When a dark and furious storm is racing in, and the tornado
sirens are howling, smart folks stop staring at their cell phones, and head for
shelter. But what if the cell phones
were streaming messages that the storm warnings were a hoax, and there was
nothing to fear? Twenty years ago, Peak
Oil was a ridiculous absurdity conjured up by notorious idiots on the lunatic
fringe. Ten years ago, it had become an
acceptable topic for polite conversation.
Today, an extremely effective disinformation campaign has inspired many
to toss their energy concerns out the window.
This made Richard Heinberg hopping mad, so he wrote Snake Oil to set
the record straight. He’s been blasting
the warning sirens for more than ten years, via a series of books. Nobody sane disputes that fossil energy is
finite and non-renewable. Nobody sane
disputes that our current path has an expiration date. The argument is over when that date
arrives. For most folks, something that
may become a problem 50 to 100 years from now is simply not worth thinking
about. Heinberg is getting strong whiffs
of trouble right now.
The production of conventional oil and gas is close to peak,
but new technology has enabled production of unconventional oil and gas. We are now extracting oil and gas from
shale. We’re cooking oil out of tar
sands bitumen. We are drilling in deep
waters offshore. This energy is far more
expensive to produce.
Today, for each barrel of new oil we discover, we consume
four or five barrels pumped from elderly fields. In 1930, oil was as cheap as four cents per
barrel. In 2002, a barrel of oil cost $25,
and in 2012 it was $110 (with a $150 spike in 2008). Deep water drilling is economically possible
when the price is $90 or more. Existing
tar sands projects can continue production at $60, but new tar sands projects need
at least $80. Almost all drilling
requires $70. The era of cheap energy is
over.
A hundred years ago, drilling in ideal locations led to mighty
gushers of black gold. It only took one
unit of energy to extract 100 units of energy.
So, the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) was 100:1. By 1990, the EROEI of U.S. oil production had
fallen to 40:1. In 2013, it was about
10:1. Tar sands, oil shale, and biofuels
are all less than 5:1, and at this level, the economy gets dizzy, wobbly, and
sweaty.
Every gold rush produces a few winners and legions of
losers. In order to drum up the
necessary investment funding, it is customary to make highly exaggerated
estimates of the immense wealth just waiting to be reeled in by wise guys (like
you). I recall industry hucksters once
proclaimed that the Caspian Sea province contained up to 400 billion barrels of
oil. By 2001, after ten years of
intensive work on prime sites, far less than 20 billion barrels were produced,
according to petroleum geologist Colin Campbell.
Everyone agrees that the production of unconventional oil and
gas has delayed our blind date with disaster a bit. Is this delay years, decades, or centuries? Heinberg introduces us to petroleum
geologists who believe that U.S. gas and oil production will begin its decline
by 2020. “Production from shale gas
wells typically declines 80 to 95 percent in the first 36 months of operation. Given steep shale gas well decline rates and
low recovery efficiency, the United States may actually have fewer than 10
years of shale gas supply at the current rate of consumption.” In the North Dakota oil fields, 1,400 new
wells have to be drilled every year, just to maintain current production,
according to a story in Financial
Times (27 Aug 2014).
Today, everyone has spent their entire lives in an era of
rising energy production and economic growth, just like our parents did. But economic growth is getting dodgy. It’s being kept on life support by
skyrocketing levels of debt. As energy
production approaches its decline phase, prices are sure to rise. There will come a day when economic growth goes
extinct. Without economic growth, our
way of life will eventually become a hilarious story told by the campfires of
our descendants.
Should we be making serious plans for the coming
challenges? “Heck no,” says the energy
industry. Our treasure of unconventional
energy is the equivalent of two Saudi Arabias!
We now have a 100-year supply of gas, according Daniel Yergin. T. Boone Pickens says 160 years. Aubrey McClendon says 200 years. Even 100 years is daffy. How was it calculated? “Simply by taking the highest imaginable
resource estimate for each play, then taking the very best imaginable recovery
rate, then adding up the numbers.” This
results in projections that have no relationship to reality.
The Bakken and Eagle Ford deposits produce more than 80
percent of U.S. tight oil. David Hughes,
author of Drill,
Baby, Drill, estimated that the combined production of both
deposits will end up being the equivalent of ten months of U.S.
consumption. The U.S. Geological Service
(USGS) estimated that Bakken contains 3.65 billion barrels of recoverable oil —
about six weeks of current global consumption.
The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) predicted that Bakken oil will
peak in 2017.
Tim Morgan is a consultant who does a lot of work for
investment bankers. In his eye-opening 2013
report, Perfect
Storm, he concluded, “the economy as we have known it for more than two
centuries, will cease to be viable at some point within the next ten or so
years unless, of course, some way is found to reverse the trend.”
Heinberg recommends that we shift to renewable energy with utmost
speed. Hmmm. Solar
panels and wind turbines have a limited lifespan. Using them, repairing them, and replacing
them requires the existence of an extremely unsustainable industrial
civilization. This civilization is
unlikely to last long as it gets strangled by energy shortages and hammered by social
unrest. We’ll be forced to make a
painful transition to muscle-powered agriculture, which cannot feed seven
billion. Somewhere along the line,
televisions, laptops, and refrigerators will become useless ballast. Even if scientists invented a way to extract
affordable energy for another 200 years, it would be a foolish thing to
do. We’ve burned far too much carbon
already.
I wonder if it might
be more useful to voyage into the realm of unconventional thinking, on a sacred
mission to explore a lot of big questions.
Over and over, we are told that cool people work really hard, become
really prosperous, and buy lots of really cool stuff. To me, that sounds like a tragic waste of the
precious gift of life. It’s causing lots
of irreparable damage for no good reason.
We weren’t born to live like this.
We were born for a life of freedom, to enjoy a normal and natural
standard of living. Imagine that.
The book is short, full of helpful charts and graphs, well documented,
and delightfully easy to read and understand.
The book’s Introduction can be read HERE.
Heinberg, Richard, Snake
Oil — Fracking’s False Promise, Post Carbon Institute, Santa Rosa,
California, 2013.
5 comments:
Rather than "a ridiculous absurdity conjured up by notorious idiots on the lunatic fringe" 20 years ago, Peak Oil theory was positively proved nearly 60 years ago by a geoscientist and president of the Geological Society of America who worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas.
M. King Hubbert presented a paper to the 1956 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute which predicted that overall petroleum production would peak in the United States between 1965 and 1970. In 1970, his prediction proved correct. In 1974, Hubbert projected that global oil production would peak in 1995 "if current trends continue" (without factoring in desperate measures such as fracking).
Hubbert's predictions were dismissed by the petroleum optimists, but taken seriously by at least some industry insiders when they matched the reality coming out of the ground.
However, true believers in the myth of eternal progress and everlasting profits will never concede defeat as long as there is a dollar yet to be made from planetary exploitation.
I address this "perfect storm" in the essay Out of Equilibrium – Into the Maelstrom and the necessary shift of consciousness in A Collective Rite of Passage.
Riversong, I was referring to the general public’s perception of Peak Oil twenty years ago. My 93-year old neighbor, Walter Youngquist (author of GeoDestinies) had lunch with Hubbert long ago. As far back as 1975, Walt was giving public lectures, trying to warn folks about a very big problem rising up on the horizon. The groups that hosted him never invited him back. For telling the truth, he became a pariah. His latest essay is here.
PS: Cool blog! Native Americans do not believe that the United States has a "right" to exist. I can understand that.
Nice review of the book. Good work.
Yup, its still happening and its still all too real. Getting to a more sustainable lifestyle will be a good thing for all of us.
Yes, indeed! We're moving out of the Dark Age, and better days are coming. A bearded desert prophet in a long white robe carries a sign: "The beginning is near!"
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