Prediction of peak oil is not an exact science. C.J. Campbell, one of the leading experts on the subject, made a few comments on the vagaries of the science which I would like to pass on to you. He points out that the date of the peak is not nearly as important as the long decline that follows. The following is taken from the September 2005 ASPO newsletter. Campbell has compiled a database and prepared the graphics for the past 15 years. His comments follow the graphics. I thought it would be interesting for some of you who are not so involved with peak oil to see his opinion of where we are and his explanation of some of the difficulties in predicting when peak oil would occur. His peak date is slowly drifting to the right. When he started doing this, nearly all of the oil being produced was, by his definition, regular oil (lowest curve). As you can see we have passed that date. The changes in technology to enable production from other sources plays a large part in this shift. My opinion has been that the peak that I considered "peak oil" was the peak of regular oil, which is really not the case - but where do we stop counting liquids as "oil"? Should oil made from natural gas (GTL), or from any gasification/Fischer-Tropsch process be it coal-to-liquids or biomass-to-liquids be counted. I don't think so, but they could, depending on what you are trying to prove.
"It is a summary of a depletion model and database that have been maintained for about 15 years, being subject to continual revision and refinement. It will be readily understood that public reserve and production data are grossly unreliable, and that even the industry databases show widely different estimates. Accordingly, it is necessary to look for trends and relationships, as well as apply common sense and geological knowledge, to try to come up with realistic assessments. The next revision may well see a reduction in the Yet-to-Find, based on extrapolating the falling trend. Furthermore, modeling depletion involves not only the calculation of natural depletion rates as imposed by the immutable physics of the reservoirs, but also relies on assessing politico-economic factors, especially in relation to critical Middle East supply. Each country is evaluated individually and then summed to give regional and world totals. It is well said that all numbers are wrong: the challenge being to determine by how much.
Much interest devolves on the date of peak, but this really misses the point. It is not an isolated or high peak, merely the indicated maximum on a fairly gentle production curve. Small changes in the estimates and modeling can shift it by a few years one way or the other. The
Technocrati tag: peak oil
I have never liked the ideas like "peak oil" because it is only half of the total economic picture. Subistitution economics will allow the gradual replacement of fossil oil with other energy sources. This will occur over decades allowing the replacement infrastructre to be built with no great impact as the present infrastructure wears out in a normal replacement cycle. Just above this peak oil post is several concerning PV cells and there are many other techonologies discussed here.
At the end of the 19th century there was a great problem of what to do about all the horse manure on the streets of New York City. Little did the city fathers realize that within 10-15 years they would have an entirely different set of problems with horseless carriages.
Posted by: Rich Walden | September 10, 2005 at 03:28 PM
This post really had me thinking about this particular issue in way I havent before. Its something I do believe we need to talk about more. Thankyou.
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