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> It's physically impossible for this development to continue indefinitely Why can't oil be made synthetically? Say by genetically engineering bacteria etc. Th

> It's physically impossible for this development to continue indefinitely Why can't oil be made synthetically? Say by genetically engineering bacteria etc. That being the case I don't see any limit to oil production

ncarlson 17y ago
He's talking about development in terms of oil well depletion.
- lupin_sansei 17y ago
  Sure, but why limit our oil sources to just oil wells?
brazzy 17y ago
First law of thermodynamics. The whole point of oil is that it's energy-rich. To make it synthetically, you need to take energy from somewhere - but if you intend to use the oil to produce energy, why not use it directly instead of going through the intermediate oil stage. Basically, synthetically-made oil only makes sense only if the process involves an efficient way to turn a widely-available but inferior form of energy into oil. Basically, that's bio-ethanol: already being done, but not feasible at the scale it would take to satisfy all current demand for oil-
- lupin_sansei 17y ago
  Oil is a convenient, efficient storage mechanism for energy, and there's a vast existing "user base" or machinery that runs on oil. If we use non-oil energy to provide heat and light in order to "grow" oil via some organic process we could still be ahead.
crpatino 17y ago
This is possible of course. After all, the stuff we extract from the ground came into existence somehow in nature, and we know we are good at speeding up nature to do staff we want. The two problems I see are scale and unwillingness. On the one hand, the conventional wisdom say that the natural oil was made over millions and millions of years. Even if we manage to find a way to speed up nature 1000x we are in the thousands and thousands of years to regenerate the whole global reserve. At present consumption rates, know reserves will last less than 50 years. This means we would be better off developing alternate energies, reducing consumption, and reserving oil exclusively for strategic uses only (you cannot fly a plane without fossil fuels, but you can make your chairs of wood instead of plastic). The other issue I see, and I belive there is no solution at all, is unwillingness from the politicians and the society in general to acknowledge the problem and do what needs to be done. Every child learns in the school that oil is a non renewable resource... and what we do? We consume more and more of the stuff every year. It is depressing to see the huge amount of utter garbage that gets made and sold out of oil, frivolous stuff, junk that nobody really loves or cares about... Markets are slow to transfer information to economic actors when conditions change drastically. Lack of political organized response, we are in for very interesting times in the decades to come.
- lupin_sansei 17y ago
  > At present consumption rates, know reserves will last less than 50 years But those reserves are growing not shrinking over time. In the 1950s there was only 10 years of known reserves. We need to start worrying when the known reserves start getting smaller, rather than growing over time. http://www.scdigest.com/images/misc/World-Oil-Reserves_web_000.jpg http://www.scdigest.com/images/misc/World-Oil-Reserves_web_0... http://www.cheaperpetrolparty.com/Images/World%20Crude%20Oil%20Reserves%201980-2007.jpg http://www.cheaperpetrolparty.com/Images/World%20Crude%20Oil... http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/opec_reserve_growth.gif http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/opec_reserve_growth.gif > Markets are slow to transfer information to economic actors when conditions change drastically Hardly. Prices rise and fall in minutes when there's new information. Also if the 20th century has taught us anything it's that we need to keep politicans as far away from resource development as possible,
  - crpatino 17y ago
    lupin, I think you are taking a really cheap shot at me. I am not arguing that we are about to run out of oil in the near future. I dont think oil will "run dry" in my lifetime, and quite possible not in my kids lifetime as well. So, let me restate my point. Rebuild an artificial oil reserve of the size of our original natural oil reserve (at the late 19th century levels... regardless of the reserve was known or not), is not an achievable goal for the 21st century. We dont have the time to do the R&D and we dont have the resources to implement the project in the scale needed. Can we do the stuff, I think yes; but un a much lower scale and only for strategic applications that cannot use any other form of less concentrated energy. The rest of society will have to due without or find an alternative solution. Now... >Hardly. Prices rise and fall in minutes when there's new information. That is precisely the problem! Variation within minutes does not produce a consistent strategy, it produces noise. We are guiding the future of ourselves and our children on sheer noise. Not an improvement over the shaman who reads the burned scraps of the dinner. In peak oil circles, it is a widely held belief that 2005 is the year of Peak Oil (since global oil production has plateaued over the last 5 years or so). I do not believe it is the Peak Oil. I believe we are observing a peak oil, resulting from underinvestment from the Big Oil industry in the 90's, when it was so cheap to bother and they decided to "focus on developing existing reserves". Fortunately, you cannot just declare that you are now exploiting new reserves. It takes both material and human infrastructure that takes time to implement. Thus, demand exceeds supply and you see a barrel rise up to almost $150 USD. This triggers a catalyst to structural problems in finance sector and you end up in recession... unable to command the resources needed to upgrade your infrastructure.

ncarlson 17y ago

He's talking about development in terms of oil well depletion.

lupin_sansei 17y ago
Sure, but why limit our oil sources to just oil wells?

brazzy 17y ago

First law of thermodynamics. The whole point of oil is that it's energy-rich. To make it synthetically, you need to take energy from somewhere - but if you intend to use the oil to produce energy, why not use it directly instead of going through the intermediate oil stage. Basically, synthetically-made oil only makes sense only if the process involves an efficient way to turn a widely-available but inferior form of energy into oil. Basically, that's bio-ethanol: already being done, but not feasible at the scale it would take to satisfy all current demand for oil-

lupin_sansei 17y ago
Oil is a convenient, efficient storage mechanism for energy, and there's a vast existing "user base" or machinery that runs on oil. If we use non-oil energy to provide heat and light in order to "grow" oil via some organic process we could still be ahead.

crpatino 17y ago

This is possible of course. After all, the stuff we extract from the ground came into existence somehow in nature, and we know we are good at speeding up nature to do staff we want. The two problems I see are scale and unwillingness. On the one hand, the conventional wisdom say that the natural oil was made over millions and millions of years. Even if we manage to find a way to speed up nature 1000x we are in the thousands and thousands of years to regenerate the whole global reserve. At present consumption rates, know reserves will last less than 50 years. This means we would be better off developing alternate energies, reducing consumption, and reserving oil exclusively for strategic uses only (you cannot fly a plane without fossil fuels, but you can make your chairs of wood instead of plastic). The other issue I see, and I belive there is no solution at all, is unwillingness from the politicians and the society in general to acknowledge the problem and do what needs to be done. Every child learns in the school that oil is a non renewable resource... and what we do? We consume more and more of the stuff every year. It is depressing to see the huge amount of utter garbage that gets made and sold out of oil, frivolous stuff, junk that nobody really loves or cares about... Markets are slow to transfer information to economic actors when conditions change drastically. Lack of political organized response, we are in for very interesting times in the decades to come.

lupin_sansei 17y ago
> At present consumption rates, know reserves will last less than 50 years But those reserves are growing not shrinking over time. In the 1950s there was only 10 years of known reserves. We need to start worrying when the known reserves start getting smaller, rather than growing over time. http://www.scdigest.com/images/misc/World-Oil-Reserves_web_000.jpg http://www.scdigest.com/images/misc/World-Oil-Reserves_web_0... http://www.cheaperpetrolparty.com/Images/World%20Crude%20Oil%20Reserves%201980-2007.jpg http://www.cheaperpetrolparty.com/Images/World%20Crude%20Oil... http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/opec_reserve_growth.gif http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/opec_reserve_growth.gif > Markets are slow to transfer information to economic actors when conditions change drastically Hardly. Prices rise and fall in minutes when there's new information. Also if the 20th century has taught us anything it's that we need to keep politicans as far away from resource development as possible,
- crpatino 17y ago
  lupin, I think you are taking a really cheap shot at me. I am not arguing that we are about to run out of oil in the near future. I dont think oil will "run dry" in my lifetime, and quite possible not in my kids lifetime as well. So, let me restate my point. Rebuild an artificial oil reserve of the size of our original natural oil reserve (at the late 19th century levels... regardless of the reserve was known or not), is not an achievable goal for the 21st century. We dont have the time to do the R&D and we dont have the resources to implement the project in the scale needed. Can we do the stuff, I think yes; but un a much lower scale and only for strategic applications that cannot use any other form of less concentrated energy. The rest of society will have to due without or find an alternative solution. Now... >Hardly. Prices rise and fall in minutes when there's new information. That is precisely the problem! Variation within minutes does not produce a consistent strategy, it produces noise. We are guiding the future of ourselves and our children on sheer noise. Not an improvement over the shaman who reads the burned scraps of the dinner. In peak oil circles, it is a widely held belief that 2005 is the year of Peak Oil (since global oil production has plateaued over the last 5 years or so). I do not believe it is the Peak Oil. I believe we are observing a peak oil, resulting from underinvestment from the Big Oil industry in the 90's, when it was so cheap to bother and they decided to "focus on developing existing reserves". Fortunately, you cannot just declare that you are now exploiting new reserves. It takes both material and human infrastructure that takes time to implement. Thus, demand exceeds supply and you see a barrel rise up to almost $150 USD. This triggers a catalyst to structural problems in finance sector and you end up in recession... unable to command the resources needed to upgrade your infrastructure.