
Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will 'break economies' - evolve2k
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/23/british-petroleum-geologist-peak-oil-break-economy-recession
======
randyrand
Again?

1882: "only 95 Million barrels remaining/4 years of oil left"

1919: "only 20 years of oil left"

1950: "only 100 Billion barrels left"

1956: "peak oil" by 1970

1980: "only 648 Billion barrels left"

1993: "only 999 Billion barrels left"

2000: "only 1016 Billion barrels left"

2008: "only 1238 Billion barrels left"

The point is not the peak oil will never happen, it's that we have no clue
when it will.

Past precedent says prices will rise slightly, technology will improve, and
new oil that was once too expensive to obtain becomes obtainable. Here's my
prediction: We will switch to some cheaper alternative long before oil ever
runs out. There won't be some dramatic crisis where everything goes to shit.
It will be a gradual change where oil prices steadily climb and consumption
slowly diminishes. Just like has already happened with countless other
resources and just like is happening now.

Source and video explanation [Are we running out of Resources?]:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWkN4ngR2Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWkN4ngR2Y)

~~~
coldtea
> _Past precedent says prices will rise slightly, technology will improve, and
> new oil that was once too expensive to obtain becomes obtainable._

And common logic says that a resource that is finish will, sooner or later,
finish.

It also says that there's no natural law that "technology will improve"
always, so that getting harder to get oil will only require the prices to rise
"slightly". At some point a specific technology does not improve anymore, or
you get diminishing returns.

Also, common sense says, that as time goes by, and measurements improve, it's
far more likely for us to predict correctly how many barrels are left that it
was in the past.

Common sense says that for a civilisation to run out of a resource and NOT
find a proper, similarly cheap, replacement in due time, it's bloody probable.
Nothing strange about it.

Now, some people like to think that stuff like "technology always improves in
time to save us" is some kind of natural law. I guess they are more into
science as religion, than in science as science.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Now, some people like to think that stuff like "technology always improves in
time to save us" is some kind of natural law. I guess they are more into
science as religion, than in science as science._

(Shrug) On the one side, we have some people who have always said that. They
have always been right.

On the other side, we have some people who have always forecast an imminent
heat death of Malthusian malaise for us all. Those people have _never_ been
right, so I'd say they bear the burden of proof that This Time It's Different.

~~~
waps
Really ? Where were the technological improvements when oil shot up to $150 in
2008 ?

Sure technological improvements eventually got us to the energy level we were
at in 2005 ... but only just barely and only for a week. Since then it's been
going down, with predictable results.

And while shale (currently) provides a few years delay, it's only for a few
years, and maybe even only America. That's the problem with these ass-saving
technologies. The first few times they saved our ass for several centuries
(coal + trains, which will keep working, later nuclear). The next revolution
saved our collective energy-hogging asses for ~60 years. The next one,
horizontal drilling, did for ~10-15 years. Now we have shale oil, which saves
our asses for 5-6 years tops.

The situation is not as rosy as you indicate at all. We're effectively
dependent on ALL technologies operating at totally maxed out capacity for
economic prosperity, and a lot of these technologies are faltering all at the
same time. It won't be pretty.

Frankly we have ~5 years to increase the efficiency of batteries (which have
improved a factor 2 in ~100 years in mass/energy and volume/energy). Not by a
factor of 2, but a factor of 10, to keep our society at the same technological
level. Nobody has any even theoretical ideas to get a twofold improvement. We
only have 5 years because of shale oil, and we knew perfectly well in 2000
that we'd need this super-battery before the decade was out, and humanity
simply failed ...

I went to a robotic mechanics lecture 2 years ago. The opening line was this :
you climbed 5 floors to get here, and you got seriously tired (the elevators
were out). If you had been the best robot we have, with roughly half it's
weight dedicated to battery you would have just used ~50% of the total energy
contents of your battery. This is a problem that needs to be solved before we
have any real hope of true independent robots.

Oh and let's feel inspired by nature. Wait. How does nature solve this ? Well,
here's the basic formula for oil CnH2n+2. Here's the basic formula for human
fat : CnH2nOOH. In both cases the energy is stored in the same chemical
structure. The energy is pretty much stored in the exact same chemical bonds
in the human body (or any animal) and in a gas tank. In other words : in 4
billion years evolution did not find a better way. Do you think humanity is
likely to improve upon it ?

You best hope so. Or we'll see repeats of 2008, except without recovery.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Orbital solar. Methane Hydrate. More efficient engines of industry. These
things are in development/getting done now. Economies might suffer but when
they are needed they will happen pretty quickly.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Orbital solar is in development? I'd love to read more on that!

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well, since the DoE study in 81, the only active project is one between China
and India announced in 2012. Solar cell costs have come down 100X since the
70's, so in that sense its getting some attention. But since power is still so
cheap, its hard to pay back the lift costs of any space-based installation
that's been designed.

~~~
qohen
I don't know how serious it is, but it appears that Japan has been looking
into it too:

From Oct. 2013: [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/02/japan-
solar-e...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/02/japan-solar-energy)

From Apr. 2009:
[http://phys.org/news172224356.html](http://phys.org/news172224356.html)

------
barry-cotter
Title exaggerates to my mind. Peak oil is here; it was reached in 2008
apparently but 'break economies' is doom mongering. It seems depressingly
plausible that the decline in liquid petrocarbons will lead to a lower growth
rate absent large technological changes.

I just hope nuclear or the unproven renewables come on line smoothly,
otherwise coal might come back. There's 200 years supply for North America at
current energy usage, in North America. But coal is awful. Just the radiation
released into the air by burning it kills more people every year than
Chernobyl and that's without considering "normal" air pollution.

~~~
krakensden
I suspect it's not doom mongering for some of the goofier regimes propped up
by oil money. Would not want to live in Saudi Arabia when the money runs out.

~~~
shirro
Yeah, it could turn into a corrupt feudal state ruled by religious police.
What a nightmare.

~~~
barry-cotter
It's not feudal, the religious police don't rule and as is the people there
have enough water to drink, food to eat and mostly live in something
resembling peace. After oil Saudi Arabia will look like Yemen does now, if
they're lucky.

I'm sure the royal family/clan/tribe will be fine but the average Saudi will
be in a much, much worse position than now.

~~~
waps
They only have enough water and food because of constant imports of both.
Without oil, Saudi Arabia couldn't realistically sustain 1% of it's
population. Realistically, if the oil runs out, except for a few pockets and
islands, Saudi Arabia will have to be abandoned.

------
thewarrior
I think that if we were facing such an imminent and catastrophic collapse
world governments wouldn't be so complacent. There would be moves being made
to secure each countries future. I mean the main job of the CIA etc is to
predict and stay on top of such trends.

Also in such a scenario I would expect countries like Saudi Arabia to curtail
their own exports and start preserving it for their own needs. The day you see
that happen you can rest assured that we're in deep trouble.

The actions of the Chinese govt are also interesting to observe. They've been
buying up oil around the world but haven't really being attempting to engineer
a paradigm shift in their energy policy.

We have endless summits on climate change and such but not even a single
global summit on such an important issue.

The govts of the world maybe incompetent but I would like to believe that they
arent incompetent to this scale.

So the gist of my point is that we might be facing some difficult times ahead
but not an outright collapse.

~~~
coenhyde
Why would Saudi Arabia curtail their own exports? They'll make a lot more
money exporting it. The ruling class has no incentive to care how expensive
oil is for their domestic economy.

~~~
Anon84
They can make more money by exporting it later when it's scarser.

------
coldtea
It's amazing how many people think that something like peak oil can't happen,
not for anything else, but for their ardent zeal in scientific progress that
makes them believe that things can only get better and there are no limits...

~~~
roel_v
It depends what you call 'peak oil'. That there will be a point in time where
we consume the maximum amount of oil ever is inevitable - we will run out, and
the usage curve will have a maximum somewhere. But 'peak oil' is being used as
some sort of scientific-sounding synonym for a precursor to a Mad Max style
society. It's this part that is absurd and highly unlikely - much more
unlikely than the alternative in which we more or less gradually transition
into a society based on other energy sources and modes of energy transport.

------
fizx
I feel like the crazy decline in cost of solar will catch us in time, even if
this is true.

[http://www.treehugger.com/slideshows/renewable-
energy/import...](http://www.treehugger.com/slideshows/renewable-
energy/important-graph-cost-solar-headed-parity-coal-and-gas/)

~~~
olefoo
To what extent is the solar economy dependent on the petrol economy?

Solar is great for architectural uses, and with a decent electrical grid you
can even out and match up the fluctuations in demand and generation. But if
you need to ship quantities of energy dense easily usable power around; it's
really hard to beat hydrocarbon fuels. And for manufacturing and installing
all those solar facilities...?

------
eru
> [...] showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008.

Oh, so it's "conventional peak oil" and not "peak oil".

~~~
mike_esspe
Global oil production in 2013 increased by 2.2%. Natural gas production
increased by 1.9%.

[http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-
econom...](http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-
economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy-2013/review-by-energy-
type/oil/oil-production.html)

[http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-
econom...](http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-
economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy-2013/review-by-energy-
type/natural-gas/natural-gas-production.html)

------
caoilte
It's most illustrative that this lecture was given to future actuaries.
Branches of society that have to concern themselves with the future are
already well advanced in making preparations for it.

For example, a friend who is a town planner has to make sure that all new
infrastructure takes expected sea level rises into account - even as her
political masters deny global warming exists.

Meanwhile, mass society still can't even come to terms with the fact that many
well respected mavens predicted that the Iraq War would be a disaster, that
there would be a housing crash and that banks were incentivized to be corrupt
and loot the economy. What hope for anti-biotics misuse, over-dependence on
synthetic fertilizers and civilization surviving the anthropocene?

------
manglav
This is quite scary when you think about the fact that so most economies are
ultimately tied to their oil prices (except Greenland). Because peak refers to
production, as the world goes, we have some more time to prepare, but price
will increase in the meantime. What's interesting is that I'm more hopeful
that the oil companies will find a common ground solution than the governments
of the world will, because at least the companies are motivated by their
collective wallets.

~~~
eru
> This is quite scary when you think about the fact that so most economies are
> ultimately tied to their oil prices (except Greenland).

Oil can only get so expensive. We have lots of alternative sources of energy
that put a lid on the oil price. Just to give some examples, at some point,
making artificial oil out of coal will become viable on a large scale (just
like Germany did during WWII), and there's always nuclear power.

And there's also lots of oil at sea that we have barely started to explore.

~~~
manglav
I don't understand your comment.

1\. How can oil "only" get so expensive? By oil, we are referring to the act
of gathering existing oil. There is no limit to the cost of gathering. Going
deeper and deeper, or from lower concentration will become more expensive as
time goes on.

2\. We have a lot of alternative sources of energy that put a lid on oil
price. Can you explain the mechanism for this? Are you referring to the true
cost of oil, or just at the fillup station? Are you saying the major cost of
gathering oil is the input energy, and because the input energy is
alternative, the EROIE is infinite? Please elaborate.

3\. making artificial oil out of coal will become viable on a large scale.
Making artificial oil has nothing to do with gathering oil. The reason they
did that was that oil was a more valuable energy medium than coal, because it
can be used for many products, not just trains/ships/electricity.

4\. There's always nuclear power. I am a big fan of nuclear power, but have no
faith in governments making a sound scientific analysis. So unless nuclear
power becomes cheap (infrastructure-wise), I think peak oil is still a big
concern.

5\. Lot's of oil at sea we haven't explored. There's a reason we haven't
explored it - it costs way, way, too much. But I'm sure we will as the EROIE
goes down.

~~~
eru
Let's ignore technical progress for a while. You can order every Joule of oil
by how much effort the extraction is. There's basically no limit on the effort
here. But, if you add all energy from other sources into your line-up, you
will see that we won't touch the crazy difficult oil until we have exhausted
the easier alternative sources.

So, if oil ever gets expensive enough, nobody will use it until we have used
up eg more coal. While we use the coal and _not_ the oil, oil won't become
scarcer, and thus won't increase in price.

Of course, it doesn't really make sense to go for oil that has less energy
output than what its extraction costs. At any price. [0] Technologic progress
will take care of some of that.

[0] Unless you use the oil as a kind of battery. Ie use 100J of solar power
that's only available during the day, to extract 50J of oil usable anytime---
that might be worthwhile, but it would compete with battery technology not
with energy sources.

------
Choronzon
Forget production rates barrels left and the economic value of the oil. They
are second order approximations .The way to measure peak oil is in joules. The
energy from the oil - the energy to extract in the first place is what your
economy is left with .We will never run out of oil but running out of energy
efficient oil is probable

------
graeham
The oil industry works like industries are supposted to from Econ 101: at $150
oil like there was in 2008, there is a lot more oil that becomes economically
viable than the $100 oil now, or the $30 oil in the early 2000's (off-shore,
oil sands, and fracking). The article seems to say that the recession was
caused by a peak in oil supply - I would suggest it is instead made a peak in
oil demand (or rather the downward slope on the other side of the peak).

They are probably correct that cheap oil is done - the oil sands in Alberta,
Canada are viable only when oil is above about $70/barrel. Of course when the
price goes up, demand drops, so the need for higher production goes down.

In my opinion peak oil isn't the question: what we should be asking is how do
we want to change our industies and lifestyles to reflect that energy is more
expensive than it has been.

~~~
psbp
You just sloppily restated the article.

------
baq
RIP [http://www.theoildrum.com/](http://www.theoildrum.com/)

everyone should go read at least one article from that site. doesn't matter
which one.

------
legohead
ah, the yearly peak oil outcry

