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THE F.William Engdahl Thread (merged)

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby jbeckton » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 14:20:22

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dorlomin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', ' ')Who claimed that oil was not infinite on a local scale?
just about everyone who has ever wrote on the subject ever. Who claimed oil is not finite on a local scale?


Sorry I was running for lunch, I meant "who said that oil production was infinite on a local scale"

The current oil origin theory may be widely accepted in the scientific community but that by no means makes it a fact. There are still questions.

This is getting pointlessly off topic.

My position is that we have based almost all of our surveying and drilling efforts upon the idea that oil was formed from the remains of organic material long ago. If it were to be shown that oil can be formed from methane pockets deep within the earth, it would mean that we have not looked in all of the right places. It would by no means mean that we would never hit PO, but it could very well have an impact on the timeline of PO and therefore, have an impact on the course of events to come.

I have NEVER said that I necessarily buy this idea, only that if it were to be proven, that it would in fact make a huge difference.

I am more than happy to defend this position if you disagree with it but I will no longer debate anything that does not add to the discussion.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby rumspringa » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 16:45:45

Elaine Supkis at Culture of Life News deals with Engdahl: Engdahl Can't Comprehend Hubbert Oil PEAK.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby dorlomin » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 17:38:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', 'M')y position is that we have based almost all of our surveying and drilling efforts upon the idea that oil was formed from the remains of organic material long ago.
Many of the biggest fields in the world were found before we had the technology and theory to drill in that fashion. Pennsyvania, Ohio, Texas, Iraq, Persia/ Iran and others were found without its benefit.

Alot of dry drilling of non oil bearing rock has been done over the years. All of the oil discovered so far fits comfortably with the current dominant theory.

You will need to present a much stronger more coherent case than you have so far that any other hypothyses are worth considering than telling me we have not drilled enough dry holes where there is no oil yet.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby Morpheus » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 17:57:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Biological origin is central to Peak Oil theory, used to explain why oil is only found in certain parts of the world where it was geologically trapped millions of years ago. ...

An entirely alternative theory of oil formation has existed since the early 1950’s in Russia, almost unknown to the West. It claims conventional American biological origins theory is an unscientific absurdity that is un-provable. They point to the fact that western geologists have repeatedly predicted finite oil over the past century, only to then find more, lots more.[/


? What?!?

Ummmm... no... it's not. Peak Oil is NOT a theory, rather it is widely accepted scientific fact, and has been for decades. The USGS & even CERA both predict a peak production in conventional hydrocarbons. Peak Oil says nothing about the origins of oil... you self-serving, psychotic prick.

only to then find more

Lot's more huh?

Are you high?

Get off my lawn... punk.

This deserves little response, since a child can quickly locate evidence which disputes this statement. When you begin by mischaracterizing Peak Oil's arguments, & then proceed to debunk your fake version of Peak Oil... & then go on to claim oil discoveries have sky-rocketed since the 50's...

Well...

You are an embarrassment.

Oh yeah... and "un-provable" isn't hyphenated genius.

I am new here and maybe I do not know who is who yet is this type of conduct allowed and tolerated? If this is the way peak oilers convince people that peak oil is a fact instead of just a theory then I do not want convinced.

Wow "prick" , "punk" and the anal retentive correction of grammar used to degrade.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby TheDude » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 18:45:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('meemoe_uk', 'O')K, who knows about this 'Dnieper-Donets Basin' Engdahl talks about as the fruit of abiotic theory? Is the oil in a place that defies conventional geological oil theory?


From Heinberg's Energy Bulletin article on abiotic oil:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Russians (I must remind the reader that I am actually talking about a minority even with the community of Russian geologists) claim successes in drilling in basement rock in the Dneiper-Donets Basin in the Ukraine. Professor Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Chairman of the Department of Petroleum Exploration, Institute of Geological Sciences, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kiev, and leader of the exploration project, wrote:

The eleven major and one giant oil and gas fields here described have been discovered in a region which had, forty years ago, been condemned as possessing no potential for petroleum production. The exploration for these fields was conducted entirely according to the perspective of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins. The drilling which resulted in these discoveries was extended purposely deep into the crystalline basement rock, and it is in that basement where the greatest part of the reserves exist. These reserves amount to at least 8,200 M metric tons [65 billion barrels] of recoverable oil and 100 B cubic meters of recoverable gas, and are thereby comparable to those of the North Slope of Alaska. (5)

However, independent assessments of the situation do not support these claims. First, the US Geological Survey does not agree that the Dneiper-Donets reserves are that large (it cites 2.7 billion barrels for total oil endowment). Second, the appearance of oil in basement rocks is unusual but not unheard of, and there are various ways in which oil can appear in basement rock. In the process of drilling through overlying sedimentary rock, oil can be expelled downward so that it appears to come from below. Then there are situations where igneous or metamorphic rocks have migrated upward, or sedimentary rocks have migrated downward, so that basement rock covers sedimentary rock (in some cases, the overthrust may be hundreds of square kilometers in extent). In his paper �Oil Production from Basement Reservoirs�Examples from USA and Venezuela,� Tako Koning of Texaco Angola, Inc., cites source rocks such as marine shales in nearly all instances. (6) More to the point, numerous studies cite the existence of sedimentary source rocks in the Dneiper-Donets region. (7)


Engdahl also compares the D-D basin's production to Alaska's North Slope, which apparently is a handy yardstick...

From the Oil Drum: Abiotic Snake Oil.
Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
And let me tell you something: I dig your work.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby genworb » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 20:06:43

The theory could be construed as a large bowl of
" herring red primordial soup" , I wish.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby billybell88 » Wed 19 Sep 2007, 20:45:37

Time will prove that Peak Oil is real. By around 2010, everyone will be a "Peak Oiler".
Prepare for Peak Oil
http://www.kbkmedia.com
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby threadbear » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 00:43:36

Morhpheus, You should give this book a read. I'm unmoved by people who stubbornly support any dominant theory and then criticize alternative theories, siting lack of sufficient evidence. Obviously, the data required to change minds and undermine the dominant theory is insufficient, until it is backed up by money and political power

The book is Alternative Science, Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment. --Richard Milton

"With humor and an eye for the telling detail, the author describes many instances when the defenders of scientific orthodoxy acted with unscientific rigidity in the face of the evidence. Faraday, Roentgen, Edison, and even the Wright Brothers were thought to be charlatans by their contemporaries. Taking the broad view of the way science is done, Milton discusses the forces at work in the marginalization of unorthodox research, and makes the reader wonder if there is not something fundamentally wrong with the way that science is currently being practiced."

http://www.amazon.com/Alternative-Scien ... 0892816317
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby threadbear » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 01:24:08

Aaron is usually pretty subtle, Morpheus. My guess is he's had to deal with some idiot in a Bayliner at his marina. You have no idea how annoying that can be. Google plastic boats, sh**heads. :lol:
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby muon » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 03:34:43

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', 'I') have been looking around and have seen some interesting articles:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')stronomers have been able to find that hydrocarbons, as oil, gas and coal are called, occur on many other planetary bodies. They are a common substance in the universe. You find it in the kind of gas clouds that made systems like our solar system. You find large quantities of hydrocarbons in them. Is it reasonable to think that our little Earth, one of the planets, contains oil and gas for reasons that are all its own and that these other bodies have it because it was built into them when they were born? That question makes a lot of sense. After all, they didn’t have dinosaurs and ferns on Jupiter to produce oil and gas.
...
Human skull fossils have been found in anthracite coal in Pennsylvania. The official theory of the development of coal will not accept that reality, since human beings were not around when anthracite coal was formed. Coal was formed millions of years ago. However, you cannot mistake the fact that these are human fossils.
...
"The coal we dig is hard, brittle stuff. It was once a liquid, because we find embedded in the middle of a six-foot seam of coal such things as a delicate wing of some animal or a leaf of a plant. They are undestroyed, absolutely preserved; with every cell in that fossil filled with exactly the same coal as all the coal on the outside. A hard, brittle coal is not going to get into each cell of a delicate leaf without destroying it. So obviously that stuff was a thin liquid at one time which gradually hardened."
...
Gold claims that the only thing we find now on the Earth that would do that is petroleum, which gradually becomes stiffer and harder. That is the only logical explanation for the origin of coal. So the fact that coal contains fossils does not prove that it is a fossil fuel; it proves exactly the opposite. Those fossils found in coal prove that coal is not made from those fossils. Where then does the carbon base come from that produces all of this?

http://www.jcrows.com/hydrocarbons.html


I'm not a chemist but I believe hydrocarbons do not equal oil any more than they equal any other things made from organic components - a tree or a human for example. I believe methane is found on other planets, at least in the solar system, but that's at the surface, not deep underground where oil is, they can't probe underground on exo-planets to know if they contain oil or not. The question doesn't make sense as no one does know if Jupiter contains oil, they're just making a very big and unreasonable extrapolation.

I don't agree that finding fossils in coal rules out a fossil origin for them. If there was a liquid-like bed of earlier transformed organic residue there's no real reason I can see for a later untransformed plant leaf or insect to not fall in there and not be transformed but to stay intact, especially if there's a quick solidification after it falls in.

I've briefly tried googling the skull in coal and found two references on what I would consider "fringe" sites that are making conclusions by ignoring a lot of facts that contradict their conclusions. If they can reach false conclusions by missing out facts on such things as the Laetoli footprints, I don't place much validity in their other statements until or unless I can find a proper scientific source presenting the same facts and suggesting conclusions with sound reasoning. If you can find a proper science reporting site that says they have found oil on Jupiter fair enough, but saying they have found unspecified hydrocarbons in space or on other planets does not imho allow anyone to draw such a conclusion as in that quote.

I've read a reasonable amount of crank science before (and most of it was very interesting and very believable if you don't delve deeper) and I've taken time to read different sites on peak oil, trying to discern the logical and scientific from the radical or lunatic, some of what I am seeing to back up these abiotic theories is what I would place more in the latter categories than the former. The statement about the 19 mile cube of dinosaurs really is a big flaw in the link the OP gave, if there's a flaw that big, what other flaws are in there too? I would like to see more information and critiques of abiotic oil, but these type of things will not convince me, they're more likely to push me in the other direction.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby seldom_seen » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 04:05:51

It is not a coincidence that the term "abiotic oil" entered the lexicon of some segment of literate folks at this time and place in history.

The term "abiotic oil" arrived right on schedule, in tandem with oil prices setting a trajectory for the moon. No one was writing articles, or books, or websites about abiotic oil in 1998 when oil was 10 dollars a barrel.

"abiotic oil" is a mental escape hatch for those would rather avoid the wear and tear on the brain cells that would occur by ruminating on the other more stark reality. That oil is finite, biological in origin, and we're using up what's left at a frightening pace.

No amount of intelligence, scholarship or accolades makes one immune to the soothing elixir of "abiotic oil." It's like having a gin and tonic when contemplating our energy predicament..."maybe there's still plenty of oil out there and it's being regenerated all the time? ...ahhhh. I like the sound of that."

The cry of the cargo cult. You will know things are bad when people start constructing mock gas stations out of cardboard boxes and plywood in the hopes that a gasoline truck will arrive.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby Zardoz » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 05:10:19

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('meemoe_uk', 'I') know very little about abiotic oil theory, it's crazy to dismiss it because it won't stop a peak in oil production. Geologists are as dogmatic as the other speculative sciences. These guys refused to accept the theory of plate tectonics. Only when there was overwhelming practical evidence did they accept it. Could be the same with abiotic oil.


Good post.

You will find that many here aren't interested in learning about anything that won't completely solve every problem that we ever had, right now, and for the remainder of civilization. And if you show any interest in it, you completely subscribe to every claim ever made about it.

It's the same argument with alternative energy from them, it's too expensive. What they always fail to comprehend is that expensive is a relative term.

Oil was once considered too expensive to drill. Good call!

Get this: Your life is not going to turn out the way you want it to. You face a bleak future, as we all do.

The resource that supports our opulent, convenient, luxurious way of life is being exhausted at a furious rate, we're going to start running short of it very soon, and there is nothing anyone can do to alter that reality.

You can sharpen your denial skills all you like, and play every psychological game you can think of to play, but it isn't going to do you the slightest bit of good. We're all screwed, and the younger you are, the more screwed you are. We graybeards are going to see plenty of shit hit a lot of fans, but the kids of today are eventually going to find themselves playing roles right out of apocalypse movies. I suspect you don't have a lot of years on you, and you're frightened out of your mind at the prospect of what the next few decades have in store for you.

Hell, if I was 20 years old, I'd be in deepest denial, too. The thought of what life is going to like forty or fifty years from now is enough to send anybody off into flights of absurd fantasy.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seldom_seen', '"')Abiotic oil" is a mental escape hatch for those would rather avoid the wear and tear on the brain cells that would occur by ruminating on the other more stark reality: That oil is finite, biological in origin, and we're using up what's left at a frightening pace.

Right on, seldom. That what it's all about.

That's all it's about.
"Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby Doly » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 06:52:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', '
')It's the same argument with alternative energy from them, it's too expensive. What they always fail to comprehend is that expensive is a relative term.

Oil was once considered too expensive to drill. Good call!


Yes, it is a relative term. But the correct comparison sometimes isn't "How expensive is X compared with other similar things?", but "How expensive is X compared with a person's average salary?"

And I did get your point, but you don't see where I'm coming from. I believe we either peaked already or are going to peak in the next five years. So, you see, even very high rates of replenishment would only buy us a year or two. Hardly enough to make a difference.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby jbeckton » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 07:57:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billybell88', 'T')ime will prove that Peak Oil is real. By around 2010, everyone will be a "Peak Oiler".


If you look back to 2004, there were a lot of posters claiming that about 2007.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby jbeckton » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 08:18:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', '
')Get this: Your life is not going to turn out the way you want it to. You face a bleak future, as we all do.


Whistle blowers have been saying that for a least 34 years. Let me tell you , it's been really rough these past 3 decades.

I guess I will just go and prepare for my dooom.....

I am thankful that I know enough not to buy into the doomsday scenarios. I feel bad for thoses who don't.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby TonyPrep » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 12:53:47

To all abiotic believers and biogenic doubters: please read rocdoc's posts and the various links posted about articles and previous discussions. This seems to be a subject that rears its head from time to time and, each time, never seems to address the rebuttals that are made.

It's amazing that we've found so much oil in the exact places one would expect to find it, given a biogenic origin.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 15:23:36

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't agree that finding fossils in coal rules out a fossil origin for them. If there was a liquid-like bed of earlier transformed organic residue there's no real reason I can see for a later untransformed plant leaf or insect to not fall in there and not be transformed but to stay intact, especially if there's a quick solidification after it falls in.


This is another ridiculous suggestion and ignores a wealth of knowledge that has been gathered by coal petrologists over the past 40 - 50 years, some very famous geochemists in that bunch such as Martin and Mary Teichmueller who basically invented much of the theory between organic catagenesis.

Simply put you can use a microscope in reflected light to identify all sorts of included organic material in various stages of catagensis within coals of various grades. In low lignitic to low vol bituminous coals you can easily identify pieces of wood, seeds etc. that are at early stages of alteration....at higher grades the hydrogen and oxygen are driven out of these fragments and the carbon molecules become better organized such that they exhibit some amount of light reflectance, or Ro a direct meaure of level of maturation. Even at higher grade bituminous coals various organic relects are still visible although somewhat altered through de-volutization. There are books written on the subject and a scientific journal Coal Petrology that is dedicated to the subject.
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Re: Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer - Engdahl

Unread postby threadbear » Thu 20 Sep 2007, 15:31:15

People who "believe" the standard theory, can just as easily be pathologized as those who don't. In the end it comes down to a certain degree of uncertainty, for me. I don't know the truth as I'm not a geologist, but am always skeptical of those who claim to know for sure, based on an expert's point of view, or insider knowledge. When I cast a cursory glance at their proof, I can see how they COULD be deluded. This isn't saying they necessarily are. They may well be correct.
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