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Did WikiLeaks Confirm "Peak Oil"? Saudi Said To Have Overstated Crude Oil Reserves By 300 Billion Barrels (40%)
In what can be the "Holy Grail" moment for the peak oil movement, Wikileaks has just released 4 cables that may confirm that as broadly speculated by the peak oil "fringe", the theories about an imminent crude crunch may be in fact true. As the Guardian reports on 4 just declassified cables, "The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show. The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%." Could the OPEC cartel's capacity for virtually unlimited supply expansion to keep up with demand have been nothing but a bluff? That is the case according to Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, who met with the US consul general in Riyadh in November 2007 and "told the US diplomat that Aramco's 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to keep a lid on prices could not be reached." And yes, that conspiracy concept of peak oil is specifically referenced: "According to the cables, which date between 2007-09, Husseini said Saudi Arabia might reach an output of 12m barrels a day in 10 years but before then – possibly as early as 2012 – global oil production would have hit its highest point. This crunch point is known as "peak oil"." And it gets worse: "Husseini said that at that point Aramco would not be able to stop the rise of global oil prices because the Saudi energy industry had overstated its recoverable reserves to spur foreign investment. He argued that Aramco had badly underestimated the time needed to bring new oil on tap." Look for Saudi Arabia to go into full damage control mode, alleging that these cables reference nothing but lies. In the meantime, look for China to continue quietly stockpiling the one asset which as was just pointed out is the key one to hold, for both bulls and bears, according to Marc Faber.
More from the Guardian:
One cable said: "According to al-Husseini, the crux of the issue is twofold. First, it is possible that Saudi reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described, and the timeline for their production not as unrestrained as Aramco and energy optimists would like to portray."
It went on: "In a presentation, Abdallah al-Saif, current Aramco senior vice-president for exploration, reported that Aramco has 716bn barrels of total reserves, of which 51% are recoverable, and that in 20 years Aramco will have 900bn barrels of reserves.
"Al-Husseini disagrees with this analysis, believing Aramco's reserves are overstated by as much as 300bn barrels. In his view once 50% of original proven reserves has been reached … a steady output in decline will ensue and no amount of effort will be able to stop it. He believes that what will result is a plateau in total output that will last approximately 15 years followed by decreasing output."
The US consul then told Washington: "While al-Husseini fundamentally contradicts the Aramco company line, he is no doomsday theorist. His pedigree, experience and outlook demand that his predictions be thoughtfully considered."
Seven months later, the US embassy in Riyadh went further in two more cables. "Our mission now questions how much the Saudis can now substantively influence the crude markets over the long term. Clearly they can drive prices up, but we question whether they any longer have the power to drive prices down for a prolonged period."
A fourth cable, in October 2009, claimed that escalating electricity demand by Saudi Arabia may further constrain Saudi oil exports. "Demand [for electricity] is expected to grow 10% a year over the next decade as a result of population and economic growth. As a result it will need to double its generation capacity to 68,000MW in 2018," it said.
It also reported major project delays and accidents as "evidence that the Saudi Aramco is having to run harder to stay in place – to replace the decline in existing production." While fears of premature "peak oil" and Saudi production problems had been expressed before, no US official has come close to saying this in public.
The conclusion:
Jeremy Leggett, convenor of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, said: "We are asleep at the wheel here: choosing to ignore a threat to the global economy that is quite as bad as the credit crunch, quite possibly worse."
Obviously, if true, the implications of this discovery are massive, and will have a huge impact on the price of oil imminently.
The four key cables can be found at the links below.
- Saudi oil company oversold ability to increase production, embassy told
- Saudi Arabia tackles western shift towards energy independence
- US queries Saudi Arabia's influence over oil prices
- US concern over Saudi Arabia oil production
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We were running out of oil when it almost touched $150 in 2008 and then it plunged to $40. Now it is again around $100 and reports of the world running out of oil are in circulation. The actual usage and the actual consumption have not changed so drastically in the last decade.
The only thing driving up commodity prices worldwide are speculators armed with cheap money provided by central bankers and super fast computers. This volatility in prices is causing a havoc in the lives of rest of the population and pushing them towards poverty as they can no longer afford the basic necessities of life.
Regulators are either hand in glove with the banksters or are too slow to react and take ages to identify and take measures to solve the problems.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article24581.html
The production has changed.
The best thing about peak oil threads is it separates those too dumb to even acknowledge. If you don't understand peak oil your investing advice is completely useless.
>>
The best thing about peak oil threads is it separates those too dumb to even acknowledge. If you don't understand peak oil your investing advice is completely useless.
>>
I confess I never really thought about this. You're right. People who can't understand this are safely ignored.
Wooo, straightforward conclusion. It fails. The main legacy of the US is duplicity. Your comment stems from the same sauce as the sheeple categorisation.
People might not be too dumb to even acknowledge. They might be people who are aware of the fact but making money from denying it.
For your comment to be of value, you must show that you can not make money by conning people. Good luck in that.
The only thing that they show is they are unable to provide a better narrative for their con game. Their denial of oil extraction peak is so low quality they are transparent. If they manage to maintain their denial based con scheme on such the feeble argument oil extraction can not peak, well, the causes are worth investigating.
Not sure what to make of this just yet but....
I can see why the Saudis would keep prices low since sparking a panic might make us to get off our ass and invest in other enery sources.
Yes, but in the final analysis, there is no replacement for oil at this time...
Yeah, no shit. Like the COUNTLESS suppressed technologies that could replace oil in a heartbeat. (Ok, 20 years but that's still a 'heartbeat'.) Google Tesla. Or zero point energy. Or all the latest fusion discoveries. One day, one of these technologies is going to get through the buy offs and assassinations.
Tesla cult, zpe, fusion, all not worth the letters they are written with...
Someone should tell the American Chemical Society.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/acs-fm030810.php
This article was before Blacklight Power's 3rd verification at Rowan University.
Sorry the DIA report is a pdf, it seems like it would take years to investigate the already successful results/papers they list (there are so many). What an irony that the ACS published another paper in March 2009 on the 20th anniversary of Fleischmann and Pons describing the tech as real, cheap and safe: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/acs-fr031709.php
The US Navy likes it: http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/USNavy.htm
India's BARC: http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/BARC.htm
I like the Tesla cars, I see them all over California.
You know Mountain Pass mine is re-opening right?
The reason for the financial/housing bubble was the cheap oil of the 90's feeding into the American dream. We had twenty years of low foreign labor induced disinflation combined with a fractious OPEC pumping like mad. Like hogs in shit, we wallowed. Then the price of oil caused long rates to start to rise in '07, and the housing bubble burst, catching everyone on the wrong side of 30 years of declining interest rates. Interest rates can only be low as long as the fuel of the economy is plentiful. Oil is getting harder to get out of the ground. Period. We could print endless dollars if oil was gushing out of the ground for free. The fact of oil's increasing scarcity is what makes inflation happen. The economy can't make the goods to match up to the dollars because the costs of production are rising. Business and govt. will find it increasingly hard to pay back debts when production is constrained by high input costs.
In this chicken and egg debate, don't lose sight of the fact that as long as oil was plentiful we could print all the money we wanted. And if oil is plentiful, then high prices will stimulate production. And we won't have any problems.
peak oil = global warming
crap, by another name
If Hillary is known as 'her thighness', should Moochelle be known as 'her cabooseness'?
Clint: Yeah, uh.. Steve? My name's Clint!
Steve: Okay.
Clint: I just gotta say that you guys are the only show on TV that has the guts to openly discuss women's problems, and I think that's great for a lot of guys.
Steve: Alright!
[ the men applaud themselves ]
Steve: Well, thanks a lot. You know, we're trying the best we can, Clint.
Brad: Yeah, that's right.
Clint: My question is: what part of a woman's body do you like the best?
Steve: Okay, that's easy for me. I go for a woman's breasts. I'm a breast man. What about you, Brad?
Brad: Yeah, put me down for big breasts.
Steve: Craig?
Craig: Breasts. Humonogous breasts!
Steve: Okay, Mike?
Mike: Uhh.. I like a woman with a big butt. You know. Something you can hold onto and hit with a car antenna.
I see some people have no appreciation for Garrett Morris' work on SNL. C'est la vie.
Nice to see someone in the Establishment use the term 'Peak Oil' in a sentence. For awhile I was worried.
Oil prices are set in the market by economic activity. I don't see too much in the way of a price change because oil is very expensive right now. Adding spec pressure on the price will threaten demand destruction.
Current price levels sustained for too much longer will have the same effect. I go into stores with no customers. Nobody can afford the high- priced goods.
Peak oil is actually an old story but hasn't caught the public imagination the way Snooki has. Oil isn't abiotic nor is it made of dinosaur bones. Like coal it is the carboniferous remains of fossilized plants.
Hydrocarbons are plentiful in the universe. The planets Jupiter and Saturn are gigantic gas balls of ammonia and methane. Try to get the stuff back here ...
The idea that's missing is the conservation idea. The easiest oil to find now is the oil you don't use ...
So if I find oil 10,000 feet below the ground due to " the carboniferous remains of fossilized plants" these super plants didn't need sunlight to grow in the first place?
LOL.
The whole peak oil idea is nonsense. I remember Time Magazine in 1973 announcing that oil would run out by the 1990's. Did that happen? Of course not. It's just a scare story, nothing more.
Only the easy, in-land, "pool" oil that can be extracted with a siphoning hose method is running low. Western North America has trillions of barrels of shale oil..enough for many decades...oil partially trapped or contained in rock, not sand. A little technology and American know-how is needed. That's all.
Your post is reflective of the logical fallacies surrounding peak oil. All the oil you discuss is in hard-to reach places, unlike the "pool" oil you refer to. That means it will take much more energy (i.e., oil) to extract it than it would for "pool" oil. Know how many barrels of oil you need to get one barrel of tar sands oil? One third, compared to one fortieth, or one eightieth of a barrel when you can just stick a hose in the ground.
Peak oil doesn't mean that the oil is gone. It means that half of it is left. It's just the hard to reach half. That means it's expensive, and there's not as much of it coming to market. That means *gasp* shortages! A word that no American ever expects to hear ever. The entire social fabric of the country would disintegrate if it faced an oil shortage.
You propose that "a little technology and American know-how" would solve the problem. What technology would that be? Have we even invented it? Are we even trying? What sort of American know-how will come out of a population that has been impoverished, rendered ignorant, and fattened up on McNuggets? The days of exceptionalism are long gone, and it will require some serious pain to re-ignite Americans' drive, but we're a long way off from that yet.
Actually I think we have enough qualified manpower out there to solve these problems, though most of them may not be American. Not that it matters, if the solution produces from a resource that is infinitely renewable. Everyone will pay homage to our saviours, but it will be affordable. New industries will arise to employ a lot of people. Of course -- this presumes that these brainiacs will be led to acheive this goal.. I know that there are viable ideas which have huge but, I think, surmountable obstacles to success. We need leadership!
Your post is reflective of the logical fallacies surrounding peak oil.
Actually I believe in the All-Mighty, who having seen all possible outcomes, has provided in abundance for his children.
We aren't going to "run out" of anything or be made to suffer.
And the technology is horizontal drilling. We are recovering a measly 6% of the Bakken Shale reserves..ignored for decades because the technology wasn't there. Now it is. At 12% recovery America's energy needs can be met for 30 years.
A geology major I see. Not to mention a firm grasp of the 1st three laws of thermodyamics.
Your opinion on the subject will be given the credibility merited based on a 40 year old memory of something a Time Mag. may have said...
Hit this link and read a hundred or so of these articles on the subject, then come back tell us about EROEI and the difference between Reservoir size and Flow Rate
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7191#more
And Ghawar,Khurais , and Abqaiq et al of Saudi Arabia specifically
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7191#burn
jus sayin
Why would I care about that, when the solution is here? Apparently my atrophied skills are still far superior to yours.
Please. We don't need ANY more evidence that you are completely and utterly retarded. We ALL understand that you have a double-digit IQ on your very best days. No need to pile on with idiotic confirmations. Really. You're done. "Mission Accomplished".
Riiight... So if the weatherman says it will rain next Tuesday but it doesn't then the weatherman was wrong and therefore it will never rain again?
TPOG
+1
Hope you brought some bug spray, because the gnats will be swarming you.
reality is a pest sometimes
And some pests are just pests. Like you peak oil gnats.
Will we ever reach Peak Julian?
BYOC (bring your own condom)
Wow. Very serious topic, yet 75% of the comments are complete crap. ZH has totally gone down the shitter. Logging out for good.
Bye
crap...shitter... loggin out... stay off the mexican food, ok?
ZH comments have turned into kids before christmas - everyone stirring around until the big day.. what's the big day?? who knows.. but that grip has them waiting.. and most ran out of things to say over and over.. even the XXXX bitches have gone quiet
well, in my defense, TD told me to chill out with the bitchez posts lol
This is NOT news (like everything else Wikileaks publishes). The decline of production in the Saudis' main oilfields has been public knowledge for at least four years.
A plateau is not the same as a peak. Might as well call a circle a square.
This IS news, because it casts doubt on their official reserves, which if true would IMPLY that the current plateau really is just a broad peak.
As most who have did the research on Peak Oil, everyone knows that the reserve size for nearly every country in the middle east were restated up by about 40% or so in the mid-1980's for market reasons.
Take a look
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OPEC_declared_reserves_1980-now_BP.svg
Also, for all the pumping Saudi Arabia has done since 1988(say) they have not change their reserve size.
Like Ben. No matter how much they pump, they say their reserves hadn't changed.
this is also discussed pretty well in the documentary "a crude awakening."
I sure hope for a plateau, but hubberts peak will look like a plateau until it doesnt.
It's not news if you read ZH and listen to money machines like Jim Rogers or Marc Faber. But it may be news to the current oil price?
If you are feeling generous, please tell me if you would be long/flat/short oil. Thanks.
Oil that is too cost prohibitive to get out of the ground is oil that might as well not exist. I think that is the problem. There is also the problem of being unable to project power and influence in regions where oil is more easily exploitable.
then just move the china factories down to where the oil is??? get Cheney on the phone now!!!
assuming a total loss of leadership after all this financial bs climaxes, y'all might be right about your predictions of war. I tend to think we will come to our senses before that.. I rather believe that there are people who will not just stand around and let the world go to shit. People do like to be led, and we can go for only so much war. Do you disagree?
So does this mean that using 1.3 units of energy to produce 1.0 units of energy to create corn ethanol is still a good idea? Also, if we are recognizing peak oil, doesn't that mean that we are probably close to peak carbon? Of course, assuming we don't jack up our coal habit. We may want to rethink our priorities on solving problems.
I can help here:
Ethanol is a crime at this point, but Senators will starve people if it wins votes and makes the big banks who own them happy.
Now "peak carbon" is a cute term. We may have to double power costs as coal plants are shut down. We might have to move 10's of millions of cogs, I mean people, back into cities so they drive less. And I nominate you to lecture the BRIC's on their "carbon footprints." If other countries won't sign up with us we can kiss another 10-20 mm jobs goodbye I would guess.
Then there is the whole matter of your power-grab carbon theory being completely unproven. It seems the people Al Gore pimps for made an error in avoiding an honest scientific debate on the matter.
No need to thank me...I am here to help...
Ethanol is not a crime and it is our damn corn. The third world can grow their own if they want.
they grow sugar cane which may actually be cost effective, unlike corn ethanol which depends on subsidies and ignoring market externalities like too cheaply priced clean air and water which is sacrificed in corn ethanol production.
p.s. wasn't it also our own damn panama canal, or something?
Ethanol from corn is the U.S. version of the Easter Island logging industry...
nice.
as long as we get some statues out of it
Thanks, am thinking of copywriting it.
What? Las Vegas is not part of our statue building program?
Nice analogy !
Ethanol does not make overall economic or ecological sense. Ethanol is corn. Corn is food. Tying the price of food directly to the price of energy is bad public policy.
Repeat after me: 10 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of food
The two are tied at the hip, ethanol only makes it obvious
Repeat after me: organic food grown locally.
Repeat after me: World population of of ~2.5 billion
Ah, a Mathusian. 150 years and counting. And they say a broken clock is right twice a day.
Here's some gnat spray for you: PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST!
0.25 acres arable land per capital
support yourself on that, organically
he's not good at math (or science) (or consistency)
Anyone seriously interested in Peak Oil needs to read the works of Prof Deffeyes. Deffeyes worked in the oil industry first, under Hubbert, then became an academic, which is the best of both worlds...
Why waste your time reading bought and paid for academic research? People have enough trivia jammed into their brains already.
a debate usually involves pointing out facts
Your facts start with oil = fossils. It's wrong, and so your entire viewpoint collapses. Immediately.
you don't even comprehend your opponent's argument, let alone yours
Gotta' love how the same people calling Assange a patsy & plant suddenly respect his WikiLeakage when it's convenient to do so or fits their preconceptions.
Don't know about that. Suppose Peak oil is real, and the things in here are true and the studies by Hirsch et al are true. And it is a decline from here on out.
And that Saudi Arabia has Peaked (Hail, mighty Ghawar has fallen)
Would you want it coming out from one of your public sources? CNNNBCFAUX etc
Or would it serve more purposes for it to come out via a "Leak" ?
Jus sayin
"Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
-- Henry Kissinger, commenting on the US sellout of the Kurds in Iraq in 1975
This is not rocket science. Just a repeat in failed central planning policies.
Enjoy..
Petrodollars
Husseini has been vocal with his opinion on saudi oil reserves for years now...to wit this story from 2008
"Mr. Husseini, Aramco's second-in-command until 2004, says the world faces a brute reality of depleting resources and ever rising prices. Mr. Saleri, until recently the company's oil-reservoir manager, insists that with enough ingenuity and investment, plenty more oil can be found."
http://delong.typepad.com/egregious_moderation/2008/06/neil-king-globa.html
It is one of the best WSJ pieces I've ever read. Of interest, though they worked together, it was Saleri who was able to extend the life of the saudi wells crippled from overproduction in the 70's.
Maybe GOOGLE/CIA has been planning a "revolution" on Saudi Arabia, just like they have been doing in Egypt.
After all, Egypt and SA have plenty gold in their vaults.
A "revolution" is a perfect way to transfer that gold to another vault.
Other US puppets with nice gold reserves should beware *cough* Chavez *cough*.
Let them eat sand!
The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5...3 trillion.
"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.
"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reportsThe Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' It stretches from Northern Montana , through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves..... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!
That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from 2006!
U.. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World
Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006
Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?
They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.. Here are the official estimates:
- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
- 22-times as much oil as Iran
- 500-times as much oil as Yemen
- and it's all right here in the Western United States .
HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?
James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.
Energy is control. Control the energy and you control the sheeple/resources.
Actually all you need to do is control the information about energy.
Folks this is a simple one, You can spot someone who has no grasp of the geology of Peak Oil if like this guy talks about Reserve Size and not Flow Rate.
With ALL those numbers above, ask him how much the daily production numbers are. Ask him how many years ago (multiple decades kids) production started on this "New Big Find".
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5928
This story comes around yearly it seems From the SAME people I swear. It's like those money for nothing emails you get from Nigeria...
Here's the Bakken's production, take a good look.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Figure%207.png
Oh, That's a WHOPPING 70,000 barrels per day from Bakken. But.... Gee we use north of 19 MILLION barrels per day.
Ya REALLY think That 70,000 is gonna tip the scales there bunky?
You should work for the folks who do the employment numbers....
You Don't happen to work for the gov do you??
What was that? 10 year old production figures?
355,000 Barrels per day, just North Dakota, all Bakken this past November.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/01/north-dakota-oil-production-355038.html
The forecasts are for North Dakota to double oil production to 700,000 barrels per day by 2014-2017
Yipee! Might just cover the decline in Prudhoe Bay and Thunderhorse
Dont get me wrong, I have made a fair amount of money on Bakken oil plays...
Good luck pulling it out. What will be your excuse in five years when only token amounts are recovered?
The Bakken produces 350K boepd just in North Datoka now. Add Montana and Canada in. Almost 500K per day. Hello.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels.
It's been doubled since 2006. Still we can currently only recover 6%. Like I said, at 12% and fully utilized we can eliminate oil imports.
jlee2027=FOS
go renew you subscription to treehugger, you purveyor of douchebaggery....if you haveany love of yourself/life/earth, you'll go to yer bakken fields with a matrix weapons cache, mow down the "innocent" lemmings working the knobs and wheels, thermite all the machinery, then swallow a grenade.
So my entire post went WHOOSH over your head? Thought so.
Peak oil is probably coming soon if it is not already here. The only question is how painful it is going to be. There are quite a few alternatives to conventional oil (natural gas, alternative oil, coal, nuclear, solar, conservation, and so on) but most of them would require major changes in our infrastructure (such as converting our cars to use natural gas, electricity, methanol, etc.) So the big question is how rapid the onset of the problem will be. If it occurs gradually over a decade or so, it might be somewhat painful, but not devastating. If the oil prices rise rapidly over the course of a year or two, then we would be in for some severe pain.
Three very easy litmus tests to tell if you're dealing with a complete moron over the internet (think of it as Turing-lite):
- They believe Sarah Palin is fit to serve in ANY public office
- They deny global warming (especially if they believe it is a vast conspiracy)
- They believe in "abiotic" oil (or otherwise can't come to terms with peak oil)
Anyone who claims any of these three can be immediately ignored as they are completely devoid of critical thinking skills and conversing with them will be nothing but a waste of your time.
Global warming is bullshit. I thought everybody knew that already.
They got wikileaked before there was a wikileaks -- Climategate, which also proved it's a conspiracy.
Next.....
Well with deep-thinking like that in play, we can all rest easy. You want to believe that and found some evidence to fuel your confirmation bias, but physics doesn't do sophistry or rhetoric.
I agree with you on 1 and 3. There are valid arguments that climate change is still within the range of normal variation particularly if your data series goes back a million years and includes the most recent thermal maximum.
www.skepticalscience.com
The amount of CO2, sure...the rate at which we got there? Not even close.
(and I think you meant 'solar' maximum)
I am not aware that we have generally accepted ways to measure change in co2 over time a million years ago. We dont even have good estimates of the rate of change in temperature. If you are aware of a method of measuring rate of change of co2 other than ice core sampling which can only go back 10,000 or so years then give us a link so i can review it. We know the peak temps but as far as i know we dont know how quickly they ramp up.
The ice core work goes back about 800k years, but there are other methods for time-tripping farther ("generally accepted" is quibblable, I suppose). It's a lot to get through (nerd humor: painful), but it's all about the carbonate rocks:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
No. I mean thermal maximum. Look at the paleocene eocene thermal maximum and get back to me.
You're right, bad ass-umption on my part (too used to dealing with crackpots); the eocene is covered in the video linked above.
I'm off to perform some metaphorical deforestation (cutting logzzzzzzz...).
No...you guys don't realize that we need a Magnetic Tax to solve the problem
http://www.helium.com/items/2083868-magnetic-polar-shifts-causing-massiv...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCfLrAcJ-VM
Can't we just have a tax on each virgin thrown into the volcano?
I may not appreciate your politics but I do not want you thrown into a volcano...
Loving the way you tie Sarah Palin to the other two issues.
Were you in the high school debate club?
Snowball
Change your avatar again this one is not working..
Change your holier than thou presentation not working either..
Change your habit of laying out tests for the world at large to earn your respect..
The guy with the alien avatar writing software in mom's basement says stop wasting his time lol..
you forgot to add they believe one political party is responsible for our mess
+1, I just scroll down fast if I see that being proposed...
Good god... another idiot who won't read...
Bakken is estimated to have 3-5 billion recoverable bbls by USGS...
Green River and similar deposits are Kerogen, not oil...
It is dQ/dt not Q that matters....
Three to five billion......hmmm.....how much oil does the usa use in a year?
I can not believe how many nutjobs there are that believe in this peak oil sh*t. IT's a crying shame that someone writes an article trying to prove this sh*t. I wonder how much Saudi Arabia are paying him for the article. Facts are Facts and Peak oil is Fiction.
Recoverable oil is not the same thing as pie in the sky.
Peak oil is fiction.... because you say so?
Peak oil is fiction, because if you've lived long enough, you've heard the story before.
yes, that's the definition of fiction, if you heard it more than once. You're gonna need to do better than this
I've heard it several times. Throughout it all American continues to drive internal combustion vehicles powered by gasoline. This has been going on for a century now, despite changing technology.
There is no thought or sentence in this post that rebuts peak oil. You're either a really bad troll or very talented fool.
I think a question might be How will this effect the Saudi Goverment and the people?
If they run out of oil who gives a shit? They go back to having camel beauty contests and shagging goats..
This fits in with estimates that all the opec countries overstated reserves to increase quotas. I always thought there was a reason why iran was interested in nuclear power other than wiping israel off the map. The cat may be out of the bag now. In game theory once everyone knows that everyone else knows a certain piece of information i forgot what that is called but it is the stuff of immediate shifts to a new equilubrium. Is 86 now a floor in wti?
Tomorrow's action in energy will tell us if peak oil is now widely acknowledged and with a date of 2012 then the only thing preventing me from caling a top in civilization is my belief we got a long ways to go on that global warming thingy and nat gas is our savior. Otherwise it would be time to buy puts on civilization or possibly go short.
I hope there are enough people confused on eroei and dq/dt so that we dont have a quick lurch to a new equilibrium. We need time to prepare.
TCT, setting aside the market/short term financial response to this new equilibrium. We, as a society, may be able to make peak oil work for us. JW's link to Jeff Rubin's lecture was timely, we go from a global economy to a local economy. Big changes coming our way. To now see the potential to start producing marketable goods on a local level will be a good thing, of course their will be some steep cost to bear along the way.... put your big girl panties on and deal with it!!!
Is your glass half empty or half full?
'Peak oil', as a concept by it's very definition has no basis or association in provability. It is simply an observation that is accompanied by implied re-actions to a cost/benefit ratio.
I believe there is ample evidence that infers a high probability that this ratio is askew in many current wells, however, you have to be suspicious regarding any of Mr. Assange's pre-screened, alphabet letter agency approved controlled releases.
Smells like controlled release info manipulation to me. Whether it's true or not, whether the facts line up or not, from certain perspectives, the the concept of peak oil is secondary (although not irrelevant).
Just who would benefit from such public disclosure? MIC? Globalist cap n trade tax revisit?
You smell like a controlled release of something, but it's definitely not information.
The odious olfactory disgust you sense is snowball re-enforcing the flatulent structure of his delusion.
Must...deny...must...not...understand...EROI...
Must...believe...assange...must...swallow...psy-ops propaganda
Must...not...see...manipulation...in...releasing...valid...info
must... believe... all... valid... information... has... no... other... purpose... but... truth
HLS, suggest you educate yourself on the issue at hand before writing such post.... try this link for starters.
Saudi Oil Production and Reserves - Reasons Behind Wikileaks Concerns
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7465#more
Oildrum = hotbed of kool-aid gulpers.
You should really read some of the other posts on the page...perhaps then you'd recognize that I supported peak oil and did so well before anything leaked out of your wiki.
+1
I read estimates of Saudi oil reserves many years ago that went something like: 180 Billion barrels of recoverable reserves, of which about 110 Billion barrels had already been pumped and sold. That leaves less than half the original reserves, which means it's getting harder and harder to get the stuff out.
To enhance recovery the Saudis use sea water injection to keep field pressure up, and drive oil to the wells. As of several years ago their wells were producing 55% sea water and 45% oil. They just opened that last part of the largest oil field ever discovered, Gahwar. This last section is called Haradh, and they have put in 32 platforms with star patterns of horizontal wells. Before the first drop came out, they built a similar number of injection stations around the boundary of the field, with 8 ft diameter pipes pumping sea water into the ground to keep the pressure up as all those wells come online.
If that sounds like massive technology to exploit the resource as fast as possible, you'd be right. Nobody knows their production statistics, because that's a state secret, but there are many signs that production has peaked. Of course they'll still be pumping oil 100 years form now, just a little bit less every day from now on.
" Nobody knows their production statistics, because that's a state secret"
The public will be permanently kept in the dark about the availability of oil. Information about oil is an extremely powerful device. The story of oil reserves will change as needed.
Yes... the illusion of oil forever must be kept alive
yes, considering it's a debt based economy
It will be kept alive......forever.
And in terms of previous thermal maximums such as the lptm ptm or petm the rate of change is within a few thousand years but trying to measure rate of temperature change with microfossils and chemical composition of rocks is like trying to time a marathon with a calandar. We know the winner completed the marathon in a day. We just dont know anything more specific than that!
Black Swan....WW 3 moment?
The Business of Climate Change Conference 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
Thanks for the link, enjoyed the lecture.
Thanks JW.. I don't care what they say about the charging handle hk-91 rocks..
HK 417... is the only way to go... considering how hard they are to find... H and K MR762 http://www.tactical-life.com/online/products/heckler-kochs-mr556-mr762-rifles/ coming to a store in semi form near you, get in line ahead of time if you want a great gun.
from westexas at theoildrum.com
Wikileaks:
Saudi Net Oil Exports Versus US Annual Oil Prices:
2002-2010 (EIA, Total Liquids)
2002: 7.1 mbpd & $26
2003: 8.3 mbpd & $31
2004: 8.6 mbpd & $42
2005: 9.1 mbpd & $57
2006: 8.4 mbpd & $66
2007: 8.0 mbpd & $72
2008: 8.4 mbpd & $100
2009: 7.3 mbpd & $62
2010: 7.4* mbpd & $79
*Estimated
And actual Saudi production, consumption & net export numbers through 2006, along with Sam Foucher's projections, showing low case, middle case, high case, and the actual values for 2007, 2008 and 2009:
The Saudis can't directly set the world price because they sit at the bottom of the supply curve, not at the margin. All they can do is push more or less supply out at their (low, very very low) cost to extract. Waaaaaay up at the actual margin, non-OPEC suppliers are living and dying on the bleeding edge, like Texas wildcatters and ragged-quality Indonesian and African plays.
It certainly seems like the Kingdom is setting the price but we should bear in mind that it's an indirect and, well, crude mechanism.
Basically they can easily move the global supply curve out by a million barrels per day, or in. That's a hair over 1%. With greater effort they might be able to move 2 million; do I hear 3? Without getting fancy one can figure a simple price elasticity with respect to change in supply, and since that is a fairly steep curve out there (oh, if only we could see it clearly) we can just go with 2 so each 1% change in supply is met with a 2% change in price.
With the price of oil so conveniently near $100, as global demand is conveniently near 100 million barrels per day, it's actually a very good time to practice this math :*) so there's your silver lining.
That gives SA 'control' of a sort to the tune of 2-6%. Maybe 10% at the most. Not very reassuring if anyone was looking for a security blanket there.
To me it seems clear that the devaluation of the dollar has at least as much impact on oil prices as do the fundamentals. The OPEC 'comfortable' price band has gone from $22-27/barrel to about $100. That's a currency hedge, and properly so as that is one of OPEC's purposes; it says so in the charter.
Our twin deficits--the trade deficit (mainly oil) and the fiscal deficit--thus strongly reinforce each other.
Final note: the lack of available analysis on separating fundamentals, 'speculation' and currency factors influencing oil prices seems quite ridiculous given the importance of the problem.
double post
I have to agree with the earlier posters; there are some morons loose here.
Just to make the oil debate easier to quantify try for a minute imagining a US economy exposed to even one year of $200/barrel oil, just one year. That would put diesel in the range of $6-9 if not much higher. At that level things just don't get expensive, they just don't get delivered. Truckers will not deliver loads at staggering per hour or per day losses, contract or not it won't happen. A spike like that would of course destroy demand and crush prices back to maybe $30 or $50, it really does not matter. Even 6 months at $200 would deal a crushing blow to the system. It continues to get worse because that environment would cause those business already on their knees to close and of course at some level there would be a Fisherian deflationary collapse. Plenty of money goes to money heaven but not all of it. And the Fed could be counted on to flood the world in an ongoing wall of liquidity making things much worse as there are fewer goods and services being provided but the same or greater liquidity with which to chase it. Peak oil does not need to be nearly as intense as people make it out to be. The bumpy plateau of peak production discourages massive fixed investment in new fields and refineries as well as occasional spikes to crush marginal players in all industries. Two basic economic observations: all prices are set at the margin and production stops when marginal revenue=marginal cost. The problems of peak oil or peak flow or rapidly rising EROEI are closely related the the previous two observations.
China begins dumping of YEN
http://dawnwires.com/investment-news/downward-pressure-on-yen-will-begin...
Sometimes the paranoia here gets out of control and every bit of information, every act is seen as false flag or conspiracy and not as a simple piece of data escaped bought out into the wild.
These cables are not the only ones being released in recent times but they are the ones coming to your attention because of the interesting content. I take for exactly for what they puport to be, genuine embassy cables of the time.
On the subject of oil reserves I see that there may be a Bakken type field in Australia's Northern Territory in the Georgina Basin. Ryder Scott estimates I have seen state from Petro Frontier's presentation...
Un-risked undiscovered Original Oil in place
Low 196bbl
High 373bbl
Un-risked Prospective oil resources
Low 14bbl
High 41bbl
early days as yet and they are only just about to begin serious drilling.. so watch this space.
Dad worked for Aramco for 25 years and he and a good deal of other veteran Aramcons always talked about this.
The Guardian quotes "15 year plateau", from which you conclude in 2012 we have the crunch of "peak oil"? If oil reserves will last another 15 years of stable output, I would say that's the least of our worries to come.
Plateau in production, not demand.
Ha who cares.. Shrunken gonad muscle man says dollar value does not matter so print and outbid everyone in the world. Production plateau will be someones else's problem, someone who does not own enough digital ink.
Ruppert was right! Yall gotta pay respek where its due, BITCHEZ
Jimbo Rogers has been saying this for years...
All the mid east countries overstated in the 80s to get a bigger share of OPEC production allowance.
Some, like Kuwait did it overnight. The sheikh has no clothes.
NY is waking up - futures are down - huh - OK - lets kill the Dollar - that always works - right?
Michael Stipe speaks up : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eyFiClAzq8
crossing the rubicon - mike ruppert
twilight in the desert - matt simmons
2 good books to stoke the brain on such matters.......looks like theres lotsa peeps here spouting words about abiotic/bakken/tar sands that get their info from some long reads on the net; read some books from a few years ago....
sure, ruppert and simmons(r.i.p.)may have been/be may be agents of some sort, but who isnt nowadays?
this is a very sensitive subject.
We are just about to face a complete financial collapse based on a energy shock.
We are not running out of oil, we are just running out of the oil that we can burn with the price that we can pay.
All is interconnected, commodity price, inflation, scarcity, etc, etc.
For the people who can't see the correlation between oil peak and inflation here is:
In Many ways, the most fundamental linkage between Oil shocks and economic recession is that Oil shocks always cause huge spikes in inflation and those spikes in inflation are accompanied by huge spikes in interest rates that eventually snuff off growth
Every Central Banker knows, even misleads Central Bankers as Ben Bernanke will tell you that your borrowing rate is a mirror image of your inflation rate
I believe most of the people don't want to hear or recognize the issue with energy and economic growth, especially people involve in finance or economics. Imagine all those pundits who appear every day explaining about inflation, deflation, economic recovery and globalization and then all of this can be summarized to the point of how much cheap and abundant energy you have.
In addition, imagine that today a new type of energy source is discovered (exam, cold fusion), then you have to realize that fossil fuels are not only and energy source but is the mayor source of most of the modern chemical products and industry, starting from tooth paste to paints, resins, plastics, etc, etc, etc.
In addition all modern agriculture is based on fossil fuels (fertilizers and pesticides)
"There is nothing in any combination that can replace the edifice built by fossil fuels"
"We are just about to face a complete financial collapse based on a energy shock."
This is kool-aid and I'm not drinking it. The banks are the sole source of the world's economic troubles. The rise in the price of oil and everything else is a result of their actions.
I find the hatred being spouted by the "left" side of the argument on this rather lengthy discussion rather amusing. Rather than have a serious dialog about what is apparently an important subject to all, it devolves in to a "Fuck you, you're wrong and that's all there is to it" screaming match. This can only end as it did, with people throwing rocks at one another.
Instead of trying to persuade someone that you are completely right, how about picking the common ground that you actually illustrated quite nicely, and work from there?
This whole thread looked just like a session of Congress, I shit you not.
My 2 cents from the cheap seats anyway.
Dig deep into the thread... there was a semblance of a serious discussion. Not once was the left-right dichotomy invoked there.
Not sure about your familiarity with the characters here, the worst bile was spewed by the "anarchist wing". Face it, a lot of people are in denial about it and it is easier to blame someone else than face the music.
The oil doesn't give a shit who you voted for.