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Robertscribbler tackles Peak Oil (and IMHO) misunderstands it
To Fear Peak Oil, Or to Pursue it? That is the Essential Limits to Growth Question
5
August, 2014
On
a world in which fossil fuel burning is now in the process of setting
off various events of geological scale, one of the things we could
well hope for most is a peak in fossil fuel supply. Such an event
would force countries and economies to adjust. To abandon business as
usual economics and to rapidly shift to approaches that enhance and
reinforce lifestyles and energy consumption behaviors that do not
radically alter the world’s environment for the worst.
But,
unfortunately, as we will see below, there is more than enough oil,
gas, coal, brown coal, fracked oil and gas, gas hydrates, tar sands,
kerogen and other fossil fuel stores to continue burning for years,
decades and perhaps even centuries to come. So to hope for peak
fossil fuel use, unless that peak is determined by responsible
individual, community, and political action, is a false hope. An end
that sets off terrible consequences. Even worse than those difficult
to deal with problems we’ve already locked in.
(The Bazhenov Shale Formation. An Arctic oil and gas reserve now accessible due to US driven technological ‘advancements’ in hydro-fracking. This vast pool of tight oil has 1.2 to 2 trillion barrels of oil in place of which 75 to 330 billion barrels are currently estimated to be recoverable [Depending on who is making the estimation -- US or Russian Government]. It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that these reserves occur in the same region where troubling methane blow-holes first appeared this summer. It is this massive supply of oil that is being directly targeted by the Exxon-Mobile/Rosneft partnership before sanctions this week put the effort on hold. Accessing this massive carbon bomb would lock in billions of additional tons of CO2 release into the atmosphere while, by itself, delaying a global peak in oil production by years to decades. The consequences of burning this massive fuel source are almost certainly far worse than simply leaving it in the ground. Image source: Commons.)
*****
Back
in the mid 2000s there was an oil industry energy consultant by the
name of Matthew Simmons. And Simmons had developed a laser-like focus
on a massive store of ‘easy oil’ in the deserts of Saudi Arabia.
This store was locked in the great oil field called Ghawar. A
self-pressurized dome that originally contained about 80 billion
barrels of the hothouse gas firewater we call oil. Prick Ghawar with
a drill and the stuff just came erupting out. Deceptively clear for
all the btus of global atmospheric heating it contained.
At
some point, the black magic of Ghawar began to fade. Saudi Arabia
started to inject water into the Ghawar well to keep the oil flowing.
This required more energy and increased costs. For Saudi Arabia and
much of the world, the age of easy oil was coming to an end.
Simmons
declared that peak oil was just around the corner. That global oil
production couldn’t exceed 85 million barrels per day. And that the
new, unconventional sources — locked in tight oil deposits and tar
sands — were too difficult to extract. Peak oil analysts declared
that the Bakken would never exceed a flow rate of 100,000 barrels per
day. And the Eagle Ford Shale basin was just a glimmer in the eye of
most analysts. Risks for an imminent peak in world oil supply did seem quite high
.
(Map of the Bakken tight shale fields in the Williston Basin. The Bakken is estimated to contain 24 billion barrels of oil of which 7.3 billion barrels are currently considered to be technically recoverable. Image source: Commons.)
For
some, for conservationists and those who are justifiably very
concerned about the impacts of continued fossil fuel based carbon
emissions on the world’s climate systems, the notion of an imminent
peak in world oil supply came as welcome news. It would force
economies to adjust to new structural and environmental realities and
it would help to prevent some of the worst impacts of climate change.
Certainly, there were still massive volumes of coal and natural gas
to consider. But a peak in world oil production would lead to a
variety of consumption reductions as well as help to advance
renewable energy technology — so long targeted for delay and denial
by oil and fossil fuel interests through their wealthy political
backers.
For
most market analysts and economists, peak oil was never an object.
They believed the magic of market economics would always provide a
new resource and that the price signal would be enough to produce
more resources of different varieties. But these analysts were
somewhat blind to the broader impacts of large governmental movements
and of investment or failure to invest in new resources by
communities, states, and policy-makers.
In
many ways, all of these analysts held somewhat correct views. But
contained to their narrow focus, they failed to accept where the
others were correct or to see their own short-comings. A vocal
portion of the peak oil analysts, led by Simmons, retained a narrow,
and primarily easy oil and fossil fuel centered world-view that not
only denigrated the effectiveness of new oil technology to over-come
any peak oil situation, but also blithely dismissed much of the
potential for renewables to take up for new energy production. They
held a rigid view that only radically reduced consumption (and
related implied wide-scale poverty and collapse back to 19th century
standards of living) would result from peak oil and that such reduced
consumption and collapse was needed and, indeed, would happen whether
we liked it or not. Some conservationists seemed to glom on to the
notion that renewables were not a desirable solution and this led
steam to the anti-renewables faction.
Though
the push for lower consumption from peak oilers and conservationists
was somewhat helpful, without the renewable option their world-view
led to more implied reliance on fossil fuels through active denial of
alternatives. And it left the door wide open for new oil related
extraction technologies to come charging in absent any wide-spread
renewable energy adoption.
The
market analysts were labeled ‘cornucopians’ by the more militant
peak oilers or related agitators. In fact, this was a term that
seemed to include anyone who supported any technology whatsoever,
including sustainability based technical solutions. Contrary to peak
oilers, the analysts pushed a view that the supply crunch, at first,
wouldn’t happen. And, when they were proven wrong, went about
cheer-leading for the new fracking technologies and for opening up
the unconventional oil basins.
An
outside group of progressives pushed hard for new renewable
resources. And, given the opening provided by high fuel prices, they
were partially successful, despite the constant attacks coming from
renewable energy detractors and in spite of a broad front of oil
industry advanced extraction technologies competing in the energy
investment sector.
Consequent
to Simmons’ warnings, a peak in conventional fuels did happen
during the period of 2006 to 2008. Prices rocketed and economies were
jarred by the shock. A shift toward more renewable energy and
efficiency was driven by the crisis. Consumption fell and the world
economy stalled in a combined energy and market derivatives crash.
But the market signal and increased prices for energy unlocked
technology that lead to the rapid expansion of production in Bakken,
Eagle Ford, in Canada’s tar sands and in other far-flung basins
around the globe.
(EIA map of the Eagle Ford shale play in South Texas. It’s a basin that extends into North Mexico and contains an estimated 10 billion barrels of recoverable together with trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Image source: Commons.)
Today,
the wretched energy and carbon intensive and highly polluting process
that is fracking now squeezes 1 million barrels per day out of the
Bakken formation. It wrings 1.7 million barrels per day out of the
Eagle Ford formation. Add this staggering production gain to other
fracking and conventional extraction efforts across the country and
we find that the United States now produces a staggering 13.9 million
barrels of liquid fuels per day.
This
makes the US the highest volume liquid fuels producer in the world on
the back of a terrible breaking of the ground and increasing
extraction of a fuel source that is already in the process of
wrecking the world’s climate.
Globally,
despite struggling production in the Middle East and elsewhere,
production of the firewater continued to rise. Canada’s tar sands
production spiked to more than 2 million barrels per day with the
Arctic state planning for a jump to 5 million barrels per day by
2030. An ongoing carbon bomb explosion that, by itself, could well be
described as a tract of human-generated flood basalt.
These
and other oil sources combined with enhanced extraction to push
global daily oil production from 85 million barrels per day during
the mid 2000s to approaching 92 million barrels per day in 2014. This
on the back of oil reserves additions in the form of tar sands at 168
billion barrels of extractable oil (total reserve at around 300
billion barrels), Eagle Ford at 10 billion barrels of currently
recoverable oil (total reserve at 80 billion barrels), West Texas at
30-75 billion barrels of recoverable oil, Bakken at 7.3 billion
barrels of recoverable reserves, and many other regions around the
world that are now seeing new oil extraction or enhanced oil
extraction.
(The Permian Basin of West Texas now containing between 30-75 billion barrels of recoverable oil due to climate-endangering fracking technology. Image source: Commons.)
So
Simmons was wrong on the issue of oil peaking at 85 million barrels
per day, and many peak oil analysts along with him.
And
so it goes with the global fossil fuels story. As of 2014 we burn
more oil, gas and coal than we ever have and global peak oil has
again been removed to some future date. The global carbon emission is
now enough to completely overshoot the lower range IPCC emissions
scenarios and we are staring down the face of the highly unpleasant
middle and worst case ranges. So in this respect, a number of peak
oilers were dreadfully wrong — peak oil did not save us from
climate change. In fact, bad effects are now locked in and the debate
has shifted to whether or not there is enough extractable oil, gas
and coal to hit the worst case scenarios.
But
if history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme. For now it appears
that both Eagle Ford and Bakken, due to the nature of rapid fracked
well depletion, will peak sometime during 2016 and 2020. And the peak
oilers are now having a bit of a rally, as challenges to global
production, many of them political, are also continuing to expand.
On
The Verge of a Voluntary Peak
The
environmentalists and scientists, thankfully, appear to be on the
verge of successfully putting a crimp on Canada’s tar sands
production. The US has sanctioned Russian oil production and a
massive set of Arctic and shale reserves many times the US tight
shale reserve hangs in the balance (a resource of ultimate reserves
on the order of 1.2-2 trillion barrels of oil of oil in place).
Barriers to fracking are rising and companies, facing a production
glut today and investor uncertainty tomorrow, are in the process of
consolidation and retraction.
China
is pledging to vastly reduce fossil fuel consumption growth and many
oil exporters are beginning to wonder if they’ll have a market for
their products there. Around the world, the situation is similar as
governments and consumers both push for less use of dirty, dangerous,
depleting and costly fossil fuels.
In
addition, renewable energy and alternatives have never been more
widely available. Solar panel costs are down and EROEI is up. Wind
power beats fossil fuel generation in most markets even when
considering a natural gas glut due to fracking. Electric vehicles
continue to become more widely available and CAFE standards around
the world keep rising. An expanding movement is afoot to shift diets
to less meat intensive ones — thereby pushing for a reduction in
both the land and fossil-fuel use footprint of agriculture. And all
these changes aim directly at reducing fossil fuel demand and
consumption, generating impetus, along with the political movements
targeting both new and old sources for an artificial, voluntary peak
in fossil fuel flows.
And
this is exactly what we would desire, a direct refusal of business as
usual economics. A voluntary taking on of responsible action,
economic transition, and behavior change needed to reduce and
eventually eliminate an extraordinarily damaging carbon pollution. As
has been said, the Stone Age didn’t come to an end for lack of
stones. And this could well be the case with fossil fuels, if we
actively make that choice. Whether or not it happens essentially
depends on people’s perception of the need for it to happen.
Fear
of Peak Oil as a Means To Force Continuation of Business as Usual
But
the voluntary peak is no-where near a pre-ordained certainty. There
is an extraordinarily strong array of political forces aimed at both
denying the existence of climate-related harm and doing everything
possible to extend business as usual fossil fuel extraction for so
long as it is economically and technologically possible. To deny the
expansion of renewable energy access and to block access to measures
that reduce consumption. To, overall, degrade the political will to
respond effectively to a climate crisis that is directly linked to
ongoing fossil fuel burning.
And
one potential political lever for this forced extension is advancing
the fear of peak oil. For if people are wrongly led to believe that
peak oil is a worse event than climate change, then it is unlikely
people will make the changes necessary to transition away from fossil
fuels. They, like the climate change deniers, will cling to fossil
fuel extraction in the same way passengers unaware of the existence
of life-rafts will cling to the upper tiers of a sinking ship.
How
does fear of peak oil work? It’s simple.
First
deny, degrade or ignore any potential value to human civilization for
renewable energy sources (this is easy for oil industry folks,
because they’ve had years of practice advancing anti-renewables
misinformation). This includes using energy return on energy invested
(EROEI) figures that are outdated or simply false.
(In the EROEI battle, renewables win the electricity production race hands down. From top to bottom: light green = hydroelectric, teal = wind, purple = coal, light blue = nat gas, dark green = photovoltaic solar, and dark blue = nuclear. It’s worth noting that solar pv energy return on energy invested continues to rise and is now estimated at 7 according to newer figures. It is also worth noting that the best energy return on investment for individual vehicle transportation comes from an electric vehicle plugged into a renewables fed grid. Image source: Scientific American.)
Second,
declare an extreme supply-side ideology in which only fossil fuels
have any practical means to fulfill supply needs. In this view, all
farming relies on fossil fuels and cannot trade inputs or flexibly
change how food is produced to help ensure resiliency (meat to veg,
polyculture agriculture, edible landscaping, individually grown
gardens, etc). So if fossil fuels peak, access to food is seen to
peak as well.
Third,
over-emphasize the value of fossil fuels to all levels of
civilization with the implied need for fossil fuel related industry
to support civilization.
This
mind-set is in direct contradiction to the appeal first advanced
by Limits to Growthauthors
for a transition to a sustainable civilization that did not rely on
environment-polluting and resource-destroying energy sources as the
basis for its prosperity. In fact, it directly obscures the need for
such solutions by placing the notion that civilization is only
sustainable so long as fossil fuels are available and that
civilization inevitably dies without them.
From
LTG:
If
society’s implicit goals are to exploit nature, enrich the elites,
and ignore the long term, then society will develop technologies and
markets that destroy the environment, widen the gap between rich
and poor, and optimize for short-term gain.
And
it is reliance on fossil-fuel based technology that directly
reinforces the vicious cycle that Meadows so eloquently describes
above.
The
final element of the fear peak oil and cling to fossil fuels mind-set
is to, at last, deny climate change and, more specifically, to deny
that enough fossil fuels remain in the ground to set off climate
change that is a threat to human civilization. And it is in this
assertion, that they have excessively over-reached and are baldly
incorrect (as many who keep tabs here are well aware).
(More and more of a globally estimated 13-20 trillion tons worth of fossil-fuel based carbon are unlocked through advancing extraction technology each year. Is it really a sensible approach to simply wait for such technologies to fail? Image source: IPCC.)
Negative
Impacts of Climate Change Now Ongoing, More than Enough Fossil Fuels
to Wreck the Climate Many Times Over
So
with oil and fossil fuels demand now in trouble due to a broad
political and grass-roots response, due to spreading measures that
reduce fossil fuel consumption, and due to rapidly expanding ease of
access to various renewable energy based technologies, a new Matthew
Simmons – type view has emerged.
The
view is that Bakken and Eagle Ford are about to peak and with it,
North American fossil fuel production will plateau or start falling
and that a global peak is in the offing sometime around 2030. As with
the Ghawar field focus, the view is likely correct in micro. The
fields will probably peak by 2016-2020 and global oil production
during the same period will (thankfully) suffer due to a combination
of reluctance to invest on the part of oil companies, political
constraints that hamper oil flows in Asia and the Middle East, and
due to broader conservation measures and alternative energy adoption
that begins to put the crimp on world oil demand.
And
how we respond to this potential crisis in world oil supply will have
far-reaching impacts for both energy and climate going forward. If we
see the peak as something we must avoid at all costs, what we will
witness is the rapid expansion of fracking in foreign countries to
include the exploitation of massive tight fuel resources in Russia
and China. We will see the expansion of US oil production through
enhanced extraction in the West Texas formation. We will see the
barriers to tar sands extraction fall and Canadian tar sands oil
rocket to 5 million barrels per day. We’ll see the China syngas
operation horrifically expand to an environmental catastrophe to
rival that of Canada’s tar sands. And we’ll see the first forays
into gas hydrate extraction. We’ll see more coal plants converted
to burn brown coal – a massive resource already exploited in
conventional coal-poor regions. And we’ll see oil extraction extend
into the climatologically violent Arctic.
This
expansion will not come without its severe costs. Fossil fuel prices
will rise, poverty in many regions will expand. But without some
major catastrophic event, net consumption, driven by an
ever-expanding fossil fuel and related industry, will continue to
increase over at least the next two decades and may well extend
beyond 2030 as the massive unconventional resources continue to be
tapped. For the political will for reducing such consumption will
have been subsumed by fear of peak oil and the alternatives will,
again, have been tamped down.
Or,
instead, we can embrace peak oil and stop trying to fight off what
will inevitably occur over the course of decades or centuries. We can
actively decide to change how much and what we consume and we can
push hard for renewable energy and broad sustainability measures in
agriculture. And through that action we might prevent a portion of
the climate catastrophe we have already partly locked in. We can
learn not to fear peak oil, but to pursue it, along with the
will-full and socially chosen peaking of all fossil fuel sources. We
can say goodbye to the age of burning and open a new age where we
attempt to deal with the consequences of fossil fuel based
industrialism before it’s too late. Before we no longer have the
opportunity to.
That’s
our choice. But going into it, don’t be comforted with false
notions that we don’t have enough carbon sources to wreck the
climate. And don’t, for goodness sake, embrace the notion that peak
oil is the worst problem we face. Instead, it is a necessary problem.
Part of the active and, admittedly, difficult act of changing how we
live and of attempting to make human civilization both a more
resilient and less harmful beast.
Links:
Limits
to Growth
Twilight
in the Desert
Hat
tip to Pintada (in answer to some of your questions)
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