gaddafi peak oil news 2011 opening up libya and middle east to curve peak oil problems?.
it seems if peak oil is not a myth and in fact a reality that countries like libya with vast oil reserves would help keep the oil flowing and peak oil more of a myth then reality.
basically peak oil means, the oil has not run out, but the demand is higher then the supply.
this is because of higher populations and more technological societies relying more and more on oil to run, thus demand out stripping supply, whereas if you control all the major oil fields then the problem of peak oil might be not as much of a problem.
because then you can up the supply to meet demands, and not have any disruption in your supplies.
a disruption in oil supplies would cause a peak oil problem, especially if you are running at near max capacity to meet the demand for oil.
now gaddafi is gone where will the oil flow, will the oil fields now be opened up more to meet the global demand in the coming years like 2012 and on.
this is a summary about peak oil.
Peak Oil:
A Summary
World Oil Production Peak - Matthew Simmons comments, "if it turns out that Saudi Arabia has peaked, then categorically, the world peaked." Saudi Arabia has indeed peaked.
"We've embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil."
Mike Bowlin, Chairman and CEO, ARCO, (1999)
Unbeknownst to much of the population, is that the world has reached the peak in oil production. The point where the is no more growth in the system. The mainstream media has finally acknowledged this frightening issue.
FALL 2003 -- World oil and gas 'running out': CNN recently reported, the world's oil reserves are up to 80 percent less than predicted. Production levels will peak in about 10 years' time. At that point prices for petrol and other fuels will reach disastrous levels.
Bottom of the barrel: The world is running out of oil - so why do politicians refuse to talk about it?: The Guardian UK reports: “The oil industry is buzzing. On Thursday, the government approved the development of the biggest deposit discovered in British territory for at least 10 years. Everywhere we are told that this is a "huge" find, which dispels the idea that North Sea oil is in terminal decline. You begin to recognise how serious the human predicament has become when you discover that this "huge" new field will supply the world with oil for five and a quarter days.
Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in denial.”
Exxon-Mobil: “Our industry can certainly be proud of its past achievements. Yet the challenges we will face in the coming years will be every bit as great as those encountered in the past, due in part to ever-increasing global energy use.
For example, we estimate that world oil and gas production from existing fields is declining at an average rate of about 4 to 6 percent a year. To meet projected demand in 2015, the industry will have to add about 100 million oil-equivalent barrels a day of new production. That’s equal to about 80 percent of today’s production level. In other words, by 2015, we will need to find, develop and produce a volume of new oil and gas that is equal to eight out of every 10 barrels being produced today. In addition, the cost associated with providing this additional oil and gas is expected to be considerably more than what industry is now spending.
Equally daunting is the fact that many of the most promising prospects are far from major markets — some in regions that lack even basic infrastructure. Others are in extreme climates, such as the Arctic, that present extraordinary technical challenges."
ASPO Comments: We in ASPO (The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas) know that it is harder to find oil then gas, but if we accept that it might be equally easy I can make the following conclusion:
Today we have a daily production of 75 million barrels per day. If we in 2015 need 80 percent of this as new production we must open new oilfields that can give 60 million barrels per day. To understand how impossible this is I like to make a comparison with the top production of 6 million barrels per day in the North Sea. The question is where can we find 10 new regions of the size of the North Sea? Maybe can the production in Iraq with enormous investments increase with 6 million barrels per day.
I think that it would be a miracle if the rest of the countries in the Middle East can increase the production with 6 million barrels per day. That the rest of the world can find over 40 million barrels of new production is just a dream.
SPRING 2004 -- ExxonMobil has made a new report on energy trends. Once again they claim that the decline of oil and gas will be enormous the coming years.
"The U.S. has some unbelievable energy problems." "The world cannot live without access to energy."
Matthew Simmons, Investment Banker, Member: V.P. Cheney’s 2001 Energy Task Force
FALL 2004 -- World's Seven Largest Economies (G7) Admit They Have No Idea How Much Oil Is Left
The Party's Over-- excerpt from: The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, by Richard Heinberg
The five strategies humans have adopted for capturing increasing amount of energy have permitted societies to grow in size, scope, and complexity. However, it is important to note that the ramp of history, rising upward from the simplest Paleolithic hunter-gatherer bands to the heights of globalized industrial civilization, has not been a smooth one. Many civilizations have expanded their scope and complexity dramatically, only to dissolve back into simpler forms of social organization.
The ancient Egyptians, Romans, Mayas, Greeks, Minoans, Mesopotamians, Harappans, and Chacoans provide a wealth of material for investigation. Why would a group of people intelligent enough to have built impressive temples, roads, and cities and organizing a far-flung empire suddenly lose the ability to maintain them?
The literature on the subject is voluminous and includes speculation on the causes of collapse ranging from class conflict to mismanagement. Undoubtedly, the best modern research on this subject was done by archaeologist Joseph Tainter, whose book 'The Collapse of Complex Societies' (1988) is now widely recognized as the standard work on the topic. In his book and related essays, Tainter takes an ecological view of society as an energy-processing structure and concludes that complex societies tend to collapse because their strategies for energy capture are subject to the law of diminishing returns.
More complex societies are more costly to maintain than simpler ones.
Western civilization from the Middle Ages to the present illustrates the theory in a somewhat different way as it has recovered and undergone at least two even greater growth surges due to its ability to find and exploit new energy subsidies at critical moments.
The discovery of fossil fuels, the greatest energy subsidy ever known enabled the transformation of civilization itself into a form never before seen: industrialism.
This does not mean, however, that industrial civilization is immune to the law of diminishing returns. Over time, the amount of energy that must be expended to find and extract each barrel of oil, or to mine each ton of coal, increases.
Tainter ends his book by drawing the following sobering conclusion: “However much we like to think of ourselves as something special in world history, in fact industrial societies are subject to the same principles that caused earlier societies to collapse.”
Industrialism
"Marion King Hubbert first announced in 1949, that the fossil-fuel era would prove to be very brief.
The life of industrial civilization will be a “horridly short” pulse lasting roughly 100 years (from 1930 to 2030), with its high point corresponding to the peak of global per-capita energy use - which occurred in 1979.
Hubbert immediately grasped the vast economic and social implications of this information. He understood the role of fossil fuels in the creation of the modern industrial world, and thus foresaw the wrenching transition that would likely occur following the peak in global extraction rates. In lectures and articles, starting in the 1950s, Hubbert outlined how society needed to change in order to prepare for a post-petroleum regime.
Hubbert was quoted as saying that we are in a “crisis in the evolution of human society.” You can only use oil once.
This is within the lifetimes of most people now alive. This foreseeable energy crisis will affect everyone on earth.
This period of overwhelming transformative change has sometimes been called the “Petroleum Era” or the “Industrial Age, “ but, in view of its relative brevity, it may be more appropriate to call in the “Petroleum Interval” or the “Industrial Bubble.”
The sooner the general public understands the situation industrial societies are in, the less suffering will occur as we make the inevitable but painful transition to a new energy regime.
In the near-term future, secure access to resources will depend not only on the direct control of oil fields and pipelines but also on successful competition with other bidders for available supplies. Eventually, the US will need to curtail European and Japanese access to resources wherever possible. [and too, China]
Food and Population
Prospects for increasing food production above the global level of demand are dim - largely due to continued population growth.
Add to this already grim picture the spectre of oil depletion. It is not difficult imagine the likely agricultural consequences of dramatic price hikes for the gasoline or diesel fuel used to run farm machinery or to transport food long distances, or for nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides made from oil and natural gas. The agricultural miracle of the 20th century may become the agricultural apocalypse of the 21st.
How many people will post-industrial agriculture be able to support?
This is an extremely important question, but one that is difficult to answer. A safe estimate would be this: as many people as were supported before agriculture was industrialized - that is the population at the beginning of the 20th century, or somewhat fewer than two billion people.
This poses a serious problem, since there are currently over six billion of us and our numbers are still growing.
...
The picture drawn is a profoundly disturbing one. It depicts a century of impending famine, disease, economic collapse, despotism, and resource wars. The reader may be wondering: Is this author deliberately exaggerating the perils ahead in order to make a point? Or is he simply a gloomy and depressed individual projecting his neuroses onto the world?
The future projections represent the likely outcomes of present trends. The emotional responses run the gamut from shock, denial, despair, and rage to eventual acceptance.
The fact remains: as long as we trade on false hopes, we only dig deeper the hole we’re already in. We have arrived at a point where global societal collapse - meaning a reversion to a lower level of complexity - is likely, and perhaps certain, over the next few decades.
The process of getting from here to there is likely to be horrendously difficult, and the desirability of the outcome will depend to a very high degree on actions taken now.
It has been a fabulous party.
Shall we acknowledge that the party is over, clean up after ourselves, and make way for those who will come after us?"
"It is evident that the fortunes of the world's human population, for better or for worse, are inextricably interrelated with the use that is made of energy resources."
M. King Hubbert (1969) Energy Visionary
Everything you touch, any mode of transportation you take, all the food you eat has been provided with the benefit of this most energy-rich fuel source. No other fuel source has such a high Energy Return on Energy Invested ratio (EROEI). Our society has been built on this fuel source - one that is finite.
Obviously, it would run out sometime. That time is now - within our lifetime.
With current consumption rates, oil reserves will be depleted in 25 to 30 years, yet demand is increasing. The timeline is ever declining.
Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facilities are not expected to be developed by the end of the decade. There are no terminals and no tanker fleet - these will cost billions and take time.
Nuclear power is not without it's issues. If the immense expenditures for plant construction and safety, reactor decommissioning, and waste storage are taken into account, nuclear power is very expensive.
The new CANDU reactor reprocesses spent fuel in the form of MOX (mixed oxide), which consists of a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxides. Only two MOX plants have been built (UK and France) and both have turned out to be environmental and financial nightmares.
Conventional reactors use the traditional fuel of uranium. The mining, refining and concentration process is wasteful and polluting. Much of the energy needed for these processes comes from... oil. No country in the world has yet succeeded in building a permanent high-level nuclear waste repository. Needless to say, transporting of waste to a central repository would create extra dangers.
Physicist David Goodstein writes in Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil -- "Is there enough uranium around for that to be a long-term solution? Just like oil reserves, as at an earlier time, uranium reserves will surely increase, as a result of both further exploration and advancing technology. However, known reserves are estimated to be enough to supply all of Earth's energy needs - at the current rate of energy consumption - for a period of only five to twenty-five years. That ignores the growing world demand for power, as well as the Hubbert's peak effect, which just as valid for uranium as for oil."
Planet earth has been scoured and raped of its mineral resources. The large, 'easy to extract' finds have been made. Here too, depletion is the watchword.
There is no equivalent energy replacement - this is not a debatable issue, this is an unpleasant fact.
Petro-chemical products touch every aspect of our lives - the car we drive (gasoline, interior mouldings, exterior coatings), clothing, stereo and computer housing, paint on the walls of our houses and offices, the plastic packaging used for food, the shampoo bottle in the shower. The list is endless.
Chemicals used for manufacturing processes and fertilizers will become scarce and expensive.
There will be no hydrogen economy.
Right now, there is a deluge of stories on the wonders of hydrogen. Yet, this is another area of great confusion. Hydrogen is not a primary source of energy. For a Hydrogen Era to occur you need an abundance of natural gas, or you need to create a great deal of new power plants using coal and nuclear power. As well, all these energy 'sources' require fossil fuels for extraction, construction of buildings and equipment, transportation of materials. EVERYTHING is tied to hydrocarbons.
Fuels cells for automobiles are not as viable as the promoters would like us to think. Banc of America comments, "On the best-case scenario, fuel cells are expected to become viable only beyond 2020." If hydrogen was feasible, building the infrastructure would take decades and billions of dollars.
And if by a miracle, these cells were viable and the hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks could be retrofitted for fuel cells, where would the energy come from to fill these?
Most importantly, the process of hydrogen production always uses more energy than the resulting hydrogen will yield. The Second Law of Thermodynamics insures that hydrogen will be a net-energy loser every time since some usable energy is lost whenever it is transformed (from hydrogen to electricity, electricity to hydrogen, etc.).
Where will the petroleum products come from to build and maintain roads? Asphalt incorporates large quantities of oil. Airlines use copious amounts high-grade kerosene refined from oil. Transportation will change dramatically.
Where will the chemicals come from for fertilizer production? The great agricultural miracle of the 20th century dates back to nitrogen for fertilizer and increasing food crops. Food travels thousands of miles, by just-in-time delivery, to reach its customers. When the national truck fleet experiences gas rationing, how will large cities receive food from the agricultural regions? Supermarkets fully stocked with imported produce will be a thing of the past. Prices will be high.
Cities do not grow enough food within reasonable proximity. Suburban homeowners will have no choice but to turn their lawns into food gardens. What will city and apartment dwellers do?
Will we continue to build what are really unnecessarily large homes, which we heat in the winter and then cool down in the summer? Is it necessary to keep building these large new big box retail outlets with high ceilings and extensive lighting? Both these activities must stop! By choice and planning now or by necessity and haphazard approach later. Building codes must reflect this new reality and communities must be redesigned around mass transit. There will be no more suburbia.
There will be less foreign tourists as traveling will become expensive. In summer, the weekly trip to the cottage will be costly and best saved for the annual holiday.
Economic activity will decline. Jobs will be lost.
In simple terms, our financial system essentially represents debt and structurally it is built on perpetual economic growth to service this debt. As raw materials (in addition to hydrocarbons) face depletion -- "China has sucked the cupboard bare of raw materials" -- prices will soar. So too will the cost of goods and services. Economic activity will decline as demand decreases; government revenues will be reduced and there will be added strain on support services -- Economics 101. Population growth will add further pressure.
But the real kicker: planet earth will never again experience the economic industrial growth made possible by the utilization of fossil fuels. At some point in the future, a global financial crisis will not be unexpected.
Clearly, the issue at hand is how to best manage the decline of our society to one that is simpler and less complex.
Richard Heinberg: "Virtually all of the authors who have contributed to the literature on sustainability tell us that, in order for a transition to a lower-complexity and lower-throughput society to occur without a chaotic collapse, humanity will have to take a systemic approach to resource management and population reduction.
It is the scale of the problems that beset us now that is unique. The steep expansion in scale of the human population size and the consumption of resources that has characterized modern societies is almost entirely due to industrialism and the use of fossil fuels. And many of the largest problems we are to likely encounter in this century will be due to the depletion of those fuels."
(The depletion of those fuels and the realization of the consequences has for quite sometime been the driving force behind geo-political events.)
"We must face the prospect of changing our basic ways of living. This change will either be made on our own initiative in a planned way, or forced on us with chaos and suffering by the inexorable laws of nature." Jimmy Carter (1976)
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet airplane. His son will ride a camel."
Saudi saying
