Can you please provide links to:

“the GAO agrees that the majority of petroleum engineers worldwide believe we are at or near peak. The IEA believes we are at or near peak. The US Army believes we are at or near peak. The US department of Energy believes we may be at or near peak.”

Thank you all for the great discussion thread!

One of my greatest fears is that peak oil, climate change, peak food, peak water, and peak economy are all happening at the same time. They could create a self-reinforcing spiral that ruins my prediction of a soft landing for the many changes ahead of us all.

As for our dubious anonymous – again, the GAO agrees that the majority of petroleum engineers worldwide believe we are at or near peak. The IEA believes we are at or near peak. The US Army believes we are at or near peak. The US department of Energy believes we may be at or near peak. So perhaps the question becomes – what research are you doing, and where are you getting it from?

It is true, we’re not running *out* of oil – but the days of oil being cheap to extract are over – period. And that means that the price of everything that is petroleum dependent is going to go up forever (that would be everything pretty much), and our capacity to meet needs is going to go down.

Sharon

Richard

It never was a debate, the question only ever was “when”. It was and still is divided between those who say, “no worries, we’ll see it coming, and Science! will save us” and those who say, “oh shit.” That is, everyone agreed we were tied up on the train tracks, but people disagreed – and still will – about whether we’ve time to struggle from our bonds before we get hit by the oncoming train.

Sharon, you must speak precisely about this issue. “the IEA is talking about all sources of oil running out before 2015.” No, they are speaking about oil running short before 2015, absent Iraqi production.

Running short and running out are very different things. Going back to your post about rationing tells us why; if we’re short, we can still have a good society by using what we have wisely, while if we’re out we can’t.

Correne, regarding the tar sands, there’s an interesting article here talking about some of the technical difficulties of it. Setting aside the technical and pollution problems, the basic point is that there’s a difference between “reserves” and “production.”

Suppose that you have a well on an aquifer, there are 100 million gallons of water there – that’s your “reserves”. But suppose that you just have a ten gallon bucket, and a rope to lower it an fill it – you can’t get more than ten gallons a minute out of the well – that’s your “production.”

If you have 10,000 people who want to draw from that well, and they all need 10 gallons each, then 10 gallons a minute is not enough to give them water each day. The water reserves are more than enough to give water to everyone, but the water production isn’t enough, some people will die of thirst, or else the water will have to be rationed out.

It’s the same with oil. Just because we find somewhere with a lot stored up doesn’t mean we can get it out fast. In extracting the Alberta oil, we run into these technical difficulties. There are physical limits to how fast we can extract it. Even the company taking the oil hopes for at best a million barrels of oil a day by 2015. Sounds a lot, but the world uses 84 million barrels a day now, and the USA uses 21 million, and demand for oil is going up by 2.2% a year – or one million barrels. Whereas production is flat or declining.

It’s a bit like if you have a job which pays all your bills – say, $500 a week for wages, then $450 for bills. Then one year your bills go up to $480 a week, but your wages stayed at $500. Then next year the bills are $495, and your wages still $500. Then bills are $510, and wages still $500. Woops.

The difference is that we can go into debt for money; but we can’t go into debt with a physical resource.