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Just for good measure, and since you're so fond of linking charts, here is a chart for you to demonstrate my point.
Ok,, this is in the future.. please from where is this chart???
It is a chart of ALL the new oil fields that are coming online in the next few years, MINUS production capacity from old oil fields that are already in decline. Look at the red bar. It represents that net capacity of new production minus falling existing production. After 2010 it goes into decline.
It is a study, and OPINION,,, we can and we should start drilling our reserves,, and getting them online in 2-3 years... Especially when we have the LARGEST RESERVES IN THE WORLD, Even de Energy Department say that we have it...
The outlook after 2010 gets even darker as the chart shows. Of course that could change if we were to find more oil or start bringing into production even more new fields. But I'm not optimistic.
We already have,,, but we are not doing anything with it.....
Full data entry that chart is taken from is here at The Oil Drum.
Again same thing,, the US has oil and is not using it... If the US doesnt do anything about it, then yes... we will reach a FAKE peak,, produce by the US goverment not willing to drill...
Is like you read the news... And yet you said you have study this oil crisis.
"There is an estimated 2 trillion barrels of oil buried beneath parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Geologists, petroleum companies and the federal government have known about these massive deposits for nearly a century."
"Still, if only half can be extracted, scientists believe the amount is nearly triple the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.
"
And this one is only Colorado, Utah and Wyoming,,, Right now just with this one we are #1..
U.S. Department of Energy in 2006, technical analysts at consulting firm Advanced Research International said "undeveloped domestic oil resources still in the ground (in-place) total of 1.1 trillion barrels" and "the U.S. still has 400 billion barrels of undeveloped technically recoverable oil. Saudi Arabia says it has 260 billion barrels of proven reserves."
And China is right now drilling off Florida coast for oil... and we are not..
You're implying that I don't know what I'm talking about with this oil crisis like I haven't been studying up on it, and yet here you are showing that you don't even know what is oil and what isn't!
The trillions of barrels lying underneath parts of the United States and Canada are NOT oil. They are oil shale, or tar sands.
There is a big difference between the tar sands and oil. Tar sands are not petroleum. Petroleum is a liquid substance that you pump out of the ground. The tar sands are solid, and extracting them from the ground is a mining operation and not an oil drilling operation.
Now, you can turn tar sands into petroleum if you heat them up and melt them down. This presents some problems. First, since you have to invest more energy to get energy out of the tar sands they have a lower energy profit ratio than traditional petroleum, and are thus less useful to us as an energy source. Second, you have to ask yourself where are you going to get the energy to melt the tar sands down so they are in a form you can use?
You also have to take into account that not all oil is created equal. The most sought after type of oil is light sweet crude, because it is very easy to refine into finished products that we can use (like gasoline). There are heavy forms of oil with a higher sulfur (known as "sour oil"content that are more expensive to refine, and thus have a lower energy profit ratio. The oil that you get from tar sands is about as sour as you can get. It's very easy to make asphalt from the stuff. Gasoline? Not so much. It can be done, but this adds to the expense of it.
Right now the Canadians are the largest producers of the stuff, but they're only producing (if memory serves me) about 2 million barrels a day worth of it. They can't increase their production of it much more than that. Why? Because supplies of petroleum produced from tar sands are constrained by natural gas. Natural gas is what they are using to heat the tar sands up and turn them into petroleum. Natural gas supplies have been tight in North America for years, and it can't be imported easily from overseas the way oil can be.
Until you can come up with a more efficient way of melting the tar sands down that can expanded, they are never going to be very useful to us as an energy source, and they're not going to offset declines in production from traditional sources of petroleum.
The head of Shell's Unconventional Resources unit himself estimated that production of tar sands will be negligible by 2015, but if things go very well be producing 5 million barrels per day by 2030. That's nothing!
The bottom line is that tar sands are not the same as traditional petroleum. They're not useless, but the high number of reserves is very deceptive. I gave an example in an earlier post about millions in the bank but only being able to withdraw a couple of hundred per year. That is the situation with the oil sands. Banking on the tar sands to save us before we even have a method to extract them to any significant degree is a fool's errand.
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What... I am sorry but I dont understand.. if we can produce millions of barrels a day,,, and increas supply their is no peak... the peak is when production hit the highest it can,, but we can go higher if we drill...
and who says we are at the peak...
If we can increase supply, then no we are not at peak. Can we go higher if we drill? You need to look at how much we're going to get from the new fields we drill in, and subtract how much we're losing to depletion from existing fields. That's the net number. I posted a chart with that information below which shows the outlook from 2010 is in the negative.
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Ok,,, last time you said that only 85% is being sold... so where is the 15% left??
Ok now you are just putting words in my mouth. I NEVER said that only 85% of oil is being sold. You made reference to the Saudi's claiming they put oil on the market and not all of it was sold and I disputed that.
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Again,,, My question,, why when production goes up, the prices goes up and not down... even if what you are saying is correct,,, when you produce more the price should atlease go down.
Production has to go up just as fast as demand for price to remain the same. If you want price to go down you need production to increase FASTER than demand. Production is increasing but demand globally is a run away train, and production isn't keeping up with it.
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Ok,, and I have dismissed your ridiculous statement...
A study by the Rand Corporation estimates the sedimentary rock in the corner where Utah borders Colorado and Wyoming holds about 800 billion barrels. That's three times the size of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves.
"If the planets line up right and everyone supports it, this could be the oil capital of the world. Because there's enough to last us for a long, long time," Merrell says. "This is the most exciting entrepreneurial adventure in the nation right now."
Just search it.. is on every single news webpage...
More:
According to The Wall Street Journal:
(When the oil is extracted)...America would become the world's single biggest oil source, exceeding Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of 261 billion barrels."
what more do you want???
That article you linked to makes reference to Shell oil company. I provided a link earlier which has the head of the tar sands division of Shell himself saying that right now it looks like they're only going to be producing 5 million a day in 2030.
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Millions,, and millions only with the rocky montains.. Right now is 0, when are we going to start drilling is the question...
The Rocky Mountain article does the same thing virtually all articles and mention to the tar sands does. It talks tough about how many trillions of barrels there are, and how many years of supply that is. But those are meaningless numbers. What they DON'T tell you is how fast we can get the stuff out of the ground and actually use it, which is the important number. One of the heads of Shell oil company himself is saying right now it's looking like 5 million barrels a day more than 20 years from now. That's a drop in the bucket that is not going to save us.
Oil shale and tar sands are not the same thing as petroleum. Sorry. If there was a trillion barrels of light sweet crude sitting under Utah just waiting to be pumped, that would be a whole different story.
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Each oil reserve is seperate,, they are not connected.. If you take X amount somewhere doesnt affect others reserves... Where you get this Idea that they are connected and if you increase in some part of the world it will decrease on other.. I mean they didnt teach me this in my geology class.. Each oil reserve is independent to each one,, they are wells,, and are not connected.
Once again you are putting words in my mouth because you don't understand what I am saying. At no point did I say or even imply that if you pump more oil in one place you will only be able to pump less elsewhere.
What I am talking about is net supply globally.
Hypothetical example:
Saudi Arabia increases production by 2 million barrels a day.
Mexican production falls by a million barrels a day.
English production falls by a million barrels a day.
Nigerian production falls by a half million barrels a day.
Net result on crude oil supply globally? The world has half a million barrels a day less.
(NOTE: THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE. What is actually taking place in the world is essentially the same but more complicated)
What you keep doing is you're pointing excitedly at the Saudis pumping more (or saying they are pumping more) and saying that is evidence that we have plenty of oil. What I am trying to help you understand is that at the same time the Saudis (or other swing producers) are increasing their production when they can, other producers that have already gone into decline are losing production. When you examine the net effect on global supply what is happening right now is that supply is not increasing. Analysis of how this is going to play out in the coming years shows that the net effect more and more is going to be negative: there will be more oil lost to depletion than new sources of oil brought on stream.
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Hydrogen powered car are already on the market...
And recently have made airplanes to use Hydrogen..
The thing you need to keep in mind about hydrogen fuel cells that the media doesn't really talk about is that hydrogen is not an energy source. It's an energy carrier. It takes more energy to make the hydrogen than you get from using the hydrogen itself. This isn't to say it's useless, but that's not the way it's being billed. Hydrogen stores energy like a battery. If you're going to talk about converting the auto fleet to hydrogen on a scale that we use petroleum powered cars, you have to ask where is all the energy going to come from to make the electricity to make the hydrogen? We don't have room in the electric grid right now. So it all gets back to what I've been saying. We don't have any immediate solutions to this. It would take years and lots of investment to scale up the alternatives. That is time we don't have.
And about the hydrogen plane - really? I haven't heard of such a thing. I'm genuinely curious - can you provide me with a link?
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It is a study, and OPINION,,, we can and we should start drilling our reserves,, and getting them online in 2-3 years... Especially when we have the LARGEST RESERVES IN THE WORLD, Even de Energy Department say that we have it...
Winning an argument is easy when you just dismiss all the evidence your opponent brings as opinion, isn't it?
And as far as the largest energy reserves in the world thing, I assume you're talking about the tar sands again. Once again I'll ask you HOW QUICKLY WILL BE ABLE TO GET THOSE RESERVES OUT OF THE GROUND? Once again I'll ask for details. I asked for details on the reserves and you give me the tar sands. Fine. My rebuttal is that the tar sands are not typical petroleum and their rates of extraction are not significant. I provided a link where an executive of Shell oil company confirmed this.
Reserves do not equal production. What is important is not how much oil you have in the ground, but how quickly you can pump the stuff out.
Last edited by NativeBronxite; 07-12-2008 at 12:10 PM..
Reason: grammer
Are we even talking about the same thing? I was talking about an energy crisis. Why are you bringing a climate crisis into this now?
You don't see the connection? We were discussing whether or not people would make the needed changes and adapt new technology to reduce energy usage, and I said that they would this time because of the awareness of the climate crisis. The climate crisis is number one on people's minds--far above the energy crisis.
Take my suburban town: It recently became a Cool City and pledged to reduce emission by the percentage called for in the Kyoto Protocol. As initial measures, the town put a slew of solar panels on the town hall and other town buildings and bought a fleet of Smart Cars for town use. It is also giving tax exemptions to people who do similar things, and is creating more bike paths and sidewalks. The larger area has a Locovore movement that is getting a lot of press and the number of people shopping at local farms and farmer's markets has tripled--there's also a new service in Westchester that delivers food and items from organic farms within a 75 mile radius to your home. And I'm seeing a lot hybrid cars on the road. All of these things are being done to reduce our carbon footprint--but obviously they also reduce our energy consumption.
No, I am NOT saying these that measures will solve the energy crisis, or the climate crisis. What I am saying is that concern about the climate has made people willing and eager to make changes and try new technology that reduces energy consumption. Driving a hybrid to save a few bucks on gas is tacky and embarrassing--but driving a hybrid to save the planet is hip and noble and something to be proud of. As more technology becomes available that reduces our carbon footprint--and reduces our energy consumption--people will gladly adapt it in order to save the planet.
Yes I do see the connection, and I was aware of it before you gave your example. Your jump from energy crisis to understanding of a climate crisis earlier just confused me a bit. I thought you were one of many people who immediately lump Peak Oil with climate change. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone bring up climate change as if it is the exact same thing as peak oil when they hear someone else talking about oil reserves and production.
They are related but they're not the same thing. Thought you were making that mistake but you weren't.
On one level it appears that peak oil will actually be the forced solution to our climate crisis. Less oil to burn, less CO2 into the atmosphere and problem solved. We'll see.
You're implying that I don't know what I'm talking about with this oil crisis like I haven't been studying up on it, and yet here you are showing that you don't even know what is oil and what isn't!
I am sorry I dont want to offend you, but if you didnt know that the US has the biggest oil reserves in the world... well i dont know it has be in the news for months now...
The trillions of barrels lying underneath parts of the United States and Canada are NOT oil. They are oil shale, or tar sands.
There is a big difference between the tar sands and oil. Tar sands are not petroleum. Petroleum is a liquid substance that you pump out of the ground. The tar sands are solid, and extracting them from the ground is a mining operation and not an oil drilling operation.
actually the site has both... Mainly is Oil shale yes, but also oil.
Here is a picture of a oil pump in the rocky mountain
http://www.rmotc.doe.gov/images/Services_Vert.jpg (broken link)
It looks like regular oil pump to me.. for more information
Services - RMOTC (http://www.rmotc.doe.gov/services/services.html - broken link)
RMOTC=Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center
Now, you can turn tar sands into petroleum if you heat them up and melt them down. This presents some problems. First, since you have to invest more energy to get energy out of the tar sands they have a lower energy profit ratio than traditional petroleum, and are thus less useful to us as an energy source. Second, you have to ask yourself where are you going to get the energy to melt the tar sands down so they are in a form you can use?
boy,,,you really do know your subject.. about 20 years ago...
to give you a little update information... You can change the oil shale IN SITU. Meaning in site.. and then pump it like any other oil(liquid).
You also have to take into account that not all oil is created equal. The most sought after type of oil is light sweet crude, because it is very easy to refine into finished products that we can use (like gasoline). There are heavy forms of oil with a higher sulfur (known as "sour oil"content that are more expensive to refine, and thus have a lower energy profit ratio. The oil that you get from tar sands is about as sour as you can get. It's very easy to make asphalt from the stuff. Gasoline? Not so much. It can be done, but this adds to the expense of it.
This is true,, Venezuala oil is heavy oil, and still is used to make gasoline... And China hold the largest oil shale plant in the world and the oil is use for gasoline...
Right now the Canadians are the largest producers of the stuff, but they're only producing (if memory serves me) about 2 million barrels a day worth of it. They can't increase their production of it much more than that. Why? Because supplies of petroleum produced from tar sands are constrained by natural gas. Natural gas is what they are using to heat the tar sands up and turn them into petroleum. Natural gas supplies have been tight in North America for years, and it can't be imported easily from overseas the way oil can be.
Please,, read on in-situ,,, they can even do it with microwaves or radiowaves and other ways not using natural gas...
Until you can come up with a more efficient way of melting the tar sands down that can expanded, they are never going to be very useful to us as an energy source, and they're not going to offset declines in production from traditional sources of petroleum.
Again,, please read how they can convert this shale to oil underground and then pump it out...
The head of Shell's Unconventional Resources unit himself estimated that production of tar sands will be negligible by 2015, but if things go very well be producing 5 million barrels per day by 2030. That's nothing!
Source if you don't believe me. His name is Steve Mut.
And said "If oil prices went to $100/barrel, there might end up being a trillion barrels of reserves recoverable.." Hmmm,, i guess the oil went to 100 and pass it... like he said trillions,, also,, the site has OIL.. liquid oil... more shale but still some oil...
The bottom line is that tar sands are not the same as traditional petroleum. They're not useless, but the high number of reserves is very deceptive. I gave an example in an earlier post about millions in the bank but only being able to withdraw a couple of hundred per year. That is the situation with the oil sands. Banking on the tar sands to save us before we even have a method to extract them to any significant degree is a fool's errand.
I have different opinions,, i have read the many ways in situ that we can use to change oil shale to liquid oil... Also coal can be change to oil..
We still havent dont that....
If we can increase supply, then no we are not at peak. Can we go higher if we drill? You need to look at how much we're going to get from the new fields we drill in, and subtract how much we're losing to depletion from existing fields. That's the net number. I posted a chart with that information below which shows the outlook from 2010 is in the negative.
Again,, they are estimates,, everything can change if we start drilling in Alaska, Florida and other places.
Ok now you are just putting words in my mouth. I NEVER said that only 85% of oil is being sold. You made reference to the Saudi's claiming they put oil on the market and not all of it was sold and I disputed that.
Ok,, is what they say... I cant say is true or false...
Production has to go up just as fast as demand for price to remain the same. If you want price to go down you need production to increase FASTER than demand. Production is increasing but demand globally is a run away train, and production isn't keeping up with it.
That is the problem,, the US havent done anything since the 80's.. We are part responsible for the problem...
That article you linked to makes reference to Shell oil company. I provided a link earlier which has the head of the tar sands division of Shell himself saying that right now it looks like they're only going to be producing 5 million a day in 2030.
That is only one way to do it.. they are others... Chevron CRUSH process, MWE IGE technology, and again,, I am not saying that this will solve the problem.. but why we didnt start heating up this shales in the 80's so that today it would be ready to be pump out, why we have to start now when is almost to late??
The Rocky Mountain article does the same thing virtually all articles and mention to the tar sands does. It talks tough about how many trillions of barrels there are, and how many years of supply that is. But those are meaningless numbers. What they DON'T tell you is how fast we can get the stuff out of the ground and actually use it, which is the important number.
We wont know until we start.....
One of the heads of Shell oil company himself is saying right now
well not right now.. like 3 years ago....
it's looking like 5 million barrels a day more than 20 years from now. That's a drop in the bucket that is not going to save us.
that is only with the Shell's In situ Conversion Process (ICP), others company have others..
Oil shale and tar sands are not the same thing as petroleum. Sorry. If there was a trillion barrels of light sweet crude sitting under Utah just waiting to be pumped, that would be a whole different story.
Ok, my question to you....
why we are not doing anything in Florida?? offshore or everglades???
why we are not doing anything in Alaska????
Once again you are putting words in my mouth because you don't understand what I am saying. At no point did I say or even imply that if you pump more oil in one place you will only be able to pump less elsewhere.
What I am talking about is net supply globally.
Hypothetical example:
Saudi Arabia increases production by 2 million barrels a day.
Mexican production falls by a million barrels a day.
English production falls by a million barrels a day.
Nigerian production falls by a half million barrels a day.
Great... but I have giving you charts that doesnt show any drop in supply...
Here you can even see how Tar Sand is almost 10% of oil production today... and you can see how oil production or supply has not gone down...
Net result on crude oil supply globally? The world has half a million barrels a day less.
Really please look at chart...
Ok, more evidence???
you like the International Energy Agency,, you have use them before as reference right.... ok a chart from them(website)...
I think I already have posted this before,, and still you dont say supply is down??????
From 85 in 2007 to 87 in 2008... where is the 1/2 million missing???
(NOTE: THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE. What is actually taking place in the world is essentially the same but more complicated)
What you keep doing is you're pointing excitedly at the Saudis pumping more (or saying they are pumping more) and saying that is evidence that we have plenty of oil. What I am trying to help you understand is that at the same time the Saudis (or other swing producers) are increasing their production when they can, other producers that have already gone into decline are losing production. When you examine the net effect on global supply what is happening right now is that supply is not increasing. Analysis of how this is going to play out in the coming years shows that the net effect more and more is going to be negative: there will be more oil lost to depletion than new sources of oil brought on stream.
I am sorry but please... can you just read the tittle of this chart.. your the people that you only trust.... I think it say WORLDS OIL SUPPLY DOESNT IT???
The thing you need to keep in mind about hydrogen fuel cells that the media doesn't really talk about is that hydrogen is not an energy source. It's an energy carrier. It takes more energy to make the hydrogen than you get from using the hydrogen itself.
WHAT?????? You really dont know much about hydrogen...
search this GM developing home-based hydrogen filling station.
You make your own hydrogen for free at your own home... only energy is solar power....
This isn't to say it's useless, but that's not the way it's being billed. Hydrogen stores energy like a battery. If you're going to talk about converting the auto fleet to hydrogen on a scale that we use petroleum powered cars, you have to ask where is all the energy going to come from to make the electricity to make the hydrogen?
Ok,, you really dont know how easy is to make hydrogen from water...
We don't have room in the electric grid right now. So it all gets back to what I've been saying. We don't have any immediate solutions to this. It would take years and lots of investment to scale up the alternatives. That is time we don't have.
Please I am tired.. come back when you have read something on the subject.... because is clear that you dont know what you are talking about...
here you have it a toy that produces pure hydrogen
Winning an argument is easy when you just dismiss all the evidence your opponent brings as opinion, isn't it?
I think that is what you are doing.... I have just giving you charts from DOE, IEA saying that supply is up.. and it has not gone down... where is your evidence???
And as far as the largest energy reserves in the world thing, I assume you're talking about the tar sands again. Once again I'll ask you HOW QUICKLY WILL BE ABLE TO GET THOSE RESERVES OUT OF THE GROUND?
We will never know,, unless we start.. atleast start on the oil that is already available...
Once again I'll ask for details. I asked for details on the reserves and you give me the tar sands. Fine. My rebuttal is that the tar sands are not typical petroleum and their rates of extraction are not significant. I provided a link where an executive of Shell oil company confirmed this.
Ok, but he also said,, if oil goes 100 we can extract trillions... well when do we start.. and when do we start in alaska, california, florida????
Reserves do not equal production. What is important is not how much oil you have in the ground, but how quickly you can pump the stuff out.
Yes,, and right now is 0,,,
This whole discussion is just so surreal to me. I feel like I've stepped into a time machine and gone back four years.
And before you read anything else, do yourself a favor and read this whole post before you read it and reply it it line by line. From your previous posts it appears you are replying to my words as you read them instead of reading the whole thing and placing it into context, which is probably why you think that I was claiming oil supply is going down when I very clearly stated it was just an example.
Here is what you are doing primarily.
You are attributing statements to me that I haven't made.
You are repeatedly dodging specific questions that I'm asking you.
You are betting our future on unproven technologies.
You are neglecting to take into account the challenges of net energy and scalability, which most alternatives to oil suffer from.
Attributing statements to me that I haven't made - building up straw man arguments and then knocking them down. Example: I put up an example of what I really meant by net oil supply, and in big capital letters I say that it is just a hypothetical example. And then you go and say that I am claiming that oil supply is falling? You do know what the word hypothetical means, don't you?
I've never claimed oil supply is falling. My contention is that supply is struggling to stay even while demand is rising, and supply is falling behind. Supply is rising but it isn't rising fast enough, so it is falling behind demand. This is why you see the price of oil has continued to rise in recent years.
You are neglecting to take into account the concept of net energy in your hyping up of the tar sands. It doesn't matter if they convert the shale to oil underground before they extract it or above ground after they've extracted it. The point is that this extra step of converting the shale to oil requires energy. This decreases the amount of net energy we get from the shale, and it increases the price. That Shell executive said that the amount of oil recoverable from the tar sands would increase if oil went to $100 because it just isn't profitable to use the stuff unless oil is expensive. This would hold steady with one of the tenants of Peak oil theory. Peak oil is not the end of oil. It is the end of CHEAP oil.
As the price of oil increases so too does the amount of economically recoverable shale oil, but not necessarily the rate at which it can be extracted. And in order for the shale to continue to be extracted into the future, the price of oil has to continue to remain high. This is the same reason some of the offshore fields you are so excited about aren't being worked on. It's not a conspiracy or stupidity. Drilling a couple miles underground under a mile of ocean to get at oil is EXPENSIVE. Let's say hypothetically (there's that word again) that it costs an oil company $175 to get oil out of one of those deep water fields. And let's also say in this totally hypothetical example, that the current price of oil on the open market is $100. If you owned that oil company, would you set up that deep water field? Hell no! You'd be losing money. Only after the price of oil rises past $175 does it become economical to extract that oil and sell it. The tar sands suffer from the same problem. They're expensive to get at. If the tar sands are going increase production to any degree (which wont be much) the price of oil will have to remain high. As the price of oil rises you'll see more fields become economically viable, but getting that oil to market will mean the price will have to remain high. Remember, Peak Oil is not the end of oil. It's the end of cheap oil. Cheap oil is the stuff the suburbs run on.
So for the tar sands to have any meaning to us as an energy source, energy prices will have to continue to remain high. The suburbs aren't exactly a viable living arrangement with expensive energy, which is where this thread all comes back to.
I asked you specifically if you could provide figures on what the extraction rates for the tar sands could be if the necessary investments were made. Instead of answering that question you side stepped it by lots of fancy talk about other technologies that could be used to extract them. So I'll ask you again.
How many barrels per day could the tar sands provide our civilization if the necessary investments were made? And after how long?
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Again,, they are estimates,, everything can change if we start drilling in Alaska, Florida and other places.
You keep saying this and you keep ignoring me when I tell you to SHOW ME SOME HARD NUMBERS. How much oil is estimated to be in those places, how much oil will they produce per day, and after how long? You keep dodging the question, and yet you speak of these things like they will provide the US with energy independence. Do you think the US could be energy independent in terms of oil if we drilled in Alaska and all the off shore places we could?
Here, let me do you a favor and provide the information you keep neglecting to.
This article is four years old but the information is just as true.
But even at peak production, the EIA analysis said, the United States would still have to import two-thirds of its oil, as opposed to an expected 70 percent if the refuge’s oil remained off the market.
And before you go disputing the numbers in that article, here is a document prepared this year by the Energy Information Agency.
The dates are updated but the numbers remain essentially the same. It would take TEN YEARS to get ANWAR oil production into full production, and once that happened it wouldn't even be producing a million barrels a day. The US consumes more than 20 million barrels a day now. If the economy continues to grow oil demand ten years from now will be even higher.What kind of impact do you expect Alaska to have?
Go ahead and find me that information about the offshore fields that might be produced in Florida and elsewhere. If you don't want to give me some hard numbers on those the way I have about Alaska, then please, be quiet about them and stop speaking of them as if they are going to save us and make everything ok.
And in answer to your question since you asked, why do I think they're not drilling in Alaska and elsewhere? Because they are stupid. It's politics and stupidity that is preventing us from drilling. I don't agree with it. I think we should be drilling in ANWAR, offshore, and everywhere else we can. But unlike you, I don't think that if we did those things it would change the energy picture. It would only make things less hard for us in an energy starved future. I don't think it would allow us to continue our current energy rich lifestyles.
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Originally Posted by cjma79
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Originally Posted by NativeBronxite
And as far as the largest energy reserves in the world thing, I assume you're talking about the tar sands again. Once again I'll ask you HOW QUICKLY WILL BE ABLE TO GET THOSE RESERVES OUT OF THE GROUND?
We will never know,, unless we start.. atleast start on the oil that is already available...
Are you kidding me? They can always estimate approximately how much oil a field is expected to produce before it goes into production. I just showed you the figures for ANWAR. Before you go saying that the tar sands will be such a great energy source based on reserve numbers, you need to be able to tell me how much oil that will actually bring to market on a daily basis.
Let's look at what is happening right now in Canada, since they are the world's leader in producing oil from tar sands.
The Alberta Tar sands have 1,700 billion estimated barrels of oil in them. That's 1.7 trillion. TRILLION. With a "T"! More than all the oil that has ever been used in all of history. A huge resource! And we have even more in the United States. WOW.
Problem solved, right? Wrong.
Don't be fooled by that high reserve number. You have to look at how much oil they are actually producing from the tar sands, and unlike us they actually are doing their best to produce as much oil as possible.
So how much are the Canadians actually producing?
As of 2006, only 1.1 million barrels per day.
On the one hand you see that huge reserve number and think the problem is solved, but in reality it is so difficult to actually get oil from the tar sands that production is very modest despite efforts to increase production. The Alberta government thinks that with lots of investment they could get production up to 3 million barrels a day by 2020. Possibly even 5 million barrels a day by 2030.
Not an insignificant resource, but hardly anything to look at and say we don't have to worry about oil.
Keep in mind that the Canadians have been at this for years. In the United States we haven't even gotten started yet.
The Hydrogen stuff is interesting, and of course it works in a laboratory setting. You can make almost any of these alternative technologies work in a laboratory setting. But that is where the scalability problem comes in. You can make it work in a lab, but can you expand it to real world applications millions of times over, placing it in homes, cars, etc?
You may say so, but that would be your OPINION (since you like that word so much). The fact of the matter is that hydrogen fuel cells on a wide scale have not been tested yet. So how can they be proven?
Joseph Romm is a former employee of the department of energy, and he's a proponent of hydrogen fuel cells. He wrote a book about them.
Even though he thinks we should push forward with Hydrogen, even he admits that in order for a hydrogen economy to work we would need to make several technological breakthroughs in order for it to become a reality. Breakthroughs like how to produce vast quantities of hydrogen (remember the problem is scalability) cheaply, how to store the hydrogen (hydrogen is a highly corrosive material that tries to escape from the smallest of holes because of how light it is), and how to manufacture the fuel cells less expensively (current hydrogen fuel cells use exotic materials like platinum).
Hydrogen is an unproven technology. Should we be investing in it and researching it? Yes.
Should we be betting our future on something that hasn't been proven yet simply because it has potential? No.
This seems to be what you are proposing. Do you buy things on your credit card and only hope that you can pay for them later to? How about buy a house that you can't afford and hope you can refinance in a year when your credit goes up? Millions of Americans adopted that strategy, and just look how they winded up.
So for the record, let me summarize some of the things I've said here since you are making a habit of attributing statements to me that I didn't make.
1. I do not think supply globally is falling - yet. Supply in individual countries is falling, and increases in supply from other countries are not enough to meet growing demand.
2. I do think we should be developing ANWAR and the offshore fields, but unlike you I don't think they will change out energy outlook significantly.
3. The tar sands are expensive to produce and not scalable to a point that they will change the current energy outlook.
4. Hydrogen fuel cells have promise but they are an unproven technology that we should not be betting our futures on.
Specific questions I'd like you to answer
1. How much oil could we get from the tar sands on a daily basis?
2. How long would it take us to ramp up production of the tar sands?
You have tried to dodge these questions before by saying we wont know until we try, but that is a gross over simplification. No CEO is going to invest billions of dollars into something without any idea of how much of a return on investment they will get. A politician playing with public money? Maybe. But even they like to have estimates of what the investment will produce.
The Canadians can estimate how much they'll be producing from their tar sands, and we can do the same with ours. Either provide figures on how much our tar sands can give us, or stop talking about them like they will be some sort of savior.
3. How much oil could we get on a daily basis from offshore fields in Florida and elsewhere?
You made big claims about Alaska and offshore without providing numbers. I provided some hard numbers that show Alaska will not make a big impact on our oil supplies.
4. Do you think the US could be energy independent with oil if we drilled in Alaska, offshore, and developed the tar sands?
Last edited by NativeBronxite; 07-13-2008 at 09:18 AM..
This whole discussion is just so surreal to me. I feel like I've stepped into a time machine and gone back four years.
Is funny I feel the same way...
And before you read anything else, do yourself a favor and read this whole post before you read it and reply it it line by line. From your previous posts it appears you are replying to my words as you read them instead of reading the whole thing and placing it into context, which is probably why you think that I was claiming oil supply is going down when I very clearly stated it was just an example.
You did,,, Ok...
Here is what you are doing primarily.
You are attributing statements to me that I haven't made.
ok
You are repeatedly dodging specific questions that I'm asking you.
What is your specific question???
You are betting our future on unproven technologies.
Is better then doing nothing...
You are neglecting to take into account the challenges of net energy and scalability, which most alternatives to oil suffer from.
Ok,,, I have no problem... maybe I am...
Attributing statements to me that I haven't made - building up straw man arguments and then knocking them down. Example: I put up an example of what I really meant by net oil supply, and in big capital letters I say that it is just a hypothetical example. And then you go and say that I am claiming that oil supply is falling? You do know what the word hypothetical means, don't you?
Ok, since you said that Russia production was going down,, and that you did say,, I give a chart saying it didnt...
I've never claimed oil supply is falling. My contention is that supply is struggling to stay even while demand is rising, and supply is falling behind.
Ok,, is not struggling to stay even when is rising...
And right now is only 1 million difference between supply and demand, dont you think pumping just 1 million from alaska will help??? I mean we are just talking about 1 million.
Supply is rising but it isn't rising fast enough, so it is falling behind demand. This is why you see the price of oil has continued to rise in recent years.
Ofcourse supply is rising.. I havent said that it isnt rising have I??
You are neglecting to take into account the concept of net energy in your hyping up of the tar sands. It doesn't matter if they convert the shale to oil underground before they extract it or above ground after they've extracted it. The point is that this extra step of converting the shale to oil requires energy.
If it is not worth it,, why 10% of all oil supply are from oil shale, and why China has the worlds largest oil shale plant in the worlds??? I guess is they have the technology but we dont or WON'T???
This decreases the amount of net energy we get from the shale, and it increases the price. That Shell executive said that the amount of oil recoverable from the tar sands would increase if oil went to $100 because it just isn't profitable to use the stuff unless oil is expensive.
I think others country thing different then,, especially China, everybody else that sells 10% of Oil from oil shales.
This would hold steady with one of the tenants of Peak oil theory. Peak oil is not the end of oil. It is the end of CHEAP oil.
Cheap oil could be something from the past.. that is true.. but again is an opinion..
As the price of oil increases so too does the amount of economically recoverable shale oil, but not necessarily the rate at which it can be extracted. And in order for the shale to continue to be extracted into the future, the price of oil has to continue to remain high.
If you can see from the chart,, you can see that 10% of the oil from oil shale was even 10% before this oil crisis... so when it was cheap people still was converting oil shale to oil.
This is the same reason some of the offshore fields you are so excited about aren't being worked on. It's not a conspiracy or stupidity. Drilling a couple miles underground under a mile of ocean to get at oil is EXPENSIVE.
I guess China found a way to do it...
Let's say hypothetically (there's that word again) that it costs an oil company $175 to get oil out of one of those deep water fields.
Just in case Florida also have oil in the land, not only on deep ocean
And let's also say in this totally hypothetical example, that the current price of oil on the open market is $100. If you owned that oil company, would you set up that deep water field? Hell no! You'd be losing money. Only after the price of oil rises past $175 does it become economical to extract that oil and sell it.
Again I guess China and Cuba have differenent CFOs working with them...
The tar sands suffer from the same problem. They're expensive to get at. If the tar sands are going increase production to any degree (which wont be much) the price of oil will have to remain high. As the price of oil rises you'll see more fields become economically viable, but getting that oil to market will mean the price will have to remain high. Remember, Peak Oil is not the end of oil. It's the end of cheap oil. Cheap oil is the stuff the suburbs run on.
Please tell me then,, why before, when oil was CHEAP,,, China and other countries was using oil shales????
So for the tar sands to have any meaning to us as an energy source, energy prices will have to continue to remain high. The suburbs aren't exactly a viable living arrangement with expensive energy, which is where this thread all comes back to.
OK,,, Shale oil was selling cheap 2 years ago,, it will sell cheap again...(if the price goes down)
I asked you specifically if you could provide figures on what the extraction rates for the tar sands could be if the necessary investments were made.
Ok,, now you want me to go and do research on the subject... not even you can answer that question not even CEO of Shell could.
Instead of answering that question you side stepped it by lots of fancy talk about other technologies that could be used to extract them. So I'll ask you again.
How many barrels per day could the tar sands provide our civilization if the necessary investments were made? And after how long?
that is a question imposible to anwser,, only when we try and see..
You keep saying this and you keep ignoring me when I tell you to SHOW ME SOME HARD NUMBERS. How much oil is estimated to be in those places, how much oil will they produce per day, and after how long?
No one can answer that,, but everybody knows,, and I have already posted,, it has more then 900 billions of EXTRACTABLE OIL. it really has 1.1 or 1.2 trillion.
You keep dodging the question, and yet you speak of these things like they will provide the US with energy independence. Do you think the US could be energy independent in terms of oil if we drilled in Alaska and all the off shore places we could?
Nope... but if we can pump at least 5 million is something,, better then nothing... We will only be oil indepndent when our energy is about 85 to 90% nuclear, wind, solar or other non-oil dependent energy...
Here, let me do you a favor and provide the information you keep neglecting to.
This article is four years old but the information is just as true.
From the article.
Like it say,, we can pump almost .9 million and you say that wount help.. ok,,, it could have helped if we started drilling 2 years ago... .9 here .9 in california .9 in florida, now you are looking at a little more then just 1 million per day...
And before you go disputing the numbers in that article, here is a document prepared this year by the Energy Information Agency.
The dates are updated but the numbers remain essentially the same. It would take TEN YEARS to get ANWAR oil production into full production, and once that happened it wouldn't even be producing a million barrels a day. The US consumes more than 20 million barrels a day now. If the economy continues to grow oil demand ten years from now will be even higher.What kind of impact do you expect Alaska to have?
It also say,,, something that maybe you are ignoring
[LEFT]The opening of ANWR to oil and gas development includes the following impacts:[/LEFT]
• reducing world oil prices,[LEFT]
[LEFT]• reducing the U.S. dependence on imported foreign oil,[/LEFT]
[LEFT]• improving the U.S. balance of trade,[/LEFT]
[LEFT]• extending the life of TAPS for oil, and[/LEFT]
[LEFT]• increasing U.S. jobs.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]Also you dont read.. the peak oil from ANWR is 1.45 million per day... I think this is more then 1.0 million what do you think??[/LEFT]
Go ahead and find me that information about the offshore fields that might be produced in Florida and elsewhere. If you don't want to give me some hard numbers on those the way I have about Alaska, then please, be quiet about them and stop speaking of them as if they are going to save us and make everything ok.
Florida as 4.6 to 9.3 billions of barrel... that a fact... is about the same size that ANWR,, and should produce the same...
Ok... in the Everglades we have 40 Billions of barrel CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Thompson won’t rule out Everglades drilling « - Blogs from CNN.com
And in answer to your question since you asked, why do I think they're not drilling in Alaska and elsewhere? Because they are stupid. It's politics and stupidity that is preventing us from drilling. I don't agree with it. I think we should be drilling in ANWAR, offshore, and everywhere else we can. But unlike you, I don't think that if we did those things it would change the energy picture.
Well we are in the same page,,, yes we should, well we should have a long time ago.. Now is a little bit to late.. and yes I believe it can change the picture.. not a lot.. but if we are talking about 1 million barrels difference between supply and demand just a little more would help...If we can produce 2 or 3 million of barrels more,, then is another picture...
It would only make things less hard for us in an energy starved future. I don't think it would allow us to continue our current energy rich lifestyles.
I agree,, at least with Oil.. but we can and we must change our oil dependence,
Are you kidding me? They can always estimate approximately how much oil a field is expected to produce before it goes into production. I just showed you the figures for ANWAR. Before you go saying that the tar sands will be such a great energy source based on reserve numbers, you need to be able to tell me how much oil that will actually bring to market on a daily basis.
I cant say,,, even Shell could answer the question... but we do know is about 900 billions barrels of oil. Not even the goverment in the rocky mountains know...
Let's look at what is happening right now in Canada, since they are the world's leader in producing oil from tar sands.
The Alberta Tar sands have 1,700 billion estimated barrels of oil in them. That's 1.7 trillion. TRILLION. With a "T"! More than all the oil that has ever been used in all of history. A huge resource! And we have even more in the United States. WOW.
Problem solved, right? Wrong.
Don't be fooled by that high reserve number. You have to look at how much oil they are actually producing from the tar sands, and unlike us they actually are doing their best to produce as much oil as possible.
I know,, also is china.. we are the only Stupid Country(in this subject) that is not doing anything...
So how much are the Canadians actually producing?
As of 2006, only 1.1 million barrels per day.
And that is better then nothing...
On the one hand you see that huge reserve number and think the problem is solved, but in reality it is so difficult to actually get oil from the tar sands that production is very modest despite efforts to increase production. The Alberta government thinks that with lots of investment they could get production up to 3 million barrels a day by 2020. Possibly even 5 million barrels a day by 2030.
Not an insignificant resource, but hardly anything to look at and say we don't have to worry about oil.
Keep in mind that the Canadians have been at this for years. In the United States we haven't even gotten started yet.
The good thing is that we can copy they technology from them and/or China.
The Hydrogen stuff is interesting, and of course it works in a laboratory setting. You can make almost any of these alternative technologies work in a laboratory setting. But that is where the scalability problem comes in. You can make it work in a lab, but can you expand it to real world applications millions of times over, placing it in homes, cars, etc?
ITM Power is already selling a home Hydrogen pump for cars and energy... Welcome to ITM Power
And GM is already working on it and has a prototype... GM developing home-based hydrogen filling station - Engadget
Honda is working also... HES Home Energy Station Honda Worldwide | Fuel Cell
More information about all of them
Green Wombat: The Solar-Powered Home Hydrogen Fueling Station (broken link)
You may say so, but that would be your OPINION (since you like that word so much). The fact of the matter is that hydrogen fuel cells on a wide scale have not been tested yet. So how can they be proven?
what is my opinion? about hydrogen what part?
Joseph Romm is a former employee of the department of energy, and he's a proponent of hydrogen fuel cells. He wrote a book about them.
Even though he thinks we should push forward with Hydrogen, even he admits that in order for a hydrogen economy to work we would need to make several technological breakthroughs in order for it to become a reality. Breakthroughs like how to produce vast quantities of hydrogen (remember the problem is scalability) cheaply, how to store the hydrogen (hydrogen is a highly corrosive material that tries to escape from the smallest of holes because of how light it is), and how to manufacture the fuel cells less expensively (current hydrogen fuel cells use exotic materials like platinum).
First that is old.. second they even have invented a way that hydrogen can produce 100X more energy that it take to make it...
Hydrogen is an unproven technology. Should we be investing in it and researching it? Yes.
Well since we already have BMW, running and on sell, and others cars also sell Hydrogen cars and works with both hydrogen and gasoline,, and they already are selling your own little house pump i think is 100 proven technology, what more do you need....
Should we be betting our future on something that hasn't been proven yet simply because it has potential? No.
What??? what is not proven,, airplanes already, cars already,, Including a house running 100% by hydrogen using ITM power technology
This seems to be what you are proposing. Do you buy things on your credit card and only hope that you can pay for them later to? How about buy a house that you can't afford and hope you can refinance in a year when your credit goes up? Millions of Americans adopted that strategy, and just look how they winded up.
Well I have a friend that has a BMW Hydrogen in California and I think he is driving it, including others that have it already what do you think???
So for the record, let me summarize some of the things I've said here since you are making a habit of attributing statements to me that I didn't make.
1. I do not think supply globally is falling - yet. Supply in individual countries is falling, and increases in supply from other countries are not enough to meet growing demand.
OK
2. I do think we should be developing ANWAR and the offshore fields, but unlike you I don't think they will change out energy outlook significantly.
Ok, if the US use 25 million barrels a day even 2 millions a day represent almost 10%, is actually 8%.
3. The tar sands are expensive to produce and not scalable to a point that they will change the current energy outlook.
Again,, only 1 or 2 millions can represent 8%, 8% from alaska, 8% from Oil shales, oh and another thing,, oil Shales are not Tar Sand,, tar sand is more difficult, oil shales is completely diffenrent. Tar Sand can not be in situ, while oil shales can be produce in situ... Tar Sand is Canada.. The number 1 in oil shales in China with the largest plant in the world
4. Hydrogen fuel cells have promise but they are an unproven technology that we should not be betting our futures on.
I still dont understand why is unproven???
Specific questions I'd like you to answer
1. How much oil could we get from the tar sands on a daily basis?
I dont know since we dont have tar sand, we have oil shales, not the same thing.. and it could be 1 to 2 millions of barrels a day. It could be more,, since we havent invest in it is imposible to really know... Just like know the reserves are imposible to know only ESTIMATE.
2. How long would it take us to ramp up production of the tar sands?
I dont know since you think that tar sand is the same as oil shales is difficult to tell.... Tar sand are Bitumen and Oil shale are kerogen.
It will take a long time,, at least 5 years.. but we can start today or we can start in 10 years... It should have started 20 years ago...
You have tried to dodge these questions before by saying we wont know until we try, but that is a gross over simplification. No CEO is going to invest billions of dollars into something without any idea of how much of a return on investment they will get. A politician playing with public money? Money. But even they like to have estimates of what the investment will produce.
Yes but since I dont have a team of expert, I can answer that, not even you not even a CEO... Since the US doesnt let anyone drill in their federal land,, we will never know... When the US say start drilling and find that oil.. is when all the companies will send teams to find out...
The Canadians can estimate how much they'll be producing from their tar sands, and we can do the same with ours. Either provide figures on how much our tar sands can give us, or stop talking about them like they will be some sort of savior.
Again as soon as you get the idea that tar sand and oil shales are not the same the better. oil shale is easier. While Tar sand you have to mine it oil shale you dont...
3. How much oil could we get on a daily basis from offshore fields in Florida and elsewhere?
If florida everglades has 40 billions, i guess we can take 4 millions why not... since alaska has 10 billions and we can pump 1.45 per day.. And agian,,, do you know how much.. because I have been looking for it.. and is hard to find it, since everything that comes up is about our current oil crisis..
You made big claims about Alaska and offshore without providing numbers. I provided some hard numbers that show Alaska will not make a big impact on our oil supplies.
Even in your own numbers you were wrong,, your numbers are really 1.450 millions per day.. that is almost 6.5% of US demand. We can drill and get out more from Florida, how much we dont know... the federal goverment doesnt allow any company to drill and pump oil on the florida coast..
Not make a big impact only this,,, right out your report
[LEFT]The opening of ANWR to oil and gas development includes the following impacts:[/LEFT]
• reducing world oil prices, [LEFT]
[LEFT]• reducing the U.S. dependence on imported foreign oil,[/LEFT]
[LEFT]• improving the U.S. balance of trade,[/LEFT]
[LEFT]• extending the life of TAPS for oil, and[/LEFT]
[LEFT]• increasing U.S. jobs.[/LEFT]
[/LEFT]
I really like the first one, reducing world oil prices...
4. Do you think the US could be energy independent with oil if we drilled in Alaska, offshore, and developed the tar sands?
No, yes, Maybe... we start building nuclear plants. reduce our 22 million barrels demand to 15 or less then yes.. and we start drilling and pumping everywhere there is oil. And using oil shales and not tar sands...
[/LEFT]
And I thought this thread had something to do with suburbs. I didn't realize I'd walked into the wrong room and signed up for Petroleum Economics 101. Or possibly 201.
You can change the oil shale IN SITU. Meaning in site.. and then pump it like any other oil(liquid).
From waht I understand, this requires drilling holes around the perimeter of the oil, pumping a coolant into those holes to freeze the perimiter so no water seeps in, then pump heat into the target area to heat-up the shale so the oil can be extracted. This requires A LOT of energy, and is a wash unless oil is around $200 a barrell.
The fact is, if we drill for shale oil, then we are accepting $200 oil. The oil companies are not going to invest in this effort if they don't expect oil prices to remain high for at least 10-15 yrs, maybe even more.
I will tell you this: Toyota, Honda, and maybe even GM and Ford know full well that the sooner they get hybrids and all electric vehicles on the market, the sooner they can jump-start their falling sales and get their industries more independent from the volatile oil industry. Once these cars get on the road and once we replace many oil-fired and gas-fired plants with nukes, the price of oil will fall FAR below the price needed to keep shale oil profitable.
If I were an oil compnay, I wouldn't waste my money for this exact reason.
I don't disagree with this. This is what it all boils down to. No matter how we address this problem, the end result is going to be a dramatic decline in the standard of living for the average American. Our happy motoring days are over. The age of excess and consumption are over. It's not the end of the world. It's just the end of an energy intensive way of life that we have grown accustomed to.
There are a multitude of problems with alternatives. They are characterized primarily by a poor rate of energy returned on energy invested (energy profit ratio), and an inability to scale them up to levels necessary to seriously offset our fossil fuel usage. Right now renewable energy accounts for approximately 1% of our total energy usage.
In regards to running NYC's public service vehicles on BioDiesel or electric, it's a fine idea in theory but it runs into practical problems when you try to scale it up. We probably could run NYC's public vehicles on those fuels. But could we transfer the entire US automotive fleet to run on them(as the mainstream media continually suggests)? Nope. Bio Fuels (glad that you specifically said non food biofuels) in general have a very modest energy profit ratio. In some cases (like corn based ethanol) they actually have a negative energy profit ratio. That means it takes more energy to make the ethanol than you get from using the ethanol. Other biofuels (switch grass, seaweed, etc.) have potential but there simply isn't enough land to grow enough of it to replace what we are using right now with oil.
Electric cars work but they have problems of scale also. What happens to the electric grid when you have everyone plugging their car into their garage over night to recharge it? Where is all that electricity production going to come from? We could make it, but that kind of change doesn't take place overnight - it takes years.
NB, excellent post. You succinclty point out the limitations of alternative fuels today. My point is that as time goes by and technology improves, the scale issues become more practical as has happened with computers and overall communications as cable and semiconductors have become more powerful as the R&D into these areas has greatly increased over the yrs.
Electric vehicles have a rabge of about 80-120 miles. This limits their use to local use, and even eliminates them as an option for some commuters who need a longer range. I think that you will agree that in 10-20 yrs, these EV's will have greater range as battery technology improves. Ditto for gas-electric hybrids. Also, the additional power can be generated by nuclear power plants.
What are your thoughts on bio-fuels made from Algae? Obviously this is not an option we are going to see anytime soon, but all ideas have an infancy period.
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