In http://www.energybulletin.net/18506.html Dr Samsam Bakhtiari says:
"My WOCAP model has predicted that over the next 14 years present global production of 81 million barrels per day will decrease by roughly 32 per cent, down to around 55 million barrels per day by the year 2020."
Does this dire prediction tie in with general predictions?
If so, I'm a bit worried, especially as a supply demand-gap of as little as say 5% could really shake up the world's economies ... and that gap could happen Real Soon Now ... we won't need to wait until 2020 for problems to emerge.
Is Bakhtiari right?
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Blue Peter
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This:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/9/11/231845/209
provides a recent analysis of how different models are doing against actual production. FWIW, Bakhtiari's WOCAP is fitting the data better than most...and for him peak is about now
Peter.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/9/11/231845/209
provides a recent analysis of how different models are doing against actual production. FWIW, Bakhtiari's WOCAP is fitting the data better than most...and for him peak is about now
Peter.
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mikepepler
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Re: Is Bakhtiari right?
It's not a pessimistic prediction - it implies just below 3% decline per year. The pessimists are talking about bigger declines than this.Vortex wrote:In http://www.energybulletin.net/18506.html Dr Samsam Bakhtiari says:
"My WOCAP model has predicted that over the next 14 years present global production of 81 million barrels per day will decrease by roughly 32 per cent, down to around 55 million barrels per day by the year 2020."
Does this dire prediction tie in with general predictions?
If so, I'm a bit worried, especially as a supply demand-gap of as little as say 5% could really shake up the world's economies ... and that gap could happen Real Soon Now ... we won't need to wait until 2020 for problems to emerge.
It's not a pessimistic prediction - it implies just below 3% decline per year. The pessimists are talking about bigger declines than this.
Hmmm - so 2 years into this, we will be about 6% down from today's output.
So the key question is ... when will the current "undulating plateau" suddenly move into a downward slope?
As soon as we detect this has happened, we should maybe start pulling up our drawbridges!
Does anyone have any idea what the consensus view of the downward slope start date is?
Hmmm - so 2 years into this, we will be about 6% down from today's output.
So the key question is ... when will the current "undulating plateau" suddenly move into a downward slope?
As soon as we detect this has happened, we should maybe start pulling up our drawbridges!
Does anyone have any idea what the consensus view of the downward slope start date is?
It's morbidly fascinating this topic - I mean the whole of Peak Oil.
Somehow we really need to know when the world will be turned on it's head and our fears will be proved correct. On the other hand we really want it to not happen just yet.... at least not until we are more prepared!
However the world seems to be carrying on regardless; all around people are burning & spending as we collectively chase our tails in our ever increasingly pressurised jobs.....
Yet there is also an undercurrent. Admitting that peak oil is a real problem is like "coming out" when it's talked about. And I'm finding that I meet two responses:
The most common is "Ah yes there was a panic in the 70s too. It all came to nothing. Stop worrying!"
But to my surprise I am now hearing more and more people telling me that they have had these same worries too. Yet they have found it hard to bring up the subject with others.
So why the stigma in admitting the problems?
It's all linked back to the need to 'know' exactly when peak will happen. It's as though folk know that it will happen, but are still worried it won't and that they will look daft for all the preparations they have considered & changes they have made .... so they'll just make them privately and not let on that anything has changed to the rest of the world.
Thanks for the link BTW. I too fall into the group that has started the compulsive watching....
Sal
Somehow we really need to know when the world will be turned on it's head and our fears will be proved correct. On the other hand we really want it to not happen just yet.... at least not until we are more prepared!
However the world seems to be carrying on regardless; all around people are burning & spending as we collectively chase our tails in our ever increasingly pressurised jobs.....
Yet there is also an undercurrent. Admitting that peak oil is a real problem is like "coming out" when it's talked about. And I'm finding that I meet two responses:
The most common is "Ah yes there was a panic in the 70s too. It all came to nothing. Stop worrying!"
But to my surprise I am now hearing more and more people telling me that they have had these same worries too. Yet they have found it hard to bring up the subject with others.
So why the stigma in admitting the problems?
It's all linked back to the need to 'know' exactly when peak will happen. It's as though folk know that it will happen, but are still worried it won't and that they will look daft for all the preparations they have considered & changes they have made .... so they'll just make them privately and not let on that anything has changed to the rest of the world.
Thanks for the link BTW. I too fall into the group that has started the compulsive watching....
Sal
I don't think the date of the peak is the real issue ... it's more important to know when the slope downwards starts.
We then have maybe 2 years before things get tricky for the ordinary citizen.
(There will still be plenty of oil about for the rich & for the govt for many decades!)
We should also not consider global dates as being key .. it's the LOCAL situation which counts. If the UK can't pay for incoming tankers or if we run short of natural gas then who cares if the USA will experience Peak in 5 years?
On top of this, we should allow for "pre shocks" caused by either real events such as pipeline accidents, terrorism etc or by "virtual" shocks such as a media blitz about Peak Oil which actually gets through to people.
I have a dark suspicion that the switch from "business as usual" to fuel rationing could happen in as little as a week. Things would then probably ease for a while ... but the die will have been cast.
On a personal level we need to have all our preparations in place BEFORE that first trigger event hits us. Making plans, buying goodies etc will be VERY VERY difficult after that date, except for the rich.
So .... when is that first life-changing event going to arrive I wonder? Within a year? Within 5 years? Or not for 10 years?
We then have maybe 2 years before things get tricky for the ordinary citizen.
(There will still be plenty of oil about for the rich & for the govt for many decades!)
We should also not consider global dates as being key .. it's the LOCAL situation which counts. If the UK can't pay for incoming tankers or if we run short of natural gas then who cares if the USA will experience Peak in 5 years?
On top of this, we should allow for "pre shocks" caused by either real events such as pipeline accidents, terrorism etc or by "virtual" shocks such as a media blitz about Peak Oil which actually gets through to people.
I have a dark suspicion that the switch from "business as usual" to fuel rationing could happen in as little as a week. Things would then probably ease for a while ... but the die will have been cast.
On a personal level we need to have all our preparations in place BEFORE that first trigger event hits us. Making plans, buying goodies etc will be VERY VERY difficult after that date, except for the rich.
So .... when is that first life-changing event going to arrive I wonder? Within a year? Within 5 years? Or not for 10 years?
Yes! Just the problem. One day we'll wake up and then if preparations have not been made it's too late....Vortex wrote: I have a dark suspicion that the switch from "business as usual" to fuel rationing could happen in as little as a week. Things would then probably ease for a while ... but the die will have been cast.
On a personal level we need to have all our preparations in place BEFORE that first trigger event hits us. Making plans, buying goodies etc will be VERY VERY difficult after that date, except for the rich.
So .... when is that first life-changing event going to arrive I wonder? Within a year? Within 5 years? Or not for 10 years?
I disagree. Things arent going to go to pieces in a few weeks. This is/will be a long slow drawn out affair. As for looking for a signal as to when to prepare? Effectively things have started already - we will never notice when the precise peak is/was, but what we have seen this year suggests to me that the first dislocation effets (economically speaking) are already here. Oil production may or may not be dropping (perhaps the Saudis et al have deliberately curtailed production - unlikely I know) but it sure looks to me as though we have now gone through the first cycle of insufficientt supply (or at least insufficient buffer supply) leading to price rises, leading to economic slow down leading to demand falls. As the FT has pointed out US demand has actually fallen year on year:
this HAS to be in response to the high prices we have seen, and I still maintain that it is the markets reacting to the fact that they see another fall in US demand as recession looms that has been the primary driver in the falls in the oil price in the past week.
this HAS to be in response to the high prices we have seen, and I still maintain that it is the markets reacting to the fact that they see another fall in US demand as recession looms that has been the primary driver in the falls in the oil price in the past week.
On my mba course we are currently doing a module on 'business dynamics' which is basically about systems thinking and seeing the bigger picture. The first exercise was a simulated business game where 6 teams ran fishing companies that had to buy (or sell) fishing vessels and decide how many to send out into various fishing areas around the coast, each of which had a certain catch potential.
On account of my peak oil experience I immediately assumed 'peak fish' would occur in about year 3 or 4 of the game. So my team's plan became to buy a massive fleet at the beginning, fish as hard as possible, then sell the fleet to the other teams just before the fish stocks crashed.
It worked perfectly. In year 4 we had the biggest ever catch of fish, and we began selling boats. By year 5 the biggest fishing areas were depleted and everyone was scavenging for tiddlers. By year 6 there were no more fish anywhere and yet the other teams had massive fleets still out there looking, bizarrely believing that the fish would somehow come back from utter extinction
We won the game with a huge cashpile (but no food).
When quizzed why we'd exploited the fish to extinction even though we knew what would happen, I pointed out merrily that we knew that if we hadn't grabbed the resource as quickly as possible, someone else would have made the money instead of us, and the fish would still be dead.
So Jevon's paradox works in mba business games also
After the game, the lecturer showed us what had happened to fish stocks in the gameworld. The number of fish caught increased slowly at first, then faster and faster as everyone bought more boats (from us) to earn more money, and then one year after the maximum catch it crashed to zero.
And you know what? Even I didn't expect the crash to come as quickly as it did. I figured there'd be a year or two of slightly depleting returns. Me, who considers herself totally informed on what happens when an exponentially increasing population crashes into depleting resources. Outrageous. Shameful.
So be warned. Even when you're in the know, things will look entirely fine right up until the moment it's too late to do anything.
On account of my peak oil experience I immediately assumed 'peak fish' would occur in about year 3 or 4 of the game. So my team's plan became to buy a massive fleet at the beginning, fish as hard as possible, then sell the fleet to the other teams just before the fish stocks crashed.
It worked perfectly. In year 4 we had the biggest ever catch of fish, and we began selling boats. By year 5 the biggest fishing areas were depleted and everyone was scavenging for tiddlers. By year 6 there were no more fish anywhere and yet the other teams had massive fleets still out there looking, bizarrely believing that the fish would somehow come back from utter extinction
We won the game with a huge cashpile (but no food).
When quizzed why we'd exploited the fish to extinction even though we knew what would happen, I pointed out merrily that we knew that if we hadn't grabbed the resource as quickly as possible, someone else would have made the money instead of us, and the fish would still be dead.
So Jevon's paradox works in mba business games also
After the game, the lecturer showed us what had happened to fish stocks in the gameworld. The number of fish caught increased slowly at first, then faster and faster as everyone bought more boats (from us) to earn more money, and then one year after the maximum catch it crashed to zero.
And you know what? Even I didn't expect the crash to come as quickly as it did. I figured there'd be a year or two of slightly depleting returns. Me, who considers herself totally informed on what happens when an exponentially increasing population crashes into depleting resources. Outrageous. Shameful.
So be warned. Even when you're in the know, things will look entirely fine right up until the moment it's too late to do anything.
yeah Tess, that is what scares me. It will be allright right up to the last minute when the SHTF and then it will be too late.
Andyh - I can't agree with you - I see a cliff coming, not a gentle downhill walk. Two main reasons. Firstly, by all accounts Peaks in oil fields are not known to occur even 1 year before they do actually occur - ie they are always a surprise. Secondly, as a race we never prepare - we consume and consume until we suddenly realise we can't consume any more - oh yeah, all 6.5 billion of us have that human trait......
I reckon we are a bit like the Roadrunner cartoon, we are running at full speed towards the cliff, we have one leg over the cliff right now and we are about to put the other leg over - we will tread air for about 2 seconds before falling rapidly........ mark my words!
Andyh - I can't agree with you - I see a cliff coming, not a gentle downhill walk. Two main reasons. Firstly, by all accounts Peaks in oil fields are not known to occur even 1 year before they do actually occur - ie they are always a surprise. Secondly, as a race we never prepare - we consume and consume until we suddenly realise we can't consume any more - oh yeah, all 6.5 billion of us have that human trait......
I reckon we are a bit like the Roadrunner cartoon, we are running at full speed towards the cliff, we have one leg over the cliff right now and we are about to put the other leg over - we will tread air for about 2 seconds before falling rapidly........ mark my words!
Real money is gold and silver
Hmmm:
http://www.energybulletin.net/image/pri ... nd_gas.png
In 20 years time given this poor case scenario we will be producing as much oil/equivalents as we did in 1990.
I dont remember 1990 as being a disaster zone. Granted population will be larger, demands from countries such as China etc will be that much greater, and we may well be that much further down the path to asphixiating the planet, but it aint going to be the stone age thats fo sure. Recessions, yep, with intermittant recoveries, wars too. But hell whats new?
but overnight collapse it wont be. Hell the long emergency has already started, its going to go on for many many yeras.
I am not sure models based on biological resource exhaustion are that relevant to oil - if you push fish stocks so far (ie the Grand Banks cod fishery), collapse can be rapid, and apparently irreversible. Noone is saying we will run out of oil in any given week, only that there will come a week when maximum production has been reached - the yanks hit peak 30 years ago, but they still produce a hell of a lot of oil.
If I sound like a denialist I am anything but! Just that I dont buy overnight collapse - arther a long, long slow decline.
http://www.energybulletin.net/image/pri ... nd_gas.png
In 20 years time given this poor case scenario we will be producing as much oil/equivalents as we did in 1990.
I dont remember 1990 as being a disaster zone. Granted population will be larger, demands from countries such as China etc will be that much greater, and we may well be that much further down the path to asphixiating the planet, but it aint going to be the stone age thats fo sure. Recessions, yep, with intermittant recoveries, wars too. But hell whats new?
but overnight collapse it wont be. Hell the long emergency has already started, its going to go on for many many yeras.
I am not sure models based on biological resource exhaustion are that relevant to oil - if you push fish stocks so far (ie the Grand Banks cod fishery), collapse can be rapid, and apparently irreversible. Noone is saying we will run out of oil in any given week, only that there will come a week when maximum production has been reached - the yanks hit peak 30 years ago, but they still produce a hell of a lot of oil.
If I sound like a denialist I am anything but! Just that I dont buy overnight collapse - arther a long, long slow decline.
Things arent going to go to pieces in a few weeks.
Hi Andy.
Systems & resources may be apparently stable & predictable in the long term. However even a minor short term disturbance can disrupt the whole house of cards.
I can survive an year-on-year annual 10% increase in fuel costs I suppose ... but , say,7 days without electricty would be really unpleasant, especially in a bad winter. It could lead to deaths, water pipe fractures, food supply disruption, social unrest etc. Yet averaged out over several years the power cut would have been seen as a mere blip.
Hi Andy.
Systems & resources may be apparently stable & predictable in the long term. However even a minor short term disturbance can disrupt the whole house of cards.
I can survive an year-on-year annual 10% increase in fuel costs I suppose ... but , say,7 days without electricty would be really unpleasant, especially in a bad winter. It could lead to deaths, water pipe fractures, food supply disruption, social unrest etc. Yet averaged out over several years the power cut would have been seen as a mere blip.
Have you seen Dr. Albert Bartlett's lecture?Vortex wrote:I can survive an year-on-year annual 10% increase in fuel costs I suppose ...
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mikepepler
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Just a quick reminder of a chart I plotted last year, slightly updated now:
Oh, and on the "things won't fall apart over a couple of weeks" thing, I don't think Vortex was meaning that things would fall apart of their own accord in a chaotic fashion over a few weeks. I got the impression he meant that the government would decide at a certain point that the situation was becoming very serious, and over a period of a few weeks would put some drastic plans into action.
We can see an example of this with the recent (fabricated?) scare over explosives on planes, where airports went from "business as usual" to new rules (that themselves caused chaos!) overnight. And now, as luggage sizes are gradually increased again, people feel things have become "normal" again, even though the "new normal" includes a lot more restrictions than the "old normal". I could imagine a similar thing happening with energy/fuel. Drastic measures could be enforced, with a gradual relaxing over a few weeks, leading to a newly established level of what poeple accept as normal, whether that be some form of rationing, higher prices, demand management or whatever.
Oh, and on the "things won't fall apart over a couple of weeks" thing, I don't think Vortex was meaning that things would fall apart of their own accord in a chaotic fashion over a few weeks. I got the impression he meant that the government would decide at a certain point that the situation was becoming very serious, and over a period of a few weeks would put some drastic plans into action.
We can see an example of this with the recent (fabricated?) scare over explosives on planes, where airports went from "business as usual" to new rules (that themselves caused chaos!) overnight. And now, as luggage sizes are gradually increased again, people feel things have become "normal" again, even though the "new normal" includes a lot more restrictions than the "old normal". I could imagine a similar thing happening with energy/fuel. Drastic measures could be enforced, with a gradual relaxing over a few weeks, leading to a newly established level of what poeple accept as normal, whether that be some form of rationing, higher prices, demand management or whatever.