Colin Campbell: “The term Peak Oil refers to the maximum rate of the production of oil in any area under consideration, recognising that it is a finite natural resource, subject to depletion.” - http://www.peakoil.net/
Exceprt from the documentary film The End of Suburbia:
Oil in the earth is not like oil in your gas tank. When you totally run out in your tank, at that point there is a problem. It doesn’t run out until the last drops. With oil in the earth it’s a different sittuation which falls prey to the economic forces of supply and demand.
We can’t pump oil out of the earth at any arbitraty rate.
Oil production follows a bell cruve even if it is one oil field, a nation’s oil reserves or the entire world.
The first time you tap an oil field you get a gusher. You drill more on that oil field the presure goes down, the table goes down. At the begining of tapping into an oil fields resource, you are pumping out the lite sweet oil which has risen to the top, it’s very cheap to refine and takes less energy to refine than the heavy oil that has setteled on the bottom. The heavy hard to get oil is down deep so you have to pump in water, carbon dioxide, natural gas if you’ve to some, to start forcing the oil out. This is now happening in Saudi Arabia.
So, when you start pumping an oil field you begin a steep climb up the bell curve, getting more and more oil out until you hit that fields plateau. At about half way into the fields oil supply the rate you can get oil out peaks. After that point, no matter how much effort you put into it, you can’t extract the resource at the same rate. The rate of extraction peaks then begins to fall.
Currently the world is in a plateau of oil production. Many experts beleive that we are either approaching the peak or are at the peak of the world’s oil production capacity. Eventually we will enter the arc of decline. Reaching the oil peak is a phenomenon that you can’t be sure of until you see it in the rear view mirror. Usually by the time it is clear, the peak event is far in the past and you are well into a different era.
Once you hit decline, which can be a bumpy sort of decline, you hit a gap between what you would like to be useing and the actual supply available. Peaking means categoricly that you no longer grow. Crossing over the peak also means that each barrell of oil you produce will be more expensive. It will also take more energy to get out of the ground. It will be a lesser quality of oil which will take more energy to refine.
You can watch The End of Suburbia at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug
2 comments:
This seems like one of those "duh" movements. In my small little world I suppose I don't realize that the general populace doesn't already cotton to this. I mean, haven't people been saying this for quite some time? Shit, one of my peeps works at Exxon/Mobil and he's fully aware that sucking hydrocarbons from a finite supply underground is not a long term strategy (although his 401k is fucking going through the roof on company stock - most profitable company in the world, etc.) So, what's the plan stan? Since we're aware that oil is going on a downswing, what's the alternative, or is Peak Oil merely an awareness campaign?
I posted a response to this comment called Peak Oil Plan: Sustainable Energy
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