Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

All the different ways of solving the shelter problem. To be static or mobile? Roots, legs, or wheels?
white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by white belt »

Before this turns into an urban vs rural , keep in mind not all public transit is equal. For example, in the US traveling by bus is less energy efficient per passenger mile than traveling by car or truck. This is in part because buses are almost never near 100% capacity, so the most of the time you’re using a behemoth vehicle to shuttle around a handful of passengers.

Similar topics have been covered before. Search “streetcar suburb”.

ralfy
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Jul 23, 2022 5:44 pm

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by ralfy »

WFJ wrote:
Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:10 pm
Peak oil falls into the same category as Population Bomb, Sharknado, Global Warming and Climate Change, 0 science, but 100% confidence by the "scientists" making the predictions.

Ignoring the statistical issues with the 40+ peak oil declarations made over the past 50 years, all from "scientist" and all 100% wrong, the basic definition of some oil related terms is required, the most important being "Known Recoverable". Known Recoverable is a price dependent measure indicating how much oil can be feasibly removed at current prices. At $10/barrel, the Known Recoverable is quite small and mostly in Saudi, when oil is at $200/barrel, the known recoverable is MASSIVE. Any estimate of Peak Oil ignores this basic fact in the oil markets, takes 5 seconds to find and reveals most Peak Oil zealots aren't interested in providing information, but just "fear porn".

MASSIVE new oil reserves are being found in TEXAS, so imagine how many reserves are located in the rest of the US and the rest of the world and you get an idea of the abundance of this resource. An Petro engineer explained that there are four boxes, known recoverable, known unrecoverable, unknown recoverable and unknown unrecoverable. The two 'unknown' boxes were the largest, meaning we haven't even come close to identifying 1/3 of oil reserves which will currently last a few hundred years.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/na ... /94013292/

Saying above, there is a high probability of peak oil, but it won't be because the resource is depleted but the human capital to remove, transport and process oil for plastic cars and plastic wind turbine blades is falling. The entire supply chain of the energy and plastics market is threatened as it requires thousands of hard working healthy intelligent people to perform the tasks in the energy supply chain and this resource will be diminished hundreds of years before fossil fuel will be available to remove from the ground.
https://jpt.spe.org/petroleum-engineeri ... imes-ahead
Hubbert predicted in the 1950s that U.S. conventional production would peak sometime after 1970. That's what happened.

In the same report, he predicted that world conventional production would start peaking after 1995. In 1976, he argued that the peak moved by 10 years because of the 1973 oil shock, to after 2005.

In 2005, the IEA argued that world conventional production would not peak for two decades. In 2008, it conducted a world survey of oil fields. In 2010, it acknowledged that world conventional production entered a plateau after 2005. Hubbert was right again.

In 2010, BP reported that the industry was now resorting to unconventional production, and the EIA argued that that would peak as well because depletion rates are high.

Some more points:

World oil production per capita peaked back in 1979.

Technically recoverable reserves are not the same as economically recoverable ones. That's why the world economy has been resorting to unconventional production even though there are 400 years' worth of oil underground.

When oil price has to go up in order to get more oil, then that's a sign of peak oil. The same goes for energy returns and even capex. That has tripled in exchange for new oil production rate that has been halved, which is why the BIS estimates that the industry now has something like $2.5 trillion in debt.

sky
Posts: 1726
Joined: Tue Jan 04, 2011 2:20 am

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by sky »

Electric motors are lighter, simpler, cheaper, longer lasting, quieter and require less maintenance than an internal combustion engine of a similar power output. As battery chemistry improves, the electric vehicle will take over the passenger vehicle market for economic reasons related to the cost to manufacture and maintain the vehicle. The difference in cost related to fuel is significant as well.

The internal combustion engine powered passenger vehicle will not be able to compete on a cost basis with electric passenger vehicles.

Here is an entertaining video showing the complexity of a simple internal combustion engine built using the technology level of about the year 1950.

https://youtu.be/gJx4Ze-j348

ralfy
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Jul 23, 2022 5:44 pm

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by ralfy »

EVs have lower energy returns and quantity because of energy density issues:

https://insideevs.com/news/398814/energ ... t-problem/

and that includes factoring in efficiency.

That's why fossil fuels are even needed for mining, manufacturing, and shipping EV components.

white belt
Posts: 1452
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 12:15 am

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by white belt »

There still is a lot of room to improve fuel efficiency in modern ICE vehicles. Just look at all of the efficiency gains in the hypermiling community. 50+ MPG average is typical with simple DIY modifications, so professionally manufactured solutions would likely provide a lot more efficiency. Some of these innovations came about 50 years ago but were never implemented in the USA because oil prices stabilized.

Here are some examples:

-regenerative braking (already implemented on hybrid vehicles)

-more aerodynamic vehicle designs (flat rims, boat tails, paneling to cover seams, vehicles that are lower to the ground, lower drag tires, etc many of which are already used by truckers)

-more efficient engine designs (a cruise control that mimics pulse/glide and shuts off the engine when gliding would greatly improve highway MPG)

-smaller vehicles

-more programs that incentivize carpooling and/or disincentivize solo driving

TLDR: For various cultural and economic reasons, modern cars are not designed to maximize fuel efficiency.

ralfy
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Jul 23, 2022 5:44 pm

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by ralfy »

The same applies to renewable energy, etc., but the room is limited. Overall, the world economy has high energy demands:

https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/howmuchenergy/

We have to almost triple energy output worldwide just to meet basic needs and middle class conveniences of the current world population, plus provide returns on investment, reverse diminishing returns not only in oil but in mineral production, and ensure capital for even more economic growth of a growing population.

The point about diminishing returns is very important because what affects oil also affects minerals, and doubly so if up to 70 pct of mining equipment require fossil fuels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE

By diminishing returns, we're looking at increasing amounts of energy (and material resources and money) to get decreasing amounts of oil and minerals.

For example, in the oil industry, we've seen a tripling in capex in exchange for new oil extraction rate down by half:

https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/e ... ey-drivers

chenda
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Location: Nether Wallop

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by chenda »

WFJ wrote:
Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:10 pm
...Global Warming and Climate Change, 0 science, but 100% confidence by the "scientists" making the predictions.
You're not doing your credibility any favours here hun.

clark
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2022 6:30 pm

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by clark »

WFJ has mentioned "Sharknado" so many times in different threads that I had to look it up because I thought that it was a real thing that scientists were worried about. Silly me...

prudentelo
Posts: 173
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2022 8:55 am

Re: Re-Visiting Peak Oil after the Fracking boom

Post by prudentelo »

Oil does not have significance it did in 1950s.

Peak oil is more problem for fake countries that lived on digging up (or rather expropriating and then hiring Europeans/Americans to do actual work) "free gold" lying on their territory than technological leading nations. THey will continue to produce oil jsut as more "normal product" with "normal profit" than "magic money fountain mega profit" - like most industries in their nation.

In worse case of very high prices, Japan is good example of fully first world - more advanced than West in some ways - country that can operate full transport network on just electric trains and bicycles. Not the only possibility.

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