Let's talk about oil

[Narz]

Over the past years I've become more and more interested in sustainable living as well as becoming as physically (as well as emotionally) self-sufficient as possible.

Thru self-analysis I haven't been able to help but notice the habits of people (both close and distant) around me.

I've found studying people's consumption habits particular interesting. It is particularly interesting how it almost all ties into the oil industry.

I recently (five minutes ago) found some good material on youtube that sums up alot of the concepts and theories I've been reading about.

Online Videos

Peak Oil Movie on the History Channel (59 minutes) (longest one I've found for free)

Peak Oil Hits Mainstream - CNBC

End of Suburbia (52 minute version back on YouTube!)

Peak Oil: Gas Prices, Supply Depletion & Energy Crisis (10 minutes)

Basic Messege, Streaming Text, Dramatic Music (shortest, consise, less content than the above)

Websites

ASPO - The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Life After the Oil Crash website

LocalFuture.org (solution oriented)

Peak Oil Forums (you'll find Narz there, I have about 800 posts)

Peak Oil in the "Mainstream"

Books

The Long Emergency

PowerDown
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What are your thoughts on this? How do you expect this to affect your country? Your personal life?

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Some more recent video links & an article (6/29/08) :

Here are some videos I thought were worth watching. Most of them from the mainstream news.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D05I2v4RbpE

Krugman with Olbermann on "The Energy Question of 2008" (critical of McCain and Obama both) from MSNBC's Countdown. (7 mins)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh6x9gA2u-A

Jeff Rubin of CIBC predicts $7 gasoline on CNBC with Erin Burnett, which he says would take 10 million cars off the road. Kind of a scary conclusion, finally hitting the mainstream. Personally I don't see how the world economy can keep chugging along at this rate. Light rail & new technology will not appear in time, IMO (but that subject is still pretty much taboo in mainstream media because it's too scary to contemplate). Good video. (4 mins)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TDs57H3I6Oo

Great talk by Bill Moyers straight shooting about oil & Iraq. (6 min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqg3P3wOV60

James Howard Kunstler on CBC talking about the end of the cheap oil age (touching the issues of food, air travel, suburbs, etc.). Very well done, his book is good too. (8 min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM1x4RljmnE

"Are humans smarter than yeast?" this one is entitled. A bit overdrawn out and simplistic, it still does a decent job pointing out the disconnect between businessmen & economists on one hand and reality on the other. (8 min)

Oh, and while I'm here, thought I'd share this also. The article is entitled "No evidence of manipulation in oil trading". So much for McCain's conspiracy theory.

I have watched all the videos & recommend them all.

 

[ArneHD]

Last I heard was that Norway, at it's current rate of production, has enough Oil for about 60 years. I guess that we should prepare for an American invasion.

 

[tomsnowman123]

New energy resources definately need to be researched more than they are now. People keep putting them off saying hat they are too expensive and whatnot. Oil will run out one day, we don't have an infinite amount. We need to focus on switching to a lifestyle that won't hurt future generations by destroying the enviroment, draining resources, etc. Unfortunate, America is nowhere near doing this, most people are happy in their SUV's.

I remember being at a GM conference about 3.5 years ago, when they said hydrogen cars would be cheap and redily available to everyone by 2010. Hmm... don't see that coming. There is a lack of motivation, and, as such, we continue to use up oil and hurt our future.

 

[JerichoHill]

Do I really need to cover this topic again? Peak Oil is a misnomer. There is no coming oil crash. The economic mechanism will prevent this, just as it has for other commodities.

There is PLENTY of oil left, its just more expensive to get. As oil gets more expensive, alternative fuels become more attractive to invest in, produce, and distribution. As that occurs, the cost of alt fuels is lowered, and eventually oil will be an afterthought.

If this has occured for numerous other commodities and is a trend that has yet to be broken by any comodity, what makes oil so different?

Please understand economics!

Extrapolating current trends into the future is NOT good science.

 

[tomsnowman123]

Do I really need to cover this topic again? Peak Oil is a misnomer. There is no coming oil crash. The economic mechanism will prevent this, just as it has for other commodities.

There is PLENTY of oil left, its just more expensive to get. As oil gets more expensive, alternative fuels become more attractive to invest in, produce, and distribution. As that occurs, the cost of alt fuels is lowered, and eventually oil will be an afterthought.

If this has occured for numerous other commodities and is a trend that has yet to be broken by any comodity, what makes oil so different?

Please understand economics!

Extrapolating current trends into the future is NOT good science.

But I am also talking about what's good for the planet, not the bottom line. Cars, for example. Hydrogen cars would be 100% better for the enviroment, but we don't look towards them at all. Once again, this is an example of people giving money more importance then the enviroment, health, well-being, etc.

 

[Leonel]

Last I heard was that Norway, at it's current rate of production, has enough Oil for about 60 years. I guess that we should prepare for an American invasion.

Oh don't be ridiculous! I would think you would be the last person to fall for liberal stereotypes!

*stuffs Norway invasion plans under the desk*

 

[Whomp]

I'm fully agree with Jericho and approve his message.

It comes down to what the market will bear. When gas hit $3.00/gallon the volume of minivans and S.U.V.'s that were turned in accelerated and smaller vehicles acquired. It's at these prices that it becomes feasible to risk capital exploring for alternative means as well as more difficult ways of extracting oil.

I would contend that there's at least a $20 terrorism premium in oil prices. This is a new factor for experts to chomp on since it's not going away anytime soon.

 

[Tenochtitlan]

Do I really need to cover this topic again? Peak Oil is a misnomer. There is no coming oil crash. The economic mechanism will prevent this, just as it has for other commodities.

There is PLENTY of oil left, its just more expensive to get. As oil gets more expensive, alternative fuels become more attractive to invest in, produce, and distribution. As that occurs, the cost of alt fuels is lowered, and eventually oil will be an afterthought.

If this has occured for numerous other commodities and is a trend that has yet to be broken by any comodity, what makes oil so different?

Please understand economics!

Extrapolating current trends into the future is NOT good science.

Isn't there a risk of a depression though?

 

[bhsup]

I will never buy into ANY of this peak oil stuff. Yeah, it'll get more expensive, but we're not touching 3/4th of the earth regarding oil. May not be technologically feasible right now, but we could eventually get deep sea crawlers (go watch the Abyss movie for an idea), extract from coal and shale, and so forth.

Running out of oil will not be a concern for generations.

 

[El_Machinae]

The main problem comes with wasting oil, not the price of oil. In general, the poorer people need the oil to be cheaper than the rich people do. As well, the economy much prefers cheaper oil.

The environment seems to suffer no matter the price of oil. It needs artificial barriers to consumption as well as encouragement of clean drilling techniques.

There's another thread about Oil Wastage though

 

[MobBoss]

This planet will be running on oil long after you and I and everyone we know has turned to dust.

 

[tomsnowman123]

The environment seems to suffer no matter the price of oil. It needs artificial barriers to consumption as well as encouragement of clean drilling techniques.

Thank you, it seems that nobody seems to care about that part.

 

[Whomp]

Isn't there a risk of a depression though?

How and why?
A depression would be preceeded by mass euphoria not pessimism.
People are saying there's was a lot of uncertainty in the market about inflation. Likewise, there was extreme concern about how high the Fed would raise interest rates. Plus, there was worry that the war in the Mideast would hinder the transport of oil, raise its price, and spread to a wider conflagration. For all of these reasons,means it's a bad time to buy. I say do the opposite of the herd.

As the saying goes buy on the cannons, sell on the trumpets


Here's my theory

Spoiler :

the Planet Saturn was in the Astrological sign of Sagittarius. The significance of this is that Sagittarius, the combined horse/man, with Saturn having a connection in Greek / Roman / Etruscan mythology to agriculture as well as weights and measures and coins, means that Saturn in Sagittarius represents the third Horseman of the Apocalypse, economic depression. When Saturn is in Sagittarius you may get the trigger event, such as a stock market crash, that begins an economic depression. Saturn will not be in Sagittarius for many years, but you can still expect great economic chaos in 2006-2007 as we will then be in the seven year End Times period, ending with Armageddon in 2007.

Cross your fingers!

 

[El_Machinae]

Scientifically, I think that the $20 terror premium is quite handy, because the innovation in alternative fuels will proceed a lot more quickly once people are purchasing the products (to create a feedback loop)

 

[betazed]

There is PLENTY of oil left, its just more expensive to get.

Not sure where you are getting that from. While estimates of existing oil reserves vary widely what is not for argument is that we have not found any new large oil reserve for quite a while. When is the last time we found a Ghawar or Alaska? So our replacement ratio is pretty close to zero.

As oil gets more expensive, alternative fuels become more attractive to invest in, produce, and distribution. As that occurs, the cost of alt fuels is lowered, and eventually oil will be an afterthought.

This might be wishful thinking on your part. The demand for oil is empirically seen to be pretty inelastic. It is definitely inelastic between the 2 - 3 dollar range. How do we know it is not inelastic in the 3 - 4 dollar range?

Hence, if it is inelastic the demand is the same and there is absolutely no incentive for oil suppliers to invest in alternate fuels. Why should they?

lastly, any alternate energy medium requires vast amount of public investment in infrastrcuture and would require long gestation times. Not ideal for private enterprises; and I do not see any government (or at least the US government actively pursuing any strategic goal in alternate energy needs).

If this has occured for numerous other commodities and is a trend that has yet to be broken by any comodity, what makes oil so different?

Why is oil different? Shouldn't that be obvious. what other commodity is there in recent times over while wars have been fought? What other commodity is there whose price increase would definitely lead to inflation. Literally, oil grinds the gears of western civilzation.

Extrapolating current trends into the future is NOT good science.

But not taking into account special factors is not good science either.

 

[Kozmos]

Can Hydrogen push me 240 kph? I dont think so.

 

[North King]

It's quite amusing to hear neo-cons claiming that somehow we're not running out of oil, that it isn't a worry at all, and so on, when the neo-con leaders are working their butts off to secure the major sources of oil supply. It all makes perfect sense from a geo-political viewpoint, if you think that they're looking to secure oil. If you don't think that, then what the Bush administration is pursuing is not only stupid, it has no justification, legal, strategic, political, what have you.

 

[Whomp]

Betazed--venture investments in alternative-energy companies has jumped this year and last.

Venture capitalists put $139.5 million into solar, wind and geothermal energy companies through the second quarter of the year, already surpassing the $95 million they spent in all of 2004, according to the National Venture Capital Association, Thomson Financial and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Here's a few:
Energy Innovations Inc. of Pasadena, Calif., and Nonosolar Inc. of Palo Alto — make solar cells while the third, Jadoo Power Systems Inc. of Folsom, California, makes fuel cells.

On a bigger scale there's a company outside of the energy business called Cypress Semiconductor. They invested in SunPower, and SunPower is attempting to bring high efficiency solar cells to the real world market place through the introduction of the A300.

T.J. Rodgers, President and CEO of Cypress says that “back in 1976 ... a watt cost $62. We’ve now driven down the cost of a watt to about $3.67, and we can see our way to making a profit by selling a watt for $2.” “Cumulative world shipments as of 2002 were about 1,000 megawatts – that’s an important number,” he said since a typical power plant generates 1,100 megawatts. So a typical power plant – about 400 in the U.S. – is a gigawatt of power. The solar industry from 1976 through 2000 generated a total combined output to equal one power plant. “The total available market for the solar industry in megawatts in 2005 was 1,300 megawatts. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is 31 percent."

http://www.sunpowercorp.com/

Whole Foods I believe will be 100% solar within 2 years.

 

[joycem10]

I agree with those above who say that market forces will eventually work to make oil an afterthought except in the chemicals & plastics industry.

While the demand for energy is inelastic, energy does not necessarily have to come from oil. As the price of oil increases and technology increases, alternative energy souces become more viable.

Who says only oil companys are responsible for innovations in energy? Like Whomp said, theres hundreds of alt energy startups. Hell, put your money where your beliefs are and invest in an alt energy company or dedicate your education to this issue. If you come up with a viable idea, it'll be worth millions.

Thats my glib reply.

what other commodity is there in recent times over while wars have been fought? What other commodity is there whose price increase would definitely lead to inflation.

Not really recent, but salt is an example.

 

[betazed]

@Whomp: You are missing two key points. (a) The problem is more than just cost of energy and (b) the investment required to solve this problem is not millions, not billions but hundreds of billions. Lets take (a) first.

Say we change all our power production to some magical zero-point energy source today and cost of energy is magically changed to 0 dollars/joules. Does that make us oil independent? Unfortunately no. Reason is that a large part of the economy is not just dependent on energy but dependent on the medium of energy too - which is oil. i.e. they cannot utilize any energy unless it is not in the oil form. Think of all the cars, planes, fertilizer plants, tanks, fighters etc. etc. They need not just energy but specifically oil. Average energy cost means nothing to them. So it does not matter how much money you spend in alternative fuel research, unless you whole infrastructure changes from oil consuming to non-oil comsuming you do not gain oil independence.

Now you estimate how much investment it would take to make that transition. After that compare it to the venture capital investment figures you mentioned.

You will get the picture.