Peak Oil Reader: Where To Start Learning About Peak Oil

Peak oil is the point at which worldwide oil production is reached. Once the oil supply peaks, petroleum extraction will decline, prices will increase and oil will become unobtainable.

In 1956, M. King Hubbert, an American geophysicist employed by Shell Oil, predicted that the United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970 in his theory on peak oil.

Scientists have developed a myriad of peak oil forecasts. Some believe that the oil industry already peaked while others claim that it will happen within several decades. Currently, researchers struggle to find techniques to harvest oil from remote areas in order to prevent the peak oil crisis.

A selection of articles on peak oil:

* Benjamin Kunkel's article on the impending peak oil emergency for GQ.

* National Geographic article on the world oil market, "when will the peak hit?"

* National Geographic article, which discusses the surging oil demand's limit.

* Reuters article on how peak oil will obstruct world development.

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* Financial Week author Patrick Mcveigh's opinion piece on how the slump in fuel demand will offset peak oil.

* Financial Times' preparation for the age of peak oil.

* Time Magazine's Lisa Abend reviews the OPEC World Petroleum Congress.

* Time Magazine's Justin Fox discusses the future of the oil industry.

Peak oil RSS:

* A compilation of recent peak oil news reports.

* A database of peak oil news, resources and articles.

Peak oil related links:

* The Association for the Study of Peak Oil offers news updates and analysis. Founder Colin Campbell is a leading authority on oil depletion.

* Wolf at the Door provides a beginner's guide to peak oil.

* Oildrum.com offers a peak oil media guide.

Huffington Post links:

* Blogger Gabriel Rotello writes about oil prices and the media: why the blackout on peak oil?

* Blogger Raymond J. Learsy discusses peak oil and its history in his blog "oil's big dirty secret as producers rake in hundreds of billions"

* Read more on peak oil at the Huffington Post Oil big news page

Comments

[ThePeakOilDude]

Before pinning your hopes on the US utilizing oil shale, read
Environmental impact of oil shale industry - Wikipedia and the linked documents therein, which will quickly lead anyone with any sense to realize the kerogen will, by and large, stay in the ground. The water impact alone would be enough to have every state in the SW up in arms against a process that would entail severe drawdowns on the Colorado River, and that's more than a slightly touchy subject.

This hasn't been an issue to date with the tar sands since you don't have millions of people living upstream of Fort McMurray, but it will ensure than only very modest production comes out of the Green River Formation - in all likelihood, no more than what one or two offshore platforms would deliver, which is all that really matters. People fixate on the size of the oil shale overall, not taking into consideration what the production volumes, expense or environmental impact would be. Shell took a good look at oil shale in the wake of Carter's call for a synfuels program, and concluded that they'd be spending $6-8 billion for 50k barrels per day - in 1982 dollars, no less - and promptly gave up on the project, for good reason.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

I'm getting sick and tired about people who just heard about the energy crisis going on about oil shale and tar sands like they were just discovered last week.
With an EROI a small fraction of that of petroleum it would take gasoline prices north of $15-$20 gal. to make it economical to even THINK about them much less the fact the they are ENORMOUS losers on the greenhouse gas front.

It's kind of like pointing out there are trillions of dollars of gold dissolved in the ocean. Why isn't anybody getting rich off of the 'free' gold?

[Ratbert]

The sentence about M. King Hubbert notably omits the world "correctly" which should be placed in front of the world "predicted". There also should be a mention that his prediction was met with the same disbelief by industry and government officials that the recent predictions of world oil production peaking have received.

[KillTheMessenger]

Actually, most people who know the work of Hubbert by heart, including oil executives, will give him credit for having been correct. The problem is not that people don't believe it. The problem is that they can not admit that they understand the problem without essentially putting themselves out of business. So we are living the lie while moving ever closer to the 800lbs. gorilla which keeps smiling at us...

[JonathanCallahan]

Another useful site you might mention is the Energy Export Databrowser at:

http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/

This simple tool allows you to generate plots of oil production, consumption, export and import for various nations and groups of nations.

Browsing through the images one gets an intuitive feel for what has been going on throughout the world and where we stand today.

It's an eye opener!

[DRaymond]

What gets me is that there are so many supposedly sane people whose approach to the problem of peak oil is 'Drill It All NOW!'. Irrespective of when Peak Oil actually occurs the most rudimentary common sense would say that "Drill It All NOW" makes peak oil sooner and more severe. No matter what the resource, when facing the loss of a resource the sensible thing is to begin preparing for a replacement and buy yourself time by using less of the resource, not to give yourself less time by accellerating the loss of the resource.

[KillTheMessenger]

People simply do not understand how exponential functions work. After all, this nation on average fails math in school and the math it fails is nowhere close to the level that is being taught in other parts of the world.

"Drill here, drill now!" is what scientists call a "logarithmic correction" and those are generally of no importance. They make a little change to an otherwise strong effect. All the drilling will delay peak oil by a year, two at most, most likely not even that if the added resources come online 2012 or later. It will, however keep the illusion alive that there is no depletion while accelerating the actual depletion process, thus making the final crash much worse.

It's analogous to pushing the accelerator while driving towards the wall.

[OilWarsDotCom]

Yea right - "Just following orders." defense didn't work for the Nazis at Nuremberg and it won't work here. Powell ignored those like Scott Ritter who actually knew there were no WMD's and went for fabricated evidence from Chalabi and Curve Ball
Powell would probably be given 20 years in the big house for his role in this international crime.
The only reason ALL these turkeys are not in a Federal prison is the fact the Senate and Congress didn't do their homework either and believed the lies fabricated by bush and his gang of killers. So the result is only those Representatives who did not vote to fraudulently attack Iraq (Kucinich) are the only ones speaking out. The others, Powell included, can't say much since they participated in the conspiracy.
The drawings of the so called mobile bio labs were of drawings of US equiptment by the University of Maryland.

[OilWarsDotCom]

opppppppppppppps posted the above in the wrong place - yikes - supposed to be a comment on Colin Powell

[OilWarsDotCom]

Think about it - There is no "crisis" when it comes to the price of gas - Gas stations are still be built, roads are still being built and no one has noticed any shortage of gasoline. People have decided to invest in oil just like gold and silver and that is what is driving the price. Off shore oil drilling is nonsense - it is the most expensive way to obtain crude and we have just secured Iraq with 115 billion bbls of crude and 112 trillion cu ft of natural gas. There is only 21 billion bbls of crude on and off shore in the USA. There are, however, 2.3 to 3 trillion bbls of oil in the world"s shale and sand. Now that the price of oil is up - it will be profitable to obtain this oil. PS - The US imports nears 25% of its nearly 5 billion bbls of oil each year from CANADA - not the Mid east, not Venezuela - So people need to get a grip - both obama and mccain are full of hot air - Now you know.

[KillTheMessenger]

More trolling.

[BlackbirdHighway]

Yeah, but it takes a whole lot of energy to turn shale and sand into usable oil. When you get to the point where it takes a barrel of oil's worth of energy to get a barrel of oil out of the shale, then what have you got? You got nothing, that's what.

[leduck]

i like the book from kenneth deffeye's
"Hubbert's Peak" the impending world oil shortage

[KillTheMessenger]

Wow, that just has to be one of the poorest write ups on peak oil I have ever seen.

The first sentence is not even complete...
The second sentence is flatly false. Oil will be abundantly available even after the peak. It will be available for millions of years after we will actually stop using it. It would take major geological catastrophes like a complete resurfacing of the planet's mantle to destroy all the oil we will never extract.

"Scientists" have not developed a single peak oil forecast. Science is the study of nature. Peak oil is an entirely man made phenomenon that falls squarely within the realms of economics theory, not science. What the articles call forecasts are simply models that try to fit the data to scenarios that are limited by reasonable assumptions. It is generally acknowledged that forecasting the timing of the peak is next to impossible, which has the logical consequence that a rational response to peak oil is to PLAN AHEAD, because hindsight is 20/20 (as in it will cost 20 trillion dollars if we are 20 years late responding to it).

And the selection of the author's reading preferences tells it all... she has no clue where to get real information on the topic.

[OilWarsDotCom]

I have faith in the greed of US corporations - they will replace "oil" with something else when it runs out - Just like the car replaced the horse and buggy. How about the big scare over the change of refrigerant gas - No problem - In the mean time - big oil will suck every drop of oil out of the ground and then replace it when the time comes - Hey remember the big scare when the year 2000 came - I'll bet folks spent billions preparing for the end of the world - get a grip - peak oil is nonsense. Now if it were peak water, then you would have something to worry about.

[KillTheMessenger]

Good trolling. Or a very poor intellectual understanding of the subject. I don't know which. If you had written this as an essay in high school, I would grade it "F".

[leduck]

it's not writen by a science writer obviously
i'm just happy when it's brought up on the Huffpo

it's a lousy introduction but maybe someone will click on a link which will lead to a better link
like the "oil drum"
maybe someone who's curious will find a book on it

""Scientists" have not developed a single peak oil forecast. Science is the study of nature."
kenneth deffeyes is a geophysicist
so was m. king hubbert
most people talking about Peak Oil are either petroleum geologists or geophysicists

until very recently, i don't think many economists acknowledges limits or depletion
and even if it happens, there's always a substitute (usually inferior and hard to find one that could completely fill the shoes of oil)
it's not something economists talk about, it's something scientists talk and write about
go tell m. king hubbert (that will be ahrd), kenneth deffeyes and colin campbell that they are not doing science

peak oil is about nature

[KillTheMessenger]

A scientist talking about Turkey stuffing does not make cooking for the family at Thanks Giving science. Of course any thorough discussion of peak oil will use the scientific method but it still is an economic phenomenon. That many economists are rather limited in their intellectual insight is a sad fact, but again that does not make peak oil NOT an economic phenomenon.

Please look at the definition of science again, very carefully. You will see it is all about understanding natural phenomena that have nothing to do with what man does to it. Peak oil simply does not occur in nature. Why would it? Nothing in nature drills for oil at an initially roughly exponentially increasing speed. Only man does.

Hubbert, Rickover etc. were talking about the economic side of peak oil, by the way. They were not just driven by an abstract geological idea but they had a lot to say about the consequences for society from what they understood was an unavoidable fact.

See Rickover's fabulous speech on the subject:

http://energybulletin.net/node/23151