Comments on: EIA’s first Peak Oil statement—how was their vision a decade ago?

By: EIA Critique Redux

EIA Critique Redux — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:03:57 +0000

[...] comes a piece this summer by ASPO-USA, an organization devoted to the concept of Peak Oil, with some perhaps even [...]

By: Matt Platte

Matt Platte — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:14:58 +0000

Lovins’ role is to suck oxygen from the alternative transportation atmosphere, thereby protecting the status quo. That was apparent a decade ago - unless one had a Rocky Mountain blind spot.

By: Charlotte Tee

Charlotte Tee — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:45:56 +0000

Is the EIA’s optimism any different from the nonsense we hear about unemployment under 10%, our ‘nascent recovery’, ‘winning’ wars in ME, or any other fairy tale coming out of Washington?

By: Bill Simpson near Slidell, Louisiana

Bill Simpson near Slidell, Louisiana — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 02:14:13 +0000

The BIG problem with all these future oil production estimates is the human factor. People act in their own self interest. Once peak oil becomes evident by the oil price mostly going up, hardly ever down, only a foolish exporter will not begin to cut back on their exports in order to raise the price even faster. The exporters don’t do that now because some other producer still has excess capacity. That will change, probably in the second half of this decade because of increasing demand from China. And once one exporter does it, others will follow. Of course, they will need to be careful not to collapse the entire world economy, since many import a significant amount of their food, much of which arrives by ship. (I doubt that it will work out that way, but I can hope for no collapse.)
The King of Saudi Arabia recently stated that the Kingdom didn’t intend to ramp up production because he wanted to save enough oil for his own people to consume. The real future oil production graph will look a lot different than all the academics assume. Trust that nice, smooth oil decline graph at your peril. Mathematical formulas can seldom account for human emotion. They are useful, but far from good at predicting all outcomes. Wall Street relied on math to forecast the performance of financial products related to housing. How did that work out? Twice. Remember Long Term Capital Management? They were the best and the brightest to be bailed out by the rest of us. The math is perfect. We aren’t.
But maybe I am wrong, and all the oil exporters will become altruistic.

By: Don Hirschberg

Don Hirschberg — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 03:19:43 +0000

To call the EIA wrong would be to give them a great compliment.

By: Patrick Cummins

Patrick Cummins — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:17:27 +0000

Three related points:

1) In the second scenario, the one preferred by the EIA, post-peak production drops off at a very high rate. As such, it doesn’t look anything like post-peak US production.

2) The reason for the sharp drop-off after the peak is that this scenario assumes production will continue to rise well after 50% of the resource has been extracted. This is contrary to the experience of mature production regions around the world (including the US) which typically show production peaking at about 50% extraction.

3) The difference between the low (2248 billion barrels) and mean (3003 billion barrels) estimate of global extractable oil is about 750 billion barrels. Since peak production tends to occur at 50% extraction and given that production near the peak is about 30 billion barrels per year, this extra 750 billion barrels delays occurrence of peak production by 0.5*750/30 = 12.5 years. The seemingly massive 750 billion barrel difference between scenarios translates into a mere 12.5 years in delaying the peak.