Oil and gas may run short by 2015, say industry experts

[Subdivisions]

Source: The Independent

Humanity is approaching an unprecedented crisis when not enough oil and gas will be produced to keep industrial civilisation running, the world's top oilmen warned last week.

The warning – which is being hailed as a "tipping point" on both sides of the Atlantic – marks the first time that the industry has accepted that it may soon no longer be able to meet demand for its products. In Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, it gives authoritative support to concern about impending shortages, following a similar alert by the International Energy Agency less than two weeks ago.

-snip-

The report concludes that "the global supply of oil and natural gas from the conventional sources ... is unlikely to meet ... growth in demand over the next 25 years". It says that "many observers think that 80 per cent of existing oil production will need to be replaced by 2030" to keep up present supplies "in addition to volumes required to meet existing demand." But, it adds, there are "accumulating risks to replacing current production and increasing supplies".

-snip-

The predictions should send a shiver down humanity's collective spine as a shortage of oil and gas has been predicted to cause industrial collapse, market crashes, resource wars and a rise in poverty. Some forecast that fascist regimes will rise out of the chaos.

Read more: http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2790960.ece

---

HO.LEE.SHIT!

Read the whole article! Oh my God!

[melody]

1. Well, let's hope nanotech makes up the distance ... and makes fossil fuels irrelevant

Now, if we'd only listened to Jerry Brown and Jimmy Carter thirty years ago ... :banghead:

[tkmorris]

7. Nanotech?

It is unclear to me how nanotechnology could conceivably make fossil fuels obsolete. Could you explain?

[melody]

12. As one example, the spray-on solar power cells

This technology can harvest infrared rays and is several times more efficient (And less expensive)
than current solar technology.

[GliderGuider]

18. Kewl!

That's really good stuff. And it's so easy on the lungs, too. Homegrown?

The world has three years left before the first large cracks start appearing in our civilization due to global shortages of transportation fuel. For a look at an opinion about why technology and energy are not interchangeable, try reading Peak Tech? by our good friend James Kunstler.

[melody]

19. Now that you've pimped your friend's book while insulting me

If you need to believe the end is near, by all means do so. Some people thirst for apocalypse. If you want
to know the reality of what is going on and not just embrace the view that is making a handful of people
very rich from book sales (ahem), the technology is on the rise that will help to alleviate things, but enjoy chewing
your nails if you choose to believe otherwise. ;)

[GliderGuider]

20. Some new technologies may help mitigate the consequences of a decline in oil production

In order to be taken seriously in that capacity, however, they need to be able to answer "yes" to these two questions: "Will they replace or reduce the need for transportation fuel?" and, "Will they be commercially available in significant quantities within three years?" Unless a "technology" can provide affirmative answers to those questions, we might be better off putting our about-to-be-limited resources into areas that can. I don't think that spray-on nanotech solar cells qualify.

You may continue to believe in a Deus Ex Machine if you want to, but I think Kunstler's understanding of the situation is quite a bit more realistic than your own.

[melody]

21. I said spray-on nanotech was one example, not the only one

We're on the cusp of dramatic nanotech advances.

Try Kurzweil's the Singularity is Near as an additive to your Peak Oil doomlit. Most Peak Oilers hate him
because he gives them hope. lol

[GliderGuider]

22. The reason Peak Oilers have a problem with Ray Kurzweil

is that we feel he doesn't recognize some aspects of reality - like the declining net energy of our civilization. His assumptions appear to be over-simplified as a result, and his projections seem driven more by optimism than realism. His stuff is fun to think about, as are FTL starships and the other accouterments of science fiction. I just can't take such things seriously in light of what I know to be the reality of our situation.

[melody]

33. Kurzweil's theories have been shown to be more accurate predictors than the PO folk's

As usual, optimism is made fun of while negativity is seen as "realistic". The reality is that
this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. :)

In 1988, Kurzweil said we'd see significant improvement in AIDS life expectancy by 2000. The negativists
laughed at him. In 1989 he predicted, by 2005, a sharp jump in smaller, smarter computers. The early Peak Oil
people like Charlie Byrd (who was also wrong about Y2K) predicted $100 a barrel by 1995. My father (an early
negativist who called himself a "pragmatist") who was an engineer, laughed uproariously at the idea of "hybrid cars".

Sorry, but the negativists have a pretty poor record when it comes to prediction. Kurzweil is just following the
data. The negativists are counting on the worst happening.

I paid off my mortgage and credit card bills, I have a tiny car and a low carbon imprint, and I'm still paying
more attention to Kurzweil than most of the gloom-and-doom PO'ers.

[phantom power]

35. bear in mind, peak oil has a history of successful predictions, too.

In fact, the peak oil meme all started with "Hubbert's Peak," which Hubbert used to predict peak oil for the United States to within a year.

I assume you have followed the news in the forum. Basically every important oil field is reporting production losses year-on-year for 2006-2007. Numbers like 10-20%, too.

So, whatever we're going to do to replace that lost energy, we had better be bringing it on line immediately, since the losses in oil production are already happening. To me, that's the critical observation. Starting in 2005, peak oil stopped being a "prediction" and transitioned into something that is actually happening to us.

Speculating about what technology we might have in 10 years is arguably meaningless, if in 10 years we are already 5 years into a worldwide recession caused by loss of transportation fuel. Because it's damned hard to conduct R+D and deploy new technologies on an exa-joule scale when you don't have any money to spend on it.

So, if you have examples of technologies that can start saving us today, that's what we need to know about.

[melody]

37. The solutions will be found because they must be found

People in a position to do this will find solutions. There are already many of them in progress.
They have to be found so they will be found. Also, we run out of clean oil in five years. The
whole pictures is less dire than that, which I know has also been pointed out in the forum.

I've stopped arguing the material among primates because Alphas are notoriously nasty and those who wish to pound
home one viewpoint -- that the end is near and we're all doomed -- will do so. lol Every voice that
suggests an alternative is shouted down.

I've learned to leave people where they wish to be.

[phantom power]

39. Wait. Am I an "alpha" because I disagree with you and say so?

Nobody here has even suggested that you stop posting, much less "told you" to. As if any of us could make you stop if we wanted to. It's a forum. And arguing is what we do. We argue our various positions on various topics. It's what you do each time you post here, along with the rest of us.

I may tell people I disagree with them. If I think the facts are established, I might even say they are wrong. Occasionally, I even make fun of them. But everybody is free to post.

I regularly advocate solutions to our coming energy and environmental problems here in this forum. Some people really hate my proposed solutions, because they involve lots of nuclear fission. And they say so frequently. I think a few of them might even have developed a personal dislike for me. Say la vee.

Some people, like Glider, are quite convinced that it's too late even for solutions involving mature technology like nuclear power, because we now don't have enough time to deploy enough of them. I'm not sure I agree, but I think they make well-thought-out arguments.

As for "finding solutions because we have to," I don't think history backs you up. History is littered with dead civilizations that failed to find solutions to their problems. Easter Island being a famous example that gets brought up a lot. Cultures and economies are governed by the same basic laws as ecologies. 99% of all species that ever existed are now extinct. Eventually they were presented with problems that they couldn't solve.

The current global economy may or may not survive what's coming. The current energy situation and the current climate situation indicate that we're in big trouble. The kind of trouble that is so big, there isn't necessarily a "solution."

You are obviously free to disagree, but my personal opinion is that generic claims that "solutions exist, and we'll find them because we have to, and people who aren't so sure are just being needlessly gloomy" aren't very convincing.

[melody]

41. No, I wasn't talking about you, but the general field of disagreement in fora

All cultures aren't based on the same level of technology. We have more sophisticated technological
solutions than the ones history is "littered with". Obviously, those civilizations survived in some
form, since civilization itself did. We're all interconnected now. We have the web. We come to
solutions infinitely more quickly than they have in the past. We have a very different situation now.

And I don't bother to state my reasons. You may notice there are fewer women on your forum since we
tend to shy away from such confrontations -- this is a very confrontational forum. There really is
no genuine exchange of information or energy in these online communities. Most people come away with what they went in with.

I just made a passive remark and now I'm passively withdrawing. Enjoy your continued discussion about how
bad things will be. I'm hiding the thread.

[GliderGuider]

40. Assumptions and conclusions

SYDNEY, Australia - Access to life-extending HIV/AIDS drugs in developing countries has improved during the past three years, but new infections still dramatically outpace efforts to bring treatment to patients, health officials said Monday.

Three years ago, fewer than 300,000 people in the developing world were receiving the anti-retroviral drugs that help treat the virus. Last year, 2.2 million people in developing countries received the drugs, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"However, for every one person that you put in therapy, six new people get infected. So we're losing that game, the numbers game," Fauci told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

I can't find anything on Google about a "Charlie Byrd" making predictions about Y2K or oil prices. Do you have a reference? I assume you're not referring to the jazz guitarist.

One of the pitfalls you should be cautious about is accepting individual opinions as proof of your position. That may not be what you're doing, but it certainly sounds like it - "Charlie Byrd was wrong about oil prices", "my father laughed at the idea of a hybrid car". That amounts to confirmation bias, where you cherry pick responses that support a position you've already adopted and are trying to defend. It's a behaviour I'm very aware of and try to consciously guard against whenever I consider new information, especially about energy and specifically about oil. On the other hand, I'm not weighing just one or two individual opinions on Peak Oil issues. In case you hadn't been following the research, there are literally hundreds of malevolently well-informed people who are saying loudly that Peak Oil poses a major and urgent problem.

There are four parts to the "Peak Oil Doomer" position I take. The first is, "The behaviour of the oil supply today indicates that it is in trouble." The second is "That trouble is evidence of a finite resource encountering recovery limits." The third is "Those limits guarantee that we will experience a decline in oil production in the near future." The final one is, "That decline will be soon enough and rapid enough that replacement energy sources will not be sufficient to offset the lost utility of the missing oil, and that will result in social disruptions."

I claim that the first three parts are well enough supported by evidence to be considered "facts", and are broadly accepted by most of those who are watching the oil situation (certainlly those who don't depend on oil for their paycheck, and even some who do). The last conclusion is where all the hoohah is right now. The difference in how people respond comes down IMO to two things - how much evidence they examine, and their preexisting psychological makeup. At the extremes, these differences can result in people rejecting valid negative evidence out of hand, or similarly rejecting valid positive evidence out of hand. Whenever I encounter people who are adamant that one end or the other of the spectrum is utterly mistaken, I assume that psychological factors are in play (and I'll cop to a lot of that myself).

On the other hand, given that the first three elements I described above are pretty much givens, I do find pessimism to be the more reasonable of the two extremes.

[FogerRox]

34. IMHO we will know in 5 yrs if an alternative fusion concept like Polywell is viable

Dr Bussard is the former Assistant Director of the US Atomic Energy Commission, he was the father of the US Fusion effort from the 1970's into the 1980's. As the Assistant Dir. of the AEC, Dr. Bussard went to Congress and pushed the fusion research programs in the 70's that developed the Tokamak design.

Dr Bussard now advocates a different design. For the last 11 years he has been working under US Navy contracts, building small test devices.



WB4 in 2003. Yes, low levels of fusion can be created in a very small device




WB6 in 2005. WB6 was run in steady state operation for a number of tests before a short stopped testing.

At the end of 2005, the Navy did not renew his contract. Since then Dr Bussard has given many lectures including the (famous in fusion circles) google tech talk of 2006. Video here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

DR Bussard was awarded the International Academy of Science Outstanding technology of the Year, award for 2006.

Why is this important? World oil production peaked in May of 2005. Dr Bussard says for 200 million he can build a proof of concept reactor by about 2011. The ITER reactor in Europe will be finished by 2013, and the concept may be ready for power generation by 2025. The ITER is slated to cost 13.3 billion. More importantly $3 million keeps Dr. Bussard working. The next step is build variations on the 1 foot square WB6, to test tweaks in the design, before building a full size model. DR Bussard envisions the full size reactor (100MW) to be about 9 foot square.

Bussards website:
http://www.emc2fusion.org/

Sources and links:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/27/213841/746

[Maat]

2. This only proves my belief ..

Hubby was in the oil and gas industry for two decades (moved on several years ago). Anyway, THEY KNOW (Big Oil) that the supplies are not going to be adequate, and have known for years; so, why did they kill the electric car? Because they want every last dime of profit from citizens around the world - the planet be damned!

[KillCapitalism]

3. Well, unless we come up with alternative sources of energy...

like electric, solar, or hydrogen, I guess we'll all have to go back to horses and bicycles.

[BrokenBeyondRepair]

6. that would be awesome

[kestrel91316]

36. Nothing wrong with that. It works for the Amish, and they seem happy enough.....

[eallen]

38. I doubt horses will make a comeback. Technical progress continues....

There may be a shift to various forms of mass transit complemented by bicycles, other human-powered vehicles, and small electrics. But it won't be a return to the 19th century. Instead, it will be a less energy intensive move to the 21st. Energy is so cheap now that we use it quite wastefully. If it becomes more expensive, two changes will occur. First, we'll use it more frugally, and second, alternative sources will be developed.

:hippie:

[Blackbird_Highway]

4. It's An Industry Report

This is a report produced by the industry, which tends to be quite conservative, so It's likely to happen a bit earlier than that. You'll know when gas hits %5 a gallon. I expect we'll see $4 as early as next year. For a couple decades now, for each new barrel of oil that is found, we pump 3 barrels outof the ground. Clearly, that's not sustainable.

The good news is that we can reduce consumption by 20% fairly quickly, without a lot of pain, (unless you REALLY love that SUV), which should help a lot in the short term, maybe 5 years out. The bad news is that in the long term, it will take a lot more, and that won't be easy.

There's a quote from a Arab oil shiek that goes something like: My grandfather rode a camel, my father drove a Mercades. I drive a Mercades, and so will my son. My grandson will ride a camel.

[PittPoliSci]

5. i'm not so sure...

there were lots of reports commissioned by oil industries throughout the 20th century that drastically underestimated oil reserves in order to justify higher pump costs and the like.

what is needed is a comprehensive analysis, compiled by a neutral government agency, in order to determine what kind of reserves really exist.

running out of oil is a very serious problem, and thus the questions surrounding global oil supply should be approached in an equally serious fashion, not from groups with a vested interest in making money off of oil.

[4dsc]

8. And on the other hand

many oil producing countries OVERestimated the amount of oil they actually have in the ground. OPEC countries, in the 1980's, all raise their reserve amount by about 100% without find any new oil fields..

But what is more amazing is how after two decades of pumping oil, many still show the same reserves they did back in the 1980's..

SO called alternatives will never replace a faction of the needs we get from oil!!

[sutz12]

11. You won't find a 'neutral government agency' in the current administration. nt

[sofa king]

28. I think most everyone agrees on the upper limit of reserves.

I recall that the oil industry and peak oilers generally agree that worldwide reserves are somewhere around 1000 GB, with roughly one-third of it in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. We burn 100 GB every three years--soon every two years if China and India continue to economically expand at double-digit rates. That's where people start to argue: how fast are we burning it; how much new stuff are we finding, et cetera.

On the bright side, at this point most humans are totally reliant upon oil for their fertilizer, food and heating, so as soon at things get really tight, half of us are gonna eat the other half and half of those left are gonna freeze. The other horsemen will be along shortly thereafter.

So my guess is in a hundred years we'll have plenty of oil to support the 250 million or so humans left.

[Eugene]

30. "Hard Truths" is as close to a "neutral" gov't report as we're going to get.

The Bush Administration IS Big Oil. "Hard Truths" is a government report.
Energy Secretary Bodman's advisers who wrote it are oil men, including
ex-Exxon chief Lee Raymond. The report a change from their 2001 view
that America could drill, mine, and fight its way to energy security.

Don't hold your breath for anything more transparent in the near future.

[conspirator]

9. Shutdown industry and give the land back to the people n/t

[Theduckno2]

10. Yep, this starts my week with a case of the warm fuzzies.

Funny that the Petroleum Council didn't get the Bush memo concerning the posting of such unpleasant truths during the Friday News Dump time period.

Yes it is going to be a bumpy ride.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Javaman]

14. May? lol bank on it. nt

[GliderGuider]

16. This ain't news

Anybody without a bad case of recto-cranial inversion has known this was coming for at least a couple of years. Those who actually thought about it have known for decades.

What's interesting about the report is the grudging admission by the oil industry that there are in fact looming problems. Given who was on the panel that wrote this report, I expected to see a lot more spin, smoke, mirrors and snow. The fact that there was so little, that the message is so clearly visible in the report, scares the shit out of me. The last thing these guys want to do is spook the horses. That they weren't able to avoid spooking them means the wolf is now at the door.

It also means that those of us who have been banging the drum and yelling that there were cracks in the sky may not be the fruit loops we've been painted as. And that loosely translates to, "We fucking told you so!"

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. Sure it's news!

When the Oil industry starts saying, "Hey folks, we've gotta conserve oil here, and develop alternatives." That's news!

[GliderGuider]

26. Yes, I agree that part of it is news indeed.

How bad do you think things really are, to make them spout such heresies?

My main worry is that even us Peak Oil doomers may not have called it bad enough. Given that TPTB are trying to hide the severity of the situation from the public, there's at least as good a chance that things are worse than we suspect rather than better.

Dr. Samsam Bakhtiari in Peak Oil: The End of the Modeling Phase (PDF) predicts we could lose 35% of our oil production by 2020. That's a loss of 3.3% per year. However, we know from our experience with the North Sea, Canatarell, Yemen and possibly Saudi Arabia that decline rates can easily exceed that value. In addition, decline rates tend to increase over time rather than remain at a constant percentage.

It's enough to give even a well-inoculated pessimist the heebie-jeebies.

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[phantom power]

31. Yesssssss. Use your anger, young Jedi. Feel the power of the Dark Side!

[Nihil]

44. Thank you Darth Phantom!

:spray:

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[phantom power]

17. Events of the last year suggest that we may be feeling it in 3-5 years.

[depakid]

46. Depends on when enough traders figure it out

Could be sooner or even later- but eventually, they (and especially the computerized "trading" prgrams) will figure out that the party's over.

Then, all bets will be off.

[OKIsItJustMe]

23. The Actual Report

Press Release:
http://www.npc.org/7-18_Press_rls-post.pdf

... “Accumulating risks to the supply of reliable, affordable energy” require an integrated national strategy, according to a major new report by the National Petroleum Council (NPC).

...

“There is no single, easy solution to the global challenges ahead,” said the NPC report, which proposed integrated strategies for the United States that “must be initiated now and sustained over the long term to meet the accumulating risks to the supply of reliable, affordable energy” to 2030 and beyond.

The report identifies five core strategies for meeting future energy challenges:

• Moderate the growing demand for energy by increasing efficiency of transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial uses.
• Expand and diversify production from clean coal, nuclear, biomass, other renewables, and unconventional oil and natural gas; moderate the decline of conventional domestic oil and gas production; and increase access for development of new resources.
• Integrate energy policy into trade, economic, environmental, security, and foreign policies; strengthen global energy trade and investment; and broaden dialogue with both producing and consuming nations to improve global energy security.
• Enhance science and engineering capabilities and create long-term opportunities for research and development in all phases of the energy supply and demand system.
• Develop the legal and regulatory framework to enable carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). In addition, as policymakers consider options to reduce CO2 emissions, provide an effective, global framework for carbon management, including establishment of a transparent, predictable, economy-wide cost for CO2 emissions.

...

More:
http://downloads.connectlive.com/events/npc071807/pdf-downloads/Facing_Hard_Truths-Executive_Summary.pdf
http://downloads.connectlive.com/events/npc071807/pdf-downloads/Facing_Hard_Truths-Excerpts.pdf
http://downloads.connectlive.com/events/npc071807/pdf-downloads/Facing_Hard_Truths-Report.pdf
http://www.npc.org/NPC_Presentation_71807ac.pdf

[phantom power]

25. They still don't really get it, do they.

[GliderGuider]

27. Sure they get it.

They're just not ready to tell us they get it.

[Maven]

42. K&R...this should be high up on the greatest page.

I don't know why this issue doesn't get more attention here.

[4dsc]

47. Its called denial!!

Let's face it, most DU'er are not ready to accept this subject. They basically believe we will be able to mitigate to a yet "UNNAMED" energy source and our wasteful lives will continue unabated.. PEak oil is mearly a speedbump and once crossed we will enter a new frontier..

[Nihil]

48. Ably aided & abetted by the ...

... who <censored> the <deleted> forum here on DU and brush anything
judged to be too close to the truth into the backwaters of the E/E forum ...

Sorry, would say more but it would result in this post being deleted too.
:hi:

[IDemo]

43. Anyone seen the "2057" series on the Discovery Channel?

Part of the plot line is that in the year 2057 ("if Man is still alive, if Woman can survive, oh yeah") the world is just beginning to run out of oil, and NASA, only now sensing the urgency, has dispatched a crew of two or three to the space station to conduct research on a world-saving solar electric material. Spoiler alert: they find it! Crisis averted.

The vision that physicist Michio Kaku paints of civilization 50 years from now is bound to please Trekkers and amaze Peak Oilers with the assumption of technology's advance unimpeded by the energy crunch (crash!) at the first part of the century.

[depakid]

45. Hey- the great technological fix fast forwarded 25 years!

I bet it makes for great Sci Fi viewing!