Ever hear of Hubbard's peak?

[2ndAmendment]

Nope, it is not a mountain. It is the point at which oil production begins to go down forever. It is the reason behind rising gas prices.

Could it be the reason Iran, one of the largest oil producers, wants to have nuclear power for energy?

Bartlett warns of oil ‘peak’; says crisis nearing


Publish Date: 05/09/05

By Clifford G. Cumber
News-Post Staff

WASHINGTON — Rep. Roscoe Bartlett left his congressional office Tuesday night with a few staffers, arms loaded with charts, and headed for the floor of the House of Representatives in an attempt to shape national energy policy.

In three, hour-long, sparsely watched “special order” speeches, Mr. Bartlett has shared predictions made in the 1950s by Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbard that the world is imminently approaching the halfway point in its oil supply.

Mr. Bartlett predicts the end of cheap oil as the world crosses that threshold. Demand will rise and costs will rise as oil becomes more difficult to extract.
“The congressman is warning that we have to adjust ourselves to the implications to our economy, our national security and geo-politics, the worldwide implications … The more you prepare for something the less wrenching the adjustments are,” said Bartlett press secretary Lisa Wright.


The congressman has twice before taken advantage of time reserved after the legislative work of the House is done to try to bring attention to what he sees as a pending crisis. So far the audience has consisted mainly of late-night C-SPAN viewers.

Halfway
The halfway point in supply is called “peak oil,” or also, “Hubbard's Peak.” Dr. Hubbard's predictions were accurate for American reserves, correctly predicting the U.S. had pumped half its reserves by 1970.

“It is true that every year since then we have pumped less oil and found less oil,” Mr. Bartlett said in his special order speech on March 14.
Dr. Hubbard was dismissed for years as a crackpot. However his predictions — based on a “bell curve” calculated from oil field performance — are accruing supporters worldwide. An Internet search on “peak oil” produces hundreds of organizations that advocate the theory.

Dr. Hubbard predicted that a global peak would come around 1975. The date is slightly off due to Arab oil embargoes, world recession and price spikes, Mr. Bartlett said.
The real peak will occur in the next five to six years, he said. From here on in, we are sliding down Hubbard's Peak and oil production will become increasingly expensive, especially with growing competition for resources, Mr. Bartlett said. In 2004 China increased its oil imports by 25 percent and became the No. 2 oil importer.

America is ranked No. 1 in consumption, using a quarter of the world's oil. Eight percent of the world's production comes from U.S. oil fields.

Mr. Bartlett is concerned about national security. Because the U.S. imports so much of its supply, any impact would be significant.

“If we have 5 percent less oil than we need, prices would skyrocket,” he said.
....

According to the sources I found, about 71.4% of U.S. electricity production is by fossil fuel which includes oil and coal. I really don't know the split between oil and coal, but even if only half of the 71.4% is oil, then we have the potential to loose 35.7% of U.S. electricity production. Talk about brown outs and rolling outages - California will look trivial. The U.S. will become a third world nation; can't use an F-22 without jet fuel.

Lots of people will go , but like it or not, oil is not a renewable resource.

Hydrogen cars ... yeah hydrogen power. NO! I don't think so.

A current car produces about 2000 cubic feet of exhaust every minute at idle. Multiply that be the number of cars in large metro areas which I estimate at about 10,000,000 on the road give or take and you get 20,000,000,000 cubic feet of exhaust per minute. This increases dramatically when cars are not at idle. No wonder we pollute the air.

Now say all those cars are hydrogen powered producing water vapor. The cars will be producing their own weather patterns. We will have 100% humidity and fog and/or rain almost constantly. That sounds like fun.

Hydrogen powered vehicles could be used as long as the water vapor is condensed and collected, but current designs don't do that.

We need alternative power developed NOW! But it must be developed with fore thought and not be knee jerk reaction.

 

[Larry Gude]

Oil will fall out of favor...

...but it won't happen over night and it won't be a big deal and it will never run all the way out.

Once it's too expensive vs. alternatives, what is left will simply sit and then, over time, supply will build. I can't quote how long it takes for nature to make a barrel of oil but it is making more all the time. It's essentially stored sunshine.

When it does get short, when it gets kinda close, something will replace it on the market. For awhile, there will be a paradox that while oil is running lower, it's price will drop as the new thing starts out expensive but them gets cheaper as it gains use and then oil won't be worth bothering with; a market balancing act.

At present figuring only what we know we have and can be used by current technology and justified by current economics there is a 40-50 year supply for the whole world. What will they be saying in 40 years?

"At present, using current 2050 technology, we only have 50 years of oil left..." Maybe not. Buy maybe.

In the meantime, very little oil is used to produce electricity and coal is, by far, the dominant fuel for electricity in the US at something like 60%, followed by natural gas and nuke. Oil is less than 10% of electrical generation. So, as far as that goes, we have immense supplies of coal in the US.

A 10% loss would be dramatic if it happened overnight but that can't happen; Oil in reserves, in oil transport, untapped domestic supply, so on and so forth. Add in any new ways of getting oil through necessity (man made shortages, embargoes etc), including war, and we'll bridge the time gap between when oil is no longer viable and it's replacements arrival.

Bartlets curve makes the assumption that when a given oil field reaches the point where there is less oil left than it is worth to pump it out, that the field will simply be abandoned. That's nothing short of silly for anyone to assume, let alone a man of numbers. In other words, he's taking oil off the map that exists because he assumes it won't be economically retrievable. Ever.

Electricity has the power of the speed of light behind it and is the likely the future, the unforeseen future. It can be generated by oil, gas or coal AND by solar and wind and nuke.

The power to density ratio curve over time from Fultons steam engine to the jet engines some electric plants use today is nearly vertical. That is to say that from Fultons veiw, or from his time, not much could be soon for the future. Then came internal combustion and new limits of the future. Now turbines. Every step of the way, efficiency went up as power output went up and overall use of energy skyrocketed.

What will we be able to do with solar power in 40 years? What about batteries? How small can a nuclear reactor be safely made? What of advances of hydrogen or some other idea?

I'm no scientist or engineer but then again the ones who always said the end is near, for each age, were.

 

[Bruzilla]

Not to seem to be , but if Hubbard's predictions were true, then how does one factor in massive petroleum reserves that have been found since the 1970s and that have yet to be tapped? Hubbard's predictions were based on the assumptions that no new oil was being created, and that we had already found most of the major deposits and would pump them down to >50% by the mid-70s. When one factors in the huge reserves found in Russia, Alaska, and other landmasses, along with undersea fields, Hubbard's theory quickly goes down the potty.

Also, the ability to produce oil in many regions has not been effected by the amount of il still in the fields, but by simple non-oil economics, specifically, return on investment. When oil dropped into the low $20s per barrel, there was no way to pump it profitably in the the United States once you factor in labor, environmental, and regulatory costs, so we greatly stepped back from pumping our own. It was better to invest in supertankers to transport oil from areas with low costs of production than to pump it locally. And modern regulatory expenses still keep it less profitable to pump locally in the US, so there's no financial reason for oil companies to write off their investment in tankers.

Lastly, there's no financial incentive for oil producers to pump more oil than can be consumed as this drives down the prices. This is far more a factor in how much oil is produced than alledged shortages.

 

[Toxick]

My Wacky Conspiracy Theory

Big Oil companies have had a viable alternate fuel source for years.

They've covered up its existance, and silenced a lot of people, so they can milk fossil fuels for all they're worth. When oil becomes too limited, or so expensive that the price finally outweighs demand - they will slowy (ever so slowly) start switching over to this new fuel source.

They will do this in such a way that there is no shift in the status quo.

Big Oil will become Big Somethingelse - but the same players will still be in charge of the game.

George W. Bush may or may not be secretly behind all of this.



I'm looking outside my window for the unobtrusive white van to pull into the parking lot.

 

[Bruzilla]

Damn! You've uncovered the secret energy source! It's called... GRAVITY. They just haven't figured out how to make it work uphill yet though.

 

[Fred Hoeck]

Now say all those cars are hydrogen powered producing water vapor. The cars will be producing their own weather patterns. We will have 100% humidity and fog and/or rain almost constantly. That sounds like fun.

Hydrogen powered vehicles could be used as long as the water vapor is condensed and collected, but current designs don't do that.

We need alternative power developed NOW! But it must be developed with fore thought and not be knee jerk reaction.

This proves the point that the alternative energy advocates only want alternative power before it can be used. They wanted windmills, now we can and have windmills: "Oh, they spoil the landscape, they kill birds, blah, blah, blah. Solar power will take up too much real estate and absorb too much heat from the sun. Now hydrogen cars will make too much humidity. Well all the water vapor released is simply the return of water that the hydrogne was extracted from in the first place.

 

[Fred Hoeck]

Hubbard's Peak factored in discorvery of new oil fields. He did not know where the oil would be found, but projected it based on discoveries up to that point in time. It has proven quite accurate. The part he couldn't predict was the lack of will by people in this country to drill for the new found oil. He did not predict the enviromental people to prevent the drilling for oil with reasonable controls to prevent large scale damage. ANWR could be drilled and oil pumped out with no damage with modern drilling techniques. The caribou like the heat of the Alaska Pipeline, so it has benefited nature.

 

[Steve]

Can you imagine what the world would revert to if no alternative, motive energy fuel was developed? We'd again form communities of people that rarely travel outside of the immediate geographic boundaries of their home of birth. The world would again become pockets of individual populations, prejudicial against other populations. We would still communicate globally, but since our means of actually travelling to other areas would become prohibitively expensive, we would lose interest in their affairs. And isolationism would increase.

 

[2ndAmendment]

Not to seem to be , but if Hubbard's predictions were true, then how does one factor in massive petroleum reserves that have been found since the 1970s and that have yet to be tapped? Hubbard's predictions were based on the assumptions that no new oil was being created, and that we had already found most of the major deposits and would pump them down to >50% by the mid-70s. When one factors in the huge reserves found in Russia, Alaska, and other landmasses, along with undersea fields, Hubbard's theory quickly goes down the potty.

Also, the ability to produce oil in many regions has not been effected by the amount of il still in the fields, but by simple non-oil economics, specifically, return on investment. When oil dropped into the low $20s per barrel, there was no way to pump it profitably in the the United States once you factor in labor, environmental, and regulatory costs, so we greatly stepped back from pumping our own. It was better to invest in supertankers to transport oil from areas with low costs of production than to pump it locally. And modern regulatory expenses still keep it less profitable to pump locally in the US, so there's no financial reason for oil companies to write off their investment in tankers.

Lastly, there's no financial incentive for oil producers to pump more oil than can be consumed as this drives down the prices. This is far more a factor in how much oil is produced than alledged shortages.

Hubbard's peak has already happend for the U.S.

 

[Bruzilla]

Hubbard's peak has already happend for the U.S.

What makes you think so? The reason that drilling drastically decreased was economic, not availability. With all of the reserves in Alaska, within CONUS, and in our coastal waters, I find it quite mad to assume that we've reached the 50% mark. There's just no way to determine that other than guestimates based on highly dated speculation... not a sound basis for a comment like yours if I might say so.

 

[2ndAmendment]

What makes you think so? The reason that drilling drastically decreased was economic, not availability. With all of the reserves in Alaska, within CONUS, and in our coastal waters, I find it quite mad to assume that we've reached the 50% mark. There's just no way to determine that other than guestimates based on highly dated speculation... not a sound basis for a comment like yours if I might say so.

You sound like you haven't done much research on the subject. Do a Google on Hubbard's Peak. Yes, it is controversial and some do not agree, but look at the production figures.

Absent some action, the energy problem will only worsen. We produced 40 percent less oil in the United States last year than we did in 1970 because of environmental concerns about drilling, refinement and exploration. Yet domestic energy use rose 17 percent through the 1990s, and we now import 10 million barrels per day. http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed031402c.cfm?RenderforPrint=1

I'm not against drilling in ANWR or off shore. But any fossil fuel is not a long term solution; it will run out. Many experts believe we have already found 85% of the world's oil reserves. I don't know. I'm not an expert. I'm just saying that we better come up with a better energy source sooner rather than later. We should use a renewable resource like alcohol which can be produced from garbage or the corn stalks or other vegetable matter.

 

[Bruzilla]

You sound like you haven't done much research on the subject. Do a Google on Hubbard's Peak. Yes, it is controversial and some do not agree, but look at the production figures.


I'm not against drilling in ANWR or off shore. But any fossil fuel is not a long term solution; it will run out. Many experts believe we have already found 85% of the world's oil reserves. I don't know. I'm not an expert. I'm just saying that we better come up with a better energy source sooner rather than later. We should use a renewable resource like alcohol which can be produced from garbage or the corn stalks or other vegetable matter.

The production figures are 100% meaningless unless you have a measureable target state, and it doesn't matter how many sources of data you extract from your keester to validate the claim. There's no way to determine where the halfway point is without first knowing where the endpoint is, and the guesstimated endpoint for Hubbard was based on known values from the 1950s, which are about as valid as the claims of scientists that we would all be driving space cars and living on Mars by the year 2000.

The supporters of Hubbard are claiming that his theory is validated by exploration and production values between 1975 and 2005, but that fails to take into account the economic factors that we experienced in the US, specifically that it was no longer economical from a human cost and not a technological cost, to continue pumping oil; nor does it take into account that oil exploration was peaking in the 1950s and 1960s, not because of availability but because of necessity. We had found more than enough oil to supply the World, so why we maintain the same level of effort? We wouldn't. This is a factor of need and cost, not availability.

Here's what the truth is: A - Nobody has any idea how much oil is actually out there, and B - nobody knows for sure if no new oil is being created as a result of geological actions. Right now it's cheaper for oil companies to continue to keep getting oil from known deposits, serviced by people who make 10 cents and hour. As long as cheap labor and lack of environmental restrictions drives the process, there's no financial incentives for companies to restore the level of exploration effort seen from 1920 to 1960. This is why we needed Bush's energy policy, so it will encourage oil companies to start investing in exploration.

As for alternative fuels, I agree with you there. But in reality we're a good 30-40 years out from being a land where most of the cars and homes are powered by alternative fuels, which I think is a timeframe closer to reality for when oil resources will START to become more limited than Hubbard's theory in which we should already be running on empty.

 

[fishinfool]

Why don't we just go nuke for our electricity needs and extend all other resouces by doing so?

 

[2ndAmendment]

Bruzilla,
I hope you are right. Many think you are not. I reject the idea that I am pulling stuff from my keester; I thought better of you. The projected Hubbard's Peak for the world is conservatively put at 2017. Those that endorse the research say it is more likely 2012. There are many political and economic reasons to project the peak further out. But whether it is 2006 or 2060, we need to be doing something now.

 

[Larry Gude]

#1 nuke has it's own issues...

Why don't we just go nuke for our electricity needs and extend all other resouces by doing so?

...the waste and fear. My grandfather fixed this one 20 years ago; load it on rockets and aim it at the sun.

But, we're not there yet.

 

[Hessian]

Next Question: Russia

Is it possible that Mr Hubbard did not factor in Russia's energy resources (since the cold war was in full gear and access to their info was doubtful?)
And so even now...we shake our heads and wonder why Russia is getting cosy with Iran (& their nukes)...is it because Russia wants to be allied with an Oil producer if their reserves start dipping too low? (Russia gets too cold to burn peat!!)

Did Mr Hubbard ever envision an oil hungry CHINA?...manufacturing gadgets for the entire western world?

 

[SamSpade]

...the waste and fear. My grandfather fixed this one 20 years ago; load it on rockets and aim it at the sun.

But, we're not there yet.

Logical, sensible, completely safe.

But not as cheap as hiding it in your back yard.

Hey, why make the trip to the gas station to dispose of your oil, when you can just pour it down the drain?