Peak Oil is You
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Page added on November 5, 2012
Cecil Adams: What’s the Latest on Peak Oil?
What’s the current thinking on peak oil? Your column six years ago led me to think the petroleum tap was running dry and we’d soon be trading in our cars for bikes and roller skates. Now high-profile opinion types like David Brooks and Fareed Zakaria are making it sound like we’ve got nothing to worry about, what with fracking and dropping natural gas prices. Were you being an alarmist then, or are the optimists kidding themselves now? — David Wargo
Me, alarmist? Never. I just emphatically point out the facts. However, the situation has changed since my 2006 column on peak oil. Let’s take it step by step:
1. Peak oil is the point when oil production stops increasing and starts falling, with potentially dire economic consequences. That day will arrive eventually; the question is when.
2. Pessimists note oil production is tapering off or declining in many parts of the world and anticipate a peak soon — not long ago, some thought it would happen any day. However, people have been making gloomy forecasts for years, and virtually none have panned out.
3. The exception was in 1956, when geophysicist M. King Hubbert introduced the concept of peak oil in a famous paper. Drawing on analyses of U.S. petroleum reserves plus some informed conjecture, he correctly calculated domestic oil production would peak in 1970.
4. Global petroleum estimates were much fuzzier. Hubbert thought the “ultimate recoverable resource” for world oil was 1.25 trillion barrels; most reports I see now say it’s at least 2 trillion, perhaps much more. His prediction that global oil production would peak in 2000 was accordingly way off.
5. The official word is we haven’t reached peak oil yet, and probably won’t for a while. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says world oil production was about 85 million barrels per day in 2011, and predicts a steady if slowing increase to 99 million barrels per day by 2035 — as far out as the forecast goes.
6. Now for the part no one anticipated in 2006: U.S. energy production has jumped in the last few years due to improved recovery techniques such as hydraulic fracturing of shale rock, also known as fracking. EIA statistics show a 24 percent increase in U.S. production of petroleum and natural gas between 2006 and 2011. Domestic natural gas is now so abundant the EIA predicts the U.S. will be a net exporter by 2022.
7. This puts matters in a new light. Oil has been the focus till now because transportation relies heavily on liquid fuels — currently natural gas is mostly used for heating and electricity generation. However, it can also be used to power vehicles — some transit agencies use compressed natural gas to fuel buses. So we should really be talking about peak oil and gas. When might this occur?
8. My assistant Una dug through the statistics and established the following. First, as of 2005, ultimate recoverable natural gas in the world was between 8.5 and 12.5 quadrillion cubic feet. Second, between pre-fracking 2000 and frack-happy 2010, U.S. proved natural gas reserves increased 72 percent.
9. We then commenced arguing. I noted fracking was now mainly confined to the U.S., due partly to scruples about contaminated groundwater and such. Let’s suppose the world gets over all that and starts fracking as much as we do, with the result that world recoverable gas reserves jump at the same rate as U.S. proven reserves. That would give us 17 quadrillion cubic feet.
10. This was too cavalier for Una. The most she’d concede was 12.5 quadrillion feet, the equivalent of 2.3 trillion barrels of oil.
11. Fine, I said. But another fossil fuel can also be liquefied and used for transportation in a pinch, namely coal. What’s the recoverable world stash of that? One trillion tons, Una said, the equivalent of 3.3 trillion barrels of oil.
12. By now it had dawned on us the limit of importance wasn’t oil, or oil plus gas, but all fossil fuels taken together. We computed global recoverable fossil fuels as follows: 2 trillion barrels of oil + 2.3 trillion barrel-equivalents of natural gas + 3.3 barrel-equivalents of coal = 7.6 trillion barrel-equivalents total.
13. Finally we (well, I) took a stab at estimating peak fossil fuels, which I called PFF, or “piff.” Much depends on developments in the world economy, conservation, alternative fuels, and who knows what else, but I optimistically predicted PFF wouldn’t occur till 2100.
That kicks the can down the road. However, let’s remember a few things. One, if we’ve burned through half the planet’s fossil fuels by 2100, our problem won’t be global warming, it’ll be global scalding. Two, fossil fuels provide the bulk of the energy for everything transportation, heating, electricity. Looked at in that light, 2100 isn’t that far away.
The market will remind us. Although natural gas now is cheap, long-term energy prices due to growing world demand will inexorably rise. That noise you hear? Perhaps you thought it was the ringing of the cash register. Ah, no. It’s tick tock.
13 Comments on "Cecil Adams: What’s the Latest on Peak Oil?"
BillT on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 11:56 am
Wow! We can go forever! NOT!!!
This guy is smokin’ some good stuff. All they talk about is barrels of burnable liquids. Lets add cooking oil and wood alcohol, distilled spirits like Jim Beam, etc and keep the numbers growing.
Lets not even consider looking at NET energy. If you do, you will notice that we passed the maximum energy per person long ago and the maximum energy from fossil fuels around 2005. We are burning sludge, asphalt, moonshine, and maybe a few barrels of easy to get sweet light crude from the last few wells still producing it.
Nope. The economy is going to shut down most of these pipe dreams in the near future. The world economy is already dropping in real numbers. Growth is over. Lies are all that are left of the old way of life.
dsula on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 11:58 am
Unfortunately he seems to be right. No peak in my lifetime. And I was so hoping to see it happen. And I was so hoping to see global population decline. Why am I denied such a simple pleasure?
Arthur on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 12:57 pm
Dunno, may be in 2100 we will have a planet without borders and global government (to avoid global annihilation by nukes) with 16 billion empoverished dumbed down people on it, with every square mile of the soil poisoned and mr Goldstein running the global central bank.
deedl on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 1:29 pm
Usually the market argument is on side with fossil fuels, but maybe the markets turn against them. In a few years two billion people will live under a carbon trading scheme increasing prices for fossil fuels even further and renewables are becoming cheaper year by year. Maybe in 2100 there are still plenty of fossil fuels to burn through, but nobody does it, because its to expensive.
The markets already turned against nuclear, no one invests significantly in this technology in the west, because its too expensive.
Looking at global investments and their trend the world is turning renewable. Of course it will take decades to turn, but its turning. Many in the US dont realize this global developement, in which the US lacks way behind, yet. But most leaders in the world are ware of the problems and are dealing with it. Of course these are slow longterm processes, and of course no politician would ever open admit it to not scare the masses. But in many nations plans are made to move beyond fossil fuels.
People and communities arounf the world figured out that energy independece is a very imporntant for of freedom. As soon as the north american citizen catches on to that, no big money can stop the pv-roof revolution.
DC on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 1:29 pm
Lol! when did he write this 2000?
#5 I guess this tool didnt bother to check and see if world oil production was, in fact, growing, slowly. Wonder what he makes of the production stalled at 85ish since 2005. Probably why he prefers the IEA estimates to, you know, looking at actual numbers. As we all know here, its been @ 85million for nearly a decade now. Maybe someone should mail him and point that out…
John Bilsky on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 2:12 pm
Peak fossil fuels won’t occur until 2100? That’s probably quite accurate as long as one realizes that the date of 2100 is actually in Metric Time. If one does the conversion to Reality Time, it happens to be roughly 2005. Oil companies don’t go drilling beneath MILES of ocean because there’s plenty of easier oil to obtain elsewhere. There will be no more growth. Suck it up and stop being delusional.
GregT on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 3:41 pm
The biggest problem concerning peak oil, is not the peak itself, but whether we will continue to spew the second half of it into our atmosphere.
GregT on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 4:09 pm
Dsula,
Be careful what you wish for.
Plantagenet on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 6:12 pm
Oil production globally is no longer increasing. Frakking for natural gas doesn’t change that.
WhenTheEagleFlies on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 7:56 pm
The article makes no mention of declining production in KSA, Mexico, etc. There is no way that the USA is going to ever reach daily production to replace its exports. We’re using about 19 mbbl per day and are producing (extracting) about 7 mbbl. Does anyone really think we’re going to come up with an additional 12 mbbl per day? BTW, the “per day” modifier is extremely important. Even if I had a proven reserve of 1 trillion barrels, it is virtually useless if I can extract only 1000 bbl per day. Flow Rate!
MrEnergyCzar on Mon, 5th Nov 2012 10:32 pm
Peak oil is about the peaking in production of conventional crude which happened in 2006… been a bumpy plateau since. I’m surprised he didn’t know that, unless they changed the definition…
MrEnergyCzar
mike on Tue, 6th Nov 2012 9:04 am
I stopped reading when he started using the words pessimists. If we are pessimists he must see himself as an optimist, in which case everything he says is clouded by a bullshit vision of the world. I think many of us can fairly say we are realists and that optimism and pessimism doesn’t belong in the world of science and mathematics.
mike on Tue, 6th Nov 2012 9:08 am
I think the main problem with all these “peak oil no longer a problem” articles is none of them seem to understand Entropy. They seem to utterly dismiss net energy problems, in which case they shouldn’t be writing about bloody scientific matters.