The Antiplanner paid $2.99 a gallon for gasoline last week, which–according to my records–is the lowest I’ve paid for three years. The United States is now producing more oil than it imports for the first time since 1995. Not only is the U.S. producing more oil than Saudi Arabia today, it is poised to become the world’s largest oil producer (ahead of Russia, which is currently number one) by 2015.
Despite these dramatic changes, there are some who still want to harp on peak oil. “A new multi-disciplinary study led by the University of Maryland calls for immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce vulnerability to the imminent threat of global peak oil,” says one news article.
In fact, the study in question doesn’t predict that peak oil will take place soon, only that if it does, it will have serious consequences. But even that conclusion is wrong, as the “multidisciplinary team” would have known if one of the disciplines had been economics.
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Second, energy is fungible. Different kinds of energy have different characteristics, but ultimately we can power cars and airplanes from electricity generated by nuclear, hydroelectric, or other sources.
Third, saving energy is fungible. We can save more energy by reducing the amount of energy we need to live our current lifestyles than by changing those lifestyles. That means it makes more sense to design more energy-efficient single-family homes than it does to push more people into multifamily housing, just as it makes more sense to buy more fuel-efficient cars than to live less mobile lives. As a result, some, such as former BP CEO John Browne, are more worried about peak demand than peak supply.
Some reporters admit that “we were wrong about peak oil,” but add that recent increases in oil production will be “a disaster for humanity.” The reality is that peak-oil advocates don’t care about energy supplies; they want to change lifestyles. They are willing to use any scare tactic they can find to promote this change. They don’t even care about the facts; all they care about are their preconceived notions that mobility and property rights are problems. Fortunately, at the moment they seem to be fading into the background.
To believe in peak oil you have to ignore economics, chemistry and history:
1. Economics because shortages increase price which increases supply and reduces consumption as the Antiplanner said.
2. Chemistry because you can make the stuff from coal or natural gas. Actually you can make oil out of thin air, if you are willing to pay the cost (extract carbon from CO2, H from water and combine – expensive, but possible – just takes a lot of energy input.)
3. History because Hitler got 1/2 of his liquid fuels from coal in the last two years of the war. South Africa has been doing it for decades.
I paid $1.19 per gallon yesterday, that’s the most I’ve paid per gallon in months. I’ve even paid as little as $0.9299 per gallon. This isn’t an advertisement for a grocery chain’s “points for gas” program, just an endorsement of Karlock’s statement: “you have to ignore economics.”
Thanks to a particular business’s attempt to draw in customers, I have a full refrigerator, and cheap gasoline.
One more thing. I distinctly remember reading an article in Readers Digest that was one of those “what the experts say the future wil be like in 2000”. I think it may have been close to 40 years ago that I read it. I believe one of the “experts” was Isaac Asimov. The part I remember was the prediction that the Soviet Union and the USA would still have huge armies but they would be too fearful of using the armies because they had so little oil! He also described the life of a man who had to walk to work (no gas/oil) and his work was mostly tearing down old buildings and reusing every part of that old building because producing new resources was too expensive.
Seems like everyone in the 1970’s was predicting we were going to run out of oil in just a few decades, is my memory close to being right on that??
The Antiplanner wrote:
The reality is that peak-oil advocates don’t care about energy supplies; they want to change lifestyles. They are willing to use any scare tactic they can find to promote this change. They don’t even care about the facts; all they care about are their preconceived notions that mobility and property rights are problems. Fortunately, at the moment they seem to be fading into the background.
Agreed. Note that I do not claim to have a clue about when or if peak oil will happen, has happened or will not happen anytime soon.
But there’s a bigger paradox here. In most, maybe all of the United States, transit is extremely dependent on the sale of petroleum products for operating and capital subsidies. So while advocates in favor of spending tax dollars to build transit instead of highways will cite “peak oil” to justify their positions (and claim that when “peak oil” renders all private motor vehicles too expensive to move, transit will substitute), they still assume that their trains and streetcars and LRVs and buses will receive “operating assistance” from highway users. Never been able to understand that.
Oil prices will fall even more during the next market correction. This time in 2009, gas in Portland was $1.79. As the Fed and banks release the Kraken–the trillions in reserves they’re sitting on that were created as ones and zeros on digital balance sheets–and petrol dollars lose value, gas and oil prices will skyrocket, reaching well above $5 a gallon as some peak oilers have predicted.
And thanks to the weakest solar cycle in the centuries, when globul warmin continues not to materialize, peak oilers-slash-AGW zealots will have to manufacture some other impending catastrophe.
According to Karlock we’re supposed to believe that an alleged “science,” economics, trumps a real science, e.g., geology. Doesn’t deserve any other response.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, global oil production averaged 73.639 million barrels per day in 2005, e.g., BEFORE the Great Recession. Through 2011, it has stayed very close to this level, and then jumped 2.7% in 2012. It remains to be seen if last year’s jump is due to an actual increase in total oil production capacity or simply a blip where reserve capacity is being brought on line since oil demand has increased a bit thanks to the current, if tepid, economic recovery.
Everything I’ve read about fracking indicates the depletion rates for wells and oil fields is much higher than in the past, meaning the oil industry has to keep moving faster just to stay in place…something the “peak oilers” have pointed out for years. And significantly increases the cost of production.
This looks like just another leap of logic typical of The Antiplanner, particularly when he has no real proof of his claims. I’d like to see the chain of logic leading The Antiplanner to conclude: The reality is that peak-oil advocates don’t care about energy supplies; they want to change lifestyles.
Where is the documented proof of this, particularly among the oil geologists and oil industry insiders such as the greatly respected, late Matt Simmons? Or is this just another cheap slander of those who see things differently than The Antiplanner? Have prominent “peak oilers” said anything lately that corobborates The Antiplanner’s claim?
Have prominent “peak oilers” said anything lately that corobborates The Antiplanner’s claim?
No.
This is another edition of “simple answers to seemingly complex questions”.
DS
“Have prominent ‘peak oilers’ said anything lately that corobborates [sic]”
Has anyone appealed to authority for Dan’s and msetty’s limited suburban-slash-Napa Valley mindset? No?! Case closed!
For someone who is/was a teacher, you sure revel in faulty logic, Frank.
The Antiplanner is making sweeping claims that he can decode the motives of those who believe peak oil is a fact, e.g, it is just a scam by those who want to “change U.S. lifestyles” as opposed to a “real” (sic) problem. It is hardly an appeal to authority to demand some hard evidence when a known ideologue such as The Antiplanner makes such a sweeping claim about the motives of an entire scientific camp.
in any case, practitioners of hard science such as oil geologists usually have much strong empirical records of successful work (e.g., oil finds) and empirical research, compared to political operatives such as The Antiplanner–funded by an organization such as the “CATO Institute” which has an explicit political agenda (noxious to many, including Dan, myself and others), and partly founded and funded by the Koch brothers and similar characters. My theory is that The Antiplanner simply can’t get his head around the fact that a large number of geologists and others in the “hard” sciences might believe something–based on what they believe is hard evidence–that is the direct opposite of cherished CATO/”Reason”/libertarian/cornucopian beliefs.
MSetty triggered my inner Koch Bot
http://icedborscht.com/blog/2013/10/24/my-koch-expose/
Randall:
Not only is the U.S. producing more oil than Saudi Arabia today
Well, its not. The US produces about 7 million barrels of crude oil. Saudi Arabia produces over 10 million.
You can ask the EIA what they think the other few million barrles are they claim we are producing, but they certainly aren’t crude oil as is quite clear in the production stats they post online, and they cannot be refined into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. My suspicion is they are counting Natural Gas Liquids like Ethane and Hexene and possibly even biofuels like Ethanol. NGL’s are great for plastics and lousy for transportation fuels.
peak demand than peak supply
In a normal market, which oil production is, supply = demand and vice-versa. If there is “peak demand” its because there is also peak supply. You can’t have more supply than demand in anything beyond the short run because the excess supply needs to be stored somewhere.
America hit “peak demand” around 2006. World crude oil production hit peak supply around that time too. All the shale oil and the like has done is mitigate the ongoing decline of places like the North Sea and Mexico’s Cantarell.
What “peak demand” really means is that at today’s $3 per gallon prices, the same demand does not exist that was present at $2 and $1. This shouldn’t be shocking to anyone. When income is stagnant and prices rise, consumption of discretionary items, like fuel, drops because marginal fuel consumption is unable to generate economic activity sufficient for its purchase.
The concept of peak oil is that the world would eventually hit a point where it was unable to make further increases in the rate of supply growth because the production and decline of exiting fields is not being matched by the rate of new discoveries and new supply brought online. That still seems to be what has happened. Prices rose because the marginal barrel of oil to meet demand came from very expensive places like the deepwater Gulf, Canadian oil sands, and the arctic, and not from fields 200 feet under the surface at Spindletop and Saudi. The moderation of price is because of demand destruction via the economic downturn and improved fuel economy in transportation forcing out the need for those expensive marginal barrels.
Effen brilliant:
Koch Brothers.
Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers. Koch Brothers.
Nightmarish shit-Koch of consumerism.
Koch.
Ted Cruz.
Keystone Pipeline.
Koch.
Koch Brothers.
Koch Brothers.
America.
Collapsing Pop Tart.
Ted Cruz.
Rape culture.
Koch.
Koch.
http://icedborscht.com/blog/2013/10/24/my-koch-expose/
Post here more often.
Earnest and utterly predictable attempts to distract from the points notwithstanding, Randal has yet another post full of unsubstantiated claims, strawmen, and false premises.
DS
Earnest and utterly predictable attempts
What about “low-wattage”? I refuse to attempt discourse with a progressive unless they first call me a low-information voter (or some variation thereof).
But seriously…what’s more predictable and strawman-ish than summoning the Koch Bogeyman? It’s getting comical, and not much different than how truthers and Alex Jones fans sound when they bring up the Rockefellers or Rothschilds. Shadowy cabals, the Illuminati, the Freemasons.
Now the Kochs.
Not very “reality-based.”
Well, aside from the fact they spent 8 figures in the last presidential cycle and help fund one of Randal’s employers, I guess it is toooootally irrelevant to mention them. Strawpersonish, even.
At any rate, your concise comment wasn’t what I had in mind when I decried the predictable hand-flapping. You’re often kinda a hoot.
DS
Dammit, Dan. I find it completely unnerving & unsettling when, during the course of arguing w/ someone on the Internet, they compliment me.
*Feels dirty, enters shower area to obsessively clean*
Hmmm. OK. OK, OK…ahem.
Your gay.
How’s that for a start? ;o)
DS
Everybody tries to predict the future by running a historical graph and drawing a regression straight line. That works really well until it doesn’t Economies, stock markets, ecology and evolution are full of such examples.
And please, please, please do not use statistics that you do not understand, such as published inventories of recoverable oil. They do not mean what you think they mean because they are meant for a different purpose.
That works really well until it doesn’t Economies, stock markets, ecology and evolution are full of such examples.
That would be the reason why we use projections when at all possible.
DS
For Frank’s benefit and his use next time he accuses me of a fallacious argument, here is an excellent discussion of “appeal to authority,” NOT from Wikipedia:
Argumentum ad verecundiam or appeal to authority, when correctly applied, can be a valid and sometimes essential part of an argument that requests judgement or input from a qualified or expert source. The operation of the common law would be impossible without it, for example.
Frequently, however, it is a logical fallacy consisting of an appeal to authority, but on a topic outside of the authority’s expertise or on a topic on which the authority is not disinterested (aka. the authority is biased). Almost any subject has an authority on every side of the argument, even where there is generally agreed to be no argument.
When someone uses themselves as an authority, it is known as Ipse Dixit – “he himself has said it.”
Rest of the article at:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority
Iced Borscht, you really need to stay away from old Monty Python reruns for at the least the next six months… :-0
You, too, Frank, on the Monty Python thing… 🙁
Also what we know about what the Koch bros have their fingers into is quite public. No conspiracy involved at all.
Frank wrote:
Oil prices will fall even more during the next market correction.
That is a distinct possibility.
This time in 2009, gas in Portland was $1.79. As the Fed and banks release the Kraken–the trillions in reserves they’re sitting on that were created as ones and zeros on digital balance sheets–and petrol dollars lose value, gas and oil prices will skyrocket, reaching well above $5 a gallon as some peak oilers have predicted.
I think there is a bigger and much more tangible threat to oil prices over the next decade or two. The Obama Administration.
No, I have not been smoking anything (I have no interest in anything that can be smoked).
But as the Administration’s tough new CAFE standards start to kick in, I think demand for petroleum may fall – rather steeply, as the U.S. motor vehicle fleet turns over (and consider that it is a huge fleet). The best analogy is federally-imposed vehicle emission standards and reformulation of vehicle fuels from the 1960’s to today, which have had a significant and positive impact on air quality in the U.S., Canada and other advanced nations (never mind that certain Green groups were busy telling us in the 1990’s that if we did not cease building highways and switch to electric-powered rail transit, we would no longer be able to breathe).
Also what we know about what the Koch bros have their fingers into is quite public.
I really don’t care about the Kochs or Cato at all. But you’ll have to explain to me how the Kochs’ activities are more insidious than that of Soros, Buffett and the umpteen Obama crony-bundlers who benefited from the stimulus package.
OK, there’s this: the Kochs have their hands in some causes that piss off environmentalists. Fine, point taken.
But they also support such evil undertakings as the decriminalization of drugs and repealing the Patriot Act. And they have several not-insignificant charitable endeavors…(as meticulously detailed by some Reddit user a couple years back, whom you are free to call a Koch Puppet):
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/frrth/stop_the_koch_brothers_they_are_trying_to_end_the/
You can call the Kochs greed-driven tycoons all you want, but they are demonstrably to the left of President Hopedick and his enablers on several defining issues of our time.