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Also contributing probably is the rising risk that if you don't pump that oil as fast as possible and sell it now, you might never be able to sell it. This is w

by eloff 7y ago

Also contributing probably is the rising risk that if you don't pump that oil as fast as possible and sell it now, you might never be able to sell it. This is weighing on the Saudi Aramco IPO. Although probably not as much as the general opaque and untrustworthy reports from the Saudis as to how much oil they have left. We used to worry about peak oil, where a supply crunch would cause the price to skyrocket. Now it's clear it will end in a whimper with demand just trailing off until only the very cheapest producers are still in the market. Too bad Canada, Brazil. It's a good thing to be clear, and can't happen fast enough.

corodra 7y ago
To be fair, I think the "peak oil scare" was good. That's when we all started to focus and take renewables seriously. I find it funny that OPEC never learned from its mistake from the 70s when there was the oil shortage and fuel efficiency became a thing. To be aware, fuel efficiency before then was never worth mentioning in a car sale. Yes, it never became too big because the shortage ended, but it at least got started. Without the peak oil scare, we wouldn't be "this" far, I think. Humans need a burning fire under their ass to actually do something. Promise you this though. Don't think big oil will be down and out. They're going to collect all the cold hard cash they can this next few years. Then, they're going to strangle the commodities needed for renewables. They'll start buying rare earth mining rights, processing plants, manufacturing companies and all. Making sure they make the biggest dollar from the beginning of the energy food chain to the consumer's doorstep. If they can't make money from oil, both God and I as their witness, they'll make their money from lithium and battery manufacturing. To think they're a bunch of mustache twirling dummies is the biggest folly people have.
- ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
  > they'll make their money from lithium and battery manufacturing This isn't much of a problem though I think? It would be a problem if they bought mining rights then refused to mine causing shortages of raw materials needed for renewable tech.
  - corodra 7y ago
    As a capitalist, I want to own all the lithium mining rights in the world. I dictate the price and flow when I seem fit. Like De Beers in blood diamonds... cough, sorry, "ethically sourced diamonds". As a consumer, I want many, many capitalists owning different lithium mining rights in the world. They fight each other to lower the price and be competitive. Then find cheaper and cheaper ways to obtain lithium or even figure out better alternatives. I am a capitalist. But I'm also not a total fucking monster. Oil companies don't play massive competitive games. They like working together. So no. I don't want them to have a hand in the future. By the way, research lithium mining. A lot of big media have reported on it. It's fucked up and pretty much a modern day humanitarian/slave crisis.
    - shiftpgdn 7y ago
      Lithium is easily sustainable to mine and there are wildly ample amounts of reserves in the US. Almost all negative articles about vehicle electrification are hit pieces that intentionally conflate lithium and rare earth materials like Cobalt.
      - Robotbeat 7y ago
        I agree with you, but Cobalt is not a rare earth material. And just to reiterate: lithium is abundant, widely distributed, and cobalt isn't required for batteries (LiFePO4 is a common chemistry, uses no cobalt, and has very long cycle life... good especially for grid applications).
- nickik 7y ago
  > To be fair, I think the "peak oil scare" was good. That's when we all started to focus and take renewables seriously. I No not really. It made me focus on looking into the 'peak oil' claims and I then realized that was major nonsense and people who proclaim it should not be taken seriously and are instantly discredited in anything they say. Peak oil was a major distraction about the actual issues that should have been talked about.
  - corodra 7y ago
    "The house is burning! The house is burning!" A child laughs. Parents take the child out of the house quickly in fear. After a moment a plane crashes into the house, obliterating it. While yes, the child was full of shit. It still led to something marginally good. Maybe the parents should have left him in the house because he's a little shit. That might make the situation better. But that's an ethics question I don't feel like exploring. Peak oil might have been a false flag scare, true. I'm not going to argue with you on that. Fuck it, I'm going to agree with you. It was a total bullshit scare! But it was a scare that led to a big push in getting away from fossil fuels. So still, it was a good thing. Ends justify the means.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > It was a total bullshit scare! But it was a scare that led to a big push in getting away from fossil fuels. So still, it was a good thing. Ends justify the means. When this kind of thinking is common, though, you lose the ability to engage at all with people who might not believe that "getting away from fossil fuels" is valuable as an end in itself.[1] Is it valuable for other reasons? Certainly not any reasons that might come out of your mouth. [1] Which, frankly, should be everyone. What kind of terminal goal is that?
      - corodra 7y ago
        I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it's effective. If you say the right thing but people still do the wrong thing... who cares? If you say the wrong thing, but people do the right thing, is that bad?
crispyambulance 7y ago
I think the peak in "peak oil" is a very wide peak with a lot of noise in it. That makes it easy for certain people to make-believe it's not going to happen. But it is... we just might not be able to predict which decade with certainty. Perhaps this is a kind of an intelligence test for human civilization. Can we stop the global guzzling of petroleum resources before there's a profound ecological and economic shock? I think not. There's no "free-refill" of oil unless we all go extinct, get covered by sediment for a million years before we're liquified to petroleum.
- corodra 7y ago
  Look, I'm just about a complete package when it comes to being an asshole. My history on HN is more than enough to prove that. But, I don't' think humans are that useless to where they're going to fail in fixing this. This can be reversed and we're in the beginning stages. The hole in the ozone layer was deemed doomed and without repair. NASA has it in track on being fully recovered in around 2060 since we stopped using shit aerosols in the 90s. I think Musk is a complete and utter cunt, but I also recognize the good he's done for electronic cars. Now, all the big players are releasing real electric cars. Hell, VW is doing so to fix their PR image after the diesel scandal. This is good. Still will take time, but you can't have a critical mass breaking point without a slow beginning. A point will be reached (when, I'm not smart enough to answer) and fossil fuel cars will look like a home phone compared to cell phones. If you're old enough, you'll remember that cell phones were "secondary" phones. Then, in a flash, people realized "Oh, we all stopped paying for landlines". And few people have landlines anymore. The moment Dodge/Ford/GM come out with an EV that has the same feel and balls as a muscle car, that's my personal breaking point. Right now it's all focused on the luxury, feather, Italian aesthetics feel. Fuck that dumbass nonsense. Give me a mean and angry electric vehicle. Or an ultra long range EV Jeep. That'd be cool.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    The ozone hole was mostly fixed by changing refrigerants. This was fought at first until it became apparent that substitute refrigerants could be produced. At that point, the refrigerant manufacturers and the manufacturers of air conditioning equipment saw that there was a pot of gold in the transition and dropped their opposition. The consumer paid for it, but consumers are often led astray and aren't organized enough to fight for their self interest.
nradov 7y ago
The notion of crude oil becoming a stranded asset seems a little silly. It will be many decades before the transportation infrastructure transitions off fossil fuels. And even then there will be demand for oil as a feed stock for chemical manufacturing (plastics, fertilizers, etc). (I'm not claiming that this is a good thing, it's just the economic reality.)
- corodra 7y ago
  I can't remember where I saw the numbers and I'm pretty sure I'm off a bit. But I think only half of all crude oil gets distilled into "fuel". The rest ends up as plastics and other chemicals, as you mention. I just remember it's a very significant of non-fuel oil use is out there. A quick google search, I can't find the chart I saw. Maybe someone can chime in better on that? Edit: Listen to Retric's comment below, not me on my stats
  - Retric 7y ago
    Worldwide, only 1/4 of oil is used for industry. 46% of oil is turned into gas. However, include diesel, aviation, plus boat fuels and transportation adds up to 69% of oil used. Home heating is 3%, and electricity is 1%.
- Retric 7y ago
  Personal transport going close to 100% electric is going to take a long time, but combine all electric vehicles with plug in hybrids and demand may start to drop within 10 years. Especially if bio fuel production remains steady, the total demand for oil could actually start to fall significantly within ~15 years. Remove oil as an energy source and industry would still keep 1/4 of current demand. So, oil is not going to become stranded, but that’s still going to crush any company or country depending on current profits.
- eloff 7y ago
  We have a LOT of oil in the ground. If most of it doesn't get stranded we're in for much, much worse problems.
- 7y ago
cmrdporcupine 7y ago
This demand whimper thing is inflaming politics very poorly in Canada. There is a very vocal and strong wing of right wing politics centred out of Alberta that blames central Canadian liberalism for its economic woes (for not building pipeline capacity and enacting carbon taxes). Or at least that's their public line to inflame the masses while they know full well that their oil is expensive low quality oil and the world wide price of oil has been sagging for a half decade because of global macroeconomic forces that the rest of Canada has no control over. It's becoming quite toxic, and is an example (along with Trump's nonsense coal jobs rhetoric) of the kind of thing that we are going to have to deal with as the economic and political realities of climate change become more visible. (That, and xenophobic hostility to refugees which will inevitably increase as climate change further damages the global south.)
- corodra 7y ago
  Like... do inflamed Canadians hold the door open for you but not tell you to have a good day...ah? Jokes aside, Canada actually stands to profit well from global warming. With thousands of years of resting, fertile top soil, lands not suitable for agriculture due to short growing seasons... well, you'll have better growing seasons. Plus still be cool enough to not be a scorching wasteland. Just being realistic. Many countries used for agriculture will dwindle in the average increase of temperature. Canada will actually increase. Same with Russia, most of Siberia is fantastic top soil, just really, really shitting growing seasons... well, lack there of.
  - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
    Har har stereotypes. Most of Canada's north is in fact granite "Canadian shield" country with thin or non-existent top soils. See map here: https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x450/98/180898-050-810A6879/Map-extent-Canadian-Shield-North-America-mass.jpg https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x450/98/180898-050-810A6879/... Also the bulk of the population lives next to the border, in areas as far south as northern California / southern Oregon. In reality Canada will not likely benefit economically from global warming because for its entire history it's been mostly an exporter of resources, not a producer of finished goods. Right now a large part of GDP from exports is from oil and gas, and the dominant economic class here benefits from keeping it that way. Similar to Russia, actually. Canada already has plenty of fertile soils (rapidly being destroyed by urban sprawl, but that's another story). And it used to be one of the world's biggest food exporters. It is now a net food importer. Because it's cheaper to produce food elsewhere with dirt cheap labour in Mexico and so on. That isn't likely to change.
marcosdumay 7y ago
> where a supply crunch would cause the price to skyrocket Hum... How do current prices compare the the 90's? What is the definition of "skyrocket" you were expecting? Or are you talking about the people that kept saying we'd be back to a medieval economy? Apocalipse fantasizing is a hobby since that book exists; and I'm pretty sure it just had a different name before it, it's not sane to take those people seriously (it's not healthy to fight them either), and it's not sane to pretend everybody is like them.

by eloff 7y ago

corodra 7y ago

To be fair, I think the "peak oil scare" was good. That's when we all started to focus and take renewables seriously. I find it funny that OPEC never learned from its mistake from the 70s when there was the oil shortage and fuel efficiency became a thing. To be aware, fuel efficiency before then was never worth mentioning in a car sale. Yes, it never became too big because the shortage ended, but it at least got started. Without the peak oil scare, we wouldn't be "this" far, I think. Humans need a burning fire under their ass to actually do something. Promise you this though. Don't think big oil will be down and out. They're going to collect all the cold hard cash they can this next few years. Then, they're going to strangle the commodities needed for renewables. They'll start buying rare earth mining rights, processing plants, manufacturing companies and all. Making sure they make the biggest dollar from the beginning of the energy food chain to the consumer's doorstep. If they can't make money from oil, both God and I as their witness, they'll make their money from lithium and battery manufacturing. To think they're a bunch of mustache twirling dummies is the biggest folly people have.

ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
> they'll make their money from lithium and battery manufacturing This isn't much of a problem though I think? It would be a problem if they bought mining rights then refused to mine causing shortages of raw materials needed for renewable tech.
- corodra 7y ago
  As a capitalist, I want to own all the lithium mining rights in the world. I dictate the price and flow when I seem fit. Like De Beers in blood diamonds... cough, sorry, "ethically sourced diamonds". As a consumer, I want many, many capitalists owning different lithium mining rights in the world. They fight each other to lower the price and be competitive. Then find cheaper and cheaper ways to obtain lithium or even figure out better alternatives. I am a capitalist. But I'm also not a total fucking monster. Oil companies don't play massive competitive games. They like working together. So no. I don't want them to have a hand in the future. By the way, research lithium mining. A lot of big media have reported on it. It's fucked up and pretty much a modern day humanitarian/slave crisis.
  - shiftpgdn 7y ago
    Lithium is easily sustainable to mine and there are wildly ample amounts of reserves in the US. Almost all negative articles about vehicle electrification are hit pieces that intentionally conflate lithium and rare earth materials like Cobalt.
    - Robotbeat 7y ago
      I agree with you, but Cobalt is not a rare earth material. And just to reiterate: lithium is abundant, widely distributed, and cobalt isn't required for batteries (LiFePO4 is a common chemistry, uses no cobalt, and has very long cycle life... good especially for grid applications).
nickik 7y ago
> To be fair, I think the "peak oil scare" was good. That's when we all started to focus and take renewables seriously. I No not really. It made me focus on looking into the 'peak oil' claims and I then realized that was major nonsense and people who proclaim it should not be taken seriously and are instantly discredited in anything they say. Peak oil was a major distraction about the actual issues that should have been talked about.
- corodra 7y ago
  "The house is burning! The house is burning!" A child laughs. Parents take the child out of the house quickly in fear. After a moment a plane crashes into the house, obliterating it. While yes, the child was full of shit. It still led to something marginally good. Maybe the parents should have left him in the house because he's a little shit. That might make the situation better. But that's an ethics question I don't feel like exploring. Peak oil might have been a false flag scare, true. I'm not going to argue with you on that. Fuck it, I'm going to agree with you. It was a total bullshit scare! But it was a scare that led to a big push in getting away from fossil fuels. So still, it was a good thing. Ends justify the means.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > It was a total bullshit scare! But it was a scare that led to a big push in getting away from fossil fuels. So still, it was a good thing. Ends justify the means. When this kind of thinking is common, though, you lose the ability to engage at all with people who might not believe that "getting away from fossil fuels" is valuable as an end in itself.[1] Is it valuable for other reasons? Certainly not any reasons that might come out of your mouth. [1] Which, frankly, should be everyone. What kind of terminal goal is that?
    - corodra 7y ago
      I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it's effective. If you say the right thing but people still do the wrong thing... who cares? If you say the wrong thing, but people do the right thing, is that bad?

crispyambulance 7y ago

I think the peak in "peak oil" is a very wide peak with a lot of noise in it. That makes it easy for certain people to make-believe it's not going to happen. But it is... we just might not be able to predict which decade with certainty. Perhaps this is a kind of an intelligence test for human civilization. Can we stop the global guzzling of petroleum resources before there's a profound ecological and economic shock? I think not. There's no "free-refill" of oil unless we all go extinct, get covered by sediment for a million years before we're liquified to petroleum.

corodra 7y ago
Look, I'm just about a complete package when it comes to being an asshole. My history on HN is more than enough to prove that. But, I don't' think humans are that useless to where they're going to fail in fixing this. This can be reversed and we're in the beginning stages. The hole in the ozone layer was deemed doomed and without repair. NASA has it in track on being fully recovered in around 2060 since we stopped using shit aerosols in the 90s. I think Musk is a complete and utter cunt, but I also recognize the good he's done for electronic cars. Now, all the big players are releasing real electric cars. Hell, VW is doing so to fix their PR image after the diesel scandal. This is good. Still will take time, but you can't have a critical mass breaking point without a slow beginning. A point will be reached (when, I'm not smart enough to answer) and fossil fuel cars will look like a home phone compared to cell phones. If you're old enough, you'll remember that cell phones were "secondary" phones. Then, in a flash, people realized "Oh, we all stopped paying for landlines". And few people have landlines anymore. The moment Dodge/Ford/GM come out with an EV that has the same feel and balls as a muscle car, that's my personal breaking point. Right now it's all focused on the luxury, feather, Italian aesthetics feel. Fuck that dumbass nonsense. Give me a mean and angry electric vehicle. Or an ultra long range EV Jeep. That'd be cool.
- Merrill 7y ago
  The ozone hole was mostly fixed by changing refrigerants. This was fought at first until it became apparent that substitute refrigerants could be produced. At that point, the refrigerant manufacturers and the manufacturers of air conditioning equipment saw that there was a pot of gold in the transition and dropped their opposition. The consumer paid for it, but consumers are often led astray and aren't organized enough to fight for their self interest.

nradov 7y ago

The notion of crude oil becoming a stranded asset seems a little silly. It will be many decades before the transportation infrastructure transitions off fossil fuels. And even then there will be demand for oil as a feed stock for chemical manufacturing (plastics, fertilizers, etc). (I'm not claiming that this is a good thing, it's just the economic reality.)

corodra 7y ago
I can't remember where I saw the numbers and I'm pretty sure I'm off a bit. But I think only half of all crude oil gets distilled into "fuel". The rest ends up as plastics and other chemicals, as you mention. I just remember it's a very significant of non-fuel oil use is out there. A quick google search, I can't find the chart I saw. Maybe someone can chime in better on that? Edit: Listen to Retric's comment below, not me on my stats
- Retric 7y ago
  Worldwide, only 1/4 of oil is used for industry. 46% of oil is turned into gas. However, include diesel, aviation, plus boat fuels and transportation adds up to 69% of oil used. Home heating is 3%, and electricity is 1%.
Retric 7y ago
Personal transport going close to 100% electric is going to take a long time, but combine all electric vehicles with plug in hybrids and demand may start to drop within 10 years. Especially if bio fuel production remains steady, the total demand for oil could actually start to fall significantly within ~15 years. Remove oil as an energy source and industry would still keep 1/4 of current demand. So, oil is not going to become stranded, but that’s still going to crush any company or country depending on current profits.
eloff 7y ago
We have a LOT of oil in the ground. If most of it doesn't get stranded we're in for much, much worse problems.
7y ago

cmrdporcupine 7y ago

This demand whimper thing is inflaming politics very poorly in Canada. There is a very vocal and strong wing of right wing politics centred out of Alberta that blames central Canadian liberalism for its economic woes (for not building pipeline capacity and enacting carbon taxes). Or at least that's their public line to inflame the masses while they know full well that their oil is expensive low quality oil and the world wide price of oil has been sagging for a half decade because of global macroeconomic forces that the rest of Canada has no control over. It's becoming quite toxic, and is an example (along with Trump's nonsense coal jobs rhetoric) of the kind of thing that we are going to have to deal with as the economic and political realities of climate change become more visible. (That, and xenophobic hostility to refugees which will inevitably increase as climate change further damages the global south.)

corodra 7y ago
Like... do inflamed Canadians hold the door open for you but not tell you to have a good day...ah? Jokes aside, Canada actually stands to profit well from global warming. With thousands of years of resting, fertile top soil, lands not suitable for agriculture due to short growing seasons... well, you'll have better growing seasons. Plus still be cool enough to not be a scorching wasteland. Just being realistic. Many countries used for agriculture will dwindle in the average increase of temperature. Canada will actually increase. Same with Russia, most of Siberia is fantastic top soil, just really, really shitting growing seasons... well, lack there of.
- cmrdporcupine 7y ago
  Har har stereotypes. Most of Canada's north is in fact granite "Canadian shield" country with thin or non-existent top soils. See map here: https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x450/98/180898-050-810A6879/Map-extent-Canadian-Shield-North-America-mass.jpg https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x450/98/180898-050-810A6879/... Also the bulk of the population lives next to the border, in areas as far south as northern California / southern Oregon. In reality Canada will not likely benefit economically from global warming because for its entire history it's been mostly an exporter of resources, not a producer of finished goods. Right now a large part of GDP from exports is from oil and gas, and the dominant economic class here benefits from keeping it that way. Similar to Russia, actually. Canada already has plenty of fertile soils (rapidly being destroyed by urban sprawl, but that's another story). And it used to be one of the world's biggest food exporters. It is now a net food importer. Because it's cheaper to produce food elsewhere with dirt cheap labour in Mexico and so on. That isn't likely to change.

marcosdumay 7y ago

> where a supply crunch would cause the price to skyrocket Hum... How do current prices compare the the 90's? What is the definition of "skyrocket" you were expecting? Or are you talking about the people that kept saying we'd be back to a medieval economy? Apocalipse fantasizing is a hobby since that book exists; and I'm pretty sure it just had a different name before it, it's not sane to take those people seriously (it's not healthy to fight them either), and it's not sane to pretend everybody is like them.