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I thought the peak oil people were saying we are running out of oil and that production would peak then decline relatively soon. If they were saying that prices

by spikels 12y ago

I thought the peak oil people were saying we are running out of oil and that production would peak then decline relatively soon. If they were saying that prices would simply rise encouraging new technology to allow continuing increased production then I think they were very poor at communicating their ideas. More likely they actually believed what they were clearly saying: oil production would peak in X years. See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06peak.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06peak.html

CookieMon 12y ago
As per your wiki link, it is about the extraction rate, which is not to be confused with how much oil there is - there will always be vast amounts of oil that's uneconomic to extract, or slow to extract, or both. The only "running out of oil" claimed by peak oil people is that we're running out of cheap oil. They do claim the production rate will decline, and conventional crude has. The wells from this boom in the US have a production rate decline of 40% per year, so production is already declining nearly as fast as we can drill more and is predicted to peak soon. Edit: Myself, I guess it's true that by throwing even more resources at oil (e.g. pursuing tight oil in other countries like in the US) we could still kick the peak down the road a little more and raise the production rate, but when the world economy can't afford such prices and the EROI is so poor then it seems more like playing word games than an honest rebuttle of the implications of peak oil.
tsotha 12y ago
They certainly got the shape of the curve wrong, but the fact that you'll eventually have to stop using a finite resource is axiomatic, isn't it?
- spikels 12y ago
  Agreed - it is either wrong or a contentless axiomatic statement. My sense is many "Peak Oil" people were predicting something dramatic would happen (not just price increases) and were simply wrong. What is strange is the strong appeal of the idea to some people.

by spikels 12y ago

CookieMon 12y ago

As per your wiki link, it is about the extraction rate, which is not to be confused with how much oil there is - there will always be vast amounts of oil that's uneconomic to extract, or slow to extract, or both. The only "running out of oil" claimed by peak oil people is that we're running out of cheap oil. They do claim the production rate will decline, and conventional crude has. The wells from this boom in the US have a production rate decline of 40% per year, so production is already declining nearly as fast as we can drill more and is predicted to peak soon. Edit: Myself, I guess it's true that by throwing even more resources at oil (e.g. pursuing tight oil in other countries like in the US) we could still kick the peak down the road a little more and raise the production rate, but when the world economy can't afford such prices and the EROI is so poor then it seems more like playing word games than an honest rebuttle of the implications of peak oil.

tsotha 12y ago

They certainly got the shape of the curve wrong, but the fact that you'll eventually have to stop using a finite resource is axiomatic, isn't it?

spikels 12y ago
Agreed - it is either wrong or a contentless axiomatic statement. My sense is many "Peak Oil" people were predicting something dramatic would happen (not just price increases) and were simply wrong. What is strange is the strong appeal of the idea to some people.