[julianj]

Taskforce Unity

I just downloaded your report, and will read it with interest.

Thanks

Julian

[Taskforce_Unity]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', 'A')s far as decline of 2.5%, of the countries that are currently declining in production, they are averaging about 1.8% annual decline between all of them (they are NOT all declining as fast as the North Sea due to DIFFERENT GEOLOGY of those areas).

And yet the Petroleum Review talks about declines in the 5% range as being the current figure. Matt Simmons's book highlights the likelihood of high decline rates when fields are over produced, as most appear to be, since the world is pumping at capacity, or thereabouts.

[Flow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Taskforce_Unity', '
')
I think we are confusing the different types of decline here:

decline type I, Wells declining

decline type II, fields declining

decline type III, countries declining

Flow is reffering to 1.8% decline in all countries together

decline of 5% refers to wells + fields + countries.

[Flow]

Imagine a time some years ago (I don't know how long it has been as I don't really care to research it) when people were sitting around saying "Oh My God, we are going to run out of gas - Peak Oil is coming." Then along comes this idea to pump water into the wells that have already given us the 22% of oil there typically gave you at the time before they were left for dead. With that great idea came another 13% of life into all wells around the world. Today, thanks to that technology increase, we get about 35% of the oil out of the well.

I have often posted, here and other places, how can anybody say what technology will bring in the future, that technological advances will allow us to get more and more out of wells. That technology will develop new types of transportation that is more efficient that we could ever imagine. And time and time again, all I hear is Peak oil is coming in the next 5 years - we are all screwed. Technology cannot save us.

So I am reading articles on Yahoo! News about Peak Oil today (like I do every day) and low and behold, I come across this article:

CO2 Injections


"An experimental project in Canada to inject carbon dioxide into oil fields has proven successful, removing 5 million tons of the heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas, while enhancing oil recovery, the Energy Department said Tuesday.....such a process can enhance oil recovery up to 60 percent, extend the life of aging oil fields by decades, and provide a permanent repository for the carbon dioxide in geologic formations, the DOE said....we would see billions of additional barrels of oil and a reduction of CO2 emissions equivalent to pulling more than 200 million cars off the road for a year."

So, let’s say that today’s proven reserves are 1.278 trillion barrels, at 35% of the total worldwide recourse. Let's say they can only get an average of 50% of the oil out rather than 60% as the article suggest with CO2 injections. That additional 15% extraction just increased our Proven Reserves by 548 billion barrels of oil.

Now add that to this that I posted a day or two ago in this thread…..

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ased on my calculations, I have figured we will need 730 billion barrels of oil between 2006-2025 based on EIA projections and forecast growth demand.

Next, let's assume we have peaked this year at 85 million barrels per day (mbpd). Let's also assume that we will decline at a rate of 4% (vs. the 2.5% average decline from existing countries in decline today) starting in 2006, so next year we will only produce 81.6, 78.3 the next year and so on.

Over the course of the next 20 years (I didn't figure any leap years, so this number will increase a tad bit), we will produce a total of 432.8 billion barrels of oil. So based on this, we are short 297.2 billion barrels - assuming again that decline will be 4% a year and Peak happened this year.

This also assume that fuel efficiency will not increase, conservation will not increase, Ethanol and BioDiesel levels will not increase with better EROEI that 1:1, The 89 billion barrels of new discoveries over the past 12 years will not come online, the 114 billion barrels of new discoveries that the chart found on the LATOC.net shows we have to discover will not be found or produced, the 50 fields in Iraq and Saudi Arabia that have not been tapped yet will not be tapped, etc.

[DefiledEngine]

With 15% higher extraction, won't that just make us run out of cheap oil even faster? How will this help initiatives away from oil by making it easier to get? How fast can this new technology be scaled up? How much money will have to go for that? How more energy demanding will our society get later on by exploiting these new extracstion techniques?
I still don't understand how this will help CO2 emissions and global warming?

[Flow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DefiledEngine', 'W')ith 15% higher extraction, won't that just make us run out of cheap oil even faster? How will this help initiatives away from oil by making it easier to get? How fast can this new technology be scaled up? How much money will have to go for that? How more energy demanding will our society get later on by exploiting these new extracstion techniques?
I still don't understand how this will help CO2 emissions and global warming?

[DefiledEngine]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')I don't think it will make us run out of cheap oil faster, did injecting water into the wells make us run out faster? Not really, just gave us more.

[Taskforce_Unity]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Flow', '
')I'm pretty sure that in the EIA reports I have referenced, wells and fields are in countries so your 5% is double reality. I can't imagine that there are wells and fields in places that cannot be claimed by a country. That would be like saying, all the fields in the Gulf of Mexico financed and operated by US companies are not included in the US production numbers.

Secondly, a quote from Matt Simmons, a Peak Oil will happen within 5 years advocate can be taken with a grain of salt (or many actually).

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Flow', 'I') have often posted, here and other places, how can anybody say what technology will bring in the future, that technological advances will allow us to get more and more out of wells. That technology will develop new types of transportation that is more efficient that we could ever imagine. And time and time again, all I hear is Peak oil is coming in the next 5 years - we are all screwed. Technology cannot save us.

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

Flow, you cannot "make" more oil. Any method of increased extraction will cause the eventual depletion to be greater. Do you understand this ?

[Mesuge]

TFU> Great report! Almost like a suspense novel reading from A to Z..
Thanks..

Btw. any correlation between those unsubstantiated new oil fields discoveries (Mexico etc.) and temporarily spikes in stock value of these companies?
I'd like to look into that, it's quite likely that's some guys made easy million$ that way..

[Flow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Battle_Scarred_Galactico', 'F')low, you cannot "make" more oil. Any method of increased extraction will cause the eventual depletion to be greater. Do you understand this ?

[GreyZone]

1. CO2 injection is not new. Neither is nitrogen injection. They've been around a while, Flow, just like those Brazilian oil fields have been around since the 1980s and been in production since 1998. You really need to stop taking worldnetdaily.com seriously.

2. Biodiesel and ethanol appear to be net energy losers. Might they become energy gainers? Maybe, but never at 30:1 ratios like cheap oil was once or even at 15:1 like cheap oil is now.

3. On top of the energy loss problem, there may not exist enough arable land on the surface of the earth to provide the biodiesel we currently would need across the planet, let alone future growth.

Let's look at theoretical production capacities of biodiesel just for the United States, shall we? Here are various plants that have been studied for biodiesel production.

1. Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (40 to 50 m³/km²)
2. Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 140 m³/km²)
3. Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130 m³/km²)
4. Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160 m³/km²)
5. Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (610 m³/km²)

Anyway, let's take Palm oil at 650 gal/acre. That's 15.5 (rounded off) barrels per acre. Now, if we did not eat any food at all and just used the entire arable 400,000,000 acres of arable land in the US for biodiesel we'd produce 6,190,476,190 barrels of oil per year. (This is a ridiculous number but I want to demonstrate how utterly ridiculous the idea of biodiesel is coming from people who think it will let us continue the American car culture uninterrupted.)

Right now, today, we use about 7,500,000,000 barrels of oil in the US per year. It looks like biodiesel means the end of society as we know it, doesn't it? It means cutting back on fuel use by even if we stop eating entirely which is absurd. So it really means cutting back on petroleum use by 95% or more when you consider the need to produce food crops for ourselves (and others).

Biodiesel is not a solution to continue the car culture of American consumerism, at all. The sooner that Flow, and others, accept that, the sooner they can realize that we need to move forward to something new and that abandoning the past is not necessarily bad, just an opportunity for a better tomorrow. However, that tomorrow will not be anything remotely like what yesterday was. Does biodisel have a place in our future? Most certainly. But that place is not in powering fleets of automobiles driving to and from extremely low density housing dozens or even hundreds of miles from the cities.

[Flow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GreyZone', '1'). CO2 injection is not new. Neither is nitrogen injection. They've been around a while, Flow, just like those Brazilian oil fields have been around since the 1980s and been in production since 1998. You really need to stop taking worldnetdaily.com seriously.

[ashurbanipal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') was running the numbers trying to figure out how people have come to the conclusion that Peak Oil, it it has not happened, will happen in the next 5-15 years. I believe the reason for these predictions is because they are typcially relying on Proven Oil Reservse as their source of information. The problem with Proven Oil Reserves is it only conciders crude oil that can be extracted with current technology and at current price. This is why Proven Reserves have grown over the years from 600 billion barrels in 1942 to over a trillion barrrels today.

[GreyZone]

There are technical issues with algae based biodiesel production else we'd be floating in the stuff already. The other sources are sources that are actually in production right now, Flow.

Should we also wait for Star Trek anti-matter driven spaceships too? Let's be realistic here. I'll include algae when someone has a working facility producing more than a few barrels per day to prove that it can be done, can scale, and is sustainable. Right now the primary crops are soy and rapeseed, far below even the palm oil, yet you grasp at hypothetical straws that no one has figured out how to do.

Your biodiesel algae solution is like someone promising fusion is going to save us. Maybe it will but when?

I'd also like to see real numbers on switchgrass. How many gallons per acre? I seriously doubt that switchgrass can provide us with enough ethanol to replace all of our domestic transportation oil use, even in a ridiculous scenario like I posited where we don't grow any food at all.

[Flow]

The answer to all your questions is as it always has been with me.

WHEN WE NEED TO.

Why aren't there mass algae farms across the country, because we don't need them. We still have plenty of the good stuff left. That is the same answer to where is the coal liquefaction plants, Ethanal from switch grass, thermal conversion process plants, etc.

The answer to why we wouldn't do it to replace our dependance on forign oil is two part:

1) Saudi Arabi has about $680 billion invested in companies across the USA. They also have over a trillion dollars in our banks. Long story short - we say we will not need you in 10 years Saudi, they say oh yeah - no more oil from us and all that money we have invested in your economy, we would like that back right now please. And oh yeah, we now support using using the Euro to price oil so your dollar is going to go to shit right now.

2) These other technologies cost more to produce oil. Most require oil to be over $30 a barrel for years straight before investors will think about putting money into them. Short of the recent spike in the price of oil, this has never happened. There are agencies in the USA that predict oil will eventually go back to about $30 a barrel and will only raise to about $35 a barrel by 2025. I don't know too many people that are willing to invest that kind of money only to have hybrids become common place, our demand for oil plummet and they are out all that money as they cannot make a profit due to the price of oil being so low (just like the fate of the Canadian Tar Sands project decades ago).

Do either of these suggest that it is not possible to increase production in the future? No way.

[Flow]

One other thing about the Saudi's just came to mind.

I was watching Fairenheight 9/11 again on Showtime (or one of the movie channels - can't remember which as I have them all) the other night.

They do a huge piece on the Bush family ties to the Saudi's. I gotta believe that with that kind of relationship, Bush knows about the production capabilty of most of the OPEC nations. With such knowledge, he doesn't seem too concerned about Peak Oil other than to tell us to "Drive Less."

p.s. I am NOT a GW Bush supporter of any sort so please do mistake this as support the him or any of his policies.

[DefiledEngine]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')WHEN WE NEED TO.

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Flow', 'M')y only goal is to delay Peak Oil as long as possible so that we can develop other technologies (hybrid, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, hydrogen, cold fussion, <insert new technology here>, etc). Time will save billions of lives as far as I am concerned.