Meteorite Debris <epicurus1@*THE_ANTI-SPAM_SHIELD*optusnet.com.au> wrote in message news:<MPG.1a319656e710a04e989c7d@news.optusnet.com.au>...

I note your response and all links deal with production and
production has nothing to do with supply. Production is
more a function of political and economical concerns.

Production is also related to discovery. Oil has to first be
discovered before it can be produced. The creaming graphs plotting
wild cat strikes against volume discovered shows that discoveries are
getting smaller. Where exploration is frustrated or allowed the result
of exploration is the same. Discoveries when made are getting smaller.
In 1962 40 billion barrels were discovered. In the 1990s an average of
6 billions barrels were discovered each but the world consumes 4 X as
much. This is a creaming curve.
<http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/misc/cream.gif>. This graph
shows the gap between discovery and production
<http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/misc/GrowingGap.gif>. Clearly
the smaller discoveries is related to geology and is not simply a
matter of politics or economics.

All this ignores substitutional effects of the next best thing.

And if extraction of shale trapped , sandstone trapped
and embedded supplies were to improve I think that
could run into 200 years of supplies. Then find a better
method to reduce sulfur content and 300 comes in
to the reasonable range...

To talk of 100 or 200 years is not based on anything but conjecture.
In 1800 could anyone talk of how much coal would be consumed in 2000?

Sure. So is talking about whether oil production will peak.

How much oil will be consumed in 2115? But there are probs with shale
oil. The main one is energy related. The EROEI (energy returned on
energy invested) is marginal or even negative. Producing shale oil is

Well, its still worthwhile as a feedstock for fuels. Nuclear power can
allways provide energy. Even so the energy cost for shale is often
overstated in many cases, and shale isn't the only substitute for
conventional oil.

energy expensive but energy is the end product. In 1970 it was thought
that if oil rose to $6.00 a barrel shale oil would be economic. OPEC
obliged and quadrupled oil to $12. Just what was needed except that
the effects of the rise were translated into all energy costs and
suddenly it was thought that $20.00 a barrel was needed to make oil
shale economic. The high cost that keeps going up reflects the low
EROEI. If it takes more than one barrel of equivalent energy to
produce a barrel of oil it will not be produced at any price. Shale
oil looks like being just a marginal component of total oil production
barring some fantastic technology that can produce it for far less
energy than at present. Basically shale oil is source rock that has
not gone through an "oil window", that is the pressure and heat of
7,000 to 14,000 feet below ground, and is expensive to produce for
this reason. Deeper than this and the hydrocarbons are cracked into
gas.

All substitutes in the 1970's oil shocks could only come online if
there was a very low capital investment, because it was obvious to
everyone with the purse strings that OPEC could just turn on the pumps
again and bankrupt the whole thing; Any capital intensive substitute
will require sustained prices that are higher than 30 dollars per
barrel in todays prices. Event though we're trading at those prices
today, another disruption, asian financial crisis, or major supply
boost by OPEC and your investment will be destroyed.

There are other substitutes for oil: Gas to liquids a la syntroleum,
and fischer-tropsch coal liquefaction, both of which have proved
themselves historically when oil prices were sustained high for
several countries (Nazi Germany and South Africa.) Currently there are
well over 1 trillion tons of coal, which translates to about 4
trillion barrels of oil.

In 1972 the Club of Rome estimated the total petroleum supply to be
700 billion barrels of oil. Our current estimate is closer to 3
trillion barrels of conventional oil, another trillion of gas to
liquids, another trillion of heavy oils, and 4 trillion of coal to
liquids, and most of this is recoverable at todays prices. We'll have
relatively inexpensive gasoline for a long time yet.

[...]
In 1972 the Club of Rome estimated the total petroleum supply to be
700 billion barrels of oil. Our current estimate is closer to 3
trillion barrels of conventional oil,

[...]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:29:30 +1030 the ET form known as Meteorite
Debris<epicurus1@*THE_ANTI-SPAM_SHIELD*optusnet.com.au> sent a radio
signal across the vast expanse of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.-
-._.

Producing shale oil is energy expensive but energy is the end product.

Hundreds of years before Europeans discovered the North American
continent there was a settled civilisation in the south west United
States called the Anazari......

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:29:30 +1030 the ET form known as Meteorite
Debris<epicurus1@*THE_ANTI-SPAM_SHIELD*optusnet.com.au> sent a radio
signal across the vast expanse of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.-
-._.

Producing shale oil is energy expensive but energy is the end product.

Hundreds of years before Europeans discovered the North American
continent there was a settled civilisation in the south west United
States called the Anazari. They built towns with buildings up to 5
stories high. Their main source of energy were the trees found in the
region. They provided some of the building materials and fuel for
cooking and heating.

The Anazari did not so much harvest the trees as much as mine them.
That is, their use of timber was not long term sustainable. To fuel
their society trees were felled from further and further away.
Eventually timber was sourced from as far away as 70 miles. And then
collapse. What happened? What follows is part analysis and part
hypothetical. There are also some parallels with today.

The Anazari would have come up against that old troll on the bridge
who always wants his toll - EROEI (energy return on energy invested).
No one crosses the bridge to plentiful energy nirvana without paying
this horrible little monster. Timber getting is an energy intensive
business. Travelling, sawing, cutting up, carrying and transport. Also
a very efficient way to make widows. The timber getters are the
machines who do the work and need fuel (food), a garage (heated
quarters) and some maintenance (folk medicine with potions prepared in
part with heat). The energy to keep the timber getters going was
coming from the timber they were getting. Initially this was done at a
large EROEI profit. As time passed however timber was coming from
further and further away. Eventually the energy involved in getting
timber from 70 miles away did not justify the product which by now was
becoming very expensive. What with having to carry enough food on
route and timber to heat it with the journey would barely justify
their own needs for energy, let alone provided a surplus for the
society at large. With more effort devoted to timber getting there
would be less time to devoted to other economic activities. If it
takes 2 days to get timber instead of 1 day there is less time for
tilling the soil or making tools. The economy drifts into long
stagnation and decline.

How might have the Anazari reacted to these increasingly difficult
times? The economic rationalist among the Anazari may have seen the
poor economic performance and decided the "deregulation" was needed.
The medicine men should be privatised and the rules regarding the
safety of timber getters are clearly putting an onerous burden on the
industry. These have to go. Allowing price of timber to rise would
give an incentive to go further afield to get more (ignoring the fact
that the EROEI does not change). The market will fix the problem. With
these changes the "enterprising spirit of the free market will be
released" and the economy will grow. Don't laugh. The problem of going
further and further afield for timber is real today in Nepal and
Ethiopia and here the IMF have given these sorts of policy
prescriptions without recognising the obvious reality that energy
stress (wood is the main source of energy in these countries) is
retarding the economies. The rewards from the IMF are loans that can
never be repaid but must always be serviced.

The same IMF response is repeated in many countries with soil or water
stress without recognising resource stress as economically
significant. Is it any wonder the IMF and the World Bank are so hated.
They fly to country X on Monday in an air conditioned bubble and are
chauffeured in another a/c bubble to the 5 star hotel which is another
a/c bubble, talk to government figures in a gov building (a/c bubble)
on Tuesday and fly out Wednesday (a/c bubble) and pride themselves as
"experts" on country X without ever leaving some sort of a/c bubble
let alone know anything about the history or culture of the country.

Back to the Anazari. The moralist among them may have decided that the
economy is stagnant because "young people are lax and don't want to
work". "Back in my day...." etc. The xenophobe will point to
foreigners who wear different clothes and speak with funny accents
"undermining our way of life" as the reason why the economy will not
move up. "Stop them coming in" or "kick them out" would be the catch
cry. The engineer among the Anazari would talk of there being plenty
of trees still out there. He would call timber getting of up to 70
miles away "enhanced recovery". This increases the energy needed to
get the timber and lowers the EROEI but it is hailed as a "triumph of
human ingenuity". Density of trees is a factor too. The more dense an
outcrop, the more worthwhile it is to go further to get it. Timber
getting of low density trees far away is also "enhanced recovery".
This is like geologically difficult oil fields. The REAL news about
"enhanced recovery" of oil is not that this is some sort of
technological break through but rather that it is actually needed. We
need to spend more energy in recovering oil from old fields rather
then developing less energy demanding younger large fields which will
return more profit and this would surely be done if the world was as
washed in plentiful oil as many spin masters tell us. Further our
Anazari engineer claims there are lots of trees 100 miles away and all
we need is the right "market price" and this will come online as a
supply of energy. This is what might be the equivalent "shale oil"
recovery today. The engineer talks eagerly about building high lookout
towers in outlying areas to see at a glance any outcrop of trees
instead of the slower, and likely to miss some, method of exploring on
foot. This would be like 3D seismic surveys today and again the real
news is that this is needed.

The most typical response would be denial and wishful thinking. This
is true today of Hubbert's Peak despite observed confirmations of its'
predictions at local levels - most notably in the USA and the North
Sea. Paul May's assertion that the observed peak in US oil production
40 years after a discovery peak is nothing to do with supply is
typical of this. I can imagine the Anazari being confident that there
were still plenty of trees out there - enough for 100 years or 300
even. Having observed local Hubbert Peaks there is no reason to doubt
the advent of a global one coming soon.

When I read Stephen Jay's Gould's book "The Missmeasure of Man" I
learnt a new word - "rarefy" - to treat an imaginary concept or model
as if it was reality itself, to turn an idea into reality in the same
way as deify means to turn something or somebody into a god. Rarefy
describes the economists' craft to a T. They even blame the subjects
of their failed experiments instead of reexamining at their models. It
is our responsibility to live up to the expectations of economists'
models and not theirs to model reality. This extends even to the laws
of physics and thermodynamics which somehow MUST give way to the
workings of the "market".

The economist, moralist, xenophobe and the ostrich will all give their
various misleading analyses of problems of post oil peak societies.
They will not see the wood for the trees.