Petroleum and the future of civilization

  • Thread starter Thread starter Doug50
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
drpmjhess said:
The crisis is not one of energy per se, but of liquid fuels. These have been deposited over hundreds of millions of years, and we are using them u in 150 years. We won’t necessarily all starve to death (although tens of millions regrettably will), but we will largely be staying put. We won’t have the liquid fuels to push around our Yukons and Hummers and ten-ton RVs. Commuting will become a thing of the past, unless communities install light rail, or people start bicycling a lot more, which would have the added benefit of reducing obesity and diabetes.
Click to expand...
Just for information purposes, energy crises have occurred in the past. Society was heavily dependent on whale oil, for example. When whales got hunted out and demand continued to increase, liquid petroleum suddenly became economic to develop. In addition, techniques were developed to convert coal into liquid and gas forms of hydrocarbons.

The economic “law” of supply and demand works for our current need for petroleum. As petroleum becomes more expensive, it will become economic to drill in more difficult locations. China, for example, is developing locations all over the world (including off the coast of Florida, even though the United States won’t drill there).

There is also a theory advanced by the late Thomas Gold and which is also known as the R-U Theory. And that is … that the planet Earth has a molten core with a paper thin crust floating on top. And that the incredibly high temperatures and pressures result in the continuous “creation” of new petroleum, which slowly trickles up into existing oil fields and renews them.

So, there is some interest in figuring out if the Thomas Gold / R-U Theory is real or not and if it is, how can it be used to our advantage.

In addition, the Earth has a LOT of coal and natural gas. So, there is a lot of interest in developing these natural resources and in using them to develop liquid fuels.

Another approach is the use of rechargeable batteries for vehicles (including railroad switcher locomotives!) that can be charged using special off-peak rates from electric utilities that have or construct large “base load” generating facilities that they need to keep operating continuously (with other units used for peak loads).

It’s not as bleak as the media would make it appear to be.
 
JimG said:
So let’s get to the nitty gritty: should I be selling BP and Mobil stock?
Click to expand...
Think of this way: a company like Exxon with huge oil reserves on the books must find huge new reserves to have any significant reserve appreciation. Seems to me smaller is better. Oil service stock look better to me. I moved a lot of my stock investments into oil service and am up 30-40% in less than a year.
 
Al_Masetti said:
Just for information purposes, energy crises have occurred in the past. Society was heavily dependent on whale oil, for example. When whales got hunted out and demand continued to increase, liquid petroleum suddenly became economic to develop. In addition, techniques were developed to convert coal into liquid and gas forms of hydrocarbons.

The economic “law” of supply and demand works for our current need for petroleum. As petroleum becomes more expensive, it will become economic to drill in more difficult locations. China, for example, is developing locations all over the world (including off the coast of Florida, even though the United States won’t drill there).

There is also a theory advanced by the late Thomas Gold and which is also known as the R-U Theory. And that is … that the planet Earth has a molten core with a paper thin crust floating on top. And that the incredibly high temperatures and pressures result in the continuous “creation” of new petroleum, which slowly trickles up into existing oil fields and renews them.

So, there is some interest in figuring out if the Thomas Gold / R-U Theory is real or not and if it is, how can it be used to our advantage.

In addition, the Earth has a LOT of coal and natural gas. So, there is a lot of interest in developing these natural resources and in using them to develop liquid fuels.

Another approach is the use of rechargeable batteries for vehicles (including railroad switcher locomotives!) that can be charged using special off-peak rates from electric utilities that have or construct large “base load” generating facilities that they need to keep operating continuously (with other units used for peak loads).

It’s not as bleak as the media would make it appear to be.
Click to expand...
Fist off, the media/news isn’t even addressing the issue.

Society went from wood to coal to oil. Oil has been used for thousands of years. All of those were raw material that society learned to extract and use more efficiently. Critical question: What’s the raw matterial that society is going to use to replace oil in the volumes used or in the way its use? There isn’t one. Liquid fuels will have to be manufactured from something else. That doesn’t just create an incease in monitary (name removed by moderator)ut but also an increase in energy (name removed by moderator)ut.

Look at this way: can we make methane gas? Sure. There are plans on the books to take hydrogen to Mars to manufacture methane using it and the atmosphere’s CO2 as a source of rocket fuel. The energy would come from photovaltaics. So we could do that here, no? Is it cost effective?

Most of the arguements for oil and coal reserves ignore exponetial growth of demand has upon these reserve bases.

Arithmetic, Population and Energy (Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis)
 
There is also a theory advanced by the late Thomas Gold and which is also known as the R-U Theory. And that is … that the planet Earth has a molten core with a paper thin crust floating on top. And that the incredibly high temperatures and pressures result in the continuous “creation” of new petroleum, which slowly trickles up into existing oil fields and renews them
Click to expand...
all petroleum geologist that i have worked with do not use this methodology when exploring for hydrocarbons. this theory is not taken seriously by anyone in academia either.

in basin modeling, the industry standard is that oil and gas are either bio or thermogenic in origin. there are ways to chemically link the source rock to the hydrocarbons they produced. basically, oil and gas are generated when organic rich rocks are buried and “cooked” by the increased temp and pressure at depth. the deeper and or hotter the source rocks are heated, the more gas they produce. so there is an oil window where only oil will be produced. basically these source rocks will continue to produce hydrocarbons but not a time scale to be considered renewable.

i’m not so optimistic about the future. when the transition from a petroleum based economy to a different energy source does come, i believe it will be sudden and we will not be prepared. capitalism is driven by profit and not common sense.
 
Dee_Dee_King said:
all petroleum geologist that i have worked with do not use this methodology when exploring for hydrocarbons. this theory is not taken seriously by anyone in academia either. .
Click to expand...
Dee Dee King, the petroleum explorers and developers with whom I work regard the theory of the abiotic origins of oil as no more credible than the theory that diamonds grow on magnolia trees.

I was visiting an elderly cousin 65+ this weekend who has just retired to a community or several thousand mostly of elderly but active people, an hour up in some lovely mountains from the nearest town. On fixed incomes, with no bus or electric rail service, I fear for their survival when gasoline gets to $10.00 per gallon, as it will not long from now. Their life savings are tied up in beautiful houses which will plummet in value as it becomes too costly for anyone else to buy them and commute the hour into town.

Petrus
 
There is an indirect tie in this argument related to Catholic morals. For some reason nobody in the news media is giving this issue much notice. The modern world runs on oil and what have we been doing with about it? We pretend that oil will simply last for ever or when the time comes the free market will simple go to the next energy supply whatever that supply will be.

Without oil in the way agriculture is so dependent upon it we cannot feed the current world population in an era of oil depletion. That is very much a Catholic moral issue.

Here’s a visual of world population growth from ~ AD 10 to + 2000 that correlates to oil production

321energy.com/editorials/chefurka/chefurka02.gif

The critical question is: When oil depletes with population also deplete and if so who is going to die? I’d like to believe we can mitigate this problem but without puplic awareness I have a tough time seeing that mitigation happen on a timely bases.

Actually Pope Benedict complimented Matt Simmons for his efforts to bring this problem to public awareness.

financialsense.com/transcriptions/2007/0407.html
MATT: That’s a really profound statement. I think the English copies – I’ll get a report at the end of April – but I think we’ll probably cross 100,000 books which I didn’t realize how few books ever do that. So the book in German through an intermediary was delivered to Pope Benedict the 16th. I have a lovely framed letter now from the Secretary of State’s Assistant to the Vatican thanking me for the efforts of alerting the world to peak oil. That’s pretty neat stuff.

financialsense.com/Experts/2007/Simmons.html
 
Doug50 said:
Without oil in the way agriculture is so dependent upon it we cannot feed the current world population in an era of oil depletion. That is very much a Catholic moral issue. Here’s a visual of world population growth from ~ AD 10 to + 2000 that correlates to oil production

The critical question is: When oil depletes with population also deplete and if so who is going to die? I’d like to believe we can mitigate this problem but without public awareness I have a tough time seeing that mitigation happen on a timely bases.
Click to expand...
Doug50, you are quite right. The human population of roughly one billion in 1859 has skyrocketed to 6.7 billion now, and is headed toward 9 billion by 2050. Either we close the “gap” by generating more energy to support the population (which you seem not to believe to be likely), or the population must decline by 2-5 billion people to match the decreased resource availability.

The reason I am involved in this (as a Catholic theologian) is that I fear societies will crumble as their energy base declines, leading to anarchy or tyrannical governments that will institute draconian population control measures, such as abortion and infanticide. The best way to prevent this would be to reduce family size to replacement rate, through educating people to the nature of the resource-to-population relationship.

Although personally pessimistic that Capitalist, communist, autocratic-Islamic, or any other governments will act in time to engineer a soft landing, I remain – for my children and my students – outwardly optimistic. It is not always easy, with dealerships here selling Dodge trucks that get nine miles per gallon, and RVs that get six, and with subdivisions of 20,000 houses plunked down in remote former agricultural areas, with no provision made for light rail. But our moral and spiritual witness is important.

Petrus
 
drpmjhess said:
The reason I am involved in this (as a Catholic theologian) is that I fear societies will crumble as their energy base declines, leading to anarchy or tyrannical governments that will institute draconian population control measures, such as abortion and infanticide. The best way to prevent this would be to reduce family size to replacement rate, through educating people to the nature of the resource-to-population relationship.
Click to expand...
The reason I discuss this is due to my belief I have a moral obligation to inform. What amazes me is just how hostle people are to the eventual reality of world oil production declining. I’ve had people (including ones who see themselves as devout Catholics) tell me “well it won’t happen in my life time so I’m not going to worry about it.” as if they know for a fact it won’t happen in their lifetime or to heck with the next generation. As Matt Simmons says in the intro to this clip Peak Oil - Imposed by Nature

BTW the History Channel has a show called Mega Disasters on tonight about oil but aside from that I don’t know what their arguments with be Mega Disasters : Oil Apocalypse
 
How does the discovery the other day of the second largest oil field in the world (off the coast of Brazil) affect the date at which the planet will run out of oil?

Peak Oil and all that …
 
How does the discovery the other day of the second largest oil field in the world (off the coast of Brazil) affect the date at which the planet will run out of oil?
Click to expand...
there is always more oil to be found. just at a higher and higher cost so that at some point, our cheap oil based economy will collapse. the field you mention only contains 700 million barrels of oil. the largest field in sw asia contains over 70 billion barrels–100 times bigger. also, this field was discovered in deep water and will be expensive to produce.

besides, i don’t think brazil exports oil. even if they did, this is a drop in the bucket in context to the world wide demand of cheap oil.
 
This is not a cause for alarm. The richest percentage of the people on earth live on the same planet. If the oil runs out, it will run out for them as well.

Some years ago, the Hydrogen Economy was announced in Michigan. Also in Michigan, cellulosic ethanol is coming online. In California, a major utility has agreed to purchase solar generated power from a site in the desert which, almost needless to say, is unpopulated.

Perhaps those countries that are having difficulty should adopt a policy of having few or only one child.

Safe hydrogen storage is already possible (and not using fuel tanks at high pressure). But, it’s always about the money. I have every confidence that the rich will survive and continue to get richer.

God bless,
Ed
 
Dee_Dee_King said:
there is always more oil to be found. just at a higher and higher cost so that at some point, our cheap oil based economy will collapse. the field you mention only contains 700 million barrels of oil. the largest field in sw asia contains over 70 billion barrels–100 times bigger. also, this field was discovered in deep water and will be expensive to produce.

besides, i don’t think brazil exports oil. even if they did, this is a drop in the bucket in context to the world wide demand of cheap oil.
Click to expand...
No reason at all for the economy to collapse. Tropical countries will re-discover solar energy … after all, they get tons of intense sunlight now. As the cost to discover oil increases, substitutes for oil will develop. During World War II, folks in Europe figured out alternate ways to power their automobiles. Don’t forget that a hundred years ago, there was the Stanley Steamer. It boiled water to steam and a steam engine ran the car … and quite well, too. Very quiet, fast. Don’t forget, either, the Baker: a fast quiet battery powered car … also a hundred years ago.

Also a hundred years ago, steam powered railroad trains were routinely going a hundred miles per hour.

Coal and wood can be converted to gaseous or liquid fuels.

These processes have all been used before. And they can be used again.
 
You know what? It’s very simple, people. The sooner we switch to alternative fuels, the better off we all will be. I heard my congressmen speak on this issue, House Rep. Bob Inglis, and he recommends a gradual switch to alternative fuels, but a switch nontheless. Hybrid cars are an example of how we can switch gradually. Once those catch on, then we can maybe go to purely battery powered cars or water-powered cars, or whatever the engineers with all their genius can some up with. We already have solar power for houses, but for whatever reason it’s not popular. I asked my husband why we don’t have it and he said
1.) they’re ugly (which to me is ridiculous) and 2.) we couldn’t afford the panels during construction. Maybe this is why more people don’t have solar power. You would also need a back-up power source in case it rains for three days or something crazy, but, again, nothing that can’t be developed by our resident engineering geniuses. Mr. Inglis also said depending on all these “rogue” nations for oil is foolish, and I agree. Maybe if they didn’t have the money pouring in for their precious oil then they would be forced to behave themselves like everyone else who wants to trade semi-necessary commodities.

Tracy
 
Petrus, Dee Dee, how in the world do get people like Al, Ed, and Tracy to understand what they or their children are facing with oil depletion? The 20th century was made possible by the introduction of petroleum. Without it you would not have seen much the economic development that took place. Petro was so abandent and cheap it created the disposable wealth that made so much of what you take for granted.

Oil isn’t just about fuel energy. It’s the carpet in your home, the keyboard you’re typing on, to the elastic in your underware, etc. etc. There is no substitute for it in the way its used and at the cheap economic costs.

The world uses 86 million barrels of oil per day. That’s enough to fill 5600 olympic pools every day. If you lay those pools end-to-end how long would they stretch in one year? You’d have a pool 82 feet (25m) wide by 6.5 feet (2m) deep by 63,488 miles long. Do the math, an olympic pool is 164 feet (50m) long…and the amount used is growing exponetially every year. What are we going to replace it with? Corn based products (you can make carpet out of corn oil) won’t even come close. Dee Dee said the Brazil find was 700 million. I think I read it was maybe 5 billion…the US alone uses 7.5 billion barrels per year. Now add the US’s increasing demand along with the rest of the world’s increaing demand. You have to put these so-called giant finds in perspective.

Bill Reinert, Toyota’s advanced fuels manger on plug-ins and ethanol
Bill Reinert: Towards Environmentally-Sustainable Vehicles
Toyota’s alternative fuel manager has a warning about ethanol

Solar panels for electrical generation is much more expensive per kilowat than normal grid costs txses.org/PVeconomics.php You’re basicly betting that on grid cost with skyrocket over the life of the solar panels to off set the initial installation costs. But even then this has little to do with oil since only 3% of US electrical generation is made using the stuff.
 
Doug50 said:
Petrus, Dee Dee, how in the world do get people like Al, Ed, and Tracy to understand what they or their children are facing with oil depletion?
Click to expand...
IOW if they, the genveral public, won’t even acknowledge the problem (or any problem) it stands to reason they won’t do the necessary planning to metigate the future. The freemarket can only work if the information goining into it is based upon reality. But too many people put faith in the freemarket and the miricals of science.

Here’s the Q&A from the Society Petroleum Engineers 2004 conference. The general population want’s to listen to the optomists instead of the pessimists…but look back to who was predicting what and what actually happened.
interface.audiovideoweb.com/lnk/nj45win9664/SPE/qahi.wmv/play.asx
 
The world is a complicated place and this includes economics with all its (name removed by moderator)uts, outputs, statistics, theories, etc.

This is why the free market system works since people make decisions based on prices and the system gets balanced. Prices are the indicator as to supply/demand. This is not to say that some hardships might come with change but that is life in all it’s forms.

I think its important for intellectuals/experts to provide relevant information to the public and since this helps in their decision making process but all this fear mongering on global warming, peak oil, hyper-inflation, US infastructure serves no good and is praying on people’s emotions for there own purposes.

The US has the most dynamic economy in the world and the idea that China, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia is some how going to gain financial dominance is just silly and shows that people are not optomists but most generally pessimists.
 
A problem won’t be fixed until it’s first acknowledge there is one.
Like it or not fear is a motivator to take action.

PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION:
IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.,Important observations and conclusions from this study are as follows:
  1. When world oil peaking will occur is not known with certainty. A fundamental problem in predicting oil peaking is the poor quality of and possible political biases in world oil reserves data. Some experts believe peaking may occur soon. This study indicates that “soon” is within 20 years.
  2. The problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past “energy crisis” experience will provide relatively little guidance. The challenge of oil peaking deserves immediate, serious attention, if risks are to be fully understood and mitigation begun on a timely basis.
  3. Oil peaking will create a severe liquid fuels problem for the transportation sector, not an “energy crisis” in the usual sense that term has been used.
  4. Peaking will result in dramatically higher oil prices, which will cause protracted economic hardship in the United States and the world. However, the problems are not insoluble. Timely, aggressive mitigation initiatives addressing both the supply and the demand sides of the issue will be required.
  5. In the developed nations, the problems will be especially serious. In the developing nations peaking problems have the potential to be much worse.
  6. Mitigation will require a minimum of a decade of intense, expensive effort, because the scale of liquid fuels mitigation is inherently extremely large.
  7. While greater end-use efficiency is essential, increased efficiency alone will be neither sufficient nor timely enough to solve the problem. Production of large amounts of substitute liquid fuels will be required. A number of commercial or near-commercial substitute fuel production technologies are currently available for deployment, so the production of vast amounts of substitute liquid fuels is feasible with existing technology.
  8. Intervention by governments will be required, because the economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic. The experiences of the 1970s and 1980s offer important guides as to government actions that are desirable and those that are undesirable, but the process will not be easy…In summary, the problem of the peaking of world conventional oil production is unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society. The challenges and uncertainties need to be much better understood. Technologies exist to mitigate the problem. Timely, aggressive risk management will be essential.
 
No need to inculcate fear.

What kind of logic is that?

It’s not logic.

It’s an attempt to inject emotion into science and economics.

Science and economics deal with the left, logical, side of the brain. Emotion is controlled by the right side of the brain.

Let us not make critical decisions by emotion. Usually that results in the wrong decision. Too much flip-flopping back-and-forth results.

First, over-reaction in one direction. Then, over-reaction in the other direction.

How many times in the past has some group or other, or some individual or other, predicted with absolute certainty that oil would run out in twenty years? Answer: ever since 1940, it has been almost an annual event. Hasn’t happened.

If anyone is seriously interested in this issue, they should look up the Club of Rome and it’s report “Limits to Growth”. They predicted with absolute certainty that natural resources would diminish to the point that would cause us to starve to death … by around 1990.

Didn’t happen.

Malthusian look it up ] predictions have been with us for a very long time. Always turned out to be wrong.

[Yeah, yeah, I know,… but this time is different. Just like they said about all the previous times.]

Finally, “WE” don’t need to do anything. The “WE” is society, presumably driven by some dictator, or czar, or totalitarian individual. But, if each of us is interested, each of us can take action individually to improve his or her own energy situation.

For example, as petroleum becomes scarcer, then the cost will cause petrochemicals you do know what they are, right?] will no longer be used for making toys and car parts and siding for houses. Instead, we will return to using other materials such as metal or wood.

Natural resources are in surplus. Many natural resources (such as petro-chemicals) can be substituted for others.

Liquid fuels and gaseous fuels can be made from coal and wood, for example.

For example … Did you ever notice that wood is in such surplus … that we don’t recover excellent hardwoods such as maple and oak from our suburban neighborhoods. All those excellent woods are chipped into mulch, because it is not economic to turn all that gorgeous oak and maple into wood for furniture or building.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top