A Fresh Look at Oil’s Long Goodbye

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/a-fresh-look-at-oils-new-boom-time/

by gruseom • 14 years ago

56 48 14 years ago

dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com

ck2• 14 years ago

Did anyone ever predict Saudi Arabia would actually reduce the price of oil as a method of economically attacking it's enemies? Because the USA recovery is about to be greatly helped by that.

Oil would last a lot longer if car makers would provide the 60mpg cars they have in Europe, here in the USA too. Instead they just stop advertising with the average mpg and switch to only advertising highway mpg to make the cars seem better, while city mpg remains horrible.

tadfisher• 14 years ago

Few gasoline-fueled cars actually get 60 miles per US gallon of gasoline in Europe, because they advertise MPG numbers in imperial gallons (3.785 L vs. 4.546 L).

They have plenty of small diesel-fueled cars that get around those numbers, but remember that diesel is less energy-dense and is more expensive in the US, making owning a diesel car a wash here in the best case.

ams6110• 14 years ago

You mean diesel is more energy-dense. Gasoline has about 114,000 BTU/gal and #2 diesel has about 130,000 BTU/gal (varies somewhat by season due to different blending).

getsat• 14 years ago

My motorcycle gets 65 MPG.

My car does between 12 (city) and 28 (highway). Ugh.

rmc• 14 years ago

"gallon" is the one imperial unit of measurement that's quite different in the US and the UK. Most other imperial units (e.g. foot, inch, acre) are nearly exactly the same (but not exactly the same!) to not matter for practical reasons, but the gallon is different by about ¼.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 14 years ago

Additionally, the US has higher crash survival standards, making many of those small, light European cars impossible to sell here. Improve their crashworthiness, and there goes the light weight, and along with it, the mileage.

There's also the case that the US has tougher emission standards, which makes it harder to achieve those high mileage rates. Although I've heard that recently, the UK and the rest of Europe have been tightening their emission requirements, so there isn't as much of a difference any more.

dredmorbius• 14 years ago

Note that thinking in terms of MPG tends to obscure how much gas is necessary to go from point A to point B by making you think of how far you can get with a given amount of gas.

Going from 10 MPG to 20 MPH is the same leap as 20 MPG to 40 MPG -- you've just doubled mileage, and halved your fuel requirement.

There's some induced demand which will eat up the efficiency gains, though time and congestion costs tend to reduce this further.

Even if we doubled all our efficiency, the net effect would be the same as doubling our proven energy reserves. Which has ... a very negligible effect on Peak Oil. I can't dig up a reference right now, but recall a presentation or Youtube video in which the net effect of doubling US reserves would have been to move the Hubbert Peak Oil date forward by five or ten years, maximum.

I'm not saying "don't be efficient", I am saying "don't bank on that changing the game".

We're going to have to learn how to get by on vastly less energy than the typical first world resident has become accustomed to.

politician• 14 years ago

Gallons per 100 Miles is a better metric, but fat chance that it'll see the light of day.

mistermann• 14 years ago

> the net effect of doubling US reserves would have been to move the Hubbert Peak Oil date forward by five or ten years, maximum.

> I'm not saying "don't be efficient", I am saying "don't bank on that changing the game". We're going to have to learn how to get by on vastly less energy than the typical first world resident has become accustomed to.

But that's exactly what this article is about, that that thinking is erroneous. The oil supply situation in the US now vs 5 years ago is dramatically different.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 14 years ago

We're going to have to learn how to get by on vastly less energy than the typical first world resident has become accustomed to

That is highly unlikely to occur. More likely is that we will start looking at other energy sources while the overall energy usage goes up.

maxerickson2• 14 years ago

People are still buying lots of mini suvs with $3-$4 gas, so I'm not sure the blame lies solely at the feet of the auto companies.

antidaily• 14 years ago

Try fitting a baby car seat in anything smaller. It can be done but you have zero leg room in front.

patio11• 14 years ago

Did anyone ever predict Saudi Arabia would actually reduce the price of oil as a method of economically attacking it's enemies?

There exists academic literature suggesting that oil producing states would, if threatened with technological change which had the possibility of making oil obsolete, respond by flooding the market with cheap-as-water oil with the twin goals of a) killing or delaying the new tech (newly irrelevant because, hey, it is now 100x more expensive than existing technology per unit of energy) and b) transferring as much from their below-ground Swiss bank accounts to their above-ground Swiss bank accounts before their nations collapsed.

If you've got a friend who did policy debate back in college, ask for their files on "backstopping."

planetguy2• 14 years ago

Sounds difficult -- the oil wells of Saudi Arabia can only produce so much oil per day

brc4• 14 years ago

My economics lecturer did a memorable talk on OPEC back in the day.

His thesis was that groups such as OPEC are ultimately self defeating. I think it was related to game theory.

Basically : OPEC members are made up of states with varying levels of oil reserves. Those with small reserves want to restrict supply to drive the price up, so they can maximise the amount they get for their reserves before they are exhausted.

Those with much larger fields (ie, Saudis) do not want to drive the price up too much, because this encourages other extraction methods (ie, Oil Sands, Deepwater Extraction) as well as encouraging uptake of alternative energy sources (ie Electric Car development, natural gas, biofuels).

As each OPEC member has differing goals and differing timeframes, eventually OPEC will become a toothless tiger that individual nations openly disobey.

I must say in the 10 years since that time, while his eventuality hasn't come about (OPEC is still together) much of it has come true. It certainly isn't the feared group it was 30 years ago.

rdl2• 14 years ago

It's been known for a long time that the Iranian cost of production is much higher than the Saudi cost (basically Saudi oil is free ($1-4/bbl); due to sanctions, Iranian oil isn't profitable at less than around $50, and they need it to be >$80 to sustain their overall economy.

Saudi Arabia and the US have been long-term allies, and Saudi Arabia and Iran have been rivals, so it's always been likely Saudi Arabia would sacrifice some marginal profit to hurt Iran.

unexpected• 14 years ago

Saudi oil may be "free" to produce, but their entire economy is built around $70/barrel oil price.

amcintyre• 14 years ago

Oil would last a lot longer if car makers would provide the 60mpg cars they have in Europe, here in the USA too.

Toyota's Prius C will do 55-60mpg if you're not out on the highway a lot, provided you adjust your driving habits to fit with the hybrid system behavior. Highway mileage is closer to the advertised 48 or so.

etrain2• 14 years ago

Whether or not you believe we're approaching or passed Peak Oil, it's astounding the impact that technology improvements in horizontal drilling and shale gas are having on domestic oil and natural gas prices vs. the rest of the world.

Currently, natural gas trades for ~$3 in the US vs. ~$12 in Europe. No pure arbitrage available here, because Nat Gas is extremely expensive to transport. But, as the US infrastructure develops (natural gas gas stations, more power plants running on nat gas, etc.), this discrepancy will deteriorate.

Deliberately ignoring the environmental implications, this is a great thing for the US. For once, we might actually be able to use energy for leverage vs. the rest of the global economy, not the other way around.

rdl2• 14 years ago

If we can move coal and oil loads to natural gas, it's an environmental win, too. (not as big as nuclear or wind or solar, but still better, especially for everything except CO2).

I would almost argue for natural gas + global warming abatement (ocean seeding, atmospheric modification) as the least bad likely path through the 21st century. At the very least, move other fossil fuels to natural gas while working on other energy sources.

quantumhobbit• 14 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't natural gas a win on CO2 also. Low molecular weight hydrocarbons, when burned, produce more H20 and less CO2 per unit energy than the heavier hydrocarbons. CH4 and C2H6 have relatively more Hydrogen than C7H16 .etc. Coal is almost pure carbon, so all hydrocarbons win vs. coal.

etrain2• 14 years ago

I agree with you here, but there are environmental concerns related to the extraction process - namely contaminated water supplies and greenhouse gas emissions.

mkr-hn2• 14 years ago

This means the world won't descend into chaos before we finish the transition away from fossil fuels.

I'm not worried about advancement in renewable energy. It will slow as oil gets cheaper, but not too much. Energy companies will continue to develop it as a long-term plan since they've already spent so much time and money working on it.

khuey• 14 years ago

Why would they do that? Isn't that the sunk cost fallacy?

mkr-hn2• 14 years ago

There are only so many ancient seabeds to scrape and pump. We will eventually run out. They already have a jump on preparing for the inevitable, so it would be silly to toss it out the window just because oil has been given a reprieve.

tokenadult2• 14 years ago

The report, "Oil: The Next Revolution: The Unprecedented Upsurge of Oil Production Capacity and What It Means for the World," underlying the New York Times piece kindly submitted here:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Oil-%20The%20Next%...

The appendix shows the methodology.

einhverfr• 14 years ago

I think there are some interesting issues in the theories (as well as peak oil theories).

The key problem is that with a lower EROI, unconventional hydrocarbon sources are going to be fundamentally more expensive. So I don't think you can see a price collapse in oil as a result. Conventional hydrocarbon production also may or may not have peaked, but the principle reason for any peak is likely to be economic in nature rather than solely dependant on what's in the ground.

Prior to the 1960's oil discovery was still growing. After the 1960's conventional oil discovery had peaked, and I see this as a major reason why the 1973 oil crisis was possible-- there was a growing awareness that oil was a finite resource that wouldn't be with us forever. After 1973, oil prices have, adjusted for inflation, never returned to their pre-1973 stability or level. This represents a shift where oil has been supply-restricted rather than demand restricted (if peak discovery is peak 1, this is peak 2). Peak 3 may be a peak in conventional oil production (light sweet crude). I think we are at peak regarding LSC production and have been for some time, and that peak is political and economic rather than reserve-based.

csharpminor• 14 years ago

Did anyone else notice that BP was a major contributor of funding to this report? I'm working my way through this, but it's hard to see it as anything more than the oil industry using academia as a mouthpiece.

bennyfreshness• 14 years ago

Although I'm all for energy independence and the benefits of cheap energy I'm hesitant to think fracking's long term affects are worth it. This documentary does a decent job of depicting some bi-products of fracking.

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

brc4• 14 years ago

Gasland is propaganda from one person (or groups) point of view. They definitely had an angle to push, and push it they did.

Not saying there aren't truths in the movie, but I've read enough on the background to know it was a movie with an agenda. The famous flammable tapwater, for example, is a naturally occuring phenomonen in many places.

Much more needs to be done on the studying of injecting the ground to see how this affects groundwater and ground stability. But fracking is not new - it's been around for a long time.

mkramlich• 14 years ago

> The report is written by Leonardo Maugeri, a top oil company executive

This is the point where your skeptical Spidey senses should start to tingle.

A Fresh Look at Oil’s Long Goodbye

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