So much for Peak Oil: Oil in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming Equal to Entire World's Reserves

According to the GAO, the Recoverable Oil in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming alone is 'About Equal' to the Entire World’s Proven Oil Reserves.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gao...wyoming-about-equal-entire-world-s-proven-oil

 

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The only reason we are even looking at exploiting this is because the price of oil has gone up so much. Large corporations are only going to make bets with expensive infrastructure if they are confident that prices are going to stay high.
Rather than being "So much for peak oil", more than anything this, combined with deep water wells, and other signs of an increasingly desperate scramble to exploit increasingly difficult sources of oil, only serves to confirm peak oil. Barring some breakthrough in extraction technology, this oil will be expensive, and getting it out of the ground will cause significant environmental degradation.

We will never run out of oil. It will get increasingly expensive, and we'll fundamentally change the way we use it as a result.

Suggested reading: the Hirsch Report. "The Hirsch report, the commonly referred to name for the report Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management, was created by request for the US Department of Energy and published in February 2005. It examined the time frame for the occurrence of peak oil, the necessary mitigating actions, and the likely impacts based on the timeliness of those actions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_report

 

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I knew it, but still everything has limits even the oil quantities on Earth. The main question is for how many years exactly there is oil and gas reserves?
200 or 300 years?

 

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That is impossible to say, because new technologies will almost certainly make detection and extraction easier, as well as allowing for the more efficient use of those materials. Plus that ignores the possibility of extracting liquid hydrocarbons from non-terrestrial sources. Titan has more than the whole of the Earth, by some estimates.

http://www.universetoday.com/12800/titan-has-hundreds-of-times-more-liquid-hydrocarbons-than-earth/

 

It's good to see we have a large reliable source of somewhat conventional energy. Anything to get off the Saudi teat. I do worry about the CO2 emissions IF AGW is indeed real. I'm not so worried about environmental degradation. Most of that land is uninhabited.

 

So we tear up the Green River formation and suppose we cut the cord to the Middle East? Problem solved?

Every crisis seems to stem from some other crisis deferred. The Middle East conflict was deferral of the British occupation, which was deferral of Nazi aggression, which was deferral of endless issues going back to prehistory.

Ultimately this all catches up with us--the economy, the environment, the competition for wealth--and we run around like chickens with their heads cut off partly because we just don't have real solutions and partly because we don't like each other.

All human activity that defers the ecological crisis presumably will eventually fail. After that, who knows? Maybe a new petroleum era will begin, in a brand new sedimentary layer, one marked by fossilized imprints of rebar and I-beams.

 

It's a lie. Everyone has an interest in inflating these numbers, and underestimating the cost.

 

I wouldn't call it a lie; it's much more about selective omissions of the truth.

Once again, from the Hirsch report:

 

Oh, another dumbass Republican doesn't understand basic logic.

...is irrelevant if:

1. You can't get it out fast enough from the ground.(let's say, if it is just 3-5% of the US' usage, it doesn't make a dent in the demand)
2. It is too messy (aka enviromental disaster).
3. There is not enough water to do the mining. (read up on it)
4. The energy return is negative. (it takes more energy to produce the quantity)
It is not, yet, but as it gets more and more expensive, it is something to account for.
5. The locals don't want it. Take a look at the mess in Canada and decide if you want to live next to an oilshale mine.

Now stop listening to stupid Reps radio and start to educate yourself... Oh, too late....

 

And you can be sure they won't question those numbers the way they would question other predictions - say, global warming.

CNSnews is guilty of lies of omission. First, you have to cook the shale to around 1000°, a retort process:

Or you can try to cook it in the ground:

And the third option is to haul it by truck to a refinery. But the rag he cited didn't bother to mention this. They did make a passing reference to using a lot of water. By contrast:

All the GAO really said was that they are directing further environmental impact studies because they think the mining will start in 15-20 years. Of course the rag leaves all of this out, leaving the reader to infer that we can start tomorrow. Just elect Romney, so he can fly out there and kick off groundbreaking operations. After all, Obama did cancel Bush's oil leases on federal lands as he went up the steps into the signing room right after his inauguration. The AM radio cranks will probably carry this ball for a while.

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Are there any peer-reviewed articled suggesting that peak oil is an immediate problem? Not the typical bootless internet analyses, but actual scientific treatments?

It seems to me that most peak oil enthusiasts are simply Malthusians who've latched onto oil rather than food production as their basis upon which to predict that the end is nigh. Sure, there is a limited supply of oil on the planet, and we will eventually use it up if we keep using it, but to ignore the technological developments that allow us to extract more, find more on Earth, do more with less, and ultimately find sources off the Earth, is deeply misguided.

If oil starts to run out, and supply constricts, the economic fact is that the price will rise and alternate sources of energy will become more attractive than they are today. Ethanol, nuclear power, solar, wind, biomass derived synthetic fuels, etc. all would see heavier and heavier investment as oil starts to run out. I see no reason to believe that we will be technologically dependent on oil for all eternity, and so no reason to suspect that its gradual loss over what seems likely to be centuries will pose the apocalyptic problems my internet brethren seem to be predicting.

 

The peak oil theorists also believe, as you do, that we shall have to do "more with less". However, no one is seriously preparing for it. You faith in the free market and technology is misguided, because there are presently no scalable solutions to the energy problem, everything is hype and marketing. Meanwhile demand for energy is rising. This means troubling times ahead, because no alternative energy or combination of alternative energy sources will make up for dwindling oil supply. Add political tensions to the mix, and we may see it play out much sooner. If we find large reserves somewhere, that will only postpone it.

 

A bit from Peak Oil:

"If we do not aggressively change direction by 2020, it will be too late and we will be taken, by default, down the fossil fuel path. Sure, we have lots and lots of fossil fuel, enough to cover our needs for the next 500 years. Or do we? We geologists know that the concept of peak oil and peak gas referred only to conventional fossil fuel with standard methods of extraction. Peak is now irrelevant in the face of huge reservoirs of the so-called “unconventionals”, i.e., tar sands, gas shales and heavy oils, with the concomitant new methods of extraction to recover them including dangerous solvent injection and hydrofracking. We cannot ignore the horrendous environmental and health costs of a fossil fuel-dominated future because these costs are real and someone has to pay them. These very dirty “unconventionals” will not peak until far into the future, well past the next major global demographic and environmental tipping points that will alter our future beyond recognition. We must resist the temptation that they will solve all our problems"

We either roll up our sleeves and get busy with finding replacements for oil,coal etc or our fates will be decided for us.It wont be pretty!

 

The question is not is the supply of oil infinite. Of course it's not. The question is are we in danger of running low any time soon.

 

Again, though, that is very Mathusian reasoning, as he argued that the amount of arable land is finite (and farm production grows geometrically), and that land is needed to grow food to feed people. Yet the population grows exponentially and without controls, therefore mass starvation is inevitable. In fact, the world-wide famines he predicted never really came (at least not yet), in large part because of technological innovations that he never considered. (There are of course famines in the world, but it's not a lack of food production that causes them, but rather problems in food distribution, usually caused at the local level.)

What you say was also equally true 100 years ago (since you make no assertion in your argument that we are "almost out" of oil) and yet the people of 1912 turned out okay despite the logic of your statement. They were not almost out of oil, so any serious concern on their part would have been premature.

Still, I acknowledge that it could be a problem if we are indeed almost out of oil (just as I acknowledge that Malthus could have a point in the far future *if* population growth starts to outstrip technological gains in food production). But all I hear are mere assertions that we will reach a crisis point soon. Is there any solid evidence or peer reviewed analyses that suggest that an actual crisis will arise in my lifetime or shortly thereafter (say the next 100 years)?

Obviously the preference would be for a study not conducted by interested parties (though, if fears of shortfalls drive up oil prices, why would oil companies overestimate supplies?). I know from my own googling that BP estimated in 2008 that there is at least 40 years of oil left in known proven reserves alone, but they could be lying. We seem to have even more coal than oil, so coal fired power plants should be serviceable for a very long time.

It still seems to me that the worst case here is that high fossil fuel prices lead us all to become poorer in real terms, rather than society crumbling into chaos, as some people think, and that will drive research into alternatives.

I'm sure it seems like I am arguing that we should not worry, but I'm not. I'm merely asserting that no one seems to provide a solid reason to worry, any more than Thomas Malthus did more than two centuries ago. The people who freaked out over his analysis at the time look pretty foolish in retrospect, not because he was completely wrong, but because his analysis was too simplistic in that it ignored technological change. In the future, as population continues to skyrocket, who knows? Perhaps gains from technology will fall behind the exponential growth of the population and Malthus will be shown to be a visionary. Still, even if he is ultimately vindicated, 1798 was the wrong year to start panicking.

In the same way, I honestly can't tell from what I read whether concern is genuinely warranted right now, or if the atmosphere of doom and gloom is simply left-wing conspiratorial nonsense in the same vein as various population control efforts have been.

Edit:

Had a read further, I would have seen that you made the same point I was making above, only far more concisely.

 

I think the problem is stupefyingly simple, the only reason for confusion is that most people doesn't get that there are different types of oil. Crude oil is the most well known and used and that is what the peak oil theory (also fact) was predicting. Because we are using up the cheaply available crude oil, we have started to use the other types, like oil shale that is used to make synthetic crude oil.

So in short, since peak crude oil has already passed, that's why we are talking at all about oil shale and tar sand. But they are substitutes, and to use them is a messy, expensive, energy extensive and a very complicated process.

We already passed it, look up crude oil productions. So depends on how you look at immediate, yes, it could be a problem....

Also, to ignore that the Earth population is growing and that same already existing population is using more oil (developing countries) is deeply misguided.

Guess which one is growing faster, technological/geological discoveries or the oil usage?

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That would have to depend on how you define "running low". Even as demand for it outraces supply (and as all of the literature says, we won't really know when that has happened until hindsight makes it obvious) there will be lots and lots left. But so much that we do is based on inexpensive and readily available energy. The very idea that this may not be true in the near future seems to be deemed un American! Look at the amount of petulant whining that a relatively modest increase in the price per gallon of gasoline has caused. The good news is that increasing prices are causing people to conserve by buying more fuel efficient cars, more efficient HVAC systems, etc. Many alternatives to petroleum aren't worth developing with the low prices we've had up until now. As the price increases, these will be economically viable, and will allow us to further shift away from petroleum.

There's a very good reason the oil shales/sands in north America have remained unexploited until now. When all of the low hanging fruit has been picked, only then do you go back and consider whether the stuff at the very top of the tree is cost effective to bother with.

Is Peak Oil Real? A List of Countries Past Peak

 

I am not sure you are talking about food or oil, but we did run out of whale oil (look it up,whales got hunted to almost extinction) even though whales generally are replenishable resources.

So if we can run out of a replenishable resource (the rate of usage is bigger than the rate of replacement), imagine how we can run out of a finite resource.

The OPEC countries do it because that is what their production allowance is based on. Since each country is lying, you are at huge disadvantage if you stay honest.

Other companies are lying about it, because their interest is not the same as society's. They don't want you to switch to other resources, so they try to ensure you that not to worry, we have enough in the ground...