Peak-oil - The Turning Point

Peak Oil - The Turning Point, a poster, is available as a pdf download from the Department of Energy.  It is an interesting commentary on peak oil, including a very brief explanation of Hubbert's theory and the various predictions of when the peak might occur. They also have several other posters available, here, that trace the origin of oil and gas, the means to get it to market, the U.S. and global disposition of oil and gas, as well as unconventional sources of oil.

Thanks to vox mundi on Peak oil and Message Boards

Comments

[averagejoe]

As I understand it, the Hubbert model only applied to conventional oil, the low hanging fruit of the petroleum industry. With oil currently at $80 a barrel, unconventional sources of fossil fuels are now economically viable: tar sands, Coal to liquids, shale oil, deep water oil, coal bed methane, etc. The implementation of PHEV's and biofuels in a meaningful way will take about 20-30 years. We certainly have enough sources of liquid fuels for that time period. The U.S. has the equivalent of over 800 billion barrels of oil in its shale deposits. Current "in-situ" methods of recovery can produce a barrel of shale oil for $30-40 a barrel. According to one company, SHELL, the energy balance is 3.5 units of output for every one of input. Not perfect, but certainly good enough. Adding CTL, deep water oil, and tar sands to that easily buys us another thirty years.

[eric]

The Hubbert model can apply to any resource, but it is traditionally applied to conventional oil.

I find the DOE poster very pollyannaish. For the peakists view, see:

http://www.oilposter.org

It is easy to pick a price point, and say that all of a sudden some alternative is now viable. But these alternatives are all completely different from the oil we pump from the ground.

Take tar sands, for example. In reality, these things are mining operations, and not anything like a normal oil field. And with tar sands, there are two very important inputs that are required.

The first is natural gas. They need to heat the stuff up to process it. Right now they use stranded natural gas (meaning that it isn't economical to build the pipeline to get it to markets in the south). Once that is used up, they will need to find something else to use. Believe it or not, there is talk of using nuclear reactors to provide the heat, but so far it is only talk.

A second input is water. There isn't any way around this, really - basic chemistry tells us that we need to add hydrogen atoms to the hydrocarbons in order to make the liquids that we are addicted to. And in order to do this they need vast quantities of water. Right now they are taking water out of rivers, but significant scaleup is going to be limited by the amounts of fresh water available.

Getting back to price points, I can make the observation that recent projects about tar sands have had massive cost overruns.

[bigTom]

We need not even hit peak production before high price becomes a world economic problem. My guess is that peak production of say 90-100Mbpd will probably come within the next 10 years. Before we hit the peak, projected demand exceeds supply, and high prices will constrain demand. That should be stressful for the world economy. The IEA thinks that may be as early as 2009.

[donb]

Take tar sands, for example. In reality, these things are mining operations, and not anything like a normal oil field. And with tar sands, there are two very important inputs that are required.

The first is natural gas.

A second input is water.

Your might want to check out Toe to Heel Air Injection. It is more like normal oil field operation than mining. Relatively little natural gas is required. And the process is a net producer of water.

[teofilo dominguez mora]

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[teofilo dominguez mora]

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[teofilo dominguez mora]

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[teofilo]

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