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Biography: Chris Rhodes. www.fresh-lands.com Professor
Chris Rhodes is a writer, speaker and researcher who became involved with
environmental issues while working in Russia during the aftermath...
Oil Shortage a Myth
30 Jun, 2008 10:42 am
I submitted the following letter to The Independent, in response to an article entitled as above. There is an essential difference between the total volume of reserves and the proportion of them that can be recovered as a rate per day: i.e. it doesn't matter how big the reserves are if they can't be tapped-into fast enough to match rising demand.
This is true also of potential "abiotic oil" as is believed to be produced in the earth, according mainly to Russian/Ukranian geologists, in contrast to the prevailing view in the West. Even if the latter theory is true, the world still needs to reduce its demand for oil.
"Sir: Richard Pike [CEO of the Royal Society of Chemistry is quoted ("Oil Shortage a Myth", The Independent 9-6-08) as saying there is plenty of oil left, and he is right. We should indeed not underestimate proven oil reserves but this is not the problem; the issue is flow rather than the quantity of total reserves and the quality of the oil that will be recovered from them. There may be 1,200 billion barrels worth left, but if it cannot be recovered much faster than is being done now it will not help alleviate the pressing gap between rising demand and supply. Even if Saudi were to increase its output by one million barrels a day (and it is debatable that they could) the product would be a heavy oil for which there is presently insufficient refining capacity in the world.
Producing most of that remaining trillion or so barrels will be far more difficult and expensive than for the sweet, light crude oil, production of which peaked at the end of 2005. It will also be harder to turn it into fuel, requiring new refineries to be built, given its higher sulphur content and higher molecule mass hydrocarbon composition. I agree, we will be producing oil for decades and it is not running out per se, it is the cheap oil that is, and we will never see cheap fuel or chemical feedstocks again, with adverse effects for world transportation, industry and financial markets.
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By the same author
- “Peak Oil” is Nonsense… Because There’s Enough Gas to Last 250 Years.
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Usually, the authors of such articles try to convince us that oil is plentiful, a fact that well-informed readers already know as well as they do (So what is the point of working so hard about it ?).
But of course such readers perceive immediately that those authors generally 1?/ ignore what EROEI means, 2?/ do not make any difference between energy produced at low cost and energy produced at high cost, 3?/ do not seem to know that economic growth feeds itself from energy produced at low cost and therefore 4?/ are unable to understand what will result in the future from the fact that the average cost of producing energy will greatly increase, so that sooner or later our energy production will peak, leadin expansion to reverse into contraction.
Yes, I just read that article and it does miss the whole point. Most of the oil "reserves" he alluded to are not yet reserves but "resources", i.e. they may not be recoverable or not for years. This does not get us over the demand/supply gap and the technology that will be entailed to get this "new" oil will certainly not be cheap.
As you say, the EROEI is a significant factor but is not mentioned and probably not understood. There's plenty of shale but the energy costs in getting "oil" from it will be huge and impact on other scarce resources like gas and water too, the latter in competition with farming.
The writers of articles like this emphasise how much oil there is (may be?) down there in a desperate effort to discredit peak oil, which refers to "flow", output, not total quantity. The popular misconception of "peak oil" is that it means "the world is running out of oil", which as you say, we know well enough it isn't - just "cheap" oil is running out.
I posted an article on my blog on this topic, just now: http://ergobalance.blogspot.com
I agree, economic contraction is inevitable in the face of rising and relentless energy costs, but that's exactly what scares everybody - me included!
Regards,
Chris.
I observe we agree on the main points and share a similar vision concerning the limiting factors that will probably oppose growth perpetuation in the near future.
I guess you (and readers of this page) will find interest in listening to the conference Jean-Marc Jancovici (a distinguished French engineer, member of ASPO France) addressed to SPIE executives (March 27, 2008) ; the direct speech in French (click on 1 - une version fran?aise) or the simultaneous translation in English (click on 2 ? une version anglaise) can be obtained from the following page :
http://www.manicore.com/documentation/articles/conferences.html
A remarkable and well documented analysis of those limiting factors, closely intertwining energy production and climate change.
(The software needed to view it can be freely loaded if you don't have it).
Regards.
Thanks Andre', that article you refer to is very well done!
Regards,
Chris.