Hypocracy

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Soaring oil prices have revived the old bogeyman that the world is running out of oil. Economics is a great field for nostalgia buffs because the same old fallacies keep coming back, like golden oldies in music.

Back in 1960, a best-selling book titled "The Waste Makers" by Vance Packard showed that the known reserves of petroleum in the United States were only enough to last another 13 years at the current rate of usage. Yet, 13 years later, the United States had larger known reserves of petroleum than in 1960.

This has been a worldwide phenomenon. At the end of the 20th century, the known reserves of petroleum in the world were more than ten times what they were in the middle of the 20th century -- despite an ever-growing use of oil.

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No matter how many centuries' supply of oil there is on the planet, the high cost of oil exploration ensures that only the most minute fraction of that oil will be known at any given time. Thus there have long been recurring false predictions that we were running out of petroleum, as well as other natural resources.

The high cost of extracting and processing oil ensures that not even half of the oil in a known pool of oil will be brought to the surface and sent off to the refineries.

A generation ago, only about a quarter of the oil in a pool was likely to be brought to the surface. That is because the cost of extracting and processing oil from a given pool tends to increase as you drain from deeper into that pool.

Even at $60 a barrel, most of the oil that is known to exist is too costly to extract. How much will be extracted depends on how much higher the price of oil goes -- and how much new technology can recover more oil at lower costs.

What if the government did nothing about oil prices? Rising prices would lead people to reduce their use of oil and lead producers to drain some of the more costly oil out of the ground.
An oil 'crisis'?: part II

Once more there is no shortage of oil. There is only a shortage of profitable oil and even thats debatable. The enviormentalist are whats behind the high cost of oil. The left should be celebrating higher oil prices not bashing Bush for it.

[Red Harvest]

Once more there is no shortage of oil. There is only a shortage of profitable oil and even thats debatable. The enviormentalist are whats behind the high cost of oil. The left should be celebrating higher oil prices not bashing Bush for it.

Why should anyone celebrate a policy based on remaining behind the curve? It is reactive government. Typical of Dubya's admin though. Blecchhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! I've seen the same in industry and by folks with the same political viewpoint: folks who can't tell the difference between being ahead or behind of the trends. When you are behind with a resource with inelastic demand curves you get spikes, and you experience tremendous lag. Even if oil can be produced to fill the growing demand (and it can) it means that less financially viable sources (higher production and exploration cost) need copious justification before they commit. That produces serious LAG my friend. LAG is a DRAG on the global economy. It means higher prices and slower economic growth. Do you want that? I don't.

"Shortage of profitable oil?" That means the price is too low to support current demand because we are using too much and the SUPPLY is not there to support it. In otherwords the price is going to keep going up because we can't meet demand at today's prices.

The article is referring to price controls, and rebutting the popular political concept of price controls as they are nonsensical. He is right about that.

The one thing that stands out when you compare this oil run up to others, is that it is demand driven, not supply driven. That is what has changed.

The environmentalists did not drive up demand. Nor did the left. Most of the supply is outside the U.S. so if you believe environmentalists have been the problem there, you must be on shrooms.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Why should anyone celebrate a policy based on remaining behind the curve?

Because the are against the use of fossil fuels. They care more about the enviorment. They could care less what the price of oil is other than the higher the better.. Thats why I called this thread hypocracy.

[Steppe Merc]

Well yes, the environment is more important than oil prices.

[Red Harvest]

Because the are against the use of fossil fuels. They care more about the enviorment. They could care less what the price of oil is other than the higher the better.. Thats why I called this thread hypocracy.

I assumed you spelled it "hypocracy" as a play on words...as if it were a style of govt...theocracy, autocracy, democracy...and the current administration would be the "hyprocracy."

Your cutesy attempt to point the other way aside, the folks you gripe about wanting alternative energy development and conservation are being progressive, while the approach you embrace is regressive. Progress is trying to develop for the future need, rather than ignoring developing events. You want to invest more in early 20th century tech, while many of us see more potential in investing in later 20th century tech.

After all, it is amusing that you will say we need to be drilling like mad in one sentence, and then in another say this is a refining issue and there is no shortage of oil. Those are contradictory statements.

What is so awful about developing solar, wind, and other technology (including long range fusion work.) Seems a lot more intelligent to be investing in these than in a declining resource. What is so awful about improving energy efficiency? We trumpet productivity improvements as driving our economy, why can't other efficiencies also improve it?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Your cutesy attempt to point the other way aside, the folks you gripe about wanting alternative energy development and conservation are being progressive

Well Im one of them.

while the approach you embrace is regressive

Oh so increasing supply is now considered regressive?

You want to invest more in early 20th century tech, while many of us see more potential in investing in later 20th century tech.

I want to use what works now and plan for the future.

After all, it is amusing that you will say we need to be drilling like mad in one sentence, and then in another say this is a refining issue and there is no shortage of oil. Those are contradictory statements.

Somday yhou will wake up and realise this is a balancing act. The reason they dont drill more is because they couldnt refine it anyway. We need to both drill and build new refineries,

What is so awful about developing solar, wind, and other technology (including long range fusion work.)

Nothing again Im all for it.

Seems a lot more intelligent to be investing in these than in a declining resource.

First off we have to live now. Secondly once more there is plenty of oil left. We havent even gotten half of it yet at best.

We trumpet productivity improvements as driving our economy, why can't other efficiencies also improve it?

They can but let the market drive it.

Do you think we suddenly started running out of oil around a year ago? Oil is a commodity and its pricwe is whatever they think they can get away wiith. Their predicting shortages in supply and thats why the prices are going up just like they did in the 70s when we were "running out of oil"

[Aenlic]

The current best estimate for total oil reserves world-wide, both discovered and as yet undiscovered, is about 1 trillion barrels.

Current consumption world-wide is about 25 billion barrels per year.

You do the math. That's 40 years of oil left at current consumption levels. But consumption is not steady. It's increasing. So, we have less than 40 years of oil left. But the shortages will start occurring much sooner than that as sources become harder to reach. That 1 trillion barrel estimate includes a rosy view of undiscovered sources. The last major oil reserve find was in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Kazakstan - 30 years ago. The idea that oil production will reach a peak in spite of still-existing reserves, because of a combination of increasing consumption and decreasing finds, is called the Hubbert Peak Oil Thesis.

What are we doing about it? What are we doing to prepare for something we've known about, in essence if not detail, for at least the last 20 years?

Not a damn thing. Not really.

Sources:

Petroleum Equities

Speech by Alan Greenspan to the FRB on this topic in 2004

[Gawain of Orkeny]

The current best estimate for total oil reserves world-wide, both discovered and as yet undiscovered, is about 1 trillion barrels.

You do the math. That's 40 years of oil left at current consumption levels. But consumption is not steady. It's increasing. So, we have less than 40 years of oil left.

Hey look the sky is falling


They have been saying that for how long now?


You dont even take into consideration shale oil. This is a their best quess it says. Well twenty years ago they were saying the samething. 20 years from now the same claims will still be being made. No matter what happens the market and free enterprise will handle it. There is no need for panic and extreme methods.

[Red Harvest]

Current consumption world-wide is about 25 billion barrels per year.

This number is likely a bit low, because there are various things being put on an oil equivalent basis (including the reserves.) There are so many factors I won't claim to understand a number of them, but I can see the forest for the trees. It depends also on what you couple it with.

Current production and use is at ~84 million bbl/day for a total of 30.7 billion bbl/yr. Growth over the past 20 years has been about 2% (this is used in various estimates...although it is often more like 1.6% actual.) Demand picks up when the world economy is strong, and flattens out when the economy is weak.

That is how I predicted the extended rise in prices by the way...it was elementary economic principles. We were emerging from a downturn so the industry numbers based on recent downturn influenced past were obviously bogus. Any one with the ability to read cyclic charts should have been able to see it. It was hilarious, I wish I still had all those reports now. They were all wishful thinking crap or worse yet, telling the gullible customers exactly what they wanted to hear. Doesn't mean I could get managers to listen...they think more like your average conservative in this forum, no I'm not kidding.

The true independent experts who study this have pointed out that the appropriate limitation estimates are *geological* and that tech reaches its limits.

[Red Harvest]

I want to use what works now and plan for the future.

No, you want to look at the past and continue to do what worked then. You are a mirror of corporate America at the present. Planning for the future is exactly what you try to discount. You dismiss it as a bunch of lefties and environmentalists. (Tempting to start an ozone/CFC discussion here.) That's why we haven't had a working energy policy. The energy bill that finally made it through was a mere drop in the bucket.

Somday yhou will wake up and realise this is a balancing act. The reason they dont drill more is because they couldnt refine it anyway. We need to both drill and build new refineries,

I'm wide awake. We haven't been doing a balancing act. The alternative energy investment fell to a trickle after the supply based crises of the 70's ended. Energy conservation has been nearly absent in industry since then--didn't seem to matter how good the rate of return was on my energy savings based projects, the managers were not interested. We have tech now that can start shifting our consumption, but it takes time, and we aren't making use of it. Our President openly ignores at least 2/3rds of the tools at his disposal.

Refineries? We've been over that popular piece of nonsense ad nauseum. It fails to explain today's market. In fact, there are efforts in the industry to shut down older refineries still--and I can think of one closure that is being opposed by the very "greenie" populations you complain about. Refinery capacity is added as needed...I should know, I've worked on several recent projects.

Your circular logic does not match the data.

First off we have to live now. Secondly once more there is plenty of oil left. We havent even gotten half of it yet at best.

Stick your head in the sand, poke your fingers in your ears. You want to go on PRETENDING that there is no problem. You have no solution other than to keep doing what we've been doing, despite real changes to the nature of the market and supply. We can live just fine now, but we can also invest in the future, rather than working on the wrong end of the beast.

Do you think we suddenly started running out of oil around a year ago? Oil is a commodity and its pricwe is whatever they think they can get away wiith. Their predicting shortages in supply and thats why the prices are going up just like they did in the 70s when we were "running out of oil"

You still can't get it...how many times do I have to explain the difference? That was an artificial supply reduction, this one is about demand outstripping supply, and not in an artificial way. It would not have mattered so much...but the U.S. no longer had excess supply, it hit its limit in 1970...as Hubbert predicted. But hey, you don't believe that approach. If you did, then you might understand what is wrong with your theories.

We've been running out of the lighter varieties of oil for decades (despite efforts to bolster production and "drill our way out") and now we're starting to fill the crunch. However, yes, we did start running out of production capacity about two years ago. If you go back and look at the "excess" supply capacity numbers I posted in the other thread the change is obvious (unless you are Helen Keller.) With excess supply capacity at less than 1% of total usage, there is no swing buffer, and growing production is critical just to prevent a major shortage. The Saudi's admit they are trying to keep up by putting in new production capacity. Everyone else is already tapped out.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

And what I keep trying to tell you is that even if we tap into the oil shale and the other as yet inaccessible sources then all you've done is doubled the available reserves. So instead of 40 years, we're talking 80 years and that's if we can suck up every possible drop and the current consumption rate remains unchanged!

And Im telling you your wrong. Again they said this years ago and we keep finding more. Again its just a matter of making it profitable to extract and find. Besides that in 80 years Im sure we will be consuming far less. If we were really running out of oil we would be doing a lot more about it. You want to believe the oil companies who are making this extra profit that their telling you their running out of product LOL. Heck thats one of my favorite sales pitches. Hey I only have two left you better grap one.

Stick your head in the sand, poke your fingers in your ears. You want to go on PRETENDING that there is no problem

I never said that. I know theres only so much oil and I said we need to develope alternative enrgy. My point is leave it to the market and science and not to the government. Have a little faith in humanity.

[Ser Clegane]

You want to believe the oil companies who are making this extra profit that their telling you their running out of product LOL.

Actually IIRC oil companies even tend to overstate their reserves.

Royal Dutch/Shell had to correct the value of their reserves downwards and received the appropriate reactions on the stock market.

So to say that oil companies play dramatize the situation it oversimplifying the situation a little bit.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

So to say that oil companies play dramatize the situation it oversimplifying the situation a little bit.

Well Im trying to get through to these guys

Yes, there is an inflation risk. Yes, both Britain and the US are in rate-raising mode. And yes, there are anxieties over terrorist attacks on oil installations. But the world is not running out of oil.
There may be many fears spooking the world's oil markets. But there is no oil "shortage", just as there was no oil "shortage" in the early 1970s or the early 1990s. There are our own apprehensions. And then there are the facts of the matter.

According to a paper in the latest edition of Science magazine, proven world oil reserves exceed 1 tn barrels. Overall, the paper reckons that the world retains more than three trillion barrels of recoverable oil resources. Far from oil "running out" as some might have it, the big story of the oil industry over the past 50 years has been the way in which technological change has continuously worked, not only to yield up new discoveries but also to upgrade the size and extent of existing fields.
The paper, Never Cry Wolf -- Why the Petroleum Age is Far from Over, cites the example of the Kern River field in California, first discovered in 1899. Calculations in 1942 suggested that 54 mm barrels remained. In fact, over the next 44 years the field produced 736 mm barrels and in 1986 was reckoned to have another 970 mm barrels remaining.

From 1981 to 1996, the estimated volume of oil in 186 well-known giant fields across the world discovered before 1981 rose from 617 to 777 bn barrels -- and this without new discoveries. This trend, the paper argues, is likely to continue. For example, the Kashagan field in Kazakhstan was deemedin the second half of the 1990s to hold between two and 4 bn barrels.
In 2002, after completion of only two exploration and two appraisal wells, estimates were officially raised to between seven and 9 bn barrels. In February this year, after four more exploration wells in the area, they were raised again to 13 bn barrels. Recovery rates from fields worldwide have also increased, from about 22 % in 1980 to 35 % today.

Doomsters are wrong -- there's plenty of oil

And again this isnt touching on shale oil. As I said its the enviormentalists who are behend this. They want alternative enrgy sources developed not because their cheaper but because their cleaner. Theres absolutley nothing wrong with that. In fact as a also stated Im all for it. But dont try telling us were running out of oil. They cant wait for that day. Again this is the hypocricy Im speaking about. Just come out and tell the truth.

More

From that snapshot the oil situation doesn't look good. But there's little reason to assume that the next five years will simply see a continuation of current trends. Thanks to a combination of higher prices, increased exploration and production spending, and improved technology (page 32), oil supplies are poised to grow much faster than they have in recent years. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a respected energy consultant, sees 20 or more major new fields coming on line each year through 2010. Altogether those fields could boost worldwide production capacity 15%, from 87.9 million barrels per day to 101.5 million by the end of the decade, CERA estimates. As a result, supply should exceed demand by 7 million bbl. per day, a huge leap from the current cushion of 1 million bbl. That should take pressure off prices. "OPEC countries have the potential, and [most] are increasing production," says Peter Jackson, a CERA researcher. "Non-OPEC production has increased at quite a lick compared to the 1990s."

Where is the new supply coming from? Pretty much across the globe. After hiking its exploration-and-production expenditures by 50% since 2000, to $12 billion a year, Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM ) expects to add more than 1.2 million bbl. per day of new supply by 2007 from 27 projects, including ones off the coast of Angola and Russia's Sakhalin Island. Chevron Corp. expects its Big Five fields in West Africa, Australia, the Gulf of Mexico, and Kazakhstan to generate 800,000 more bbl. per day by 2009 -- a third of its current production. "We've got that pretty well mapped out," says Chevron Vice-Chairman Peter J. Robertson. "Projects are more complex now. They take a little longer. There's still plenty of oil in the world."

Is There Plenty Of Oil?

[Red Harvest]

Gawain,

The funny part about the links is all the boundless enthusiasm based on speculation, rather than science. The second article is counting on production from fields that have not been established. (It also appears to be about 3 million bbl/day in excess of current actual production levels...but never mind that.) The article also fails to mention the decline of many fields, such as the mature ones mentioned in the prior article. The mature ones continue to produce less each year. Contrary to what the article says, oil production has been declining outside of the Persian Gulf and Former Soviet Union.

At the rate things are going, we should have a pretty good indication in about a year (barring global recession whacking demand.) Afterall, we've used nearly a trillion barrels already, and are on course to use another trillion over the next 25 years. So even 3 trillion additional would run out in 60 years or so. Not to mention the CO2 impact on our lives.

Of course, it's not all about running out...it is more about how fast can you reasonably produce it and what happens to a resource when the end of it can be seen.

[Red Harvest]

Actually IIRC oil companies even tend to overstate their reserves.

Royal Dutch/Shell had to correct the value of their reserves downwards and received the appropriate reactions on the stock market.

So to say that oil companies play dramatize the situation it oversimplifying the situation a little bit.

Yep, it was about a 20% adjustment initially (3.9 billion bbls), but it has been restated several times since then and it looks like it is 23% now. There have been a number of questionable reserve increases over the years by various components of the industry. There is considerable potential for this to burst upon us like the accounting scandals in the U.S. stock market. It is the same sort of thing, being "aggressive" with the numbers and pushing the envelop--the motivators are identical. There is plenty of wiggle room and the rules (weak as they are) vary greatly from country to country. The Saudi Aramco reserves are questioned as well...but there is no good way to confirm them.

The following has some very good comments in it.
Discussion of the World Oil Market

From the article:

The notion that finding and development (F&D) costs would steadily fall also now seems illusionary. While F&D costs stayed in a $5 to $7 per bbl range throughout the past decade, the total exploration and production capital expenditures rose from a steady $55 billion to $60 billion in the first half of the 1990s to over $124 billion in 2000. The sole reason that F&D costs per bbl stayed low was the rise in reported proven reserves.

New big discoveries are not happening we are now in the phase of doing a better job of extracting what we have.

Also from the article:

In 2004, oil markets finally began to shatter conventional beliefs. The widely held belief that $30 oil would cause a recession failed to pan out. The idea that high prices would soon induce a surge in new oil supplies never materialized. The theory that sustained growth in global oil demand was unlikely suddenly shifted to a more ominous question: Is oil demand growth now becoming a runaway train?

The bolded part is something I picked up on earlier...many articles talk of recoverable reserves at X dollars per barrel. By their logic, production should rise rapidly as price rises. Yet price hit levels far beyond what they predicted, and production is nowhere near keeping up (driving prices back down to predicted levels.) As some of the independent researches have noted, there are geological limits that are far more important than the current assumptions about recovery and tech improvement with regards to prooduction.

The article points to a system that is bottlenecked throughout. Distribution, production, exploration, and refining (on TYPE because 90% of discoveries are heavy crude.) It clearly shows this is a demand based problem, rather than some easily broken bottleneck. (Not mentioned with regards to refining is that its excess capacity in the U.S. exceeds the excess production capacity by several fold--note that is the excesses, not the totals.)

[Red Harvest]

I never said that. I know theres only so much oil and I said we need to develope alternative enrgy. My point is leave it to the market and science and not to the government. Have a little faith in humanity.

Rather than actively do something to address the problem, you want me to pray? Wish for the best? Hope folks realize what is happening before it actually occurs...like the most recent run up? I can't find any basis for having such faith in humanity at the moment.

This is the sort of problem where the role of government can be very positive in priming the market and development. Government is there to deal with the bigger issues that we can't prepare for with out it (defense, infrastructure, etc.) Govt has been the key component behind the build out of infrastructure. What we are talking about is not a welfare system for energy, but instead a strategic shift in investment and research. It depends on market and business, but the govt needs to help along the process so that we have things as they are needed, rather than later. With energy, the economic cost of responding late is huge because of the relative inelasticity. Especially when you already run a massive trade deficit...

The result of what you suggest is that we suffer the consequences of being behind, and that would work as your market driver. As I've pointed out, business will *respond*...later, not by being there waiting for us to catch up to them. They want the market clearly established and there before they invest. Government doesn't have to act that way. Even if we start to behave pro-actively, it won't help shift fleet fuel efficiency all that much for about 5 years. Ditto for major industry fuel efficiency--efficiency improvement in the short term usually comes from folks actually shutting down, becasue they can't afford to operate anymore. My approach differs in that I would prefer that we try to keep up or get in front of the problem, rather than chasing it.

The inelasticity of energy demand is largely absent from the "oil supply is not a problem" articles. Instead the articles say: demand will decline if prices rise, therefore producing self correction. They simply ignore the well known inelasticty of energy demand. I can't take such articles seriously.

What really happens when oil prices rise dramatically? From what I've seen looking at global growth and contraction is that *growth* in demand halts, but not so much the base usage. The base usage doesn't tend to shrink, at least not on the short scale of a year or two...despite doubling or tripling or more of prices.

[Strike For The South]

The oil cant be gone it needs to hold out for a couple of months just till I get my lisnce and my truck