Say, here’s some peak-oil skepticism from a surprising quarter: Investigative journalist Greg Palast’s new book, Armed Madhouse, Chapter 2: “The Flow”:
(Palast does not seem to understand that Hubbert’s original 1956 prediction was that United States (not global) oil production would hit its all-time peak in the 1970s, which it did; nor that the “peak” is to be followed not by a “crash” but by a gentle downward slope of production as each barrel of oil, with each passing year, costs more and more to extract; nor that global consumption of oil is not a constant but will increase dramatically as India and China become more industrialized; but let all that pass for now.)
Hubbert, Palast points out, was a geologist employed by the oil industry (as are practically all the geologists of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil). His 1956 study is labeled “Publication No. 95, Shell Development Company, Houston, Texas.” At that time, oil was abundant; the price of crude was $2.77 a barrel, or a nickel a gallon, and sinking; new discoveries worldwide were driving down the price still further. Hubbert’s study, in Palast’s view, was propaganda intended to serve the industry’s needs.
Elsewhere in the same chapter, Palast fills us in with some background on the economics of the oil industry. The five big international oil companies own some oilfields of their own, but they have to buy most of the oil they refine from the nationalized oil industries of the OPEC nations. You might think they would want to buy it as cheap as they can, so they can pocket the difference, or else charge less at the pump and sell a lot more gasoline, but it’s not that simple:
So, what do you think? Is “Peak Oil” really just an oil-industry propaganda scam?
Apologies if someone else already brought this up…
But there is one big difference between the two theories. Peak oil has already been proven on a local scale. U.S. oil production DID, as predicted, peak in 1971. And since then has fallen off exactly as the Peak Oil theory predicts. This does not automatically make the global peak oil theory correct, but it makes far more than another environmental scare story.
I don’t believe anyone is disputing (in this thread so far at least) that Peak Oil isn’t going to happen. The debate is…what is the effect going to be? The end of the world? A blip in the road? Something else? And is the ‘liberal’ fretting on this issue wrt the great apocalyps of our time faith based (the equivelent of religious types ‘Left Behind’ musings), or is it reality based?
Read “TWILIGHT IN THE DESERT” for a real shock. The author’s contention is that Saudi Arabia is fast pumping away its reserves. If true, the decline in Saudi oil production will hit just as demand in India, China, and Russia takes off. :smack:
So not only will the end of cheap petroleum ease the global warming problem, but the exhaustion of middle eastern reserves will deny arab fundamentalists billions of petrodollars! Maybe…
Why surprising? Something about that particular author?
As for your question, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were, although it somehow seems unlikely to me. OTOH, I somehow can’t see the oil companies basically doing nothing KNOWING that their entire business model could very well collapse almost overnight, if the peak hits soon, or is past. Even with higher prices and higher profits, the point at which they’d be losing a lot of money would be too close to ignore, IMO.
Considering that the most likely result of people accepting the peak oil concept would be major research into finding alternatives to oil, it would seem that the oil industry would be the last people motivated to convince people it’s true.
Yes. Palast generally writes from a left-liberal POV, and at present that is the camp most like to take the “peak oil” theory seriously enough to worry about. Then again, he’s an American expat living and working in the UK, which might give him a more detached perspective.
Why would it “collapse”? Even after global oil production peaks, we’re still going to need gasoline, and the Big Five are the parties best positioned (in fact, they are the only parties positioned) to sell it to us. If they have to pay more for oil (and remember, since they have “profit sharing agreements” with the OPEC countries, from their POV “paying more” sums out to paying less), they will simply pass the added cost along to us the consumers, and we will pay the added cost. What else are we going to do?! Heads they win, tails we lose.
Out of all companies in the world that might provide alternatives to oil, oil companies are the best positioned. They have the infrastructure and transportation networks and expertise. If you’re filling up your car with hydrogen 30 years from now, don’t be surprised to find you’re buying that hyrdrogen from Exxon.
I’ve heard that idea before (often used about tobacco companies supposedly controlling the marijuuna market if it were legalized) but is it true? Are there many examples of a group of industries that controlled one technology going on to control its replacement technology? Scribes didn’t control the print industry. Sailmakers didn’t build steam engines. Horse breeders didn’t found the automobile industry. The only example I can think of offhand was the television industry but that was an unusual exception because it was regulated by the government from its inception and a conscious decision was made to give control of television to the radio industry.
You’ve got to look at the industry more broadly. Sailmakers didn’t build steam engines, but shipping companies didn’t collapse during the transition from sail to steam, they just stopped buying sailing ships and started buying steamships.
Exxon isn’t in the gasoline business. It is in the energy business. Xerox isn’t in the copier business, it is in the office automation business, McDonald’s isn’t in the hamburger business, it is in the fast food business. Coca-Cola isn’t in the cola business, it is in the snack food business. And so on. Companies that have a poor grasp of what their business really is will fail, companies that adapt and innovate will survive.
Those are bad examples though. A better example might be shippers. Going from horse to auto, most shippers made the transition and continued doing what they had always done…just using different methods. Breeders of horses are kind of a far stretch to mass produced automobiles after all…they aren’t anywhere near related technologies. Same with sailmakers to steam…not even in the ball park. But oil companies already do just about everything needed to get a proposed fuel from processing to the consummers hands.
Oil and DISTRIBUTION companies like Shell, Texaco, Mobile, Exxon, etc. They already have the distribution infrastructure after all…they have the service stations, they have the trucking and shipping, the in ground pipelines, etc. Certainly it would take some new technologies to actually create the <insert proposed new fuel>…but then, many of the current distribution companies like those above rely on refineries to get them the product now.
Transitioning from gasoline to, say, hydrogen, is nothing but a technical issue…and one that I know several of those companies are ALREADY looking at. I remember reading in Wired that Shell (and I think either Texaco or maybe Exxon) actually have pilot stations tried out in (IIRC) the Washington DC area as a proof of concept for hydrogen fueling stations. And this is at least 5-10 years before companies like Toyota and Chevy are scheduling to have hydrogen fuel cell production vehicles on the market.
Assuming a replacement technology for the passenger automobile (let’s say hydrogen fuel cells) is perfected, at least to the degree that a hydrogen car is almost as convenient as a gasoline car and only somewhat more expensive, and trains can be mostly electric like they are in Europe, that still leaves an important question: What do we do for fuel for trucks and airplanes? Trucks are vital for ground distribution of goods, and planes could scarely make due with anything but liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
Why couldn’t aircraft use some alternative to hydrocarbon fuels? And trucks too for that matter?
Anyway, pure speculation on my part but some alternatives might be to use a combination of replacement fuels and technologies. Maybe hydrogen fuel cells (or methane hydrates used as fuel, or bio fuels, ect) for personal transport and something else (or maybe good old hydrocarbons…its not like they will simply run out all of a sudden) for planes and/or long haul distribution of goods. I think this more likely…personal transport using some new alternative source and good old hydrocarbons (from shale oil, tar sands, etc) for vital air and distribution traffic.
Or, maybe we go back to a heavier reliance on trains for long haul distribution of goods…using electric trains run off an electric grid (or maybe nuclear trains :)). Maybe air travel becomes impractical and we go back to ocean travel (obviously nuclear power plants for ships are feasible…since the US navy uses them all the time for that), or perhaps someone finally creates a long hault undersea tunnel system linking the US to Europe and or the US to the South Pacific, Russia, Asia, etc (I’ve seen some designs for this concept that don’t look TOO far out there).
Trucks and other fleet vehicles are EASIER to convert to alternative fuels, because the fleet owner can provide their own refueling infrastructure. You see this with city busses a lot…some are CNG powered, some are electric, some are diesel, some are whatever. The fleet vehicles aren’t reliant on commerical gas stations.
You’ll see hydrogen powered trucks and busses long before you see hydrogen powered consumer vehicles.
As for airplanes, if we absolutely need jet fuel of the kind we burn today, we can manufacture that. Not as easily as manufacturing hydrogen, but it can be done. Jets don’t run on gasoline, they run on kerosine.
And both airplanes and trucks can be replaced by trains. We’ve had a wrongheaded policy in the US of subsidizing road and air travel at the expense of rail travel for decades. If we spent as much on rail stations, rail roads, and rolling stock as we do on airports, highways, jets, cars, and trucks, we’d have a rail system that would be the envy of the world.
In most parts of the country it is nearly impossible to catch a train from one town to the next. Bring back trains, for crying out loud!
If the cars and trains are running on something other than hydrocarbons, that reduces demand for hydrocarbon fuels, makes them cheaper, and frees up more supply for airplanes and trucks.
Um…huh? Do you really not know that there are multiple car manufacturers out there who already have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles under development? There are tons of cites if you do a google search on ‘hydrogen powered cars under development’, but here is a Wiki article on it if you are interested.
The fact that they are under development, and that a few companies have already set time tables for production models means that its not exactly putting the cart before the horse to start looking into fuel stations for them. Quite the contrary. What…you think they ought to wait until they are selling em to the public to start looking into the engineering and logistics of getting hydrogen to the public in a safe and economical way?
Not a completely convincing argument. A shipping company is in the business of transporting goods - they can change from horses to autos and still be the same fundamental business. But oil companies are in the business of selling oil - it’s their fundamental business. Sure Exxon might decide to get in some other form of business but so could Time Warner or Pepsico.
But this is really a side issue to the original issue of this thread. I agree that alternatives to oil can be developed. What I disagree with is the idea that oil companies have a motive for promoting the development of oil alternatives.
Yes, it’s a technical issue. But it’s a very big technical issue. Converting from an oil based economy to some other alternative fuel based economy will be one of the biggest changes in the history of technology. And as such, I think it deserves some serious planning.
And once again, I’ll restate my central point: the fact the alternative fuels exist does not mean the alternative fuels of equal cheapness exist. To illustrate my point, suppose I developed a method for converting coal into automobile fuel that I could produce for two dollars a gallon. Do you think I wouldn’t have a market because OPEC is still pumping oil? Of course not - if I could produce coalfuel for two dollars a gallon, I’d be a multi-billionaire next week, Exxon stock would sell for three cents a share, and we’d never run out of oil because nobody would bother drilling it anymore. The question isn’t “Will we have some kind of fuel when oil runs out?” - yes, we will. The question is “How high will the price of oil get before it becomes more expensive than other forms of fuel?”
Do you really not know that there are multiple car manufacturers out there who already have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles under development? There are tons of cites if you do a google search on ‘hydrogen powered cars under development’, but here is a 