Moderator: Peak Moderation
However, the IEA forecast is very optimistic also for other reasons, mainly because the decline in production will be more marked than assumed (-5%/year instead of -3%), the wells to be developed will be usable at 50% and those to be discovered are probably assumed to be four times what would be a realistic evaluation. The same is true for non conventional oil.
We're not swimming in oil. We're drowning in it. Not because there's an abundance of light, sweet oil to extract bit instead it's the thick heavy morass that's left which is expensive to extract and comes with a suffocating environmental cost.peaceful_life wrote:http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_great_oil_swindle
'Headlines about 2012’s World Energy Outlook (WEO) from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released mid-November, would lead you to think we are literally swimming in oil'
I think it's because the two bottom graphs are in equivalent barrels per day, I assume that's the total production minus the energy to extract it.Tarrel wrote:I don't understand these numbers. I thought we were already using in excess of 85 million barrels a day. Does this mean we're already consuming more than we're producing (net)? If so, where is the shortfall coming from?
Calling the current situation for what it isDelving deeper into the available data shows that we are already in the throes of a global energy transition in which the age of cheap oil is well and truly over. For most serious analysts, far from signifying a world running out of oil, "peak oil" refers simply to the point when, due to a combination of below-ground geological constraints and above-ground economic factors, oil becomes increasingly and irreversibly more difficult and expensive to produce.
That point is now. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data confirms that despite the United States producing a "total oil supply" of 10 million barrels per day (up by 2.1 mbd since January 2005), world crude oil production remains on the largely flat, undulating plateau it has been on since it stopped rising that very year at around 74 million barrels per day (mbd). According to John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil, "flat production for the most part" over the last decade has dovetailed with annual decline rates for existing fields of about "4 to 5 million bpd." Combined with "constant growing demand" from China and emerging markets, he argues, this will underpin higher oil prices for the foreseeable future.
So Governments are increasing fossil fuel subsidies rather than transitioning away from them. No surprise thereFinally, oil prices would be much higher if not for the fact that governments are heavily subsidising fossil fuels. The WEO revealed that fossil fuel subsidies increased 30 percent to $523 billion in 2011, masking the threat of high prices.
Therefore, world conventional oil production is already on a fluctuating plateau and we are increasingly dependent on more expensive unconventional sources. The age of cheap oil abundance is over.
Article in fullBlack gold, it would seem, is not the answer to our problems
