Apocalyptic Peak Oilers: "the liberal equivalent of Left Behind"?

Great Debates
81

Time Warner and Pepsico don’t have the distribution infrastructure…they would essentially have to build it from scratch. Texaco and Shell however DO have that infrastructure. They have the trucks for transport. They have the underground pipeline infrastructure throughout the country. They have the software and the business models for doing this exact kind of business already. Sure, it will have to be modified somewhat…thats why they are looking into it of course. Just in case the technical hurdles are overcome for something like hydrogen as a personal transport fuel source.

I’m unsure why you don’t think these are convincing arguements, or why you think just anyone could jump into the business cold. Certainly someone like Pepsico or Time Warner could purchase a Shell or a FINA or whatever, and get in that way…but I don’t seem them doing that, nor building such a thing from scratch. Its not exactly in line with their core business you know.

They aren’t motivated to promote or develop oil alternatives…they are motivated to make money for their shareholders and increase their market share in the personal transport fuel business. At some point the price of gas is going to exceed the price for the various alternatives. At that point, some smart company is going to hit the market with that alternative (or alternatives). Probably several competing companies with several different possible alternatives. Who ever wins the race to find a viable and economical alternative to hydrocarbon based fuels is going to be about as rich as the gods. THATS the motivation.

Certainly its going to be a big challenge. I used that Wiki article on Hydrogen based alternatives because I think it gives a good, realistic view of where we are at and what would need to be done for it to happen (I think its a bit overly pessimistic concerning the time table, but other than that pretty spot on).

The thing is…we aren’t going to be making the switch in a few weeks, months or even years. Its going to be a gradual process…as the price of gas rises at the pump the pressure on these companies to develop alternatives are going to mount. Not because the government is pressuring them or telling them what to do but simply because the stakes will be going up…as I said, the company(ies) who develop a viable alternative AND get it to market first are going to make more money than you (or I) can even imagine. Trillions are at stake…literally. Even today, when gas is merely at $3/gallon and the (US) public is just starting to think that the era of cheap gas may be coming to a close, companies are scrambling to develop alternatives. Think about what it will be like when gas is $5/gallon. Or $8/gallon.

No, it probably won’t…certainly not initially. I’ll restate my own point…so what? It will be a new paridigm after all, a sea change in how we do things. I’m guessing that driving a car was more expensive than having a horse also initially, and probably a lot more fuss and bother (because taking care of a horse was something that was ingrained…while that new fangled car thing was a mystery).

-XT

82

I guess what I don’t like seeing is how too many people make two unfounded assumptions; that all problems will inevitably be solved with no special effort being necessary and that the future will inevitably be pretty much like the present with some possible improvements. The idea that society might regress is so unthinkable to people that they make no concerted effort to prevent it.

83

I guess what I don’t like is people who can’t see that a lot IS being done, or who have almost a pathological doubt of even the possibility that technology CAN solve many of the problems we face. or who feel that the only REAL solution to all our problems is to let the government figure it all out by fiat. I’m not saying you are one btw Nemo…just for the record I don’t think you are. But I don’t have some knee jerk automatic faith that technology WILL solve all problems either, nor is my head buried in the sand on this issue. I can, however, look around and see that, contrary to the theory that nothing is being done, a hell of a lot of time and effort is going into researching alternatives…and as time passes such research is gaining, not lessening. And its not just US companies who are involved or who have something at stake…this effort is world wide.

As to societies collapse, well…sure, it COULD happen. After all the Roman Empire collapsed, right? I don’t see that we are, however, in iminent danger of following in their footsteps, nor do I see the parallels between our own problems and those faced during times when society regressed, as you put it.

Will the alternatives necessarily be better than what they are replacing? No…not necessarily. Of course, the other side of the coin is…they very well might, if we factor in all the new jobs created, as well as the potential for sustainablility. And the initial costs may very well eventually go down as new methods to cut costs are researched and developed, new technologies explored (like with the automobile…initially it was a very expensive toy for the rich. Eventually it became a economically sound tool for everyone, at least here in the US). Then there are the environmental impacts. Would it be worth it to have some alternative, sustainable fuel source if it had less impact on the environment…even if it costs double or triple the costs today?

Will all this happen? Perhaps. Personally I think so…based on my understanding of the research and development efforts currently underway, of the advances in science happening in every field, etc…and of course based on the truely staggering amounts of money at stake for the company(s) who come up with a viable alternative. I conceed that it may not happen as well, or that the alternative may not be as good as cheap oil, all things considered. It may indeed have a detrimental impact on society, may have an impact on not only the US’s standard of living but the standard of living world wide. It could very well happen that way.

But the POTENTIAL for a viable, economical, and clearner alternative is certainly not something to be dismissed out of hand or ignored…IMHO.

-XT

84

The possibility (not a certainty but definitely a real possibility) that the oil crisis might be less than ten years away - that by 2016 we will no longer be able to run our current economy on oil because it will no longer exist at prices that make that affordable. While there is some research going on into oil alternatives, I don’t see anything happening that’s going to develop an entirely new technology and get it in place within ten years.

And let’s face the ugly truth; if oil does start running low or even if it’s perceived to be running low, the global situation will not be stable. Countries will decide it’s in their own vital national interest to secure their own supply. Or to forestall other countries from securing their national interest. Wars will be fought to take physical control of the remaining oil reserves (which is one reason I think it would be insane to use up our own domestic oil reserves now).

So in ten years time, we might be in the midst of the equivalent of both the Great Depression and World War II simultaneously. How much chance is there then that people will want to set aside a large sum of money for basic research. “Sure, we need to develop new technology some day. But that’s a dream for the future. Can’t you see we need to devote all our efforts today to the crisis we’re in the middle of?”

85

Yeah, that’s exactly what Roosevelt said to Einstein and Fermi.

Such research would be obviously beneficial - being able to move to a military that ran on a cheaper and more plentiful energy source would allow a country to assure themselves of success; being able to move their home economy to a different energy source would allow for more strategic options in fighting. And it’s not like we shut down non-military science in World War II.

86

I would have to list that as a vanishingly small possibility that we will be at a major crisis point in 10 years. I suppose it depends on what you mean exactly by a crisis. If we are talking about the price of oil perhaps doubling in that time, then I would say that yes…this is a very real possibility. That wouldn’t exactly be a major crisis…though it would certainly slow down not only the US’s but other nations economies. If you somehow mean that oil will become scarce in 10 years though I’d say this is a pretty small possibility. Even if the oil in the ME starts to run dry in 10 years, the Canadian oil sands will be taking up the slack by then (after all, they aren’t exploited now on a large scale because the cost of oil is still too low to make it economically viable). In addition, there is more shale oil in the US than there was oil in the ME to begin with…and doubling the price of oil on the world market would make THAT economically viable as well. And thats just two examples…there are other examples of resources currently unexploited because they simply aren’t economically viable…yet.

Our domestic oil reserves, while expensive to exploit, are vast. As are the reserves of oil world wide. The EASY to exploit oil is certainly running out, and when it does the price of oil on the world market will steadily climb. But I don’t believe that this ‘ugly truth’ is realistic in a 10 year time frame…more like a century (or so). In THAT kind of time frame literally anything is possible. Technologies we can’t even conceive of are possible. One has to simply think about what folks at the turn of the last century thought was possible…and what actually happened in the last hundred years. We are the equivelent of that society in 1906 attempting to project what the future will hold. Whale oil certainly looks like its going to run out, and I don’t think that new fangled automobile thingy is ever going to catch on…

No, I can’t say as I do. Oh, we COULD be in the midst of a Great Depression as well as a world war…but I think the odds are pretty small myself, at least in the time frame you are talking about…and for the reasons you are putting forth. Oil simply won’t be that scarce that the major powers would be willing to start a world war over it. Nor do I believe that doubling the price of oil will send us spiraling down into a new world wide Great Depression.

As for devoting all our efforts today to the crisis…well, I suppose if you have a time machine and can peer into the future and see what the best course is to throw our money at then I’d go along. I’ll use a paraphrased analogy though that one of my college profs once said in class to illustrate why this may not be a wise course. It went something like this: Lets say that Queen Victoria decided, at the height of the British Empire, that she mandated that the full force of the British Empire would be used to develop some kind of wireless communications system to connect the empire together. No expense would be spared. Could they have pulled it off?

My prof’s answer was…almost certainly not, reguardless of how much was spent. The problem was, that the mainstream scientists of the day were looking in other directions at the time, and so would have pursued course that would not have lead to radio or transmitted television as we know today they work. The secret lay in the obscure researches of Maxwell and a few others. We know this only through hindsight…because we can now clearly see the solution of course.

I’m probably telling this differently than he did (it was 20 odd years ago…I might have the incorrect Queen or time frame, etc), but his main point was that you can’t dictate by government fiat advances in technology, or solutions to supposed technical problems. I think its a valid (though poorly written by me) analogy to this ‘problem’ we are discussing.

YMMV, as I’ve said. I guess we’ll see in 10 years. If the world hasn’t gone all Mad Max on us, maybe this board will still be up and we can discuss it then, ehe? :wink:

-XT

87

John mentioned the Manhattan Project and I think it’s a useful example. Germany and the United States both wanted an atomic bomb. Germany decided to take the incremental approach; spend what was essentially spare change, do some research, see what looks promising, develop some technology, putter around the lab, eventually we’ll have a bomb. The United States do a different approach; dump truckloads of money on the problem and tell people to build you a working bomb as quickly as possible - if you have ten different ideas of what might work, do all ten of them at the same time. It’s wasteful as hell but it’s the best way to produce fast results.

And once again, I don’t believe it’s a issue of running out of oil. It’s a question of how much oil will cost. How much does it cost to extract oil from Canadian oil sand, refine it, and put it on the market? (And before you say a little technology will bring down the price, explain why it hasn’t done so already - we’re in our fourth decade of oil problems.) It doesn’t matter if your local Exxon station has a full tank - if the price of gas is $15 a gallon, we’ve got an oil crisis.

88

I don’t believe that Hitler EVER took the German atomic bomb project that seriously, or ever put in any kind of realistic amounts of funds or effort toward it. One reason, IIRC, is that his own scientists were unsure if making the thing was practical due to the engineering limitations and wrt what Germany COULD afford toward the project. So…I don’t think the situation is equal there. Nor do I believe we need a Manhattan style project in order to solve the current problems…I don’t believe the problems are linear as they were with the atomic bomb project, and I don’t believe that only the government has the resources to do it. Nor do I see the time crunch that would make it urgent for the government to step in with a massive do or die effort.

Here is a Wiki link talking about tar sands in Canada (with a brief blurb about similar deposits in Venezuela. Just for background reading if you want. Here is another article from Wired on the subject if you are interested.

Basically what you have is not one level of make or break but a series of levels at which point it becomes economically feasible to extract more oil. At the CURRENT price of oil per barrel its already economically feasible to extract a certain level of this ‘extra heavy oil’…in fact, a lot of the oil we currently get from Canada (40% IIRC) comes from this source. Same with the Venezuelan oil (not sure of the percentage there). As the price of oil rises more of the resource becomes economically feasible essentially.

Why hasn’t it been widely developed before this? Because it was easier and cheaper to get light sweet crude from places like Saudi. This ‘extra heavy crude’ oil is difficult to get at and extract…so why would anyone bother if it wasn’t economically feasible? As the price of oil rises though (and continues to rise) these sources are getting new looks. And they are vast…the deposits in Canada alone (recoverable) are larger than the entire Middle East.

There ARE some serious drawbacks though (if you read the Wiki article especially they go into them…and if you are interested I have some other links taking about the downsides). For one thing, extracting oil in this way uses more energy…and emmits a hell of a lot more greenhouse gasses. Double or even triple the amounts in fact. Also, its obviously more expensive. Its not $15 a gallon expensive…but it only really becomes economically viable around $40/barrel (which is why Canada has been extracting it for a few years now in fact)…so we will probably not see gas drop below $3/gallon again, and it could rise to, say $5 or even $6/gallon realistically. Of course, Europe has been paying those prices for a while…but no doubt about it, there will be an economic impact on the US if gas goes that high.

Oil, however, is definitely approaching the last phase as a useful and economic energy for transport…no doubt about that. Within the next hundred years or so even these vast deposits will start to run dry…then we will begin tapping things like Shale Oil next. These too will eventually give out of course (though I think there will be alternatives long before we are scraping the er, bottom of the barrel so the speak). What they buy us is time…time to develop alternatives. Time that many private companies are using to explore the possibilities.

Hydrogen/methane/other fuel cells, electric powered vehicles, bio-fuels, hybrids, etc. There are myriad alternatives currently under development…and there is a hell of a lot of research being done out there giving us the possibility of some off the wall discovery and a solution completely unlooked for. Science after all is advancing at an almost exponential rate across the board. I can’t think of a time in human history when knowledge so advanced, when technological discoveries and methods were coming in from so many sources. The entire WORLD is looking at these problems, studying them, trying to find solutions to them. This stuff really isn’t pie in the sky or fantasy SciFi.

-XT

89

The problem is that people tend to clump into two opposing camps on the issue of what constitutes a “solution” to the problem.

On the one hand you have the people who might be termed the Techno-Optimists, who believe that a variety of alternate energy sources guided by the Invisible Hand of the free market will eventually replace the petroleum economy of the twentieth century. The details will differ but the essential shape of civilization will remain unchanged: energy-intensive lifestyles based on abundant resources and cheap and easy transportation. A dissident faction within the Techno-Optimist camp are those who believe that technology may provide a solution, but that it cannot be taken for granted that it will appear automatically. They insist that concious deliberate action must be taken immediately to stave off the crisis.

In the opposing camp are the people I term the Eco-Socialists, who, as stated in the OP, believe that the current petroleum crisis is the beginning of the end of an entire paradigm of how civilization is organized: one that was socially and ecologically destructive, and doomed to be unsustainable from the start. This camp has several sub-factions differing in how radically they propose civilization will have to change. The most mild of the factions is the “Small is Beautiful” crowd. They propose replacing the Big Energy model of centralized commercial energy production with a myraid of local self-sufficiency techniques: houses that rely on solar energy for heating, replacing urban sprawl with smaller more self-contained communities, etc. At the extreme end of the spectrum are the Neo-Luddites, who advocate nothing less than the abandonment of the Industrial Revolution, and returning to small scale farming and hand crafted goods, focusing on “spiritual” values rather than crass materialism.

90

In short, it isn’t just a technical debate, it’s an ideological debate.

91

I definitely agree Lumpy…well stated synopsis IMHO.

-XT

92

ok so i agree with everything mr XT says and the following is long waffle trying to say - still oil and I don’t agree with 10 yeras and we are doomed scenario, we don’t need to get that high in price before these alternates become economically viable and a short note that future fuel resources are most likley to remain hydrocarbon based. annnnnd onwards…

There are some additional details that go into the price per bbl whereby a resource will become economically viable - and that is the cost of competing resources. An asset unit in an Oil gas company has to provide busness plan to compete with other development assets within the same company. The asset that gives the best ROI gets the cash to go ahead. With plentiful cheap oil a tar sand, shale oil or super heavy 9 api crude oil projects will not go ahead.
With a drying up of competing resources the cash will flow towards these projects and the price per bbl at which they provide a satisfactory ROI will drop. Currently the $70 bbl level seems to be more than enough for oil cos to be piling cash into buying up access to resources.
There are also many conventional oil reservoirs not yet developed for the same reasons - competing resources are cheaper to develop. The security issues remains but as mentioned elsewhere oil cos will put up with a lot of political risks over the substantial geological risks and cost of additional transportation infrastructure that remain and so stay developing in known areas despite unfavorable political conditions.

Looking at current reserves the 2006 BP statistical review put the US production ratio at 11.8 years, europe and eurasia at 22 years and asia pacific at 13.8 years.
In short if the US shut down all importation and embarked on a large ramp up in drilling activity (no small feat) it has proven reserves to last 11 years at its current consumption rate. So in this unlikly situation the 10 years to no oil is possible on first read of the numbers.
However these are based on proven reserves figues, so you can add in probable reserves (P50) to that (sorry can’t find numbers right now), the transition form probable to proven is generally a matter of drilling more delineation wells and running a few more logs and coring runs and getting some sort of infrastructure in place. With a ramp up in drilling to account for my supposed cut off of imports some probable will moved to proved, and some possible (p90) which has a higher geological uncertanty will moved to probable and so on.
Add in better 3d and 4 d seismic with ever increasing definition, improved drilling practices (casing while drilling, managed pressure drilling etc) to actualy prevent lost wells prior to getting to the target depth along with cost reductions, new technologies to get the wells in the right place, and a focus on the production completion design to prevent the wells falling over and producing water or sanding up are all helping reserves make the transition for probable to proven by lowering the economic hurdles to get well on stream.
In short - if the us and eurpoe all cut off imporst form middle east - you still have a way to go, maybe nervous but still a while to go.

I have left out the Middle East africa and south america numbers because - 1 overall they are not significant users of oil compared to western/asia. 2-The numbers need a healthy dose of salt prior to consumption.

Future resources
Unconventional hydrocarbon resources are also dependent on high prices remaining high for a significant period into the future. Tar sand and shale oil projects have come and gone over the last 50-60 years along with a stop and start on the research funding. The current business sentiment is oil prices will say above $45/bbl for the foreseable future so these projects are getting interesting and the research investment in refining the extraction techniques has been on the go for some time. These unconventional resources have so far been identified in relativly politically stable regions. Methane hydrates are another source and the gas to liquids projects are also getting significant funding. The main problem with gas is that it has a low thermal capacity per unit volume, even under compressed conditions an oil pipeline reques 10% of the volumn to provide the same ammount of energy as a gas line, hence gas is not nearly as transportable, however GTL is certainly a real technology out there that will have its day soon.

My feeling is that the hydrocarbon based alternate fuels will continue to recieve the greatest ammount of funding. I base my feeling on the alternate uses of hydrocarbon other than in transportation such as plastics, chemicals, fertilisers etc etc etc. All significant uses of HC and with large capital investments and resonably well understood chemistries. Hydrogen is all well and good in a fuel cell or whatever and may adress some of the transportation issues or space heating issues, but still requires an alternate source of power to generate the hydrogen in the first place. In essence hydrogen only adresses the transportability issues of power generation.
Anyway if you have to invest in new technology to keep hydrocarbons flowing for alternate uses, that investment may as well also go and adress the transportation issues as well. (You can add in what ever conspiracy theories about big oil controlling the world here, but we all know it is Nestle who are really the voice behind the throne of the evil empire)

Some mention has been made that the oil cos have the transportation and distribution systems that would make them the logical candidate to provide hydrogen for cars. I would make a WAG that natural gas transportation infrastructure is sufficently differnet to make it worthless for transportation of hydrogen. Trucks etc would all be differnet as well. So tehre is no differnet set of entry barries to either a new entrant to the market than there is to exxon or shell. Supermarkets have pretty good infrastructure and forcourt space and currently buy lots of no brand petrol ,no reason for them not to buy hydrogen from a seperate producer. Would power generators be in a better place to produce hydrogen for transportation?

NBC

93

A nice summation, Lumpy. although I’d add another category: the Doomsayers - those people who are always convinced we are on the verge of some civilization-ending disaster. When one threat to humanity fades away they just reform around another.

I guess this is around where I fall on the spectrum. The “technology helps those who help themselves” crowd.

And I’m going to repeat myself once again. I’m not saying that civilization will collapse in ten years. I’m saying that there is a possibility (and that’s a possibility not a probability) that within ten years we may have reached a point where we will have to significantly change the way we live because of a diminishing oil supply.