Tweet
The Oil Drum is closing down after eight years, giving up the long struggle to alert us all to "peak oil" and the dangers of an energy crunch. Readers have been drifting away. The theme has gone out of fashion, eclipsed by shale and fracking in the US.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
7:40PM BST 31 Jul 2013
The demise of Britain's leading website for oil dissidents has been seized on by critics as an admission that peak oil is just another malthusian myth like so many before. It comes amid a spate of reports from global banks announcing the death of the commodity supercycle, slain by creative technology and a surge of new supply.
Yet if you stand back, it is hardly evident that the world is again enjoying abundant sources of cheap energy, metals or indeed food. Commodity prices have held up remarkably well given that we are in a global trade depression, albeit one contained by monetary stimulus.
The eurozone is in the longest unbroken recession since the 1930s, with industrial production 13pc below the pre-Lehman peak. Average growth in the US has been 1.1pc over the past three quarters as it grapples with the most drastic fiscal tightening since demobilisation after the Korean War. The Economic Cycle Research Institute continues to insist that the US is in recession right now, a claim less absurd than it sounds.
Russia and Brazil have ground to a near halt. China is in its second "mini-recession" in two years, its growth rate near zero on a GDP deflator basis. China's oil imports were down 1.4pc in June from a year earlier. Imports of iron ore were down 9.1pc.
It all adds up to a prostrate global economy, yet on Wednesday Brent crude oil was still trading at $106, and US crude at $103. There is no comparison with the collapse to $11 in 1998. The CRB commodities index is still three times higher than a decade ago. You might conclude that the supercycle is in rude good health given what has been thrown at it.
A new Eos report by the American Geophysical Union, "Peak Oil and Energy Independence: Myth and Reality", argues that global crude output has been stuck on a plateau of around 75m barrels per day (bpd) since 2005 despite enticing returns. "Global net oil exports from oil-exporting countries have peaked and are in decline."
The output of the big five oil majors - Exxon, BP, Total, Chevron and Shell - has fallen by 26pc over the past nine years, despite a relentless hunt for new fields. The North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska are all wasting away. Expenses keep ratcheting up as fields move further out to sea in the Atlantic, drilling deeper through layers of salt. Theoretical reserves are meaningless. What matters is the break-even cost.
Eos said flows from the world's existing fields are falling at 5pc a year, and it is questionable whether shale or tar sands can easily step into the breach. "Production from these unconventional sources is difficult and expensive, and has a very low energy return on investment. Simply stated, it takes energy to get energy," it said.
Using a rule of thumb that 4pc global growth requires a rise in oil supply of 3pc, Eos concluded that the world will need another 17m bpd within five years unless we find a way to change our habits fast.
To the consternation of the authors, the report was cited by the BBC this week as evidence that peak oil production is a myth. "Where they got that idea escapes us," said co-writer Jim Hansen.
What is clearly true is that US fracking has transformed America's economic and strategic prospects, slashing gas costs for industry to one third of European and Asian levels, and reviving the US chemical, glass and steel industries in what we now call the US manufacturing renaissance.
Good for them. It is testimony to US engineering quality and the irrepressible spirit of the Great Republic. The sooner we can follow suit in this benighted isle, the better. One shudders at the reflexive Nimbyism of our complacent middle classes. Do they know how delicate our national predicament has become as we live chronically beyond our means, with the worst trade deficit in a quarter century, the worst budget deficit in the Atlantic world and an illusory recovery driven by debt-fuelled spending yet again? I doubt it.
But though fracking is a Godsend, let us not lose our heads. The US Energy Department expects shale oil to add 3.1m bpd to America's oil output by 2020, a remarkable feat but far less than the 5.4m estimates of a much-cited study by Leonardo Maugeri at Harvard.
The depletion rate on rigs at the Bakken field in North Dakota - the biggest US shale field - is precipitous. Output falls 30pc within two years, and a third is leaking into the air. Shale bears say average declines are nearer 70pc in the first year, and dismiss the whole craze as a bubble.
That is going too far. The technology is improving every week. The decline rate may flatten over time. Yet claims of a 100-year bonanza in the US are wishful thinking. "The upper limit of supply is likely closer to 23 years using present day rates of consumption," said the Eos report.
Kevin Norrish from Barclays said US drillers have already tapped the "best plays" for shale, with newer Utica ventures in the north east of the US and Canada coming up short. The biggest productivity leaps may already have happened. "We expect a steep slowdown in the rate of tight oil production growth from the middle of this decade onward," he said.
Barclays is defiantly holding to a Brent crude forecast of $184 in 2020, betting that spare capacity in global output will prove thinner than supposed, and that oil shocks will come back to haunt us.
We should think of shale as one-generation play for the US, enough to ensure American superpower primacy into the middle of the century. Whether the rest of the world can follow suit in any meaningful time-frame is an open question. Boston Consulting Group said there were 110,000 shale wells in the US and Canada by the end of last year, and just 200 in all other countries combined.
Argentina, Poland and Ukraine may try to get going after 2015 but they have almost no service infrastructure, and all score badly on "ease of doing business". Australia may do better from 2017 onwards.
China has the world's biggest reserves on paper. It is itching to start but much of its shale is in the north-west desert where there is no water, and frackers have yet to find a viable extraction process without water. Not one of the 19 drilling awards issued by the Communist authorities in January went to companies with oil and gas experience. They were mostly power utilities or coal miners.
Even if China seizes the prize, it will first have to build a vast network of pipelines. That will take a great deal of energy, long before shale supply reaches the market.
As for Western Europe, it has mostly shunned shale out of obscurantist ideology, depriving itself of a way out of its EMU quagmire. Common sense will prevail in the end, but Europe does not have the luxury of time. The next five years may decide whether Carolingian Europe spirals into catastrophic decline as the ageing crisis hits, or whether it can hang on for another half century. It may already be too late.
We all love a fresh narrative but consensus has swung too fast from the 2008 oil panic to the energy complacency of 2013, and done so on slender evidence. As matters stand, peak cheap oil remains an incontrovertible fact. To Oil Drum, a fond farewell.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...ite-shale.html
Comment