[Osurac]

Maybe we should entertain the idea of cliff oil instead of peak oil, it seems like peak oil will not be understood for lack of want by the general public. If people choose to be naive than the oil producers will do everything in their power to keep production as high as possible because their livlihood is at stake and no one is complaining about the problem at hand. It's kind of like someone slapping you in the face everyday but because you dont want to cause any trouble, and you dont want to call the police, hire a lawyer, go to court, and miss days at work you choose do nothing. I think we are pushing ourselves to a cliff rather than a peak. Maybe that is what energy reports from governments and energy companies are focused on.

[turmoil]

Well directly preceding and following peak in the US-48 was a steep increase and a steep decrease in production. It is quite possible that the same thing could happen with the global peak. If that happens, we will probably have a double peak (unlike the US) where projects that come online after the steep loss offset the decline and raise it to around peak levels. Then if there are no more huge projects, we will most likely see anywhere from 2%-5% average decline.

[backstop]

Turmoil -

Might the title "Breast Oil" be about right for the supply curve you describe - i.e. complete with nipple ?

If so, then we are blessed with an abundance of models to consider . . . .

regards,

Backstop

[turmoil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('backstop', 'T')urmoil -

Might the title "Breast Oil" be about right for the supply curve you describe - i.e. complete with nipple ?

If so, then we are blessed with an abundance of models to consider . . . .

regards,

Backstop

[Novus]

I think "Cliff oil" is becoming more and more likely. When the US peaked we did not have all this high technology to help us get the oil out faster. We slowly brought the new technology online as we declined which resulted in the slow decline of America's oil production. In places like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and North Sea the new technology was already in place before their peaks. They now have nothing to turn to to stop the production declines. The North Sea experienced a 16% annual decline because aggressive use technology where as the US has declined at steady 3% annual rate.

Another process adding to the approach of Cliff Oil are the strategic oil reserves in the US, Europe, and Japan. They are currently being drawn down to keep the world economy going. Even though oil production has been plateauing for almost two years now our consumption of oil has not. Because of the production plateau we should be cutting back but instead it has been business as usual. At some point the strategic reserves will run out not one but two cliffs. We will be facing a reserve cliff and a production cliff probably sometime around 2008. We may be forced to cut our energy use by a quarter in one year.

[MD]

Been deprived of late, friend Backstop???

[backstop]

MD -

Can't complain ----- am thankful for well-rounded mercies . . . .


regards,

Backstop

[backstop]

Osurac -

the various projections of the downslope seem to me to be optimistic to the extent they fail to factor in investment confidence,
which for a given field, region, nation or corporation is under no surety of declining in a steady and predictable manner.

At the same time, there are development curves of non-fossil energies now getting underway
that will in future provide a significant pull of energy-sector investment at unpredictable moments.

Added to the unpredictable impacts on the supply infrastructure of increasingly common extreme weather events,
beside the pivotal forced-extraction issue you raise,
these points would appear to confirm that the decline will most likely be

a/. turbulent and b/. trending to a significantly steeper rate than past records of the global upslope would indicate.

regards,

Backstop

[AmericanEmpire]

Whatever you call it. We are fucked.

The shitstorm thats comming would be entertaining if I didn't have to live or rather die in it.

[Cobra_Strike]

The North Sea decline does have some interesting things to say about a possable future...I have wondered what the market wide production decrease will be. Some of the graphs furnished by others on this site have shown a more pronounced and sharper peak then that of the classic bell curve. I doubt any mitigation policy would be realistic if the Saudi and Iranian fields production declined at a modest 10%. That would halve their production in 7 years....

[turmoil]

Numerous countries are already in decline, and now that there is no more global production growth we should see a continued plateau or gradual decline until the new projects come online in the next few years. However, I would not be too suprised if we see an initial 5-10%(4.2-8.4 mbpd) drop in world production due to any number of factors. Given the age and water cut of our "go-to" fields and the instability of key countries, anything is possible.

[dub_scratch]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('turmoil', 'W')ell directly preceding and following peak in the US-48 was a steep increase and a steep decrease in production. It is quite possible that the same thing could happen with the global peak. If that happens, we will probably have a double peak (unlike the US) where projects that come online after the steep loss offset the decline and raise it to around peak levels. Then if there are no more huge projects, we will most likely see anywhere from 2%-5% average decline.

[turmoil]

dub_scratch,

I generally agree. I think there is a lot of upside potential for the total decline rate. For one, Exxon has stated 8-10% decline in the fields in production. EROEI and cost, as you mentioned, is definitely a factor and it could be that the more likely range is 4-7% average decline. ASPO figures, if memory serves me, around 3% or about 1,818,000 bpd lost each year. 5% decline averages about 3,030,000 bpd lost each year. 5% is a fair amount of production to consistently lose each year after factoring in all of the new projects, which should at least help to offset the decline.

I am the first one to admit that anything is possible or assume the worst. I just don't want to get carried away.

[ubercynicmeister]

LOL, the problem is not going to be the "availablity" of Oil, Post peak. It'll be the damn price of it. Let's assume that we see a niiiiiice gentle downslope, Post Peak Oil. Please pardon me for making this assumption, but it's just to serve as an illustration.

Matt Savinar points out that, if Oil Production for the World follows oil production for one, individual field, then we'll get a niiiiice "bell shaped" curve (sounds better than breast shaped, and yes, you haven't been getting any lately, have you?) for World Oil Production. That is, there's an upslope, a "peak" and then there's a down-slope. We haven't run out of Oil we're just to the 1/2 way point. So, if there's (say ) a 5% depletion over (say) 10 years for the entire planet, then the world will be producing 5% less 10 years from now that what it does today. This is sooo simplistic it should never need re-stating, but seemingly it does. Why?

Because we're riiiight on the border riiiiight now. We are producing about as much as we consume. And the price is rising. It's risen to approx. US$70 per barrel, up from the US$5.65 per barrel of 1998. Note: if the price of Oil rises by that much (approx 1,240% in approx. 8 years) with the supply being about equal to the demand, what the heck happens when demand outstrips supply by 5%?

Therein lies the problem - the Freemarket will really be quite happy to push the Oil price to perviously unbelieveably high levels, such as the unbeleivably high US$70 that we saw last year in October and which now (once again) seems imminent. Who would have predicted a 1240% price rise for Oil in 8 years? You'd have been thought of as nuts, if you'd predicted that sort of future price increase in 1998. Yet here we are, and here it is, too.

OK, let's be a bit conservative about this and assume only another 1,240% price rise in 8 years, where does that take us? US$868 per barrel, 8 years from now (2014).

Let's forget all the other stuff Oil does & merely concentrate on the fuel price, because that's the most obvious place where Oil's price is seen by the consumer.

The maths is not so easy on this one simply because there's not a one-for-one change in the price of fuel as versus the price of the Oil said fuel is derived from. In Australia, every time the price of Oil goes up by US$1, there's a 1 cent-per-litre rise in the price of Fuel. The present price of fuel is (about) Aus$1.25 per litre. This implies a price rise of 798 cents per litre in 8 years, or a fuel price of Aus$9.23 per litre. This works out at about US$6.92 per litre. There's 3.75 litres in a US gallon, so that's US$25.95 per gallon. In 8 year's time. Think I'm kidding? Well, this is only the price rise that we've already had in the last 8 years, projected forward another 8 years.

Now, in a regulated market, we could (possibly) stand a 5% drop in global Oil production...perhaps...mebbe...But in a Freemarket Economy, with no constraints at all on Price Rises and no incentive to conserve (and no way to pay for conservation measures, anyway, at such a Fuel price) then we are utterly screwed. No nation and no nation's economy can stand the Oil price at US$868 per barrel, if that nation uses Oil as it's primary means of transport, chemicals, energy supply (etc etc), and above all, prosperity.

Since the introduction of Freemarket Fundamentalism in the 1980's, Oil has become out primary source of everything. What about coal-fired power stations, you ask? Well, it takes a diesel powered digger to extract the coal (it used to be electrical before the Freemarket Fundamentalists got hold of it), where it it taken by a diesel powered truck (used to be electrically-powered railway) to a diesel-fuelled train (used to be electrical) which then hauls it off to the power station, usually several hundred miles away. Coal power used to be energy self-suffcient. Not any more.

Thanks to the Freemarket Fundamentalists, it has become juuuust as dependant on Oil as everyone else and everything else.

[The_Virginian]

Otay, look there will be a lot of sqwiurming and re-assesment.

Conservation is now for Republicans, Coal will use the cheapest power...that is coal, Nuclear will be a priority...

But in the end...

How they MANAGE the decline is almost as important as the rate of decline itself...

[something_awfull]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AmericanEmpire', 'W')hatever you call it. We are fucked.

The shitstorm thats comming would be entertaining if I didn't have to live or rather die in it.

[Cobra_Strike]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('something_awfull', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AmericanEmpire', 'W')hatever you call it. We are fucked.

The shitstorm thats comming would be entertaining if I didn't have to live or rather die in it.

[27010]

I think that some alternative thought is needed, we all assume that peak oil takes place when half of the recoverable oil is gone. This may have been true in the 1970s when America peaked, but since then technology has improved allowing previously unrecoverable oil to be recovered. This newly recoverable oil was not factored into the peak oil equation when it was first introduced by Hubbard and as such most modern applications of the peak oil theory ignore it too. What I am trying to suggest is that peak oil may occur later than once 50% of recoverable oil is gone, lets say 75% for the sake of giving an example. We have therefore managed to keep an adequate production level going beyond the 50 % mark and we are now at the approach to a sheer drop when we reach a point where there is no possible method of extracting the rest. To give an example with made up figures as I dont have any info to calculate correct ones, it is possible that production will rise to a point where 30% of recovered oil is recovered and remain steady until 75% is recovered. When I say steady, it would not appear to be steady as world demand and the amount of oil being produced would dictate the quantity and speed of extraction at any given point of the worlds economic cycle. I have not seen any graph of North Sea production, but I do not believe that there was 50% of the recoverable oil left at Peak, or it wouldnt be such a severe decline now.

I suppose this might seem like a load of rubbish, no doubt those of you better informed than myself will correct me.

[duke3522]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('27010', 'I') think that some alternative thought is needed, we all assume that peak oil takes place when half of the recoverable oil is gone. This may have been true in the 1970s when America peaked, but since then technology has improved allowing previously unrecoverable oil to be recovered. This newly recoverable oil was not factored into the peak oil equation when it was first introduced by Hubbard and as such most modern applications of the peak oil theory ignore it too. What I am trying to suggest is that peak oil may occur later than once 50% of recoverable oil is gone, lets say 75% for the sake of giving an example. We have therefore managed to keep an adequate production level going beyond the 50 % mark and we are now at the approach to a sheer drop when we reach a point where there is no possible method of extracting the rest. To give an example with made up figures as I dont have any info to calculate correct ones, it is possible that production will rise to a point where 30% of recovered oil is recovered and remain steady until 75% is recovered. When I say steady, it would not appear to be steady as world demand and the amount of oil being produced would dictate the quantity and speed of extraction at any given point of the worlds economic cycle. I have not seen any graph of North Sea production, but I do not believe that there was 50% of the recoverable oil left at Peak, or it wouldnt be such a severe decline now.

I suppose this might seem like a load of rubbish, no doubt those of you better informed than myself will correct me.

[turmoil]

rockdoc would be able to tell us how long secondary and tertiary extraction tools actually sustain production at field peak levels. If peak extraction rates could be sustained to 70% of field reserves, that would leave 30% left and decline rates would be much higher, maybe 10-20% annual decline like the North Sea. If most fields are being pumped at peak rates until around 30% reserves are left, that means world reserves would be 30% of total recoverable oil, and we've used 70%, making 1500 Gb the approximate global recoverable oil.

1000 / .70 = 1428.57

1000 / .65 = 1538.46

1000 / .60 = 1666,66

If this happens, we will be in the stone age in under a decade.

BTW, 1500 was Hubbert's estimate 50 or so years ago. (oops his estimate was 1250...sorry)