Friday, February 22, 2008

Mega-Projects and Peak-Oil: A Debate

I know that once in a while I see comments about The Oil Drum website here (or maybe it's just Xeroid) and I've seen my Net Oil Export chart reposted there, so to prove that I pay attention I wanted to post a link to a debate I saw there the other day that was fantastic.

It doesn't really have much to do with Net Oil Exports, but it does have to do with the contentious issue of peak-oil which I think goes hand-in-hand with NOE.

This is where it started:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3623#comment-304572

But this is where it starts to get good:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3623#comment-304746

I highly recommend this reading, there is a lot of valuable information here presented brilliantly.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm with Memmel - in th USA, for example, the decline rates are being held around 2% by massive depletion rates from infill drilling and EOR.

The infill and EOR are a one shot short term deal. Eventually the decline rates will accelerate.

Offshore regularly use EOR techniques because the environment is so hostile and corrosive. For offshore time (and most importantly PROFIT) is of the essence, they need huge depletion rates (which inevitably leads to the huge decline rates.)

IMO the implication of all this is that the decline rate post peak will be very steep as the depletion is so severe, certainly not 2%, and is likely to accelerate for geological and increasing above ground reasons.

Xeroid.

Anonymous said...

Man, you're fast. I actually like all three of these guys(gals?)- (ccpo) has some catching up to do.

I won't give you my favorite. I need to maintain some credibility as "nonpartisan." I'll let you pick sides.

Remember, I don't do predictions. I see you post there. You're free to tell memmel what you think. Be careful, though. Grey Zone might bite your head off. Just kidding.

Thanks for reading.

Like I've said, I'm seriously considering giving you an editorship here.

But easy, OK, I've got a backlog of your questions I need to answer.

Cheers,
MFP

Anonymous said...

I don't do precise predictions either. We will only know when peak was by looking back. But, at the moment anyway, peak was three years or so ago and peak 'light sweet' 10 years ago - hence it's current high price.

IMO some of Pitt's points are manipulation of data - actually, within the accuracy of the data there was an increase from 2002 to mid 2005, then flat which is not the steady 1.5% to 2% required for BAU.

For BAU economic growth there has to be an excess of oil waiting to be used - clearly it hasn't been there for 3 years or so now, despite megaprojects!

Peak oil is the peak sustained volume ie: a line joining the low points on your graphs.

Good work.

Xeroid.

Anonymous said...

How did you get "sustained" to be bolded?

Anonymous said...

On this blog you can use some HTML tags, such as < b >, < i >, < a > I've put extra spaces between the < and b etc so you can see them.

So, to bold this word I enter < b > word < /b > , the HTML tags are interpreted and not printed.

Xeroid.