How are you preparing for 'Peak Oil' / The coming oil crisis

[DanS]

Oil is a miracle substance that mother Earth has given us in plentiful portions. $60 a barrel is a real bargain.

That said, the seeds of oil's demise are rather apparent to me. Once Toyota, GM, or Ford figures out how to make the hybrid drive train extremely cheaply, over time, we will switch the energy mix away from oil and toward electricity.

[faded glory]

lol. Amazing. Some people just ignore the problem all together. Prices have jumped at the pump 150% in the last 4 years alone. Supply is already heavily strained right now. And this will only be accelerated by China and India's economic boom.

Peak oil isnt a theory. Its real. The when is the only question. When it happens civilization will collapse. Could you imagine next year, going to fill up that F-150. 7 or 8 dollars a gallon? Its possible. A chain reaction would start from there that would destroy the economy.

People paying on loans for cars they cant afford to drive. Trucks stopping shipping due to high prices. Business will go under. The poor will definately take to the street in protest. Oil companies would go out of business, too expensive to operate.

[DanS]

7 or 8 dollars a gallon? Its possible.

This would be about as much per gallon as the Euros pay currently for a gallon of gas.

Wait...

[faded glory]

Originally posted by DanS


This would be about as much per gallon as the Euros pay currently for a gallon of gas.

Wait...

Its actually around 5.00. All in taxes.


ive been to london and mainland europe. They have an efficient public transportation system of trains and buses. We dont, nor will we ever.

[DanS]

Its actually around 5.00. All in taxes.

In Amsterdam, you will be paying around $6.50 a gallon.

[Odin]

@ Park Avenue.

Peak Oil won't cause a dark age. AS Spiff said, it will depend on the behavior of the oil companies.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kidicious
What on earth makes you think so? How are we to know when the peak is coming? You seem to not even care at all. Experts are predicing it's coming soon and you just laugh. Who do you think is preparing for this crisis?

What 'experts'? Crackpots who get off on predicting the demise of the world? Apparently they've already predicted that the peak would be in 1989 and 1995. Now they are saying 2007. Why am I supposed to believe them this time?

How are we to know when the 'peak' is coming? When prices go up because of less supply perhaps? That's the standard people like faded are using to say it's coming. No I don't care at all, because it's loony stuff. As Kuci said, there was a Peak COAL crisis predictions. As already discussed, there are various extraction methods that aren't economically feasible now, but will be if supply is constrained and it makes those methods worthwile.

There is more oil in the ground now that we've pumped out in all of human history. The way to get at it is not feasible at the moment, but with technology and scarcity, it will be. For example, under Siberia there is more oil than the entire Middle East. But it's under permafrost and thus getting to it is very difficult.

[q=faded glory]Prices have jumped at the pump 150% in the last 4 years alone.[/q]

Which still puts it under what it should have been under normal inflation from 1960 prices.

[q=Spiffor]Yes. But switching away takes time, and it creates a transition phase. Since the oil lobbies are very powerful in the US, I expect the oil companies to be able to postpone the mandatory adjustment for as long as possible (by discouraging research on renewable fuel sources, by encouraging oil power plants to be built, by not promoting technologies and lifestyles that guzzle less gas).
And as a result, the American society will experience a shock instead of a gentle adaptation to a new energetic paradigm. Europe is likely to suffer less, considering that many European countries have attempted to reduce their dependancy to oil.[/q]

Doubtful. Hybrids are popular and with fuel cells, I can imagine those will be even more popular. We've had a gentle increase in price, and while even though it is much lower than it would under regular inflation, it will get people to purchase less guzzling cars in the long run (this is a new equilibrium price, not a spike where we'll go back down next year). The fuel habits will change in the US as well, and whenever we hit the *ahem* peak production of oil (how many hundred years in the future, when we've tapped into Siberia's massive oil supply and massive amount of oil under the oceans), it won't make a difference because there will be a great deal of other energy sources in use at the time.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I was reading the wiki article, and stumbled across:

[q=wikipedia]Critics such as Leonardo Maugeri point out that Hubbert peak supporters such as Campbell previously predicted a peak in global oil production in both 1989 and 1995, based on oil production data available at that time. He claims that nearly all of the estimates do not take into account non-conventional oil even though the availability of these resources is huge and the costs of extraction, while still very high, are falling due to improved technology. (A drawback to this position is that heavy oil sources will never be as profitable as current light oil sources, both in production rates and energy gain.) Furthermore, he notes that the recovery rate from existing world oil fields has increased from about 22% in 1980 to 35% today due to new technology and predicts this trend will continue. According to Maugeri, the ratio between proven oil reserves and current production has constantly improved, passing from 20 years in 1948 to 35 years in 1972 and reaching about 40 years in 2003. Also according to Maugeri, these improvements occurred even with low investment in new exploration and upgrading technology due to the low oil prices during the last 20 years. The current higher oil prices may well cause increased investment (Maugeri, 2004).[/q]

[BlackCat]

@ Imran - will you please stop all this presenting of hard evidence and logic !!!

I want to hear the ramblings arguments from those that think oil isn't available in ten years or less and how that will destroy western civilisation !!!

I know that you are a lowlife scum of a lawyer that want to annoy real huamns, but please ?

[JohnT]

By default, any year that has the record for most oil pumped out of the ground is the "Peak Oil" year. How you determine when/if it happened prior to five-ten+ years of declining production is beyond me.

However, the amount of mis-information in this thread is amusing: from the poster saying that the average US car gets 18 miles per gallon (actually it is 24.5, including cars, trucks, SUVs) and then implying that everybody else averages 45mpg, to the other posters who claim that energy companies are actively lobbying against future energy markets (for one example 12% of PGE's electrical generation is from renewable resources, and another 16% comes from hydroelectric power which, under CA law, is not considered a renewable resource (page 65)) to the argument that the US doesn't know how to conserve petroleum (actual oil use in the US peaked in 1978 and then dropped, never to reach 1978 levels until 1995. Nowadays the US gets almost twice the economic impact from a gallon of oil than it did in the pre-shock days (IIRC, the numbers went up from $660GDP/bbl to $1100GDP/bbl.)

If you're interested in knowing, as opposed to arguing disjointed "facts" whose only tie is how they support your ideological position, you will definitely want to check out the 2005 International Energy Outlook. I myself will likely print this bad boy out and go over it this weekend.

One thing I love about energy debates - it's one of the few subjects that has a wealth of data available for free: government, industry, activist sites... tons of it.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Yes. But switching away takes time, and it creates a transition phase. Since the oil lobbies are very powerful in the US, I expect the oil companies to be able to postpone the mandatory adjustment for as long as possible (by discouraging research on renewable fuel sources, by encouraging oil power plants to be built, by not promoting technologies and lifestyles that guzzle less gas).
And as a result, the American society will experience a shock instead of a gentle adaptation to a new energetic paradigm. Europe is likely to suffer less, considering that many European countries have attempted to reduce their dependancy to oil.

why does you need to make it mandatory? what does the oil lobby have to do with this? people see their wallets hit, they stop demanding oil guzzling vehicles, and start demanding say hybrids, demand for hybrids goes up, car companies p[roduce more and we substitute away from oil and towards hybrids. the 'oil lobby' cant do anything about that.
people are already doing that - i mean they even have a hybrid SUV coming out next year. the oil lobby is dead; lower prices means less profits, and higher prices means higher profits, but more likely people will switch to something else, and we are seeing that already. the oil lobby doesnt even have the ear of the republicans anymore, who hav been hijacked by the neocons and who are now more closely aligned with the greens in terms of oil (less middle east oil, which means less oil consumption in general, because we cannot sustain ourselves from our own supply)

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LoA,

It's called a supply shock. Look it up in your econ book.

Spif,

You might want to only explain it to him once. He never really gets it, unless he gets it the first time.

no need - supply shock only occurs when the supply is suddently cut off. this is not the case of what is happening now. demand is just slowly increasing, and supply is remaining pretty much constant. since supply isnt going anywhere, there cannot be a supply shock.

[Alexander's Horse]

I just read a report about global fossil fuel demand and supply out to about 50 years from now, and its economic and strategic implications. While there is a need for alternative energy sources to be developed and for some countries like the USA to reduce consumption of crude through efficiency measures, there won't be a crisis.

The sort of spike in prices we're seeing caused by the Iraq war disruption of supplies will however be a fact of life. But these signals are helpful in stimulating the sort of shifts in consumption that need to take place.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
The sort of spike in prices we're seeing caused by the Iraq war disruption of supplies will however be a fact of life. But these signals are helpful in stimulating the sort of shifts in consumption that need to take place.

Just out of curiosity, are you talking about the first or the second Iraqui war ?

[Alexander's Horse]

the second, but any kind of adverse event, like gulf war I or instability in Venezuela will send these price signals.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
the second, but any kind of adverse event, like gulf war I or instability in Venezuela will send these price signals.

Thanks. Will you then please tell me what oil supplies that was disrupted by this war ?

Unless I'm wrong, that war actually opened new oil supplies though they are not stable.