'Peak oil' doomsayers proved wrong.

Kentucky Fried Panda · Post by **Kentucky Fried Panda** » 06 Mar 2013, 19:04

Five years ago, some oil market speculators became convinced that the world was nearing the limits of oil production. Sometime soon -- the 2010s? the 2020s? -- oil production would begin a long steady decline.
Think again. World oil production continues to rise. Leading the oil renaissance: the United States. The International Energy Agency predicts that the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become (again!) the world's leading oil producer by 2017.

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 06 Mar 2013, 19:15

For all practical purposes, .....THE WORLDS SUPPLY OF OIL IS NOT FINITE....... It is more like a supermarket's supply of canned tomatoes. At any given moment, there may be a dozen cases in the store, but that inventory is constantly being replenished with the money the customers pay for the cans they remove, and the more tomatoes that customers buy, the bigger an inventory the store will carry.

Standuble · Post by **Standuble** » 06 Mar 2013, 19:15

Cool article. It's a shame that the article didn't actually manage to prove anyone or anything wrong though.

As for the supermarket comment: Thank goodness the supplier of the canned tomatoes can provide you with as many tomatoes as you require no matter the amount of demand eh?

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 06 Mar 2013, 19:16

tomatoes take a couple of months to grow I believe oil takes longer to produce somewhat

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 06 Mar 2013, 21:45

Just a few statements with no corroborative information.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 06 Mar 2013, 21:47

woodburner wrote:Just a few statements with no corroborative information.

Yep. WAW.

http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... 851#232851

ziggy12345 · Post by **ziggy12345** » 07 Mar 2013, 07:28

jonny2mad wrote: tomatoes take a couple of months to grow I believe oil takes longer to produce somewhat

It stopped being produced a couple of million years ago. Instead of canned tomatoes think of bottle of single malt from a distillery thats closed

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 07 Mar 2013, 08:48

ziggy12345 wrote:
jonny2mad wrote: tomatoes take a couple of months to grow I believe oil takes longer to produce somewhat
It stopped being produced a couple of million years ago. Instead of canned tomatoes think of bottle of single malt from a distillery thats closed

As far as I am aware, although the age of oil we use can range from 10,000,000 to 270,000,000 years old, the majority of the crude oil we use was laid down around 180,000,000 years ago

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 07 Mar 2013, 17:03

Just as coal is a once-only product, (no more will be produced now that fungi know how to decompose trees), I assume this is also the case for oil since there are plenty of fungi which will deal with vegetation and animal matter.

Post by **clv101** » 07 Mar 2013, 17:14

woodburner wrote:Just as coal is a once-only product, (no more will be produced now that fungi know how to decompose trees), I assume this is also the case for oil since there are plenty of fungi which will deal with vegetation and animal matter.

That's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Any more information on this?

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 07 Mar 2013, 17:20

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... fuels.html

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 07 Mar 2013, 19:03

The Daily Mail is, of course, always the preferred source for anything scientific.

I don't think I've ever come across a convincing and full account of the origin of oil. Descriptions tend to be accompanied by a good deal of hand-waving. The lack of decomposers in the carboniferous may well have been significant, and thus bot the coal and oil may have been an essentially one-off event.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 08 Mar 2013, 10:56

There seems to be a flood of 'peak oil is a myth' propaganda at the moment, though admittedly, a lot of it is just noisily recycling crap, as in the 'free frum facts' article quoted by KFP.

Not only do they all miss the point, it's also obvious that there would be the most vociferous denial of a decline at and around the peak.

Post by **adam2** » 08 Mar 2013, 11:43

Higher oil prices increase the incentive to search for, find, and exploit, more oil. This is how a free(ish) market works.

There is however a very definate limit to this, oil must exist before it can be exploited, and the total amount of oil existing though unknown is clearly finite.

Increased oil production in the North sea and in parts of the USA is due to the increased price, It likely that production in these places will exceed that in recent years.
It appears unlikely that oil production in either the North sea or the USA will exceed the records set some years ago.

Global oil production has probably peaked, and if it has not yet peaked is almost certainly near the peak.
NET oil production has peaked beyond all reasonable doubt, due to the declining EROEI of newer, smaller fields that are often in deep water or challenging terain.
Oil production PER HEAD has peaked beyond all reasonable doubt.

When oil reaches say $250, then more oil will no doubt be found, but probably not very much more.

Ralph · Post by **Ralph** » 09 Mar 2013, 00:10

emordnilap wrote:There seems to be a flood of 'peak oil is a myth' propaganda at the moment, though admittedly, a lot of it is just noisily recycling crap, as in the 'free frum facts' article quoted by KFP.

Like the top 5 stories over in Drumbeat at TOD today.

Abundance this, the myth of that. Another year and people will be writing stories about using all the extra to run snowblowers in Greenland to slow down the glaciers.