A Saudi Oil Well dries up

[radon]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

Peak oil is bunk and has been proven to be bunk.

How so?

Do you really think that oil extraction can grow indefinitely on a finite planet? If not then the question is one of timing. Petrochemicals and fuel make up a substantial part of the cost running a farm. When they get more expensive the cost will be passed on to you.

[gwynedd1]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

Well some careful consideration should be done in terms of air quality if switching to diesel en masse. But that has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the petroleum industry, which seems to always discredit Malthus. You're right.

The problem is American diesel. Europe uses cleaner diesel and better engines.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/bu...pagewanted=all

Then we have waste oil that could also add to supply. Its no much but another 2-3% adds up in a large country. Just make sure you have lots of boose around in case of methanol poisoning. I always keep some around for emergency purposes. .

[BadJuju]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

How so?

Do you really think that oil extraction can grow indefinitely on a finite planet? If not then the question is one of timing. Petrochemicals and fuel make up a substantial part of the cost running a farm. When they get more expensive the cost will be passed on to you.

I should have rephrased that because it is a finite resource. Regardless, the theory that we are about to hit peak oil and the world is going to come crashing down because there will be no oil is ridiculous. There is a massive supply of oil, tremendous amounts of room for conservation or alternatives, and the use of oil for agriculture is so small compared to what else it is used for that oil used for other things could be shifted to agriculture should it be needed. Even then, when oil becomes more prohibitive, alternatives like biodiesel produced on the farm can be used on the farm in turn.

[gwynedd1]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

Malthus ---> if he was right, and it sure seems that way, then we should be in for a big crash/mass starvation in the world. The food we eat comes from oil. A couple nukes dropped in the ME and that Malthusian population crash will happen. Or a solar flare knocks out electronics. That'll do it too.

It comes from stupidity. We are surrounded by food even as much as we try to get rid of it. War and droughts in marginal lands is the cause, every time. I walk home in the suburbs and come home with a bag of free groceries all the time. Its now acorn, crab apple and nanny berry season. Had some really fat wild carrot as well recently.

[aaron]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

Peak oil has been proven over and over.
Peak Cheap Oil is right in front of your eyes in the price of oil and gasoline.

Peak oil does not mean NO oil, it means it will be too expensive to feed 8 billion people. Most will starve, if they are not already wiped out during resource wars.

No, this will not happen tomorrow.

[Ghent12]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

This is an interesting thought, but there seems to be quite a few limits to this idea. For one thing, technology still relies on resources including raw materials. Despite any potential gains in technology I'm still inclined to believe that earth couldn't support 1 trillion people. Also, I don't think the number of people working on new technology is increasing at the same rate as the population.

Well of course there are limitations in a limited world, but can you name one resource that the world has "used up" in any meaningful way? As far as I can recall, only the whale and its oil ever came close to meeting that description, but lo and behold, a cheaper alternative was found and utilized thanks to technological development and innovation. I am not in a position to guess with much certainty the "hard cap" of max population the planet can support, but I wager it is far more than the current "official" estimates of between 9 to 20 Billion or so. Besides, whatever "maximum" there is should almost certainly always increase in magnitude as improvements are made to all the systems and processes that are required to sustain human life. Furthermore, I would contend that any resource that is truly valuable to human existence will be perpetuated by human existence. The chicken as a species is the least endangered of any bird, but any given chicken is almost certainly in danger from its captors.

Certainly there is correlation between population and technology but I believe that better technology does more to cause higher population than the other way around. I also believe better technology does more to improve future technology than more people does. Otherwise I would expect India and China to be leading the world in technological breakthroughs.

Just to be clear: I'm not making these arguments in support of some kind of Malthusian doomsday scenario. They are just interesting thoughts to consider.

Let's be very careful when considering the empirical evidence with regards to this discussion of population and technology. Technological development requires an environment conducive to the concept of "freedom of thought" about as much as it requires the quantity and quality of human capital devoted unto it. I use the phrase "freedom of thought" loosely because that is not exactly what I am getting at, but it is clear that places which stifle the human mind also apply the brakes to innovation. Even the Soviet Union, with all of its state-sponsored scientists, lagged behind the United States in most fields of technology development most of the time.

If you go back to the beginning of history or before that, the first human occupations other than subsistence food-gathering of any type were due to relative abundance of food compared to human needs and the relative abundance of people compared to food-gathering needs. We are long past the stage where the labors of a single family provide barely more than what that family needs to survive. As for which came first, the technology or the population, I would say it is a mutual relationship. One cannot exist without the other, in other words.

As things stand now, India and China are proving my contentions correct--the massive increases in the numbers of engineers from those countries is astounding. While their political environments are far less conducive to innovation and they are indeed at a worse "starting point" (if such a thing ever existed) than the United States, they are showing how increased population has the effect of increasing the number of specialists in a society. They are no slouches when it comes to developing new technology or implementing existing technology either. Perhaps someday India or China will shed their backwards political and economic climates, and you will see them rocket off on a hundred-year golden age. Even if they cling to their ways as long as possible and only slowly reform, as they have been, they are likely to surpass the United States in technology eventually. Such is the power of people.

[Ghent12]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

Peak oil has been proven over and over.
Peak Cheap Oil is right in front of your eyes in the price of oil and gasoline.

Peak oil does not mean NO oil, it means it will be too expensive to feed 8 billion people. Most will starve, if they are not already wiped out during resource wars.

No, this will not happen tomorrow.

If Peak Cheap Oil is "proven" by the price of oil and gasoline, it stands of some very shaky proof.

The prices of oil and gasoline are only partially determined by the global supply and demand relationship of oil. One major component that also contributes to the prices of both oil and gasoline would be the supply and demand relationship of dollars. Furthermore, depending on where you live, the price of gasoline is subjected to numerous local effects of supply and demand, including but not limited to state governmental efforts to massively reduce the supply of gasoline available (i.e. California, with specific emission control standards on its gasoline making out-of-state gas prohibited). Not to mention taxes and other considerations...

What we seem to have is "Peak Regulation" instead of Peak Cheap Oil although I have reservations that the amount of regulations cannot increase meaningfully in the future.

Peak oil is likewise not an inevitability, and neither are the dire consequences you predict. The transportation part of oil can already be bypassed entirely due to numerous current technologies and innumerable future technologies, including a few that don't compete with food crops (look up Sunflow-E and Sunflow-D). The synthetic materials part of oil can be largely substituted with a huge variety of materials. There is no doom ahead, only transitions.

[Raz]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up


I spent the better part of my research time and expenditures investigating Peak Oil back in 2004 -2005.
I came away convinced that we were in for real trouble, though I didn't have the clarity of EJ's thought until late 2007.

I'm convinced of Peak Cheap Oil and have bet more than 20% of my net worth on oil stocks at present time, with plans to double my exposure if presented with another excellent buying opportunity.
I suppose I could be wrong about this, but I really don't think so due to (1) depletion of the five or six mega-fields and the FACT that conventional oil reserves worldwide haven't grown in more than six years. (We're not finding any more Ghawars or Cantarells), and (2) rising consumption not only in the developing economies of Asia, but in the economies of the major producers as well. (They won't be able to export the same percentage of their production going forward).

GRG55 will hopefully chime in as he's our resident expert on petroleum.

[Ghent12]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

I spent the better part of my research time and expenditures investigating Peak Oil back in 2004 -2005.
I came away convinced that we were in for real trouble, though I didn't have the clarity of EJ's thought until late 2007.

I'm convinced of Peak Cheap Oil and have bet more than 20% of my net worth on oil stocks at present time, with plans to double my exposure if presented with another excellent buying opportunity.
I suppose I could be wrong about this, but I really don't think so due to (1) depletion of the five or six mega-fields and the FACT that conventional oil reserves worldwide haven't grown in more than six years. (We're not finding any more Ghawars or Cantarells), and (2) rising consumption not only in the developing economies of Asia, but in the economies of the major producers as well. (They won't be able to export the same percentage of their production going forward).

GRG55 will hopefully chime in as he's our resident expert on petroleum.

I think the green part is a rather appropriate response to the reality of the situation. It is a wager that there will be pains ahead, but not an all-in that assumes petroleaggedon.

[BadJuju]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

I think the green part is a rather appropriate response to the reality of the situation. It is a wager that there will be pains ahead, but not an all-in that assumes petroleaggedon.

I'd personally like to get invested in oil, but I am not sure how. Any tips on how to trade it? I know it will go up.

[Raz]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

I think the green part is a rather appropriate response to the reality of the situation. It is a wager that there will be pains ahead, but not an all-in that assumes petroleaggedon.

Agreed. We're not going to run out of crude oil and civilization come to a screeching halt.

But we're going to see the price rise in real terms, and if civilization suffers destruction it'll most likely be due to the response
of corrupt, greedy, self-serving governments that engage in hot wars for resources.

[BadJuju]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

Agreed. We're not going to run out of crude oil and civilization come to a screeching halt.

But we're going to see the price rise in real terms, and if civilization suffers destruction it'll most likely be due to the response
of corrupt, greedy, self-serving governments that engage in hot wars for resources.

As usual, humanity's undoing is its own.

[radon]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

hot wars for resources

This.

As high energy and feedstock prices crash economies scapegoats will be needed and governments will be forced to find them. Also, proliferation continues and counting on restraint from non-enlightenment cultures seems dangerous. There is already a considerable backlash again the incursion of western culture fostered by global media.

At any rate, don't count on oil produced by energy negative extraction techniques to be cheap enough to use as fuel.

[BadJuju]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

This.
At any rate, don't count on oil produced by energy negative extraction techniques to be cheap enough to use as fuel.

What energy negative extraction techniques are we talking about, sir?

[aaron]

Re: A Saudi Oil Well dries up

What energy negative extraction techniques are we talking about, sir?

The point where digging up the oil takes more energy than the actual oil you get out. For example, you can use electricity to power your equipment to bring up the black stuff, and still be oil positive, but energy negative. Prices will by high.

There has been talk about building a couple of nuclear power stations by the Canada oil sands projects, so instead of using up diesel and natural gas, they can use nuclear power to get more oil. It will probably use more energy than you can get out of the ground in black form, but until we have portable nuclear generators in our cars and trucks, oil is the most useful form of energy.

Anyway, North America is not going to really change petrol policy. We will burn as much as we can of our enemies' oil until they have been driven back to the sand. After that, if we must, we can exploit our own resources and start conserving. Until then, we are at war with an enemy that procreates jihadists faster than we can burn up their future. Give it time, and I am sure we will see Malthusian wonderfulness all through the Middle East.