Peak Oil closer, world's 2nd largest field production drops 30%

[gasperc]

A truly ominous sign, couple this with Juan Cole's comments yesterday about the violence spreading and taking our whole energy supply down with it,(www.juancole.com ) and next year will be quite a shit storm. The most shocking part of the article is how massive amounts of sea water are pumped back into some of SA fields. I don't know the technical reasons for this, I suppose it helps push up more oil but the key point is that alot of what is pumped out is the sea water. And they seem to count that towards the field's output. So the world's #1 field may also be in decline.

shit storm city


http://www.ameinfo.com/71519.html
<snip>
The peak output of the Burgan oil field will now be around 1.7 million barrels per day, and not the two million barrels per day forecast for the rest of the field's 30 to 40 years of life, Chairman Farouk Al Zanki told Bloomberg.

He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but that 1.7 million is the optimum rate. Kuwait will now spend some $3 million a year for the next year to boost output and exports from other fields.

However, it is surely a landmark moment when the world's second largest oil field begins to run dry. For Burgan has been pumping oil for almost 60 years and accounts for more than half of Kuwait's proven oil reserves. This is also not what forecasters are currently assuming.


Forecasts wrong
Last week the International Energy Agency's report said output from the Greater Burgan area will be 1.64 million barrels a day in 2020 and 1.53 million barrels per day in 2030. Is this now a realistic scenario?

<snip>

[lovuian]

1. Let me add cause I have an inside track on this

the more older the well the more water
the more water the more chemicals to separate the oil from water
(demulsifiers)
the more water the more corrosion in the pipes
the more chemicals needed for that

that means for the decrease oil output you need to put additives in to get this output

So there will be a crisis in Arabia for the oil is decreasing and so will their profits!!!

its really a reality check!!!

[spindrifter]

2. The salt water is

to maintain well pressure.

When I was checking this out, I ran across this handy, interesting piece about the oil rationale for the IW:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ENG408A.html

[IDemo]

3. "Water-cut" and Ghawar, the dying elephant of Saudi Arabia

This is from a post I made elsewhere over a year ago on the topic:

The Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia is the single largest on the planet, producing about 4.5 million barrels per day, more than double its nearest competitor, Cantarell in Mexico, at not quite 2 million barrels per day. That's down from 5 million per day as recently as 1996, a 10 percent decline. Ghawar is the foundation of wealth for the nationalized oil company Saudi Aramco, and by inference, the global economy.

The problem, according to engineers who have actually worked in Ghawar, is that from 30-55% of the yield at the wellhead is water. As an oil field becomes increasingly depleted, the injection of water is required to keep the pressure up and the oil flowing. Individual pumps are retired from oil-extraction and utilized as water pumps over the course of an oilfield’s lifetime. Unfortunately, much of this water is returned to the wellhead. The percentage of water to oil is known as the "water cut". Presently, 7 million barrels of sea water per day are being pumped into Ghawar by Saudi Aramco. That’s an ocean of a water cut by any measure.

The original "oil column", or depth, at Ghawar was 1300', about one quarter mile. Recent 3D seismic data indicates the the oil column is now only about 150'. This, despite the spurious doubling of its stated reserves by Saudi Aramco in 1990 to 260 billion barrels (and now, 200 billion more).

The Ghawar isn't the only source of oil for planet earth, but make no mistake: it's The Big One. When it's gone, the impact on human activity will be enormous.

[MojoXN]

4. "I don't know the technical reasons for this"

Oil is less dense then water. It floats on the surface of the H20, just like olive oil on vinegar. The more water that's pumped in, the higher the oil floats. Problem is, eventually, you start pumping in as much water as oil, and then the well is pretty much useless.

MojoXN

[cliss]

5. Well - here we go -

A lot of us here at the DU have been expecting some kind of statement like this. We knew it was coming.

I believe the Ghawar Oil field is the biggest, most productive oil field ever. It's been pumping lots of light, sweet crude for decades. Now it's in decline, as well. I've read that they've been pumping sea water into the well for a long time. The reason for this is they've been accelerating the output.

As a result, they could be damaging the oil fields beyond repair. If it is true that we're facing peak oil, then all the government's strange actions from these past 5 years make sense.

[NJCher]

10. Kenneth Deffeyes, expert on peak oil

...spoke earlier this fall at the university where I teach . He says peak oil will be reached on November 25 of this year. Thanksgiving: ironic, isn't it?

Deffeyes also said that if we'd heeded Jimmy Carter and enacted changes back at that time, we could have had a "soft landing."

But we couldn't do that, could we? Oh nooo-oooo. The U.S. car mfrs had to build huge SUVs so they could makes tons of dough off their old crappy truck chassis and the idiots who were stupid enough to buy these ridiculous behemoths.

Now we're in for the hard landing.




Cher

[gasperc]

32. Nov 25, this year, what else can I say but...OH FUCK

er, ack, errr

so that's sums it up, we are in Iraq for oil, it's a brute force attempt to maintain a military foothold in a known politically unstable region. The government clearly fears terrorist groups from destabilizing SA and in general does not want to be left impotent to even "friendly" regimes when oil and gas prices really start soaring to try and abate demand. At that point the government would find itself impotent against mobs of angry Americans angry about high prices. This way with a military presence already in ME and with the attempt to focus consumer anger at "the terrorists" the government can deflect as long as possible consumer anger about high prices that is really being caused by the depletion and shortage of the energy that the world demands. Hopefully, until the "new miricle" energy source that will replace gas is discovered.

[Deja Q]

39. 25 years ago we could have laid the groundwork. Pity reagan nixed it.

And no president since giving a real damn about it.

We pay for their greed with our rotting on the sidewalks, starving to death.

Cool, huh?

[niallmac]

6. When we lived in Dhahran

about three years ago we had a friend who was a blue collar hands on, dyed in the wool expat oil driller and field supervisor. He said exactly what this article is saying. He always said the only way we will know what the situation is, is if we take over the production (he was also a major Freeper) so I paid so so attention to him at the time but really, he should know.

Interesting times ahead no matter how you look at it.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. The Ghawar oil field -- that's the biggest

It's not in decline; not yet, anyway. But as a result of the seawater forcing of oil, the quality of the oil has fallen to a barely usable level. Extensive processing is required to get it ready for sale. The oil must literally be cleaned up.

There is a second problem -- the Saudi government/family does not like to provide complete and accurate information about their oik fields. The Ghawar may already be in decline, or it may have a decade more to go. But given the history of deceit from the House of Saud, the smart money is now scared money.

The development of the Athabaskan tar sands of Alberta is proceeding apace. But it's not happening fast enough to take up the slack from a radical oil shortfall. And using those tar sands will start out expensive, and become ever more expensive.

There's one solution. We have to dedicate ourselves, NOW, to developing other sources of energy, from windmills to nuclear reactors. It has to be the primary goal, national and international, for at least the next twenty years. Allowing an uncontrolled power-down will lead to the destruction of the world's financial systems and the loss of most agriculture. That will usher in a mass die-off. Such a die-off of humanity would be like 1000 Holocausts -- all happening at once.

I know we can avoid that fate; but I am not terribly optimistic, given the knuckleheads the world's nations have for leaders.

--p!

[IDemo]

8. I would tend to believe that the Ghawar is in heavy decline

As I mentioned above. The source of my info on the 30-55% watercut (sorry, can't locate it now, but Googling 'Ghawar dying elephant' will eventually get you to it) stated that petroleum engineers had said that a 30% watercut or higher generally meant the end of profitability for a field. There is also much more extensive analysis of the geology available online.

- "Allowing an uncontrolled power-down will lead to the destruction of the world's financial systems and the loss of most agriculture. That will usher in a mass die-off. Such a die-off of humanity would be like 1000 Holocausts -- all happening at once." True, and tragic. The most important issue of our century is being systematically ignored by our 'leaders'.

[ROH]

11. If the Ghawar is in heavy decline...

this is very serious.

You write: "The most important issue of our century is being systematically ignored by our 'leaders'."

Is it really being ignored by them? From Cheney's comments back in 1999 isn't he very well aware of the issue?

[IDemo]

13. Whoops, I meant "most important" to Humanity, not sub-human leaders

Cheney and Bush both mentioned energy as a critical issue several years ago, yet it's now apparent they were not concerned with the plight of common citizens, simply with the bottom line of Big Oil and others of Bush's "base". As wildly wrong as the Iraq invasion was, I expect Iran to be the next aquisition, second quarter 2006.

[gasperc]

33. I agree, a very diverse energy supply is the key

I don't think one new kind of vehicle is the answer

there should be alternative fuels, E-80, biodiesel, hybrids, fuel cells, whatever we can come up with.
I doubt there is an silver bullet to replace gas. We'll need gas just to keep the cars that have already been built running for awhile. But all new production must move to alternatives immediately

[screembloodymurder]

9. They will get more oil out if they slow down production.

So they are dropping production to maximize total output.

[Solon]

18. You can't do that...

Oil cannot be pumped out of the ground at an arbritary rate, pressure must be maintained, usually using whatever water is available, like in this case, sea water, so that it can be pumped out at a steady, fixed, rate. Change the pressure, and you can damage the field where all the rest of the oil becomes unrecoverable. This is part of the concern about Iraq's oil fields when they were damaged when we invaded.

[screembloodymurder]

24. What do you mean "You can't do that"? They did.

He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but that 1.7 million is the optimum rate. I didn't say anything about changing the pressure. They simply can't sustain 1.9 mbd with the pressure they have so they dropped production down to a sustainable rate and that will optimize total output.

[Solon]

28. No actually they can't...

They're production per day lowered to 1.7 million precisely because they couldn't increase it. The pressure within the field is getting more difficult to maintian, but cannot lower it either otherwise they risk damaging the field. The pressure is the same, whether it was 1.9 or 1.7 million barrels a day, the only difference is the amount of water that is in the mix when pumped out, that makes a difference in production.

[gasperc]

34. so does the field get damaged by the cavern collasping

I don't understand the geology here of this issue. But, I get the jist, do the wrong thing and you'll pump shit out of Ghanwar

[Leopolds Ghost]

47. It's more like a column of sand

Take a glass tube and fill it with sand and porous rock (sandstone = petrified clay) Fill it with oil (the sand etc. absorbs the oil) and you have what's known as a column (I forget the exact term -- differential titration?) This is what a core sample of the "oil field" looks like when you jam a tube into the earth and extract a sample.

The oil is the remains of fossilized peat (undigested remains of vegetation) from the dinosaur era. There is a limited amount of oil because the rise of termites ended the accumulation of hydrocarbons (oil, soot) in the soil.

To get the oil out you start with natural pressure, because all that sand and stone is under pressure from other rocks above. If you stick a clear tube into your sand column filled with oil, the oil should rise out thanks to hydraulic pressure.

But once the oil level declines, you either have to build deeper wells or pump water into the column of sand, causing the oil to separate and froth up towards the top of the column, and the water will accumulate in the deeper sand layers, forming an aquifer. (and ruining any natural aquifers nearby by introducing salt water -- the desert has huge natural aquifers because there's so little vegetation, rainwater sinks into the ground instead of running off.)

My uncle's a geologist with Shell Oil. But I don't know much else about this topic.

[gasperc]

51. that's alot thanks

[ROH]

12. Recommended this important post. (n/t)

[gasperc]

35. thanks

[IDemo]

14. More on the topic of Peak Oil

"Peak Oil" has gained itself a wide amount of coverage lately by MSM news, bloggers, and sites devoted to the issue. The consensus now is that it is no longer a question of if, but when. That, and how big will the impact be on humans? Most of the experts now agree on the answers: soon, and huge. Why then was potentially the most important problem ever faced by human civilization essentially ignored by both sides of the last US presidential election, save for promises of a "hydrogen economy" or alternative energy? Neither can do enough, much less within the next decade, to completely replace the role of petroleum in transportation, industrial energy, manufacturing raw materials, agriculture, shipping, and yes, drilling and mining of other energy sources such as coal and natural gas. Even the production of alternatives such as solar photovoltaic panels and wind generators relies heavily on Black Gold. Oil, that is.

One of the quotes I read earlier today stated that most Americans' faces "glaze like a donut" when they are first told of the Peak Oil threat; they simply cannot wrap their minds around a concept which could mean the end of SUV'ing, dirt cheap WalMart goods, and oh yeah....food. So they disavow the possibility, or ignore it altogether. The denials are also resounding from those who should know better (and do): OPEC, Big Oil, and Uncle Sam. Saudi Aramco, the nationalized Saudi Arabian oil giant, revised its estimated reserves upward by a whopping 100 billion barrels in 1990. OPEC nations are allotted a production level based upon their estimated reserves, a figure which they conveniently supply themselves. It is to a country's best immediate economic interests if it can score an artificially high estimate of economically recoverable reserves, even if it means depletion of a valuable resource.

Royal Dutch Shell revised its “proven” reserves five times in less than a year. "OK, I lied. OK, I lied (sigh) five times."

The current estimates of when the peak will occur lie anywhere from "already has occurred" to around 2008. Kenneth Deffeyes, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and a researcher at Shell Oil for several years, puts the target at Thanksgiving day 2005, plus or minus three weeks.

So doesn't the peak, the top of the bell curve, mean that more oil is being pumped than ever before in history? Yes. And isn't a bell curve, by definition, somewhat wide and flat at its peak? Yes. So what do we have to worry about? After all, the Y2K threat turned out to be a bust. You do remember Y2K, don't you? Non-functioning ATM's = global anarchy? Y2K turned out to be a bust as catastrophes go. Couldn't the same thing happen with Peak Oil? No. The Y2K "crisis" dealt with the vulnerability of many legacy computer systems to deal with a single event: New Year's Day of 2000. The efforts and expenditures put forth by corporations to correct or replace legacy operating systems and software resulted in Y2K being a disaster no-show. The same may not be said of Peak Oil. This one is for real, and it won't be easily resolved by a legion of geeks, whether at the lab bench or the keyboard.

[ROH]

15. Yes, that Y2K comparison is sometimes raised...

but alerts were raised with sufficient time to spare (it could have been substantially more damaging than it was if nothing had been done until it was "too late"), and Y2K was always likely to be a relatively short-term problem anyway.

PO is significantly different.

[NJCher]

23. the way the media talks about it

Hi, IDemo,

Did you see my post about Dr. Deffeyes, above?

In relation to your second paragraph, where you talk about how Americans are in denial, one reason could be the way the press treats such discussion.

After Dr. Deffeyes' lecture, there were a number of articles in the press covering his talk. All had doomsday headlines.

My thought was that no one wants to read this. The headlines were gloomy, ominous.

Dr. Deffeyes himself discussed the way the media treats this subject yet he was unable to craft a slant on his talk that would have resulted in a story more likely to be read.

This is not to say he has to alter his discussion to how it might be cast in a news story, but there needs to be some work on that end if the message is going to come through.




Cher

[screembloodymurder]

25. We can't rely on our leaders.

Each of us must do whatever we can. Get prepared for the future. Ride a bike.

[Deja Q]

37. If greed wasn't a factor, we might have a chance.

Or global warming; underwater hydrogen crystals farmed in the ocean.

Oil is the result of a particular hydrocarbon process. So in a few decades or centuries we will have more. The problem is the current population. And greed.

And as more and more US elected officials go to China, one has to ask WHY so many. Why go Pawlenty and Schwarzenegger need to go to China? They're elected to govern Minnesota. Not Beijing.

[Leopolds Ghost]

48. "Oil is the result of particular hydrocarbon process. So in a few decades

or centuries we will have more."

Unfortunately, that's probably not the case (unless you agree with the "expert" who believes that oil is a renewable, non-biological, mineral resource that is generated from the Earth's core!)

Look at gold -- over a long enough timeframe (hundreds of millions of years) gold is a renewable resource as existing supplies make their way back into the ground (via graves, buried ruins, etc) and more is propelled upwards from the Earth's core.

The problem is, thanks to greed and technology, Europeans have managed to extract most of the easily recoverable gold (and diamonds) built up over billions of years. You're talking stripping the whole earth of billion's of years' worth of elemental gold in a geological instant. Most of it now sits uselessly in warehouses to guarantee the wealth of a few nations -- distribute it among all peoples, and the value of gold (and diamonds) would plummet, ending the "artificial" economic superpower bonus posessed by those nations. This helps explain why states have become so centralized over the past two centuries, despite claims that industrialism and the internet should make decentraized, Jeffersonian democracy feasible for all workers.

The situation with oil is much worse, because not only have we stripped the planet's supply of millions of years's worth of oil (it takes hundreds of thousands of years for the Earth to replenish the oil that is burned in a day by America) -- but there may not be any more oil -- ever. That's because termites evolved to keep hydrocarbons in the biosphere. Before termites, dinosaur-era logs didn't decompose, they just sank into the muck and fossilized forming peat, and eventually methane and oil. Now, the only places NEW oil is formed are the boreal arctic swamps (peat bogs) of Canada and Russia.

We can do a similar process artificially by turning chicken offal (skin, bones, innards, cooking grease) into petroleum (take THAT, vegetarians who drive cars!)

But this process, like the process of producing hydrogen, is energy negative. Meaning it takes about the same amount of oil or gas to produce the fuel you get out of it. You can't fix this problem with hydrogen.

You can fix it with biodiesel, but there's only so much energy you can extract from the biosphere. Remember, solar power is a finite resource -- most of it gets converted into heat, or hydropower or wind power, only a tiny fraction of which can be harnessed.

All those millions of years' worth of oil represent millions of years' worth of carrying capacity to produce biodiesel during one of the lushest, wettest periods in the Earth's past.

And all those massive quantities of chickens, corn, etc. are powered by oil, and oil-based fertilizer. How do you replace millions of years' worth of peat accumulated in Amazon-size jungles?

[gasperc]

38. so I wonder where the 120mbd future will come from

world global growth has been depending on reaching 120mbp by 2020 or something like that. So even if we reach 90or 100mbd not only have we passed peak oil but we're acclerating the existance of oil.And even if the Alberta tar sands can keep up with global demand the cost of extracting and refining are pretty expensive and will completely shift upwards the price of energy

[ROH]

16. "In the waning months of 2005,

our failure to face the problems before us as a society is a wondrous thing to behold. Never before in American history have the public and its leaders shown such a lack of resolve, or even interest, in circumstances that will change forever how we live.

Even the greatest convulsion in our national experience, the Civil War, was preceded by years of talk, if not action. But in 2005 we barely have enough talk about what is happening to add up to a public conversation. We're too busy following Paris Hilton and Michael Jackson, or the NASCAR rankings, or the exploits of Donald Trump. We're immersed in a national personality freak show soap opera, with a side order of sports 24-7.

Our failure to pay attention to what is important is unprecedented, even supernatural.

This is true even at the supposedly highest level. The news section of last Sunday's New York Times did not contain one story about oil or gas - a week after Hurricane Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs and production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico - which any thought person can see leading directly to a winter of hardship for many Americans who can barely afford to heat their homes - and the information about the damage around the Gulf was still just then coming in."

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/547

[Extend a Hand]

17. please cross-post

this in the peak-oil forum. Not good news at all.

[mhr]

19. See Twilight in The Desert by Matt Simmons

[IDemo]

20. WaPo interview with Matt Simmons:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/07/26/DI2005072601004.html

[Bushwick Bill]

29. Terrifying anecdotal evidence from Simmons about Ghawar

The Saudis say that Ghawar has about 125 billion recoverable barrels left, but it could be only 6!

In the public domain there’s the field-by-field reserve estimates of Aramco when it was being run by Exxon, Chevron, Standard Oil of California, and Texaco, and they had the best people in the world doing these complicated reserve calculations, working on these issues. This was the biggest deal they had. They thought that all the fields, collectively, had 108-billion barrels. They thought Ghawar had 61-billion barrels - we were told in February that Ghawar has already produced 55 . Now 61 is not total - it's the amount they could recover, so if it turns out that these guys are sort of correct, and it's interesting, one of my neighbors in Maine is the retired Chairman of the Board of Texaco. I saw him in Maine after the CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) thing, and he said, ”Boy, every Texaco employee that I've ever known has been on the phone saying, ‘do you have any idea who this Simmons guy is?’” And he said, “Yeah, he's my neighbor.” So we were chuckling about that, and I said, “Hey Butch, tell me now, seriously, back in the ‘70s, how dumb were you guys?” Butch is about 6 ft 8 in., and he looks at me and says, “Well you're not calling me dumb are you?” And I said, “No, I'm just joking.” But I told him these numbers and said, “Your best people at Aramco thought that Ghawar had 61-billion barrels and it has now produced 55-billion barrels, but the Saudis claim that Ghawar has another 125-billion barrels that it can recover; 126 plus 60 is 180, could you have missed Ghawar by 3-fold?” And it's the first time I’ve ever seen this gentleman not in a jovial mood. He said, “Those are real numbers, you know. We couldn’t have missed by over 20 percent - that's impossible.” And he said, “We had better people working on these calculations back in the ‘70s.” Because we’ve really deteriorated as a society in the ability to do these complicated reserve calculations; ah, we've created a generation of what a couple of my scientist friends call ‘Nintendo Geologists’ who just sit at a workstation and do modeling and say, “Oh, look at that field.” And if it turns out that the old ‘75 numbers are right, then we really are almost to the end of the miracle, and we should be preparing for the beginning of steep declines in the 5 great fields, and so my bottom line on all this is not to say I know that this is going to happen, because I don’t, but I think this is an enormous worry for the well-being of the world, and I happen to believe that, in fact, as much as you might dislike energy, it's the best thing that we ever had, and it’s modern energy that's created basically every aspect of our society today, and unfortunately, there are still 5-billion people on earth who are just starting to use modern energy, and this is a bad time to say, “Oh, no, that era ended.”
http://www.energybulletin.net/1264.html

[Aimah]

21. Have you seen "The End of Suburbia"

LinkTV showed it a couple weeks ago. It talks a lot about peak oil. It's not in their rotation this week but they re-show their docs often. Here's a link about it that also has a link to the docs web site.

http://linktv.net/programming/programDescription.php4?code=end

[mmonk]

22. The salt water situation is an old story.

They have been trying new techniques. I do believe that Saudi Arabia has been holding back on working other potential sites to stretch things out.

[IDemo]

27. Matt Simmons on technology:

Matt Simmons - "is technology the solution, which the Saudis Aramco senior mangers argue vociferously is the solution, or is technology the problem? What’s interesting is that we’re not talking about a dazzling array of hundreds of technologies; we’re taking about horizontal drilling, multi-lateral well completions, the use of 3d seismic to simulate reservoir models and reservoir simulation models.

.."They are certain that these advanced technologies are going to allow these fields to produce recovery rates that defied everyone in the North Sea and defied Alaska and so forth, and I feel that basically this same technology is just super-straws that are actually pulling the last easy oil out faster than it ever would have been found before, so we’re basically saying this gun is going to create peace, and I say no this gun is going to create war."

[IDemo]

30. self-delete

[IDemo]

26. Report: Saudi Arabia Oil Production Tapped Out

Report: Saudi Arabia Oil Production Tapped Out - "There is virtually no other global spare capacity."

Tom Paine - "Saudi Arabia's exploration efforts over the last three decades were more intense than most observers have assumed," Simmons asserts. "The results of these efforts were modest at best."

Oil and Saudi Arabia - Part 1 - "the business press is now filled with easy-to-read information about Saudi Arabia, and they have almost always gotten it at least partially correct. What they have missed, however, is that according to the logic of mainstream development economics, the countries of the Middle East are not going to exhaust their supplies of irreplaceable energy resources in order to pull the chestnuts of American and European motorists out of the fire, even if they assure every government and television station in the world that they prepared to do so – and even if, as Humphrey Bogart remarked in the film ‘Sahara’, they adore chestnuts.

- "There are still, however, a few observers of the flat-earth variety who do not share this attitude. In their world, physical investment is capable of finding oil that the geologists say is not there – or, to put this another way, they think that ‘market solutions’ and technological innovation can overwhelm the laws of physics."

- "This is not a particularly attractive prospect for a country like the US, where a shortage of oil is often pictured as a direct threat to national security and economic well-being, however there is not very much that can be done about it. The US oil sector is on the falling portion of its depletion curve, and a durable reversal of this situation is almost unthinkable – and by that I mean almost unthinkable if every square inch of onshore and offshore US territory, to included the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), were immediately thrown open to exploration and production, regardless of the environmental costs."

Oil and Saudi Arabia - Part 2 - "I would like to cite the opinion of the Houston investment banker, Matthew R. Simmons, who has attracted a great deal of attention with his book ‘Twilight in the Desert’, in which he says that Saudi production may be peaking. Peaking in this case probably means that while it will not increase, it may not decline by a palpable amount in the near future. Simmons undoubtedly is a strong believer in this prospect, because he had bet a New York journalist and the widow of economics professor Julian Simon $5000 that the price of oil is on its way to $200/b. I predict that Mr Simmons is certain to lose that bet, because assuming that the oil price continues to rise at the rate experienced over the past 3 years, then long before it reaches $200/b we will have to deal with a new world depression – observe, depression and not recession – and perhaps the run-up to the Third World War, or even the real thing."

[gasperc]

41. probably $80-90 is the recession/depression trip point

alot of things could send it soaring to $100 let alone $200 but the end quotes are clear. There is a trip point where the cost becomes so prohibitive that vehicle sales plunge, retail sales plunge, etc. I mean people will start car pooling figuring every other trick in the book to adapt but there will be a point where gas sales fall off substaintially eventually reaching some equilibrium but at what cost to the economy and humanity?

[IDemo]

31. I have started a 'Peak Oil' topic in the research forum

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_oet&address=358x834

[gasperc]

42. please copy and crosspost, I don't have access

I won't be able to contribute till next week so I can't post in a forum till then

[barb162]

36. I have kept track of peak oil; everytime I read about it I get ill

including now. Around here, almost every house seems to have an SUV.

[Deja Q]

40. Water is heavier than oil. Seawater moreso. Oil comes up and is

easier to collect for processing.

The trouble is continually pumping in all that water and the rate of which we can collect the oil that rises.

That or 'peak oil' is a hoax to hasten the destruction of the economy, which is what some people want.

[gasperc]

43. I and all here don't want to see the destruction of the economy

but with global GDP growth dependent on oil output reaching 120mbd these stories are quite ominous. Even if we develop every square inch of ANWR and the entire east, west and south coast which appears likely since fuel cells and alternatives are being snail paced into high volumes, the world's economy will reach a wall by the world's demand and modern technologies ability to provide the supply. Either way, the resource is finite and not reproducable so once used it's gone forever. And the more SUVs, and the more energy we willfully demand to guzzle, the faster we acclerate the depletion of oil.

[MadHound]

44. And thus our nation will go right on over the cliff,

And probably take the rest of the world with it.

Twenty five years ago we made a start at weaning ourselves from oil, but Reagan in his great stupidity nixed that, and we are now on our own. And now we're faced with the end of oil crisis, with nothing to take oil's place, and a government who isn't going to do anything about it.

That means that we're going to have to do for ourselves. And there are a few things you can do with some investment.

First off, cut your commuting budget immensely, get yourself a scooter. Bajaj, a company out of India, makes a scooter that goes 55mph and gets between 90 and 100 mpg. I've got a 52 mile commute, round trip, and having been using my scooter for the past two months with no problem. I'm saving my gas money for my next investment.

An external woodstove. For all of you that have the yard and the need to heat, an external woodstove is just the trick for you. It will heat your house for little cost. Even if you're buying wood, a couple of cords(which will last throughout all except the harshest winters) will cost you an average of $300. And since your woodstove will be outside, you shouldn't increase your insurance costs. Then you roll over your monetary savings into

A windturbine. These puppies aren't terrbily expensive anymore. A completely set up 3Kw turbine will run aprox thirteen thousand. While that is a hefty investment, in these coming times of high energy prices, you will be laughing all the way to the bank. And you can take your savings and invest them in a couple of other good energy ideas.

A couple of kilowatts worth of solar panels, and a complete setup to make your own biodiesel. With a couple more kilowatts worth of renewable energy being generated, you can sell your excess back to the power company, and have a great backup for those windless days. And even though your little scooter is great on clear days, it is no fun on rainy, cold, or snowy days. Thus, get yourself a diesel vehicle, and a kit to make your own biodiesel. Gee, filling your tank up for aprox. eighty cents a gallon, take me back to the eighties!

And don't forget, high oil prices is going to mean high food prices. Time to till up your own garden and start growing and storing. If you don't want to do your own canning, you can get vacumn sealing systems to seal up your veggies in order to freeze them.

And folks, you can do all of this on one half acre of land. Granted, not everybody is going to be able to do this do to zoning restrictions, or monetary restrictions, but we can all do some of this, and the sooner that we get started, the better off we'll be. Because we know damn well that the government isn't going to help us, or even acknowledge the problem until it is too late. Thus we had better start preparing now before it is too late. Bush and Cheney are, among others, they've already set up their houses to run on state of the art renewable energy sources. That should tell you that they know that the shit is about to hit the fan.

[gasperc]

45. all good, except for the wood stove

although pratical an comparitively economical these days
wood is finite and creates alot of pollution, a temporary solution at best
but your wind turbine solution is on the money. I even have envisioned houses being built with the turbines built right into the attic, at the roof peaks or something. Likely a small one on each house could charge a power storage system that could also sell back extra to the community.

[MadHound]

49. Well, wood is a renewable resource

And with a catalytic converter on the chimmney, pollution is cut by 90%. Hardly a temporary solution friend, being as that burning wood as a heating source has been around since the dawn of civilization, and we have yet to run out of wood.

[barb162]

46. Your ideas are good but let me ask

is the external wood stove legal in most places, does it meet code? What about the pollution from burning wood? How far from the house is the stove?

[MadHound]

50. Yes, external wood stoves are legal in most places

They are installed according to local code, are generally placed on a concrete pad somewhere between eight and fifteen feet away from the house, and installed properly they will not raise your insurance rates like internal wood stoves do. As far as pollution goes, you can have a catalytic converter installed on the stove and cut your pollution output by 90%, thus bringing it into the same range as most conventional home heating systems.

[Rainscents]

53. Here in west cost lot of apartments and houses have electirc gas,

wood burning, pallet stoves and propane.

[AlienGirl]

52. For this, you need land and you need to own your house

All of uc city-living apartment-dwellers may be in deep trouble.

Tucker