
What if we never run out of oil? (2013) - todayiamme
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/?single_page=true
======
jeremyjh
'Because the costliest stuff is left in the ground, there will always be
petroleum to mine later. “When will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?”
asked the MIT economist Morris Adelman, perhaps the most important exponent of
this view. “The best one-word answer: never.”'

Yes, but it does not follow: "Effectively, energy supplies are infinite."

This is such a massive failure of basic logic that I really do not think
anything more needs to be said. Yet I will say it. The fact that a given
energy source requires more energy to produce than it can yield does not make
it an infinite source! Nor does a source which can yield a positive flow but
does not present a better return on capital than other existing sources off an
infinite supply. Just because it will never be used does not mean it is
infinite!

~~~
redwood
You are misreading the author. His sentence is hyperbolic.. He says
"effectively" to address your concern --- and then addresses why the whole
notion requires further investigation in the next paragraph.

The very next statement is "Sweeping claims like these make Jean Laherrère’s
teeth hurt."

------
AnthonyMouse
Suppose we want to reduce our oil consumption. What can we do?

1) Increase efficiency. Jevon's paradox makes this a fail, if you make
consumption more efficient then you effectively make it less expensive and so
people do it more.

2) Impose prohibitions or taxes on petroleum consumption, or incentives for
alternative energy consumption. This also fails because oil is a global
commodity. If you inhibit its consumption in one country, the global price
goes down which causes consumption to increase in other countries where the
taxes or subsidies don't exist and offsets the bulk of the benefit. The only
way this one works is if you can do it on a global scale _and_ prevent anyone
from cheating, which you can't.

3) Subsidize research into alternative energy production methods that would be
cost competitive with oil on their own merits. Once brought to market, these
methods would be more economically attractive than petroleum consumption
world-wide and bring about a significant global reduction in petroleum
consumption. This is the only one that actually works, and it has the added
benefit of reducing energy costs.

~~~
zizee
_if you make consumption more efficient then you effectively make it less
expensive and so people do it more_

Will that really be a big factor in petroleum use? My driving is not dictated
by the cost of Petrol (not yet anyway). I am not going to start driving twice
as much if my car suddenly only uses 50% as much fuel.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Will that really be a big factor in petroleum use? My driving is not
> dictated by the cost of Petrol (not yet anyway). I am not going to start
> driving twice as much if my car suddenly only uses 50% as much fuel.

Plenty of people might buy a large hybrid SUV if its fuel consumption was
closer to that of a conventional compact car. Fuel cost goes into the
calculation of whether to drive instead of taking the train, or carpool, or
how much you're willing to pay in rent to live closer to where you work (or to
mass transit), or how much you're willing to sacrifice in fuel to get home
sooner, or whether to take a road trip, etc. etc.

It's also not all about cars. Coal and petroleum are used to generate
electricity and heat homes. Make it cheaper to move the thermostat five
degrees in the direction of comfortable and people will.

------
aaron695
TL;DR - There seems credible evidence fossil fuels will always exist for us
and they'll always be affordable.

So getting past the strawperson replies about how nothing is infinite, fuel x
is not oil or limiting factors....

It is interesting. For years naysayers have gone on about peak oil, yet the
opposite might be true, technology might be able to rip fossil fuels out of
the earth faster than we can use them for hundreds of years.

The fact fracking was only possible due to increased computing power and is
now changing local industry due to energy actually getting cheaper shows to me
we are in an era of incredibly complex and quick changes.

~~~
Daishiman
But it's never been about oil availability. Oil extraction is nowadays far
more expensive than it was a decade ago, both in cost and in energy
expenditure. Renewables are becoming cost-effective not just because of
technical advances, but because oil will continue to get more expensive.

No amount of technical advances will defeat thermodynamics.

~~~
jerf
If normal economic forces naturally and relatively smoothly bring on renewable
energy resources online over time (including sufficiently-clean "nuclear" as
renewable for this purpose), and if the economy can be run more-or-less
entirely on renewable + nuclear resources, and if there are in fact things
other than "oil we could drill in 1970" to fill in the gap, then the only
significant remaining problem is the carbon dioxide generated in the meantime,
and very little special panic or angst for energy resource limitation is
called for. People have been panicking and angsting about this for quite a few
decades now, so if this is the ultimate resolution, that is a change in
viewpoint worth discussing. This would leave us energy (literally and
figuratively) to focus on the many other problems in the world.

(We might not want to blithely sail into the perfectly-well-known future of
energy unprepared... but... there's a _crapload_ of money to be made providing
energy to people, one hardly need create subsidies to make the transition
happen if that's how the economics are going to line up, when there's billions
or even trillions to be made by being the ones to get it right.)

------
_red
Basic economics already says we will never run out of oil. Sure it may be
$10,000 per barrel, but it will still be available.

~~~
sadfnjksdf
All known resources are finite.

~~~
mason55
Yes but as the supply of oil dwindles it will approach a point where it's more
expensive to extract than it costs to use a substitute. At that point we'll be
"out" of oil but there will still be plenty left in the Earth.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's been predicted many times; each time we find cheaper ways.

~~~
manicdee
Good ol' fracking! Who needs to do expensive things like drill holes and pump
in fillers to displace the stuff we're trying to harvest? Let's just smash the
lithosphere like a dinner plate on the slate floor and collect all the goodies
that pour out!

It's not like we actually need that land to grow food on or anything.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Actually we have an embarrassment of land to grow food on. Its fair to examine
the wisdom in that tradeoff. At some point it becomes untenable, but right now
actually we're doing OK. E.g. Iowa can grow enough food to feed 2 United
States.

------
dfa0
We don't know how much oil exists,but we do know it is finite.

The sun's energy will out last us all, millions of times over. Plants have it
figured out. We should ask them.

Plus what happens when we are ready to leave Earth? Surely we'll need a way to
feed off of the stars then anyway, so why not start now.

~~~
sliverstorm
The supply of sand is also finite, but we aren't likely to run out any time
soon.

Just because the supply is finite, doesn't automatically mean we will exhaust
it.

~~~
ShirtlessRod
True, but I would guess that oil is used at a much higher rate than sand,
especially considering the relative availability of each.

~~~
mistermann
The question is whether we will use it all up before renewables become cheaper
though.

------
api
We won't ever run out of oil. What will happen is that oil EROEI will drop and
cost will increase until other sources of energy are more cost-competitive and
oil becomes obsolete. (... OR if other sources cannot replace oil, economic
collapse and demand destruction until demand equals supply.)

~~~
fulafel
"Energy" is a little broad, it's already obsolete for non portable
applications. Oil will still be in demand when eroei goes below 1, unless
there's a cheaper compatible non fossil replacement.

~~~
sliverstorm
Obsolete for stationary applications? Not true at all, especially if we are
talking about "fossil fuels" rather than simply "oil". Natural gas is a huge
portion of the USA's electricity supply.

------
tokenadult
Previous submission of this 2013 article (which I think is not the only one,
as I remember another with more comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615686)

------
blacksmith_tb
So, if we switch to using methane hydrates and shale gas instead of coal and
oil, we will be emitting less CO2 - obviously not as big a step away from
fossil fuels as going all renewable (and/or nuclear), but seemingly better
than doing nothing...

~~~
AbsoluteDestiny
It doesn't matter how quickly we put carbon in the atmosphere. It has a 200
year effect - taking 60 more years versus 20 is meaningless if you end up
putting it all up there anyway. The only difference would be how soon we
suffer the worst effects - it's too fast for adaptation in nature for most
evolutionary or migratory processes either way. I suppose you could hope for a
technological silver bullet but that's effort made while dealing with a much
more costly carbon economy.

Also, we should really avoid the worst effects. Even the middling effects are
pretty awful.

------
yeukhon
I wonder how much power we could generate if we really have an affordable
solar panel for everyone to use, put a giant sheet of panel up in the space,
storing mechanical and wave energy as we walk, drive on the road and move
things around the house, convert organic waste (human and animal poop) into
energy.

~~~
NamTaf
Solar irradience on the surface of Earth is about 1200 W/m^2 Total energy
consumption in 2008 was 143,851 TWh

Take panels that have 20% efficiency, and assume they can absorb for 6 hours a
day, for 70% of the year (255 days). You can generate 368 kW/year. To generate
the total 143851 TWh, you'd need about 3.91e11 m^2 of area. That sounds a lot,
but it's only a square of land 625 km per side, or about 90% of the area of
California. Note that this is of course a very hand-wavey order of magnitude
estimate.

The problem isn't the abundence of energy sources, it's the collection,
retainment, transmission and generation reliability of it (those factors
overlap - generation reliability can be offset by better transmission and vice
versa).

We don't really have to go looking far for energy sources, we just really
struggle to harness them with current technology.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Folks criticize orbital solar collectors, because of the inefficiency of
transmitting energy to the ground (losses in the laser creation and
reception). But consider ground-based solar collectors are in the dark 50% of
the time on average, no matter where you put them. Its hard to do worse than
that.

------
fulafel
The even bigger deal about methane hydrate is its release from the formations
as climate warms (and it's a feedback loop) -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis)

~~~
jerf
As the Wikipedia article itself says, the catastrophe scenario is now "thought
unlikely"... I'd add that any such instability just sitting around would have
been triggered by now anyhow. It's essentially impossible for the climate to
be _that_ unstable. So "thought unlikely" is quite reasonable and well-
founded, and probably putting it lightly.

While I'm sure that once we start tapping into these resources environmental
groups will subject us to an endless haranguing about the "Clathrate gun
hypothesis", it will merely serve as further evidence that many (not all, but
many) environmentalists are narrative first, science fourth or fifth.

~~~
fulafel
That "unlikely" quote isn't entirely consitent with the rest of the article,
and was also about the cause of the previous ice age's end...

In contrast, also from the WP article,

"A study from 2010 concluded with the possibility for a trigger of abrupt
climate warming based on metastable methane clathrates in the East Siberian
Arctic Shelf (ESAS) region"

and

"In 2008 the United States Department of Energy National Laboratory system[28]
and the United States Geological Survey's Climate Change Science Program both
identified potential clathrate destabilization in the Arctic as one of four
most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change"

------
throwaway5752
This is something I know a bit about, and the article is terrifyingly stupid.
The more you look into the utter dependence of modern life as we know it on
petroleum and natural gas (coal to a much lesser extent), the unbelievable
amount of it that we burn, the rate of discovery of new supplies, and the rate
of depletion of known supplies... it's very uncomfortable to imagine 70% of
the planet's population suddenly dying off over a 5 year period in the next 50
years but it's entirely plausible.

The most sobering part is that given a deep enough interruption in humankind,
it's possible we'd never recover since the hydrocarbon frontier is in
ultradeep, clathrates, and shale and none of those would be possible without a
bootstrapping from easier hydrocarbon sources (which have been long since
exhausted)

~~~
eloff
Could you connect your thoughts to themselves and to the article please? I
have no idea why you think the article is stupid, and also no idea how you get
to 70% of the population dying over a five year period.

~~~
throwaway5752
I really offered no thoughts to connect, just my opinion...

To sketch it out, though: easy oil has been found, there are widely available
charts on the count/size of new discoveries by decade. Newer sources like
clathrates, subsalt, and bitumen are exceedingly difficult to extract (ie,
lower net energy production). In particular, shale depletion is extremely
rapid per well, and there is some question as to how net-energy
positive/economically viable it is. Clathrate reserve estimates have dropped
_dramatically_ over time.

As to why I think it could result in a permanent reversal in civilization:
transportation is key to modern life. Low energy requirements per capita in
urban settings are only possible by mass transportation of goods and services.
Petroleum is the overwhelming transportation fuel. Plastics and high-density
agriculture are fundamental to modern life, and both are dependent on natural
gas (PE feedstock or Haber process).

The world generally has 3-6 months of inventory or less of oil, less of gas. A
supply crisis would not have good effects. Some people point to the US
supplies of coal and the Fischer Tropsch process, but that doesn't stand up to
scrutiny.

[http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/28210_...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/28210_2012_flow_chart_high_res.jpg) is a useful chart.
There's another for global usage that I can't find right now, but shouldn't be
hard if you look for it. You might also look at the fracking depletion curves
in various shale plays (they differ based on reservoir characteristics).

You may also note from that chart that a huge percentage of energy is wastage
from transmission loss, which makes the tragedy of postponing a widescale
(Manhattan project level) deployment of solar PV even more depressing.

edit: random, somewhat informative article on shale fracking:
[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-
dot-...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-dot-shale-
oil-boom-may-not-last-as-fracking-wells-lack-staying-power)

~~~
gph
Alright, now that I've had some time to read through your sources let's get
down to it.

First of all, I agree that civilization is wholly dependant on petroleum, and
that's probably not going to change much even in the next 30 to 50 years. If
we are unable to find new sources of petroleum and/or migrate to another
energy source there will be a collapse and likely the vast majority of
humanity will die off. That probably would be the death kneel of civilization.

Now it looks like part of your argument is that shale oil and fracking is not
going to produce nearly the amount of petroleum as is forecasted. That
businessweek article gives some good information I didn't know about, so good
source on that. However, it looks like there is still debate around how much
oil is recoverable from shale deposits. Sounds like the debates of peak oil
from the past decades with one side optimistic and the other side pessimistic.
I'm not a geologist, and only time will really tell who is right. But I think
there is a good chance that technology will continue to improve and oil prices
will rise enough to make recovery of more oil possible.

Now you also say that Clathrate reserve estimates have continually dropped
over time. In the OP article it says,

>Estimates of the global supply of methane hydrate range from the equivalent
of 100 times more than America’s current annual energy consumption to 3
million times more.

It sounds like no one has a very firm grasp of how much Clathrate is
available. But even if we take the low estimate given, that's a substantial
amount. It would likely be enough to fulfil global energy needs for a couple
decades. Unless you have good proof that Clathrate reserves are overestimated
or that it's unlikely we can viably tap those sources, I'm going to say that
you haven't refuted anything in the original article.

You said the OP article was terrifyingly stupid, but all I see as a rebuttal
is that shale oil reserves are debatably not as large as we think. Or are you
trying to say that our energy consumption and reliance on petroleum is at such
a high and rising level that even sustaining our current production isn't
enough? To that I would argue that hopefully alternative energy sources will
free up enough petroleum from electricity production to keep us above water so
to speak.

~~~
throwaway5752
I hardly know how to respond. The decline curve of frac wells was new
information to you, and you have no idea how much gas is present in clathrate
deposits (but assume I have no insight). Why do you want to continue this
discussion? Why do you imagine that I would?

Let me leave you with some thoughts:

1\. One random mistake in the article is the characterization of bitumen
production in Alberta. He describes in situ, but a larger portion is still
open pit.

2\. One thing the author is correct about is judging energy by EROIE. What do
you suppose is the EROIE of clathrate methane production? It either requires
heating or CO2 substitution. What is the value of using more than one bboe to
produce a single bboe?

3\. "I would argue that hopefully alternative energy sources will free up
enough petroleum from electricity production" \- as is clear from the chart I
posted, of the 34.7 quadrillion BTUs of petroleum consumed by the US, 0.22
goes towards the production of electricity. That is true across the world
except in some very oil rich countries, very isolated countries, or very poor
countries.

~~~
gph
>I hardly know how to respond.

You could respond by dropping the know-it-all attitude. Look I'm not an expert
and I'm probably wrong on some things. That's why I'm trying to gather info
from a bunch of sources on this, and also why I'm not taking everything you
say at face value. But even if your facts are correct you aren't going to go
around convincing people by being an arrogant prick and calling articles you
disagree with stupid. Get the fuck over yourself, you aren't a god damn child
and your ego doesn't exist on the internet. If you don't feel like discussing
these things with me then don't. Why do I want to continue this discussion?
Because I'm learning from it. Clearly you already know everything though, so I
guess if you don't want to say anything more just stop.

1\. Ok, but does that change the points he put forth much? Isn't the EROEI of
either method still economically viable?

2\. If the EROEI of clathrate methane was little to negative, then why are the
Japanese throwing so much money at it? There must be some potential at
economic viability for it. I didn't see anything in my 2 second google search
that gave a good overview of it's economic potential, but if you have a source
that gives a better picture on the EROEI then by all means I'll take a look.

3\. Yes I noticed the graph, but I was kind of assuming that a lot of
transportation in the next couple decades will move from petroleum to
electricity. Perhaps that's somewhat of a stretch, but I think we are already
trending in that direction somewhat. I'm willing to admit I'm probably overly
optimistic about this though.

------
nfoz
What if the sky rained donuts!

------
comicjk
Methane hydrates are not oil. This article is amateur nonsense.

~~~
jpwright
The author doesn't claim that; you ought to read more than the first few
paragraphs. He is relating the discovery of methane hydrate beneath the
seafloor in the 70s to newer unconventional oil extraction methods, namely tar
sands and hydraulic fracking, in terms of their impact on energy markets...
not saying that they are the same.

~~~
comicjk
I did read the article. Your gloss of it makes even less sense than the
article itself, since tight oil and fracking have changed the energy market
already and methane hydrates have had no effect after forty years. The actual
thrust of the article is that fracking worked, so methane hydrates will work.
And as I pointed out, this has nothing to do with oil. The author explicitly
defines "petroleum" so as to include natural gas, which is simply an error. If
this article had been posted to a forum of chemical engineers instead of one
of software engineers, it would have gotten nowhere.

~~~
jpwright
True, the article is more about the potential of methane hydrate if it were
used on a larger scale.

I assume you're referring to this line:

> Petroleum is a grab-bag term for all nonsolid hydrocarbon resources—oil of
> various types, natural gas, propane, oil precursors, and so on—that
> companies draw from beneath the Earth’s surface. The stuff that catches fire
> around stove burners is known by a more precise term, natural gas, referring
> to methane, a colorless, odorless gas that has the same chemical makeup no
> matter what the source—ordinary petroleum wells, shale beds, or methane
> hydrate.

This does rely on the common-use definition of petroleum = hydrocarbons
(loosely incorporating refined outputs as well) and not the technical
definition of petroleum = crude. But that usage can be found all over academic
and industry writing as well; sometimes it is shorthand for something like
"petroleum-based products". A few examples:

\-- "Petroleum is a complex mixture of organic liquids called crude oil and
natural gas, which occurs naturally in the ground and was formed millions of
years ago." \-- Australian Institute of Petroleum,
[http://www.aip.com.au/industry/fact_refine.htm](http://www.aip.com.au/industry/fact_refine.htm)

\-- "Petroleum - A generic name for hydrocarbons, including crude oil, natural
gas liquids, natural gas and their products." \-- Colorado Oil and Gas
Conservation Commission, [http://oil-
gas.state.co.us/cogis_help/glossary.htm](http://oil-
gas.state.co.us/cogis_help/glossary.htm)

\-- "petroleum n: a substance occurring naturally in the earth in solid,
liquid, or gaseous state and composed mainly of mixtures of chemical compounds
of carbon and hydrogen, with or without other nonmetallic elements such as
sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. In some cases, especially in the measurement of
oil and gas, petroleum refers only to oil—a liquid hydrocarbon—and does not
include natural gas or gas liquids such as propane and butane." \-- U.S.
Occupational Health & Safety Administration,
[https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/oilandgas/glossary_of_terms...](https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/oilandgas/glossary_of_terms/glossary_of_terms_p.html)

Either way, dismissing the entirety of a sophisticated, well-researched
article in a respected publication because you disagree with the way one term
is used is pretty glib.

~~~
comicjk
People who know what they're talking about can get away with using less
precise language. They would never conflate "the potential of methane hydrate
if it were used on a larger scale" with oil. But this author did. Therefore
the fact that he used this loose definition is not irrelevant - it points to
the central problem. This article is not sophisticated or well-researched,
it's simply long. The fact that it was this high on Hacker News is sad.

