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Showing posts from November, 2012

The Global Oil Peak or a Plateau?

I am about to cover a very serious subject, so please forgive my somewhat formal and unduly precise language.  Since I am talking here about the future of our crude oil-powered civilization, I do not feel too guilty. Besides, you can always stop reading... The six categories of liquid and solid hydrocarbons in Figure 1 are lumped together into three different combinations in the reports of global liquid fuel production maintained by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Figure 1: Click on the image above to see its full screen version. All liquid and solid hydrocarbons and alcohols are grouped into six categories that exhaust the classification of liquids used by the U.S. DOE Energy Information Administration (EIA) in their reports of global fossil fuel production. Note that depending whether heavy oil flows or not at the initial reservoir conditions, it is classified as either a transitional crude or unconventional crude. Solid tar sand bitumen is mined and liquif

Delusions of Grandeur

In the last few days, two top newspapers in the U.S., The New York times on the left and The Wall Street Journal on the right, have come up with unusual predictions of the future oil might of our fair United States of America.  I tried to link to the "Report Predicts U.S. as No. 1 Oil Producer in a Few Years," by Elisabeth Rosenthal, published on page B1 of The New York Times on 11/13/2012, but this link did not exist. I guess, Ms. Rosenthal's article belongs to the category of All News Fit to Sweep Under the Rug . The unsigned agitprop piece in The Wall Street Journal: "Saudi America - The U.S. will be the world's leading energy producer, if we allow it,"  dated 11/12/2012, still adorns the Web. At best, the authors of these two articles have shown a lack of rudimentary understanding of what is needed to increase oil production in the U.S. to the short-term levels implied by their narratives. At worst, they purposefully misled readers. Even the already b

Sir Francis Bacon's Warnings

I n 1620 , in his Novum Organum ,  Sir Francis Bacon classified the intellectual fallacies of the human kind as idols of the Tribe ,  the Cave ,  the Marketplace and  the Theater . An idol is a mental image which receives veneration but is devoid of substance. Bacon did not regard idols as symbols, but rather as human fixations.  His model of human perceptions is as true today as it was in the 17th century. Some things never change but - because of the mindless and loud media drum beat - consequences of the common human fallacies are far more damaging today.  I dols of the Tribe are deceptive beliefs inherent in the minds of all humans. They are abstractions of error arising from common human tendencies of exaggeration, distortion, and disproportion. Thus people gazing at the production of crude oil over the last cen

Peak, What Peak?

Before I discuss the logic behind negating a peak of production of anything, let me sum up where we are in the U.S. in terms of crude oil production.  According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA): "The United States consumed 18.8 million barrels per day (MMbd) of petroleum products during 2011, making us the world's largest petroleum consumer. The United States was third in crude oil production at 5.7 MMbd. But crude oil alone does not constitute all U.S. petroleum supplies. Significant gains occur, because crude oil expands in the refining process, liquid fuel is captured in the processing of natural gas, and we have other sources of liquid fuel, including biofuels. These additional supplies totaled 4.6 MMbd in 2011." Let me parse this quote.  First, let's look at the history of oil production in the U.S., shown in the chart below.  The vertical axis is scaled with a unit of power, exajoules (EJ) per year, very close to quadrillion BTUs (qu