It is very sad. Anyway, let's make this thread more interesting, here is a question: What a certain recent flood has to do with peak oil???
So the $10 run-up in crude over the past week or so is due to everyone realizing that there will be no more oil left after China attains world dominance? Silly me. I thought it was just due to speculation and the reported political tensions in Iraq/Turkey (which is not really a factor, but the news folks love to beat this to death). What was the other reason...oh yes...a harsh winter. I guess we should embrace for sub zero temps in Florida.
nobody said that. read again the topic of the thread - it is not about short term price fluctuation but about the long term trends.
OK - but my long term perspective is just the same. Forget about conventional oil. There are hundreds of billions of barrells of oil in the form of oil sands and oil shale. The recent technology to extract oil from sands has reduced the processing costs. In fact, it is so profitable based on today's prices that Canada's govt recently imposed a huge tax to take part in the action. In my opinion, peak oil will be reached once the oil sands are depleted and reliance is placed on shale or other inconventional means. When that happens is anybody's guess.
Why? Because it is peaking? I always hope that accidentally we run into a peak oil denier who is actually intelligent and has an argument that we somehow overlooked and could be helpful. Unfortunatelly, you are NOT that person, and most likely all of the deniers' arguments we already dealt with. Your silly oilsand (see my posts above) will NEVER produce the numbers needed to replace the falling Saudi and other Gulf countries' oil. Crunch the numbers and STOP listening to Fox News!!!
Excessive oil price and demand issues could entirely be solved within 3 years entirely by US policymakers alone by doing this: 1) Instituting immediate high MPG requirements and subsidies for hybrid vehicles on all new cars. Combine that with large purchase tariffs on inefficient vehicles. 2) Immediately fast-tracking a plan to create a massive # of nuclear power plants and likewise subsidizing plugin hybrid vehicle purchases. Make a plan to to make 75%+ of all new vehicles 35-40mpg starting 2008 !!! 3) Push this type of policy making agenda with the rest of the developing world, subsidizing their efficiency. ie: push China to follow our lead, 'or else' (enable protectionist policies and tariffs that effectively strengthen the yuan enough to force a slowdown of the export portion of China's economy), and ensure EU follows our lead in China policy (they'll do this in the interest of killing inflation and preserving currency value). Note EU is the largest China importer; US is second. 4) somewhat related: stop the use of food crops as oil/energy replacements and go entirely nuclear/battery. This gets inflation under control, and keeps the dollar strong. If the avg vehicle fleet gets 20mpg right now and we consume 10 million barrels of day of gasoline (in the US alone), we could reduce gasoline consumption to 5 million barrels per day with a 40mpg fleet average. Lets be more realistic (still a fantasy) and assume we get a fleet average of 32-35mpg within 3 yrs, which may amount to 7 million barrels/day consumption, trimming 3 mbp/d off the margin of oil consumption. Extrapolate this on other major oil consuming nations following suit, and you create a 10mbpd production vs consumption capacity margin. Countries spend billions on wars, and millions die in the process. In the end, wars are about resources (territory being part of that) anyway. Consider the cost here a pre-emptive action; much cheaper than waiting for the actual conflict to occur. The way I look at it, either we get aggressive and stop patsying around, or the next generation of our children (or sooner) will be fighting a world war over oil territories, clamoring for cheap $250-$300 oil. These future conflicts will make Iraq look like a small battle.
It was my understanding, the private/domestic vehicle "fleet" consumption wasn't the largest consumer, rather transport industry and power generation. Am i wrong? Further, the us is already pressuring everyone to clean up efficiency, whilst doing little itself, as the largest consumer/polluter on the planet, though rubbish rhetoric is expected, no big deal. Vast numbers of nuclear power plants........hmmm. Wheres the waste gonna be stored?Is there any logical reason, you would or should trust a technology, whose only claim to fame is their hasnt been a vast, massive , multi generational accident "recently"? How are you gonna get a road train pulling 40mpg? Not saying those ideas are unsound, (just expedient, which is why its not unrealistic) just there's some real questions to be answered there.
private/domestic consumption is at 9 mbpd more precisely, and the remainder is what you mention, plastics, etc. http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/petroleumproductsconsumption.html as for nuclear waste, nowadays it can easily be glassified and dropped either underground or in the ocean trenches. after processing and refinement (as key fuels can be re-used), I believe the time it takes the remaining isotopes to decay to background levels of radiation equivalent something like 500 yrs. Actually not bad. As for nukes being safe, countless statistics have been stated that coal plants produce many more times radiation than nukes ... Interesting stuff. Found this by the way, about rail efficiency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation If we used trains instead of trucks and cars for all freight and passenger movement, we'd be in much better shape already.
Oil sands are not a viable substitute for conventional oil. I've been an oil sands investor for years and I'm a big believer, but you have to be realistic. Production is by mining rather than pumping, which is intrinsically slow, labor intensive, and environmentally disruptive. The upgrading plants are incredibly expensive and difficult to build, which means that they take a long time to come online and have to be capitalized over a very long productive lifetime, meaning slow production rates relative to total oil in place. Upgrading relies on natural gas which is supply limited, and getting the product to market relies on pipeline capacity which isn't built yet. All of this means that even in the rosiest possible scenario, oil sands cannot even meet new North American demand, much less new global demand, much less make up for shortfalls in conventional oil production. The same argument obviously applies to shale oil, just more so. Coal gasification, even more so. And that's not even touching the question of carbon dioxide and global warming, which gets worse and worse as you go from light oil to heavier and heavier carbon rich alternatives. If the conventional oil peak is indeed already here, which seems increasingly likely, we are in for a world of hurt. We needed to start diversifying our energy supply 30 years ago when Carter thought it was a good idea, not now when we are staring into the abyss. Martin