Three Nails in the Coffin of Peak Oil

[kenneal - lagger]

You don't remember RGR?

I don't think RGR would ever have said

LEAVE the massive oil resources in the ground, PLEASE!

I should also have said that most of us would agree with that last statement.

[biffvernon]

That's why, wb, I put two conditions:

When people post anonymously on forums, with no way of checking their real life status, suspicion is likely to be aroused if they frequently post odd stuff.

Of course, we can each decide what counts as 'odd stuff' for ourselves.

[Ralph]

Just because someone holds a different view doesn't make them a troll. Trolls are nasty people who set out to destroy people's lives for no reason except they get some warped satisfaction from it. People here are just expressing an opinion.

A "different view" isn't the problem. The ability to express it effectively is.

[Ralph]

The problem is that economics thinks that you can although it doesn't actually realise that this is the result of their thinking.

I find myself completely flummoxed by the meaning of that sentence.

No economist with a functioning brain will ever claim that if you have 1000 barrels of oil on the entire planet, that his/her social science will magically create more.

Not one. It seems to me that if this is what YOU think economics mean, but THEY certainly don't, then we battling some sort of impression you have of economics, a strawman if you will.

Economics says that if a resource is getting short its price will rise so that investing in it becomes more attractive.

It also says people will use less as the price rises. And that some will choose to use something else instead. These all work together, and each is capable of affecting the price.

That increased investment will guarantee more of the resource becomes available.

You appear to be assuming that investment can create resource. It cannot, as we have already discussed. There are no guarantees, obviously.

Economics takes only minimal account of the higher energy needed to extract that resource or the fact that energy might become harder to find.

What does "minimal account" mean? Name a single process within the human economic system which does not account for the energy input when the basic principle of economics hits? I have a product...I will sell it to you for a price. If we can agree on that price, I will sell it to you. Everything which went into that product, every BTU, be it biochemical, electrical, liquid fuel, crude or natural gas based, every fiber, piece of rubber, plastic or cloth was taken into account when I sold you that item.

It takes no account of declining ore concentrations or the massive problems of getting ultra lean ores from 5000 feet underground.

It takes PERFECT account of the cost of such extraction. In the same way as I mentioned above.

Economics is no longer fit for purpose in the 21st century.

It has been functioning just fine through 13% of this century so far. Are you claiming that if I had you a pound note you cannot take that pound note to the store and buy a pound worth of goods with it? A pounds worth of gold? A pounds worth of bread?

Certainly this still works in America, I am surprised the Isles have broken down so far that economics doesn't work. How do you pay for internet access?

[RenewableCandy]

Economics is no longer fit for purpose in the 21st century.

It has been functioning just fine through 13% of this century so far. Are you claiming that if I had you a pound note you cannot take that pound note to the store and buy a pound worth of goods with it? A pounds worth of gold? A pounds worth of bread?

Certainly this still works in America,

This is classic RGR stuff, but perhaps it's just a disagreement on what exactly is meant by "economics". What Ken means is, the way of running the economy as presently prescribed (money being issued as debt, "austerity" being practiced in times of low/no growth in an attempt to stave off that same debt, etc). Whereas what RGR, erm sorry, Ralph, is referring to is more like economic theory.

I rather like the notion of taking a pound note to the store: it's pleasingly ambiguous about which side of the Atlantic you happen to be on But the problem in practice is, what happens if the present economy offers one no way of (legally) acquiring the said pound note(s)? Given that this happens to be the case for a growing number of people in (for example) Greece, Detroit etc, then in that sense "economics" can be said to be no longer fit for purpose.

[biffvernon]

Economics is not fit for purpose since it is driving us towards catastrophic global warming. The failure to internalise environmental pollution will be the death of us.

[Tarrel]

Meanwhile, back to the thread title..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24583432

It is an almost unimaginably large oil deposit; 1,500 sq km (579 sq miles) and 326m (1,070ft) deep. Although it lies well beneath the sea bed, under a thick layer of rock and salt, the find is said to be relatively risk-free. Estimates vary but it could hold as many as 12bn barrels of oil.

The find has been called "Libra" and Brazil is about to auction off the rights to develop the site, with some pretty tight strings attached.

Well, there goes the climate.

[Little John]

Meanwhile, back to the thread title..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24583432

It is an almost unimaginably large oil deposit; 1,500 sq km (579 sq miles) and 326m (1,070ft) deep. Although it lies well beneath the sea bed, under a thick layer of rock and salt, the find is said to be relatively risk-free. Estimates vary but it could hold as many as 12bn barrels of oil.

The find has been called "Libra" and Brazil is about to auction off the rights to develop the site, with some pretty tight strings attached.

Well, there goes the climate.

12 billion barrels sounds a lot but it's not.

Global consumption is around 90 million barrels per day.

That's 630 million barrels per week

That's 2.7 billion barrels per month.

12 billion barrels is only 4 month's global supply.

Of course, all of the above is based on an assumption of a billion being worth one thousand million. If, on the other hand, the 12 billion quoted is based on a billion being worth one million million, then there is 360 year's worth. In which case, we're f***ed.

I don't think it's the latter though since, if it were, it would be bigger news.

[clv101]

Hang on, 12bn is a lot of oil, it's a huge amount! I don't like describing oil fields in terms of how many days global demand they represent. By that metric all oil fields are fairly trivial.

It's one of the biggest oil fields in the world, an order of magnitude bigger than anything in the North Sea. It could support extraction rates of over a million barrels per day for a couple of decades and be as significant to the Brazilian economy as North Sea oil was to the UK's.

Oil fields, especially those discovered in the last couple of decades, don't get much more significant than this.

[PS_RalphW]

But is it oil in place, technically extractable resource, or economically recoverable reserves? These are very challenging fields, requiring massive investment up front with uncertain flow rates or decline rates. It will be years before the first oil comes ashore. Who came up with this figure? Brazil has been struggling with subsalt production recently, and this report is good timing for encouraging investors... If all these multi billion barrel discoveries had turned out to be accurate, no-one would Have been talking about peak this last fifteen years.

[biffvernon]

Except Kazakhstan.

Any one read the Citi report, Energy Darwinism?
https://ir.citi.com/p3kVXPUHk0gW8rc1YWC ... j7xg%3D%3D

It seems right at the heart of Power Switch, and really rather important.

[woodburner]

Less verbose would have been handy. The style makes it tedious.

[Little John]

Hang on, 12bn is a lot of oil, it's a huge amount! I don't like describing oil fields in terms of how many days global demand they represent. By that metric all oil fields are fairly trivial.

It's one of the biggest oil fields in the world, an order of magnitude bigger than anything in the North Sea. It could support extraction rates of over a million barrels per day for a couple of decades and be as significant to the Brazilian economy as North Sea oil was to the UK's.

Oil fields, especially those discovered in the last couple of decades, don't get much more significant than this.

Is 12 billion barrels more than 4 months global supply or not? If it is and my maths is wrong, then fair enough. If my maths is not wrong, then it is perfectly proper to describe an oil field in terms of its capacity to serve global demand. Consequently, such finds are only relevant to the larger supply picture if they are occurring in large numbers.

Are they occurring in large numbers?

Or, to put it another way, to merely hold global reserves at their current levels, we would need to find one of these fields every four months.

Are we finding one of these fields every 4 months?

Finally, my initial response was to the notion that this find of 12 billion barrels somehow represents an additional quantity of oil that could serve to push us over the edge of climatic and ecological collapse. However, the fact is, we consume this amount of oil every four months and so, whether or not we are facing collapse, it wont be for supply, or lack of, another 12 billion barrels.

[kenneal - lagger]

............
Are they occurring in large numbers?

Or, to put it another way, to merely hold global reserves at their current levels, we would need to find one of these fields every four months.

Are we finding one of these fields every 4 months?

........

Steve's hit the nail on the head with this point. Unless we are finding at this rate we can't keep up with the depletion rate on our older fields such as Gawar in Saudi Arabia which has been producing very large quantities for about 50 years.

[biffvernon]

Or put it another way, we've already found enough fossil carbon to wreck the climate so looking for any more is just silly.