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From Too Little to Too Much Oil


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2019 Apr 9, 8:10am   3,838 views  45 comments

by cmdrda2leak   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  


Less than 15 years ago, the conventional wisdom was that we’d reached “peak oil,” or that the U.S., and indeed the world at large, had already extracted more petroleum than what remained beneath the ground.

Then, in unheralded fashion and quite silently, American frackers and horizontal drillers made such a term entirely obsolete. The U.S. went from a superpower hobbled by an insatiable need for imported oil to the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world and, soon, the likely largest exporter of fossil fuels. In the same vein, the Middle East and especially the Persian Gulf transmogrified from being the nexus of American foreign policy to nearly irrelevant in U.S. strategic thinking. If Saudi Arabia was once accused of virtually running American foreign policy, it is now seen at the other extreme as a minor medieval bother. A few thousand people in obscurity in the fracking industry, without government grants and without the media fawning over them as they had green legends such as Al Gore, literally changed the lives of millions of Americans at home and their country’s status abroad.

***

Most obviously, technology has no limits, either on its ability to transform utterly modern life or the speed at which it accomplishes such changes. Once fracking was mastered, it became ever cheaper and ever more efficient at a geometrical rate — and operated independently, as scientific breakthroughs do, from political consensus and convention.

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2   NDrLoR   2019 Apr 9, 8:38am  

cmdrdataleak says
Less than 15 years ago,
Who, waiting in one of those gas lines in 1977 in a 150 HP 4,500 lb. slug that got 13 MPG on the highway, or an 88 HP six cylinder "economy" car that got 15 MPG on the highway, would have predicted that 40 years later there would be so much product on the market the prices would have collapsed back to 1960's prices when adjusted for inflation. The energy industry had been communized by the government with the allocation program where a fuel outlet was only given only 80% of what its amount had been a year earlier. It created the panics just like in Russia with its shortages of everything. People didn't want their gas gauges to go below 3/4 full, so they would fill up every chance they got. But at 13 MPG, they still had to refuel more often and wound up sitting in interminable lines. No one would have guessed then that there would be 260 net HP cars that could go 0-60 in less than ten seconds and still get 20 MPG on the highway.
3   CBOEtrader   2019 Apr 9, 8:42am  

I remember peak oil being pushed in this forum...right up until oil proces crashed again.

Pump and dump
4   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 9:51am  

Peak Earl! Peak Earl!
We're going to run out of Earl in less than 10 years!

Every Liberal Idiot and every RINO licking their chops to fuck every American in the Ass over their personal Transporation expesnes and to add a huge VAT tax to every aspect of our lives and Comerce.

Another Gem I like to laugh to is this classic number...
"Get used to $150 Oil it's never going back down!"

And who can forget the classic retort to my words of wisdom... I said:"You know if people don't buy gas, they can't keep refining Oil. Because they'll run out of storage for the refined Petrol, and you can't just burn it!"

To which the Liberal agitator brigade that must shit on every thing that is said and told in the world that violates their Commie Learnings said!

"You don't understand how the Economy works, you're on the wrong side of History, we're going to have Unicorn Fart powered everything by 2020, you're just a stupid Concerned Citizen!"

Yeah fun fucking times, Liberals don't know SHIT!
5   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 9:54am  

The funny Ironic thing is, if this were 2008 - 2012, I think everything AOC said would be held as the Gospel from the highest authority.
Watching her now, is like watching that one idiot that didn't get the memo about the Water being shut off and he put a huge stinking Steamer in the toilet and it wont flush and lathered his hair up wish Shampoo. But the water is off! He can't see it but it damn sure smells like Shit up in their Liberal world.
6   kt1652   2019 Apr 9, 10:14am  

"The economy (whether economists realize it or not) depends on physical resources, and these are in limited supply. One piece of evidence with respect to the limited supply of oil is the fact that the cost of its extraction keeps rising. This means that fewer resources are available to be used for making other goods and services."

In a finite world, debt, like anything else, cannot keep growing.
This, gentlemen, is the real Peak Oil.
There is a lot of oil buried deep in earth or ocean, or between rock formations.
Are we going to completely destroy the earth by drilling, fracking, until every pristine wild river oozes with pollution and our beaches ruined by oil spills?
The rising cost of extraction must be passed on to the end user.
If the end user has no other energy choice, then there is no peak oil, right?
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Peak-Oil-An-Issue-of-Economics-not-Geology.html
7   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 10:28am  

kt1652 says
In a finite world, debt, like anything else, cannot keep growing.
This, gentlemen, is the real Peak Oil.


New Oil is being created every second of every day, so is salt, and fresh water. Our Oceans press the excess water deep into the Earths crust where all of the Sea Snow is pressed into its purest Oil element and it collects and is also moved along in Oil aquifers.

Oil fields that dried up in Texas around the 50's were pumping out Oil during the boom a few years back. Those Oil wells went off line because they dried up. Same wells they didn't drill deeper they were tapped out. They were pulling Oil out of them as far back as 2015. Then Trump came in office and Oil prices went down, so Texans quit drilling. Not because it cost too much to extract. But because a simple Laborer in the Oil field makes a 6 figure salary. They thought Oil would $150 barrel forever.
Now those Oil folks don't want to work for $50K or $60K a year. Wait until the Mexicans replace them we'll be back $30 a barrel Oil in no time.
8   kt1652   2019 Apr 9, 10:38am  

"It takes millions (sometimes hundreds of millions) of years to obtain fossil fuels and this is why they are regarded as non-renewable source of fuels. Fossil fuels comprise of crude-oil, coal and gas. In general, decomposing dead plant material form coal while crude oil and gas are formed from dead marine organisms."

'Cause when I'm high, the world below don't bother me.'
That is some good weed man.

It took millions of years to create fossil fuel and at this rate we may have a few more HUNDREDs of years left of the stuff in the ground.
I am with you more than you realize, civilization has 100 or at most 200 years left before environmental annihilation. Peak oil is our least problem.
https://environmentalcritique.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/everything-is-headed-toward-annihilation/
9   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 10:42am  

kt1652 says
It took millions of years to create fossil fuel and at this rate we may have a few more HUNDREDs of years left of the stuff in the ground.


Who ever said that assumed it takes Millions of years at sea level atmospheric pressure. The pressures beneath the crust at the bottom of the Ocean are 1000's of atmospheric pressures.
10   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 10:45am  

The Gulf Oil spill didn't even behave as our most brilliant top Scientist expected it would have. There's still trillions of gallons that ended up unaccounted for, spewed out into the bottom of the Ocean but never made it to the top and it isn't lingering on the sea bottom. Where in the fuck did it go? Nobody knows that answer.
11   Bd6r   2019 Apr 9, 10:46am  

Tenpoundbass says
Who ever said that assumed it takes Millions of years at sea level atmospheric pressure. The pressures beneath the crust at the bottom of the Ocean are 1000's of atmospheric pressures.

You need something to press at, and that stuff does not appear on timescale of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Tenpoundbass says
pewed out into the bottom of the Ocean but never made it to the top and it isn't lingering on the sea bottom. Where in the fuck did it go? Nobody knows that answer.

Oil-consuming bacteria ate most of it, I believe
12   theoakman   2019 Apr 9, 10:48am  

They can stop pretending to know what goes on beneath the surface of the Earth. They positively identified worms that exist 2 miles below the Earth's surface only recently. Turns out, life exists a lot farther beneath the surface than we ever imagined.
13   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 10:48am  

d6rB says
Oil-consuming bacteria ate most of it, I believe


That's a fuckton of bacteria being recycled and pressed through the Earths oceanic crust Oil Press my friend.
14   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Apr 9, 10:54am  

Peak Oil is the Leftist "Gold to $30,000/oz"
15   Bd6r   2019 Apr 9, 10:57am  

MisterLearnToCode says
Peak Oil is the Leftist "Gold to $30,000/oz"

It's gotta run out at some time, question is if it will happen in 100 or 400 years. Also, it is good if we have alternative energy sources. Collapse oil price and fucktards in Russia and Saudi Barbaria will be hurting.
16   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 11:11am  

Yep, that tree will grow to the sky.
17   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 11:18am  

US projected production:
18   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 11:20am  

So that chart hasn't been updated since 2000?
19   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 11:27am  

By mid-century, conservatives will thank the Global Warming alarmists for pushing renewable energies adoption so hard.
20   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Apr 9, 11:53am  

Germany is now facing billions upon billions to remove those ineffective Windmills they built. The Carbon Fiber blades can't be incinerated and are incredibly toxic and carcinogenic, will have to be broken up in an energy-intensive, expensive process.

Without massive subsidies and tax breaks, they are completely infeasible. The Germans had their electric bills double for nothing; and heavy industry was almost wholly exempt from the renewable program (or the charges would have made them, again, utterly uncompetitive due to massive electric costs way in excess of their competition).
21   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 11:58am  

MisterLearnToCode says
Germany is now facing billions upon billions to remove those ineffective Windmills they built.


22   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 11:59am  

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/wind-energy-is-one-of-the-cheapest-sources-of-electricity-and-its-getting-cheaper/
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released the latest iteration of its annual Wind Technologies Market Report, which pulls together a wealth of data to track trends in the cost, performance, and growth of wind energy.

The report found that U.S. wind energy will continue to be one of the lowest cost electricity generation technologies available, with the long-term wind electricity price available through a power purchase agreement coming in at about half the expected cost of just running a natural gas power plant.

Furthermore, stiff competition from both natural gas and solar energy are poised to push the wind industry to achieve even lower prices and higher performance through the development of bigger turbines tailored to maximize their output even in regions with less than optimal wind speeds.
23   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 12:01pm  

MisterLearnToCode says
Without massive subsidies and tax breaks, they are completely infeasible.

Except the early investments mean prices are collapsing.
24   HeadSet   2019 Apr 9, 12:02pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
By mid-century, conservatives will thank the Global Warming alarmists for pushing renewable energies adoption so hard.


Global Warning alarmists are not pushing renewables, they are pushing "vote Democrat." No matter though, solar and wind are on their way here as a matter of technology and economics. Solar farms are being build right now at several locations in VA, and I am sure other places as well.
25   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Apr 9, 12:09pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Except the early investments mean prices are collapsing.


Not sure what you mean. The electric generators in Windmills don't have an infinite lifespan.Germany is way behind targets, and it's last nuclear plants shut down in 2022. Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic, and France have threatened to regulate in the EU if the Germans don't stop their load shedding which is causing expensive repairs to electric infrastructure in Europe.

Coal, coal, coal!
26   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 12:23pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released the latest iteration of its annual Wind Technologies Market Report, which pulls together a wealth of data to track trends in the cost, performance, and growth of wind energy.


Nobody wants windmills blowing cancer on them.
27   Rin   2019 Apr 9, 12:25pm  

Ppl. I suspect that by the next century, we'll have highly efficient solar stations in space, able to harness the sun's energy and microwave it back to earth, supplying virtually unlimited power. As one can guess, there are no clouds in the magnetosphere.

And then, we can focus on recycling our spent uranium, and making our nuclear waste a fraction of what it is today.

Instead of the above, we're bickering about phantom peak oil & other whoa-is-me scenarios.
28   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 9, 12:31pm  

Rin says
Ppl. I suspect that by the next century, we'll have highly efficient solar stations in space, able to harness the sun's energy and microwave it back to earth, supplying virtually unlimited power. As one can guess, there are no clouds in the magnetosphere.


Why no dream bigger?

Harness power directly from the magnetosphere or even pull the electromagnetic energy that is naturally around us, without magnets or generators?

If wireless electricity is a thing. Then think we could wirelessly generate electricity without a generator.

But that wont solve our plastics, lubrications and composite needs. We will still need to refine just as much Oil as we do today, just to keep up with the essential Oil by Products demand.

In the meantime that nasty waste product that new technology will replace will just stockpile. What do you suppose we should do with billions of gallons of Petrol Gasoline a year. Dump it in the Ocean, Burn it or dump it in the ground?
29   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 12:36pm  

MisterLearnToCode says
Not sure what you mean.


I mean this: people who bought renewable energy early paid very expensive prices for crappy stuff. Early Teslas or solar panels were hugely expensive.

But it is thanks to these early investments that technology evolved and that the prices are in the process of collapsing, thereby driving more spending, more investments, more research, and so cheaper and more efficient gear.
30   Rin   2019 Apr 9, 8:43pm  

Tenpoundbass says
But that wont solve our plastics, lubrications and composite needs. We will still need to refine just as much Oil as we do today, just to keep up with the essential Oil by Products demand.


With nearly unlimited power from the sun, either through your ideas or my simpler solar satellite/microwave model, being able to change petroleum by-products into their base elements, will not be a problem assuming that someone still knows some applied chemistry in the future.

The process chemical industry of today, relies upon catalytic processes, with no ability to push reactants beyond obvious reaction pathways which is both economical and feasible from a design p.o.v for bulk processing. This can easily change if a microwave collector is nearby and extra energy can to used to convert all the intermediaries and by-products.
32   just_passing_through   2019 Apr 9, 9:34pm  

Tenpoundbass says
"You know if people don't buy gas, they can't keep refining Oil. Because they'll run out of storage for the refined Petrol, and you can't just burn it!"


So true! There are several other products beyond gasoline and diesel from refining. Plastics, fertilizer etc... I've been wondering what happens if/when electric vehicles really takes off.
33   Reality   2019 Apr 9, 9:50pm  

kt1652 says
It took millions of years to create fossil fuel and at this rate we may have a few more HUNDREDs of years left of the stuff in the ground.


"Fossil fuel" is a misnomer. Carbonaceous fuel is abundant in this part of the universe, including many other planets and astroids that have no evidence of ever having life (or even possibility of having life due to exposure to space radiation). More carbonaceous fuel is created every day below the earth's crust due to heat generated by radioactive decays of Uranium and Thorium, as well as tidal forces on the crust and magma due to the moon. Water and calcium carbonate (lime stones) subduct into earth's crust and under high pressure and high temperature turn into carbonaceous fuel (starting as methane, then due to bacterial action feeding off some of the C-H bond turning methane (CH4) into ethane (C2H6) then further elongate the carbon chain as hydrogen atoms get stripped away . . . by the time the carbon chain is 6-carbon in length or longer, we have oil instead of natural gas. When all the hydrogen atoms are stripped away by bacterial, we end up having coal. That's why all the big continental natural gas fields found in the US in the past couple decades are below previously known coal-rich areas and oil-producing areas.


I am with you more than you realize, civilization has 100 or at most 200 years left before environmental annihilation.


I suppose, radioactive fallout from a global thermonuclear war can be described as an environmental problem . . . a little like calling being shot by a bullet as a form of "fast acting lead poisoning."
34   kt1652   2019 Apr 10, 12:10am  

I'm in violent agreement with you, I think.
35   HeadSet   2019 Apr 10, 8:22am  

Water and calcium carbonate (lime stones) subduct into earth's crust and under high pressure and high temperature turn into carbonaceous fuel

Do not forget that limestone is the mass of old sea shells, biologically produced from carbon originally in the atmosphere.

Carbonaceous fuel is abundant in this part of the universe, including many other planets

Gas planets have methane, but moon and rocky planets have more than trace carbon?
36   Bd6r   2019 Apr 10, 8:28am  

Patrick says
Proven oil reserves keep going up and not down

It takes more energy to extract newly discovered oil reserves. In Saudi Barbaria, you can stick a pipe down the sand and it will gush oil. If oil in under 10000 ft of water and 3000 ft of rock, it is much more difficult to get it.

Tenpoundbass says
In the meantime that nasty waste product that new technology will replace will just stockpile. What do you suppose we should do with billions of gallons of Petrol Gasoline a year. Dump it in the Ocean, Burn it or dump it in the ground?

The current oil refineries use a process that maximizes production of gasoline. It is not too difficult to change process to produce ethylene, propylene, etc for plastics. This is not an issue.
MisterLearnToCode says
The Carbon Fiber blades can't be incinerated and are incredibly toxic and carcinogenic

The carbon fiber itself is not toxic. This is outside my field, but I recall that particles from carbon fibers are really bad from lungs, causing cancer (that is, breaking up these blades may be dangerous for health). Otherwise one can lick carbon fiber blades all day without any toxic effects. I also recall reading that wind is the only renewable (other than hydro) which makes economic sense - but just like hydro, it has its problems - kills birds, is a massive eyesore, etc.
37   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 10, 8:29am  

just_dregalicious says
So true! There are several other products beyond gasoline and diesel from refining. Plastics, fertilizer etc... I've been wondering what happens if/when electric vehicles really takes off.


Oil refinement was before the Gasoline Automobile, JD Rockefeller went to Henry Ford and told him he had a dilemma. He has a volatile waste byproduct from refining Oil and needed to get rid of it. He asked Henry if he would develop an engine that could run on Gasoline rather than Steam, and the rest was History.

That genie can not go back in the bottle.

I don't take anyone serious when bitching about Fossil fuels, and believes that alternate energy will replace Petrol products. If they at least don't acknowledge the paradox Oil is the Manna, Lifeblood, the Pollen, the Nectar that fuels and feed modern civilization. Take that away we'll be battery operated Cavemen.
Until we run out of rare earth minerals and can't get more because the Diesel powered excavation equipment will lie idle and defunct.
38   Shaman   2019 Apr 10, 10:02am  

I plan to just hook up a Mr. Fusion reactor in my yard, maybe in a small closet. It should power everything just fine for the next thousand years on a cup of water.
39   Reality   2019 Apr 10, 10:43am  

Gas planets have methane, but moon and rocky planets have more than trace carbon?


The Moon and Mercury have too little mass to retain any atmosphere.

Venus has an atmosphere that is mostly CO2, IMHO, likely due to solar wind (ion blasts) breaking up water molecules and CH4 in the upper atmosphere (the same thing happens in the upper atmosphere of earth), and the planet not having enough gravity to retain the resulting H2 . . . leaving behind CO2.

Mars is recently discovered to have methane out-gassing.

IMHO, all the planets (and the sun) are likely to have been made of similar star dust in this region of the universe. The size (mass) decides what can be retained and what is lost over time after the 3D layer cakes emerge. The lighter bodies (and closer to the Sun therefore receiving more ionic blast from the Sun and shorter orbital circumference to sweep) simply don't have enough mass to aggregate hydrogen (some so light that they can't retain any gas at all, so no atmosphere at all, eventually will fall into the bigger bodies nearby; the moon is already tidal locked and will eventually fall into earth just like every man-made satellite eventually does); the heavier ones can aggregate hydrogen so have an atmosphere much more voluminous than that of the earth (we call them gas-giants because we are the idiots looking from the outside and only seeing the thick layer of atmosphere of those planets), then the really heavy one(s) generate enough pressure in its core (due to gravity) to ignite nuclear fusion of the hydrogen (i.e. the Sun). Carbon and life just happen to be byproducts and passengers in those nova and super-nova cycles.
40   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 12, 8:00pm  

About what I've said about oil being replenished in real time, at the bottom of the Ocean. It's actually happening even faster than I suspected.

https://www.breitbart.com/news/oil-eating-bacteria-found-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean/


The bacteria are likely deriving a significant portion of their food from pollution that sinks from the ocean surface. But scientists also found evidence that some of the hydrocarbons are sourced from below.

“To our surprise, we also identified biologically produced hydrocarbons in the ocean sediment at the bottom of the trench,” said UEA researcher Nikolai Pedentchouk. “This suggests that a unique microbial population is producing hydrocarbons in this environment.”

In addition to providing sustenance, researchers suspect the hydrocarbons help microbes survive the crushing pressures of extreme ocean depths.

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