[dohboi]

Demand should peak by 2030, and oil should not reach $100/barrel again.

When Does ‘Too Much Oil’ Become the Problem?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') The WEC’s scenario depends, of course, on finding an alternative to crude oil as a transportation fuel. In two of its three scenarios, demand for oil peaks in 2030: “Despite growing demand for transport fuels, new technologies and competition from alternatives drive diversification and lead demand to slow beyond 2030.”

The implications for big oil companies like Exxon are not in big-ticket, long lead-time projects in ultra-deepwater and harsh environments. The current cycle, according to a Bloomberg report of Tillerson’s comments, has “confirmed the viability of a very large [shale] resource base in North America” that can “serve as enormous spare capacity” to meet future demand.

There are two implications of this. First, prices are very unlikely to reach $100 a barrel again. Second, North American shale has displaced Saudi oil as the “swing producer” and has virtually broken any remaining vestige of power that OPEC holds over global oil markets. An OPEC production cut of half a million barrels a day may raise crude prices to $55 a barrel, but the impact of the cut is probably limited to that or just modestly more.

[Newfie]

Well Doh,

We agree on this one. Pretty insane.

[ROCKMAN]

"First, prices are very unlikely to reach $100 a barrel again." Reminds me of all the experts' reports in 1998 that explain in great detail why oil (selling for less then $20/bbl at the time) would never hit $40/bbl again. Always easy to predict the future price of any commodity when you don't have to back it up with your own money.

[Tanada]

There are some serious assumptions in this article. The first is, the economy will keep progressing BAU fashion for the next 15.25 years. The second is, peak resources will never be an issue during that period of time.

I don't think either underlying premise is correct, what do you think of these foundations?

[sparky]

.
" The WEC’s scenario depends, of course, on finding an alternative to crude oil as a transportation fuel "

good luck with that , should ( when ) we run out of crude , distillates grade fuel will be synthesized
diesel and jet fuel are the optimal form of energy transmission known .
this include the handling , on board storage and power conversion from fuel to torque of the whole system
there is nothing even close with an equal power density , the closest competitor is the coal fired steam engine
....surprise , surprise those two are the dominant form of power used for nearly two centuries

[Plantagenet]

When Putin invades Finland oil will go to $100 bbl

When Ghawsr peaks oil will go to $100 bbl

When Iran does its first nuke bomb test oil will go to $100 bbl

Etc etc

[ROCKMAN]

"When Iran does its first nuke bomb test oil will go to $100 bbl. etc, etc" And when Texas secedes oil will go to $100/bbl.

I wonder which will likely happen first? LOL.

[Rod_Cloutier]

I was trying to visualize the quantity of oil used in a day in terms of cubic volume. One barrel of oil is about 3 ft high, by 1.5 ft wide. Really quite large actually when you think about it. Recently I was at a campfire which someone had started in an fire in an old oil barrel, and 3 or four people can fit around one comfortably.

I figure I could put about 130 barrels in my living room or about 2160 barrels in my townhouse. I can see a large 9 story apartment complex out my living room window across the lake, and I figure it could hold about 82,000 barrels (multiplying the size of my townhouse by 38). See attached picture for volume.

The world uses 90,000,000 barrels of oil EACH DAY. This would be 1097.5 times the volume of the apartment building shown below. Again, just a rough guess that this would be about a quarter of a square mile in cubic volume daily!

Although the Earth is vast, is boggles my mind to think that this volume of consumption could continue for decades without the price rising. The MSM doesn't get it.

[ROCKMAN]

Rod - Here are some similar perspectives:

"Imagine the island of Manhattan covered with 150 feet of crude oil – almost enough to drown the Statue of Liberty – or 1,000 football stadiums filled to the brim with black gold. That's a cubic mile of oil, or the amount of oil alone the world now consumes in a year, Ripudaman Malhotra told an audience Monday at Greentech Media's Greentech Innovations: End-to-End Electricity conference in New York.

And Malhotra, associate director of SRI International's Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., wants people to think of all the world's energy usage in terms of cubic miles of oil, or CMOs, because "That exercise will bring us face to face with the enormity of the challenge we are facing" in moving to a renewable energy future.

Including electricity generation, which takes up about 40 percent of the world's energy usage, and all other forms of energy, the world uses the equivalent of three cubic miles of oil per year, he said."

Now a different perspective. I'm sure everyone here knows there are no "lakes of oil" in the earth. Oil is in the pore spaces and fractures in the rocks. Now some very simplistic generalizations. Only 20% of the rock is pore space. So the volume of rock holding the oil would be 5 cubic miles. But only the pores contained only oil. But they don't...more like 2/3 is oil. Again gross generalizations.

So let's round it up to 7 cubic miles. Sounds like a lot, eh? But perspective again: assume that 1 billion bbls of global productyion came from Texas. And again grossly: oil is produced in the first 12,000' or so...about 2 miles.
So the area of Texas, if it contained that solid 7 cubic miles of oil, wouild cover 7/2 sq miles. So again let's round upwards and call it 4 sq miles.

Texas covers about 270,000 sq miles. So IF that entire cubic mile of oil were produced from a solid block of rocks in Texas it would be 0.002% of the area the state covers. Of course Texas only produces about 1/25 of the world's oil. So (again a very crude generalization) globally that volume of oil would be under about 0.0008% of the area of the known oil producing regions. And just for grins: about 0.000002% of the earth's land area.

The numbers don't really relate to the actual physical world of oil production but puts it into a more easily envisioned format. Of course I can't imagin how one would envision 0.000002% of the land area of the world. LOL.

And yes: its a slow night and I'm bored.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', 'D')emand should peak by 2030, and oil should not reach $100/barrel again.

When Does ‘Too Much Oil’ Become the Problem?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') The WEC’s scenario depends, of course, on finding an alternative to crude oil as a transportation fuel. In two of its three scenarios, demand for oil peaks in 2030: “Despite growing demand for transport fuels, new technologies and competition from alternatives drive diversification and lead demand to slow beyond 2030.”

The implications for big oil companies like Exxon are not in big-ticket, long lead-time projects in ultra-deepwater and harsh environments. The current cycle, according to a Bloomberg report of Tillerson’s comments, has “confirmed the viability of a very large [shale] resource base in North America” that can “serve as enormous spare capacity” to meet future demand.

There are two implications of this. First, prices are very unlikely to reach $100 a barrel again. Second, North American shale has displaced Saudi oil as the “swing producer” and has virtually broken any remaining vestige of power that OPEC holds over global oil markets. An OPEC production cut of half a million barrels a day may raise crude prices to $55 a barrel, but the impact of the cut is probably limited to that or just modestly more.