We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
The ‘Peak Idiocy’ comment is at least three years old. Let’s visited a couple of dusty articles.
Mike Munger brings the concept into play in his December 5, 2009 post Peak Idiocy where he says:
Of all the idiotic things that people believe, the whole “peak oil” thing has to be right up there. It is literally impossible for us to run out of oil. We have never run out of anything, and we never will.
Continue reading ““Peak Oil” = “Peak Idiocy” – #10 in a series”
I’d say that’s great! Cool!
Where would that be?, I hear you ask. Try the Permian Basin. You know, that ancient field that is in perpetual decline, which just ‘proves’ the peak oil idea that there’s no more oil to be found.
Eric Fox at Motley Fool describes The Resurrection of the Permian Basin. He says the rig count in second quarter of ’12 passed the 500 mark. That is more rigs that are working in Bakken and Eagle Ford combined.
Production growth
This estimate is for production in the field to increase about 330,000 bopd in the next 4 years: Continue reading “At the end of July, Bakken and Eagle Ford had 478 rigs combined. What would you say about a field that has 500 rigs working?”
Proved U.S. oil reserves, without condensate, increased to 23.3 billion barrels at the end of 2010, according to a new report from the Energy Information Administration. The full report is here. The report and discussion on the ‘net is focused on 25.2 billion, which includes crude oil and lease condensate.
In 2009, proven reserves increased by twice the amount of oil we pulled out of the ground. In 2010, proven reserves increased by 2.5 times what we produced.
How can this be?
It is a mystery. Or magic must be involved. Or the oil fields are having babies, breeding like rabbits.
Continue reading “Must be magic. Proven reserves mysteriously increasing. Peak Oil #9”
That is the forecast by Bentek Energy LLC. I’ve been pointing out forecasts for Bakken production and this is the longest forecast I’ve seen.
The Dickinson Press picks up the AP report in their article Study: ND oil output may jump threefold by 2025. The opening paragraph:
Continue reading “Bakken oil output 2 million bopd by 2025?”
Does oil just magically appear in a tapped out field or do the oil people learn how large the field really is, locate more oil, and develop new ways to get the oil out of the ground?
If you’ve read this blog for long, you know what I think the answer is.
Look at the monthly production data for the Bakken field, exclusive of wells elsewhere in North Dakota. You can find the data here. This data is for the Bakken, Sanish, Three Forks, and Bakken/Three Forks pools only.
Seriously.
We don’t have any more oil to drill. Let me prove it to you.
In 2000, we had 21 billion barrels of proved oil reserves. Proved reserves are the amount that is economically and technically feasible to produce.
In 1999 we produced 5.9M barrels a day. Prediction for production in 2000 was 5.8M bopd. That latter number is equal to 2.11B barrels a year.
That means as of January 1, 2000 we had 9.92 years of oil that we could economically and technically get to. In other words, we ran out of oil back in November 2009 or earlier.
What if new production of one million barrels of oil per day from just two fields is just the opening round of new production in the US? What if that is just the start of worldwide growth in production?
I just took a first glance at Oil: The Next Revolution – The Unprecedented Upsurge of Oil Production Capacity by Leonardo Maugeri.
Consider this:
The Peak Oil concept is that production has peaked, production levels will soon decline in the U.S. & worldwide, and we will soon run out of oil. At a fundamental level that assumes there isn’t any more oil than what we know about right now and that we can’t get to anything that we don’t know how to reach now.
Today I provide two illustrations of the fallacy of Peak Oil.
First, a new field means that tomorrow we can get to energy we didn’t know about yesterday.
I’ve been using Daniel Yergin’s Wall Street Journal article There Will Be Oil as the jumping off point to explain that the concept of ‘peak oil’ is invalid. The posts have been combined into a page. You can click here or click on the “Peak Oil” page at the top of this blog.
Mr. Yergin comments on the Bakken field. Look at the appearance of unknown oil:
In 2003, the Bakken formation in North Dakota was producing a mere 10,000 barrels a day. Today, it is over 400,000 barrels, and North Dakota has become the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country. Such “tight” oil could add as much as two million barrels a day to U.S. oil production after 2020—something that would not have been in any forecast five years ago.
(I think the stat for 2003 production is far too low, but the underlying point stands strong.)
Notice the unexpected growth in Bakken production? The huge amount of oil behind that 400k per day output wasn’t anywhere in the proven reserve list in 2003. Wasn’t even an idea in anyone’s head.
Here is the Wikipedia definition of proven reserves, which is the same definition I’ve read elsewhere:
Proved reserves are those quantities of petroleum which, by analysis of geological and engineering data, can be estimated with a high degree of confidence to be commercially recoverable from a given date forward, from known reservoirs and under current economic conditions.
Here’s a short definition, from Hard Facts – An Energy Primer provided by the Institute for Energy Research.
They are the estimated reserves that are easily accessible and recoverable with today’s technology and today’s oil prices.
I’ve been using Daniel Yergin’s Wall Street Journal article There Will Be Oil as the jumping off point to explain that the concept of ‘peak oil’ is invalid. See previous posts here, here, and here.
Is quoting someone and explaining his position an ad hominem attack? That means attacking someone personally instead of criticizing their ideas.
I don’t think so.
Check out the solution to our energy problems according to the founder of the ‘peak oil’ concept, Dr. M. King Hubbert, PhD. Also, I’m not sure if Dr. Hubbert’s solutions are technically in the fascist or communist camp. You decide.
I started a discussion of the silly concept of ‘peak oil’ here.
That is the concept that we will soon hit a peak of oil production at which point production will fall. Furthermore, we will run out of oil very soon.
I’ve started off with a recap of a superb article by Daniel Yergin in a Wall Street Journal article There Will Be Oil.
Where did this idea come from?
Continue reading “Where did this peak oil concept come from? Peak oil #2”