UmneyDurak

Whats the point of dragging up this old thread?

jorpe

was searching for what cyclists seem to think about PO.

some_guy282

Thread necromancy!

However, in more serious recent Peak Oil news, you can be certain that we'll be having a crisis in America over this issue in less than 8 years. Probably as short as three. Why? Because Mexico, our second largest importer peaked in 2005. They have the second largest oil field in the world, and it has gone into terminal decline. Last year it's production went down by 20%. At that rate of decline, Mexico will be unable to export oil to us by 2010. That's only three years away! We get more oil from Mexico than we do from Saudi Arabia.

Even if we could find another producer to make up for the oil we are missing from Mexico (unlikely given current global situation with discoveries VS existing declines), Mexico will still be in big trouble over this. Why? 40% of the Mexican government's revenue comes from oil. In as little as three years that will likely all be gone. On top of that they'll have a new expense in having to import oil themselves! What do you think that will do to the country's economy and social services? How many more illegals do you think this will send heading north looking for a better life?

The problem is real. The world isn't coming to an end over night because of it, and to suggest as much is sensationalist. However, the lifestyle based on consumption we've come to enjoy so much here in America is coming to an end soon.

If you're curious about where I got the information on Mexico, check out the interview here with Matt Simons.

Matt Simons interview.

It's on the April 7th show. He's owner of the world's largest energy investment bank. Of course, if you don't want to believe any of this stuff you can just dismiss him as a shill for those greedy oil companies.

some_guy282

A note on oil prices of the recent past, since $50 was feared by the OP three years ago.

Many people (mainly economists) keep saying "If oil prices rise to price X, it will ruin the economy." Starting six or seven years ago, that price was $40 a barrel. Then it was $45, $50, $55, $65, $75... Each time they said prices would never get that high, and if they did it would cause a recession. They've also been continuously predicting oil will go back to "the good old days" of $40 a barrel. It hasn't happened.

I think Simmons mentions it in the above interview, but oil is still unbelievably cheap. At $65 a barrel it translates to 10 cents a cup. How much do people pay for coffee again?? There has been a lot of *****ing and moaning and hand wringing with all the price increases over the years with gasoline, but no one is changing their behavior. That's due to the inelastic nature of oil demand. In the '73 oil crisis prices quadrupled. That was caused by a shortfall in supply of about 7%. I think we're getting about 5% of our oil from Mexico right now, and soon that could be gone. I think in a crunch prices will easily push beyond $100 a barrel before it finally gets high enough to cause a recession and kill demand.

Of course, when the prices collapse there will be a large number of idiots on TV saying "See? At least the price of oil is down and we don't have to worry about that anymore..." And then when the economy kicks up again the prices will come right back with them, until global decline rates get so large prices remain high no matter what the economy is doing.

I've been following Peak Oil closely for three years now (why I ride a bike) and we're right on track for disaster.

le brad

If peak oil is hyped up quackery who benefits from it? McDonalds doesn't sell Peak Oil meals, you can't pick up a Peak Oil Preparedness kit at wal-mart. Sure, maybe a few more solar panels have been sold, but really its not like there is much profit to be made from peak oil. I'm sure all those authors/scientists/speculators are really raking in the cash from the platinum best-sellers they're writing.

some_guy282

The conventional wisdom is that Peak Oil isn't true, and just a way of justifying unfair higher oil prices. Thus, those who are proponents of the theory are other idiots or paid shills of the oil corporations.

SDRider

It always amuses me when people compare the price of oil to the price of mouthwash or a cup of coffee. What's the point? You don't drive yourself to work everyday on 3 gallons of coffee or 3 gallons of mouthwash. Might as well compare it to the price of feather dusters or mouse traps.

BTW-I agree with you 100% that we're heading for disaster.

mwrobe1

The point?

To me, it was blantantly obvious...but it wasn't mentioned by anyone.

Do NOT post on bikeforums while drinking, or shortly after consuming alcohol.

If you must...if you just can't help yourself...post your tirade or drunken logic in Foo...it'll be much more appreciated there.

THAT was the point.

Thanks to all in advance...I'll be here all week, and God willing...will have the chance to impart my wisdom to you folks for many moons. I'm sorry to say I did NOT stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...or save millions on my car insurance (mandatory on topic comment) by switching to Geico.

some_guy282

What's the point? The price demonstrates the value we place on something. Oil is a non renewable resource that is the lifeblood of our entire civilization. It's worth far far more than many other things we place a higher price on. We've practically been giving the stuff away for the entire time we've been pumping it with the prices it's been sold at. The "amusing" comparison is meant to demonstrate just how cheap oil really is.

It wont be cheap anymore on the other side of Hubbert's peak.

jac02000

Well,
I can't wait until gas hits 1.25 or so (thats if the government doesn't come in with a tax break... what tax breaks they provide just steals from the next generation or something else... no free lunch in the universe it seems... if you find one let me know... I like buffet!!!)

its going to be damn funny if gas prices takes its toll and everyone starts btchn about it all.
Who is at fault??? Those that use it.
Primarily those that drive in during rush hour and drive home in it. Idle cars and stop-go traffic. Very very no efficient use of the vehicle. The vehicle is very inefficient in the first place.

Well, I ride all year around. Increase I say... just keep the price of food down (it will be effected as well... I hope they have a damn plan of attack. But, probably not. Governments work day by day.... thats fiscal year to fiscal year... friggen sucks.). Subsidize food not oil! (maybe oil in the winter when we need it). As for now (spriing, summer and fall). Everyone can get off their fat ass and bike into work. And, hopefully every damn employeer accomodating and realizing the need for a change instead of a need for more greed on the planet to fill their own pockets (i.e. big cars, big homes, big bank accounts, big things...).

Frig. probably not. Look at the damage we have done in 300 years or so. We are a young country, yet we have killed fishing stock, polluted many land masses etc...

like little children that just found their excitement.

SDRider

Yeah, it's funny you mention that. Right now I am the only person who uses the shower at work. It's kind of nice but if a few more people start riding I might have to wait in line for it.

adamtki

The best way to fight global warming is to hope that peak oil happens real soon. I say, bring it on! We'll have more bikes and less cars on the road. I'm crossing my fingers for $4/gallon. It sounds expensive, but it's more of a psychological effect.

o-dog

bring it on, eh?

hope you're also prepared to lose your job, start growing your own food, go without a computer, listen only to acoustic music, pump your own groundwater, etc.

FXjohn

b-b-but think how GREEN and happy we'd all be.

wahoonc

I think the threshold for gas prices is going to be a lot higher than that before you see any major disruption. It is going to take $7-$10 a gallon and limited supplies to stop most Americans from driving. Unfortunately it is going to hit the working poor first, which will have a trickle down effect. Joe Suburbia that makes $100k+ a year can probably suck it up and still survive just fine at $4 a gallon, might have to give up a couple of rounds of golf every month and take his kids out of the ritzy private school. But the people that are really going to get smacked are the blue collar and service workers that are living pay check to paycheck and driving the miles to a minimum wage job somewhere, because they can't afford to live in the sprawl near the jobs.

Aaron

doraemonkey

Hey, gas here is already about $7 a gallon, and so far no disruption.... so we could probably go more. Every fill up in my car is at least $100, and there are still traffic jams here, just not as much in the US. Biking to work saves me real money.

What is going to hurt the most is a radical change, people will have to sell their SUVs and change their lifestyles if there is a sudden spike in costs. That is when people complain. But we can adapt to reality look outside the USA for solutions and ways of adapting.

wahoonc

I probably should have qualified my statement as to affecting US drivers. The US is spoiled beyond belief by low fuel taxes and fuel costs. From what I gather the largest difference between a gallon of fuel in Europe and a gallon of fuel in the US is the taxes. I know that as a whole the taxes in Europe are much higher than in the US, but you apparently get more for your money in the public sector, as in mass transit. Eventually the US will have to come around to the European way of thinking or it will suffer drastic economically. It probably will anyway, but that is another issue.

Aaron

Do 'Em Dirty

there's still untapped oil fields in alaska, we are nowhere near the end of oil.

mastershake916

The concept of peak oil is not that we have ran out of oil, but that production and ease of acquisition of oil has peaked.

Do 'Em Dirty

well, sorry for me not understanding that (i have to keep my eyes away from the news at all times due to me having severe panic attacks when i know too much about what is going on) but it still applies to the ease of acquisition, does it not?

some_guy282

When you look at the estimated amount of oil in ANWAR VS current rates of consumption, it's a drop in the bucket. We couldn't get to that oil overnight either. We could start the drilling and setting up the oil fields there tomorrow, and it would be at least 4-5 years before a single drop of that oil made it to refineries. And another 4-5 years after that before production could be ramped up to any meaningful level. This official document from the Department of the Interior estimates ANWAR could produce about 1.4 million barrels a day. Right now we're using more than 20 million barrels a day in the US alone. By the time ANWAR was producing that 1.4 million a day several years from now, it wouldn't even allow for a net increase in US production. Why? Because existing US fields are in decline, so ANWAR would only offset the losses of existing fields instead of increasing net production.

And as the above poster correctly points out, Peak Oil is NOT ABOUT RUNNING OUT OF OIL. You're still pumping out plenty of oil, it just gets harder and more expensive (both financially and energetically) so oil isn't cheap anymore. Also, you can't increase production anymore to match the demand. Demand for oil has increased every year for the past hundred years. Now it's a necessity to increase production so we can grow the economy. The economy has to grow every year because of the way our financial system is set up. We need more and more energy to make things, move things around, get people jobs, etc. When production peaks we can't do that anymore, so there are enormous implications for the economy.

some_guy282

Peak Oil does apply to the ease of acquisition, or lack thereof. World discovery of oil fields peaked in 1964. We've discovered less and less oil every year since then. Since the mid 1980's we've been using more oil than we find every year. Right now we only find one barrel of oil for every four we use. Obviously, this can't go on forever. Sooner or later something has to give.

So as far as acquisition is concerned, since we're not finding any big oil fields that are easy to get to we're turning to the harder to get to smaller fields - the low hanging fruit. This is why they are talking so much about getting oil in places like deep water and remote regions like ANWAR and Siberia in Russia. Don't you think they'd be getting it from someplace else where it was easier if they could? Obviously they would. This is one of the indications we are getting very close to Peak. You don't go drilling for oil under thousands of feet of water if you can get it elsewhere.

adamtki

Well, $4/gallon won't do that. Gasoline would have to be like $100/gallon.

Our government is not doing us a favor by making gasoline cheap. Most people only think short term and the bottom line at the end of the day and never care about long term consequences on society and how it could come back to bite them and their children and grandchildren. Higher taxes will help reduce demand for oil, build better (not more) roads, build more mass transit, reduce gridlock, and perhaps even build more bike lanes and paths. It will provide better incentives for renewable energy, etc..

But we have what we have because that's what most people want - they want everything cheap.

Jarery

I dont care one way or other about peak oil. I just thought id chime in on this statement. This does not indicate closing in on peak oil.

As oil prices go up, it becomes financially viable, ie people can make money off the venture, of getting oil in harder to get locations. It has zero indication of the volume left in either. They are not going after it because they are running out, they are going after it because they can MAKE MONEY.

As you've said, so far they have only gotten the low hanging fruit part of the oil. There could be 100x the volume of oil weve so far retrieved still underground, just that at previous oil prices it wasnt worth going for.

I have no idea how much oil we have left, i just dont like arguments being made based on conclusions that are wrong.

some_guy282

I don't dispute that. My point is that if there was easier to get to oil already found that they could make even more money off of, they would go for that instead. Alternatively, if oil was as plentiful as they'd like us to believe you would think they would just make the investment in new discoveries and find oil that's cheaper to produce. But exploration hasn't been yielding very positive results either. Discoveries of "super giant" oil fields (containing 500 million barrels or more) have fallen off to virtually nothing in recent years. If memory serves me one was found in 2003, none were found in 2004 and 2005, and one was found last year in '06. Compare that to about a dozen or so being found in 2000. Bear in mind that discovery of new oil fields peaked more than forty years ago. In the lower 48 states discovery peaked in the 1930's. Forty years later the corresponding production peak occurred. The current emphasis on developing difficult to produce deep water fields rather than finding and producing more easy cheap oil fields is to me an indication that there isn't much left to find. A peak in production is always necessarily precluded by a peak in discovery.




My mentioning of the oil companies going after remote and deep water fields isn't the sole reason I feel we're getting close to peak. It's merely one piece of information, that when combined with others leads me to conclude the peaking of oil will occur in the relatively near future. The other pieces of information I've already mentioned, things such as

- world oil discoveries peaked more than 40 years ago in the 1960's

- we consume four barrels of oil for every one we find

- discoveries of mega oil fields in recent years have fallen to practically nothing.

That last one is a particularly telling point for the immediate future. As I mentioned in a previous post, it takes at least 4-5 years to begin production of an oil field once you start development for it. That's on the low side if there is already a nearby infrastructure you can utilize. If the field is remote and you have to build everything from scratch, it can take as much as close to 10 years before production can really be ramped up. Since we know what fields have been discovered in this decade and when they are due to come online, the depletion rates of existing oil fields and nations that have already gone into decline, and the projected demand increase due to economic growth, you get an idea of when oil demand will surpass supply (a separate event from production peaking). Chris Srebowski of Petroleum Review did such an analysis a few years ago and targeted 2007 as the year demand surpasses supply if the economy continued to grow at a steady rate. The picture for the next several years gets even worse, because depletion from existing field declines continues and we aren't making new discoveries to offset those declines. I'd like to once again stress that our second largest importer, Mexico, has gone into terminal decline! In as little as three years they may not be able to send us oil anymore.

To further illustrate the point of a recent lack of discoveries being a problem, here's a good Dick Cheney quote from 1999.

50 million barrels a day of new production is about equivalent to 8 Saudi Arabias worth of production from 1999. That was 8 years ago now. Have we found 8 Saudi arabias worth of oil in recent years? No, we haven't. High oil prices are going to continue to be a problem unless the economy crashes. This issue isn't going away.