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Era of Cheap, Easy Oil is Over, Warns Study
The world could start to run out of oil in the next ten years, sparking soaring energy prices and a rush for even more polluting fossil fuels, an influential new study by the UK Energy Research Council has warned.
The exact date of "peak oil" - when the amount of oil being pumped out of the ground every day reaches its highest point before beginning an inexorable decline - has been hotly debated for decades. Environmentalists have tended to warn oil could run out at any moment, while oil companies insist there are plently more oil fields yet to be discovered.
Oil supplies could start running out before 2020, according to a new study. (Photo: Getty Images) The most recent estimation from the International Energy Agency, that advises Governments around the world, said conventional oil would not peak until after 2030.
However an authoriative new study from the Government-funded UK Energy Research Council called this prediction "at best optimistic and at worst implausible". The peer-reviewed research looked at 500 studies from around the world and took into account the difficulty of accessing new oil fields as well as growing demand. It predicted oil will begin running out before 2030 and there is a "significant risk" peak oil will be reached before 2020.
"In our view, forecasts which delay a peak in conventional oil production until after 2030 are at best optimistic and at worst implausible. And given the world's overwhelming dependence on oil and the time required to develop alternatives, 2030 isn't far away," said the report's lead author Steve Sorrell. "The concern is that rising oil prices will encourage the rapid development of carbon-intensive alternatives which will make it difficult or impossible to prevent dangerous climate change."
Robert Gross, Head of Technology and Policy Assessment at UKERC, said as soon as oil begins to run out it will make energy more expensive, sparking a knock on effect on industry and economies around the world. Petrol prices would rise and long distance travel become more expensive.
"The age of easy and cheap oil is coming to an end," he said. "It doesn't suddenly come to an end, obviously it's a gradual change, but we're moving away from easy and cheap oil to increasingly difficult and expensive oil."
At the moment oil is around £44 ($70) per barrel after peaking at around £92 ($147) per barrel earlier in the year during the height of the economic crisis.
Dr Gross said the spectre of peak oil should encourage Governments to invest in more energy-efficient vehicles such as electric cars, renewable energy like wind or solar and improving energy efficiency in industry and homes.
But he said there was a risk that instead the world will start to look at even more intensive forms of fossil fuels, therefore producing more carbon emisions and causing "catastrophic climate change". Alternatives include heating tar sands to produce oil at huge cost both environmentally and financially.
"The danger is high oil prices push us into high carbon resources just as much as they might help push us towards renewables," he said.
"The challenge for policy makers is to make sure, on a global scale, that that isn't the response to more difficult and expensive oil."
The world produces around 85 million barrels of oil every day. It is estimated this could rise to more than 100 million barrels per day before declining.
Oil companies like BP claim billions more barrels are availabe in new oil fields discovered in the Gulf of Mexico.
However Mr Sorrell said these new supplies are extremely difficult to access and will only delay peak oil by a few weeks or even days.
Even if the new fields are exploited, he said the world needs to move away from oil in order to stop global warming.
But Mr Sorrell said the UK Government had no contingency plans for oil peaking before 2020.
"If these problems are ignored and we do not make these changes ahead of time, we are heading for trouble," he warned.
The IEA is due to release its latest report on peak oil this November, just before the world meets in Copenhagen to decide a new deal on climate change. The report will be a key influence on whether the rich world is willing to agree to set targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, while also helping poor countries to switch to a low carbon economy.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change is currently considering the UKERC report.
"We are already well aware of the significant challenges for investment in future oil production and that there is a role for Governments to play in reducing demand for fossil fuels," a spokesman said. "Our climate change, energy efficiency and energy security policies outlined in the UK low carbon transition plan are not only reducing the UK's carbon emissions, but are consistent with the need to reduce our use of fossil fuels."
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55 Comments so far
Show AllI'm ready for hemp and algae for oil. How about you?
All that we (my partner and I, not the generalized "we") need to do is drive down the price of oilgae to $1.50/gallon, a reasonable target, and the age of petroleum becomes as dead as the whale oil industry.
Conventional oil reached its highest output in 2005. The peak for the easy stuff is already past.
Ya beat me to it! I was going to mention the peak annual output was 2005, and if I remember right the peak monthly output was July of last year. So it looks like we are bumping along at the top of the bell curve right now.
Strap your snowboard on real tight for the ride down the back side of the bell curve. I suspect it's going to be a rough ride.
"and a rush for even more polluting fossil fuels,"
What do these idiots think the tar sands of Canada are? Or the oil shale in the Midwest that brave kid risked jail to prevent being developed? There is already a rush for them.
Considering the damage that we have been able to do thanks to cheap, abundant energy, I am hoping any efforts to find replacements for oil (i.e. algae, hemp, etc.) are failures. We've had quite enough energy pollution as it is.
Hoping for failure due to energy pollution is not a solution. Guess who benefits with that idea? Hint, not us ordinary folks.
If you think there is a good outcome to further over-abundant supply and usage of energy, you are deluding yourself. There is no benefit to people, rich or poor, powerful or impotent, if we make the world uninhabitable, which is what we have been doing with our energy usage so far.
Durring the 2008-09 financial recession (actually: depression with over 100 bank failures; but nobody's honest anymore) oil exploration was suddenly curtailed/shelved. To keep the price above $40/barrel even though there was no demand, supertankers anchored off shore in Louisiana and Texas, refusing to offload their cargo so as to artificially keep the price up.
We may have passed peak oil, but I maintain it is an artificial peak. The Spratly Islands in the South China Sea alone have more projected oil than Saudia Arabia but those islands are contested by five countries. The so-called fuel free market is a scam engineered by a cartel to eliminate competition and fix prices. I've been told we were "running out of oil" now for forty years. We haven't even tapped antartica or most of Siberia yet, not to mention the Caspian Sea.
There is no real "shortage" of oil. There is an excess of greenhouse emissions however, and we should outlaw the private automobile for starters. Switch to mandatory subsidized residential solar in the southern climes (we do this for dangerous nuclear plants don't we?) Legalize all hemp and licence babies.
It is the only way if we want to endure. Or else resign ourselves to a mass extinction event this century.
TJ
When the temp gets to 60 degrees in the shade and we're choking, I guess we'll be told there's a shortage of air condition freon and supplemental oxygen. What a scam! Big Corp Capitalism does not work imho. We've got to break the Fortune 500 into the Poverty 5 million.
The age of cheap oil is over, and if you think algae or hemp or wind or solar or thermal or anything else is going to fill that gap, you are going to be disappointed. For so many reasons that is not going to happen. The party is over folks- the rest of the oil is harder to get and so more and more expensive. At some point, it will cost a barrel of oil to get a barrel of oil and at that point they'll stop trying to get it.
Time to simply learn to use a lot less. And, if your community is not involved in this kind of planning, you should consider getting it started. Don't waste your time frantically searching for alternatives, let that fantasy go and start preparing to powerdown. We have little time and much to do.
With hemp and algae, there's no drilling for oil involved. You may not get as much out of it but both are renewable sources of energy. I think that we have to both combine the alternatives and turn to conservation and/or fuel efficiency as much as possible. One without the other is unsustainable.
You are right- we'll need all the clean energies (Not nuclear) that we can get. But our greatest work, our main strategy by far needs to be learning how to get our basic needs met with much less energy. Then we can look at how to make the energy we do use go a lot further with efficiencies. THEN we look at alternatives for the final gap.
Its so tempting to think that solar and others will allow us to continue to live much as we have been, and that is a BIG mistake, I believe.
Chomp.
I really must thank you for being the pie in the sky techo-fetishist who trots out the old canard of human ingenuity creating a 'new' energy source out of whole cloth.
Do some basic research on the topic, find out the energy inputs of the process to get any 'new' energy source off the ground. Investigate what EROEI means, and why it is a losing battle.
Otherwise you are looking completely clueless.
As to your completely useless fantasy of the wireless power satellites, the human race no longer has the physical orbital lift capacity or the economic ability to undertake such a pointless mission. The satellite based GPS navigation system is already on a watchlist for catastrophic collapse. The International Space Station is expected to be 'de-orbited' within the next five years. And the US *STILL* has no replacement for the aging and increasingly dangerous shuttle fleet.
The US has a replacement to the aging and increasingly dangerous shuttle fleet.
It is called the Falcon9 heavy lift launch vehicle and Dragon Spacecraft, (planned to replace the Shuttle between 2010 and 2014 as the ISS supply vehicle.)
By the way, it is expected to cost 1/10 of the first phase of NASA's Orion project.
The cost of launching 1KG to low orbit today is about $3,200, compared to more than $10,000 with the Shuttle, and it is expected to go down to $1,000 in the next few years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mid-heavy_lift_launch_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch_systems
I think the Space exploration dark-ages (which started after the cancelation of the Apollo program) will be over soon.
Riiiiiiight.
Keep dreaming your happy shiny techno-fascist 'Star Trek (TM)' brand dreams...
Actually Star Trek (the original series from the 1960s) had a lot of progressive ideas.
A world without money and without capitalism.
All humanity is united.
No racial discrimination. (It's the first TV show showing a white guy and a black woman kissing.)
Techno – yes
Fascist – hardly.
@Letto - Fascist yes. Star Trek (TM) depicts a society where an elite military organization (Star Fleet) dominates the governing of sovereign nations and demands constant 'exploration' for colonies to provide resources the ruling class.
Here is just one of the many many comments that found Star Trek (TM) to be Fascist or hopelessly Utopian:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008328.php
Have fun...
Chomp- you are living in lala land. We have been able to be very inventive the last 150 years because we had lots of cheap energy to do it with...modern technology is a child of the oil age. The sun's energy is extremely diffuse as sunlight, it took a LOT of plants a LOT of years to turn the sun's light by photosynthesis and decay, into oil, which is simply the final product. Plants have already maximized the energy from the sun, and oil is the concentrate, if you will, of that energy.
Solar panels in space? You've been reading too many sci-fi stories- the realities of researching/developing/manufacturing/shipping/building ships to put them out in space/having the liquid fuel to get the ships into space...well, you can see that would be a long way off even if we did have unlimited raw materials to build them with and even if we did have the promise of many more years of cheap oil- which we don't. Even if we DID have years of cheap oil left, the C02 emissions created by all this manufacturing/shipping/blasting into space/etc. would add enormously to climate change problems. Or, you would be assuming that even with more expensive oil the economy would continue to support such activity...very far fetched all around.
I propose that having to use a LOT LESS energy is not pessimistic at all, simply realistic. What is so difficult about just saying, OK, I guess we really do need (for several excellent reasons) to learn how to get by with a lot less energy? Let me guess...its the stuff! No really- I understand it is a big shock when we really let this sink in...it IS depressing. Its also f-in scary. But you can stay paralyzed by it only so long, and then you just get up and do what needs to be done.
Actually Oil is quite CHEAP in relative terms. The US dollar is basically without value yet one needs only 70 of them for a barrel :).
You can buy more oil with an ounce of Gold then you could 5 years ago.
The stock market in the US is another example. Folk suggesting it has strength as it pushes near 10000 again.
The fact is you need 1/5th of the same amount of Gold to buy up one share of each company in the DJIA that you would have needed in 2000.
So when you talk about pushing gasoline to 1.50 a gallon, how much of that reflects it reflecting the VALUE of a diminishing resource, versus the Devaluing of the dollar that is ongoing?
The dollar may be devaluing, but my $1.50/gallon target for algae biodiesel (a bit more MPG per gallon than gasoline) is based mostly on the hourly cost of American labor, which unlike the euro and oil futures is not moving up like crazy. Not yet at least.
Indeed. But it would be interesting to compare how many hours an American needed to work in 1888 then 1920 then 1960 then 1990 and then today to earn enough to buy a Gallon of fuel Oil.
I expect we would be surprised and without researching the matter I am going to guess LESS labor needed today then most of those other dates listed.
And so I add to this. Did a quick google and found this.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-05-31-gas-prices-edit_x.htm
>>We can compare gas prices over time by calculating the cost of 1,000 gallons of gas purchased at the average price in a given year, as a percentage of per-capita disposable income in that year. For example, in 1935, when gas prices were 17 cents per gallon and annual disposable income was $466, the cost of 1,000 gallons of gas was 36% of average disposable income. Today, it takes less than 7% of our disposable income to buy 1,000 gallons of gas at the current $2.10 a gallon. The "cheap" gas of the '60s and '70s cost about 12% as a share of income.
>>A typical American working today at the average hourly wage of $17.50 works about seven minutes to buy a gallon of gas for $2.10. In contrast, the average worker in the 1930s worked more than 20 minutes to buy a gallon of gas. During the 1940s, it took 12 minutes of work. During the 1950s, it took about 10 minutes per gallon.
Now Obviously "average hourly wage of 17.50" might not apply in the cases of many Americans who will work less then that but you can use this to help make calculations as in if you make HALF that in wages you still work 14 minutes to make a gallon as opposed to earning an avergae hourly wage in 1930 and working 20 minutes.
No matter how you cut it..in RELATIVE terms it still very cheap and especially in the USA.
I guess we must resort to Thermo Nuclear Power.
Sunshine and wind are free and non polluting...
And you acquire the uranium for the reactors... how?
Think about that for a moment. Think about the machines that will extract the uranium ore and what will power them, and what will power the facilities to process the uranium into fuel pellets. Think about how much uranium there is in the world, and how many countries will be trying to do the exact same thing you propose, using a resource even more limited than oil, and even more difficult and dangerous to extract and process. And then you have to store the waste products for 500 000 years. Minimum.
In power intensive, monitored, totally secure facilities.
For 500 000 years.
Think about it.
Galen,
I think Humba knows that. He's being sarcastic. He keeps me in stitches most of the time with his one-liners!
TJ
Humbaba is not being sarcastic. There is a clean, renewable, Thermo Nuclear Power, that can provide all of humanity's energy needs. It’s called the Sun.
The amount of solar energy hitting Earth is about 20,000 times more than all humanity’s current energy consumption.
http://www.ecoworld.com/fuels/how-much-solar-energy-hits-earth.html
Solar panels require materials and minerals that are in short supply. Some of which are quite toxic.
To make a solar panel requires more energy than it will EVER produce. And solar panels are limited to certain latitudes and restricted to an extent by the time of the year as well. And they don't work worth a damn at night.
They are what is referred to as an 'intermittent' power source.
They also have a limited (20 year) lifespan before they degrade to the point that they MUST be replaced. With all the attendant problems cited above.
If you want 24/7 electricity you also ABSOLUTELY require a large bank of storage batteries (more energy and resources used) and inverters/converters (yet more energy and resources).
We are committed to a downward energy slope. How steep the slope will be is what we have to determine...
Current technology solar panels is not the only way of generating electricity from solar energy.
How about large mirrors which boil a solvent which turns a turbine?
How about solar ponds?
How about parabolic dish and Stirling engine system?
Don't think on today's technology only. Think of what we may have in 10 years. (If enough effort and funding will go toward green energy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy
You are still not acknowledging the compounding problems of energy and resource inputs into the systems you propose.
Would you want a boiling solvent anywhere near where you live? What is is made from?
Parabolic dish are even more prone to latitude than selenium based solar cells, and need even more raw material with greater inputs. Stirling engines are little more that classroom curiosities.
What technology we will have in ten years will, in all likelihood, be some of what we had in the 1950's. And will mostly be available only to the remaining obscenely wealthy.
We are already seeing the effects of a MINOR energy hiccup from last year (the near riot in Detroit yesterday over the slim possibility that *some* of the city's poor *might* get help with their bills). The present economic meltdown was triggered in part by last summer's record high oil prices.
And I have a very low target for California nonphotovoltaic solar electricity too. I'm quite an inventor.
Once again the hemp and algae crowd trot out their proposed panacea.
Once again I will point out the many authors (Kuntsler, Heinberg, et al) who have proven time and again, no alternative energy system, or combination of systems will ever meet more than a VERY small fraction of the energy density that oil provides.
The production of the alternative energy systems all CONSUME oil and other green house gas producing hydrocarbons.
For those of you who are looking for a cheap, self reproducing, minimally polluting energy source may I suggest looking in the mirror.
Human (and other animal) muscle power is almost free, self reproducing through sex, portable, adaptive, and EVERYWHERE!
It was human muscles that built the pyramids all over the world, created the roads of Ancient Rome, and tilled the ground to feed the vast majority of human history.
Yes, going back to it will be dirty, difficult, back breaking labor. And many would rather starve than lift a hand to do for themselves. Many will. Many will die.
The question is: WIll you be one of them? Or will you be one of the ones who accepts the challenge and works to build a new world using the techniques and technology of the VERY old?
Relying only on human muscles can't sustain a population of 7 billion people on this planet.
You need fertilizer, agriculture machinery, and mechanized transportation delivery system to feed such a large population.
The solution must come from rentable energy sources (Solar, Wind, Geothermal), and better energy storage technologies. - Cheap clean electricity and better batteries to run our electric cars.
Letto - the high efficiency batteries and electric motors the techno-fetishists wax poetically about as the saving grace of the alternative energy lifestyle are dependent upon rare-earth metals that only have one major source:
China.
The electric car is dead, dead, DEAD. It requires too much oil in the form of plastic and plastic based components to save weight, as well as the rare-earth metals for the batteries and motors.
Solar, wind, and geothermal all have the same base problem, that of requiring massive inputs of fossil fuel dependent energy to get an intermittent output. They all require using already dwindling resources.
The so-called 'Green Revolution' that boosted the use of petrochemical based fertilizers and pesticides and vastly increased the use of oil powered agricultural machinery also led to the perils of GMO monoculture crops and the agribusiness corporations that want to monopolize ALL world seed stocks.
But simple gardening tools and techniques feed many people. It was those self same tools and techniques that have fed the vast majority of human history as I noted above. WWII style 'victory gardens' and hobby farms are already coming back into use. Check out the book 'Squarefoot Gardening' by Mel Bartholomew for ideas and techniques.
You're right. Human muscle power can't sustain the present number of humans on this planet.
A large scale human die off IS in the cards.
We will be forced by environmental and resource scarcity imperatives to live in smaller communities, closer to the ground, making do with far fewer material comforts, recycling and re-using many of the left-overs from the previous technological culture.
By way of example, Havana, Cuba is a large (relatively) modern city that is totally self sufficient in food production. So it CAN be done.
I (and my family) are already preparing to do so.
What about you?
I'm a great believer in human ingenuity and in future technologies, such as Google’s goal of making renewable energy cheaper than coal.
RE < C
http://www.google.org/rec.html
Not everyone shares your optimism of 'human ingenuity'.
Check this review of Homer-Dixon's 'Ingenuity Gap'.
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v9n2/gerrie_rool.html
Homer-Dixon makes a good argument that human ingenuity actually peaked in 1878, and has been declining ever since.
His cogent observations that the number of patents has drastically declined, and Nobel prize winners are getting older and older because they need an ever expanding data base to come up with the next 'A-Ha!' moment.
Where did Homer-Dixon get his data that "the number of patents has drastically declined"?
A quick search shows that since 1840, the number of patent application filed per year is growing up exponentially.
http://www.athenaalliance.org/aevents/patent_reform.html
As for your claim that "Nobel prize winners are getting older" - So does life expectancy.
Ever since I discovered the peak oil meme a few years back, I've wondered if the abolition of slavery didn't ultimately originate with readily available fossil fuel resources. After all, the two seem to happen at around the same time, and who needs slaves when you've got hundreds of horses under the hood?
Which brings me to my point: Few would rather starve than engage their own muscle power, but I can think of an entire class of people who would have no qualms about enslaving the rest of us to do their work for them. The Great Pyramid and the Great Wall weren't built by the pharaohs and emperors, after all. Is it really that hard to imagine slavery being reinstated once cheap, easily extracted fossil fuels are no more?
I think it would do all posting here good to read the following:
http://www.postcarbon.org/article/our_evanescent_culture
Richard Hienberg is one of the best out there on this subject, and he is well ahead of the curve, with most of his predictions being dead on.
what about straight up water powered vehicles? no emissions, and I saw the thing showcased at a college engineering dept in the DFW area like around a decade ago. I assume you could just filter ocean water. Im sure there are more specifics, bu come on if you can run things on water then the only thing holding that back is big oil, etc
And you power the commercial production water filter with??? And it is made from???
For that matter, what are you building the car from? Where did you get them? How were they processed?
With every layer of production of the required equipment you are consuming energy and raw materials that require their own inputs. It's a vicious downward spiral.
ok so theres morehere about the water powered car thing... full discussion here... http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4271579.html
it seems more like it would further extend the life of a tank of gas which brings us back to still being powered by oil or whatever, bla
If we could convert the hot air put out by politicians, media, and pseudo-science, our energy problems would be over.
Oil already has "peaked", in the sense that demand already outstrips production (which hasn't peaked yet). Oil production cannot increase because new discoveries peaked in the 60s. Technology cannot save us from the simple fact that we're exhausting the base (and much of the costly technology used to boost production from "depleted" fields such as gas injection will only cost more as the price of oil increases since the transport cost of injection gas also goes up). Market collusion for the sake of profit only worsens this problem, but it's not the source of it.
No existing conventional source of power is truly carbon free either. Nuclear leaves behind a huge energy shadow in the mining and original refinement process, even if you assume reprocessing and the use of energy from beta-decay wastes in secondary reactors (steam or otherwise). I don't think I need mention why tar sands (wastes water too) and coal are carbon failures, especially if converted to liquids. Methyl hydrates, even if we figured out how to burn them, are a net carbon contributor. Hydrogen is a secondary fuel (doesn't exist in nature) and cannot be reasonably considered since any conversion process to it loses energy. As someone already mentioned, anything involving semiconductor wafers or parabolic reflectors is likely a net carbon positive so active solar energy (via cells or the new concentrated beams of light) are likely failures. Wind and water are likely the least carbon intensive of these, though have distinct ecological harm (to birds/bats and fish).
Just looking from the side of generating other wastes, all the others are too destructive ecologically to compare to wind, water, and passive solar (though the damage from the first two are significant).
As for algae, although they have double the photosynthetic capacity of any land plant and are far cheaper (plus can be used for bio-remediation), the conversion nto usable fuel, even with thermal depolymerization, will not produce close to enough unless we "domesticate" algae to create certain high-yield strains (because not all algae produce equivalent amounts of carbon, nor is algae common to all areas). This is likely only possible with genetic engineering, inputs of nutrients to ensure optimal growth, and monoculture, which would be a long-term failure.
Hemp is a highly useful and fast growing annual. Not planting it as a substitute for industrial products is foolish. However, to say that it will meet our energy needs is equally unrealistic unless similar tactics from modern agriculture are adopted (which would be a long-term failure).
Don't get me wrong, there are technical solutions, but they do not have the scope of oil and gas. Only when overall consumption (both present and future--hence why population growth needs to halt, preferably without violence) comes down, especially among the rich G15, will CO2 emissions drop. Fairness dictates those who consume the most reduce the most (that is, to the level of the average person), rather than pay someone else to do it for them (carbon credits). If we don't, the planet and/or wars between man will see to it; far more humans will die that way.
There's a company in Europe and Aisia developing vehicles that run on compressed air. That the same compressed air you fill tires with. The Aircar.
my friend bought some shares in that company............
There's a company in Europe and Aisia developing vehicles that run on compressed air. That the same compressed air you fill tires with. The Aircar.
Here is the prick that bursts *that* little fantasy balloon. It's called thermodynamics:
http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/3473
Please it read before you get hot under the collar.
We will never again have an energy source as dense as oil.
I think the air car is exciting too.
Here's a link to an article that I saved from about a year ago:
http://www.almadentimes.com/091108/vehicle.htm
Enjoy.
How much carbon polluting energy is required to compress all that hot air?
Fighting hard for the status quo, are you? All or nothing?
The CEO being interviewed said "Any claims about ‘zero pollution’ depend entirely on the source of the power used to compress the air. If that power source is fossil fuels then the car is still producing carbon emissions. We do not use fossil fuels."
From there, I'll leave it to you to actually read the article.
Assuming that half the oil is gone, It took 150 years to reach this point.
150 years-from the middle of the nineteenth century until now-to bring us to the edge of disaster.
What's the air going to be like if we use the remaining half of the oil in the next 50 years, i.e. three times faster than the first half was used?
A lot of people are going to get very sick. And that's an optimistic appraisal the situation.