Jump to content

Peak Oil Production & the journey down to empty?


Guest Anonymous
 Share

Are you worried about oil running out ?  

22 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you worried about oil running out ?

    • yes
      11
    • no
      12


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 153
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

With all the concerns about global warming and why we are being penalised with higher car taxes ect , why are so many airlines free to order more and more aircraft with the resultant increase in high atmospheric pollution , and apparantly without the same restrictions as we motorists are going to have to bear ?

Also why isnt aviation fuel subject to similar taxation as road fuel ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, i dont have the figures to hand I have to admit, but there are a lot more of us driving cars than flying in planes. I'm sure i've seen figures that suggest that aviation accounts for something like 0.1% of co2 emmisions.

 

I'm not trying to justify flying here because there cant be much doubt that mile for mile it's more polluting, but if each and every one of us doesn't do our bit, we're basically stuffed!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The thing which really scares me about the prospect of Peak Oil is that, just at the point where we need to pump billions of pounds into replacing our energy infrastructure to combat global warming, Peak Oil could crash the world economy making such investment impossible.

 

Our very civilisation could well be at risk here. :shock: :cry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm sure i've seen figures that suggest that aviation accounts for something like 0.1% of co2 emissions.

 

Actually, it's much higher, around 2% and rising fast. Also the fact that aircraft release their emissions into the upper atmosphere increases the effects.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_and_climate_change

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In 1992, emissions of CO2 from aircraft were estimated at around 2% of all such anthropogenic* emissions, though CO2 concentration attributable to aviation in 1992 was around 1% of the total anthropogenic increase, because emissions occurred only in the last 50 years

* Man-made.

(Also, the article is under review for it's neutrality, for the record)

 

Out of interest, the latest boeing aircraft, the 787, is constructed using mostly carbon composites, which makes it a claimed 20% more fuel efficient than previous jets.

The down side of this is that it has made it very desirable and their order book is overflowing.

 

Also: There are studies under way to refine bio-fuels to an extent that they can be used in aviation, current biofuels do not have the necessary low temperature capabilities.

Also: They release water vapour into the upper atmosphere too.....but now i'm straying into the Global warming topic so i'll desist :wink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 6 months later...
Guest Anonymous

This is a snippet from an energy news e-mail I recieve regularly , all these price rises have been known about long before they came and even now it seems nobody wants to mention the real underlying reasons to the rises , however there is new and interesting reports of major new fields discovered in America , one of them is named the Bakken field .

I wonder if it is the yanks policy to sit on there reserves and use the rest of the planets ?? sounds crazy but i do wonder ......

 

"How can we get out of these higher oil prices?"

 

 

A few months ago, . At the time, oil was trading below $110 a barrel. Soon after, oil went on another run, pushing far past the $120 a barrel I was expecting. I also mentioned that if oil prices experience a similar increase compared to last year, a barrel of crude would cost approximately $140 by July.

 

Last week, that prediction nearly became a reality after after July contracts for light, sweet crude reached $135.09 per barrel. I'm sure some of you watched crude reach that record high.

 

I believe T. Boone Pickens put it best recently, saying that 85 million barrels per day is about good as supply can get and 87 million per day is the demand. He went so far as to predict that oil will reach $150 a barrel in 2008. Even Goldman Sachs revised their price forecast to $141 a barrel for the second half of the year.

 

Yet ever since oil prices broke past the $100 per barrel benchmark in 2007, everyone has an excuse for the oil price spike. Not surprisingly, the blame always seems to be on someone else.

 

Oil Price Spike: The Global Blame Game

 

According to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), the spot price for crude oil last year was $64.93 per barrel. I know, it's probably hard to remember the last time you saw crude trading that low.

 

So why are prices so high?

 

Well, that all depends on who you ask.

 

The U.S. Congress has put the blame on OPEC's shoulders. Their solution was to pass a bill to sue OPEC (feel free to pause and laugh along with me). OPEC, on the other hand, simply points to the weak dollar as the culprit. Now add on the geopolitical violence (Nigeria's shut-in oil production comes immediately to mind), or even potential weather-related threats like hurricanes, and you have a pretty good idea of what can go wrong.

 

All of these factors, however, pale in comparison to the concern over supply demand. Don't get me wrong, all of those things can influence the price of crude. But the one driving force we need to worry about is the growing gap between supply and demand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous

Here is todays latest news from energy and capitol , and yesterday i was astonished to see the guy's who should have their fingers right on the pulse General Brown & Captain Darling blethering on about increasing production from the North Sea !! It has long since peaked and will only reduce each year from now on or if they go flat out to maintain production levels it will of course last for less time .... of course whats to the west of the British Isles could keep us going for quite a bit longer but it is in deeper water with considerably rougher seas which means it will be considerably more expensive, there ignorance of such a critical part of keeping this country running completly astounds and horrifies me & is reason enough for me that they should be removed from office immediatly .

 

Any way here more food for thought and especially to the shetland motorcar club , time tae gee up boys and get yoursels a boat , oars and canvas

 

 

Memorial Day, 2008: The Tipping Point in the Peak Oil Debate

By Chris Nelder | Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Those of us who have watched for the inevitable arrival of the peak oil crisis have been waiting for years for the day when we no longer had to fight for the acceptance of the idea, and could start getting on with the hard business of what to do about it.

 

And then, just like that, it happened.

 

Like a chorus line turning in unison from left to right, the media and the financial markets turned and embraced the notion of peak oil last week.

 

For convenience, let's call it Memorial Day, 2008.

 

CNBC devoted a whole day to peak oil coverage, allowing some in-depth discussion of the issue possibly for the first time. In the evening, it broadcast a special called "Oil Crisis."

 

Billionaire hedge fund manager and oil man T. Boone Pickens said he saw oil going to $150 this year, and this time, was widely quoted in the financial press. (Check out this excellent interview with him from the Milken Institute Global Conference 2008 in April.) He put the reasons behind rising oil prices plainly:

 

"They've got to go up, because the people that have the oil want it to go up. They're running out of oil. They're going to have to have—85 million barrels a day is all the world can produce. The demand is 87 million. It's that simple. It doesn't have anything to do with the value of the dollar. It's a fact of supply and demand. That's it."

 

While we might politely disagree with the legendary oil investor about the dollar part, in terms of the overall trend being about the fundamentals, he was spot-on. He took a 14 percent loss in the first two months of this year by shorting oil and natural gas, and quickly learned from the error to get long again and back into the black.

 

Goldman Sachs analyst Arjun Murti, the only major investment bank analyst who correctly predicted oil over $100 last year, said that oil could breach $200 this year, and $150 was very likely. Again, this time, Wall Street sat up and took notice instead of laughing.

 

In the last couple of weeks, when I talked about peak oil in my radio and TV appearances, I didn't get shouted down immediately, or dismissed for holding a "controversial theory." Instead, they actually listened to hear what I had to say next.

 

In an interview with CNN radio last week, I think the host was rather shocked when she asked me if recent predictions of $12 gasoline in the next few years could happen.

 

"Easily," I said, "easily." And then explained why peak oil means that prices will have to keep going higher as long as global demand continues higher, because supply appears to be maxed out. Even as demand in the developed world declines due to price-induced demand destruction, the red-hot developing economies of the world are more than making up for it.

 

And you could have heard a pin drop when I explained that "there are no supply side solutions to peak oil" to another radio interviewer last week.

 

The dialogue didn't shift because pundits suddenly understood the importance of flow rates, or because the data on reserve estimates suddenly became clear.

 

It was the price that did it.

 

With oil and gasoline making an almost a unbroken string of record-breaking prices since the start of the year, the problem finally got the attention of the media, and now they are grasping for answers. Reaching the $130 mark was apparently the last straw.

 

There is still much confusion over why oil prices are so high. Some blame speculators, even though the ultimate holder of a futures contract must take delivery of the oil for use in a refinery. Some still point to a "terror premium," even though oil prices have continued straight up as geopolitical events come and go. Others vastly overrate the importance of the declining dollar, or the latest inventory numbers, or pronouncements from OPEC.

 

At least nobody is claiming that oil will go back to $45 a barrel anymore, or that new supply in the next few years will somehow resolve the tension with unflagging global demand. Oil futures have gone back into a contango mode, indicating that fears about supply have gripped the market, prompting the Financial Times to report last week that "peak oil views" are now influencing oil prices.

 

IEA's Bombshell

As the Street grappled with the new reality of oil price, the Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell that reinforced the supply question decisively. They previewed the International Energy Agency's upcoming report, which won't be out until November, on the world's top 400 oil fields, including their individual depletion rates.

 

The bottom line was a zinger.

 

For the first time, the IEA admitted that the depletion of aging oil wells, combined with the dampening effect of skyrocketing costs on new field development, means that the world will have a hard time reaching 100 million barrels a day of production within the next two decades.

 

Their previous estimate from only last year was 116 mbpd by 2030, which was backed up by similar reports last year from the EIA and the National Petroleum Council.

 

Their projected supply curves are now sharply reduced, while their global demand projections continue to show about a 1.5% annual rate of growth.

 

Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist, said: "One of our findings will be that the oil investments required may be much, much higher than what people assume. This is a dangerous situation."

 

For those who understand this data, this was a major, major announcement. It means that the IEA—the official energy data agency of the OECD—has given up on its long track record of ridiculously optimistic projections that supply would always meet the expected demand. They are no longer assuming that any supply gap would be filled by big OPEC producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran or Kuwait.

 

Perhaps they felt emboldened to leak this preview of their findings because they realize that their credibility is at stake. They have consistently underestimated the challenges of today's oil business in their previous annual outlook reports, and their projections for both supply and price have been way off the mark.

 

The world's remaining undeveloped oil resources will require enormous efforts and capital to produce, including extreme technology, extreme physical challenges, and unprecedented geopolitical risks. Any increases in oil production that the world does manage over the next couple of years aren't going to come easily.

 

Whatever the IEA's reasons, however, the game is up. Most of the world now recognizes that we are up against a bona fide supply limit, and all the market is doing now is trying to find the proper value of a barrel of finite, nonrenewable, and diminishing petroleum.

 

In fact, I'm having my doubts about anything over 90 mbpd. I suspect that in another two or three years, as we reach the end of plateau at the global peak of oil production and start down the other side, the IEA will once again revise its estimates downward to match up with reality.

 

Those of us who have been laboring for years to explain that we really do have a supply problem and that no, drilling ANWR or deepwater Gulf of Mexico won't fix it, should take a brief moment to shout "Hallelujah!"

 

With all the media attention, the game of investing to profit from the peak is most certainly afoot, and we've got some excellent picks in the $20 Trillion portfolio that can produce domestic oil for under $50 a barrel.

 

Hold on, folks. The ride is just about to start getting interesting...

 

Until next time,

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just passed through aberdeen a couple of days ago my flight to heathrow was held up for 45 minutes by a technical difficulty, ie Gordan Brown was late for his flight. There he was up in aberdeen to sort out the oil crisis single handed he came up with the brilliant sollution increase the output of the north sea fields, no matter that the plane burnt more oil sitting on the tarmac than any extra effort envisaged by GB will ever extract from the north sea. At $140 a barrel you can be damn sure that every last drop is allready being squeezed out. At least 10 oil workers were on that flight and quite a few of us missed connections because of yun ass being late.

I am now 3 days behind schedule and a well I was going to sort out has been flaring needlessly during that time(120,00 bbls so far wasted because of GB). As chancelor he managed to screw the economy while we were in a boom, as PM he will now screw up everthing else.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share


×
×
  • Create New...