More On Peak Oil

I am planning, if the weather cooperates, on going for a nice bunch of bike rides. In the mean time, just some statistics that really make me wonder if urban sprawl was worse than just a really bad idea.

According to Jeff Rubin Peak Oil is not so much a supply issue, it's a problem of price. We cannot get oil cheap enough to use for energy. But according to one of the people who posted a response it is a lot worse than that. (I will have to validate this data, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but...)

To paraphrase:

In 1930 humanity was drawing from the ground about 2 billion barrels of oil per year with an average EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) of about 100 to 1. Hence the amount of net energy available to humanity from oil was then of about 1.98 billion barrels energy units. (US Government figures indicate that one barrel of oil generates about 5.8 million BTUs).

In 1970 humanity was drawing from the ground about 17 billion barrels of oil per year; however, this oil came from more difficult wells to access with an average EROEI of about 30 to 1, thus total net energy was about 16.3 billion barrel units.

In 2005 humanity was drawing from the ground about 30 billion barrels of oil per year with an average EROEI of about 15 to 1. Hence the amount of net energy available to humanity was then of about 27.9 billion barrels energy units.

Looking forward now, Alberta tar sand oil has an EROEI of 1.5 to 1. Ultra deep water oil may not be much better, if it is even positive. The BP Macondo (Deep Water Horizon) well has shown how much technology was stretched and the newly found ultra deep water oil reservoirs off Brazil are much deeper and will be much more difficult to put into production. Furthermore, Arctic oil is at the moment only a dream because there is still a moving ice cap during the winter in that region). As for shale oil, like for shale gas, one will be lucky if its EROEI is even positive.

Many people who would know these things, for example, The Chairman of TOTAL, among others, have publicly stated that humanity will be lucky if it can reach an output volume of 100 million barrels per day i.e. 36.5 billion barrels of oil per year.Hence at some point in a not too distant future, humanity’s oil production will reach 36.5 billion barrels per year with an average EROEI of about 1.5 to 1. When that happens, the amount of net energy available to humanity from oil will only be of about 12.1 billion barrels energy units.

Thus we can see our total available energy in the not so distant future will be quiet a bit less than we had in 1970. Yet we still have to drive as far, and now India and China are on stream. Recall that in 1970 there was no outsourcing to India and China was in the middle of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. As a society we really have to start diverting funds from highways and auto manufacturers bailouts. Time to build more rail, more bike lanes, and critically, more transit infrastructure. The fact is, we cannot continue down our present course, while the numbers I cited above may be way off the mark, I'm sure we can all accept that we cannot continue with business as usual for all that much longer. We can either keep running until we run headlong into an impenetrable wall, or we can begin the transition away from fossil fuels.