Comments on: Get used to high oil prices

By: Lou Grinzo

Lou Grinzo — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:52:08 +0000

This is why I constantly refer to the peak oil situation as “the other monster under our bed.” A large portion of the general public has heard of global warming and understands the basic notion–emissions from burning stuff are bad because they alter the climate.

But peak oil is an equally large threat, and its early effects are already being felt, in the form of the oil price run-up since 2003, just as we’re seeing the early impacts from global warming in drought conditions, quicker than expected Arctic ice melt, etc.

I invite people to visit my site (The Cost of Energy; just click on my name), and download my latest presentation on The Oil Crunch from the Downloads page.

By: Paul K

Paul K — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:12:52 +0000

The high price of oil is a positive for alternative energy and the electric car. Peak oil sounds like Birch Society stuff to me.

By: IANVS

IANVS — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:26:35 +0000

Right on, Paul, right on!

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:30:49 +0000

Paul K & IANVS: I’m not sure what you’re meaning to say, but I don’t understand how Peak Oil is “Birch Society stuff” or in fact any kind of a political concept at all.

It’s a long-established science/engineering/economics idea, and it’s a no-brainer, in general (an recoverable oil in an oil field is a finite resource, and we’ve already found most of the cheap oil), with the harder work being reservoir modeling, statistics, technology predictions (for expected improvements), and economics to predict timing, which is what serious professionals spend a lot of time doing. (I used to sell supercomputers to these guys 10 years ago).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil is OK.
Look up ASPO (just last week in Houston) or
www.lastoilshock.com (his book is good).

Oil is $90/barrell. Sometime i nteh next 10 years, we’ll consider that cheap.

By: Earl Killian

Earl Killian — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:37:41 +0000

Nearly everyone subscribes to the Peak Oil hypothesis, because only crazies think the Earth creates oil at the rate we use it. The USGS does not dispute Peak Oil, but they disagree with Campbell, Simmons and Pickens on the date. I’ve read the USGS stuff, and it seems to be based on just as many assumptions as those they criticize. The whole issue boils down to the definition of economically recoverable. For example, look at slide 10 of http://tinyurl.com/l48mg which shows they tend to agree on what is in the ground, but differ on how much can be taken out. I think both camps suffer from binary thinking too much. Everyone talks about “cheap oil”, but in fact oil prices will vary continuously from cheap to unaffordable, taking on most points in between. Until an analysis predicts oil prices and the resulting investment and demand, I am afraid things are just too simple to get to the truth. The only clearly unaffordable oil is that which takes more energy to recover than the oil contains, but I suspect recovery stops long before that point.

To get an idea of the ASPO postion, at a recent conference, T. Boone Pickens was speaking, and was reportedly asked by a woman in the audience about Peak Oil:
“Well, I’ve got a short answer for you,” he said. “We’ve peaked. We’re running out. For various technical reasons, world production will never be more than 85 million barrels a day. Period. The problem is that world demand is already at 88 million barrels a day and growing…”

By: Paul K

Paul K — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 02:12:04 +0000

Part of the rise in oil prices is due to the weakening of the dollar in currency markets. Pickens is probably correct that we are at the limit of oil production, but not because of peak oil. Environmentally aware countries are not pursuing additional resources. That would mean oil will probably not be cheap again. This has long been considered a good thing by alternative energy advocates. The time is right for a big change in motive power.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:44:18 +0000

I’m in the “peak oil is here” camp. Considering that the United States had it’s peak oil year in 1970 (or was that 1971) and the world is just 35 years behind. From what I’ve read at ‘the oil drum,’ the peak may have been in June, 2005. Oil production has been going down ever since and we’ll see if that holds up as the peak month. Is production going down because of politics or production or something else, we may not ever know for sure.

We need some bumper stickers to add to those “I’m spending the kids inheritance” bumper sticker on motor homes. We need ones saying “I’m using up all the oil from my grandkids too.”

The problem with using up the oil is that along with alternative energy being used is the companies are going to dig up oil shale, oil sands, oil tars, etc. It won’t be pretty.