Is oil nearing its end or is it here to stay?

[boybi]

From Time Magazine, Oct. 31, 2005 issue

It's the End of Oil
by Kenneth Deffeyes

World oil production is about to reach a peak and go into its final decline. For years, a handful of petroleum geologists, including me, have been predicting peak oil before 2007, but in an era of cheap oil, few people listened. Lately, several major oil companies seem to have got the message. One of Chevron's ads says the world is currently burning 2 bbl. of oil for every barrel of new oil discovered. ExxonMobil says 1987 was the last year that we found more oil worldwide than we burned. Shell reports that it will expand its Canadian oil-sands operations but elsewhere will focus on finding natural gas and not oil. It sounds as though Shell is kissing the oil business goodbye. M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist, correctly predicted in 1956 that oil production in the U.S. would peak in the early 1970s--the moment now known as "Hubbert's Peak." I believe world oil production is about to reach a similar peak.

Finding oil is like fishing in a pond. After several months, you notice that you are not catching as many fish. You could buy an expensive fly rod--new technology. Or you could decide that you have already caught most of the fish in the pond. Although increased oil prices (which ought to spur investment in oil production) and new technology help, they can't work magic. Recent discoveries are modest at best. The oil sands in Canada and Venezuela are extensive, but the Canadian operations to convert the deposits into transportable oil consume large amounts of natural gas, which is in short supply.

And technology cannot eliminate the difficulty Hubbert identified: the rate of producing oil depends on the fraction of oil that has not yet been produced. In other words, the fewer the fish in the pond, the harder it is to catch one. Peak production occurs at the halfway point. Based on the available data about new oil fields, there are 2,013 billion bbl. of total producible oil. Adding up the oil produced from the birth of the industry until today, we will reach the dreaded 1,006.5-billion-bbl. halfway mark late this year. For two years, I've been predicting that world oil production would reach its peak on Thanksgiving Day 2005. Today, with high oil prices pushing virtually all oil producers to pull up every barrel they can sweat out of the ground, I think it might happen even earlier.

Kenneth Deffeyes is the author of Beyond Oil (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 224 pages)

[boybi]

from the same issue of Time Magazine:

Oil Is Here to Stay
by Peter Huber

The "Peak Oil" theory fits nicely on a cocktail napkin. Its curve looks like this: Colonel Edwin Drake starts pumping crude in Pennsylvania in 1859. We've been pumping faster and faster ever since. Sooner or later, on this finite planet of ours, it just has to run out. U.S. production peaked in the 1970s. Global production will soon be on the downside of the same dismal curve.

Nonsense. Technology and politics--not geology--determine how much we pump and what it costs.

America currently consumes about 7 billion bbl. of oil a year. When production in Persian Gulf fields was ramped up by 12 billion bbl. a year in the 1960s, global prices collapsed. That made it politically painless for the U.S. to ban almost all new drilling off the Florida and California coasts and then in much of Alaska. With oil, as with textiles, domestic production peaked because others began producing the same stuff cheaper, while we contrived to make our production more expensive. Today Alaska contains 18 billion bbl. of off-limits crude. We've embargoed at least an additional 30 billion bbl. beneath our coastal waters. And we could fuel many of our heavy trucks and delivery vehicles for a decade with the 20 billion bbl. worth of natural gas we've placed off limits in federal Rocky Mountain lands.

Outside our borders, Alberta's tar sands contain 180 billion bbl. recoverable with current technology, and Calgarians are pumping that oil today. A total of several trillion barrels of oil soak the sands of Canada and Venezuela alone--a century's worth at the current global rate of consumption. Then there are methane hydrates. The U.S contains some 30 trillion bbl. worth of those frozen hydrocarbons off the shores of Alaska, the continental coasts and under the Rockies. There's little doubt they too can be extracted economically. If we try, we'll certainly find cheap ways to transform North America's 1 trillion bbl. worth of coal into crude as well. General Patton's Third Army completed its roll across Europe on coal liquefied with German technology.

The price of oil has always fluctuated. In inflation-adjusted dollars, it was higher in the early '80s than it is today. Extraction technologies continue to improve much faster than supply horizons recede. We've got the right know-how and the right planet. What we lack is the political will.

Peter Huber is the co-author, with Mark Mills, of The Bottomless Well (Basic Books; 214 pages)

[boybi]

hmmm, is there hope at the end of the tunnel? i think that hope lies in the hands of Uncle Sam. are they really hoarding their oil supply, so when others' have gone dry, they'll be the sole producer of oil and dictate on the world anew?

[mazdamazda]

For me... it is here to stay... well until 2050 probably. By then, more alternative fuel sources will drive down the percentage of traditional fuel consumption and thereby extending the life of use of oil to until 2100.

[niky]

While oil itself is here to stay, I still see petroleum and diesel as playing a less important role in transportation in the future, as we look at renewable hydrocarbon and alcohol resources.

And the reason the US is not using the huge reserves it has is that it's still cheaper to use Arabian oil than to tap these deposits. Even if we do tap these huge American reserves, prices are NOT going to fall.

[Rediesel]

bagsak na gas dito sa US ngayon, 2.2X / gallon na lang. sana bumaba below 2 / gallon para masaya. pwede nang mag V8.

oil mauubos ? definitely but not in our lifetime.

[NightRock]

Siguro yung mga nga existing location nag decline na ang production... But we are developing a lot of Oil Field now a days with a lot of new Tech. we're using to extract the oil from the under the sea and under the ground.. Don't worry guys marami pa reserved hehehehe..Hindi pa tayo mauubusan

[BoyFerrari]

I am still betting that in this lifetime (perhaps till 2050), hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles will hit mass production, although the transition phase will take years. Perhaps by 2090, hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles will be so affordable that the goverment will enact a law that will penalize vehicle manufacturers with heavy taxes those who will continue to build gas-powered cars.

Your grandchildren will be reading in their history textbooks about the "Fossil Fuel Era, Circa 1900-2090". There will be fewer lung cancer deaths by that time, perhaps.

[mbt]

i believe hydrogen power is a false economy. the energy required to produce hydrogen fuel is greater than the energy obtainable from that quantity of hydrogen fuel.

the bulk of that energy will be provided by... you guessed it, conventional oil or coal power plants, or from nuclear reactors and such. about the only truly renewable power resources are solar and wind power, it seems (kasama ba yung geothermal at hydroelectric diyan?)

[niky]

Hydrogen is a silly pipe dream, definitely... it'll be at least another decade or two before we'll be able to store hydrogen in an economical and safe manner.

[BoyFerrari]

Hydrogen is a silly pipe dream, definitely... it'll be at least another decade or two before we'll be able to store hydrogen in an economical and safe manner.

So a decade or two based on your estimate, will still put it within this lifetime.

[BoyFerrari]

i believe hydrogen power is a false economy. the energy required to produce hydrogen fuel is greater than the energy obtainable from that quantity of hydrogen fuel.

the bulk of that energy will be provided by... you guessed it, conventional oil or coal power plants, or from nuclear reactors and such. about the only truly renewable power resources are solar and wind power, it seems (kasama ba yung geothermal at hydroelectric diyan?)

We cannot pre-empt technological breakthroughs. They once said that 1 ton of pure metal cannot possibly fly in the air, right?

[mazdamazda]

i believe hydrogen power is a false economy. the energy required to produce hydrogen fuel is greater than the energy obtainable from that quantity of hydrogen fuel.

the bulk of that energy will be provided by... you guessed it, conventional oil or coal power plants, or from nuclear reactors and such. about the only truly renewable power resources are solar and wind power, it seems (kasama ba yung geothermal at hydroelectric diyan?)

Hyrdrogen will be viable if the dependence on traditional power sources will decrease.

Right now, the use of Nuclear power is the only solution to make Hyrdogen fuel fly.

[niky]

The problem with a hydrogen economy is that it's a false economy... it's based on the premise of hydrogen being available in fuel form already... the amount of processing required to create hydrogen is comparable to us having to actually create synthetic oil (though not as expensive). Like mbt says, hydrogen production will still rely on other sources of energy.

Biofuels, on the other hand, require less processing and benefit from greenhouse gas conservation... in other words, the amount of CO2 that burning biofuels produces is reabsorbed in the creation of these biofuels.

And hydrogen storage is not impossible, it's just very expensive. And it depends on materials development, as current hydrogen storage matrices are either toxic or exotic materials. I'm not hoping for much. Look at superconductors. Over two decades and we still aren't any closer to a commercially viable room temperature superconductor. How about solar cells? In development for over three or four decades, and economically feasible large scale solar arrays are still many years away.

[pajerokid]

Cold Fusion is the key :lol:

[rsnald]

palagay ko tatagal pa ang paggamit ng petroleum based fuels. The trend in engine design is to make engines more fuel efficient, remember na hindi na-mamaximize yung potential energy ng petro fuel in our existing engines, 30% or 40% effieciency lang yata for diesel engines, less for gasoline. alternative fuels may get in the picture but it's not going to substitute petroleum based fuels totally. masyado labor intensive ang pag-ani ng vegetable crops and turn around time for crops is not that fast. depende na lang siguro kung maka imbento sila ng ibang engine design na hindi masyado nag-rerely sa fuel combustion (e.g., anti gravity, or ion propulsion. medyso scifi masyado hehehe pero who knows, think-out-of-box kumbaga). a hundred years ago, man never imagined a flying vehicle that can break the speed of sound, or a land-based vehicle that can run more than 100 mph. it's really up to man's inventive genius. ;)

[nugundam93]

interesting. sana it's not too late to have feasible alternative fuel.

or gagawa na lang ako ng minovsky reactor from gundam or a fusion reactor from battletech. hahahaha.

[NightRock]

what ever the alternative sana lang abutan pa lahat natin.. para may bagong Topic dito hahahaha

[boybi]

meron daw nadiscover ang china/japan na malaking reserve ng oil &/or gas sa east china sea. china have begun drilling and pumping at that location to the strong protest of japan. both countries claim that the area belongs to their Exclusive Economic Zone. some chinese newspapers say that the oil or gas reserves in that area ay mas malaki pa daw kesa sa reserves ng saudi arabia.

[mbt]

problema yan... pag puro hanap ng hanap ng bagong oil deposits, paurong ng paurong yung paghanap ng makabagong fuel kasi nawawala yung urgency