Peak Oil is You
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Page added on December 11, 2010
Ken Deffeyes: Gauging how much oil there is
In 2001, building on the geologist M. King Hubbert’s prediction that U.S. oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970, Kenneth S. Deffeyes, emeritus professor of geology at Princeton University, predicted in his book “Hubbert’s Peak” that world oil production would peak in 2005.
“I’ve been a Hubbertian since the late 1950s,” Mr. Deffeyes writes. “I’m a geologist, with no professional expertise in economics or politics.” As a Hubbertian, or “peak oil” person, he numbers himself among “those who think that we have already found most of the world’s oil.”
“On a spherical Earth,” he writes, “there is a fixed surface area that we can explore for oil. World oil production increased rapidly from the first wells, around 1859, up to the year 2005. From 2005 onward, oil production has shown no growth. This is the story that is unfolding before our eyes.”
But parts of that unfolding story involve differences between producing, finding and estimating how much there is to be found and in the changing nature of the oil industry itself. “Although I grew up in the oil fields,” writes Mr. Deffeyes, who worked as a researcher for Shell Oil Co., “I barely recognize the oil industry as it is today. When I was young, the major oil companies (the Seven Sisters) dominated exploration, production, refining, and marketing. Today, national oil companies dominate most of the oil productive areas.”
And where national governments don’t own the companies outright – namely, in the United States – the government has become an active managing partner, determining where oil can be explored for or produced, and declaring vast prospective tracts of land, both on and offshore, off-limits to both exploration and production, usually bending to the emotional demands of extreme environmentalists dedicated to ridding the world of the internal combustion engine or preserving an imagined pristine beauty.
Thus, when areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), a vast flat mosquito-breeding ground where even the caribou have trouble surviving, are placed off-limits to exploration, when great tracts in the continental West, offshore Florida, the whole East Coast and offshore California are closed to exploration, there’s simply no way to know how much oil there is or, therefore, how much can be produced.
To be sure, there are reserve estimates. But they’re just that – estimates, and estimates based primarily on what individual companies think they may have. “For me,” Mr. Deffeyes writes, “the bottom line is that national reserve estimates contain very little useful information. I’m not about to bet the ranch on any analysis that depends on the reported reserves.”
What it all seems to boil down to, essentially, is that no one really knows how much oil there is still to be produced. Thus, theories like “peak oil” with its bell curves and models, may be scientifically elegant and intellectually satisfying, but no more reliable as guides to our petroleum future than the various “running out” theories of the past. In the end, the “peak oil” theory, apparently involving an assumption that the decline in global discoveries proves the resource itself is also declining, simply doesn’t take such externals as economics and politics sufficiently into consideration.
Nevertheless, despite his self-designation as a “peak oiler,” Mr. Deffeyes shouldn’t be confused with an ideologue. A theoretician, yes, and an earth scientist with a practical and wide-ranging interest in all aspects of his field, including the various alternative forms of energy currently being discussed.
Nor does he hesitate to put some of the more exaggerated concerns of the day into perspective: “Warnings about climate change usually carry the implied message that any change is going is going to be disastrous. Only seventeen thousand years ago, New York City, Toronto, and Stockholm were buried under a mile of ice. (In a 4-billion-year history, 17,000 years is the day before yesterday.)”
Something is to be said for global warming, after all, and a good deal to be said for Mr. Deffeye’s strongly expressed and well-argued views.
4 Comments on "Ken Deffeyes: Gauging how much oil there is"
Kenz300 on Sat, 11th Dec 2010 11:39 pm
The rising price oil will make clean, sustainable alternative energy much more competitive on price. Advances in clean energy research and development and the economies of scale due to rising acceptance of wind and solar are driving down the cost of these systems.
Wind, solar, geothermal and second generation biofuels are the transition to the future.
If Brazil can run the majority of it’s automobiles on ethanol and the city of Kristianstad, Sweden can use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses then the rest of the world can find energy solutions that work for them. (They generate energy from waste materials, manure, and used cooking oil.)
We need to diversify our energy sources.
Why put all your eggs in on basket?
Someone may drop your basket some day or take it away.
Poopypants on Sun, 12th Dec 2010 12:18 am
Peak Oil is about flow rates, not how much oil may be under the surface of the earth. Total quantity of oil is completely irrelevant in the PO scenario, it is simply how much oil can be produced in a defined time period, and at what cost. Once the cost to produce the oil needed to sustain an ever growing economy exceeds a certain amount, it’s game over. That’s where we are today, that’s why the gov and FED are creating money to fill the GDP gap, this economic system has become unsustainable. That’s the reality we now face.
Mr. Deffeyes knows this.
This article was written for the Washington Post, that should tell you all you need to know about it’s content.
MaxGreen on Sun, 12th Dec 2010 3:29 am
To Kenz300
Wind, solar and geothermal is good but can’t be scaled up fast enough without a cheap oil economy. Those alternatives become more expensive to build as the price of oil goes higher.
1st generation Biofuels are bad, they take arable land away from food production, are eroi negative or even, and second generation biofuels are worst, burning so called “agricultural waste” or switch-grass which would or should otherwise become top soil is an unsustainable practice.
MANURE=FERTILIZER.
waste materials and used cooking oil are byproducts of cheap fossil fuels run industrial nations.
The one viable alternative you forgot to mention is conservation. The waste of energy is such that we could in America easily cut our energy consumption by half and still live in a relatively modern and comfortable way. That would buy us precious time,
the oil production plateau becomes cliff 2012/13.
Kenz300 on Sun, 12th Dec 2010 10:37 pm
Energy conservation is a necessary element of dealing with limited energy and high oil/energy prices. The question is how much conservation and how fast.
We will all conserve more as prices rise and the supply becomes dear. We need to diversify our energy types and sources to reduce the impact of high oil prices on our economy. We can reduce demand very quickly if the economy tanks and unemployment goes to 15% or 20%. Ramping up wind, solar, geothermal and second generation biofuels will lessen the impact.
Creating sustainable communities where one can walk or bicycle to work, school or play would reduce the amount of energy spent on transportation.
Generating clean, sustainable distributed alternative energy locally would provide local energy and local jobs. Wind, solar, geothermal and second generation biofuels can all be produced locally.
Goods can be produced locally instead of shipping them from around the world. In a world of high energy prices will it make sense to ship fruits and vegetables and toys from overseas?
A California -based company is building a $120 million biofuels plant near Reno Nevada. They expect the plant will create more than 50 full-time and 450 temporary jobs.
The plant is expected to produce over 10 million gallons of ethanol AND 16 megawatts of electricity annually by processing MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE.
This plant will create clean energy and reduce dependence on foreign oil by
processing HOUSEHOLD GARBAGE.
Clean, sustainable alternative energy — that is what we need — local energy, local jobs.
If every garbage dump in the country co-located an ethanol plant we could go a
long way toward producing local energy and local jobs.
At the very least we should diversify our energy sources.
We can produce a portion of the energy we need and at the same time reduce
what is going into landfills. The trash is already being delivered daily so the input costs to the plant would be low. Sounds like a win win situation.