[Peakoil] Good article

[Antony Barry]

The Outlook on Oil
Some Experts Worry That Production Will Soon Peak. Others Warn That  
It Already Has.
by Jim Motavalli

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3004

Some extracts -

But one conclusion is irrefutable: The age of cheap oil is definitely  
over, and even as our appetite for it seems insatiable (with world  
demand likely to grow 50 percent by 2025), petroleum itself will end  
up downsizing.

...He writes in his book Twilight in the Desert, based on  
considerable research, that “Saudi Arabian oil production is at or  
very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak  
almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very  
foreseeable future [emphasis in the original].

...Simmons says that a few “super giant” oil fields in Saudi Arabia  
(including the massive Ghawar field, the world’s largest, discovered  
in 1953) account for 92 percent of the country’s crude oil output,  
and that these fields are aging and suffering from rising “water cut.”

...The implications of this are huge, since Saudi Arabia has the  
planet’s largest proven reserves and is the world’s largest oil  
exporter, from which the U.S. buys 1.5 million barrels a day (15  
percent of our total consumption in 2004).

...Price questions the existence of vast untapped oil reserves in  
Saudi Arabia, and points to a 20-year-old study by four American oil  
companies, then working with Aramco, that found, according to the New  
York Times, “little in the way of undiscovered oil reserves.”

...Respected oil analyst Daniel Yergin, chairperson of Cambridge  
Energy Research Associates and author of The Prize, says that  
unconventional oil sources (tar sands, ultra-deep-water developments,  
natural gas liquids) will account for 30 percent of total capacity by  
2010, up from 10 percent today.

...ExxonMobil President Rex Tillerson said in September that as much  
as three billion barrels of conventional oil are waiting to be  
recovered, and another seven trillion barrels may be lurking in the  
aforementioned unconventional sources, including tar sands and oil  
shale (see sidebar).

...A Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ analysis of the report points out  
that ExxonMobil sees no significant contribution from oil shale even  
by 2030, and only a modest 3.3 percent contribution from Canadian oil  
sands (development of which may be hampered by a natural gas  
shortfall as described by Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute  
in his new book High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis).

...API’s Felmy dismisses renewables, and sees a future only for  
natural gas hidden in frozen methane hydrates (there are reportedly  
vast deposits in the U.S.) and cellulose ethanol, a fuel made from  
agricultural waste championed by former CIA chief James Woolsey,  
among others.

...“We believe oil markets may have entered the early stages of what  
we have referred to as a ‘super spike’ period—a multi-year trading  
band of oil prices high enough to meaningfully reduce energy  
consumption and recreate a spare capacity cushion only after which  
will lower energy prices return,” said company analysts.

...With the oil companies and their supporters in Congress and the  
White House not only controlling the debate but assuring the public  
that a steady hand is at the tiller, we may very well drift toward  
the kind of abrupt collapse Diamond documents as having taken down  
the Vikings, the Mayans and the mysterious tribe that inhabited  
Easter Island.

Tony



phone : 02 6241 7659 | mailto:me at Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
mobile: 04 1242 0397 | http://tony-barry.emu.id.au