July 9, 2001 last modified Nov 11, 2002 New
remarks for each modification will have a yellow background.
This is a follow-up to a short item I published last year.
Morton, G. R. (2000) The Coming Energy Crisis, Perspectives on Science and
Christian Faith, 52(2000):4:228.
I know that Jeremiad's are rarely listened to, and I know that there are
Chicken Little's behind every hen house. And until about a year and a half ago,
I was extremely optimistic about the future. Then I began to look at future oil
production. My view changed rather quickly. Recent events have merely
re-enforced what I see and fear. An event as profound for society as the
invention of agriculture is about to take place. It is the decline of oil
production. It will mark the first time since the agricultural revolution
where the world as a whole, year by year, must get by on less energy than the
year before. For the past 10,000 years, mankind has always had an expanding
energy supply. Oil represents about 65% of our current energy supply and it is
about to decline.
I have just read two rather bleak articles concerning the future of energy
in the world. I believe that they are correct or I wouldn't be posting this. The
first article is by Richard C. Duncan and Walter Youngquist, "Encircling
the Peak of World Oil Production, National Resources Research Vo.
8(1999):3:219-232. While published in 1999 the work was completed in in 1997
according to Duncan with whom I have been in contact. Thus the predictions
contained in that paper are 4 years old. Even so, they are chilling.
Duncan and Youngquist took the production for 42 countries and using the
Hubbert curve mathematics to predict the future production and came up with a
curve for each of these nations. The Hubbert Curve mathematics can be found in
R. C. Duncan, "Energy Resources --Cornucopia or Empty Barrel?"
Bulletin Amer. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists, 85(2001):6:1090 and in M. K.
Hubbert, "Techniques of Prediction as applied to the Production of Oil and
Gas" National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 631, p.16-141.
Hubbert in 1956 successfully used his technique to predict the peak in lower 48
onshore United States Oil production. Predicting the peak 14 years in advance,
he was off by 1 year! Not bad in this fickle world. Ever since then the
production in the lower 48 onshore has declined. And total US production has had
only one slight up tick in production and that was when Prudhoe Bay came on line
in 1977. But even that event didn't take total production above the 1970 level!
One of the reasons I pay attention to the Hubbert curve is simply my
experience. I entered the oil industry in 1973, just after the peak in the US.
Being green, I had never head of Hubbert or his curve. No one was talking about
the peak in US production. I think most oil men then didn't believe Hubbert
anyway as he had been vilified in the 50s and then forgotten. Over the next 12
years, as the price of oil went through the ceiling, the lower 48 US production
continued to decline. There was no increase in production in response to price
as economic theory would presume. Price (oil going from $2/bbl in 1973 to nearly
$40/bbl in 1982) had no effect at all. Production merely dropped. This was true
even when we had 4500 drilling rigs searching for oil in 1982. Those, who think
the world is exempt from the Hubbert Curve and that there will always be
plentiful oil, should think about the implications of a fifteen-fold increase in
commodity price and a continued decline in production as experienced in the US
in the 1970s. The Hubbert curve is based in physics and you can't repeal the
laws of physics just because we want them repealed. For those who think that
previous predictions of the demise of oil count against this one, they should
know that previous predictions were usually based on an R/P ratio--reserves
divided by production. That is not the way to measure when one is running out of
a limited resource because it fails to account for future discoveries. The
Hubbert Curve takes that into account. And I got to the UK just as the North Sea
production took a 500,000 barrel per day nose-dive. It has not recovered in over
9 months since. Indeed production has continued to go down. See
picture below which I hope to update every few months. I see the imprint of
the Hubbert curve here like I did in the early 70s in the US.
Friday night [July 6] we ate at the Aberdeen Petroleum Club which is the best place
to get fajitas in Aberdeen. Our waitress has worked there since it was founded
28 years ago by a large group of American ex-pat Texans (the reason for the good
fajitas). Her career has spanned the beginning of the UK petroleum industry to
the beginning of its end. 20 billion barrels of oil drained from the Viking
Graben in merely 28 years. And now comes the decline.
The world uses 390 quadrillion British
thermal units (quads) of energy per year. Oil provides 162 quads, Coal, 112
quads; natural gas 92 quads; renewable energy sources, 20 quads and nuclear, 4
quads. In the next 50 years we need
to find a replacement for 65% of our energy supply. But energy use will grow.
Energy use in Asia is expected to double by 2020. If this turns out to be true,
Asia will require the equivalent of all today's oil supply, 160 quads.
Back to Duncan and Youngquist. After adding all the curves for the 42
countries, they concluded that the peak in world oil production would be in
2007. They list out each of the countries and when they will peak in production.
In 1997 they predicted that the UK portion of the North Sea would peak in 2001.
Unfortunately, they were optimistic. According to UK Government figures, the
peak in production occurred in December 1998 at 12.3 million tonnes. In May
2001, the UK North Sea produced only 9.8 million tonnes down 21% from just 2.5
years ago. Based upon this 4 year old work, within the next 3 years, Canada,
Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Denmark, Italy, Oman, Yemen, Angola, Congo,
Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam will pass their Hubbert
curve peaks.
The Hubbert Curve peaks mentioned above may be optimistic. Looking at the BP
Statistical Review of World Oil http://www.bp.com/centres/energy/index.asp
one sees that several of the above countries have had declining oil production
for 2-3 years already. Italy, India, Malaysia and Indonesia may have passed
their peaks in 1997. Argentina and Venezuela passed their peaks in 1998 because
since then they have produced less oil each year. This in spite of high prices.
The article predicts that by 2007 the world will peak in oil production at
30 billion barrels per year and by 2020 we will have dropped to 24.6 billion
barrels per year and by 2040 production will be about half of what we presently
consume! Consider this ominous fact:
“Oil has formed in the upper approximately 16,000 ft of the Earth’s
crust since at least as far back as the Cambrian Period, some 550 million years
ago (MYA). It is a rich inheritance of highly concentrated solar-derived energy
captured by myriad organisms, chiefly algae, and then distilled by geological
processes into an energy form that is unequalled by any other energy source in
its versatility and convenience in handling. Now, within one human lifetime,
one-half of this unique 550 MYA inheritance will have been spent. The remainder
will go very fast.” Richard C. Duncan and Walter Youngquist, “Encircling the
Peak of World Oil Production,” Natural Resources Research, 8(1999):3:219-232,
p. 220
I would add that something like 80% of known reserves come from 8 widespread
source rocks with one, the Jurassic Kimmeridgian age source rock being
responsible for 43% of the world's reserves. see notes for slide 13 of http://www.robresint.com/wpc/WEBWPC_files/frame.htm
This chart indicates that there has not been a really good source rock for oil
for the past 90 million years. These widespread source rocks were due to global
stratification of the earth's oceans. The oceanic circulation shut down and
oxygen didn't make it to the ocean floor allowing organic matter to be preserved
which was then turned into oil. These are rare events in earth history. It is
more likely to find money growing on trees than oil source rocks being formed.
Yet we have used half of this resource since my great-grandfather entered the
oil business in the 1880's. I am fourth generation in the oil business but I
will be the last.
The second article was a reprint of a speech given by Duncan at the
Geological Society of America meeting last Nov. 13, 2000 more than 2 months
prior to the first California electrical black outs. That speech has been
published and can be found by looking for "Richard C. Duncan, "World
Energy Production, Population Growth, and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge,"
Population and Environment, 22(2001):5:503-522.
The interesting thing about this article is that after a gap of 3 years,
Duncan now estimates the world oil production peak at 2006 rather than 2007.
That is one of the things that struck me hard as I read this article. As time
goes by, the predictions for the ultimate peak in oil production get closer
rather than farther off. Lest one think that I am following one author to the
exclusion of others, I would point anyone to a talk given by Richard Fowler of
Robertson Research, a major oil industry consulting firm. I met him at the PETEX
conference in London last fall. His was the only non-technical/geophysical talk
I attended during that conference. His slides can be found at http://www.robresint.com/petex/WEBPETEX_files/frame.htm.
Fowler studied 175 different basins in the world and estimated the production
capacity for each of these basins. While he doesn't come up with a year for the
peak in production, one can take current rates of production, increase demand by
3% per year or so and end up showing that the peak will be in 2008 given their
data. Fowler, Duncan and even the International Energy Agency (World Energy
Outlook, 1998) all look towards an immanent world production peak. In 1998 IEA
also predicted that the non-OPEC production would peak last year. If this has
happened, and it will be a year or so before we know, then the world, the world
economy and our children will be in for a rough ride.
Oil fields which are found today in deep water (>1000 m) are not like
fields of 80 years ago which would produce for 60 years. Decline rates today are
exceptionally high both because of technology and the economic need to maximize
return on investment in order to attract investment capital. In 1971 the average
field declined at a rate of around 18% per year. Today, with technology
increases, they decline at 50% per year! This means that we need to find them
much more rapidly than we used to find them. http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research/docview.asp?viewnews+tru&newstype=1&viewdoc=true&doc=132
see slide 17. Simmons says:
"There is a growing body of evidence that the world might never
experience the luxury of giant oil and gas fields that climb to over 1 million
barrels a day, and then continue to produce at this level for years as the giant
field is being choked back. In 1973, over 30% of the world's production base
came from such giant fields.
In 1978, Mexico's Cantarell field began production. This was the last new
field that ever generated over 1 million barrels a day. Over a decade later, the
Cusiana field was discovered in Columbia[sic-grm]. For several years, it was thought to
be as big as Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. But this proved vastly over optimistic as
this giant field finally peaked at just over 400,000 barrels a day and is
estimated to drop to around 270,000 barrels a day by the end of 2001."
"In the meantime, the world's offshore supplies are now not the young
resources they were in the OTC's[Offshore Technology Conference--grm] glory
days. Much of this base is now getting quite "long in the tooth." Let
me focus on the U.K. part of the North Sea to highlight how vulnerable much of
our offshore supplies have now become. I picked the U.K. sector since it
represents one of the single biggest fresh offshore oil and gas supplies over
the past 30 years. And the North Sea region is the only part of the world where
production statistics are available on a field by field basis.
"U.K. oil production grew from almost nothing 30 years ago to a plateau
of 2.7 million barrels per day in the mid-1990's. Over the last five years, one
forecast after another predicted that U.K. oil production would finally exceed 3
million barrels a day. In 1995, many long-term forecasts estimated that this
production might get to as high as 3.5 million barrels a day by the start of the
21 st Century.
"In reality, U.K. production flattened out in the 2.5 million barrel a
day range and has remained around 2.20 to 2.3 million barrels a day for the past
year. If you take the U.K. government Brown Book numbers as a guide, 1995 UKCS
[UK continental shelf--grm] production was 2.4 million barrels a day. 89
individual fields contributed to this total. By 1999, production from these 89
fields had fallen to 1.445 million barrels a day. Fortunately, another 58 new
fields were brought on stream since then but only held production flat. However,
their average production is only 19,000 barrels per day per new field.
"In 1995, the top 11 producing fields accounted for 52% of U.K.
production. But this 1.245 million barrels a day base fell to only 355,000
barrels per day by 1999 and is far lower today.
"Over the past six months, U.K. production from over 120 individual
fields has kept the production base around 2.3 million barrels a day, but only 3
fields now produce in excess of 100,000 barrels per day, and average only
106,000 barrels per day. Gone are the days of fields like Brent and Forties
which produced close to 500,000 barrels per day. In their place are lots of
small fields that peak fast and decline even faster.
"The Forties field still generates vast quantities of production, but
most of this volume is water. In fact, water produced by the Forties field
totals almost 17 million gallons per day. This is almost equivalent to the
amount of water used per day in Houston, American's fourth largest city. Like
the Gulf of Mexico, most new North Sea fields are simply tiny additions and it
takes a steadily increasing number being developed to keep the production base
flat.
"In 1990, almost 350 wells were drilled in the U.K. sector. Exploration
and appraisal wells made up two-thirds of this total. By 1998, before activity
declined due to the price collapse of oil, the U.K. sector was drilling a record
levels of wells, but development wells were making up 75% of the base, with only
25% of the wells being exploratory or appraisal wells.
"The dilemma this poses is acute. Until a vastly expanded offshore rig
fleet is created, the U.K. sector will ultimately fade away if exploration and
appraisal drilling remain so low. But if the current rig fleet suddenly shifts
back to doing 65% E&A [exploration and appraisal--grm] wells, the production
base will collapse as it is being propped up by this high level of development
and workover wells."
"In a 25-year period, Cantarell, Shayba and Cusiana became the world's
three top producing new fields. Cantarell is still a giant field, but Pemex just
spent $10.5 billion propping up what would soon become a rapidly falling
production base. There are no fields now on the drawing board through 2005 that
appear likely to produce in excess of 250,000 barrels per day and only a handful
are estimated to exceed 200,000 barrels per day." Matt Simmons, "Solving
Our Energy Crisis: The Important Role Which The Offshore Oil & Gas Industry
Must Play," Speech at the Offshore Technology Conference 2001, Houston
Texas.
Politicians, both Democratic and Republican have no idea of the considerable
problems that await us. The Democrats are absolutely wrong that conservation
alone will save us. We will be forced into conservation, but as you will see
below, there will be few jobs. The Republicans are wrong in saying that we can
be energy independent again. This can only happen if the laws of physics are
repealed--I am sure that the politicians of both stripes would gladly support
such a bill should it be introduced into Congress.
Implications
The first implication is to mankind's ability to communicate, command and
control the world. Almost all of our ability to control machinery today depends
upon electricity. Computers do the computations and control according to the
programming we provide them. As Duncan so clearly states:
“However, if you want to power up your computer, then 1 J of electricity
is ‘equal’ to 3 J of natural gas! Further without the crucial C3 functions—communication,
computation, and control—Industrial Civilization itself is crippled. So if
your going to worry about energy, then don’t lose sleep over oil, gas, and
coal. Worry about the electric switch on the wall!” Richard C. Duncan, “World
Energy Production, Population Growth, and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge,”
Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies,
22:5:503-522. May 2001, p. 505-506 Pardee Keynote Symposia, Geological Society
of America, Summit 2000 in Reno, Nevada, on November 13, 2000—more than two
months before the rolling blackouts of electricity began in California.
Why should we worry about electricity? Because about 42% of primary energy
is used to generate electricity, as the primary energy (oil, natural gas, coal)
begin to decline, this has to have a severe impact on the ability to produce
electricity. This means that rolling blackouts will spread from California to
elsewhere. California's problems were largely due to silly misguided regulation,
but they are a foreshadowing of things to come--no matter what we do short of
solving the fusion problem. Some will say that coal can help us out. Yes it can
in electrical generation. But try hauling coal around to power your airplane or
automobile.
This spreading of rolling blackouts will ultimately cause severe recession,
especially as oil prices go higher, which will happen later this decade. Oil
powers airplanes, electricity, jobs. Bartlett is quoted as noting that modern
agriculture is merely a way of converting petroleum into food! Without energy,
food supplies decrease. But not only supplies, deliverability decreases as well.
Here in the UK we saw a very brief vision of things to come. Last September the
truckers, in a protest blockaded the refineries for about two and a half weeks.
Reports from that show how quickly problems can develop in an industrial society
when the oil runs out. Here is what Independent Television Networks said:
"The fuel crisis sparked a rash of panic buying, and some stores ran
out of milk and bread. The Royal Mail said Thursday it was suspending Sunday
collections, to conserve fuel.
"In Yorkshire, the Malton Bacon Factory said it would
have to stop slaughtering pigs, while Webb Country Foods in southeastern England
said 6 million chicks might starve by Friday unless feed deliveries
resumed." http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSGas/gas1_sep14.html
The food was running out of store shelves after 2.5 weeks of no petrol. What
food got to the stores was quickly 'looted' by people hoarding food. It is
amazing how rapidly starvation could set in if the oil were suddenly cut off.
Just as it ended, I was beginning to wonder what Peterculter (where I live)
would look like with 250,000 people from Aberdeen wandering the countryside
searching for food. I am only .3 mile away from sheep I can steal and if I get
hungry enough there are a couple of juicy horses that direction also. But
successfully carrying a sheep back home with 250,000 other hungry
people/predators swarming over the countryside would be a real problem.
Hospitals were only doing emergency operations and the police departments in
smaller towns were having trouble getting fuel to drive their cars and do their
job of protecting us. We were probably a week away from utter anarchy in the UK
when the drivers called off the blockade.
Another implication concerns the ability of governments with socialistic
tendencies to maintain their socialism. A woman who works with me has a husband
who is an economist. Her husband says that this is the last generation of Brits
and Scots who will have the social programs like National Health Care.
Governments all over the world will not be able to finance plentiful services in
the face of high oil prices. Oil provides the government of Venezuela with 50%
of its income. Every time the price of oil drops, they have to devalue their
currency. When the oil runs out for Venezuela and the government goes
bankrupt, like Argentina's has, riots and changes of government will be daily
affairs. (Andy Webb-Vidal, "Oil Dependency Fuels Problems," Financial Times, March 8, 2002,
p. 4)
The only exceptions may be those countries who have
excess capacity and can export their oil for lots of money. Countries like the
US who will not be so blessed, will see their economies decline. Across the
world, this will create a great mass of unhappy citizens who feel that these
programs are their birthright and that it is the dastardly politicians who have
robbed them of it. Political instability will ensue. I am sure that a few
leaders will be headless after the masses get to them.
It is in such times that Lenin, Hitler and other dangerous individuals take
the reigns of power. Life will be a bowl of cherries then.
Yes we have no bananas--or cherries, or mangos or Chilean grapes or
pistachios or.... Food distribution will be the first place that will feel the
effect of a tightening of oil supplies. Transportation costs will skyrocket and
people will begin to see a return to the 50s where you could only get
strawberries in the summer in the US. Travel was too slow to allow good
strawberries to be flown around the world to grace the winter tables with fruit
from south of the equator. Our wintertime diets will become somewhat less
attractive. More meat and potatoes. As noted above, modern agriculture is merely
a way of turning petroleum into food. Without it, yields and harvests will
decline. To plant the same number of acres without petroleum to drive the
tractors will require a whole lot more farmers and a lot more livestock.
Petroleum allows a farmer to spend 4 hours per acre in grain production, down
from 500 hours per acre in the pre-petroleum era! Fertilizers which improve the
yield are made from petroleum. There are 1500 megajoules expended for a tonne of
superphosphate fertilizer and 37000 MJ per tonne for nitrogen fertilizers.
Without fertilizer and irrigation (energy use) corn yields would drop from 130
bushels per acre to around 30 bushels per acre. (see Walter Youngquist, "The
Post Petroleum Paradigm--and Population, Population and environment: A Journal
of Interdisciplinary Studies 20(1999):4)
Vacations over seas will once again become the property of the wealthy
class. I don't think my grandfather ever left the US except to go to Mexico or
Canada once. I don't think he was ever on a commercial airplane. My father left
the country for several tours and I am able to flit around Europe with ease
seeing the sites. My children may not be so lucky.
The current recession being experienced by the US is largely a result of
higher oil prices last year. Merely doubling the prices cause the pain everyone
is now feeling. Oil underlies everything and the boom of the 1990's was not
because of the 'New Economy' or some new way of doing things, nor was it due to
the savvy of the smart young things in the dot.coms. It was due to a massive
transfer of wealth from oil producing to oil consuming nations. The tables have
now turned. And they are about to turn with a vengeance. OPEC will have to exercise
some self-control because if they jack the prices up too high,
recession hits and demand for their product, oil, drops costing them income.
They will have to become the countries who dole money out to poor countries for
foreign aid. If they don't, no one else will be able to do it. They will be
forced to purchase things from their customers. If they don't, their customers
will have no money to buy more oil. Remember the screams in the media when the
Japanese bought the Empire State Building? The people of the Middle East will be
able to buy nearly everything, which of course will change the political
landscape.
But what happens to an economy driven by oil, when each and every year it's
lifeblood diminishes? Can a person sever an artery and day by day get by with
less blood than the day before? Stagflation or more precisely depresaflation
will become the standard state of affairs. If one can get a recession like what
we see from a doubling of oil price, what will happen when oil gets scarce?
Yesterday in The Times it was reported that manufacturing output in Great
Britain has fallen for the past five months straight. All of this from a minor
(compared with the future) rise in oil price. As energy is cut off to the
economy, everything will slow down. Is there anyone out there who still vividly
remembers the Great Depression? To be a person with experience in survival
during those times is to be a person over 90 years old today! Those who were
alive as adults in Europe after the War have knowledge of times like this. And
they are over 70 years old. It has been a long time since the world has
experienced really bad times.
After the world Hubbert peak, when energy costs go way through the roof,
there will be a period in which an emphasis on conservation will occur. This
will be like the early 1980s when the price of oil caused the world to become
more energy efficient. Smaller cars were purchased, insulation put into houses
and lighting changed to efficient bulbs. That will occur again putting off some
of the worst problems. But this time, unlike the 80s, there will not be
increasing oil production. Every year unrelentingly we will require further
efficiencies in our energy use. Every year inflation will add to the price of
goods because oil gets scarcer and scarcer. Of course at some point for each
product, the consumer will say to himself 'I don't care if it is a car, I won't
pay that much', and then he will buy a bicycle. For every product he will say
"I don't care if it is a... I will not buy it." This has the effect of
putting people out of work which will act as a feed back loop on the economy. No
jobs, no money to buy products. No product purchases, more people thrown out of
work. My grandfather told me about the Great Depression, indeed he raised his
family during that time. His job was easy by comparison with what is about to
hit.
People in Third World countries, like Mexico, will do the only human thing,
the thing we all would do in their circumstances-- try to get into countries
they perceive have wealth and jobs. The army, without oil will be unable to
defend the borders. The sight of poor desperate people being shot in order to
keep them out will not be pretty.
Some countries, like Canada, may decide to cease exports and retain what
resources they have left for their own people. Indeed there were calls for that
this year. Udall says:
"The Canadians have historically been eager to ship methane south, and
today half the country’s gas is exported to the States. But last winter, as
Canadian gas bills doubled, a debate over this practice began. Canada is, after
all, a frigid country and some Canadians are beginning to suggest capping the
amount of gas sent to the “damn Yankees” so that future generations will
have adequate supplies." Randy Udall, "Methane Madness"
publication of (Aspen, Colo: Community Office for Resource Efficiency,)
Of course importing countries, like the US, might very well take great
umbrage at this brazen behavior and invade them to obtain the supplies required
for our economy. After all, there are more of us than them! And we have the
nukes. Think this is far fetched? As a people we are no better than any other
people. When we are desperate we too will do desperate things.
By 2008, OPEC (read that the Middle East) will control most of the world's
oil exports. Does anyone think that the Middle eastern countries won't want to
force Israel to cease building settlements on Palestinian land? How well does
anyone think Israeli tanks will run on sand and heat--which are the only
plentiful resources they have? The Middle Eastern countries will use their great
economic and political leverage to influence people to get rid of Israel or at
least to stop helping them. Without oil, Israel will be a sitting duck for the
hitherto inept Arab armies. Israel is just now developing an oil industry with
the successful test of the Med Yavne gas well 20 miles offshore in 1999. Israel
should use this as a strategic reserve for the time when oil will be cut off
from them. They probably won't. If Israel is cut off from oil the implications
are ominous. Does anyone think Israel doesn't have nukes? Does anyone think they
won't use them if the alternative is a not so polite offer for them to move into
the Mediterranean Sea?
And after the Middle East over plays their hand, does anyone think that a
country of around 3 million (Saudi Arabia) won't be invaded as bigger powers
seek to control the oil? The population of the Gulf states is now a majority
non-Arabic. It is the perfect situation for some bigger power to foment a
rebellion with the purpose of getting a friendlier government in place who will
give them more oil in return. If the Gulf War was over oil, do we rationally
think that we won't fight another one? The Gulf War was merely a prelude, an
overture to the wars that will be fought this century over an ever dwindling,
extremely important resource. For the first time in history, the energy which
powers us will be declining in quantity. There is no way that can't have
profound implications for our society, our way of life and for our children.
We have merely 5 years before we begin to see these effects. Today we are at
the apex of world oil production. Today as I filled my car (Cost $60 for about
11 gallons and you in the US complain about$2/gallon gasoline. I laugh in your
face). I looked around at the other motorists who have no idea how precious this
golden liquid is that we use to drive our cars. They think it will always be
available. Ignorance is not bliss, but a blessing. But for those who wish to see
the future of automotive transportation, here it is.
There is a bit of a problem with methane exhaust however.
Toward the end of this decline in oil, with electricity in short supply
several basic services which we have become accustomed to in the past 100 years
will disappear. Turn on the tap in your house and clean water flows. That
water is brought to you courtesy of electrical pumps and the electricity is
brought to you 42% thanks-worth to petroleum. Without water from the taps, where
are people going to find water in the concrete jungles we currently
inhabit? Even in the countryside, people have replaced their hand-pumped
wells with modern electrical ones. Which of course won't work if the electrical
supply declines.
And this raises a connected question. Without water, how will your
toilet flush? Sure, we can buy conservation toilets that you have to flush 3
times to get rid of the waste, but even if you only flush it once, it won't
solve the problem. When electrical outages become widespread cities won't
be able to keep the pumps running so by then, these fancy toilets will do not
good. Cities may become the smelly, fetid and on another related topic, disease
ridden places they were in the 18th century.
Which raises another issue. Disease. As transportation gets tighter,
trash trucks will not run as often meaning that trash must be burned or it will
pile up. If burned, the air pollution increases If not, piles of trash will
create the conditions for disease. In the modern world we have
gotten used to being able to go into the doctor to get a shot of
penicillin/latest antibiotic to solve our health problems. The medicines are
very widespread. Why? Because they can be shipped everywhere. Why can they be
shipped everywhere? Because of oil! The health
systems will begin to decline in efficacy. Medicines won't be able to get
from the manufacturer to where they are needed as rapidly or more importantly as
cheaply. Throughout history cities have been very dangerous places to live.
Disease was rampant. Disease is very rare in isolated primitive societies
because there are not enough people to maintain an epidemic. If a bad bug
kills off a tribe, the epidemic stops there. But in crowded cities, there are
enough people for viruses and bacteria to jump from host to host and maintain
their gruesome rounds. Measles, small pox, the black death were all aided in
their spread by crowded cities and no medicine at the time. We see this
situation today in some of the poorer parts of the world, even Russia has had
troubles with the medicines running out due to a bad economy.
Energy is important to our survival. We should pay attention to the
example of St. Matthews Island in the Bering Sea. This island had no reindeer
until 29 were introduced in 1944. There they found an excellent energy
source--4 inches of lichen covering all the rocks. It was a reindeer's
dream. They could eat really easily and lots. They grew fat and
sassy in that otherwise barren place. By 1957 the 29 had grown to 1350 and
by 1963 to 6000. Then the lichens were eaten. Over that winter, the 6000
reindeer starved and by spring there were only 41 females and one malfunctioning
male. While he was probably the happiest reindeer in reindeerdom, he left no offspring.
The reason I mention this island is that one can correlate at an above .9 level
the human population and energy consumption! What happens when oil production goes down?
Options
What are the options? Few. One bright light. The present recession will move
the day of reckoning off by a couple of months or so as demand for oil is always
depressed in recessions. That is small comfort though. It means that we get
eaten by the wolf next Friday rather than Thursday.
Option 1. Fusion. We could solve the fusion
problem but we aren't putting many research dollars into it. To me that is the
real hope because in 1% of the world's deuterium lies 500,000 times more energy
than will ever be burned by all fossil fuels combined! (See David
Price,"Energy and Human Evolution", Population and
Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Volume 16, Number 4, March 1995, pp. 301-19)
But there are serious doubts as to whether we will accomplish this in
time. Consider this from a recent New Scientist:
“The dream of tapping the enormous power released when hydrogen isotopes
fuse together never seems to get any closer. Ever since research into nuclear
fusion began fifty years ago, the promise of endless energy has always been ‘decades
away’. Now physicists say the very earliest a power-producing reactor could be
built is 2050.
“The lure of jam tomorrow was never going to convince politicians for
long, especially when research worldwide swallows up 1.4 billion euros a year
(GBP840 million) of taxpayer’s money. Small wonder then that since 1998, plans
to build the vast International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) have
come juddering to a halt.
“Now fusion researchers are pleading for 3.5 billion euros to build a
slimmed-down version of ITER. This would be a prelude to a prototype that
actually generated electricity. Last week Russian fusion scientist, Evgenii
Velikhov, warned that if the reactor isn’t built now it probably never will
be." “Fusion Jam Tomorrow,” New Scientist, Oct 14, 2000, p.3
By 2050, we will be producing about 11 billion barrels per year with an
economy grinding to a halt. We need it much sooner. We won't be able to afford
it then.
And more frustrating than the lack of funding is the pessimism I hear both
from people in fusion research as well as those who work in nuclear power
plants. One man said, "Forget about it; it won't happen. The only thing
that is consistent about fusion over the last 40 or so years is that proponents
have been promising that it will be viable in 50 years."
Option 2. fuel cells. Some loudly proclaim the
immanent advent of the hydrogen economy or fuel cell economy (David Hart,
"Fueling the Future," New Scientist June 16, 2001 center page of
magazine.) He describes two types of fuel cells, a hydrogen one and a gasoline
one. Given that there are no hydrogen mines or deposits on earth, one must use
energy (presumably in the form of oil/natural gas/coal) to produce the hydrogen
for these cells or merely use the fuel itself. In any event these are not the
solution to our problem. Fuel cells are not tapping into a primary energy
source. And most silly of all is the claim that they are environmentally
friendly. Consider this:
“This is what we might call the ‘electric kettle problem’. Fuel cells,
like electric kettles, emit only steam. But kettles are powered by electricity
generated in power stations that burn coal or oil And fuel cells are powered by
hydrogen made by …well, by what? You cannot mine hydrogen or pluck it from the
air. It has to be manufactured. And the method of manufacture determines the
pollution.” Fred Pierce, “Kicking the Habit,” New Scientist, Nov. 25,
2000, p. 39
One must burn oil/coal/natural gas to create the hydrogen. At each step of
the transformation, one gets about 20% of the initial energy converted to useful
work. Today we have the situation of
oil->engine converted to work=20% efficiency.
By creating hydrogen rather than burning the primary fuel directly, one must
burn more primary energy per unit useful work with fuel cells. What the fuel
cell will do for us is:
oil-> hydrogen=20% efficiency
hydrogen->fuel cell converted to work=20% efficiency.
(20% is used for illustrative purposes--whatever the efficiency, it will be
less than merely burning the oil directly)
One can see that at the end of the tube we get much less work out of the
fuel cell than burning it directly. So, in point of fact, fuel cells will
pollute the earth more than doing what we are doing.
Option 3. Exploit the hydrates. The world's
oceans have huge deposits of natural gas tied up in clathrates or hydrates.
These are ices in the sea floor which trap methane. The US has an estimated
300,000 trillion cubic feet of such resources. But they are economically
unexploitable for the foreseeable future. They are too sparse to be exploited.
Indeed consider this:
“One might think that methane is so densely packed in solid hydrate that
Blake Ridge nevertheless constitutes a rich deposit. After all, when a cubic
meter of gas hydrate decomposes, the products are 0.79 cubic meter of water and
172 cubic meters of methane at 60 degrees F and 1 atmosphere pressure. While
that seems impressive, a petroleum engineer would note that the density of
methane in the solid hydrate is only 0.12 gram per cubic centimeter. A gas well
drilled into a formation with 2 percent methane at this density is considered a
‘dry hole.’” Robert L. Kleinberg and Peter G. Brewer, “Probing Gas
Hydrate Deposits,” American Scientist, 89(May-June 2001), 244-251, p. 246
After a thorough technical review of them, Kleinberg and Brewer concluded:
“Another barrier is the considerable expense of operations at the edge of
the continental shelf. Although drilling at these water depths has become
possible in the past decade, the massive rigs needed cost in the range of a
billion dollars. It is probably safe to say that there will be windmills on the
roofs of homes before Blake Ridge is exploited for its natural gas.” Robert L.
Kleinberg and Peter G. Brewer, “Probing Gas Hydrate Deposits,” American
Scientist, 89(May-June 2001), 244-251, p. 247
Option 4. Coal. Coal will have to serve as a
near term solution. But it is very polluting as anyone who has ever been to
Beijing can testify. But there is little choice. At current rates of production,
coal could last 200 years. But if you replace the lost oil with coal, it will
last 100 years or less. By 2120 the world will have used up its reserves of
coal--reserves which were generated at the time when land plants conquered the
earth 400 million years ago and converted sunlight and a high atmospheric CO2
level into a fuel that has been used up at an alarming rate. I found this on the
web a few months ago:
"From earlier statistics it can be estimated that the cumulative coal
production during the eight hundred years before 1860 amounted altogether to
only about 7 billion metric tons, whereas 133 billion metric tons, or 19 times
as much coal, was mined during the 110-year period from 1860 to 1970. Also
during the entire 9 centuries about 140 billion tons were mined; of this,
somewhat more than half was produced during the 34-year period from 1940 to 1970. "http://www.technocracy.org/articles/hub-gro.html
One worrying thing about coal
however is that given the way it is presently mined approximately 50% of the
energy used to mine coal comes from oil! (Jay Hanson, "Energetic Limits to
Growth," Energy Magazine, Spring 1999) Take away half of the energy
used to mine coal and you will mine half the coal you used to mine!
Option 5. Solar. Unless solar cells become
incredibly more efficient (and the second law limits how efficient they can be),
we will have problems. This is a bit out of date but looking at http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/eff/eff_tab1.html
there hasn't been a lot of progress in the past 8 years:
”Test photovoltaic cells that consist of silicon solar cells are currently
up to 21% efficient in converting sunlight into electricity. The durability of
photovoltaic cells, which is now approximately 20 years, needs to be lengthened
and current production costs reduced about five fold to make them economically
feasible.” David Pimentel et al, “Renewable Energy: Economic and
Environmental Issues,” BioScience 44(1994):8:536-547, p. 541
http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/eff/
says "The only other new result reported is also for silicon. A module
fabricated by UNSW and Gochermann Solar Technology and measured at Sandia
National Laboratories equaled the 22.7% efficiency for the highest efficiency
photovoltaic module."
With solar one will need to cover tremendous areas of the earth to replace
oil. Pimentel et al calculated how much land would be required to make solar
cells yield half of the US energy demand of the early 90's. They said:
"Producing 37 quads with solar technologies would require approximately
173 million ha, or nearly 20% of US land area." David Pimentel et al, “Renewable
Energy: Economic and Environmental Issues,” BioScience 44:8:536-547, p. 545
Given that efficiencies haven't gone up a lot, this is still a pretty good
value--except that energy demand has gone up over the past 8 years--the figure
might be a wee bit low. Cover 20% of the US with vast ugly sheets of solar
cells. What an environmental disaster! What would that do to the climate? To the
plants beneath and the animals that eat those plants? So much for purple
mountain's majesty. So much for the myth that solar cells are environmentally
friendly.
There is one bright spot in the solar issue. A new kind of silicon has
been created that absorbs 97% of visible light. This would cut by four the
amount of land needed to power the US with half its energy(97/23). Even
so, to have every 20th square mile covered with solar cells would still be an
environmental disaster--especially if these things actually absorb 97% of the
light. The earth absorbs only about 62% of the solar energy. Yet
these things would absorb nearly 100. That would clearly affect the
climate increasing global warming. For information on this development see Bruce
Schechter, "Tall, Dark and Stranger," New Scientist, Jan 13, 2001, p.
34-37.
However, one should not forget that
producing solar cells is an extremely energy intensive affair. Consider this:
"Single crystal wafers are
sliced, (approx. 1/3 to 1/2 of a millimetre thick), from a large single crystal
ingot which has been grown at around 1400 °C, which is a very expensive
process. The silicon must be of a very high purity and have a near perfect
crystal structure (see figure 1 (a))." (http://acre.murdoch.edu.au/refiles/pv/text.html)
Where do we think we will get the
energy to create 1400 degree C ovens in the future?
Option 6. Wind. In the UK we are seeing the Green movement split over wind
turbines. It seems that these big blades slice and dice little birds and big
birds who fly right into them. Yesssirreee, for only $19.95 you too can have the
greatest bird shredder known to man. Call now and you will receive a free sushi
knife. Yet the UK and Europe are going for them. By 2005 wind will produce an
amazing 1.6% of the UK's electricity. This is clearly a long way from solving
our energy needs. (Sunday Times 6-3-01 p. 4 and Independent Sunday 6-3-01 p.
21.)
Option 7. Natural Gas. For the US and North
America this is a real problem. From 1992 when there were 300 rigs drilling for
gas prospects until today, when it has doubled to 600 rigs, the gas production
has been almost perfectly flat. In Texas the average amount of gas found in a
gas well has dropped from 6 billion cubic feet in 1985 to 1 billion cubic feet
today. To maintain production one needs 6 times the number of wells today as we
did in 1985. In Western Canada the rig count has increased 37% over the past 5
years, but production has only gone up by 9%. (see ) http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research/docview.asp?viewnews=true&newstype=1&dv=true&doc=93
slide 7 and 9) Obviously we are reaching the point of diminishing returns. The
increased effort is merely maintaining current production rates but is not
increasing them. It seems that the gas isn't there onshore in sufficient
quantities to help. In the Gulf of Mexico gas production has declined for the
3rd straight year and the decline would have been even larger had it not been
for the deep water fields coming online. The production from the shallow
(<1000 ft) part of the Gulf of Mexico declined from 4.8 trillion cubic feet
per year in 1996 to 3.9 trillion in 2000. (What's Happening Offshore, Gas Decline in GOM",
World Oil, June 2001, p. 29) However in the deep water(>1000
ft), there aren't enough
rigs to find and develop these very expensive deep water fields quickly enough
to over take the decline. And when they are found, they are produced at such a
rapid rate that no deepwater field will last much more than 7 years. The bright
spots are Prudhoe gas and Mackenzie River Delta gas in Canada. Pipelines are in
the planning stage. Who knows when they will be built. But it will be 3-4 years
of construction time alone. see http://www.mms.gov/eppd/scicom/2000/summary2000.htm
Option 8. Nuclear fission. In some discussions
last fall with a person in the nuclear industry, I ran some numbers on how many
nuclear plants needed to be built each year in order to replace oil with nuclear
power. My model began with the building of 10 plants per year each year. That
wouldn't suffice to replace oil by 2050. One needed about 100 per year. Today we
are building only a tiny handful of nuclear plants. This option won't work. Tony
Blair must make a decision on whether to build more nuclear plants next year so
that they will be ready when the current batch must be decommissioned. I bet he
says no. The longer we wait, the more massive building will be required ensuring
a lesser level of protection. Politically this is unlikely to happen until we
are desperate.
This week the UK announced the first nuclear reactor decommissioning. It is
of the Dounreay plant and is one of the first nuclear plants in the world to be
decommissioned. It is estimated to require around $6 billion dollars and 60
years for this decommissioning. Without a doubt, it will require large
quantities of energy to be invested in the clean up. After the Hubbert
peak, energy costs will skyrocket and the cost will increase. As noted
above in 2050 we will only be producing around 1/3 of the oil we produce
today. Will the energy be there to decommission this plant? What
about the others which will need decommissioning later? Will they ever be
properly decommissioned? See http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/17-5-19101-055-8.html
Option 9 Oil shale. One friend suggested that
oil shale would replace conventional oil as a source of our energy when oil
reaches $100/barrel. There are some indications that this won't happen, at
least on the large scale. Shale oil will never work for a simple physical
reason. It takes more energy to extract the oil from shale than it produces.
Since you like such investments, I have a special one for you! :-)
Here is what Walter Youngquist says about oil shale. (I emphasize the part
that is of importance):
"Myth: There are billions of barrels of oil which can be readily
recovered from oil shale in the U.S."
"As the United States has the world's largest and richest deposits
of oil shale, the optimistic statements which sometimes arise from that fact are
among the more commonly heard in regard to the U.S. energy future. An
enthusiastic article about oil shale in the prestigious Fortune magazine is
titled: "Shale Oil is Braced for Big Role." It concludes, "Shale
oil is not the whole answer to the energy problem but it's one of the few pieces
that is already within the nation's grasp."(l9) The article was written in
1979. As of 1997 no oil from oil shale is being produced in the U.S.... or
anywhere else.
"Reality:
"The supposedly great prospects for the production of oil from oil
shale in the United States has been one of the most widely promoted and heard
energy myths for many years. Statements even made by government agencies can be
quite misleading. These arise perhaps because it is good government policy to
take as optimistic view as possible toward any national problem. The statements
also are due to a less than careful examination of the facts, and perhaps a bit
of promotion for the agency involved. The statement is made by a U.S. government
organization that "...using demonstrated methods of extraction, recovery of
about 80 billion barrels of oil from accessible high-grade deposits of the Green
River Formation is possible at costs competitive with petroleum of comparable
quality."(l2) This is a clear misstatement of the facts. At the time it was
written (1981) there had been no demonstrated methods of oil recovery at costs
competitive with oil of comparable quality, nor have there been any such methods
demonstrated to this date. A variety of processes have been tried. All have
failed. Unocal, Exxon, Occidental Petroleum, and other companies and the U.S.
Bureau of Mines have made substantial efforts but with no commercial
results."
"A state government agency issued a pamphlet on oil shale stating,
"The deposits are estimated to contain 562 billion barrels of recoverable
oil. This is more than 64 percent of the world's total proven crude oil
reserves."(29) The implication here is that the oil which could be
"recoverable" could be produced at a net energy profit as if it were
barrels of oil from a conventional well. The average citizen seeing this
statement in a government publication is led to believe that the United States
really has no oil supply problem when oil shales hold "recoverable
oil" equal to "more than 64 percent of the world's total proven crude
oil reserves." Presumably the United States could tap into this great oil
reserve at any time. This is not true at all. All attempts to get this
"oil" out of shale have failed economically. Furthermore,
the "oil" (and, it is not oil as is crude oil, but this is not stated)
may be recoverable but the net energy recovered may not equal the energy used to
recover it. If oil is "recovered" but at a net energy loss, the
operation is a failure. Also, the environmental impacts of
developing shale oil, especially related to the available water supply (the
headwaters of the already over used Colorado river), and the disposal of wastes,
do not seem manageable, at least a the present time, and perhaps not all."
"The clear implication of both of these government statements is
that oil shale is a huge readily available source. Because of the enormous
amount of "oil" which has been claimed that could be recovered, this
gives a large sense of energy security which does not exist. For this reason it
is a particularly dangerous myth. "
**** End of Youngquist quote. This is from Chapter 27 GeoDestinies, by
Walter Youngquist PhD & Chair Emeritus, Department of Geology, University of
Oregon; National Book Company, 1997; ISBN 0894202995
As far back as I can recall and that is to the late 50s hearing my dad talk
about oil shales, people have been saying that if the price would rise a bit oil
shale would become economic. The price has risen a lot, yet no oil shale
operation is occurring. It is because as of this moment the energy to mine and
retort the oil shale is more than the energy value of the oil we get out. The
real limit to economically extractable oils occurs when the energy gotten out of
the well is equivalent to 5 times the amount put in. Why? Because of the 2nd law
of thermo. Real conversions of energy to useful work occur at around 20%. Thus
if you use 5 joule of energy you get 1 joule out as useful work. That useful
work in the case of an oil field is having a barrel in the tank (ignoring
transport and refining etc energy costs). Now to get that barrel of energy if
you spent .2 barrel of energy in useful work, then you had to spend about 1
barrel to get that .2 useful work. Break even. Thus, this is the true basis of
economics, not price. Price/money is a poor representation of the amount of
energy required to create the object.
The problem with the press accounts of this issue and governmental accounts
is that they aren't physicists.
Final comment: None of the options listed above actually solve the
fertilizer problem. As noted above without fertilizer, crop yields will
diminish. Without crop yields, how can we feed the world? Wind, fission, fusion,
solar cells etc, don't make fertilizer.
Whatever the solutions, or lack of solutions, the fun begins in about 5
years.
