Peak Oil Wikileaks

[MrG]

And if the plateau is 15 years then the top of the curve is going to be pretty shallow as well.

If we assume it's a normal curve and call the gradient at plateau zero then you could actually work out how shallow.. or just watch the news.. global recession.. food price riots.. we're starting to hit the limit.

The curve won't be normal anyway. That's the export land model isn't it.

[vtsnowedin]

Not to hard to figure out. A single authority has control over that supply and their reserve is far in excess of their need for funds today.Any barrel they don't pump at $89 today can be pumped for $250 some time in the future. It would have been wise to treat every giant field in the world similarly and extended our oil supply for centuries. Instead we have pumped it out at 7 to 30 bucks a barrel to waste it heating uninsulated houses and flogging around in gas guzzler cars.

Fully agree with you on principle, but not sure at all that this has been, or is the politics of the Saudis, when major fields start to decline, picture could very well be the usual one.

@MrG
Yes correct, he was indeed talking about 15 years plateau at global level.

Except for the US setting areas off limits to exploration. East coast and Anwar I know of no country that has significant extra capacity other then KSA. Everybody else is getting out all they can within the limits of logistics, politcs and war. Perhaps Kuwait can turn the pumps up a bit on short notice but nobody else comes to mind. If you needed an extra million barrels per day and the Saudis said no who would you turn to?

[frank_begbie]

Don't keep it to yourselves boys..... tell the world.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12416580

[Aurora]

The Guardian - 10/02/11

Jeremy Leggett - Peak oil: We are asleep at the wheel

Revelations that the Saudis have overstated their oil reserves are a timely reminder of the huge threat to the global economy.

Article continues ...

[AutomaticEarth]

What's interesting is that the article in the Guardian that Aurora has linked to above allows comments this time, which are starting to fill up nicely

Interestingly, the SA reserves story has also appeared in the TIME magazine at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 42,00.html ....

[Ludwig]

Many others who have "pedigree and experience" think there will be a drop in production within just a few years, and we are in danger of that drop being so steep as to merit description as a collapse.

This is something I've been thinking about... We tend to think of the downslope as being relatively gentle... But surely if global EROEI goes down, the NET amount of oil being produced will go down much faster than the slope suggests, because more and more of the oil extracted yesterday will be needed to extract oil today.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the reason the bell curves for individual countries are more or less symmetrical is that the increasing amounts of energy needed to extract oil on the downslope can, in principle, come from elsewhere on the globe, and global prices aren't greatly affected. However, when there is literally no cheap oil left to be had, it seems to me that net production could fall, and prices could rise, far faster than Hubbert's Peak suggests. Because oil is not being depleted just by diminishing supplies, but also by the need for increasing oil input into the extraction process. The amount of oil actually available for purposes other than extracting oil will go down more rapidly than the total oil supply.

But maybe the increases of oil needed for input remain dwarfed by the amount output? I don't know.

[SunnyJim]

Think about this now we grew food on every bit of land we could, had a largely thrifty and agricultural population, and had food imports from America and the empire and we barely fed a 30 million population, now we are near a 70 million population

It really doesn't work like that.

Have a read of this report.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/food/p ... 100105.pdf

See page 82, 'Calorific potential of UK agriculture'. With a much changed diet, Britain can feed itself.

Good find Chris

Just had a quick read under 'UK productive capacity' and if all croppable area was turned over to wheat (ok that is a bit extreme) the UK could provide 7,000 calories per person!!!

Its not enough to provide our current heavy meat diet, and current food waste rates, but more than triple what each adult requires to survive!

If we all starve it will be political/economic **** up rather than the means to do it!

It may be theoretically possible, but it's not politically possible or financially possible to do this yet. It will be a slow (and possibly violent) transition. The global financial system must break first. Until then financial pressures on the UK economy will ensure that we continue to use foreign 'aid', contracts and law to force poorer nations to grow our food. In the meantime, we can continue to work to pay the huge interest bills to benefit the people that share the profits of the Bank Of England. Interestingly, if you read the BoE Act of 1946, which ostensibly nationalised the bank, you'll see that share ownership still remained with whoever held shares in it previously, now with a government guarantee! Get to work people!

[Aurora]

An alternative take on the recent article in the Guardian:

The National - 15/02/11

Peak oil believers put their faith in leaky arguments

Article continues ...

[caspian]

An alternative take on the recent article in the Guardian

All you need to know about that article is the final paragraph:

As they so often do, peak oil believers are ascribing too much importance to geology, and too little to economics.

Yeah, who needs geology? Stupid scientists, not like those clever economists whose predictions are always accurate.

[nexus]

yeah economists have got a great track record; especially in recent years.

[vtsnowedin]

An alternative take on the recent article in the Guardian:

The National - 15/02/11

Peak oil believers put their faith in leaky arguments

Article continues ...

Not a very convincing argument. His three points come down to.
!. That it is old news
2. That the original source was taken out of context. and
3. That the Saudis are not acting as if they are stressed.
The fist point can be dismissed as the age of a bit of news or a set of facts does not change the facts. The second could have some merit but the quote he sites

His concern about higher production was whether it was economically optimal, not technically feasible

does little do assure the sceptic as as economic reason not to do something can be just a powerful as a technical reason. If the Saudis choose not to expand production for economic reasons the oil will not be produced and peak oil is about actual production not technical possibilities.
last we have the behavior of the Saudis. There not running around in a panic drilling wells in every bit of sand is proof they have plenty?
I'm sure they do have plenty, for them. they have been in the game now for sixty years plus and nothing will cause a panic there. There activities are carefully orchestrated to manipulate the oil markets to their ,not our, advantage.
Add in a bit of information not contained in the article, the decision of KSA to stop growing wheat using desalinated irrigation water and you see actions that are if not panic clear and reasoned reactions to a rising value of their oil and perhaps real limits to their supply. [/quote]

[emordnilap]

It's been accepted for a long time that all middle east reserves have been vastly overstated (remember all the jostling of figures in the mid-1980s?), so why these leaks are in any way surprising to anyone is, well, surprising.

I suppose economists may be surprised but aren't they always?

[DominicJ]

I feel I have to point out that these "leaks" are diplomatic cables. They are memos sent between diplomats and departments.

They arent the contents of the secret CIA future prediction machine.

All they tell us, is what the various US diplomats were actualy saying to each other in private.

VT

Add in a bit of information not contained in the article, the decision of KSA to stop growing wheat using desalinated irrigation water and you see actions that are if not panic clear and reasoned reactions to a rising value of their oil and perhaps real limits to their supply.

Nar, thats pure economics.
If you should burn oil to create electricity to deslinate water to grow wheat to sell abroad or displace imports is a mathematical function based on the prices of oil, the efficiency of the oil to wheat conversion process and the price of wheat.

If you can turn one barrel of oil into 10 tons of wheat, its a bad trade if oil is $120 a barrel and wheat is $10 a ton.
Its a good trade if oil is $20 a barrel and wheat is $5 a ton.

Theres a debate as to whether or not food exporters have a stronger hand than oil exporters, when tshtf, but third place is several thousand miles behind in the 100m dash.
At the end of the day, Canada would swap food for oil long before it swapped food for iPods

[vtsnowedin]

I feel I have to point out that these "leaks" are diplomatic cables. They are memos sent between diplomats and departments.

They arent the contents of the secret CIA future prediction machine.

All they tell us, is what the various US diplomats were actualy saying to each other in private.

VT

Add in a bit of information not contained in the article, the decision of KSA to stop growing wheat using desalinated irrigation water and you see actions that are if not panic clear and reasoned reactions to a rising value of their oil and perhaps real limits to their supply.

Nar, thats pure economics.

I believe those are one and the same. Glad you agree with me.

[Aurora]

The Guardian - 15/02/11

How much oil does Saudi Arabia actually have?

Is it 260bn or 550bn barrels? Should we believe the Americans or the Saudis? The answer may lie in the provenance of the information.

Article continues ...