US Dept of Energy Report: PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION

shakespear1 · Light Sweet Crude Joined: May 13, 2005 Posts: 1509

This is a rosy picture according to Harper's Index for July 2006

ballad · Coal Joined: Sep 13, 2006 Posts: 4

Navono · Coal Joined: Mar 28, 2007 Posts: 7

jdmartin · Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:40 am Post subject:

Navono · Coal Joined: Mar 28, 2007 Posts: 7

Thanks very much for the welcome. I first became aware that Peak Oil was close when I saw Mike Ruppert's Truth and Lies of 9/11. Since then I have taken to viewing the practices, policies, and general attitudes of my industry in a new light. A lot of the lunacy I have witnessed makes perfect sense to me now that I realize just how much paper petroleum there is. Within an hour's drive of my home town there are hundreds of old slow producing oil wells and a couple of small refineries. However, within the same distance there are thousands and thousands of gas wells, and 50 or so significant plants and batteries perparing their output for export. I am 37, and when I was 18 I worked my first gas plant turnaround. The plant in question was at the time owned by Mobil. I was surprised when I discovered that the original process and sulphur trains there were older than I was. I returned there for another maintenance turnaround a couple years ago and was amazed at how much of the plant had been mothballed/demolished and that the only significant new construction on the site that had happened in almost 20 years was a new sulphur recovery unit. Operations staff I knew at the site informed me that the local gas field had not only dropped off in productive capacity significantly, but also that it had grown far more sour over the years, hence the new SRU. This same story is being repeated at every one of those old plants despite the continued drilling of new and advanced wells into the old reservoirs. The product is still there, but it gets harder and harder to produce as time goes on. If you look at a map of oil and gas wells in Alberta there are a lot... but if you also include the ones that have been abandoned the map gets pretty full all of the sudden. Most of the capital expense of the Alberta oilfields happened in the 60's and 70's. Then Trudeau's National Energy Program killed almost all investment in the province's oil industry until the mid-90's. Since that time the investment has been huge, but not in the old fields. New sources of petroleum here in Alberta are expensive and very destructive environmentally. More proof that the lifespan of fields that are usually greedilly overproduced is generally shorter than originally hoped for at the time of their discovery. When I was a child of 5, Alberta celebrated its' 75th Anniversary and we all believed there was enough natural gas in Alberta to take care of our needs for hundreds of years. However, rapid expansion and low royalty exports to the US and rest of Canada has the industry scrambling to maintain current production levels. Regular gasoline here is $99.9 cents per liter right now, which works out to roughly $3.75 per US gallon. With exchange factored in that comes out to $3.24 US per US gallon. On one hand it upsets me that gasoline I buy less than one mile from the refinery I work in costs more at times than it does in other places, but, I get paid well to fit the pipes, so I really shouldn't complain... this project is good for a year, right here in town, and the next one is 20 minutes away and will likely take 3-4 years to build. Shell plans to more than double their Scotford upgrader complex at an estimated cost of 18 billion Canadian. The Albian sands mine that supplies the bitumen for the upgrader will of course also be enlarged to suit the needs of the downstream production. I doubt I will be unemployed anytime soon...

That is, until I have enough coin to disappear with a sailboat, seeds, and a plan.

Wink

Battle_Scarred_Galactico · Intermediate Crude Joined: Apr 07, 2005 Posts: 962

The only real survival option will be local and communal. It's far too late to attempt to replace cheap energy and waste it like we are accustomed to. I say this after spending the last 17 years of my life full and part-time employed by the oilfield/refining sectors in Alberta, Canada.

What a great quote, its' brilliant to see someone who actually has real world experience with oil come here and tell it like it is.

Welcome.
_________________
"Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true." - Julius Caesar

manu · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 654

Yes gurmeet you will be the last jackass to be trading when it all comes down.

MD

wow...look at all the spam hiding in here...now you see it..now you don't.
_________________
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
Robert A. Heinlein

md@peakoil.com

funzone36 · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 04, 2005 Posts: 177

These are some of the best things I found:

skiptamali · Tar Sands Joined: May 09, 2008 Posts: 28

Apologies if I'm re-posting what someone has already hit, but given the thought to govt projection and energy analysts' words of late, thought you guys would like this article from RiverWired:
"Robert Hirsch, a "senior energy advisor," gave this dire warning on CNBC last week. He based his prediction on an interview given by Charles T. Maxwell in February. Maxwell, who is apparently known as "The Dean of Oil Analysts," said the crisis will start sometime between 2010 and 2015 and will last for at least ten years."

Annnnnnd then this fun one from Business & Media Institute.
My personal favorite prgh:
“[Maxwell] expects an oil-induced financial crisis to start somewhere in the 2010 to 2015 timeframe,” Energytechstocks.com reported. “He said that, unlike the recession the U.S. appears to be in today, ‘This will not be six months of hell and then we come out of it.’ Rather, Maxwell expects this financial crisis to last at least 10 or 12 years, as the world goes through a prolonged period of price-induced rationing (eg, oil up to $300 a barrel and U.S. pump prices up to $15 a gallon).”

Soooooooo... great. Who wants to grow garden veggies and tend the chickens with me while I prepare for armageddon?
Seriously, this could be one of the more extreme projections, but I don't think it's totally illegit. My head is spinning just thinking about the restructuring that could be done to lessen famine and other poverty-related catastrophes in the next few years. Is anyone else sniffing out a very big, very dark chain of reactions?