Peak Oil

[dpeilow]

Leaked Study on Peak Oil Warns of Severe Global Energy Crisis

[kgb]

I think we might have been wrong about Peak Oil, this guy pretty much proves it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHZRSlhJxY

Nature doesn't give a damn what you do to it!

Hard to tell if this is a parody or mental illness. There was so much oil in this presentation that Jesus was drenched in it!

[TEG]

http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Proj...olving_Oil.htm

[vfx]

Consider the source.

They might be cooking the books to back up their demand for more deep water, national park, and shale operations.

[Alfred]

How much there is underground is currently not decisive. In the short to medium term there is probably just not enough production capacity in relation to anticipated demand. It is not possible to expand production significantly at short notice. In economic language: Supply is inelastic. Apart from the question whether you would like to blow all those reserves into the atmosphere, a peak oil situation could therefore emerge over the medium term, regardless of all other good or not so good intentions. The details of this are well explained in the following (voluminous) study:
http://www.odac-info.org/sites/defau...l%20Market.pdf

[vfx]

Good writeup.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashc...r-17a-peak-oil

Here’s our experience with oil in United States. From the first well drilled in 1859 until 1970, more and more oil was progressively pumped from the ground. But after that point, less and less came out of the ground. It is said, then, that the US hit a peak of oil production in 1970 at just under 10 million barrels a day, and today produces just a little over 5 million barrels a day. Those are the facts.

...Suppose we wanted to become “independent from imported oil” and decided to replace those 10 million imported barrels with some other form of energy. Those 10 million barrels represent the same power equivalent as 750 nuclear power plants. Considering the issues we have with the 104 we have operating right now, I think it’s safe to say nuclear power is not a realistic candidate for reducing oil imports. Well then, how much would we have to increase our solar wind and biomass energy production? There, we’d have to increase our currently installed base by a factor of 2,000. Not 2000%. Two-thousand times as much.

[vfx]

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6169

Mr. Gabrielli, the CEO of Petrobras [A Brazilian oil company], gave a presentation in December 2009 in which he shows world oil capacity, including biofuels, peaking in 2010 due to oil capacity additions from new projects being unable to offset world oil decline rates.

[cinergi]

...Suppose we wanted to become “independent from imported oil” and decided to replace those 10 million imported barrels with some other form of energy. Those 10 million barrels represent the same power equivalent as 750 nuclear power plants.

... assuming the same source-to-wheel efficiency, sure. Charging BEVs to travel as many miles as ICE vehicles requires less (how much? I'm sure someone here knows) energy.

[SByer]

2000x for alternative energy sources sounds like a lot until you realize that it doesn't take that long if you have a healthy CAGR. It's 30 years at 30% annual growth - 30% is what wind power grew by globally in 2010. China is investing enough in alternative energy to make that reasonably attainable.

No, not going to be fun getting there, but it doesn't mean we can't. To bad the US isn't planning ahead or investing enough in the future. Actually, just phase out subsidies on oil and coal and I bet the free market would take care of most of the rest.

[Alfred]

A modern nuclear station might be sized to around 1500 MW and could produce then 13 TWh/y.
10 million b/d correspond to 500 million tons of oil per year. Taking that as an energy equivalent, with one ton of oil equivalent holding 11.7 MWh, we get an annual call for 5850 TWh, or what 450 of those stations could produce. If used only for road transport, considering efficiency, you would end up with on the order of 45 new stations. This is still too high of course, because crude oil has to be refined and not all of it can be stuffed into cars. So at the most 20 new mid-sized station or perhaps 10 larger ones are closer to reality.
Further details about such estimates can be found on my pages.