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Page added on July 22, 2013
Technology vanquishes the peak-oilers
The decision to shutter “The Oil Drum”, the leading website devoted to peak oil, has come to symbolize the end of an era – and sparked a furious debate about whether the theory was all along based on a fundamental mistake.
The site’s authors and editors blamed the decision to archive it on the “scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors,” according to a statement on July 3.
“Because of this and the high expense of running the site, the board has unanimously decided that the best course of action is to convert the site to a static archive,” they noted sadly.
For critics, the site’s demise marks the end of a flawed theory and more generally the fact the commodity supercycle has turned.
“Peak oil theory has basically gone the way of the California Condor, from widespread existence and acceptance … to near extinction,” Forbes magazine wrote in a polemical column (“As fracking rises, peak oil theory slowly dies” July 26).
“Today, given the new abundance of shale oil, almost no real industry leaders are peak oil proponents,” Forbes added, dismissing peak oil as “a theory based on lack of imagination.”
According to the magazine, proponents underestimated the huge role advancing technology plays in allowing industry to discover new sources of oil and recover deposits previously thought to be inaccessible.
The site’s authors have hit back, insisting it is not folding for lack of interest. Instead peak oil has gone mainstream. “Repetition of the basic information, beyond a certain point, was counter-productive,” the site claimed.
DRUM BEATS NO MORE
The life and death of The Oil Drum, which began in 2005 and is set to end in 2013, neatly corresponds with fears about oil supplies running out.
If one name has been associated with the modern revival of interest in peak oil, it has been that of Colin Campbell, a veteran oil-industry geologist.
After presenting a conference paper on oil depletion in 2001, Campbell went on to found the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), a network of scientists and others interested in determining the date and impact of peaking world oil and gas production.
The Oil Drum became the popular front-end for a growing community of experts. They succeeded in pushing concerns about peaking oil supplies back up the agenda for policymakers after almost two decades when it had been absent.
In 2000, the phrase “peak oil” occurred just 2.5 times in every billion words published in English, according to Google’s N-gram language-analysis tool, which can search an enormous corpus of books, articles and websites published in English and other languages. By 2008, the number of references had risen 65-fold to 160 occurrences per billion words (Chart 1).
It is not the first time that concerns about oil supplies have risen. Similar though much smaller alarms occurred in the late 1940s and again in the 1970s and 1980s (Chart 2).
More recently, interest seems to have cooled. The web-version of Google’s N-gram does not support searches after 2008. But the British Library’s UK Web Archive, which tracks the content of British websites, shows references to peak oil rose steadily from just over 1,000 in 2004 to a high of 115,000 in 2010 but had more than halved to just 42,000 by 2012 (Chart 3).
FROM SCARCITY TO ABUNDANCE
Interest in peak oil rose to fever pitch in 2008 as prices rose relentlessly to reach more than $147 per barrel.
Later that year, the International Energy Agency (IEA), devoted its flagship publication, the annual World Economic Outlook, to analyzing the accelerating decline rates at many of the world’s oil fields.
12 Comments on "Technology vanquishes the peak-oilers"
J-Gav on Mon, 22nd Jul 2013 8:20 pm
Oh geez! Aren’t we all relieved here, BillT, GregT, Socrates, Beery etc? Damn! Guess we’ll all just have to get used to energy over-abundance now, eh?
GregT on Mon, 22nd Jul 2013 9:06 pm
Someone needs to think long and hard about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five stages of grief, because he/ she has clearly not passed the first stage of DENIAL.
Or, this article is intentionally misleading, and the author is being paid by the oil and gas industry.
banjo on Mon, 22nd Jul 2013 10:32 pm
peak oil is now.
supposed fracking revolution
low total employment
high oil and gas prices
low paid part time jobs
quantive easing or money printing to support the banks.
low economic growth
civil unrest in mid East and north Africa
Europe’s unemployment levels are terrible
47 million on food stamps
on and on it goes … in the supposed recovery
Beery on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 1:17 am
I wonder what these bozos are going to say in a few months when the Bakken goes into decline, and then a bit later when the whole fracking bubble goes pop?
It will be a lot of fun watching all these idiots crawl back into their holes.
BillT on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 2:37 am
“…Tribune is jointly controlled by the company’s three senior debt holders: Oaktree Capital Management (which owns a 23% interest), Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase (which both own 9%)…”
There is your spin. Financial money skimmers cannot admit that the emperor has no clothes, no matter how obvious. The panic for the exits would destroy them and their easy life. Always look at the paycheck source.
If I had a dollar for every article that has come out claiming that peak oil has not happened, I could have a nice sized farm overlooking the Pacific from the Western shore. Oh, wait, I do … lol. Well, seven acres or so anyway. I hope it is enough!
DC on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 3:01 am
What ‘technology’ is that, fraking? LOL! seriously…
If all that 19th C fraking technology has ‘vanquished’ PO, why is crude not plummeting back down to 40 dollars a barrel and retail prices dropping through the floor too?
GregT on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 4:04 am
BillT, if you have a reliable source of water, experience with gardening, and the support of a local community, you will do much better than the vast majority of the rest of the world’s population. Especially those that believe that they will be saved by technology. Those people are in for a very rude awakening.
Some solar panels and/ or wind turbines, with a battery backup would be a nicety for refrigeration, and perhaps some lights at night, but not a necessity.
Seven acres will serve you well. Chickens, goats, and dogs are also on my list, as well as the means to protect myself, and those around me.
Hats off to you, Sir.
rollin on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 4:07 am
Bakken is already flattening in production.
But if you count the number of anti-peak-oil articles on this site lately, peak oil must be over.
Stock market rule may apply here, when everybody is running away and selling it’s time to get interested in buying.
BillT on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 5:46 am
GregT, a spring, with a high water table allowing a hand pump for the dryer months and a river at the bottom of the hill (200 yards) that is fed from a sparely populated, forested mountain range, plenty of garden experience and neighbors that will welcome a new neighbor and possible help to improve their own resources. Dogs of course. And other small animals as possible.
We plan for a solar panel/wind generator system to provide lights, fans, a small fridge under the counter and, yes, satellite access to internet for as long as the net lasts and is useful. I hope to continue my new writing career as long as possible also.
Thanks for your ‘tip-o-the hat’. ^_^
Arthur on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 1:59 pm
“yes, satellite access to internet for as long as the net lasts and is useful.”
LOL, now I understand your persistent claims that one needs satellites for the internet, where in reality it is YOU needing these satellites in the jungle!
shortonoil on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 9:26 pm
The Chicago Tribune could write their entire accumulated knowledge of petroleum on the back of a postage stamp:
with a crayon!
SilentRunning on Wed, 24th Jul 2013 2:54 am
Odd, now that Peak Oil has been vanquished by Technology, Free Markets, God and the American Way – it’s odd that with all this infinite oil gushing out of the ground that gas is STILL almost $4 a gallon…..