reducing investment in upstream projects, even in the face of historically high oil prices and falling production.

[Lore]

Isn't this a bit like Dollar General picking up the scraps around Walmart?

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', '
')I would say that that statement actually reinforces the staircase of slow decline theory even more,

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'T')he US is about to become the largest oil producer in the world. This is not due to the efforts of the government or the oil majors or the IOCs but to small independent oil companies like continental Kodiak etc

[Quinny]

Pop's point is valid and depresses me.