MetaFilter posts tagged with oil and peakoil

Potholes on the road to a green future

Diablevert — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:49:32 -0800

Inspired by a recent Wall Street Journal* article, Robert Rapier, chemical engineer, peakist, blogger, and currently chief technology officer for a bioenergy company, reviews the pretenders, contenders, and niche players in the emerging field of green energy, with particular consideration of liquid fuels. Meanwhile, the boffins at Foreign Policy consider the risks of the coming of the green energy era, and depict the end of the oil age. (Both part of FP's extensive look at the end of oil; previously.) Being an engineer, Rapier discusses some hard numbers that give a sense of the dimensions of the challenge the industry faces. From his contenders article: “Consider for a moment the amount of energy locked up inside the 1.3 billion tons of dry biomass that the Department of Energy suggests can be sustainably produced each year. Woody biomass and crop residues - the kind of biomass covered in the 1.3 billion ton study - contains an energy content of approximately 7,000 BTUs per pound (bone dry basis). The energy content of a barrel of oil is approximately 5.8 million BTUs. Thus the raw energy contained in 1.3 billion tons of dry biomass is equivalent to the energy content of 3.1 billion barrels of oil, which is equal to 42% of the 7.32 billion barrels the United States consumed in 2008. This calculation tells you a couple of things. First, the 42% represents an upper limit on the amount of oil that could be displaced by 1.3 billion tons of biomass. The true number would be much lower because energy is required to get the biomass to the biorefinery and then to process it. So replacing oil with biomass isn't going to be a trivial task, and a process must be capable of turning a respectable percentage of those biomass BTUs into liquid fuel if it is to be a contender. *Paywall, if encountered, may be averted by searching article title on google and entering from there.

Energy Independence and Peak Oil

bystander — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:57:40 -0800

A Saudi Prince tells America to give up futile dreams of energy independence. Op-Ed in the NYT says Peak Oil is a waste of energy and an illusion. Meanwhile, the OECD's energy advisors, the IEA are saying cheap oil will run out in ten years, a decade sooner than estimates made as recently as 2007.

Yesterday's Energy of Tomorrow...and more

Miko — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:05:33 -0800

Peak Oil, 1925. In 2000, 20% of new buildings will be solar equipped. By the late 1990s, 90% of the world's energy will be nuclear-generated. These and other erroneous projections are being collected as part of the Forecast Project on the website Inventing Green: The Lost History of Alternative Energy in America.

Expensive gasoline is good for you

acb — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:58:36 -0800

The author of a new book on how rising oil prices will change America makes the claims that higher gasoline prices will make the country healthier and safer. Christopher Steiner asserts that, for every $1 that gasoline prices rise, obesity rates drop by 10% (as people walk more and eat out less). As for "safer", that comes in when high gasoline prices force police out of their cruisers and onto bicycles and foot patrols, where they can interact more closely with their communities. And here is a summary of claims Steiner makes in his book about other consequences of high oil prices. Some are things that have been discussed before (inner cities becoming affluent and suburbs becoming slums, for example, fewer plastic knick-knacks and a renaissance in rail transportation), while others (such as mass migration to the south as heating homes in the north becomes prohibitively expensive) are less so. All in all, Steiner's assessment, whilst heralding radical changes, seems upbeat and entirely non-apocalyptic.

Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation

symbollocks — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:32:05 -0800

In a talk titled Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation given at The New Emergency Conference, Peak Oil activist and writer Dmitry Orlov (previously 1 2 3) shows how he has come to the conclusion that the oil price spike of summer 2008 was the trigger for the financial collapse that occurred later on in the fall. He goes on to summarize (from his point of view) pretty much everything that has been happening in the past year or so, and what he thinks is coming up next. This is a long one, so here are some quotes: "Now that the reality of Peak Oil has started to sink in, one commonly hears that "The age of cheap oil is over". But does that mean that the age of expensive oil is upon us? Not necessarily. We now know (or should have learnt by now) that once oil rises to over 25% of global GDP, the world's industrial economy stalls out, and as soon as that happens, oil ceases to be particularly valuable, so much so that investment in maintaining oil production is curtailed. The next time industry tries to stage a comeback (if it ever does) it hits the wall much sooner and stalls again. I doubt that it would take more than just a couple of cycles of this market whiplash for all the participants to have two realisations: that they cannot get enough oil no matter how much they pay for it, and that nobody wants to take their money even for the oil they do have." "One person I would like to have a close encounter with the brick wall is this fellow, Myron Scholes, the Nobel Prise-winning co-author of the Black-Scholes method of pricing derivatives, the man behind the crash of Long Term Capital Management. He is the inspiration behind much of the current financial debacle. Recently, he has been quoted as saying the following: "Most of the time, your risk management works. With a systemic event such as the recent shocks following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, obviously the risk-management system of any one bank appears, after the fact, to be incomplete." Now, imagine a structural engineer saying something along those lines: "Most of the time our structural analysis works, but if there is a strong gust of wind, then, for any given structure, it is incomplete." Or a nuclear engineer: "Our calculations of the strength of nuclear reactor containment vessels work quite well much of the time. Of course, if there is an earthquake, then any given containment vessel might fail." In these other disciplines, if you just don't know the answer, then you just don't bother showing up for work, because what would be the point?"

Pickens Plan

Laugh_track — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:59:02 -0800

Pickens Plan -- oilman T. Boone Pickens has a plan to reduce America's oil dependency problem: exploit the country's massive windpower potential for domestic energy, replacing natural gas, and then use natural gas to power cars instead of foreign oil. Some problems with the plan.

The Politics of Radicalized Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money

Parallax.Error — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:25:08 -0800

Bush had Karl Rove. But the original wiretapping President needed brains too. Introducing Kevin Phillips. He predicted the prolonged Republican dominance of Washington 1970-present and advised the Ford and Reagan presidencies. He predicted a more liberal 1990s and when the Bushies killed his party he became uttery disgusted. Recently he spoke about the influence of the christian right, our addiction to oil, and America's debt (public and private) at the University of California Santa Barbara. Some Reviews of his work: New York Times on Phillip's books 1969-2005 Salon Review of American Theocracy Previously on Mefi in 06 and in 2004

Hold all bets, please

ilovemytoaster — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:06:41 -0800

How much of the Oil Shock of 2008 is peak oil, and how much just speculation? Will the cavalry ride to the rescue?

End Nigh?

nasreddin — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:11:24 -0800

After a comprehensive study of 400 oil fields, the International Energy Agency has concluded that, barring a substantial decrease in demand, the world faces an oil supply shortfall of 12.5 million barrels a day by 2015--15% of current production. [via]

Wadda Ya Mean I'm Powerless?

Xurando — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:28:57 -0800

The twelve steps of peak oil and peak civilization: Powerless over TEOTWAWKI.

Oil Tops Inflation-Adjusted Record Set in 1980

stbalbach — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:12:40 -0800

Oil Tops Inflation-Adjusted Record Set in 1980. Normally this would slow economies and thus slow demand for oil, forcing OPEC to loosen supplies, but things seem different this time: "we now have an oil world in which the impact of high oil prices is only really felt in the OECD countries" - high demand from China, India are keeping prices high, even as OECD economies slow. For its part Saudi Arabia says the high prices are caused by speculation. Oil speculators 'riding roughshod' over OPEC, say analysts Falling Dollar Pushes Oil Prices Up, Weakening Economy (PBS, video) Boom in Asia means oil price will continue to rise above $100 a barrel

Post Peak Oil Post

roofus — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:58:26 -0800

"The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life." The new Oil Report from Energy Watch Group makes a strong case that we have now passed peak oil. It identifes 2006 as the year of global peak oil, with a 7% annual fall in production from now on. They make no predictions regarding future prices, though many options traders are betting on $100/barrel within a month. The Guardian have some additional background on the report. (p r e v i o u s l y)

Horse Power

homunculus — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:15:27 -0800

Horse Power: A practical suggestion that would transform the way we live.

Ghawar, Going, Gone...

DAJ — Tue, 15 May 2007 07:53:03 -0800

Heard enough about Pain at the Pump? The 24-hour news love to cover the "unreasonable" record gasoline prices, but the real issue is crude oil supply--and this latest installment of Stuart Staniford's highly detailed analysis of the world's largest oil field, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, provides new evidence of sharply declining production. Can Saudi Arabia really increase supply to meet world demand that is surging on growth in India and China? Signs point to no--in the past week they have again voted to maintain OPEC's "voluntary" production cuts, and their petroleum minister commented that there may not be a "need" to increase Saudi production much further.

Putting Peak Oil in its place

blahblahblah — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:29:19 -0800

Peak Oil no more? Prophets of peak oil are being proven wrong as new technologies increase oil recovery rates. In fact, the entire peak oil theory might be based on flawed assumptions.

What Peak Oil means in the near-term

LeisureGuy — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 17:01:21 -0800

The Paradigm is the Enemy: A sobering but cogent account of the state of Peak Oil, what it's already led to (reported and ignored), and what is in store for us in the near future. The worst part is the political impossibility of addressing the problem constructively: that would require acknowledging the problem.

Freedom of the Seas

thirteenkiller — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:43:11 -0800

Supertankers are so cool. Click previous sentence for more information.

The State of Disunion

digaman — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 08:11:31 -0800

Zeitgeistfilter: Lumpen Leisure and Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown... Now Shut Up and Buy Something -- two fine rants about our current state of disunion by James Howard Kuntsler, author of The Long Emergency (excerpt), and writer and Vietnam vet Joe Bageant. "All over but the keening for our soon-to-be-lost machine world," Kunstler predicts in The American Conservative, while Bageant taps the inner stream-of-unconsciousness for Dissident Voice: "Things cannot be as bad as the alarmists say. They cannot be as bad as I often suspect they are. If there really were such a thing as global warming they would be starting to do something about it. And besides, even if it were true, science will find a way to fix it. If there really were genocide going on in so many places far more people would be concerned... If the earth were heating up we would surely notice it. If our soldiers and government agencies were torturing people around the world it would make the news. If millions were being exterminated, it would be more obvious, would it not?" (Kunstler's book previously discussed here, Bageant here.)

Half Gone

alms — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:05:07 -0800

As of today, world oil reserves are five percent lower than previously thought. Well informed early toppers like Jeremy Leggett (previously discussed here) won't be surprised by the news, though they may be disappointed that it didn't make bigger headlines.

Billionaires

samelborp — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:04:16 -0800

"Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to profit from a crisis. Now he foresees the biggest one yet". Rainwater discovers peak oil and wants to profit from it. Among other things, "he's thinking about opening a for-profit survivability center". Admittedly, his peak oil obsession goes beyond profiting:

But there may be something more important than making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the survivability of mankind. I don't want the world to wake up one day and say, 'How come some doofus billionaire in Texas made all this money by being aware of this, and why didn't someone tell us?'

Boundless energy or bad math?

Espoo2 — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 06:04:20 -0800

Boundless energy or bad math? Randell Mills thinks he has the solution to our energy problems. In his company's patented process, "energy is released as the electrons of atomic hydrogen are induced to undergo transitions to lower energy levels producing plasma, light, and novel hydrogen compounds." It also implies that quantum mechanics is wrong.

Oil Prices, Giffen Goods, and the American Landscape

digaman — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 04:34:50 -0800

Running on Fumes -- a fascinating essay by the Nation's Sasha Abramsky on what rising gas prices will do to poor exurban communities.

PEAK GARBAGE!

loquacious — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:03:55 -0800

Your Mr. Fusion is ready. Sort of.

April 22: Earth Day or Peak Oil Day?

DAJ — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:34:03 -0800

Today the Saudi Oil Minister announced that they are setting aside OPEC production quotas. Is the end for OPEC? More importantly, when the Texas Railroad Commission did the same thing in 1971, it signaled the peaking of US oil production. Oil prices keep rising, and the Main Stream Media blames it on tight refinery capacity. But simple economics tells us that this should actually cause crude prices to drop. So what is happening? Is this the peak of global oil production? President Bush is concerned, and he is hosting Crown Prince Abdullah at the Crawford Ranch this week. Leading Oil & Gas investment banker Matt Simmons thinks that the peak is upon us, and even the Saudi Oil Minister admits that they probably won’t find any more light, sweet crude…

The Sky (and Global Oil Production) is Falling!

DAJ — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 10:52:06 -0800

The Sky (and Global Oil Production) is Falling! With all the recent news on Global Warming, here's an article on the root cause of the problem: Global Energy Use. Has oil production peaked? Is the real focus of the Iraqi insurgency foreshadowing an energy-dominated future? Is there a solution to the problem??