Well there you have it in the opening sentence of an eye-opening article in this Sunday's New York Times, Tracing Oil Reserves to Their Tiny Origins: "If you believe petroleum came from dinosaurs, think again and look toward the seas."
Here, in the Science section, the Times tells us that the emphasis these many years on "fossil fuels turned out to be wrong." The article goes on to detail the evolution of vast reservoirs of oil that owe their origins to microscopic life that fell into the sea over the ages and was "cooked" into oil through the earth's inner heat. That over 95% of the world's oil traces its genesis to these origins. That the most productive regions are centered on shorelines and coastal regions (think the Gulf of Mexico). According to the article, the broad shelf areas are some of "the best "factories for biogenic proliferation," especially the shore of the Tethys Sea (a prehistoric, ancient ocean that bordered the equator some 100 million years ago and was to form along its southern shore the oil laden sectors of the Middle East).
Similar Cretaceous period events, we are now learning, may have yielded munificent reservoirs of oil. As an example: when the mass of Africa pulled away from South America, "Big rivers poured in nutrients. A biological frenzy on the western shores of the narrow ocean ended up forming the vast oil fields now being discovered." It is not for naught that Brazil alone has unveiled a five-year, $224 billion investment plan to tap and develop these vast oil deposits.
Combine this information with equally impressive work done by Russian and Ukrainian geologists on the theory of Abiotic Oil, (which states that oil is inherent to the geological make up of the earth) and the dimension of extant oil takes on a whole new meaning.
It has been the cornerstone of Peak Oil dogma, which has indoctrinated us into believing that oil is imminently running out. It has permitted the oil industry to get away with setting prices unrelated to the forces of supply and demand -- prices achieved by having successfully lulled the oil consuming public and their governments into a trance of blind acceptance of costly oil.
The peak oil geologists and their prediction of the imminent arrival of peak oil is science paid for in large measure by the best geology that oil money can buy. One after another, the Peak Oil Pranksters are falling all over themselves, fine tuning their prophecies of physical depletion to "well its not so much that there is a physical shortage, but it is more difficult and costly to access." That may be the case (especially with regards to offshore reservoirs, as we all now know). But that is a very different argument than the oil industry's self-serving cries of, "there just ain't no more, so please pay, pay, pay."
There is nothing in that New York Times article contradicting Peak Oil. Oil results from biological dead zones in the sea (no oxygen, hence no decomposition of organic molecules). The coastal areas have been well explored. There is no surprise bonanza waiting there.
Indeed, the conditions required for oil to form are very stringent. It requires that dead organic material settle at the bottom of the sea in areas where the sea bottom is dead due to lack of oxygen. Quite rare conditions either today or in the last 500 million years.
According to both CERA and the EIA, the vast majority of giant oil fields (defined as producing more than a half million barrles every 24 hours) are declining at a rate estimated to be between 4% and 6% annually.
So the math is against you. The world needs to add a Saudi Arabia to productoin every four years to prevent decline.
That's not going to happen.
By the way, oil production in the Gulf has not prevented either Mexico's or the United States productoin from declining. Mexico peaked in 2002 and is now 30% below it. The US peaked in 1973 and is now 50% below. Norway and Great Britain are also in long term decline.
If you think there is an oil price conspiracy, you are naive. There are way too many players in the oil market to coordinate prices. Oil price conspiracies are a hobgoblin of the populist Left (as opposed to the intelligent Left)
OPEC was able to push prices up in the early 70s because OPEC became the swing producer after the US became a net importer (after US oil production peaked in 1972 and went into decline).
But OPEC able to maintain discipline when the 1982 recession reduced demand and as Norway and the UK ramped up their fields.
Then prices fell even further in the 90s and got to the $12 a barrel level.
Price conspiracies tend to unravel themselves because cheating is very attractive to the smarller OPEC players. OPEC has only one enforcement mechanism - Saudi Arabia's ability to ramp up production and drive prices down to punish cheating.
But how much excess capacity does Saudi Arabia have? The same Saudi Arabia that is planning to build nuclear power plants and is constructing solar powered desalination plants.
A country that is foregoing investing in new oil discovery ...
Sounds like a country preparing for a post oil world ....
As far as the vast reservoirs of oil being down there or about abiogenic oil just cooking up fresh supply does not square up with the well known and documentable fact that new discoveries of oil are shrinking in size and in the frequency of discovery.
What Cornucopians, and some "greenies" believe is that "alternatives" and unconventional sources (like tar-sands) can make up the difference.
Magical thinking does not, and will not, deter history.
Uh yeah . . . by definition. Countries have made come backs. Russia had a big comeback although that is leveling off. The USA has gone up a little bit in recent years.
But yeah, overall overall it is a problem.
What separates Russia from the rest of the world was a lack of capital in the 1980s and the plunging of oil prices in the 90s. It was underinvestment that caused their production to decline in the 80s and early 90s. Special circumstances.
In no country where there have been open access to capital and technology has oil production peaked, gone into decline, and then reversed itself to reach a new peak higher than the former.
Russia is a special case that has not been replicated elsewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSdGU3XZmLk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjcHuRphIas&feature=related
Theories of Deep Pools of Abiotic Oil Shown to be Flawed
http://geologyecology.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_origin_of_oil_a_mystery
Rex Tillerson - CEO Exxon Mobil Denying Peak Oil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjG3HRUYVo
so much for your claim peak oilers being paid.
BP: http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/44/oil_discovery_trend.gif
Exxon: http://www.daveseslbiofuel.com/pix/gap.jpg
Plateau oil
http://localfuture.org/charts/20080301/20080301WorldOilProductionWissnerLarge.GIF
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd7QGbNKxoQ
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUVY2qrEfd8&feature=related
United States Joint Forces Command:
U.S. JOINT OPERATING ENVIRONMENT REPORT 2010
http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2010/04/united-states-joint-forces-command-us.html
IEA World Energy Outlook 2008
http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2008/11/iea-world-energy-outlook-2008.html
thanks.
For example: Since everyone has seen 55-gallon steel drums I covert barrels into drums and then build a pipeline out of those drums. At 85M bbl/day of consumption you could fill 64,909,090 drums. At 3 feet tall laid end to end you could make a pipeline of drums stretching 36,880 miles long. At 24,900 miles circumference of the earth those drums would encircle the earth 1 1/2 each day, 540 times per year. And flow rate through that pipe would be twice the speed of sound, Mach 2. Here's the math: http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2009/07/steel-drum-pipeline-of-oil-encircling.html
At 86,400,000bbl per day (a 1000bbl per second) you could fill 2,044,000 Olympic pools. They'd encircle the earth 2 1/2 time each year.
That tells me a couple of things:
1 the world produces huge amount of oil but those volumes are needed to run the modern world.
2 Comprehending that consumption and then believing it would be easy to replace the energy equivalent in those barrels with bios, or whatever, is delusional.
If a person knows that and then hears a politician saying "yes we can transition to advanced bios and do it within ten years" or "drill baby drill" has to ask themselves a couple of questions: Either this politician knows nothing about what's at stack or that politician is using campaign rhetoric to get votes from an energy ignorant populous.
I get these emails about how the 300B bbls of oil in the Bakken Shale. Only a fraction of that volume is producible. The USGS increased its estimate of total Bakken recovery from 350,000bbl to 4B bbl using horizontal drilling. Problem is since the US consumes 7B per year and 3/4 of that is imported the Bakken's 4B only equals a year's worth of US imports.
If as you say, "...peak oil is science paid for in large measure by the best geology that oil money can buy." -can you please contact someone at the NYT or Exxon and inquire for me as to where my check is?"
Thanks a bunch,
GAB
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JJ_4As4LXQ&feature=related
In other words, you posing a standard of evidence that is not pragmatic and will lead to paralysis.
There are many levels of evidence ranging from plausiblity to preponderance of evidence to beyond a reasonable debt to proof.
Proof is not the right criterion.
Oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s. Reserve figures are probably exaggerated due to OPEC. Certainly any new oil being discovered has a marginal cost in the $60 to $90 a barrel.
Peal oil is very plausible just like Global Warming. Time to prepare ...
Given the French success, it seems clear that nuclear is the way to go along with a very heavy of dose of conservatin. Since German enery intensity per dollar of German GDP is half that of the US, conservation will be key. That probably means an energy tax.
In fact the Times article is just a transparent advocacy for off-shore drilling. This is unsurprising given the huge popular backlash against such drilling, for obvious reasons. The Times is just fulfilling its role as advocate for big coprorate interests.
thanx.
Even if the world was swimming with oil, we should be getting off it asap.
finding and consuming oodles of oil in a world that is otherwise becoming uninhabitable due to its unrestrained use has to be a really dubious strategy.
Anthony
http://www.anthonyelement.com
But anything that helps break the OPEC/BUSHCO stranglehold on humanity is something that we need to factor into every element of our transition planning.
That's highly unlikely given that oil production will probably fall sometime early this century. Oil production will fall before any migration to other energy sources is underway.
The economic disruption could be very severe, particularly for an energy hot like the US.
Actually, we are past peak- Peak meaning the apex of supply of crude and condensate (c&c).
You want the uninitiated to believe that PO is promoted by Big Oil, whereas, like most new-speak, it denies the reality that Big oil, along with the USGS, has been Cornucopian- NOT promoting Peak Oil or conservation- like you, Raymond. How many times have we gone over this?
Our love of the tar sands and deep ocean oil is testament to the precarious nature of supply.
We're going to coal now, so that we can drive our little "green" 'lectric cars.
As to Idiotic, er, Abiotic oil, you and i wish. If I wish for an afterlife, it doesn't make it so.
Just come out and say it with me- we don't need no stinkin' conservation!
I wonder how long, by chance, you've been reading him.
Me and Raymond go back a long way. His posts used to be all I would comment on back in the heady days of $140 oil. He was my first, and for the longest time, only fan- ya, kinda funny but he fanned me back when i eschewed all that nonsense and had no friends, no fans.
I do like Raymond and think in real life we'd be good friends with a lot to argue about.
I wish he'd do like some bloggers and respond to commentors.
As far as him not being "married to continued consumption, OPEC, or any other manifestation of BIG OIL" i agree, but he prefers to conflate "peak oil pranksters" with Big Oil interests, whereas as i've pointed out with chapter and verse over the years that OPEC and B.O. have been the primary deniers of peak oil for obvious reasons. Also, Raymond seldom (if ever) has promoted conservation which happens to be the lowest hanging fruit for solving energy problems. He prefers to say how abundant oil really is with the only impediment to our birthright to cheap fuel prices being greedy Oil barons, bankers, and sheiks.
Obviously, i disagree.
Hope that clears that up.
regards, GAB
Raymond can't seem to figure that out. :)
Raymond embodies what I call the 'dumb left'. The Dumb Left never took a basic economics course and believes that any price rise that affects the common man must be a price conspiracy by rapacious capitalists. Falling prices is always fair ... Rising prices always bad ...
Rising prices encourage conservation and encourage new supplies. It is an intelligent rationing system. Not perfect, and needs to be supplemented, but an essential ingredient in a world of scarcity.
1. The shape of the continents and oceans was significantly different in the Cretaceous, so why should all these deposits currently be under seas?
2. Can we rely on deep water drilling to be safe?
3. If a field is very far from land, the middle of the south Atlantic for example, won't that make the extraction costs higher?