Peak Oil and the political response

silverharp

There is good evidence to suggest that we will hit Peak oil in the next 2 to 5 years at the outside (this is the point in time when we have consumed 1/2 the economically viable oil on the planet). It is my opinion that the policital establishment is sleepwalking us into a disaster and are only tinkering around the edges when it comes to energy policy. Will we need the lights to go out and the petrol stations to close down before anything meaningful is done? or put it another way how long will the Irish economy last at $200 oil.

silverharp

silverharp wrote:

There is good evidence to suggest that we will hit Peak oil in the next 2 to 5 years at the outside (this is the point in time when we have consumed 1/2 the economically viable oil on the planet). It is my opinion that the policital establishment is sleepwalking us into a disaster and are only tinkering around the edges when it comes to energy policy. Will we need the lights to go out and the petrol stations to close down before anything meaningful is done? or put it another way how long will the Irish economy last at $200 oil.

Invade an oil rich country under the pretense of them having WMD or build some nuclear power plants to hold us over until "alternative" energy has advanced enough to become viable.

bonkey

silverharp wrote:

There is good evidence to suggest that we will hit Peak oil in the next 2 to 5 years at the outside

Is there? I've seen this argument presented with everything from your estimates to "within our lifetimes". It would suggest that Peak Oil is coming, but there's no real consensus as to when.

Maybe I'm wrong in this....which is why I'm asking. Is there good evidence to back the 2-5 year timeframe?

(this is the point in time when we have consumed 1/2 the economically viable oil on the planet).

Economically viable is a loaded term. For example, if you were to ask in 2000 what was an economically viable price limit for oil, I can almost guarantee the answer would be lower than today's prices.

So what is the economically viable limit? 75$ a barrel? 100$? 120$? Depending on where you set that figure, the amount of oil you can extract profitably increases.

It is my opinion that the policital establishment is sleepwalking us into a disaster and are only tinkering around the edges when it comes to energy policy.

I don't think they're sleepwalking anywhere, personally.

Will we need the lights to go out and the petrol stations to close down before anything meaningful is done?

Done by whom? The sleepwalking politicians?

Why don't the sleepwalking public do something off their own bat, instead of collectively blaming someone else for not forcing them into it?

or put it another way how long will the Irish economy last at $200 oil.

I don't know. How long before we're at $200 a barrel? If you asked back in teh 80s how long the Irish economy would last at 60$ a barrel, the answer would be significantly different to what the answer is today....now that oil has actually hit those prices.

Also, you should ask yourself how much you're willing to pay for the sleepwalking politicans to wake up and use a less-cost-effective alternative to oil somewhere. If we cannot afford oil at $200 per barrel as you suggest, that also means that we cannot afford alternates to oil at $200 per barrel-equivalent. So where is the line drawn, and how willing & able are you to face costs hikes in the short-term greater than those faced for sticking to oil in a comparable timeframe.

Note - I'm not saying that nothing should be done. I'm saying that there are n o easy solutions out there....just people who are easy to blame and who aren't us.

jc

The_Minister

silverharp wrote:

or put it another way how long will the Irish economy last at $200 oil.

If everyone else is at $200 then we might be ok


The problem will solve itself. As oil gets more expensive, renewable will seem cheaper

Freelancer

Firespinner wrote:

If everyone else is at $200 then we might be ok


The problem will solve itself. As oil gets more expensive, renewable will seem cheaper

Hmmmm :rolleyes:

Homer wrote:

Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rainforest scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they?

Lisa wrote:

No, Dad, I don't think--

Homer wrote:

Ah-ah! There's that word again

mike65

Forfas have just released a report looking at Irelands oil needs . There's a high powered discussion tomorrow night not sure of the venue.

http://www.forfas.ie/publications/show/pub223.html

Mike.

SeanW

They proposed nuclear. like wtf? Nuclear has a whole bunch of problems and its rather costly. Wouldn't it make more sense to develop a renewables and biofuels policy now rather than in 15 years time say "oh gee we have a 2000MW power shortfall?"

Moriarty

SeanW wrote:

They proposed nuclear. like wtf? Nuclear has a whole bunch of problems..

Renewable energy sources have no problems associated with them?

SeanW wrote:

.. and its rather costly.

Not overly. I suspect it's in a similar price range to any renewable you'd care to compare it to. The benefits nuclear power has over renewables also needs to be taken into account.

SeanW wrote:

Wouldn't it make more sense to develop a renewables and biofuels policy now rather than in 15 years time say "oh gee we have a 2000MW power shortfall?"

I'm missing the connection between nuclear power and a shortfall in supply in 15 years.

meepins

There is no political response because there is nothing to gain from acknowledging the problem.

meepins

Moriarty wrote:

Renewable energy sources have no problems associated with them?



Not overly. I suspect it's in a similar price range to any renewable you'd care to compare it to. The benefits nuclear power has over renewables also needs to be taken into account.

It's not overly costly to business... just to society who has to deal with the toxic waste and disposal of it.

Moriarty

Nothings perfect. Advances have been made regarding the nuclear waste issue over the years though. New reactors can produce far less waste in the first place than current generation ones. Reprocessing can also help.

To put the waste issue in perspective, you don't hear many people complaining about their local coal-fired power station killing them even though it would release relatively high amounts of radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. Waste is manageable.

SeanW

Coal, bad as it is, can't do this.

Neither can wind, solar, hydroelectricity, (experimental) Miscanthus etc.

There is also that problem of what are we and future generations going to do with the nuclear waste that will be potent for in some cases 250,000 years.

I'm not saying don't use nuclear ever, just that we have a bunch of other options, and we should try to avoid the situation where a decision is made in panic when brownouts become common. Interconnectors with England are an option but that's the same thing, using nuke power by proxy.

Pazaz 21

SeanW wrote:

There is also that problem of what are we and future generations going to do with the nuclear waste that will be potent for in some cases 250,000 years.

(Sarcasam Alert):)

Don't worry about that, they have found a way to trans-mutate nuclear waste so that it is radioactive for only a couple of hundred years instead of a couple of hundred thousand years, oh but by the way it makes the nuclear waste about twice as radioactive in the meantime !!

anonymous_joe

The Irish have been moaning about Sellafield for years. Can't see us accepting nuclear energy.

John_C

SeanW wrote:

Coal, bad as it is, can't do this.

Neither can wind, solar, hydroelectricity, (experimental) Miscanthus etc.

Coal does just as much damage, only it's not concentrated into one town or area.

Wind, solar and hydro cannot produce electricity in the quantities required at any reasonable cost. When that changes, great, but politicians won't gamble the future of the country on a technology that hasn't yet been invented.

Mucco

It's a shame the Moneypoint workers called off their strike. With it supplying something like 40% of the state's electricity, we could have got a feel for the power cuts that might result when countries begin to flex their muscles wrt fuel supplies.

flogen

anonymous_joe wrote:

The Irish have been moaning about Sellafield for years. Can't see us accepting nuclear energy.

Yeah, all that stuff over Sellafield would seem pretty hypocritical if the government was to take forfas' suggestion and run with it.

Renewable energy has its problems too, but I'd like to think that Ireland, having avoided the use of nuclear energy in the past, could continue to do the same as new greener ideas are developed.

Besides, this could be taken advantage of, next time people complain about ugly wind farms, the Government can say "ok, we'll take them down and slap a nuclear reactor up instead"

Being sensible>Being hypocritical

From what I've read nuclear power has a lower number of associated deaths and injuries per unit of energy produced than coal.

SeanW

That is true particulary WRT miner deaths. Coal mining is a dangerous game.

And nuclear power has a lot of plusses too, such as it makes a sh1tload of energy and does so with very little carbon dioxide emmissions, and the raw material can usually be sourced locally instead of places like SaudiArabia.

But the risk of meltdown (there will always be something we didn't think of like an unfortunately placed comet strike or an insider terrorist or something to give Ireland it's very own Pripyat) the longevity of nuclear waste, there's really little to make it better than fossil fuel. Unless you're in the nuclear weapons game and that's a whole different story.

My personal opinion of nuclear vs. fossil is that the question is like being asked "do you want your sh*t sandwich with butter or margerine?"

We may end up going nuclear and I would not be totally against that but I think it ought to be a last resort, far behind, for example, a vigorous biofuels and wind farms programme.

SeanW

One thing I find quite disturbing however, is the latest attempt by the UN "Chernobyl Forum" to airbrush the Chernobyl catastrophe out of history.

gilroyb

SeanW wrote:

Coal, bad as it is, can't do this.

Neither can wind, solar, hydroelectricity, (experimental) Miscanthus etc.

There is also that problem of what are we and future generations going to do with the nuclear waste that will be potent for in some cases 250,000 years.

I'm not saying don't use nuclear ever, just that we have a bunch of other options, and we should try to avoid the situation where a decision is made in panic when brownouts become common. Interconnectors with England are an option but that's the same thing, using nuke power by proxy.

250,000 years? depends what you mean by potent. It certainly isn't dangerous to humans for anything near that amount of time. By the way, I'm not pro nuclear, just think that when hyperbole is used, then it hurts the anti nuclear arguement.

Regarding the interconnector thing, we already do that, don't we?

silverharp

Boikey-It is a raging debate to be sure, if you read the reviews of Matt Simmons “Twilight in the desert” on Amazon, he is in the early peakers camp. His main focus is the lack of audited information coming out of Saudi. Every world growth forecast “assumes” growth in oil supplies, Saudi is also assumed to be the swing growth supplier, if these assumption are flawed the whole shooting match is over.

Economically recoverable oil is hard to define but the main push in technology is to keep oil pressure up ie it’s like putting a bigger straw in the ground, you can keep the flow up but you increase depletion at the other side of the curve. As an example in Saudi for every 10m oil extracted there is 13m water injected into the field, the cost however is that less oil in total will be extracted then if the oil was pumped at a lower rate and the rate of decline will be steep. Deep water oil fields and Tar sands oil in Canada are examples of higher prices bringing on more supplies, but there are limits to the rate at which these will flow for eg in 10 years time Canadian oil sands maybe producing 6m bpd but this is not 84mbd +6m, depletion rates at the existing sources may have dropped by more then 6mbd


The point for Irish planners if there is such a term is that the basic assumption that things will continue as they did in the past. If the NRA for example doesn’t have “peak oil” mentioned somewhere in their 20 year plans then what is the point of having a 20 year plan. If in hindsight much of the tax incentive developer lead crap that has been build around Ireland in the last 10 years turns out to be completely unsustainable in a post peak environment then we will all be the poorer. If Ireland has a greater exposure to oil fuels than other countries then we should put plans in place to reduce this dependence and not wait for Europe to come to the rescue, France get 80% of their electricity from nuclear, Denmark get 20 to 25% from renewables , Sweden have a plan to move off oil as a primary fuel. We are certainly not best in class and especially so given the potential here.

mike65

Intersting idea floated about leasing the Wylfa nuclear station on Anglesey, so we get the 1 MW of power without the bother of having a plant here to complain about!

Mike.

bonkey

SeanW wrote:

Coal, bad as it is, can't do this.

Yes, but we're trying to get away from hydrocarbons in the first place, so comparisons with coal are not the issue here.

Besides, one can show some of the horrific capabilities of coal (most notably the effects of coal mining, including coal-seam fires) and point out that nuclear, bad as it is, cannot do that.

silverharp wrote:

if you read the reviews of Matt Simmons “Twilight in the desert” on Amazon, he is in the early peakers camp.

Yes, but "Matt Simmons" does not qualify as "good evidence" unless there is some reason to argue that his point of view is intrinsically better and more likely to be correct than those saying "withing 10 years", "within 25 years", "within 50 years", or "within this century".

I'm not denying that some peopel put the figure earlier rather than later....I'm asking what the good evidence you mentioned is to believe that they are more correct than those projecting ti further out.

His main focus is the lack of audited information coming out of Saudi.

In other words, he is arguing that its sooner rather than later because we don't have accurate inforamtion to judge when it will be????

Every world growth forecast “assumes” growth in oil supplies,

Including Simmons' own forecasts? I somehow doubt it.

if these assumption are flawed the whole shooting match is over.

Agreed, but that is no reason to support the 2-5 years. It is a reason to believe that there is trouble ahead, and that we do not have the information necessary to accurately predict when it would be.

Economically recoverable oil is hard to define

Which undermines the "good evidence" that its 2-5 years....unless we decide that although the definitions are tough to make, we'll make them anyway and decide the ones that lead to our timeframe are the accurate ones....

you can keep the flow up but you increase depletion at the other side of the curve.

Agreed....but this suggests that the peak-oil is being pushed further into the future, at the cost of a larger problem when we cross a certain threshold. Its delaying the peak-oil moment...so it would seem that this doesn't address the ultra-short-timeframe, unless someone has accurate figures showing that the dropoff mathematically must occur soon....but such accurate figures are exactly the ones you've already admitted we don't have.

Deep water oil fields and Tar sands oil in Canada are examples of higher prices bringing on more supplies, but there are limits to the rate at which these will flow for

Yes, but the flow-rate of such fields is not a consideration in when we'll pass this 50% mark that you said defines peak-oil. It is a consideration in determining how much oil the market will be supplied with, but 50% is 50%, regardless of whether the remainder is pumped at 100bn barrels a day, left in the ground, or something in between.

The point for Irish planners if there is such a term is that the basic assumption that things will continue as they did in the past.

Irish planners have not, in any meaningful way that I can determine, made this assumption at all. Can you show where they have?

Even more importantly - how can you question whether or not there are Irish Planners whilst simultaneously suggesting that they have made certain assumptions about conditions that their plans will revolve around.

Consider ESB - when did they last build an oil-fired station? Why do you think that might be?

If the NRA for example doesn’t have “peak oil” mentioned somewhere in their 20 year plans then what is the point of having a 20 year plan.

Beacuse roads don't consume oil, Cars do. The NRA is not, that I'm aware of, in charge of forming policy in terms of what can and cannot be driven on the roads.

If in hindsight much of the tax incentive developer lead crap that has been build around Ireland in the last 10 years turns out to be completely unsustainable in a post peak environment then we will all be the poorer.

Yes indeed. We all would be poorer.

I'm not sure of the relevance though...there is very little industry in Ireland which is reliant on oil-based products as its basic materials. The only exception I can think of to that is our generation capability, where we do have some oil-based stations. However, its abundantly clear that the ESB is not planning a large-scale return to oil-burning, and indeed is attmepting to decrease any existing reliance on hydro-carbon (or "thermal" as its often referred to) generating capacity in the future.

Indeed, you'll find that ESB has not significantly changed its generation capability in recent years because it was prevented from doing so by a government who wanted to create an artificial demand for generation capability in order to atrract competition.....and that such competition was never going to be oil-based (if even thermal at all).

I also think you'll find that the collapse of the US markets etc. would inflict far greater "poorness" on us than any unpreparedness of our own making.

If Ireland has a greater exposure to oil fuels than other countries then

Can we show that Ireland does have this greater exposure before deciding what the disastrous impacts would be if we did have it.

France get 80% of their electricity from nuclear, Denmark get 20 to 25% from renewables , Sweden have a plan to move off oil as a primary fuel. We are certainly not best in class and especially so given the potential here.

I think you're blurring some issues here.

Ireland is not all that heavily dependant on oil as a generation medium, although it is heavily reliant on thermal generation. Indeed, many of our pre-existing oil stations were converted to gas following the discovery of the Kinsale field. This also indicates, incidentally, that we have the ability to convert the remainder im a similar manner if and when it proves necessary.

Furthermore, with a total generating capability of just north of 4GW (or 4,0000 MW), it is simply not practical to compare our percentage of reliance with a nation like France (approx 80GW). Even Frances "mere" 22% non-nuclear generation capability is over 4 tmies greater than our total.

As for Sweden...do they really have a plan? I heard they announced the intention to meet a target....but not that they actually produced a plan to show how they would get there within their stated timeframe. I'd be very interested in this if they have....do you have any information?

No...having said all that...I agree that Peak Oil is coming, and that one way or another we need to deal with it before rather than after the fact. What I'm trying to show is that the situation is not as clear-cut as any side would have us believe.

jc

silverharp

will be heading along to this


Peak Oil - Seminar - 8 - 10pm, April 5th 2006 -The Mansion House, Dublin 2.
dublin | environment | event notice Tuesday March 28, 2006 17:01 by Ronan
The Global Energy Picture Public Seminar - 8 - 10pm, April 5th
Imagine 40% of Ireland unable to heat their homes, or petrol €5 a liter at the pump, and cheap air travel a thing of the past. The world as we know it is moving from an era of cheap abundant energy to an era of scare hard to get, expensive energy. Ireland is now the 7th most dependent oil economy in the world and with no security of supply what kind of future do we face?
Energy Future presents The Global Energy Picture Public Seminar with leading voices in the energy field to answer these questions.

Chaired by David McWilliams this program will include:

• The Dawn of the second half of the Oil age
• What is Oil Peak and when will it happen?
• How will Irish consumers wean themselves off their oil intensive lifestyles?
• The future of energy solutions

Event Public Seminar

Location:
The Round Room,
The Mansion House,
Dawson St.,
Dublin 2

Date: April 5th 2006, 7.30pm to 10pm

mike65

I wonder what 'sacrifices' we will be willing to make in the near future?

Yesterday as the Forfas paper was relased there was also a story about how Dublin airport will require a third terminal to cope will the projected
increase in passager numbers from 15 million to 40 million a year!

I can't have been the only one struck by thr assumptions being made, it seems to me that discretionary air travel may be one the first areas to be hit hard with first tax being levelied on aviation fuel then an air miles quote being introduced. Multiple Foreign holiday/city breaks on a given year could soon be thing of the past sooner than we think.

Mike.

Elmo

Is nuclear power the way forward?

BBC: Nuclear clean-up 'to cost £70bn'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4859980.stm

Perhaps not.

The_Minister

silverharp wrote:

cheap air travel a thing of the past.

Air fuel is the worst, crudest fuel ever there is little danger of this running out.

bonkey

silverharp wrote:

Ireland is now the 7th most dependent oil economy in the world

I've seen this figure quoted in quite a lot of places.

What I can't find is anywhere which links to / explains how this was calculated, what the rest of the table looks like, and so forth.

Can anyone help me out here?

mike65

http://www.feasta.org/documents/wells/contents.html?irelandoil.html

maybe of some help.

Interesting chart from BP pdf file


Mike.

silverharp

Bonkey- You are absolutely correct to focus on why 5 years and not 25 years, to be honest we will only know after the fact. The timeframe is a hostage to so many factors, a dollar/china induced economic crises would put the peak back 5 or 10 years, human to human bird flu…… etc etc. I could easily argue that demand for oil is unsustainable and not the supply or you could hit peak have an economic crises and see oil go back to $20. Also there are different definitions of the Peak, there is Peak conventional oil, which we are probably at now, there is peak conventional oil & unconventional oil and there is a peak that includes gas.

However the things that I would look at are

-The last major oil discovery was the North Sea in the 70’s / 80s, Hubbards peak suggests that you hit a peak in discoveries 30 odd years before you have a peak in production again the North Sea is an example, US production follows this logic as well

-The OPEC countries doubled their reserves in the 80’s to not fall behind in quotas, are these reserves real? Or just paper?

-The USGS did a big survey in 98/99 where they showed reserves growing until 2025/2030, however I believe that new reserves have fallen short every year since

-A lot of projected new reserves are statistical ie they take an are like Greenland and say there is a 5% chance of finding x amount of oil, this then gets added to future world reserves

-A number of well known oil geologists have come out and agree with an early Peak (it’s up to you to read their logic)

I included a link below if anyone wants to do their own research

http://www.peakoil.ie/downloads/newsletters/newsletter64_200604.pdf


Another site (US) www.Financialsense.com has good podcast interviews with energy writers