http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Ok, so it's a bit of a long read, but it's a really accurate, well researched and clear portrayal of what is happening and what will eventually happen. It's really hard to argue around material such as this. There's a lot of people I know that swear the "oil situation" is nothing but corporate or even Crazy-Hippy-Environmentalists myth.

What worries me is our lack of planning of alternate fuel resources and instead of taking action on the information provided, we all seem to sit around and debate on it.

In all honesty, this article did shake me up a bit.

6/2/2006 9:04:08 PM

new topic!

6/2/2006 9:04:46 PM

I've already taken action by moving closer to work.

6/2/2006 9:06:24 PM

I've taken action to move us closer to peak oil by buying an SUV

6/2/2006 9:11:50 PM

Yes, we are running out of oil, but not because the Earth is out but because no one is bothering to look for more.

State run corporations are very bad at producing cars, why does anyone suspect they would be good at producing oil?

Since the majority of the World's oil reserves are locked up by state run monopolies such as Saudi Aramco, is there any wonder that there isn't enough oil to go around?

If we could get Exxon or BP free reign to drill in Saudi Arabia we would have all the oil we wanted at $10 a barrel.

6/2/2006 10:54:13 PM

^^^When you get laid off...?

^How do you know that? Where did you read that? Please share. Like I've said to many other folks on here, it sounds like a good read!

(Why wouldn't the good folks in Saudi Arabia not have their eyes on more oil? And, even if they did, why would they bother sharing that information with us when things are going so well for them? Or is that your point?)

[Edited on June 2, 2006 at 11:05 PM. Reason : ds]

6/2/2006 11:01:11 PM

We're not going to run out of oil, period.

What we're running out of is commercially viable oil at 40-50$ a barrel. I didn't read your article, but unless it was about the lack of refinery power, its just retarded. We aren't going to run out of oil, probably ever. As it gets expensive, private enterprises will find more/become better at extracting it until it gets too expensive and someone invents something else.

FYI, people panicked that we were going to kill all the whales on Earth and run out of oil centuries ago...then they discovered crude oil.

6/2/2006 11:19:16 PM

BridgetSPK, it has nothing to do with whether or not Saudi Arabia is interested in more oil or not (i'm sure they are). It has to do with historical evidence against the provision of state monopolies. I'm also certain the Soviets were interested in making more and better cars, probably wishing to rival Toyota. But the fact is, since it was a state-run enterprise they made few and shoddy cars.

It is the nature of government run enterprises to be poorly run and badly administered. Having such a company in the oil industry means that few productive wells get drilled and the ones that do suffer from poor recovery rates.

Or was this not what you were questioning? Perhaps you question whether a majority of the Earth's reserves are held by state monopolies?
Proved reserves (billion barrels)
1. Saudi Arabia 261.9
2. Canada 178.81
3. Iran 125.8
4. Iraq 115.0
5. Kuwait 101.5
6. United Arab Emirates 97.8
7. Venezuela 77.2
8. Russia 60.0
9. Libya 39.0
10. Nigeria 35.3

Just in the top ten countries by reserves, only Canada has free-enterprise control over oil resources. And Venezuela and Russia were somewhat free until just recently, now we can call them "governmentally influenced". All told, that is 776.3 billion barrels in states with government run monopolies, 137.2 billion barrels in "governmentally influenced" states, and 178.81 billion barrels in states with strong free-enterprise principles, namely Canada.

6/3/2006 12:03:27 AM

Quote :

"We're not going to run out of oil, period"

might as well go home, people. it just cant get any more stupid than this.

6/3/2006 1:16:47 AM

how many "omg Peak Oil! we're all gonna die, aaiiiiiiyyyyeeeee!1" threads are we going to have in the Soap Box?...

6/3/2006 1:21:55 AM

Quote :

"Yes, we are running out of oil, but not because the Earth is out but because no one is bothering to look for more. "

you do understand that the earth has a finite supply of oil buried in it right?

6/3/2006 5:02:29 AM

sooooo old. old as in years old

6/3/2006 5:12:14 AM

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/

Check this out. There is some good information on this blog.

Look oil is going to get expensive but it is not going to be the end of the world. We live in the richest country on Earth, with the best military.

No one is going to have gun fights in the street over the last few drops at the Citgo.

Everyone alive can cut back their energy consumption, car pool, etc. It will happen when gas gets too expensive.

6/3/2006 7:29:42 AM

^ Nice link, has neat graphs.

Quote :

"you do understand that the earth has a finite supply of oil buried in it right?"

So what? We are so far away from even the midpoint what does it matter? There is more oil still in the ground than has been pumped throughout human history. So, sure, there is a finite supply, and as long as the human race depends upon badly run government monopolies to get at that "finite supply" we might as well be out of oil.

There is a finite supply of Iron Ore in the world, too. Lucky for us most of it is burried in free-enterprise nations, such that we don't need to worry about "running out" until its all gone in a thousand years.

There is a sufficient quantity of "proven reserves" to last another 60+ years, which assumes no new technology, a fixed price of $25, and minimal competence from the world's government monopolies. Regretfully, when making such predictions, we all failed to take into account just how incompetent government run businesses can be.

[Edited on June 3, 2006 at 8:17 AM. Reason : ^]

6/3/2006 8:14:47 AM

the sun is a finite energy source... does that mean that we should stop using solar arrays to collect its power????


just because a quantity is "finite" does not mean that you're going to use it up. its stupid to keep repeating, "but the oil supply is finite!" over and over - talk about quantities or stfu.



[Edited on June 3, 2006 at 9:19 AM. Reason : s]

6/3/2006 9:17:41 AM

Quote :

"might as well go home, people. it just cant get any more stupid than this."

He's actually right. We will never run out of oil. We will stop using it. There are less economically viable but still very oil-tastic reserves of oil scattered across the globe in oil sands, etc. The only problem is that you might end up having to pay $80, $90, or $100 to get some of this oil because of what's involved in digging it out. So when you're paying $6 at the pump, and it becomes apparent that you can buy an electric car that runs off of coal or nuclear power at an equivalent or cheaper cost per mile (this is decades away (i hope), and just a hypothetical situation), you just might go for that electric car.

We won't just use oil until we run out of other stuff to use. It's kind of the same way we won't use wood in a franklin stove to heat up our homes for the rest of our existence, or coal in our power plants for the rest of our existence (although coal isn't going away for years and years and years). We have a tendency to discover new economical energy sources as time goes on, and I can't see why we'd just stop at fossil fuels.

6/3/2006 10:43:57 AM

^ thank you, I was going to have to defend basic econ to this retard, but you covered it

6/3/2006 10:53:13 AM

Quote :

""Yes, we are running out of oil, but not because the Earth is out but because no one is bothering to look for more. " you do understand that the earth has a finite supply of oil buried in it right?"

Actually Smath, the supply of oil in the world isn't finite, but it is functionally finite. The earth will continue to make oil until all organisms are wiped off the planet, but we use it at a rate far faster than it is created. Its a non-renewable resource only because we use it too fast.

But that's just semantics.

6/3/2006 10:55:38 AM

Quote :

"BridgetSPK, it has nothing to do with whether or not Saudi Arabia is interested in more oil or not (i'm sure they are). It has to do with historical evidence against the provision of state monopolies. I'm also certain the Soviets were interested in making more and better cars, probably wishing to rival Toyota. But the fact is, since it was a state-run enterprise they made few and shoddy cars. "

Quote :

"If we could get Exxon or BP free reign to drill in Saudi Arabia we would have all the oil we wanted at $10 a barrel."

I always thought oil was priced as it was because of the "monopoly" part, not so much the "state" part.

(I was drunk last night, but still, you went from saying they weren't bothering to look for more oil to they aren't efficient.)

[Edited on June 3, 2006 at 11:11 AM. Reason : sss]

6/3/2006 11:02:03 AM

Oil (like every other publicly traded commodity) is priced the way it is because of supply and demand. If countries such as Saudi Arabia boosted the supply (drilled for more oil or let others do it for them), the price of crude would go down in the short term.

With respect to the international oil market, there are no monopolies to speak of. Even looking at the US, there are 5 big companies with comparable shares in the market, and a whole bunch of small ones. That hardly fits the bill of a monopolistic market. It's possible that there are some oligopolistic practices going on, but countless studies have shown that there is no collusion or price fixing from big oil companies in the US.

[Edited on June 3, 2006 at 1:56 PM. Reason : 2]

6/3/2006 1:51:21 PM

^ Was that directed at me? If so, you misunderstand my point. My point was not that the entire oil market is dominated by a single monopoly, this would be untrue. My point was that large percentages of the Earth's proven reserves have been granted to "local monopolies", such as Saudi Arabian Aramco. What this means is that there is no competition to drill and produce Saudi Arabian crude. There is no competition to drill and produce Iranian crude because only NIOC can legally drill there.

And where-as an incompetent oil company in America will get bought out by a better competitor or simply be suplanted by one, this is impossible in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco can be dumping half the oil in a river for all it cares, its managers don't get to keep the profits from oil sales and the Saudi Government has no way to check that the company is being run efficiently.

This gross inefficiency and incompetence is why state run enterprises normally fail, except Saudi Aramco has no competition, it's competitors do not have access to $4 oil, so no matter how badly it is run it will still rake in the dough.

6/3/2006 3:25:04 PM

Quote :

"the sun is a finite energy source... does that mean that we should stop using solar arrays to collect its power????"

haha

Save the sun, use flashlights!

[Edited on June 3, 2006 at 4:15 PM. Reason : http://www.conservegravity.org/]

6/3/2006 4:14:05 PM

^^no, my comment was in response to Bridget's post:

Quote :

"I always thought oil was priced as it was because of the "monopoly" part, not so much the "state" part."

6/3/2006 7:06:45 PM

one more "oh god this again" on the pile...

6/7/2006 10:55:35 PM

Quote :

"^How do you know that? Where did you read that? Please share. Like I've said to many other folks on here, it sounds like a good read!"

great post

6/8/2006 3:05:35 AM

FUCK THE OILERS

GO CANES!

6/8/2006 12:33:44 PM

Quote :

"We're not going to run out of oil, period. "

this is absolutely correct, and if you can't understand it then you have no business arguing over oil economics. we will eventually hit a point where it costs more to pump the oil out of the ground than it will to switch to alternative sources of energy and even make major changes to the infrastructure. at that point, oil will be used mainly for the production of industrial chemicals.

people have been claiming we would run out of oil for the last 100 years, mainly because they don't understand where oil comes from or how the earth produces it. the earth regenerates oil, and a lot faster than most people might think. there are shallow venezuelan oil fields that were pumped dry in the 70's which now have refilled with a considerable amount of oil.

6/8/2006 7:12:39 PM

Quote :

"What we're running out of is commercially viable oil at 40-50$ a barrel. I didn't read your article, but unless it was about the lack of refinery power, its just retarded. We aren't going to run out of oil, probably ever. As it gets expensive, private enterprises will find more/become better at extracting it until it gets too expensive and someone invents something else."

OPEC has a way around this. They bump oil prices occasionally to accustom the market to them, then lower them again just before everyone's about to go buy a bite-sized Toyota hybrid. Then very gradually raise oil prices over several years until they're where they were at the previous peak. People are complacent with gas prices, and will remain complacent with them without government intervention.

We're not going to run out of oil, but we will remain dependant on an expensive, unreliable foreign supply due to our stubbornness when it comes to how we get to work, and how much the thing can go off-roading.

6/8/2006 8:41:34 PM

is Canada an unreliable foreign source of oil? Or Saudi Arabia? Venezuela and Mexico? How unreliable can they possibly be if they love the almighty dollar too?

6/8/2006 8:46:19 PM

You overestimate the importance of OPEC. This isn't 1970 anymore.

Quote :

"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1768700.stm"

While they still control ~50% of the world exports, they are losing any ability to completely dominate markets.

6/8/2006 8:55:59 PM

Quote :

" it becomes apparent that you can buy an electric car that runs off of coal or nuclear power"

6/8/2006 10:02:29 PM

I'd rather burn gas than coal. thiat shit is fucking nasty, and it destroys the mountains the way they strip it out.

nuclear energy is a small percentage of what is on the national grid.

6/8/2006 10:11:48 PM

Quote :

"it becomes apparent that you can buy an electric car that runs off of coal or nuclear power"

Are you trying to point out that that sounds silly or something? I meant grid electricity power provided by coal/nuke power.

And as far as coal goes, the fuel is damned super cheap. If we find a way to build super-clean coal plants (like that clean-coal initiative which has several promising projects that, while costing a butt ton for some, tend to reduce emissions on some of the nastiest stuff by 80+%.

6/8/2006 11:25:19 PM

who cares if you lower emission 80% when the fuel is a million times dirtier. crude oil and natural gas have almost zero sulfur content. coal is fucking loaded with sulfur, and scrubbers are't completely effective. dumping hydrogen sulfides and sulfur dioxides into the air is thousands of times worse than greenhouse gases produced by burning fuels in general.

you also have to consider that the only reason coal is considered cheap is because it isn't an import, and no one gives a shit about us stripping away the countryside of rural kentucky, virginia, west virginia, and pennsylvania. I'd rather see another exxon valdez incident than to see them continue to chop down mountains and keep producing acid rain in the sake of coal.

if you didn't calculate in all the costs to the planet from nuclear energy, it would be dirt cheap too. Unfortunately real world economics don't work that way.

6/9/2006 12:30:45 AM

my physics teacher in highschool said that a gallon of water could fuel the world's energy supply for a year if they could figure out(i get this next part confused, its either fission or fusion) how to harnest the energy of the atoms

6/9/2006 6:02:16 AM

85% of people could convert their existing cars to electric for about $7,000 (price of parts).

The car would no longer run on gas, have a range between 40-75 miles per charge and cost about 0.04 per mile.

This would cover your daily commute and trips to the grocery store.

Pick up the last issue of Make Magazine to see how to do it.

If you are lucky enough to have diesel you can buy some biodiesel from Willie Nelson.

Everything is going to be o.k.

6/9/2006 8:56:34 AM

Quote :

"if you didn't calculate in all the costs to the planet from nuclear energy, it would be dirt cheap too. Unfortunately real world economics don't work that way."

We'll never know the true costs of nuclear energy because the industry has been run through a command and control regulatory agency. The only other industry that is run this way is the public school system, which we know is endlessly wasteful.

Without the "deal" struck back in the 50s we have no idea what the nuclear industry would look like. For those that don't remember, the "deal" involved granting exemption from liability in exchange for command and control regulatory powers. In other words, if a nuclear plant melts down and kills a million people you cannot sue the plant owners, so the only safety check was government control which did a remarkable job of making the industry uncompetitive in both safety and efficiency.

6/9/2006 8:59:39 AM

our national electric transmission grid is in much worse shape than our petroleum production is. there is no way in hell we could handle a massive changeover occurring anywhere in the next 30 years.

6/9/2006 12:50:04 PM

that limited liability deal was bullshit. look at the fallout from Jersey Central Power and Light with First Energy over Three Mile Island and how they have been so in debt ever since from the enviromental cleanup bills that they haven't don't any new construction on their systems in 20 years. I spent 3 months straight on their system once just detailing the code violations in preparation for a lawsuit being persued by the Governor of NJ.

look at the problem we are having trying to store the spent reactor fuel, and that has gotten 10 times worse since the scare of domestic terrorism has come about.

6/9/2006 12:54:12 PM

Quote :

"there is no way in hell we could handle a massive changeover occurring anywhere in the next 30 years."

30 years is a long time. If we get the incentives right then private enterprise can move heaven and Earth to fix any problem you can name.

The only question is getting the incentives right. This can be difficult for, so, power lines. But it can be simplistic when dealing with power generation and resource availability.

6/9/2006 1:55:15 PM

I work in the utility industry. 30 years is NOT a long time. you have to consider that the cost of property in heavy populated areas is 20 times higher than it was 60 years ago when most of our infrastructure got built. Labor is also outrageously expensive for people that work with EHV contruction.

What we'll most likely see is conversion of our existing 500 and 765kV EHV grid to utilizing high temperature superconductor materials in about 30 years from now when the technology to produce these materials in bulk makes it economically feasible.

[Edited on June 9, 2006 at 3:03 PM. Reason : generation will never be the issue. transmission of power is the bottleneck in the system]

6/9/2006 3:02:31 PM

Quote :

"you have to consider that the cost of property in heavy populated areas is 20 times higher than it was 60 years ago when most of our infrastructure got built"

There is a failure in your logic here. That statement is true regardless of what time period you are referring to. In 1960 property in heavily populated areas was easily 20 times more expensive than it was in 1900. This did not make it foolish for the industry to take the right-of-way we have today because there was no alternative, so a few land owners in 1960 were paid a fortune for their property by the whole of the customer base.

We will use fancy high-temperature conductors if it is cheaper than buying new right-of-way. 60 years ago we bought new right-of-way because fancy high-temperature conductor didn't exist. As with most things in urban settings you will pay whatever it takes. If you add 5 cents to every kw-hour of every customer in New York you could buy times square in a relatively short period of time.

6/10/2006 12:00:00 AM

you have no clue about the cost of property ROW acquisition if you believe what you just wrote. 60 years ago you could get awarded a utility condemnation on a piece of proterty without having to pay a dime. in the last 30 years the tables have turned in favor of the property owner. Certain states, such as Deleware and a couple in the northeast don't allow condemnations for any reason whatsoever now.

and as far as the value of property, I was not referring to the cost of property after inflation. property values are growing at a rate that is incredibly higher. if you don't believe it, then research it. 60 years ago even the largest metropolitan areas still had undeveloped land available. nowadays that is nonexistant in the parts of the country experiencing the largest load problems.

6/10/2006 7:24:37 PM

Quote :

"60 years ago you could get awarded a utility condemnation on a piece of proterty without having to pay a dime"

WTF!?!? That is a crime against humanity, how can you possibly consider theft a necessary condition for progress? What makes electricity customers special that they get to steal my land and not pay me a cent? It is a common carrier just like a railroad and a highway, eminent domain my ass but pay me at least the minimal market price.

Quote :

"I was not referring to the cost of property after inflation. property values are growing at a rate that is incredibly higher."

So was I. The national inflation rate was negative between 1870 and 1910, yet the price of real-estate went up very quickly. It is a natural state of things that the wealthier a society gets it will spend an ever greater percentage of that wealth on real-estate. My point is simply that there is nothing that has fundamentally changed between 1950 and 2000 in the real-estate market. Today we STILL have undeveloped land in even the largest metropolitan areas. Land prices are rediculous, but they were also rediculous as the time, they have always been rediculous, this doesn't change the formula. In a free-enterprise system all resources have a price attached and all those that wish to use it, even common carriers, must compete to use them.

However, I must ask you: what percentage of the average New Yorker's electricity bill went to buy right-of-way? I suspect it is 1% or less, which means you could double it and it would only drive up my power bill by 1%, barely noticeable. This is because right-of-way is a one-time fixed cost which you don't have to pay again. If you need to spend a billion dollars buying right of way in New York to deliver a constant 100 Megawatts of power, that is only 0.1 cents per kw-hour transported to pay it off in one year ((1e9/100e6)*1e3/(365*24)). So, tack on 0.1 cents per kw-hour sold, and you can buy a billion dollars worth of right-of-way a year. Surely you can keep the lights on for that.

If we suffering from insufficient transport capacity it is because the incentives are wrong, not the math and definitely not the economics. Regulators are refusing to raise rates by 0.1 cents, or the power lines are not owned by profit businesses with an interest in delivering electricity.

6/10/2006 10:28:03 PM

Quote :

"It is a common carrier just like a railroad and a highway, eminent domain my ass "

railroads own their property. the don't purchase right of way.

as for the rest of your bullshit post, I don't care to refute it. You obviously don't have a fucking clue as to how property acquisition works, or how energy costs are strictly federally regulated (and for good reason), or condemnation proceedings work. I can't explain it to you without you having at least the slightest bit of knowledge about how utilities operate or what the ramifications would be from trying to double the size of our current grid to support electric cars.

6/11/2006 11:19:44 PM

Quote :

"WTF!?!? That is a crime against humanity, how can you possibly consider theft a necessary condition for progress?"

I found this to be fucking funny as hell coming from someone that obviously doesn't own land.

6/11/2006 11:21:01 PM

Quote :

"railroads own their property. the don't purchase right of way."

That doesn't change shit, it was a metaphor, and it is just as valid now as it was then. To use the land you must pay for it, whether the deed changes hands or not is irrelevant. By putting up your lines, or burying your cable, you are limiting what the original owner can do with the land. No high-rises, no underground parking decks, these limitations will lower the future value of the property (not to mention the gaudy lines overhead/below feet). In economic circles we call that a seizure of property rights. As such, if you are not compensating owners you are engaged in moral theft.

But, it seems you are done talking. That's fine, just don't go around spouting your doom and gloom and expect everyone to roll over and say "oh, he works for the power company, obviously he knows enough to run one." Bullshit is the only conclusion I can draw as you have not given a shred of reason why "there is no way in hell we could handle a massive changeover occurring anywhere in the next 30 years." We have wire, we have labor, we evidently have the ability to seize property rights of owners, what the fuck can hold us back? Right, you don't know, all you know is that it is impossible.

[Edited on June 12, 2006 at 12:32 AM. Reason : sp]

6/12/2006 12:31:54 AM

Here is a little interesting piece of transportation:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/the_worlds_firs.php

This is interesting because of its top speed (55 mph), and the way it is charged (solar power).

As population density grows, this will be a great transportation option for a lot of younger people. At $820 it is defintely affordable.

I just got back from a week in Hong Kong. If people can ride scooters in that traffic, people can ride them in America.

6/12/2006 7:18:37 PM

^ Damn, I want one.

Then again, I think I'd prefer one you plug in. Solar cells are expensive and $800+ is an awful lot to pay for a scooter.

6/13/2006 12:37:53 AM

Quote :

"30 years is a long time. "

i agree

shit 100 years ago we made cars, less than 40 years ago we put someone on the moon

people living with fake hearts and shit

aint got no smallpox, got hybrid cars and shit

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

man 30 years from now we gonna have some crazy ass shit

ps- i really wish that pizza idea in back to the future 2 would take off

6/13/2006 12:45:11 AM