Gee, it's really hard to predict a "peak" for that ever-rising graph. 0bamanomics-inspired depression notwithstanding.
Posted on 08/09/2010 9:24:44 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Matt Simmons, a prominent oil investor and advocate of the "peak oil" theory, died suddenly on Sunday.
Simmons founded Simmons & Co. International, an investment bank that caters to energy companies.
He is also known for his book "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," which drew attention to the unreliability of Middle East oil reserves.
More recently, Simmons had retired to devote his time to the Ocean Energy Institute, a group he founded to research and develop energy from wind and tidal sources.
Simmons, who served as an energy advisor to President George W. Bush, has been known for sometimes making controversial statements.
Earlier this summer, he asserted that BP [BP 41.39 0.06 (+0.15%)] would need to file for bankruptcy in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon accident. He also claimed there were two leaks in the Gulf of Mexico, not just the one on which BP had fixed its underwater cameras.
BP's recent efforts to cap the Macondo well and establish a $20 billion claim fund have made these highly controversial comments unlikely.
He is survived by his wife, Ellen, and their five daughters.
He peaked....
He’s actually past his peak.
...and his theory with him...
He lived longer than his theory.
Gee, it's really hard to predict a "peak" for that ever-rising graph. 0bamanomics-inspired depression notwithstanding.
Maybe he will decay into crude.
Is it true his car ran out of gasoline on the way to the hospital?
The US alone has a 300 year supply left.
http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/The_U.S._s_Untapped_Bounty_080630.html
The US alone has a 300 year supply left.
http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresourc....
Peak Oil refers to dwindling supplies of conventional oil resources.
Your Kiplinger reference cites speculative sources of nonconventional oil: shale oil, tar sands and other less economical sources.
Those sources that Kiplinger cites are actually verification of Peak Oil theory, not a refutation.
"The largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oilresource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillionbarrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years."
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf
Granted the following discussion is from Wiki, but it's thoroughly supported...
According to a survey conducted by the RAND Corporation, the cost of producing a barrel of shale oil at a hypothetical surface retorting complex in the United States (comprising a mine, retorting plant, upgrading plant, supporting utilities, and spent shale reclamation), would range between US$70–95 ($440–600/m3), adjusted to 2005 values. Assuming a gradual increase in output after the start of commercial production, the analysis projects a gradual reduction in processing costs to $30–40 per barrel ($190–250/m3) after achieving the milestone of 1 billion barrels (160×10^6 m3).[9][42] Royal Dutch Shell has announced that its Shell ICP technology would realize a profit when crude oil prices are higher than $30 per barrel ($190/m3), while some technologies at full-scale production assert profitability at oil prices even lower than $20 per barrel ($130/m3).[12][56]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_economics
When one seriously begins comparing shale/tar sand oil (and even coal gasification ) with "green energy", it becomes obvious what's "speculative" and what are undeveloped opportunities.
Estimates of the oilresource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillionbarrels.
To extract that much oil, you're probably going to have to excavate enough shale to fill the Grand Canyon.
Ain't gonna happen in my lifetime.
Much of the technology involves separating the oil from the shale in the ground, no big holes. Further, strip mines can and have been reclaimed.
http://www.mii.org/reclcoal.html
Much of the technology involves separating the oil from the shale in the ground, no big holes.
At best you're only going to squeeze out only ½ barrel of oil out of a ton of rock.
It doesn't really matter that we have a bazillion tons of rock, it's still an agonizingly expensive way to produce oil, and we need more efficient passenger rail technology to use it. Not wasteful transportation like airlines, buses and automobiles.
As for the amount of oil produced per ton of shale, it's of no concern if the mine site is recovered and the process is otherwise economically productive and of even far less concern with In Situ Conversion.
Did you even read post 14? I'm not sure how $20 to $95 dollar per barrel is “agonizingly expensive”.
Because conventional oil drilled onshore only costs $5 ~ $7 to produce. (source)
And now that the cheap $5 ~ $7 stuff is running out, they're turning to the AGONIZINGLY EXPENSIVE stuff that costs between 4 and 20 TIMES more to produce.
So QUIT pretending that we have an infinite supply of cheap oil. We DON'T.
First of a kind mining and surface retorting plants may eventually be economic, providing a minimum 15% rate of return, at sustained average world oil prices above $54.00 per barrel.
In-situ processes may be economic at sustained average world oil prices above $35 per barrel.
http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/Oil_Shale_Economics_Fact_Sheet1.pdf
You may also want to read the entire article you used a source. It states Canadian oil sands breaks even at $33 a barrel, beating two other countries break "evens" for conventional oil.
Years of oil is available at prices even today's market will bear. Hang it up brother.
Years of oil is available at prices even today's market will bear. Hang it up brother.
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