Yes Lib of Upway, we should be starting on the big job of converting
our truck & car fleet to gas.
One problem is that the owners of the Gladstone LNG plants are already
refusing domestic contracts for CNG.

It would require the government to legislate and government, both
Labour & Liberal do not believe there is a problem anyway.

Hasbeen;
The Rundle shale, is it oil shale or shale oil ?
If it is oil shale, it has never been possible to do a process that
does not use more energy than it produces. Ask Shell, they gave up.

If it is shale oil, better known as tight oil, this is the process
used in the US on the Bakken & Eagle Texas fields & others.
It has very poor EROI and is very expensive and fraught with fracking
difficulties.

There is a very big tight oil field near Coober Peady the lease rights
are held by Linc Energy and they will probably operate there.

Its big problem is very high decline rates 40% to 60% per year.
It becomes a giant Ponzi scheme in that more & more money is needed
to keep drilling & production up. The Red Queen syndrome.
As they more away from the best spots decline rates increase and more
and more drilling is needed.

Is there plenty of water in the area of the tight oil, hundreds of
road water tankers each day would be needed. Would the roads stand up to it ?

I suggest that you do some reading on tight oil, it is an eye opener.
In the US it will stop overnight if interest rates rise.
No easy solutions are there ?

And through all of this discussion and article, no one pays even a single thought to the still very rapidly increasing demand for oil, and what we might do to slow that down, attempt to stabilise it… or heaven forbid, even reverse it to some extent!

As usual, it is all about the supply side.

The thing that really matters is whether the supply capability is going to be able to keep up with demand, which of course it won’t be, without the price rising continuously and a whole bunch of huge negative consequences resulting from that.

It is not peak oil that we should be concerned about, it is the total lack of demand / supply balance.

The main message that should have come out of the whole peak oil (and climate change) issue is that we need to STOP EXPANDING and to stabilise the overall demand!

This is every bit as important as everything put together on the supply side of the equation!!

But, we have just so totally failed to heed that message.

So…. If we aren’t going to do anything about the demand side, then how are we ever going to deal with this issue?

In fact, in the absence of any meaningful action on reducing demand, or I should say; on reducing the rate of increase in demand, all our efforts to find more oil and develop alternative energy sources really are just adding to the problem, because they are facilitating this continuous growth!

They are facilitating the schism between supply and demand a little bit further down the track, and hence exacerbating the consequences.

I just don’t get it. Most people just seem to think in a totally one-sided and unbalanced manner about this sort of thing. I see it all the time on OLO.

You are right Ludwig, dampening demand is most helpful.
The US since the GFC has reduced its demand by about 3 Mbd.
Europe has also reduced its demand.
Australia has slightly increased its demand.
China has markedly increased its demand.

Unfortunately it takes a lot of economising on fuel to offset 3.5Mbd
of decline in world crude oil year after year after year.
Thats why we have to find another Saudi Arabia every three years.
Our chances of doing that are astronomical.
The real experts say we will NEVER find another Saudi Arabia.
Saudi = 9 Mbd. Divide 9 by 3.5 you can see the problem.
Forget tight oil, the writing will be on the wall this year.

The writing will say "Beware the Ides of 2017 !"

Luddy old mate, the balls in your court.

If you want to decrease demand you have to stop population growth, worldwide. To do that someone is going to have to come up with an incredibly addictive form of sex aversion therapy.

Are you working on it? You could achieve so many of your desires with something so simple.

Get stuck in, & report back in a couple of months.

I don't think OPEC can be blamed for high prices. OPEC is not new. High prices are (with the exception of a spike during several years around the oil crisis of 1979-81 period. Did OPEC all of a sudden get greedy? I have heard people talking about how greedy OPEC is for decades.

I am afraid that high prices are a result of supply not keeping up with demand.

It is for the psychologists to explain why virtually everyone, or at least, virtually every male adult, is convinced that there has to be plenty of oil. Enough oil that there will be no problem ever - ever being the rest of their life.

One of the worst ways to try and debunk Peak Oil is by saying that someone in the past made a prediction about "running out of oil" and it didn't come true. If oil were not finite, if oil were not depletable, you might be able to make that work. But oil IS finite and it IS depletable.

Another one for the psychologists is how it can be that oil has tripled in price in the last decade, production has only increased by growing the production of more expensive unconventional sources like tar sands and oil trapped in shale (tight oil), and yet the Cornucopians and some Optimists are crowing about the death of Peak Oil.

Hazza, you make light of a very serious subject. Just about the most serious in the world actually!

You agree that population – the rate of growth and overall size – is of major importance, and that we need to work on that issue very very VERY much!!

Well….. I think you agree with me to that extent….. …… ….. ??

This needs to be a FUNDAMENTAL part of the formulation of a sustainable energy regime.

It is just DAFT to be talking about peak oil, renewable energy, nuclear, AGW, etc, without including the population factor!

There is a great deal that governments could do to address this…. if they just put their minds to it.