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I'd say peak oil was 99% wrong. The main argument against it was simply that market forces would find a way to deliver more oil if conventional oil started get
by cameldrv 4y ago
I'd say peak oil was 99% wrong. The main argument against it was simply that market forces would find a way to deliver more oil if conventional oil started getting expensive. That's exactly what happened. As it turned out, the main solution the market has come up with is fracking, but if fracking had not been invented, it could have been tar sands, coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, more ultra-deepwater drilling, political accommodation with pariah states, etc etc.
- syntheweave 4y agoIt all depends on whether we define fracked oil to be actually the same energy resource as conventional. Which, in EROEI terms, it isn't - it gets a compatible result at a higher cost. In that framing, peak oil happened - we just proceeded to reframe reality around a substitute and choked down a decade of stagnation in the energy economy.
- cameldrv 4y agoIMO that was another problem with the peak oil theory -- the obsession with EROEI. They would say that Saudi oil was, say, 30 EROEI and shale was 5. If you flip that upside down though 30 EROEI = 97% efficiency, and 5 EROEI is 80% efficiency. Of course you'd rather have 97% efficiency, but 80% works fine.
- aidenn0 4y agoYeah, I don't buy the EROEI argument either. I do think that non-demand based price shocks spurred research into more expensive (usually lower EROEI) sources of petroleum much sooner than a purely open market would have. 1975-1985 was about as expensive (inflation adjusted) as the early 21st century, and we didn't have a huge shale boom then.