Several years ago, I did some online research on peak oil. I read that reaching peak oil meant that we had used up the easy-to-get half of the available oil. There were several problems with the remaining oil. It was in difficult to get to locations, it would take more processing to be made usable, etc. Often, the amount of energy required to get the oil of of the ground and render it usable exceeded the amount of energy it would provide. We’d have no choice but to leave the remaining oil in the ground.
But here we are, going to enormous lengths to get that remaining oil out of the ground.
Why? In particular, if it takes more energy to obtain it than the oil can provide, how are the oil companies continuing to make a profit? Is it because they are being subsidized by the US and other governments?
(If this has already be explained in another thread, my apologies, and could someone provide a link to that thread?)
Oil is like 3x plus more expensive now vs 10 years ago. And in 2008ish - was probably close to where it is now. So in a short period of time oil had gone up fairly dramatically - and at that point some people were thinking even higher.
Point is - there is probably oil that is profitable to get at every price point - so as prices rise - so does opportunity.
Your definition is a bit off. Peak oil just means peak oil production. Why we hit peak production can have various explanations - the aforementioned difficulty in getting harder to reach deposits, variability in demand, etc.
You seem to be under the misapprehension this means peak oil means it costs more energy to extract the oil than we get out. This is, of course, not true. By “cost”, we typically mean economic. If it is economically viable to retrieve oil, it is done. If it is not, the oil is left in the ground.
And, indeed, certain wells are stopped or started based on the price of oil. Let me repeat that: the decision to continue or stop producing from wells is based on the price of oil. Not how much energy is required to retrieve the oil (which, to be fair, is reflected in costs, but is not the primary motivation). Why isn’t this directly related to extractable energy? The price of oil depends on local economies. The last recession killed the price of oil. That made extraction less attractive from some wells, even though it was entirely from economic factors rather than the fundamental physics of energy from oil.
This just isn’t true, and will not be true for a long time. Even for low-quality Colorado shale oil, the factor is around 3.5:1, according to Royal Dutch/Shell.
So the only way to avoid allowing global warming to ruin the planet is to find the willpower to voluntarily leave most of the remaining oil (and, for that matter, coal) in the ground? Peak oil won’t help?
I saw you were talking about peak oil and energy return on investment (EROI). I had an article in Scientific American a few months ago that described the EROI for oil, gas, solar, and many other energy sources, describing how we’re generally moving toward sources with lower and lower EROI. It’s a major problem that could prove a challenge to economic growth, according to Charles Hall, the ecologist who was the originator of the concept of EROI.
Here’s a Q&A I did with him:
Despite recent choruses of “peak oil is dead,” I think peak oil is real, and an issue of equal importance to climate change. Peak oil won’t save us from climate change—but if we want to deal with climate change, we also have to deal with peak oil. That is, we have to transition off of petroleum and other fossil fuels. In my opinion, peak oil gives us a strong reason to make that transition as quickly as possible, starting now, because the longer we wait, it’s only going to get harder.
If you’re interested, I’m writing a biography of M. King Hubbert, the “father of peak oil,” which will be published by W. W. Norton next year. Here’s my webpage for the book, in case you want to sign up for updates:
Best,
Mason
First, it won’t necessarily be due to oil reserves being depleted. If tomorrow some genius inventor created a Mr. Fusion that could provide limitless cheap power from water, then everyone would switch over to cars powered by that, and we’d forget all about all the oil left in the ground, even if it were abundant and easy to get. OK, so Mr. Fusion probably isn’t going to happen, but you could still get the same effect to a lesser degree from more realistic technologies.
Second, when peak oil happens, we won’t necessarily notice right away. It’ll just look like oil production is constant (with a bit of random noise) for a few years. It probably won’t be until we’re several years past peak oil that we’d notice the downward trend.
If you google around, you will see that the average cost to produce one barrel of crude oil is far, far less than what it’s traded for at the moment. This has little to do with Peak Oil but I find it amusing.
Exactly. The concept of peak oil doesn’t take into account changes in technology. For example advanced recovery methods have kept many wells productive long past the time when they should have been abandoned. And fracking has completely changed the economics of fossil fuels.
Shale oil is actually a relatively small part of that. The US has much larger reserves of nat gas from shale formations. The problem is that we don’t have the infrastructure to compress, liquify and transport it currently. Additionally, we’re not set up to use it in transportation as widely as we are petroleum products like diesel and gasoline. But given the very favorable comparisons of cost per BTU, that could very well change in the foreseeable future.
Just when it looked like we were running out of new oil sources, we have shale oil and fracking that have extended the supply for a while longer.
We saw a hint of what will happen with the oil market just before the New Depression of 2008. Oil hit $150/barrel, and gas was pushing $6US a gallon. (Although a decent amount of that was speculation) This is not so much due to big demand in developed countries, but because countries like India and especially China are working toward the same energy-rich lifestyle as us. Supplying power for air conditioning, microwaves, TV, and especially automobiles for a billion or two more will exceed the capacity to supply it.
When that happens, the people who want it will bid up the price. The problem in North America is that even if gas prices doubled tomorrow, we would still have to do much of what we currently do - driving is pretty much mandatory for most people for work commutes and even grocery store visits. There simply is not the replacement transit infrastructure, and many places we need to go are too far away.
What happens with peak oil? What would you do if gas were $8 a gallon? $15? Would you buy a more efficient car? What if nobody wants to buy your SUV? What if FedEx or Purolateor cost 3 times as much? What if airline travel cost 4 times as much? Think of the impact to the airline, auto, highway service groups, trucking, etc. Business would replace business trips with video conferences, and half the airlines would fold.
On the plus side, what would have to happen to make it cost-effective to produce locally rather than ship from China? What happens geo-politically if half China’s factory labour is suddenly unemployed?
As pointed out, passing “peak oil” does not mean there is no oil, just that there is less so it is a lot more expensive. The question is, will it hit slow enough for us to adapt with minimal pain?
People have been gleefully hyping this doomsday scenario as on its way tomorrow for the last forty years. It’s the fantasy of those who think humanity deserves to be wiped off the planet, Genesis flood-style, as punishment for our sins against the environment. It’s not based on any real science (just the apparently groundbreaking notion that a finite resource will, eventually, be exhausted) and offers no actual solutions to creating a world without fossil fuels or solving global warming. The last time the Peak Oil crowd was really in vogue was around 2004, when they were absolutely convinced the day of reckoning was at hand. Since then, natural resource extraction continues to get cheaper and cheaper and the zealots get fewer and far between, but proportionately louder, of course.
You are correct that the amount of natural gas reserves in the US is substantial (450 to 530 trillion m[SUP]3[/SUP] as estimated by the BP Statistical Review of World Energy - 2007); however, while natural gas (which is primarily methane) is a suitable resource for electricity production at static power installations, it poses significant problems as a general transporation fuel. For one, at standard temperatures it is a gas with limited compressability, so for cost effective storage and transportation it either has to be shipped by gas pipeline or liquified, either by cryogenic treatment into liquid natural gas (LNG) or by gas-to-liquid (GTL) conversion into liquid hydrocarbons or methanol. LNG is more cost effective to produce but the facilities to cool natural gas into LNG still require significant investment (typically several billion dollars). Worse yet, LNG is both a safety and environmental hazard; because it has to be kept at crygenic temperatures to remain in a liquid state it is relatively easy for an accident or deliberate sabotage to turn an LNG carrier or train into an enormous fuel-air incindary bomb.
While combustion of LNG generates about 10% of the CO[SUB]2[/SUB] emissions of typical petrocarbon fuels, the additional CO[SUB]2[/SUB] produced in the purification and liquidation processes may double or more the emissions. Worse yet, a spill would generate large amounts of atmospheric methane gas, which is about 60 times more effective as a ‘greenhouse gas’ than CO[SUB]2[/SUB] and may persist in the atmosphere for a decade. It is not feasible to make automobile storage systems capable of maintaining the required conditions for storage of LNG so it has to be reconverted to compressed natural gas for vehicle service which has much lower volumetric density and also increases the incidence of accidental atmospheric release. Similar arguments apply to coalbed methane and other sources of artificially produced methane as a fuel.
However, it is possible as noted above to convert methane to methanol, which is a stable liquid at standard temperature and pressure, or (either by dehydration of methonal or directly from syn gas) dimethyl ether (DME) which is a liquid at -24 °C or at around 6 atm pressure, which is feasible for automotive and mobile applications. Methanol poses minimal environmental hazard and breaks down quickly in groundwater due to biodegradation. As a liquid, it can be distributed and used in a fashion similar to the existing gasoline distribution infrastructure, and in fact can be used in spark ignition gasoline engines requiring only replacement of components such as seals and filter which are prone to corrosion by methanol and changing the combusion mapping in the engine control unit. While it has a somewhat lower energy density, it also offers significantly better octane rating than even high grade gasoline, and therefore provides better thermodynamic efficiency; it is widely used for high performance engines either as a mix with gasoline or as a straight fuel, and some conversions from existing gasoline engines have reported distance per volume efficiency greater than straight gasoline as well as reduced emissions. Methanol is also a good choice for direct conversion methanol fuel cells, which do not suffer from the volumetric issues and purity concerns of hydrogen fuel cells while offering comparable power throughput per mass performance.
DME has been considered for use in replacement of diesel and propane compression ignition engines. Again, the lower energy density (about 60% of propane) requires higher volumes, but because it can be kept liquid at moderate pressures and ambient temperature it is viable for a transportation fuel and may provide higher thermodynamic efficiency given the somewhat higher cetane rating compared to diesel fuel (55-60 compared to 45-50 for diesel). Some small amount of research has gone into use of DME in a pulse or continuous detonation type engine, but this is obviously speculative at this point, and probably more applicable to aircraft and rocket propulsion usage. DME, which is the most simple ether, breaks down quickly in the environment due to photooxidation or hydration into methanol and subsequent biodegradation, so it also poses little hazard compared to methane-based gas.
There is also the possibility of converting CO[SUB]2[/SUB] directly into methanol (and then dehydration to DME), so if some form of sequestration of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from atmospheric or oceanic sources becomes practical it would be possible to make a completely carbon neutral fuel cycle. An external source of energy would be required for this (solar, nuclear, geothermal, wind, wave) but it would make an excellent storage and distribution medium for distributed power production without requiring an electrical power infrastructure, and thus would be ideal for concepts like mid-ocean wave energy production or remote solar facilities.
In short, there is no reason that “peak oil” should pose a serious handicap to providing the transportation energy requirements of modern industrial civilization, provided that we take the necessary steps to develop the production and infrastructure technologies sooner rather than later. In fact, the story about how gasoline and petrofuels came to dominate transporation energy over what was at the time more available ethanol and methanol is a study in corruption and corporate cronyism over good sense. Gasoline and diesel are convenient in that we only need dig them out of the ground and perform minimal processing to make them available as an energy resource, but given other sources of energy methanol and DME are actually superior options as energy carriers than the petrofuel and fossil hydrocarbon sources.
I didn’t say that natural gas was not usable as a transportation fuel; I pointed out that it has characteristics which make it less desireable than other altenatives for a transition from existing petrochemical resources for the developed world, and especially the United States and Western Europe which are dependent upon energy imports. Iran and Pakistan both have large internal reserves of natural gas and so do not have to be concerned with liquifying the fuel for transportation with the attendant costs. Pakistan has limited oil reserves and as transitioned to natural gas for transportation in order to limit dependence upon imports, while Iran has a large surplus of natural gas which they do not have the infrastructure to prepare for export, so it makes sense to use it domestically.
The safety and environmental concerns with large scale use of natural gas as a fuel remain, and would become more significant if it were to be used as a singular replacement for existing petrochemical fuels.
Which has nothing to do with the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel and the comparative features thereof. Domestically produced natural gas can be converted to methanol and DME relatively easily with the advantages listed above; and stored, transported, and used with minor modifications to the existing infrastructure and vehicles. That it can also be synthsized from bio sources or converted from sequestered CO[SUB]2[/SUB] (when that becomes feasible) also ensures future viability.
No, but to ignore the fact that it has such a wide variety of industrial uses would be to underestimate the likelihood of its adoption for transportation usage. Obviously the same methods for transporting it, in whatever form will facilitate its adoption for use as a fuel. And that can be done without the additional overhead required by any chemical conversion you’re proposing.
And again, with the logistical, environmental, and safety issues that accompany natural gas, magnified by broad usage as a general transportation fuel. The volume of natural gas for industrial usages would be negligable compared to its use for fuel, and it would be extremely short-sighted to convert the transportation infrastructure to an energy carrier with such significant drawbacks simply out of expediency.
It’s unlikely it would be used for the family minivan. It would almost certainly be used almost exclusively for fleet vehicles simply for reasons related to infrastructure build out. You can’t really duplicate the more than hundred thousand odd gas stations in the country or retro fit them with CNG/LNG.
Why would this be amusing? Oil, like all commodities, has a price primarily based upon the marginal cost of production, not on an average cost of production.
Okay, I guess we’re doomed.