There's a good chance this is still a Chicken Little issue. An article in a journal does not make it true.

Nonetheless, it will eventually be true. What should be done about it? Obviously take the brakes off other forms of energy, such as coal seam gas and nuclear.

There should never be a shortage of energy, as long as the market is free to innovate.

DavidL:

Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as that, and that's because it's not just energy that we get from oil, it's...well...everything.

The entire global food network relies on it for the packaging, transport, and manufacture of the food we eat. Everything from the tyres on the trucks that deliver it, to the packaging that keeps it from spoiling, oil is deeply ingrained in our day to day lives, beyond mere energy and petrol.

I'm not as much of a pessimist as to say it's an intractable problem, but it's a very real one, and when the oil begins running out we are going to require a global cultural shift to find solutions.

Unfortunately first will come the shock, and how we respond to that will determine whether we're in any state conducive to developing those solutions.

Meanwhile, in the real world, new sources of natural gas and improvements in the technology of its extraction have added immensely to the world's energy resources, a fact conveniently ignored by alarmists.

Michael Lardelli

BBBBWWWWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Okay, so you've been peddling this line for some time now in defiance of self-evident reality. The article by those two deluded scientsts starts from the peak oil assumption. It is no way verifies that assumption. That Nature has chosen to print the item shows the influence of the two scientsts or the depths to which the journal has sunk.

Pound this into your head. The peak oil buisness only ever referred to easy lift oil - the stuff pumped out of onshore wells.. go back and look at the original thesis. Now we could argue whether the flattening in conventional production evident at this time is actually a peak, or OPEC deciding not to invest in new production facilities, for internal reasons.

But there are still vast reserves of unconventional oil and major new discoveries at great depths - notably off Brazil's coast - which have yet to come on stream. Oil prices will determine how fast production shifts away from OPEC.

Sorry, but your thesis has passed its use by date. The article in nature simply underlines how naive even senior, distinquished scientsts can be when they stray outside their own disciplines.

Curmudgeon,

Here's a vast reserve of unconventional oil.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/kunzig-text

and here's the latest round in the controversy accompanying it.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/president-obama-rejects-keystone-xl-pipeline/story?id=15387980

Even if there is oil still to be found, wouldn't it make sense to have a duel power system, and eventually get off oil and coal. Nuclear is still causing problems with its safety, once it has been disturbed. Nuclear plants have to be bomb proof or else they will fail. And has anyone made one bomb proof yet. Certainly not the one in Japan.
The whole trouble is nothing real will be done until no one can afford to put fuel in a car any more.
We should be pushing for alt; headway before this happens.

Poirot the fact that Obama is a ratbag greenie, who has been preventing the US exploiting it's own huge reserves of oil, or stopping the pipeline from Canada is well known. Most know that the major donors to his campaign are set to benefit from this. Along with the billions he has handed out to alternative energy companies, [many now bankrupt], this type of corruption has become a hallmark of his administration.

Have you noticed he has jumped on the shale gas band wagon, a reversal of his trying to prevent it until now. Must want to get reelected.

Michael we now know we have new sources of transport fuel in the huge gas deposits now available. WE are not going to run out of energy.

We have all that coal, which if we don't do the sensible thing & burn it to make electricity, will be available to produce all the chemicals we now do from oil & gas.

We have at least 100 years of energy, & if we can't develop new technologies in that time, [by private enterprise, not government grants], we deserve to fail.

Sorry mate, you are not going to turn peak oil into the new global warming con job, now that it has failed.

What none of these people leaving comments seem to understand is that Peak Oil is not about reserve size - it is about FLOW RATES. Peak Oil means peak oil production as measured in millions of barrels per day. As the quality of the oil resources declines (i.e. the remaining oil is denser, deeper under the sea, in smaller average field sizes, is more difficult to extract etc.) then the total flow rate that can be achieved declines. Quite simply, the oil gets more expensive to extract (which is just an economics world reflection of the fact that more of the world's total energy flow is having to be put back into energy production - i.e. the energy profitability of energy production is falling). It would not matter if the entire planet Earth was made up of 50% hydrocarbons - if those hydrocarbons cannot be extracted at an energy profit then the extraction activity simply cannot occur. Shale gas, shale oil etc may sound exciting but it invovles a phenomenal amount of drilling per unit volume produced since the wells deplete rapidly. Also, the resource is dispersed which causes logistical problems for collection, transport to refineries etc. If any of the people commenting here had actually read the King and Murray article they would realise that the article is describing how, despite massive price signals, the production rate of oil has stalled since 2005 (that is 7 years ago now!). Alternative forms of oil production exist but they are expensive and cannot be scaled up to meet the drop in production of conventional oil from existing fields which is running at around 5% per year. Soon the drop in conventional production will overtake the increase in non-conventional and then you will see an decline in total production. Pound this simple concept into your head Curmudgeon!

Poirot - yep, there are activists protests, but there will always be activist protests. That they don't want the pipeline is hardly surprising. Peak oil is still dead.

Michael_In_Adelaide - you've hit on it!.. flow rates are indeed important. the question has always been will the rates of production be maintained and increased, despite the ongoing shift from OPEC to non-OPEC oil? That is far more important than any blather about peak oil, and what the original forecasts were about. The original proponents (Campbell and Laherrere) of the forecasts in their modern form were never concerned over the world running out oil, as such, but of disruption due to the switch from conventional to unconventional oil. Good work!

Peak oil and global climate change are to different equations, and both are real. Climate change needs less pollution, and peak oil means more money for the same amount, of pollution. Even though one will compliment the other, this should not be seen as a conspiracy, for the sake of people like Hasbeen, who seem to have a problem with climate change and peak oil occurring at the same time.

No thinking person, unless one of the gravy train passengers, could possibly believe in global warming any longer, after all the science recently produced, & the exposure of the warmers tricks.

Are you a gravy train rider 579, or just a non thinker?

Atman commented on "immense" gas finds.
The shale gas finds in the US are not the bonanza many expected and
some of the major companies in the field such as Chesapeake have
stopped drilling because it is just not economic.
Recent articles on natural gas prospects have been rather sobering.

http://tinyurl.com/72fhe4y

When you have depletion rates of 25% a year, you have to be drilling
flat out to stand still.

Often you hear of these MASSIVE finds of oil such as Brazil.
Just divide their expected resources by 85 million and receive a shock
on how many days it would supply the world.
Then wait till what they say the reserves are and it all might reach
into next week.

The oil sands in Canada will be fine but the cost in energy to get it
has been so high, that while they can mix it with cheaper oil it is
not too bad, but as the mix gets more oil sands into it the cost will
cut back its production.
It is not expected that Canada will get above 5 Mbd.
Also it takes a lot of natural gas to produce it. ERoEI again.

No, the real problem is that the politicians are suppressing the
reports, and I think it is because they dread being asked;
"And what are you going to do about it ?"

Bazz that is pretty good spin there mate.

The reason for the slowdown in exploitation of shale gas is the huge glut that has developed as too many companies flooded the market, before it developed to absorb the bonanza.

Once the chemical industries catch up, & start to use the stuff as feed stock, just watch the price rocket.

Meanwhile home hearing is available at prices not seen in a couple of decades, & even the price of electricity is dropping.

You're living in a fools world if you think the gas is not extremely cheep to harvest, & your reference said as much.

Michael in Adelaide. I think that is a very useful comment. I claim no expertise in oil production estimates, flows etc but my son in an expert. He tells me that the world is in no danger of running out of oil any time soon, provided, and it is a big if, we are prepared to pay the costs of extraction. Unless we find feasible alternatives to oil, which is highly unlikely in the forseeable future, we are going to have to be prepared to pay a significantly higher cost.

What I found more interesting in the article is the fact that Labor and the Coaliiton have twice united to suppress debate on the topic and suppressed an important (now leaked) analysis. Do they so little trust our intelligence that this issue joins a long list of others that dare not be aired for fear that it might give rise to awkward questions.

Hasbeen,
Well thats the catch, it is cheap, but the enormous investment
needed to get a transition to CNG for other than power stations.
I wouldn't know what percentage of chemical plants use Nat Gas now but
I suspect it would be quite high.
As you said it is cheap to harvest once you get it but the depletion
rate spoils the fun. The big fuel need is for transportation systems
as that need is so much bigger than all else.
The ERoEI goes down as soon as you start compressing it for cars and
trucks and the refit of all service stations would be a massive cost.
The transport would need a lot more tankers than petrol tankers.
Not as bad as hydrogen but still significant.

I think it should be kept for industrial process heating and
electricity generation, fertiliser production and plastics.

The kiwis been on the CNG since the late 70,s, Fill er up at home.
CNG good for the atmosphere, best not tell hasbeen.

This is an important article and further research from those doubting its varacity would be worthwhile.

Where people fail to join the dots relates to our economic way of life. First world countries, and those aspiring to our way of life, depend on a growth economy. We use fractional reserve banking which means all money (whether real or electronic) is created (lent) into the system as credit (really debt) at interest. This requires a growing economy, estimated to be at least 3% per annum, to remain functional and provide the growing goods and services.

Concurrently you must have cheap energy to maintain this system, i.e. energy inputs must remain below a certain level of GDP or they cause economic (and the resultant social) chaos. Following the oil spike in July 2008 ($147 per barrel) the economic crisis unfolded, the sub-prime mortgage issue in the U.S. was just the match that lit the fuse.

Cheap oil is the key driver for economic success, yes the low hanging fruit is gone, now we are exploiting the deep ocean oil and the less refinable oil remaining elsewhere. This scenario guarantees higher oil prices.

Alternative do not have the EROEI of oil, nor do touted other future energy resources hold much sway for the future. Get ready for a much greater constrained world moving forward.

I you can't grow some of your own food now, I would suggest you start to learn how or at the very least teach your children, they are going to need these skills in the future.

There is no energy shortage.The elites just want to monopolise the supply.Peak oil is like Global Warming,very exaggerated.There are plenty of alternatives to oil.We have enough coal for 200 yrs and new technology will fill the gap, ie cold fusion.

Both AGW and peak Oil are alarmist agendas being used to subjugate the masses.

Geoff of Perth

no new research is required.. people have been warning of peak oil for decades without realising that it doesn't refer to a peak of total oil supply, as noted in the earlier posts..

The article overlooks major new developments in the energy field, particularly in the US, in order to retread tired, old scare stories. Given recent developments, the author must be one of the few left who bothers with peak oil..

Other posters, also unwilling to let this scare story go, have tried to get around the fact of new discoveries by claiming that really they won't last long.. they are assuming that the Brazilian and Gulf fields are the last to be discovered in deep water and that the reserve estimations will not grow substantially as the existing field is explored.. which always happens. they are also overlooking the vast reserves of unconventional oil.

Peak oil is dead.. forget it..

Yes 579 I heard about that, I just wonder if they still use the system.
In the US you can buy the compressors off the shelf.
I wonder though if everyone did that would the gas mains cope or would
the whole city have to have its capacity increased.
Bit like for electric cars, have to increase the mains capacity.

One catch with CNG cars, you have to purge the tank every time you refill.

Hasbeen your proof that global warming was all made up clearly has been missed by the rest of us living in the real world. What is the bet everyone that Hasbeen thinks at least one of these is true.
they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Evolution is false! the world is only 6,000 years old! 911 was an inside job.

The Author has tried in vain to get the right wingers on this sight to think. They just can't get it. One can only think they must be surprised everytime they eat the last lolly in the lolly jar.
Oil will runout some day it's a simply as that, just as the sun will stop one day.
More importantly however oil will get dear and dear to buy. The free market will not help us, as not even the yanks will allow market forces to do what they do.
So what do we do, we have to start planning for it now as there will be lot of people with their head in the sand just like climate change.

Kenny, as a sailor, with commercial masters tickets, & a bloke who breed horses for fun, I started getting pretty excited at the talk of peak oil in the 70s. Here the world was coming to me, my skills, & my hobbies, all at once.

I could sail the new wind powered cargo ships that would be required, or I could breed all the horses to pull the carts we'd need. Fortunately I didn't hold my breath then, or the next time, & won't this time either.

I reckon my son will still be driving my classic old sports cars, long after I'm gone, & they are petrol powered.

Meanwhile let me know when you want a skipper for your sailing ship, I'll love it. But if you need me to breed up a herd of horse power to pull your carts, you'd better hurry. I've only got one stallion left, & he's over 20, so wont be breeding much longer.

Once we've used all this gas, we then have all the tundra methane, we should be able to harvest, then the deep sea methane to follow. Fellers your kidding your self, with probably wishful thinking, that we're going to run out of energy any time soon.

These discussions are handicapped by what seems to be ignorance about micro-economics. The fact is that there is a supply curve and a demand curve for petroleum products. On the supply side, it is evident that the higher the price, the more fuel can be produced and return a suitable return to the investor. There are many sources of supply including shale oil, tar sands, coal to oil conversion as well as shale gas, natural gas etc. There is also the possibility of working over old oil fields for tertiary recovery.

Clearly some of these approaches are capital intensive and require sustained high oil prices to be viable. However, there is no doubt that oil supplies are more than sufficient if current prices could be guaranteed for, say, 20 years.

There is a demand side response to higher prices as well. Consumers find ways to use fuel more efficiently, notably by adopting diesel powered European cars, but also electric cars of various kinds.

Bazz The compressors are available in NZ, and there is no purging of gas, a small amount of gas escapes when you release the re-fueler.

579, There is a gas which is left in the tank that needs to be purged.
I was told the name by my son's father in law who has been involved in
the design of natural gas buses. Unfortunately it is one of those
chemical names that are unpronounceable.
It builds up in the tank, so perhaps it is in liquid form.
Thats is all I know about it.

Curmudgeon, it takes a long time to develop an ocean oil field and as
it comes on line it will partly offset the decline of old fields.
This is exactly what has been calculated to show that these new large
fields cannot offset completely the decline.

I suggest that you read some of Chris Skrebowski, the ex Editor of Petroleum Review, work on his Mega projects.

He covers this very argument and is certainly more knowledgeable than
me on this. That work has been repeated by the Upsalla Global Energy
Group and the IEA. It was why the IEA stated that we need to discover
a Saudi Arabia every two years just to stand still.

Have we discovered even one Saudi Arabia in the last five years ?

Just a thought. If the peak oil theory is wrong, why then has America's production of oil declined since the 1970 (just when Hubbert said it would)? Ditto for north sea oil and gas. The US of A imports 2/3 of their oil requirements as it is.

If an individual oil field can decline then why not the entire production of oil planet wide? Surely advances in technology would reverse this decline? Has it? If tar sand could take up the slack the America's oil production would have increased to meet demand (certainly in the USA)? Yet they are still importing oil.

The problem is producing the oil at a cost we can pay. There would seem to be little economic inventive to produce oil of no one can afford it (and demand then falls so less exploration as its not economic to do so).

The IEA says world production has peaked (conventional oil). http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil -- they have access to much better data then us, I think they would know. I guess we're all going to see how it pans out from here...

Bazz i know what you are talking about, the residue is from manufactured natural gas, not the gas from the ground.
natural gas is made from wood and farm trash, which has a sticky residue.
You have been conversing with a greenie, be careful, they may contaminate you.
I wasn't aware they were using manufactured natural gas in vehicles.

Ahhhh 579, maybe you have a point there, I will have to ask.
My son's father-in-law was managing director of Dennis and
is an engineer.
Dennis is a manufacturer of buses and fire engines in the UK.
They built natural gas buses.

I think the natural gas in the UK comes from the Nth Sea oil fields
and from Russia.
It also comes from the middle east by ship as LNG to terminals in Wales.
Here it comes down the pipeline from Queensland at Moombi and Dalby.
So the gas here and in the UK would not be manufactured.

Perhaps the residue you mention is not what I was talking about but something else.

I have asked for clarification so will let you know what he says.

Most of the comments here seem to accept that all fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) are finite even if they may last for hundreds of years. There is also a general (if not unanimous) agreement that they will become more expensive to extract over time.

Several comments have acknowledged the link between energy availability and economic growth. Of course our energy does not need to come from fossil fuels alone. But it does need to be affordable. If the cost of fossil fuels keeps rising – where will the vast quantities of cheap energy come from?

The Greens would love the answer to be renewable energy. Many believe it will – but I suspect they will be disappointed when the task of trying to replace all fossil fuels at an affordable price with RE proves to be impossible. The energy density issue of RE alone will almost certainly guarantee this.

We have known how to produce almost limitless supplies of cheap energy for almost 70 years. For many reasons this has been blocked many times in many countries by various vested interests. Not least of which is the Greens themselves. I’m talking about nuclear fission of course.

Perhaps when fossil fuel prices become unaffordable for transport and electricity generation and the RE revolution fizzles we can go back to using the most high density energy source we have. We need to defuse the hysteria that seems to surround its use in the minds of some people but I’m still convinced nuclear fission is our best long term solution.

Martin how do you make them foolproof, Tsunami, Running out of coolant, earthquake, Human mistakes, or is that collateral damage.

A "hydrogen economy" was once the Next Big Thing. The US was poised to run 240M cars and trucks on it, and wean itself off oil. There is no longer discussion of a hydrogen economy. Then Americans became drunk on ethanol. More than $20B in subsidies was spent turning 40% of corn crops into 10% of the country's fuel.

In 2009, US taxpayers subsidised 75% of each gallon of gasoline replaced with ethanol. Now the US has gone batty for natural gas.

Obama cited a huge estimate for natural gas supply in the US, the equivalent of 379B barrels of oil, enough to stisfy demand at current levels for a century. Published figures represent "possible" reserves, not certain categories, "proved" and "probable" gas that is likely to be producible under current conditions. When discussing proved reserves, the US possesses just 1/12 or 47B barrels. A lot but just 11 years supply. If we assume a 50 percent recovery factor for the 379B of probable gas, the US would have just 31-year supply.

A lack of data, bias toward optimism, underlies this perception gap. A well-by-well analysis shows “contrary to popular belief, gas production is not growing under current conditions; instead 80 percent of the country's shale gas production has flattened out or declined over the past year”. Total US production is on a "plateau" as new shale gas output struggles to compensate for a 32 percent-per-year decline in conventional gas production. This picture is missing from reporting/auditing.

There is great reason to disbelieve the sustainability of shale gas production. A growing parade of drillers has been sharply curtailing work gas, and shifting to production of natural gas liquids, which might permit them to eke out a bit more profit. The result will be further declines in gas production, despite forecasts suggesting the opposite.

The shale gas phenomenon is new, data thin, one wonders at the wisdom of making long-term decisions with perhaps irreversible consequences. The last two manias lived and died without a wisp of a memory.

This one, if it goes wrong, may not be so benign

579 – answers below:

Tsunamis and running out of coolant – don’t put the backup power supply underground

Earthquakes – not the direct cause at Fukushima – it was the above. Nuclear plants survive earthquakes all over the world.

Human mistakes – that’s the tough one. These cause all sorts of problems with all generating sources, PV and wind installers fall off roofs and nacelles or get electrocuted, wind turbines catch fire and spread dangerous debris, gas plants and steam turbines explode, hydro dams break. These accidents all kill many more people per unit of energy generated than nuclear plants http://externe.info

This is what I mean when I say defuse the hysteria.

Great article thanks Michael-in-Adelaide. A couple of years ago I was at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) in Denver when a guy from Brazil gave an excited presentation on the 400 billion barrels or so they had in pre-salt deposits off-shore i.e. ultra deep deposits. Given that the world has only had two trillion barrels of available oil and we have used up half of that, 400 billion barrels is quite a lot. But he was treated with general scepticism by an informed audience who questioned the ERoEI of producing from these deposits. Now it seems Brazil has increased its oil production but not quite at the rate anticipated. Instead, there seems to be general acceptance amongst analysts that we passed peak oil back in 2005 and that these unconventional sources are only filling the gap caused by the decline in conventional oil - hence the bumpy plateau we are on at the moment in terms of overall production.

But a complicating factor is one being expressed by Canadian systems analyst Nicole Foss, currently touring Australia,who says the most immediate crisis facing us is the bursting of the current credit bubble which will see another GFC characterised by deflation. That means demand will drop and the price of oil will fall, which means that oil companies will not be able to explore for new resources, partly because the returns if they do drill will not be enough to cover costs and also because of a general lack of investment funds (credit). That may exacerbate the supply problem and the price may then shoot up to unaffordable levels, say $500 a barrel. I think we can anticipate an end to industrialised society as we know it.

579;
Below is the answer I got to the CNG question.
It appears that the problem I mentioned refers mainly to Liquid Natural Gas.
Here he discusses the differences.

You ask about natural gas. Our experience was as follows; and it is different for CNG (compressed NG) compared with LNG (Liquid NG). NG is mostly Methane of course, but the percentage varies wildly depending on the source. The purer obviously the better but the methane content can be as low as 85% and the motor will still run. In UK I don't think the methane content (with NG from the North Sea) was ever more than about 95%. With CNG the purity doesn't matter all that much because you have just got compressed gas in large pressurised cylinders which stay relatively clean ( excepting over a long period of time oil carry over from compressors etc, despite filtration and all the rest.)

With LNG it is a different story. There you have liquid gas at low temperature ( -160 degrees C) in a cryogenic tank. The advantge is that the storage capacity doesn't need to be nearly so big and heavy as with CNG. The disadvantage is that the different gas fractions have different densities and tend to separate out with the longer carbon chain length impurities, being the denser. If a vehicle so equipped rests for a while e.g. a bus in a depot overnight, these heavier fractions sink to the bottom of the container. With constant refuelling these tend to build up so that if you run the tank low, a slug of longer carbon chain gas runs through the motor and jiggers up the sensors, plugs and sometimes the mechanical parts as well. Hence the need for periodic flushing out.

Cont 579

People got quite excited about LNG powered vehicles for a while until it was realised you need very pure methane to start with and it is also quite difficult to hold the low temperature on a road vehicle for any length of time. There are still CNG buses running around (I assume), but they tend to be temperamental (sensor and plug troubles with the Cummins motors that we used) and the tanks, although located on the roof weigh a lot and cut down on the legal payload.
unquote

So I think it sums up that LNG has the definate purging need but CNG
has over a longer time a need to clean compressor oil out of the tanks.
However with LNG the tanks are lighter and smaller.
I presume that the LPG system and tanks would be similar.
I have not heard of the need to purge LPG tanks.

hmmm...lot of good points but little in general direction...

ok...put this in another way...a possible future scenario...energy prices keep gradually increasing...the powers that control us(I dont mean politicians and governments) dont want a sudden jump that suddenly excludes large population percentage from our current way of energy squandering self_serving life...yep...anarchy...

then...sudden crumbling of all governing structure, media goes offline, food ceases in cities, no fuel...so basically your mad max situation...while the 'powers' are secure in some high tech bunker waiting it out..while population collapses...

opposite of this on scale(I doubt very much by the way)...governing continues to deliver energy, and unless some saviour energy source appears, population\economy growth will exceed energy, we are close to this by fact increasing numbers of us are barely making end of each month with some savings....and we all gradually move towards third world situation...and population gradually dies...

whichever it is...by fact warnings sounded long ago but no action was taken other than lip service, when it happens there will be no need for these discussions...it will be apparent to all...so from my personal view point...we are out of all time...

gltuag

sam

Don't worry Sam there is plenty of Methane lying on the bottom of the oceans, just waiting for us to start vacuuming it up. Of course we'll have to exhaust the oil, & gas before it's worth the trouble.

Once we get poor enough, you'll find even the greenies will demand we go harvest the very large oil reserves under the great barrier reef. As with their resistance to dams, until we looked like running out of water, green is not such a nice colour, when you're thirsty, cold or hungry.

I do agree we may have to get close to third world conditions for some, the worst of the green element is well insulated in academia & the bureaucracy, & will take some convincing It may happen, as most of them are in the inner cities, you expect to collapse.

May not happen though, at the rate China is buying up the farm, [& the mines} we may find them coming in to take possession of their possessions. It wouldn't take them long to get all our drones out of the ivory towers, & into the fields.

Good information Bazz.
There was more than not putting the back up power on ground level.
No one will guarantee a nuclear reactor, safe against all odds. If it were we would not have leaks, or meltdowns.
Japan is going to be in trouble for decades, and that is beside the reactor still causing problems.
The core has been damaged, and to what extent no-one knows.
So how do you defuse a working reactor, and render it safe.

Sam;
Well the optimists fall between your two scenarios.
However there is a fourth group mainly populated with economists who
think we can keep growth going forever. Senor Monti the Italian PM
is one of those economists. He gave a speech recently when he mentioned
growth about twenty times but never o0nce mentioned energy.

All the talk in and about Europe waffles on about growth and how to use
pixel money to produce growth. It will be interesting to watch what happens.

With politicians like these we are in for an interesting time.

The first great problem we all face - including curmudgeon and anyone else with their blinkers on - is that oil and gas production everywhere is approaching the inflexion point where 'elastic' becomes 'inelastic'. This is fact, irrespective of what you imagine to be the cornucopia of ‘untapped’ reserves. There is far more to this than the price mechanism. All that increased 'value' does is drive us towards this inflexion point - it allows us to invest so that we move closer to it. Once we get there we encounter limits associated with technology, engineering, geology, ‘bottom line’ costs (environment etc etc etc). These mechanisms are all known and understood but there is little data easily available from mainstream reporting sources because we have not, to date, had to confront them. If we are all to engage in intelligent discussion and indeed, intelligent planning, then this stuff needs to be available.

The second great and closely related problem is that the challenge of resource depletion is not just about current or future per capita consumption which most debate appears to focus on. The far greater challenge lies in just ensuring continued maintenance of the myriad of structural and institutional entities that go to make up industrial society (any society for that matter). That's maintenance of everything from roads, bridges, water supplies and factories through to public services, educational institutions, health and governance systems and agriculture. Currently nearly all of our energy and resource production goes towards such maintenance. How do we expect to do something transformative and entirely new (nuclear power generation, Zero Carbon Australia etc) if our capacity to simply maintain some stable base is compromised?

I can’t see much positive happening in Oz until we collectively have a better data set and a better grasp of such issues.

Hear hear Savvas. Well said. Given that we have to replace infrastructure, on average, every 50 years, we need to spend 2 per cent (one fiftieth) of GDP just on that. But if our population grows by two per cent a year (which it was a couple of years ago but has dropped back to 1.4%) then we need to double the amount of money spent on infrastructure because we have to create new as well as replace old infrastructure. So in these uncertain times when we're about to experience the credit bubble bursting and money is likely to be in short supply in the near future, adding extra people to the population (native-born or immigrants - both have the same effect) is, well, madness. We're experiencing the end of economic growth and, hopefully, population growth as well.

To all the linkered and optimistic: Gasoline will hit $5 per gallon this year, predicts John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Company, the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. He points to rising demand by developing countries, especially China and India, and says that the recent increase in U.S. oil supply rates and decrease in demand is not enough to offset global trends, and that prices will continue to creep upward, unless there are major changes in public policy to substantially increase domestic U.S. supply.

Gasoline prices could suddenly spike even higher, and though increases in U.S. domestic supply may be important, no realistic U.S. increase will offset declining yields from other nations, according to Professor Tadeusz Patzek, chair of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and vice-president of ASPO-USA's board of directors. He highlights that declining output from most oil-exporting nations over the past decade, in the face of rising global demand, is likely to create a lasting drop-off in global availability of oil—spelling serious consequences for all oil-importing nations, including Australia. Building an economy that runs on half as much oil is essential and unavoidable, according to Dr. Patzek.

Regardless of who is right, this issue needs to be examined with seriousness and urgency, not that you would know it from most of the blinkered comments above.

Hasbeen, Im past worrying...ever since it conclusively dawnwed on me we no longer behave as a homo sapien(or 'reasoning man' tranlated from latin) but homo roboticus extinctus(not sure of latin translation on that one)...

so even with all the methane that may theoritically exist...looking at whats happening arround us, including Bazz point of Italian prime minister still trying the cold faced deceit tactic, that Obama mastered, on the population just to get through his current issues...thats where the effort is going...no one is realistically tackling the issues....

and the energy crunch...when it comes...the population energy consumption momentum is too large for any quick fix...so...you know the rest...

sam
just turn the tv off...and actively seek out some basic facts...would be a good startme thinks...

Sam your problem seems to be a belief in government, & what it will do about all this.

Well lets hope they do bugger all. That's why I hate talk of leadership. All the leadership I have read about just got a lot of people killed. It is the last thing we need from government.

We need a government to manage the shop, with minimum input. We need them to get out of the way, & take the academics with them, & let real people do what they do best. Have ideas, & do things to implement those ideas.

Fracking has not come from any government sponsored research, but damn fool windmills have. What more proof do you need.

Companies are even now exploring how to harvest the methane clathrate off Japan. Many will loose their shirts proving up a successful method of harvesting, but if government is not involved, it won't be our shirt.

As with the stone age not finishing because of a lack of stones, the oil age will finish, because someone, not government, has developed a better fuel.

All we need now is government out of the way, & if they'll take the greenie rabble with them, all will be well.

Savas;
I read a couple of months ago the book The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg.
He discusses how energy relates to growth and how we have reached our
present predicament. That and other articles I have read explain how
the cost of energy eats into your GDP.
In 2007-2008 the US's rising cost of oil was such that it reached 4%
of their GDP and the economy collapsed.
The reason that the economy collapses is because we rely on GDP to
repay loans and interest.
It is the best documented case of the cause of 11 of the last 12
recessions being proceeded by a spike in oil prices.
What is not certain is whether this 4% is valid for all economies in
developted countries. With so much mineral export here the figure might be 5 or 6 %.

The cost of fuel is also the cause of increased food prices which is
why the UN is in a flap about food supplies.
Welcome to the post peak oil world.

For all those so deeply in denial that they cannot see the wood for the trees, consider this:
There are 95,500 new cars hitting the world’s roads EACH day.
There is no way that there can ever now be an increase in oil production to accommodate that.
This does not include use of oil for other uses such as agriculture, power supply and just about anything that you look at in your home or car.
Forget BAU, it is not going to happen. Sorry guys but you are clutching at straws.

Hasbeen said;
As with the stone age not finishing because of a lack of stones, the
oil age will finish, because someone, not government, has developed a
better fuel.

I don't think we will need government direct intervention if the
windback is gradual as they will just increase public transport as a
matter of course.

The difficulty is the energy density of oil, diesel petrol etc.
Every suggestion that comes up has a scaling problem and usually a
poorer ERoEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested), eg ethanol, but of
course we all can be optimistic and expect that the magic bullet will
turn up.

The oil sands are an example of the problem, we (ie the world), can
afford to use it provided it is mixed with cheaper oil. If all the
oil was at the oil sands break even price (approx $90) we just could
not afford to put it in our tanks. I have seen reports that the oil
sands maximum output will be about 5 Mbd limited by the available
water and natural gas to heat the sand.
Also the ERoEI is rather poor 1:4 if I remember correctly.

No, what will happen is that oil's uses will gradually be restricted
because of price and the price will be forced up as supply fails to
meet demand.

I don't think that there will be a collapse, but a wind back to public
transport, a decrease in the number of cars and a fairly fast
reduction in air travel. But then I am an optimist.
This mornings Qantas news is probably a straw in the wind.

However, I think we should presume that Hasbeen's magic bullet will
not turn up, and act as though there will be no substitute and we
have to wind back on oil and natural gas based technologies.

What is the cut off price for petrol $2 / lt maybe. then there won't be enough public transport to go around. 4wd's will rot in paddocks. Even more small korean cars. Pushbikes with motors, Registered of course.
That is what it will take to make it attractive enough, for alt fuels to start appearing at $1.99 / lt. The carbon price will aid that change also. Get your own power supply for home, and leave grid power for industry. Or else wait till your power is cut off during the day before doing something.
Refrigerators run well on batteries, every thing else can be shut down.
Do not leave it till the last minute, Change is inevitable.

Why would anyone want to increase public transport, when its cost in dollars & fuel consumed is greater per passenger mile than the private vehicle.

City folk have strange ideas. You could increase public transport around here by a thousand percent, & you'd get more kids to school, but not one person to the shops. At least once I've driven 22Km I have access to the only reasonable public transport, trains.

I was unlucky enough to once travel from Brisbane city, by bus, to the southern bay side suburb, to catch a ferry to the bay islands. As a stranger, I assumed I'd traveled a long way when it over 90 minutes. Imagine my surprise when I drove it a couple of days later in 17 minutes. No wonder buses are so ridiculously expensive & unsuitable.

So never mind Bazz, even in the unlikely case that I am wrong, & we are reduced to those horrible little electric bubble cars, like an enclosed mobility scooter, we will still have mobility, unless the socialists/greenies get us.

Oh, & do remember, if we don't do the sensible thing & burn all that coal for electrical generation, it will be there just waiting for us to convert it to liquid transport fuel. The Germans damn near won a war running on liquid coal, I reckon we can do a better job of converting it today. We will have South Africa to advise us, they are using heaps of the stuff.

Hasbeen
When you turn all that coal into liquid transport fuel, you can kiss the atmosphere goodbye...

579,

Many developed economies have petrol prices above $2 without suffering economic collapse. Australia's petrol prices are actually quite low by international standards.

The key difference between petrol prices in Australia and overseas is tax. About a third of what we pay at the bowser is tax, whereas in most European countries it is more than half. The USA, Canada and Mexico have lower taxes and therefore lower retail prices than us, but in all other OECD countries, prices are higher.

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/item.phtml?itemId=1020827&nodeId=b394b61872fa0cd3474ed9fc57d24388&fn=ACCC%20Petrol%20Monitoring%20Report%202011.pdf

see chart on page xliv

So it seems to me that we could stand higher petrol prices without economic collapse. An if it's really too much to tolerate, we could take a somewhat smaller slice of tax to keep petrol affordable.

We had similar predictions of disaster when the petrol price rose above $1. We din't like it, but we seem to have got used to it.

579;
I agree, watch what happens in the UK, they pay over $2 a litre and it has no effect
except to continue their smaller car trend. My bet is there would not be any change till
the price was about $3 a litre.
Hasbeen said;
public transport, when its cost in dollars & fuel consumed is greater per passenger mile
than the private vehicle.

Actually, no it is not, especially if you factor in the higher loads that would occur.
Hasbeen;
we are reduced to those horrible little electric bubble cars,

Huh ? You mean this ?
http://leaf.nissan.com.au/brochure/

I suggest you get a new pair of glasses.

Re the CTL plants, eg SASOIL yes a good way to go though it might be more efficient
to turn it into electricity, but as a transition fuel it could be a goer.
Linc Energy has a prototype plant running in Queensland where they burn the coal in situ
bring up the gas and turn it into very clean diesel. They will be building a fullscale
plant in South Australia.

579;
While we can look at higher prices from where we stand as individuals and say I could
pay that, unfortunately if it bites too hard on GDP the economy may not and it might
put you out of a job, or halve your pension.
Note the Greek troubles, all due to the peak in 2007-2008.

Sorry Bazz, but I read a report on those a couple of days ago, & a couple of Chinese even smaller electric things. The total emissions for the full life cycle, including manufacture & 100,000Km, was greater than lots of simpler modern hatches, both petrol & diesel.

I'm afraid that electric cars is a lot like wind power. Nice idea, heavily promoted, but a total failure when fully examined.

I have no great preference in transport. One of our main problems have been greenies with ridiculous requirements, & the safety lobby. Our cars have got so heavy & complicated, that they have emitted more by the time they leave the factory than an FJ Holden would in manufacture & a 150,000 miles, life cycle.

Not that emissions worry me, I'm all in favour of plant food, but emissions mean resource use, & I can see no reason to squander those, while we still need them.

I would be happy to see simple 2 seater cross between a go cart & a ride on mower, with weather protection for normal transport. Unfortunately the safety lobby, after a quid of course, would howl their heads off. I'd even accept an electric one, if the weight of batteries did not destroy the practicability of the thing.

When I bought my new 1962 sports car, [a Morgan +4] I had to have it weighed for registration. It was 14.4 hundred weight, [1612 pounds, 716Kg], in a couple of years it did not fall to bits, even at 124.6MPH down conrod straight Bathurst. It is still on the road with its fourth owner.

By comparison my wife's little Mazda 2 weighs in at over a ton [1059Kg] 46% heavier in fact, does not get near 124 MPH, but did have a bit fall off it recently. In it's favour, it does give better economy, but how much better would it be if it had 46% of it's weight knocked off it?

The energy intensity of the economy is has fallen steadily for decades, so rising energy prices are easier to accomodate than they once were. Risng prices will accelerate this trend.

http://adl.brs.gov.au/data/warehouse/pe_abares99010610/EnergyUpdate_2011_REPORT.pdf

Who said anything about damaging the economy.
I said there would be a cut off price for buying fuel.
$2 / lt is a lot to pay for petrol, given our distances between towns.
That would get you about 8 km's down the road, or 4 km's in a 4 wd.
$2 would put considerable pressure on transport costs which would cause everything to rise.
I say it would cause a lot of stress.

579,

Higher energy costs (petrol, electricity whatever) do damage the economy; as costs rise we have less disposable income. Less to spend equals economic contraction and a slow down in growth.

If petrol gets to $2 a liter then people will cut back their other spending. $2 a liter would double my transport costs per week but I could still afford it. It it gets to $4 or higher then Huston, we have a problem

For those that have been following this thread, the link below is to
an article by Richard Heinberg on collapse or the alternative words
that are less frightening.

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-02-16/fight-century

I think you will find it interesting. Part way down there is a blue
link to an article by George Soros. Most of you I think will know who
he is, you know the man who broke the Bank of England.

Re the effect of high fuel prices, in 2007 as they were climbing food
prices rose with the oil price.
People, in the US, were faced with paying the mortgage, food or petrol
so they could go to work. Guess what got dropped.
There was an interview on the BBC radio last night about the unemployed
in America and their kids lack of food.
At a school where kids go to school hungry the interviewer noticed
one little girl had her head down, on talking to her the
interviewer discovered she had a rat for dinner the night before.

Still think it is not a problem in the tent cities around US cities ?

.... all of which is due to peak oil?

Yes Rhian, the current economy in the US was caused by the rapid increase in
fuel prices in the US, which caused the housing bubble to collapse
putting millions on the street.

It started after crude oil production stopped increasing in 2005-2006
and the price increased during 2007 and finally reached $147 in the US.
The oil price crashed to $36 a barrel.

Two months later the banks failed and Wall St had to be bailed out.
Then all the CDOs fell apart. Then Wall St crashed.
When oil prices have risen previously it has always caused a recession
shortly after. Then recovery restarts with a lower oil price and away
we go again.
Unfortunately this time as recovery started the oil price did not
just go up to $40 or $50 but went right on to $100 because there was
no longer a surplus.

Finally Greece's chickens came home to roost and are all surprised
that no one in Europe can repay their loans. No GDP no growth.

All this is well documented if you want to look for it.
How do we get out of it, I doubt if anyone knows, but the article
by Richard Heinberg that I gave the link for has a stab at four possibilities.

579 et al;
Following our recent discussion on cost of car usage I have just come
across this article from Wales;

http://tinyurl.com/7grbeop

It does appear that $2 plus petrol does cut back on car usage.
There was another report from the UK that said bicycle usage was up 13%.
Gives a new meaning to "on ya bike !".

Look, I can't wait for WWIII.

Living in this realm with such sexually insecure and deprived dolts is insufferable. That modern men and women do not understand the Second Law of thermodynamics (that you can't get something from nothing) is astonishing. To wit, you can't make uranium without more diesel than the uranium you collect and refine, you can't compress and transport gas without more oil based industry than the energy youget. You can't build and maintain ANY renewable energy source without oil and coal underwriting them.
And when oil is too expensive the only way for coal to be efficiently used is to return to the steam engine, and an age that clearly supported less than 2 billion people, 5 billion precipitously fewer than now.

When WWIII begins, when oil is only 3 to 4 times more expensive, it won't be raptors, nukes, germs, or tear your world apart.
It will be your next door neighbour, egged on by his wives who have their hearts squarely fixed on prime breeding rights in rapidly shrinking economic vistas.

Then and only then will you bores understand the importance of oil and the significance of population growth INERTIA and its inevitable collision and explosion at the OIL . You will also then belatedly realise that its what women WANT! And if that means the end of the human genome then I don't believe women really give a damn. Its the nature of the beast.

So pull out all the inhibitions and get yer ends in now. OVERPOPULATE AND RUIN THE PLANET or kiss your chances goodbye!

THUS, THE OILY SEEDS OF war ..

KAEP: You are on the right track but I disagree that woman will be the final arbiters. They are too blinkered (mostly, there are a few exceptions) it will be the Alpha male caveman who is dominant.
None of the splinter groups that are grinding their own axes with the exception of a handful of anti population groups can see the inevitable end game.
But WW3, no I do not think so, more like Rwandan and Yugoslavian ethnic cleansing.
Even the US Empire will disintegrate quite soon into separate groups and fight each other.

Kaep,
I sympathise with your impatience about the inability of people to understand the second law of thermodynamics. In this they are aided and abetted by the mainstream press who persist in retelling the fairy story of the imploding WTC buildings (all 3) on 9/11. Clever chaps these Muslims, they are able to suspend the laws of physics all on the same day, and the credulous populace don't even blink.
What hope then for the people you rail against who fail to grasp the basic point, as you say, that you cannot create energy out of nothing. There is always a cost, social, political and environmental, in our blind pursuit of "cheap" energy.

FYI:
The price we are paying for oil has now reached $129.84 a barrel.
It will be interesting to see whether it keeps going up and how much
behind the pump price is in terms of days.
Actually it should be rather quick as I think it comes ashore in Bass
Straight by pipeline. So Melbourne should get a rise almost immediately
whereas it has to come by ship to Sydney.
I notice the talk about the Sydney refinery closing so oil will have
to be sent to Singapore for refining and petrol & diesel sent back to Sydney.
That should justify another 10 cents on the price !

Sarnian,
I get it. You just read "What men know about women. You know, the e-book with 100 blank pages. And, now you are an expert!

-->>

When you see, a gentleman green,
’Round a lady green-bikin'
Just count to ten, then, count again:
She'll have a dozen kids in a limousine likin'!

Multiplication… that’s the shame in the genes!
And each generation… no matter what you plan, it’s played the same!

Now, there was two butterflies, castin’ their eyes,
Both in the same direction…
You’d never guess. that one little “yes,”
Could start a 4 wheel drivin' butterfly collection!

Multiplication… that’s the name of the game!
And each generation… they play the same!

When a girl gets coy, in front of a boy,
After three or four dances…
Ah… you can just bet, she’ll play hard to get,
To multiply her V8 chances!

Hear me talkin’ to ya: Mother Nature is a clever girl,
She reli-es on habit!
Ya take two hares, with no cares:
Pretty soon you got a planet full of cost-ineffective oil wells backed by Abbott!

Two parakeets, in-between tweets,
Sometimes get too quiet…
Uh-oh! But have no fear, ‘cause soon you’ll hear,
Demi Moore's gonna deny it!

Multiplication… that’s the shame in the genes!
And each generation… no matter what you plan, it’s played the same,