The U.S. will become the world's biggest oil producer before 2020 and energy independent by 2030
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And kuwisdelu, I don't want to overlook the rest if your excellent post ......
To draw an anlogy,
I work in medicine. And people have a choice to refuse care, to refuse intervention, to refuse to be intubated, to refuse to be put on life support. Why do they refuse? Because the quality of life after such intervention will be so unbearable that they'd rather die than languish onward in that state.
With these new 21st century methods of oil extraction, we are resorting to desperate measures to exploit these unconventional and difficult-to-get-at oil reserves. We are raping the land, destroying vast stretches of wilderness, leaving entire communities broken and uninhabitable. Is life really worth the living in such perverted environments? And yet the inhabitants of such areas are often NOT being given the choice. This is piracy of the worst order.
To draw an anlogy,
I work in medicine. And people have a choice to refuse care, to refuse intervention, to refuse to be intubated, to refuse to be put on life support. Why do they refuse? Because the quality of life after such intervention will be so unbearable that they'd rather die than languish onward in that state.
With these new 21st century methods of oil extraction, we are resorting to desperate measures to exploit these unconventional and difficult-to-get-at oil reserves. We are raping the land, destroying vast stretches of wilderness, leaving entire communities broken and uninhabitable. Is life really worth the living in such perverted environments? And yet the inhabitants of such areas are often NOT being given the choice. This is piracy of the worst order.
I stopped reading your post right here at the red.
And then I read no further.
Are you saying that paying the price in actual people is "okay"??
Would you care to volunteer to sacrifice your own personhood upon the altar of this precious, precious god named "progress"??
And here's the rest of your post, which I am still too jaw-dropped to process.
And then I read no further.
Are you saying that paying the price in actual people is "okay"??
Would you care to volunteer to sacrifice your own personhood upon the altar of this precious, precious god named "progress"??
And here's the rest of your post, which I am still too jaw-dropped to process.
PD,
In 2008, you challenged us to bookmark a post of yours and return in three years (2011) to check it's validity.
This is the post: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2399034#post2399034
And the prediction:
With all due respect, and I truly mean that, the whole Peak Oil argument sounds like a preacher predicting the Rapture and then endlessly revising his predictions when it doesn't happen.
In 2008, you challenged us to bookmark a post of yours and return in three years (2011) to check it's validity.
This is the post: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2399034#post2399034
And the prediction:
With all due respect, and I truly mean that, the whole Peak Oil argument sounds like a preacher predicting the Rapture and then endlessly revising his predictions when it doesn't happen.
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Well, there's the 12/12 2012 thing, isn't there?
So it doesn't matter.
It's just a month away!
*stocks up on canned food and life-rafts*
So it doesn't matter.
It's just a month away!
*stocks up on canned food and life-rafts*
I understand the visceral reaction to what JSF said, but what he said is technically true.
Just about every decision we make has a trade-off, and frequently that cost involves people in non-obvious ways.
For example, having cars in a society comes with benefits and costs. We travel faster, but people also get hit by cars. We could go sans car and all walk. But we've made a decision to have progress (cars), even though we know there is built-in cost in human injuries/lives. We can reduce that cost, but it'll never be zero. Moreoever, there is probably a specific community that is especially negatively-impacted by cars (I'm guessing the elderly, slow walkers, people with bad sights/hearings, etc.)
The bottom line is that we can never avoid humans costs. The calculation is always whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
#
The other point I wanted to make about oil exploration is this. I understand the security benefit of increasing oil production and having oil sources on our (US) land. It beats having oil in Saudi Arabia.
But, again, there is a trade-off.
The fact is that technological improvements are profit sensitive. Whether oil is at $50 or $200 per barrel has an enormous impact on the economics of alternative energy. The cheaper the oil, the less the impetus to wean ourselves off it. Not to mention decreased economic incentive for alternative energy.
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Not to derail here, but anytime someone says "diversification" I immediatly hear the scene from Johnny Dangerously where he talks to his gang about diversification.
Because there's a couple of Japanese gangs out there, and they're going to do it smarter and they're going to do it better.
Your analogy is invalid because there is no equal comparison beween manufacturinng and driving cars which MIGHT kill people as compared to strip-mining entire mountains which WILL destroy the towns in and around those mountains. People die from automotive activity only when the law gets violated. Towns get destroyed from frakking and strip mining activities when huge drilling companies do exactly what the law allows then to do.
My complaint is not against the truthfulness of whether crummy actions get deliberately carried out in the name of progress. My complaint is whether anyone here thinks it should be a-okay for good people to stand by and ALLOW crummy actions to get deliberately carried out in the name of progress.
Roger, I dont mind at all that you took me up on my challenge and showed my prediction to be wrong. I have never forgotten that challenge and have fully realized for the past two years that my prediction didn't unfold in the time frame I delinneated.
I have rethought it over the past two years and come to the following conclusions:
1) Nailing yourself down to an exact time frame is always more often than not going to be proven an error.
2) The economic factors inherent in oil (specifically) and energy (in general) was more powerful than I imagined -- which is to say that the phenomenon of "demand destruction" was a stronger driver to turning nations upside down and re-ordering how we conduct commervce than anyone in the Peak Oil community realized.
In short: the energy crisis is a global economic crisis which manifests itself in our civilization more prominantly via punctuated blurts of scattered economic crises than it does via gas lines and the shortages of goods. And yet this six-degrees-to-Kevin-Bacon level of separation between oil and the economy is not real handy to the ability of any Peak Oiler to point at a given crisis and say "You see! It's all because of the oil!" But most matters regarding economic theory are (kinda like views on psychology) elusive and debateable. I wish it were all more concretely demonstrable with the level of simplicity found in a typical episode of Mr. Wizard, but it's not.
It all comes down then to your own views of economic theory and where you believe energy --especially from oil-- fits into any economic model.
So the farm people who lease their land out to the oil companies for frakking are... bad?
It seems that the checks aren't bouncing.
To use one of your favorite retorts:
Bullshit.
(Okay, I'm not angry or anything, but I've been wanting to use that for a while since you have so much fun using it.)
Driving cars WILL result in human casualties. It's not a MIGHT. People don't die only when traffic laws get violated. People are imperfect beings driving imperfect machines in an imperfect world. If if we all tried our best to drive safely, accidents will happen. Mechanical or human errors are inevitable. Driving cars entails a human cost. Insurance actuaries can quantify that the frequency and magnitude of that cost. We can minimize that cost, but it will never be zero.
Same thing with construction. We build tall buildings even though we know an X amount of construction will entail a Y amount of casualty. Workers will fall off the scaffold and get hurt. It's not IF; it's how often. Yet we choose to accept that workers will die because we don't want to live in one story huts.
There is almost always a human cost to every technological action. The fight is over how much human cost is acceptable.
So the farm people who lease their land out to the oil companies for frakking are... bad?
It seems that the checks aren't bouncing.
My experience with this comes from visiting the Hidatsa-Mandan-Arikara reservation.
Years ago, their tribes were nearly wiped out by smallpox. Then the government built a dam, flooding the land on which they'd lived and farmed for hundreds of years.
Today, it turns out the land to which they were moved has oil. It's a second chance. It's a good chance. But how capable are they, right now, of truly taking advantage of it?
The people have lived in poverty. They've been underprivileged and undereducated. Suddenly, they find themselves with lots of money. The elders recognize this. It's happened before. It's unsustainable. And it's just as easy to say its their own fault for spending unwisely, but it's not so simple when it's the punchline of centuries of being taken advantage of.
So people take the cash and spend it. Meanwhile, the people who come to take the oil don't care how they hurt the reservation. They give jobs to the young people. They give them big fat checks. They don't care about the culture of unlawfulness and rape and petty crime they leave behind, because they can leave the rez, and the cops have no authority anymore. They don't care about where they dump the frack water, leaving the land dryer and deader than it already was. They don't live with it.
And those of us screaming about sustainability, about investing that oil money in education and something that will bring good things long after the oil is all gone, those people are voted out of office, ostracized, ignored, because the people want their money, and they want it now.
And in the end, when the oil is gone, and the money is spent, and debts pile up, and all the oil company's promises end up being as hollow as we feared they were, the land won't be the way it was before, and it was bad enough already, because all the good land is underwater so the people in Bismarck can live easy. And everything will be worse than it was before. And "I told you so" won't bring any kind of comfort to the people who watched their community slowly sell itself to death.
So yeah. Maybe it's good in the short term. Maybe it's all their choice. It's what they want. That doesn't mean it doesn't still bring a fucking tear to my eye.
That doesn't mean I think it's fucking worth it.
I don't think the oil is bad. I don't think the money is bad. But I think people ought to know what we're really getting for it, and what we're giving up in exchange.
I understand lots of people don't care.
I understand maybe it's not their problem.
I just want them to think about it.
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I'm backing blacbird on this. I've seen countless projections on this stuff (it's a good part of my day job to understand oil and gas resources and production) that indicate, even if the U.S. doesn't become #1 in the world, they're going to get very close. I'll also agree that becoming oil independent is unlikely given that the U.S. is a very big consumer (though there appears to be peak demand in the U.S. lately as demand is no longer rising, at least for now).
Thanks to new technologies, there's a very large amount of oil in the U.S. that can be economically produced if oil is above $80/barrel and an immense amount if that price is $100/barrel. This is not fantasy and the "skeptics" of its potential, so far, have been proved embarrassingly wrong as U.S. oil production continues to rise past even optimistic projections.
Plus, so far, costs to develop this stuff don't necessarily have to go up. Yes, demand for technical resources increases, which increases some costs, but companies work really hard on improving efficiencies at every step in the value chain. Faster drilling. Faster fracking. Multi-well pads. Five years after starting to develop shale-gas plays and they're still decreasing times it takes to drill a well, so you can expect it for these oil plays too.
Now, I'm not going to endorse production of this oil. There are carbon issues with it (mainly that peak oil isn't going to bail us out of our GHG problems). And, yes, we need diversification and to move to renewables. I'm just stating some facts that are difficult to ignore in terms of its potential.
Anyways, you may not see a response to any replies to this post, simply because I deal with this stuff in my day job and I come to this board to get away from my day job.
Suffice to say that, to ignore reality is pretty risky when trying to figure out where you want your country to go.
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Put your jaw back into place. I can understand you getting pissed off but what I'm talking about is historical fact and LaGrunion put it a little better than I did (or maybe will).
When I wrote the sentence you're so aggrieved with, look at history and tell me when any country has not sacrificed its communities and people at one time or another. I did NOT say I agreed with it--I don't, FYI--nor did I say it was desirable. All things being equal, I would say let nature go back to nature and let's live off that.
But things are never equal, and times being what they are and technology being what it is, with progress the price one pays is, yes, health of a community or disruption of the ecological balance. With fracking, you're going to get runoff. With mines, you get waste. With steel-making plants you get waste. Even with the new solar panel-making companies (and some of them are deeply in debt with money provided by the US gov't) the tech used to make those panels produces waste. All of this will eventually disrupt the environment in one way or another. I am not saying I'm in favor of it at all. I'm simply stating a fact...a very unfortunate one.
As for health, I don't know where you live or if you can live by just using a fireplace and chopping wood for fuel. If you can, good for you, and I'm not being snide when I say that. I live in Japan and yes, here it's quite polluted in some cities (mine being one of them) and yes, I AM paying for it. It is the choice I have made.
According to this seemingly comprehensive list, 10% of tax credits, grants & energy loans have gone to companies that are either 'gone bankrupt or are circling the drain'.
Is 10% high? Nope - it's shockingly low. That's part of venture capital - you are investing in highly risky companies.
As a comparison, it had failure rate much lower than that of that of a certain Bain Capital, when it was investing in companies.
Of course, it's a bit of an unfair comparison, as tax-credits and grants have different intended outcomes than venture capital .. but I'm still awed by how low the 10% failure rate is (so far).
I would have guessed, by the media coverage, that it would have been massively higher.
Mac
To use one of your favorite retorts:
Bullshit.
(Okay, I'm not angry or anything, but I've been wanting to use that for a while since you have so much fun using it.)
Hey, William led the way. I just picked up on his pioneering.
No one should ever sit in a board room and SERIOUSLY ask the question: "How man human deaths are acceptable to us each year?"
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So the farm people who lease their land out to the oil companies for frakking are... bad?
It seems that the checks aren't bouncing.
No. They foolishly lease the land with the blind trust that the drilling companies won't poison the entire county.
The farmers are being trusting. The drillers are violating the trust.
And after their fracking fluids get "accidentally" spilled into the environment, the government is then faced with two choices: either make the drillers clean it up, or contract a third party to clean it up. (The third choice of doing nothing is unacceptable because that's when people and wildlife die, and whole communities become ghost towns.) But when a third party contractor TRIES to come in and clean it up, they are faced with the need-to-know urgency of having the drilling company disclose to them the types of chemicals used in the fracking solution. But then the drilling company plays the despicable card of commerce-is-more-important-than-conscience and insist that the chemical composition of the fracking fluids is proprietary information and it would be detrimental to their future as a business if they revealed the secret formula of the fluids. So the government caves in to that insipid card and says "Okay, you silly little curmugeon of a drilling company, YOU clean it up, and give us a report card at the end letting us know how well you did." And of course, the report card is always an A+.
I'm backing blacbird on this. I've seen countless projections on this stuff (it's a good part of my day job to understand oil and gas resources and production) that indicate, even if the U.S. doesn't become #1 in the world, they're going to get very close. I'll also agree that becoming oil independent is unlikely given that the U.S. is a very big consumer (though there appears to be peak demand in the U.S. lately as demand is no longer rising, at least for now).
Thanks to new technologies, there's a very large amount of oil in the U.S. that can be economically produced if oil is above $80/barrel and an immense amount if that price is $100/barrel. This is not fantasy and the "skeptics" of its potential, so far, have been proved embarrassingly wrong as U.S. oil production continues to rise past even optimistic projections.
Plus, so far, costs to develop this stuff don't necessarily have to go up. Yes, demand for technical resources increases, which increases some costs, but companies work really hard on improving efficiencies at every step in the value chain. Faster drilling. Faster fracking. Multi-well pads. Five years after starting to develop shale-gas plays and they're still decreasing times it takes to drill a well, so you can expect it for these oil plays too.
Now, I'm not going to endorse production of this oil. There are carbon issues with it (mainly that peak oil isn't going to bail us out of our GHG problems). And, yes, we need diversification and to move to renewables. I'm just stating some facts that are difficult to ignore in terms of its potential.
Anyways, you may not see a response to any replies to this post, simply because I deal with this stuff in my day job and I come to this board to get away from my day job.
Miguelito, I've seen your posts about the oil industry before and I appreciate your input. (I didn't realise you were adverse to reliving your worplace here at AW, and i can respect your need NOT to talk shop while here. So if you choose not to answer, that's fine.)
My concerns here are limited to two issues, and no one here has disputed those two issues yet. I am concerned about 1) the non-sustainability of energy via oil, and the b) resulting societal disruption that will come from the economics of oil sprialling out of control in price.
The future of American oil production is a future of EXPENSIVE oil prodictions. And the costs incurred by the oil extractors will get passed along to all down-stream consumers of that oil. No one here in this thread has yet disputed my assertion that tomorrow's oil will be forever expensive. Nor has anyone disputed my assertion that it will change our economy into one of permanent austerity.
Roger took me to task on timeline predictons of "when." And I now know better than to pin down an exact "when." However, the OP news article of this thread is laying out a timeline of 2030. And if they are correct about American oil in 2030, then I will say that by 2030 (if the OP article is correct), American oil production will be staggeringly expensive, and the rest of real-world prices will follow.
If you want to pay a price with people, I obviously can't stop you. But that's not my vote.
That's not how economics works. There is a global energy marketplace. If American oil becomes too expensive to compete with other sources, it will not be produced. We already have examples of that very thing having happened, notably with the Rocky Mountain oil shale experiment of the 1970s.
Likewise, right now, a lot of alternate fuel technologies have a difficult time competing with petroleum because they remain too expensive.
Now, since you've taken my previous posts in this thread as being utterly sympathetic to the destruction of people and communities involved, and the environment, let me reiterate what I said in my first post: None of this factual matter takes into account the issue of increased CO2 emissions. To which I'll add the additional potential costs to producing communities.
But your initial response to what I said was "Total bullshit". Which implied that you thought the story about the increase in petroleum production was some kind of fabrication.
It isn't, and that's a fact, Jack.
caw
And are we now going back to those Rocky Mountain shales due to the sea-change in the avalable deposits and the global oil markets?
One way I look at oil reserves is like looking at the tomatoes at your local produce stand. There are the really nice tomatoes, there are the "okay" tomatoes, there are the barely-passable tomatoes, there are the pathetic tomatoes, and then there are the total crap tomatoes you wouldn't even toss to a beggar on the street.
All the really nice tomaroes are gone. The "okay" tomatoes are quickly running out. And we're now all quibbling over the rights to the barely-passable tomatoes. The pathetic tomatoes are already being hashed over by various *cough* "future-thinking" interests. And as for the crap you wouldn't even toss to a beggar on the street, even though many voices are right now saying "Oh but we'd NEVER be desperate enough to bother with that junk!" I don't think so. If there's oil to drill/mine/boil/synthesize, then someone in your industry will drill for it. And after the "pathetic" tomatoes are nearly spent, you and I both knoe that those not-worthy-of-a-beggar tomatoes will easilly get snatched up at part of this 2030 scenario being touted here. So I don't see the article in the OP as something to be happy about. I see it as a veiled declaration of the horrible future of energy desperation we are heading for.
Right now, those are unworthy-of-a-street-beggar tomatoes. At least ... for now they are.
No, that was one poster in particular who started it, and a few other posters rushed to his defense. I never once saw you step up to the "Meh, taint no thang to pay the price of societal progress with other peple's lives and souls." At least I'm pretty sure I never saw you go there. (I'd be disappointed if you did.)
I'm not super concerned about CO2 and global warming as my INITIAL concern. I'm instead primarilly concerned about societal collapse due to energy scarcity. And my cries of "bullshit" are against anyone making the flat-out stupid claim that --as the title of this thread declares-- we will achieve that fantasy called "energy independence" a) by 2030 and b) via the alleged help of our allegedly becoming an oil producer more prolific than Saudi Arabia (by 2030, no less). The very phrase "ENEGRY INDEPENDENCE" was what set off my bullshit meter and made me zero in on this thread like a fly on .... on whatever form of mannure you like. I am not saying it's impossible for us to go after the not-worthy-of-a-street-beggar tomatoes (as bone-heased of an errand it would be for us to do so). I am instead saying there is no way it will make us energy independent to do so. If anything, the crappy beneath-a-beggar tomatoes will send us headlong into terminal energy deficit because getting at the crappy oil costs us more energy than we can get out of that oil. (There's that pesky ERoEI thing again.)
Nope. Wrong. (You must be tired, bb, I know it's late in Alaska right now.) I used the word "Bullshit" in repsonce to the OP itself. In fact, when I used that word back on Page One of this thread, you hadn't even joined the conversation yet. (Nor did you even once say you will gladly pay for the price of progress in human lives. Not sure why you think I accused you of that one.)
Perhaps you took it that way. But my intended mesage was: "We can go after the crappy
And so to anyone who sings ""Energy Independence via oil" I will say the word "Bullshit" again and again and again.
I don't doubt that we can dig, drill, boil, simmer, flambe and squeeze from rocks more oil than the carbon molecules of this planet could ever dream of becoming for us. But the ERoEI question is what dictates that such accomplishments will never make us energy independent.
Can we of the USA, here in the physical universe, with current known technology, start making more oil than Saudi Arabia?? YES.
Will it make us "Energy Independent" to so do?? Hell no (or ... "bullshit").
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Plot Device;7743932I'm not super concerned about CO2 and global warming as my INITIAL concern.[/quote said: