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Today oil closed at $71.23, up $1.78. How many here believe in "Peak Oil?" I'm a believer, and believe we're close or at the point where oil production cannot be increased. This could mean much higher oil prices in the next few years because Asian demand keeps increasing. Very good for EEstor.

Yes...

I made a $1 bet with a friend that I'm hoping to lose:
crude oil at $200 by January 2011
(partly dollar index, mostly asian demand+peak oil that I believe was somewhere between 2005 and 2007

I'm now reading "Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century".

http://www.amazon.com/Profit-Peak-Greatest-Inve...

Considering even IEA is talking about it - we should look at peak oil as fact. No different than anthropogenic global warming.

I don't think we are seeing demand as high as previously. We have this recession thing going.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo

Yes, the glass is half empty and the only way to get the second half is with a really long straw and a lot of sucking.

evnow wrote:

I'm now reading "Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century".

http://www.amazon.com/Profit-Peak-Greatest-Inve...

Considering even IEA is talking about it - we should look at peak oil as fact. No different than anthropogenic global warming.

What do you define as peak oil? Do you mean cheap, easy to obtain oil, then sure this is the peak. There is a lot of oil out there in oil shale. While you, and I for that matter, would likely not like the way to obtain that oil (mostly mining more akin to coal mining), there is plenty of it,and it's economically viable, depending on who you talk to, in the $50-125 per barrel range. The USA has more of that kind of oil on our shores than the Middle East, by a factor of 2-4, again depending on who you talk to. So, I don't think oil is going away unless humanity can make alternatives cheaper than that. After all, the Germans in WWII made quite a bit of oil from coal and other similar fossil fuels, and the technology has improved with time. Mind you, I don't WANT it to happen, but believe it will if we don't support cleaner alternatives. That's why I am invested in this company, and buy electricity from wind and hydro (see con ed solutions) at a premium. I can afford it, and want to help make it cost effective; just like those folks who pay extra for hybrids. (I live in Manhattan, use mass transit, and don't own a car.) Cleaner is better, but it won't fly unless we can make cleaner, cheaper.

BTW, not to get off topic, but AGW is hardly fact. While I support the idea of getting humanity off of carbon based fuels due to the fact that obtaining and using them is dirty, and helps trigger asthma in folks like me. I do not support it from the standpoint of AGW. Dirty fuels are bad, and we can do better, so let's make it cost effective to do that. Then we won't have to force anyone to use them; they'll do it themselves. I'm hoping First Solar, amongst others can keep their innovation wave going to help us do that. I believe in innovation, and humanities abilty to solve problems collectively. We can, and thus we will, solve the dirty energy problem.

hador_nyc

I would define peak oil as that point where known reserves start to fall. By that measure, we are already there.

Like you I suspect oil will continue to be used for some time, but not for reasons of cost, but because there isn't much alternative.

The best you can do is to use it as efficiently as possible, DON'T buy huge cars with huge engines, DON'T use them unecessarily, and start installing an efficient public transport system.

I also applaud your support of alternative enrgy, but in terms of making a difference it is unlikely to beat improving the insulation of your home or of managing with one small car per home rather than one often quite large car per person which seems to be pretty near what it is now.

Finally, I view the way we are encouraged to pretend that EVs will make everything all right with deep dislike. It won't make any difference to the consumption of fossil fuels, whether they are oil or coal. What is needed is a less profligate mindset, at least until some form of truly plentiful primary energy is discovered.

Until then we have oil. It is up to us to use less and less of it and as wisely as possible.

evnow wrote:

I'm now reading "Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century".

http://www.amazon.com/Profit-Peak-Greatest-Inve...

Considering even IEA is talking about it - we should look at peak oil as fact. No different than anthropogenic global warming.

There's an even more radical book - "$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better"

"Forbes writer Christopher Steiner has a new book about the approaching era of declining world oil production entitled $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better. In it he takes an interesting approach toward explaining how declining oil production will change the world. Each successive chapter is named after a progressively higher price for a gallon of gasoline. At each higher price point he describes how our lives will change. This is a novel and interesting approach aimed at explaining to a broader public what Peak Oil means for us in our daily lives. He doesn't put a timeline on when the price points will get hit or predict how much the total economy will shrink. This is more of a lifestyle approach to Peak Oil."
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006382.html

Tec wrote:

hador_nyc

I would define peak oil as that point where known reserves start to fall. By that measure, we are already there.

Like you I suspect oil will continue to be used for some time, but not for reasons of cost, but because there isn't much alternative.

The best you can do is to use it as efficiently as possible, DON'T buy huge cars with huge engines, DON'T use them unecessarily, and start installing an efficient public transport system.

I also applaud your support of alternative enrgy, but in terms of making a difference it is unlikely to beat improving the insulation of your home or of managing with one small car per home rather than one often quite large car per person which seems to be pretty near what it is now.

Finally, I view the way we are encouraged to pretend that EVs will make everything all right with deep dislike. It won't make any difference to the consumption of fossil fuels, whether they are oil or coal. What is needed is a less profligate mindset, at least until some form of truly plentiful primary energy is discovered.

Until then we have oil. It is up to us to use less and less of it and as wisely as possible.

Look up and down, energy is all around, we just need a way to store it that does not degrade, isn't that why we are all here? (i guess there is the profit motive)

Hi Guys,

PO is now in our rear view mirror. My confident predictions are:

1. There will never be a sustained quantity of more than 74.8mmbbls/day of conventional crude oil pumped out of the ground (the peak in July 2008)
2. The world economy cannot fully recover and grow until they fill the energy gap which will take some years.
3. In ten years the historians will call "PO day" as having taken place on 11 July 2008.

I hope we all enjoy living in a post-peak world. Cause that's what we's got :-)

But remember when they hunted whales almost to extinction? Then there were severe price spikes both up and down. Sometimes whalers made huge profits on a cargo. Sometimes the price was so low they couldn't afford to send their ships back to sea. So expect greater price volatility in both directions.

hador_nyc wrote:

BTW, not to get off topic, but AGW is hardly fact.

Because you say so ? I'd rather beleive thousands of scietists who say it is true.

As hardor_nyc states above, we probably are past peak, if you define 'peak' as the easy to extract oil.

I believe the point of this post should be 'will it matter?'

If you're a EESU believer, probably not, as it's introduction will cause an immediate drop in oil demand, and an even greater drop in speculation. This alone will cause the price of oil to plummet rather quickly.

If no EESU, I still believe that something else will come along, the most likely being an advance in battery technology, that will make 'peak oil' no more of a pain for the average person then Y2K was.

Oil prices are not rising because it's running out. Oil production was reduced months back because supply > demand, which drove the price down to unsustainable levels.

Rumour has it that it is being stockpiled all over the place by investment vehicles. Imagine if you had 1m barrels in storage that were bought at $45 each. Nice profit there for doing very little.

Canada has shown us the way of the future by turning Alberta's formerly green and pleasant lands into a vast toxic waste site because the oil shale there just happens to be one of the largest reserves in the world (174 billion barrels). Other countries are queuing up to do the same. When all that's gone, we'll still have coal & biomass to keep us going.

Link

I wouldn't lose sleep over PO.

Hador wrote

There is a lot of oil out there in oil shale. While you, and I for that matter, would likely not like the way to obtain that oil (mostly mining more akin to coal mining), there is plenty of it,and it's economically viable, depending on who you talk to, in the $50-125 per barrel range.

Yes you are dead right there are reserves of shale oil in Nevada and Colorado that are treble the oil in all of the middle east. Unfortunately my friend that is where they are going to stay in Colorado and Nevada, even if the price rises to $1,000 a barrel. The American Government has been trying to extract oil out of these shales since the beginning of the fifties. The reason these are not mined is because it cost you more energy to extract one barrel of oil than you get out. there is no net energy gain. You can't buck the laws of thermodynamics. I'll put it more simply if you had an stripper well and you used a barrel of oil to get out a barrel of oil would you keep pumping.

trick wrote:

... Alberta's ... oil shale ...

WalksOnDirt wrote:

Nuclear power can be used to extract oil from shale oil or tar sands, so being energy positive isn't an absolute requirement. This seems to have been seriously considered in Canada.

The question regarding extraction rates remain. Even with all this the yearly production is going to go down while the demand is surging. China is growing at 10% and India @ 8%.

From that, anyone can do the math.

Yorkshire Miner,

Your EROEI argument is well made.

Unfortunately there are people who know the position through many thousands of hours of research (with their views represented by ASPO) and then there are people who know very little but are happy - as Trick is - to air their views. We can do little about that.

Regretably there are also outfits like the EIA and IEA who make their pronouncements on the basis of vested political or even commercial interest. So until the historians have charted when the peak occurred, there will be no acceptance from many that peak oil is a reality to be faced. There is nothing we can do about that.

Rumour has it that it is being stockpiled all over the place by investment vehicles. Imagine if you had 1m barrels in storage that were bought at $45 each. Nice profit there for doing very little.

You are referring to an oilttrading condition called "contango."

google it

Anyone who wants to get up to speed with a discussion of "peak oil" can go to the ASPO web sites or if they want to monitor progress can go to either of the following sites for articles considered worthy of mention.

www.peakoil.com
www.theoildrum.com

low hanging fruits are gone. It cost more and more to get it now. We will never run out of oil, but at some point the return on investment will not be as good.
Hopefully, by then we will have Mr. Fusion and the EESU

This story may be worth reading:

http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10001772/iea-ec...

States that even if oil demand is flat. Fields are running out faster than expected, there is insufficient investment, that we need to find the equivalent of 4 more Saudi Arabias by 2030 and six if demand increases as expected.

Not good news.

The world will change for us and our children. We will not recognize it.

pchamp5 wrote:

low hanging fruits are gone. It cost more and more to get it now. We will never run out of oil, but at some point the return on investment will not be as good.
Hopefully, by then we will have Mr. Fusion and the EESU

Ofcourse. What better way to protect the future than to bank on miracles ? ;-)

No limited resource like oil will last forever. Hubert's peak will happen (or has already happened, but I doubt it) but it's not likely to be a nice neat curve, as in the theory. Above ground factors (like the current recession) will distort and shape the curve into something more akin to a jagged mountain. I'm guessing we're looking at a price spike in 2011-12 followed by frenetic activity and one last hurrah for oil before economics relegate it to a smaller share of our energy supplies. An EESU, or something like it, could nip that last hurrah in the bud.

Yorkshire Miner: Re Shale oil EROEI, the same was once said about tar sands oil. If there's money to be made digging up a resource it will be found. This may not be the technology that opens up the shale, but I've no doubt someone will figure it.

http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/feature/oil_sh...
note: shell also has in-situ strategies for shale extraction, they just aren't proceeding until the economics are more advantageous.

Tec wrote:

Finally, I view the way we are encouraged to pretend that EVs will make everything all right with deep dislike. It won't make any difference to the consumption of fossil fuels, whether they are oil or coal. What is needed is a less profligate mindset, at least until some form of truly plentiful primary energy is discovered.

Cute flip-flop Tec. Not long ago you were going on (and on and on ...) about how sunlight was inexhaustible and how wonderful it was that this sunlight could be converted to diesel, so we could continue to our habit of joyful diesel motoring without regards to our lungs and health. By the way, I love the way you try to squeeze in between the lines some of your standard FUD about EVs. ...what a flipping hypocrite you are Tec.

Last edited Mon, 03 Aug 2009, 10:46pm by ONeil

RmW wrote:

This story may be worth reading:

http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10001772/iea-ec...

States that even if oil demand is flat. Fields are running out faster than expected, there is insufficient investment, that we need to find the equivalent of 4 more Saudi Arabias by 2030 and six if demand increases as expected.

Not good news.

The world will change for us and our children. We will not recognize it.

Even the Saudi's realize it won't last however, they're currently drilling horizontally to find new sources and have found some new sources by using this approach but yup it won't last. With China modernizing demand has and will continue to increase. We need other sources. The Saudi deserts as well as the Sahara could make for a fantastic Solar future.

Any Abiogenic Petroleum believers out there?

Dutchie wrote:

Any Abiogenic Petroleum believers out there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleu...

Abiogenic petroleum origin is an alternative hypothesis to the prevailing biological origin theory of petroleum origins. Most popular in Russia and Ukraine between the 1950s and 1980s..

Hmmm ... any resident Russian scietists ?

All I know is that oil is over twice as much as it was when I bought my Conoco Phillips stock and I'm still down. This and my healthcare stock are about the only two that are giving me fairly large losses. I guess I'll think of it as a CD and hold it for the dividends.

Couple of points.

Roughly 1/2 of the world supply is gone. But, it's the easy 1/2 that's gone. Hence, supplies such as the tar sands in Alberta and deep sea drilling are being targetted.

Secondly, something like 80% of the fertilizer (amonia?) comes from oil.

How will the lack of oil play out in the next decade?

Not good, IMO.

Y

yyy wrote:

Secondly, something like 80% of the fertilizer (amonia?) comes from oil.

How will the lack of oil play out in the next decade?

Not good, IMO.

Y

You really want to know ?

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5558

Peak Oil And World Food Supplies

Remember that you can’t save the whole human race, you can only save a few people; learn to use a gun and an ax; head for the country. Oh, yes, and get yourself a reputation as a good neighbor; they may not actually adopt you, but they might help you out when there’s trouble.

Since oil reaching $147 was the cause of this world-wide recession and not the bursting of the housing bubble in the USA, the sooner the EESUs are delivered the better. We can't have stable and sustained economic growth with oil continuing to hold us by the short hairs.

For oil to already be at $70 while we are at the bottom of a major recession shows just how soon demand will again outstrip supply.

PS Saudi Arabia is lying!