Reliable Information Source for Petroleum News...
 

Here is a link to The Oil Drum, a website with highly reliable news and analysis on events and developments in the petroleum industry.

Most of the articles are written by geologists and engineers in the industry.

During the British Petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, this site was the only reliable source of information and analysis I came across, often leading media stories by weeks or months.

If you really want to know what's going on, this is the place to start.

Of course, some of the blog comments have questionable validity, but it's fairly easy to sort the good apples from the bad.

-AC

I'd have to say thats true of every blog I've ever read.

I don't know if you already know about this site, but in my view, it stands far above anything else.

There are the various ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) sites that are also great, but for timely analysis and trend-spotting this one is where I start.

-AC

US Military Prepares for Fuel Shortages
 

Although I am not a willing supporter of the obscene amount of money spent by the US military, it is of interest that formalized planning is taking place within the military against the event of energy shortages. Why doesn't Congress talk more about this?

"To ensure mission sustainability when supplies are not assured, the Defense Department should incorporate an additional pillar into its operational energy security strategy ¡X that of energy resilience."

More here... Energy for the Warfighter

-AC

An Accidental Environmentalist
 

Retired Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson calls himself “an accidental environmentalist.”

His epiphany about climate change started with a tactical problem. In 2006 and 2007, when he served as the military’s chief logistician in Iraq, he coordinated the transport of millions of gallons of fuel across the country to power everything from vehicles to the large compressors used to cool individual tents—or, as Anderson puts it, for “air conditioning the desert.” He was taking one casualty for every 24 fuel convoys, and he was doing 18 convoys a day. That’s one casualty every other day. He needed to get the trucks off the road. He needed to find a way to reduce the military’s fuel use.

MORE...

-AC

CO2 Per Capita Per Year
 

FYI

-AC

Peak Oil: Has It Arrived?
 

Here is an interesting review of some previous predictions of Peak Oil and when it will arrive...


MORE...

-AC

How Quickly Is Petroleum Being Formed?
 

I have found myself wondering: how fast is petroleum being formed? Petroleum formation is a natural process, and there is no reason to think that the formation has stopped.

Just a few days ago, I realized that I had enough information to do a rough calculation of the rate of petroleum formation, based on how much petroleum we have and how long it took to form.

First off, as I understand it, the petroleum we have available to us began it's trip to us during catastrophic die-offs of oceanic algae, due to excessive CO2 build-up and the consequent atmospheric warming, in two great geological periods. One of these periods was about 125 million years ago and the other was about 90 million years ago.

The dead algae sank to the bottom of the sea, where it was naturally oxidized and entered back into the great maw of life. However, some of it sank or was conveyed by ocean currents into deep oceanic cracks called rifts. If the dead matter got covered by sand and silt, the oxidation was prevented and pressure and heat and many millions of years changed the trapped, dead sea life into a substance we now call 'oil'.

So, there is a time element involved, and the average of the two geological periods is about 108,000,000 years.

There is also the element of how much oil was formed by these ancient events.

This is a chart that was presented to a Shell Oil meeting in 1956 by M. King Hubbert, the most renown geologist of his day:


We can see two global quantities indicated,

• Proven reserves = 250,000,000,000 barrels
• Future Discoveries = 910,000,000,000 barrels

This would give a total = 1,160,000,000,000 barrels, both found and yet to be found.

NOTE: Please note that petroleum barrels are 42 gallons, not 55 gallons. They can also be expressed as liters, 1 barrel = 158.89 liters

A third element would be the number of people who would use the oil, and there are currently about 7,021,000,000 people on the earth who would want to use it. As a reference, the average US per capita consumption is around 28 barrels per year (4,448.9 liters per year)... it's probably gone down some because of the terrible economy.

So if we divide the earth's total oil supply by the years it took to make it, we get:

1,160,000,000,000 barrels / 108,000,000 years = 10,741 barrels per year

That may seem like plenty, but when we divide that by the number of people...

10,741 barrels per year / 7,021,000,000 people, we get a number that is almost too small to understand...

If we convert that number to liters (158.89 liters/barrel) we get... a number that is still too small to understand, so if we convert that number to cubic centimeters (cc) we get 0.2 cubic centimeters, or...

1/5 cc per person per year.

That works out to about 5 drops per person per year.

Comments?


-AC

Yeah, peak oil is more about flow rates and EROEI (energy return on energy invested) than simply reserve numbers. Sure there is a vast amount of unconventional oil in the tarsands, shale, and deepwater, but you have to put in more oil to get less and less "return". There's a lot of oil in that "long tail" of the extraction profile.

The fact that anyone is bothering extracting this expensive, unconventional oil already tells you everything you need to know. IMO, we already see the global economy bumping into the peak and throttling back into recession in response to energy price spikes. The strongest effects are currently seen in the financial world where failure to get expected growth is popping major bubbles and long brewing financial problems. The economy and financial world are the first places to show stresses of peaking oil, not necessarily the gas pump. A lot of what society operates on are expectations (reflected in bonds, budget projections, markets, currencies etc..). It'll be interesting to see what happens when the reality of peak oil and climate change sink in.

As far as info goes, I find that Chris Martenson has a pretty level head and explains things very well. James Howard Kunsler and Michael Ruppert tend to be on the hysterical side, and don't provide much usable info.

Have a nice day :)

I think we're pretty much on the same page here...

I've looked over Martenson's stuff too, and he seems to have the story straight. But the question that needs to be asked next, is what do you do with the knowledge after you have it? It looks to me like Martenson wants to position himself with those who wish to maintain their wealth or better yet, to profit from the approaching disaster. I suppose you could call those people the Oligarchs, at least that's the term that the South Americans are using now.

I'm much more interested in allying myself with community-oriented sustainability thinkers. I think Richard Heinberg speaks with clarity and truth from that point of view.

-AC