3.1 The impending threat of peak oil
3.2 "Drill, baby, drill" against EROI
3.3 Peak Oil as seen through the eyes of Arab oil producers
3.4 Forbes magazine discovers EROEI
3.5 Economic Strangulation
3.6 The Peak Oil Crisis
3.7 Industrial economies addicted to oil
3.8 Imminent peak oil could burst US, global economies
3.9 Oil's biggest problem? A new 'peak' worry
3.10 UMD researchers address economic dangers of peak oil
-------------------
3.1 The impending threat of peak oil (1/3/2013)
Why is there such a big disconnect between what our political leaders and the media project, and what the common man thinks?
Selvaraj
http://www.bupipedream.com/
UniverseWeAre • 2 days ago
3.2 "Drill, baby, drill" against EROI (10/3/2013)
“Like one, that on a lonesome road
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
3.3 Peak Oil as seen through the eyes of Arab oil producers (PKO) (11/4/2013)
3.4 Forbes magazine discovers EROEI (7/6/2013)
From the comments section:
3.8 Imminent peak oil could burst US, global economies (24/11/2013)
A new multi-disciplinary study led by the University of Maryland calls for immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce vulnerability to the imminent threat of global peak oil, which could put the entire US economy and other major industrial economies at risk.
... Mapping out the key sectors most vulnerable to the impact of peak oil, the paper concludes:
Last year, a paper in Nature co-authored by Sir David King, the UK government's former chief scientific adviser and currently the government's climate change envoy, concluded that a "tipping point" in the global oil supply had been reached since 2005, with global conventional production hitting a ceiling of around 75 million barrels per day (mbd) despite price increases of 15% a year. That paper also noted that production at shale gas wells can drop 60 to 90% in the first year of operation.
There are two prime ways to adapt to these potential risks, according to the new study. One is to decrease the vulnerability of critical sectors:
"Examples may include curbing the strong dependence on artificial fertilizers by promoting organic farming techniques, or reducing the overall distance traveled by people and goods by fostering local, decentralized economies."
http://www.theguardian.com/
3.9 Oil's biggest problem? A new 'peak' worry (26/11/2013)
A fashionable, if annoying, business term is “peak.” Name the commodity or resource, slap “peak” in front of it, and all of a sudden you have a crisis that can generate a few thousand disaster headlines. In recent years, we have been treated to peak oil, coal, gold, water, wheat – even peak soil. The only thing that wasn’t peaking was stupidity.
... Some pension funds are already worried that the enormous stored wealth of the hydrocarbon players – their reserves – is a mirage. Last month, the managers of 70 pension funds with assets of more than $3-trillion wrote a letter to the top 45 oil, gas, coal and utility companies asking them to explain how climate change would affect their business. “As long-term investors, we see the world moving toward a low-carbon future in which fossil-fuel reserves that companies continue to develop may actually become a liability,” Jack Ehnes, head of California’s State Teachers’ Retirement System, said in a Washington Post article.
Put the peak demand and a yet another “peak” – peak carbon – together and you have a scenario that should send waves of anxiety through oil and coal companies and their investors. The share prices do not reflect either of the two risks, suggesting that investors rightly do not believe oil use will fall, or that they’re deluded. Energy was always a volatile investment, prone to cycle swings. The next swing could be down forever.
http://www.theglobeandmail.
3.10 UMD researchers address economic dangers of peak oil (1/12/2013)
A focus on Peak Oil is increasingly gaining attention in both scientific and policy discourses, especially due to its apparent imminence and potential dangers. However, until now, little has been known about how this phenomenon will impact economies. In their paper, the research team constructs a vulnerability map of the U.S. economy, combining two approaches for analyzing economic systems. Their approach reveals the relative importance of individual economic sectors, and how vulnerable these are to oil price shocks. This dual-analysis helps identify which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk from Peak Oil. For the United States, such sectors would include iron mills, chemical and plastic products manufacturing, fertilizer production and air transport.
“Our findings provide early warnings to these and related industries about potential trouble in their supply chain,” UMD Professor Hubacek said. “Our aim is to inform and engage government, public and private industry leaders, and to provide a tool for effective Peak Oil policy action planning.”
Although the team’s analysis is embedded in a Peak Oil narrative, it can be used more broadly to develop a climate roadmap for a low carbon economy.
http://www.thealmagest.com/
------------------
We need to shift to an economic system based on rational discourse rather than depending wholly on the 'invisible hand'.
Selvaraj
.. the central disagreement between economic ideologies can be viewed as a disagreement about how powerful the "invisible hand" is. In alternative models, forces which were nascent during Smith's life, such as large-scale industry, finance, and advertising, reduce its effectiveness.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
3.2 "Drill, baby, drill" against EROI
3.3 Peak Oil as seen through the eyes of Arab oil producers
3.4 Forbes magazine discovers EROEI
3.5 Economic Strangulation
3.6 The Peak Oil Crisis
3.7 Industrial economies addicted to oil
3.8 Imminent peak oil could burst US, global economies
3.9 Oil's biggest problem? A new 'peak' worry
3.10 UMD researchers address economic dangers of peak oil
-------------------
3.1 The impending threat of peak oil (1/3/2013)
Why is there such a big disconnect between what our political leaders and the media project, and what the common man thinks?
Selvaraj
http://www.bupipedream.com/
UniverseWeAre • 2 days ago
Even if, "a strong contingency plan based on renewable energy," could
prevent collapse it would have had to been put into place in 1993.
Peak oil is real and scarier than most people know.
The stat that gets the most raised eyebrows is...
The world consumes more oil in 10 minutes than a new $10,000,000.00 tight oil well in North Dakota will produce in its lifetime.
3.2 "Drill, baby, drill" against EROI (10/3/2013)
Is there some minimum EROI we need to have?
Since everything we make depends on energy, you can't simply pay more and more and get enough to run society. At some energy return on investment—I'm guessing 5:1 or 6:1—it doesn't work anymore.
Since everything we make depends on energy, you can't simply pay more and more and get enough to run society. At some energy return on investment—I'm guessing 5:1 or 6:1—it doesn't work anymore.
What happens when the EROI gets too low? What’s achievable at different EROIs?
If you've got an EROI of 1.1:1, you can pump the oil out of the ground and look at it. If you've got 1.2:1, you can refine it and look at it. At 1.3:1, you can move it to where you want it and look at it. We looked at the minimum EROI you need to drive a truck, and you need at least 3:1 at the wellhead. Now, if you want to put anything in the truck, like grain, you need to have an EROI of 5:1. And that includes the depreciation for the truck. But if you want to include the depreciation for the truck driver and the oil worker and the farmer, then you've got to support the families. And then you need an EROI of 7:1. And if you want education, you need 8:1 or 9:1. And if you want health care, you need 10:1 or 11:1.
If you've got an EROI of 1.1:1, you can pump the oil out of the ground and look at it. If you've got 1.2:1, you can refine it and look at it. At 1.3:1, you can move it to where you want it and look at it. We looked at the minimum EROI you need to drive a truck, and you need at least 3:1 at the wellhead. Now, if you want to put anything in the truck, like grain, you need to have an EROI of 5:1. And that includes the depreciation for the truck. But if you want to include the depreciation for the truck driver and the oil worker and the farmer, then you've got to support the families. And then you need an EROI of 7:1. And if you want education, you need 8:1 or 9:1. And if you want health care, you need 10:1 or 11:1.
Civilization
requires a substantial energy return on investment. You can't do it on
some kind of crummy fuel like corn-based ethanol [with an EROI of around
1:1].
...
It's terrifying to people—politicians and economists—who base
everything on growth. I think they won't talk about it because the
concept is terrifying.
Most economists think economic growth can continue indefinitely, right?
It was easy to make economic theories that worked while we pumped more and more oil out of the ground, because whether you're a capitalist or a communist or a this-ist or a that-ist, they'd work—because there was more oil to make them work. We could afford all the corruption and inefficiencies in the past and still have quite a lot trickle down.
It was easy to make economic theories that worked while we pumped more and more oil out of the ground, because whether you're a capitalist or a communist or a this-ist or a that-ist, they'd work—because there was more oil to make them work. We could afford all the corruption and inefficiencies in the past and still have quite a lot trickle down.
But
now the pie is not getting that much bigger. Now, it's pretty clear
that there's a lot of economic theories that aren't working very well.
How do these economic arguments relate to people’s day-to-day lives?
Doesn't it mean food on the table, a roof over your head, gas in your car—a car itself? So economics isn't really about money. It's about stuff. We've been toilet trained to think of economics as being about money, and to some degree it is. But fundamentally it's about stuff. And if it's about stuff, why are we studying it as a social science? Why are we not, at least equally, studying it as a biophysical science?
Doesn't it mean food on the table, a roof over your head, gas in your car—a car itself? So economics isn't really about money. It's about stuff. We've been toilet trained to think of economics as being about money, and to some degree it is. But fundamentally it's about stuff. And if it's about stuff, why are we studying it as a social science? Why are we not, at least equally, studying it as a biophysical science?
-------------------
“Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
3.3 Peak Oil as seen through the eyes of Arab oil producers (PKO) (11/4/2013)
- People read religious literature when they should be reading technical literature.
- Globalization is being broadly viewed more negatively now. When peak oil comes, it will be extremely difficult to maintain.
- High oil prices will impact the world even before the onset of peak oil.
- Peak oil is the most important question in this part of the world.
3.4 Forbes magazine discovers EROEI (7/6/2013)
From the comments section:
The
concept of energy used to create energy is such an obvious idea and is
rarely mentioned by the mainstream media and it is surprising to see a
publication such as Forbes willing to publish an opinion so clearly at
variance to the US energy self sufficiency nonsense put out by the
majority. Peak Oil is a misnomer and we will never run out of oil any
more than we will run out of gold or copper. There will always be more
to find but the. scarcity will drive the cost ever higher and once the
amount of energy needed to extract it gets high enough then oil used in
certain sectors like transportation will decline and the end products of
oil will remain to be used like chemicals, detergents, pharmaceuticals
and the like. People like to say how expensive oil is now but remember
it is still below the cost of even bottled water! Few in the media have
noted this fact but it seems inevitable and is inevitable unless a new
cheap energy substitute shows up which seems unlikely. The end of cheap
transportation energy will drive some dramatic changes in how society
will operate in the coming decades. Mr Brown’s comments are particularly
instructive.
--------------------
Let
us hope GOI, our media, our economists, our Engineering Institutions
and people in general wake up to this fact soon. All of us benefit from
the present economic system and it is tempting for us collectively to
bury our heads in the sand, even as we go over the cliff ....
Selvaraj
3.5 Economic Strangulation (23/7/2013)
3.6 The Peak Oil Crisis (22/8/2013)
3.7 Industrial economies addicted to oil (12/9/2013)
The main reason unconventional oils are economically viable is because crude oil production has essentially stopped growing, causing the price of oil to jump. Geopolitical instability in oil rich regions of the world also keeps prices high, with the current situation in Syria being the latest manifestation of this dynamic. Our industrial economies, however, are addicted to oil – the world consumes 90 million barrels of oil every day – and when oil gets expensive, our economies suffer.
http://www.businessspectator.
3.5 Economic Strangulation (23/7/2013)
"A 4% growth in GDP would require an annual increase in oil supply of 3%, and that would amount to an increase in oil production of 17 mb/d over the next 5 years. Because production of conventional oil appears stuck on a plateau of 75 mb/d, it is likely that economic growth may be difficult unless there is a transformation away from the historical relationship between energy use and economic growth."
Compare all this to the BBC's claim that the Eos paper describes peak oil as "a myth."
To
the contrary, the paper suggests peak oil is alive and well - but that
until we face up to the historic link between GDP growth and our
over-dependence on cheap fossil fuels, we face the prospect of
unrelenting economic strangulation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/3.6 The Peak Oil Crisis (22/8/2013)
Richard Heinberg
has been following and writing about peak oil for a long time. In the
last decade, he has published 10 books on peak oil and related resource
depletion topics as well as given some 500 lectures warning about the
hard times ahead. The subtitle of his recent book, “How Fracking’s False
Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future” captures “Snake Oil’s” theme in a
lucid phrase. This is an angry book, for it is intended as a rejoinder
to the avalanche of half truths and optimistic estimates concerning the
future of our energy resources which have filled our media in the last
few years.
.... The
heart of “Snake Oil” is directed at countering the optimistic
projections for production of oil and gas by hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Fracked
oil and gas production is simply another, albeit expensive, resource
that will climb to a peak and then deplete away just like all the
others.
... An interesting chapter in the book deals with just who has benefitted
from the shale boom. Although thousands of jobs have been created and
some landowners have profited handsomely from lending their property for
drilling, local governments have yet to fully comprehend the damage
that boom towns have done to their communities and that heavy trucks
have done to their roads. Service companies that sell equipment
performing the actual fracking have done well, the drillers, include large ones such as ExxonMobil,
who assume the ultimate risk have been losing money on natural gas and
only some are making money on oil due to the high prices.
Heinberg concludes that the real winners, however, are the investment banks that have earned huge fees for raising the money that has fueled the boom.
3.7 Industrial economies addicted to oil (12/9/2013)
The main reason unconventional oils are economically viable is because crude oil production has essentially stopped growing, causing the price of oil to jump. Geopolitical instability in oil rich regions of the world also keeps prices high, with the current situation in Syria being the latest manifestation of this dynamic. Our industrial economies, however, are addicted to oil – the world consumes 90 million barrels of oil every day – and when oil gets expensive, our economies suffer.
http://www.businessspectator.
3.8 Imminent peak oil could burst US, global economies (24/11/2013)
A new multi-disciplinary study led by the University of Maryland calls for immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce vulnerability to the imminent threat of global peak oil, which could put the entire US economy and other major industrial economies at risk.
... Mapping out the key sectors most vulnerable to the impact of peak oil, the paper concludes:
"Given that there is substantial evidence that Peak Oil is imminent, the paucity of research looking at the potential economic impacts of this phenomenon is surprising."The study notes that "oil shortages pose a high risk for economies" and points to evidence that high oil prices were a "partial cause" for the 2008 global financial crisis. Focusing on the US economy - the biggest consumer of oil and oil-based products in the world - the study found that all major industrial sectors were at risk, including food and food processing, primary agriculture, metals and metals processing, and transport:
"Because such sectors contribute substantially to US GDP, and because they connect to so many other sectors, they could put the entire economy at risk in the case of Peak Oil or other supply interruptions. The present economic system relies strongly on them and their output may become significantly more expensive due to oil price increases.The IMF has calculated that for the global economy to grow by 4% in the next five years, oil production must increase by 3% per year. This looks increasingly unlikely.
Last year, a paper in Nature co-authored by Sir David King, the UK government's former chief scientific adviser and currently the government's climate change envoy, concluded that a "tipping point" in the global oil supply had been reached since 2005, with global conventional production hitting a ceiling of around 75 million barrels per day (mbd) despite price increases of 15% a year. That paper also noted that production at shale gas wells can drop 60 to 90% in the first year of operation.
There are two prime ways to adapt to these potential risks, according to the new study. One is to decrease the vulnerability of critical sectors:
"Examples may include curbing the strong dependence on artificial fertilizers by promoting organic farming techniques, or reducing the overall distance traveled by people and goods by fostering local, decentralized economies."
http://www.theguardian.com/
3.9 Oil's biggest problem? A new 'peak' worry (26/11/2013)
A fashionable, if annoying, business term is “peak.” Name the commodity or resource, slap “peak” in front of it, and all of a sudden you have a crisis that can generate a few thousand disaster headlines. In recent years, we have been treated to peak oil, coal, gold, water, wheat – even peak soil. The only thing that wasn’t peaking was stupidity.
... Some pension funds are already worried that the enormous stored wealth of the hydrocarbon players – their reserves – is a mirage. Last month, the managers of 70 pension funds with assets of more than $3-trillion wrote a letter to the top 45 oil, gas, coal and utility companies asking them to explain how climate change would affect their business. “As long-term investors, we see the world moving toward a low-carbon future in which fossil-fuel reserves that companies continue to develop may actually become a liability,” Jack Ehnes, head of California’s State Teachers’ Retirement System, said in a Washington Post article.
Put the peak demand and a yet another “peak” – peak carbon – together and you have a scenario that should send waves of anxiety through oil and coal companies and their investors. The share prices do not reflect either of the two risks, suggesting that investors rightly do not believe oil use will fall, or that they’re deluded. Energy was always a volatile investment, prone to cycle swings. The next swing could be down forever.
http://www.theglobeandmail.
3.10 UMD researchers address economic dangers of peak oil (1/12/2013)
A focus on Peak Oil is increasingly gaining attention in both scientific and policy discourses, especially due to its apparent imminence and potential dangers. However, until now, little has been known about how this phenomenon will impact economies. In their paper, the research team constructs a vulnerability map of the U.S. economy, combining two approaches for analyzing economic systems. Their approach reveals the relative importance of individual economic sectors, and how vulnerable these are to oil price shocks. This dual-analysis helps identify which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk from Peak Oil. For the United States, such sectors would include iron mills, chemical and plastic products manufacturing, fertilizer production and air transport.
“Our findings provide early warnings to these and related industries about potential trouble in their supply chain,” UMD Professor Hubacek said. “Our aim is to inform and engage government, public and private industry leaders, and to provide a tool for effective Peak Oil policy action planning.”
Although the team’s analysis is embedded in a Peak Oil narrative, it can be used more broadly to develop a climate roadmap for a low carbon economy.
http://www.thealmagest.com/
------------------
We need to shift to an economic system based on rational discourse rather than depending wholly on the 'invisible hand'.
Selvaraj
.. the central disagreement between economic ideologies can be viewed as a disagreement about how powerful the "invisible hand" is. In alternative models, forces which were nascent during Smith's life, such as large-scale industry, finance, and advertising, reduce its effectiveness.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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