The Truth About Oil

[oldnndway]

I thought this was an interesting read.

from Front Page Magazine
by Vasko Kohlmayer

According the Energy Information Administration as of January 2007 there was more than 1.3 trillion barrels of proved crude oil on earth. Even if this were all the oil on the planet there would be no immediate danger of shortages, because at the current rate of consumption – roughly 85 million barrels a day – this supply would last for more than 40 years.

But the 1.3 trillion in these so-called proved reserves refers only to a tiny fraction of earth’s oil, designating only that portion which can be extracted under current ‘economic and operating conditions.’ As it happens, this figure grows with each decade and usually dramatically so.

In 1882, for instance, there were 95 million barrels of proved petroleum reserves. This number jumped to 4.5 billion in 1926 and then to 10 billion in 1932. In 1944 the quantity stood at 20 billion. In 1950 it leaped to 100 billion and in 1980 it was 648 billion. In 1993 the world’s proved reserves grew to 999 billion, and today they stand at 1.3 trillion barrels.

These figures show that our ever-increasing consumption has not over the years reduced the pool of available oil. In fact, the exact opposite is the case – each successive year we have more of it than ever before. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, mankind’s oil supplies are not getting depleted, but they keep continually expanding.

There are several reasons for this. New exploration and advancements in surveying techniques in particular result in fresh finds almost every year.

We have seen a dramatic instance of this at the end of last year when a massive reservoir was discovered in the Tupi sector off the coast of Brazil. Estimated to hold some 8 billion barrels of recoverable crude it was the second largest find in the last 20 years. Two months later an even greater deposit was located nearby which may hold as much as 30 billion barrels. If confirmed, the field would be the third biggest on the planet, behind only the Ghawar in Saudi Arabia and the Burgan in Kuwait. Many scientists are now convinced that intense exploration fuelled by high prices will yield comparable discoveries in other places of the globe.

Adding appreciably to the proved reserves is the continual perfecting of drilling techniques. This makes it possible to tap deposits which because of their depth or geological environment were off limits only a few years ago. Today’s equipment can perform mind-boggling feats of horizontal drilling and there are oil rigs capable of reaching 35,000 feet under the surface, about double of what the previous generation could do.

Rising prices also make available oil which was previously considered unrecoverable commercially, because for whatever reason the extraction cost per barrel exceeded the price it could fetch on the market. With every jump in price, however, more and more of such oil is brought up as its production becomes profitable.

Finally, improvements in extraction processes make it possible to more fully utilize currently harvested reservoirs. Due to technical and economic limitations, normally only a portion of an oilfield can be recovered (it is this part that is referred to as the ‘proved’ reserve). A few decades ago the average oil recovery rate from reservoirs was 20%, but thanks to technological progress this rate is nearing 40% today.

It is the combination of these factors that accounts for the fact that more and more is added every year to mankind’s stock of crude oil. This in turn results in a seemingly paradoxical outcome. Even as our consumption increases with each passing year, the projected depletion point keeps moving further out into the future.

[annabella1]

Yes I am going to be rich I discovered oil today, a great supply too it was coming through the cement in my drive way right where I park my car ------ Oh wait a minute NEVER MIND.

[Olduvai]

We will never totally run out because we will never be able to get it all out of the ground.

Former US Energy Secretary Dr James Schlesinger seems to think that we have hit "peak oil". And with oil pushing $125 a barrel today I would agree.

http://www.energybulletin.net/34868.html

"In the keynote speech at the first day of an oil depletion conference hosted by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in Cork, Schlesinger said that the oil industry executives now privately concede that the world faces an imminent oil production peak, and argued that a recent report by the US oil industry grouping the National Petroleum Council constituted "a backdoor admission that in the next decade or two we face a moment of truth".

In a wide-ranging interview with Lastoilshock.com, Dr Schlesinger - who was also Defence Secretary and CIA Director - explains why he thinks "the battle is over, the peakists have won", and discusses the delusions of US energy policy, Iraq, Iran and $100 oil."



Theres more, go and read it all.

[Olduvai]

Army Corps of Engineers is taking peak oil seriously

http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

The GAO is taking it seriously

http://www.bartlett.house.gov/uploadedfiles/GAOCrudeOil.pdf

And the Department of Energy is taking it seriously.
(The Hirsch Report)
http://www.hilltoplancers.org/stories/hirsch0502.pdf.

[pooter]

Are these the same people that have been saying that the Earth is going to warm up because of humans, just as soon as it gets over this "natural" cooling cycle ?

[shingletownwalt]

It doesn't matter how much oil is available as long as the dollar keeps losing value the price of oil will keep going up. I just read a report that speculates $200 bbl by 2010. That would mean about $6.00 a gal in a year and a half. Well maybe the gas-tax holiday will solve the problem.

[Stephen_B]

It doesn't matter how much oil is in the ground. *We'll never know exactly how much is down there anyways unless we could all go down there like moles and look around. *Reserve figures are whatever the authority in charge *(be it USGS, OPEC, whomever) wants to say it is. *What *does* matter is how many bbls a day we can get out of the ground on a daily basis, and that number, despite all the fancy drilling and recovery technology, has been stuck for several years now at around 85 million bbls/day all while worldwide demand continues to grow.

Of course there's still lots of oil down in the rocks. *Even the lightest, most liquid oil is still fairly goey and won't easily move through rock. *What matters is what you can get out and get out fast. *The father of Peak Oil theory, geologist M. King Hubbert, showed that even at the point of maximum oil production, at least half of the original oil is still in the ground. *So what? *We don't use the oil in the ground, but rather use the stuff we can bring to the surface, and that gets much more difficult for that second half of the oil.

It's kind of like having a billion dollars in the bank but with a daily withdrawal limit of $100. *If your bills and lifestyle require $200 a day, you're out of luck.

All these "massive" oil finds in Montana, Brazil are not all that impressive when you look at how low the daily flow rates are (Montana/Dakota) or how many years we'll have to wait for it to start flowing, if ever (Brazil)

Peak Oil is here. *It means you have to share declining oil with a growing world population. * Get over it.

I wouldn't put too much faith in articles appearing on sites like frontpagemag.com either. *From the looks of it, they'd publish any piece of raw meat to attract a certain radical fringe element to their abundant web advertiser ads.

[Stephen_B]

What is this stuff, by the way, about the earth cooling? *Every thing I've seen on multiple sources says that several of the last few years have been quite warm. *I know that here in New England, we've had a warmer than normal winter (as measured against the trailing 30 avg. heating degree days) for at least 4 years running now.

Just because the conservative pundits are saying that the world is cooling using a few hand-picked low temperature records doesn't make a cooling trend. *Weather stations say we're still warming. *

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=895&tstamp=200801

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=895&tstamp=200801

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116114150.htm

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2772.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101419.htm


All of those links I Googled up on "warmest years record" basically say that the most recent years have been hot with some minor differences between years.

The only references I could find to current cooling trend of any stature turn up on The Washington Times.

There is no "cooling cycle" to get over. *Let's not lie and make one up just because we don't like the facts reported by reputable scientists and meteorologists.

[kawalekm]

Hi Stephen
Actually, there was a slight cooling trend back in the 1950s to 1960s. I don't know how much it was, but was significant enough that a few people started talking about a new ice age about to begin. I can remember several science fiction novels written in that time period depicting survival in the coming icy world.

But, fast forward to 2008 and the trillions of tons of CO2 in the air, and we can forget about a new ice age. That is unless you've watched the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". I myself am planning our homestead with warmer temperatures and less water available.

The good news is that I think global warming will be a self correcting problem. Since we've reached peak oil now, that means the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere is likely to go back down over time. The bad news is that it will take hundreds of years for this to happen and most of the human population will have died off before then.

I've largely given up on the idea of trying to convince people that they should be more conservative, or plan for change. They're much more concerned about their god-given right to hop into their SUV and drive over to K-Mart to buy a single tube of toothpaste!

[WRTN]

Here is a different take on the oil issue for folks with DSL or high speed internet.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147

[Stephen_B]

Lindsey Williams is nothing but an author desperate to drum up book sales....Seen him, heard that.

Even if there was all that extra oil in Alaska, trying to get it down the Alaskan Pipeline at a measly 1.5M bbl/day max while the world is gulping down 85M bbl/day is what the challenge is.

Again, politics and conspiracy theories are just that, and Peak Oil facts (world oil discoveries peaked ~1965, annual world consumption exceeding annual world oil discoveries since ~1982 (26 years ago!)) are pesky things. *Mr. Williams is selling snake oil and anybody who thinks that The Powers That Be could be "sitting" on all that extra Alaskan oil (beyond what the Arctic Refuge could hold) for all these years deserves to be fleeced by his sales pitch.

If there were billions of $$ to be made off of this "hidden" oil, the oil would come out of hiding. *Of this we can be sure.

It's called denial. *Four years ago when I started talking to friends and family about Peak Oil, there was lots of denial, excuses, alternate oil supplies, conspiracy theories. *Now most of these folks understand. *Eventually y'all will too, though it might take $200 oil, $7 gasoline, food shortages, heating oil shortages, interstate repairs too costly to consider (asphalt is oil, diesel is used to power construction equipment.) * *

Eventually everybody will see that this isn't the work of the greedy oil companies, - or the environmentalists - *or the government. *No, it's the fault of nearly 300 million in the US, (and increasingly Asia) driving big cars and SUVs, shipping a bazillion tons of consumer crap to all the big box stores to buy - *then throw away, or jetting strawberries halfway around the world to market, and expecting to extend this energy-intensive lifestyle to another billion+ earthlings all the while expecting an infinite supply of oil and gas to be there to power it.

It's akin to something somebody once said about the US: *"We can count on Americans to do [or believe] the right thing - after they have exhausted all the other possibilities."

The truth about oil is that the easy oil is gone. *People *need* to understand this and move away from all the tinfoil hat stuff, or they'll spend the rest of their lives in futility while they try to conduct their life affairs in a manner that just does not fit the new oil-constrained paradigm we are now entering.

[hillsidedigger]

Roughly 800 billion barrels of oil has been produced and burned during the last century to put that 1.3 trillion barrels of proven extractable reserves in perspective.

Most of that 800 billion barrels was burned by only a couple of hundred million Americans.

Now, there are about 2 billion people in the world that can afford to use lots-o-oil.

40 years? Not really. Obviously, the easy oil was taken first. What remains will be increasingly difficult and expensive to bring to the consumer. I look for declining total production inspite of increasing demand with prices to reach such a level that few can afford it with the 1st. world people having no choice but to adapt to the lifestyle of 3rd. world people.

[HockeyFan]

THe difference is that we have greater consumption worldwide than ever before; and in addition, we have more wars around the world than ever before, and it can sometimes be more difficult to move oil and other goods around while wars are going on.
Plus, there's just not enough refineries to turn all this oil into gasoline.
And then, of course, there is no government oversight of the oil companies that are willing to manipulate conditions in order to make bigger profits.
We just have a lot of things going on now that we never had before.

[Olduvai]

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/world-oil/roberts-text/1

World Oil
World oil demand is surging as supplies approach their limits.
By Paul Roberts
Photograph by Randy Olson
In 2000 a Saudi oil geologist named Sadad I. Al Husseini made a startling discovery. Husseini, then head of exploration and production for the state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, had long been skeptical of the oil industry's upbeat forecasts for future production. Since the mid-1990s he had been studying data from the 250 or so major oil fields that produce most of the world's oil. He looked at how much crude remained in each one and how rapidly it was being depleted, then added all the new fields that oil companies hoped to bring on line in coming decades. When he tallied the numbers, Husseini says he realized that many oil experts "were either misreading the global reserves and oil-production data or obfuscating it."