This is a guest post by David Archibald
The Imminent Peak in US Oil Production
The seven years of production of tight oil in the US has produced enough data to
enable estimation of the amount of oil that will be recovered from these systems and
the timing of peak production. Based on data to May 2014, the four main tight oil
basins will produce a total of 7.7 billion barrels with a peak production rate of 3.9
million barrels per day in mid-2015. Following that peak, production is predicted to
decline as rapidly as it rose. That in turn is expected to cause a re-assessment of the
ability to produce sufficient transport fuels based on current policies.
The Bakken in North Dakota
Jean Laherrere has plotted monthly oil production from the Bakken Fm in North
Dakota using Hubbert linearization:
FIG. 1
Also called a logistic decline plot, Hubbert linearization plots annual production divided by cumulative production to that date on the y axis against cumulative production on the x axis. This is the method that M. King Hubbert famously used in 1956 to predict the peak of US oil production in 1970. He was also largely correct in predicting the rate of decline from that peak. This methodology is based on the theory of the rate of extraction from a finite resource originally developed by the early nineteenth-century Belgian mathematician Pierre Francois Verhulst (1804–1849). The fact that Bakken production from 2012 has plotted as a straight line on this graph reflects depletion of a resource close to 2,500 million barrels.
Nearly 90% of Bakken production in North Dakota comes from four counties:Williams, Dunn, Mountrail and McKenzie. Figure 2 shows the monthly production history of these counties from 2005:
FIG. 2
Each of these counties also demonstrate Hubbert linearization as shown in Figure 3:
FIG. 3
Analysis by county confirms the play-wide assessment. Based on data to May 2014,Table 1 details the amount of oil produced to date, the estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) and the percentage depleted:
Table 1
As well as the Bakken, the other three main US tight oil basins/formations are the Niobrara, Eagle Ford and the Permian. Using Hubbert linearization, the EUR, peak production rate and year of peak for these plays is shown in Table 2:
The expected production profile of these basins/formations to 2019 is shown in Figure 4 following:
FIG. 4
The contribution of tight oil to US production has been welcome but will be short-
lived. The shale gas boom has different dynamics and will be more enduring. US tight oil production has stopped world oil production from declining over the last five years. The projected decline in US tight oil production from mid-2015 can be expected to have a price impact. Figure 5 following shows the WTI oil price and the Henry Hub gas price (x6) from 1997 and the modeled internal rates of return for coal-to-liquids facilities at $100, $120 and $140 per barrel based on a capital expenditure of $130,000 per barrel of daily capacity:
FIG 5.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington,
D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be
Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014). He also operates five million acres in the
Canning Basin of Western Australia.
Following is a summary of US Crude + Condensate (C+C) and liquids production from 1950 on:
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_3.pdf
And a complete annual US C+C data base:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=a
In 1965, US C+C production was 7.8 mbpd, and we hit 9.6 mbpd in 1970, a rate of change of 4.2%/year. At this rate of increase, we would have been at 11.8 mbpd in 1975, but new production coming on line was not sufficient to offset the declines from existing production, and actual US C+C production was 8.4 mbpd in 1975, a -2.7%/year rate of change.
Of course, in the late Seventies, the Trans-Alaska pipeline was put in operation (allowing oil companies to begin producing oil from North Slope oil fields, principally Prudhoe Bay), and US C+C production rebounded, increasing from 8.4 mbpd in 1975 to 9.0 mbpd in 1985, a +0.7%/year rate of change. At this rate of increase, we would be up to 9.7 mbpd in 1995 (exceeding the 1970 peak), but new production coming on line was not sufficient to offset the declines from existing production, and actual US C+C production was 6.6 mbpd in 1995, a rate of change of
-3.1%/year.
So far at least, we saw in absolute annual C+C peak in 1970 at 9.6 mbpd, with a secondary peak in 1985 at 9.0 mbpd. So, I suppose that there are two questions: (1) Will the current peak exceed 1985 secondary peak and (2) If it exceeds the 1985 secondary peak, will we exceed the (so far) 1970 absolute peak of 9.6 mbpd?
However, unless some laws of physics have repealed, US production will show a peak and decline. And something a lot of people seem not to understand (or choose not to understand) is that at a given decline rate from existing production, the greater the level of production, the greater the volume of oil that we lose each year because of declines from existing wells. In other words, every production increase carries with it the seeds of its own demise.
Graph with data from http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_3.pdf
Despite the growth in shale oil, total consumption did not go up. This means oil is too expensive.
Excellent article, the linearization’s and figure four show the direction and timing for decline of oil production from shale sources. I had expected the 2017 to 2022 time period to be the “tell” for peak oil, where it would be difficult to ignore the problems any further. From these graphs it may occur in the earlier portion of that period.
So what happens when widespread knowledge of diminishing oil production and availability becomes apparent? Of course the push for higher efficiency and conservation, as well as intermittent rationing when needed. In reality society will mostly continue on course for at least another decade since it has all of the methods in place to cope with this situation. If you have not noticed, the US has already been economically stratifying, ostracizing and shedding population that is no longer in the game. Using credit scores, lowering societal support and access to both jobs and credit; people have been permanently pushed downward in economic status and isolated from the mainstream. This has been going on for many years and is accelerating. With resource constraints, the process will only accelerate leaving a core of moderately well off and rich to maintain “society” surrounded by a large group of very poor who will suffer and do anything to survive. This and other shedding methods will continue across most developed regions.
Tie in the ever increasing surveillance and control of citizens and we have a techno-medieval state developing where opportunities to change social position or economic status is highly reduced. Still the richer core will do well for a while. They will delude themselves into thinking this will go on forever, even as their numbers fall.
What happened between the secondary U.S. oil production peak (the ‘AK Peak’) and the relization of the increases from tight oil…in other words, what happened to people’s opinions and behaviors during that interregnum when U.S. oil production was declining?
In my opinion, there was no big consternation, no real/credible push for change.
My guess is that when U.S. production starts to decline again, there will be no ‘great Awakening’.
Certain political/industrial factions will blow the horn of ‘We need to open up the entire U.S. and get those darn bureaucrats and lefty greens out of the way’ …and most people will believe in some unspecified techno-fix that surely will come along ‘soon’…
But the government/media complex will up the ante and flood the comm circuits (used to be ‘airwaves’ with lots of circuses, and will trick up ways to keep some bread coming to the people as well. Look for subsidized cable/internet service, great deals on bigger, thinner, and higher-res TVs, and Amazon will magically get even bigger.
Bread and circuses, and QE and all kinds of extend and pretend…because TPTB see no other choice…hopefully there will be some semi-skillful ‘steering’ towards the post-oil/FF future.
I suspect the oil production plateau will extend to ~ 2020/2022…We shall see.
The people will steered ‘down’ without public fanfare…misdirection and obfuscation rather than the hoped for cinematic Presidential ‘fire-side chat’ telling the masses how things are and will be.
Yeah, gonna be interesting isn’t it? There is one very very big difference this time and that the rise of consumption in the world outside of the OECD. In previous declines the associated price rises were kept in check by western (especially North American) demand drops which also lowered crude price. And after the 70s ‘shock’ the addition of new western supply; North Sea, Alaska, Mexico.
This time China et al demand is setting the price, we know this because the huge rise in LTO has not meaningfully lowered the global price. It has almost certainly constrained rise, but hasn’t lowered it, despite many many predictions, especially from inside the industry.
So it is very hard not to see a price explosion once LTO is shown to be falling. The only possible ways this may be avoided are either massive demand drop (conservation? Transition? Or this site’s favourite; economic meltdown) or some other massive resource suddenly turning up just in time to replace it. Really it does look like it’ll be very hard to ‘muddle through’ with business as usual.
At some point the 2008 kind of price breakout is sure to occur. The real question is when? Before, at, or after the LTO peak? Oh and this all assumes there is no major bust up in a major Oil exporter in the ME before then.
Note the optimists at the EIA are only saying the LTO peak is year later (2016) but is higher (suspiciously just kissing the magic 9.6 mmbblpd 1970 record rate) and has a much gentler decline curve. But they’ve never been wrong have they…?
Another big difference this time, of course, is that it will be a global phenomenon; no one to import from…
Your quite correct, we are dealing with a whole new system here. Change is happening rapidly due to population increase combined with material and food demand increase. I get the feeling that a person born today will see most of this discussion as obvious and meaningless by the time they are twenty-one, things will be so different then.
Here is one view of a future world (the views of this article do not represent the author) : http://io9.com/what-europe-will-look-like-in-2035-if-russian-tabloids-1587988556
In particular, I enjoyed the comment with the US map of paranoia.
Will we have a strange, energy depleted, techno-military society or a collapsed society by 2035? Will we be agriculturalists and planting trees or living in closet sized apartments with the latest version of the internet being fed to us directly everywhere we go? Will we have discovered new energy sources or finally realized that the sun is the best energy source there is for the planet?
Will we start to realize that the only workable way is a fully biological based world, or will we just keep trudging down the silicon dead end?
The world right now is a mish-mosh of all these things. Dramatic changes always produce new things and new ways. The next 20 years is that time period. Scarily, I may live to see it happen. The young will have to proceed on their own, this time into the most dramatically changing world ever seen by humans.
….”So what happens when widespread knowledge of diminishing oil production and availability becomes apparent?”
Surely there will be a well timed dust-up in the middle east involving one or more oil producers to provide an excuse (cover) for lowered world production and increased prices. No peak oil story here just another problem in the Middle East…. move on useless eaters.
The distortion of the Peak Oil story will continue by vested interests.
Regards,
BCD
Ron,
This analysis combined with Jeff Browns (typically) astute comment provides all you have to know about the current status of Peak Oil in America. This commendable contribution to your Blog is a credit to all involved for which you have my thanks.
Doug
Doug…. agreed.
David,
Excellent charts… especially that DOOZIE Figure 4. Your forecast of the decline in U.S. shale oil production is more severe compared to some of the well known peak oil analysts. I actually believe the peak and decline of U.S. shale oil will be closer to your chart in Figure 4.
If this is the case, YOU ALL BETTER go out and enjoy Starbucks and your favorite restaurants while you can. By 2020, it looks like U.S. economic conditions will be a whole lot DARKER.
steve
@ Allan,
A couple of things to add to your statement:
1) The sieve-like southern border with Mexico could provide an absolute flood of economic and climate induced migration.
2) The immense quantity of firearms, unregistered and too many to control, is not easily controlled despite the surveillance state.
WestTexas’ reasonable/logical argument: “the greater the level of production, the greater the volume of oil that we lose each year because of declines from existing wells. In other words, every production increase carries with it the seeds of its own demise.”
This statement is just so obvious and understandable provided one accepts that there are actual resource limits in a finite world. I fear most people never arrive at that understanding, instead believing the pumps will always put gas in the tank and there will be somewhere to go worth arriving at.
My wife and I are ‘killing and processing’ 28 broilers this morning before it gets too warm. Wood is in the sheds, veggies filling the freezer day by day, and there is salmon to can in the next few weeks. Yesterday my elk draw notification arrived in the mail. I will share said elk with family and a few friends. (Can’t eat elk everyday and these are big suckers). The new well is wonderful and we are able to water at will. If I hadn’t started reading TOD and the Long Emergency some years ago I might have kept the truck and camper, taken up golf, and remained in town.
regards…and thanks Ron,
Paulo
You are living the good life Paulo. I love the country life, the peace and beauty was enough to draw me into it. Having bear and deer wander through my yard and watching the eagles hunt the lake is fantastic. Forests, mountains, lots of waterfalls, lakes and streams all nearby. I have gone quite energy conservative and have emergency stores, but do not expect to survive any major societal crash, being only about 35 to 40 miles out from major population centers. Also there are five nuclear power plants and storage facilities within about 80 miles of me in all directions. Love the area too much to move.
So here is to hoping that it doesn’t hit the fan in a big way. Meanwhile, I am living on a dirt road in paradise.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq:
Most observers seem to be shocked that ISIS had a tactical victory over Kurdish forces in Iraq, given that Kurdish forces were generally considered to be the best fighting force in Iraq. And an interesting message from ISIS:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/08/isis-threatens-america-we-will-raise-the-flag-of-allah-in-the-white-house/
ISIS Threatens America: ‘We Will Raise The Flag Of Allah In The White House’
Incidentally, ABC (Nightline) had a program a few weeks ago on radical Islam in the UK (and the right wing response to same). Radical Islamic fundamentalists are trying to enforce Sharia Law on the streets of London, and they are trying to force people to convert. Both sides in the UK agreed that the battle was headed for the US:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/04/londons-culture-war-inside-the-conflict-between-far-right-edl-and-pro-islamic-radicals/
I hate to sound like a red neck goof, but I will…if this continues there will be some melted glass where religious cities used to stand. I think this is one issue that even the Russians and Americans would agree on.
Isis needs to be slapped down hard. Westerners need to get the hell out of the ME and figure out how to provide energy for their people without burning ME oil. US needs to figure out who their real friends and allies are and exchange/trade with them, alone. Saved Kuwait oil and rescued them from Saddam, and does it matter? The ME connected are worse snakes than the CIA manipulators. If we could only put them in a sack together…….
Carter doctrine has failed. Get out now in all ways.
Paulo
Isis needs to be slapped down hard. Westerners need to get the hell out of the ME…
That is a contradiction in terms. Which do you want, ISIS slapped down hard or to get the hell out of the Middle East and leave them alone?
…and figure out how to provide energy for their people without burning ME oil.
An impossible task of course, unless you want to collapse the economy to the point where we do not need the oil. That will happen sooner or later of course. But most people do not wish to see the collapse right now.
US airstrikes have begun against ISIS, so Gulf War III here we come.
I know Ron, it is a contradiction. I simply think that any group of fighters that force someone to recant their faith and become Muslim…right before they behead them on video, should perhaps be put down for everyone’s sake.
Then, let them rot. Feeling emotional today but this makes me sick and angry.
Paulo
Funny, I think the Mideast is making a lot of progress towards democracy.
Ilambiquated, I think you forgot to put this after your post: 😉 I know you couldn’t possibly be serious.
The region is about 20 years behind Eastern Europe politically. The Magreb isnt exactly the Mideast but Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have all improved. Libya is a mess but it is not less democratic than under Mr G — I am pretty optimistic about them. Egypt has gotten a lot better — check out the press there, nobody dreamed of publishing things like that a few years ago. Yemen and Oman have improved. Syria is a mess, and so is Iraq, but wait a few years before passing judgement. They certainly have not become less democratic. The gulf still has the curse of oil to deal with.
Egypt is right back to where it was under Mubarak. Journalists jailed. Political opposition illegal, the previous regime on death row, backing isreal, receiving billions in weapons from the us. The Egyptian people can’t quite believe how many people died for absolutely nothing.
It is not right back where it was under Mubarak. But anyway, Thailand also got taken over by generals recently. Does that prove anything about Buddhism? Why do you think possibility is this never discussed in the media?
That is the story of islam: conquest! For analysis, history and reason see The Religion of Peace
Strange name you have there. I normally delete spam but I am going to let this one stand.
I am an atheist and an unabashed liberal. But as Bill Maher, another liberal said, the idea that all religions are equal is pure liberal bullshit.
Sorry, Ron. It is not spam just a response. The name was an accident because of posting an article.
Ron you have to understand the context the phrase The Religion of peace is used in. Muslims always refer to there religion as the religion of peace is when they conquer the world then eternal peace will reign. in this case it was used ironically .
Yes, I got that Yorkshire Miner. I didn’t know it was Coolreit. I just wanted him to know that I agreed.
@Hamilton: “That is the story of islam: conquest!”
Not to forget the same goes for “Christianity” and colonial/imperial “capitalism” up to this day.
Judaism, “Christianity”, and Islam are each based on Stone and Bronze age worship of jealous, angry, violent, genocidal tribal desert sky gods.
Since the late 19th century, the West’s god is money (or debt-money), the deity, Mammon, sitting on the throne in the Temple of Wall Street and The City.
BC, that’s liberal bullshit. What religion is based on is a matter of history. What religion is doing today is called “Current Events”.
There was a time when Christianity was just as bad. There was the Inquisition and the Crusades. That was in the days when the church ruled the world. They called it “The Dark Ages”. There are some people who’s goal in life is to take us back to those dark ages. They are alive and well in Northern Iraq, and in a few other parts of the world.
Wall Street is a different matter and an entirely different subject. What ISIS is doing to the Kurds, the Christians and even the Shiites in Northern Iraq cannot be even remotely compared to what is happen on Wall Street. They wish to simply destroy them all. They want to do to them, and to all non Moslems and even to all Shia Moslems, what Hitler wanted to do to the Jews.
What you are attempting to do is to bring Wall Street down to the level of what is happening today in Northern Iraq. They may be greedy bastards but their goal is not genocide.
You said it Ron!
A palace is not much fun unless you have servants to look after it for you.The last thing the bastards on Wall Street are interested in are doing their own chores.
Farmers seldom ever shot a mule no matter how bad the mule needed shooting.
Even if it were to become possible to live-some day- without servants because really good robots are invented it wouldn’t be much fun.
You have to have somebody to look down on and somebody to hate in order to know how well off you are and who your friends are.
This comment is only half in jest.
Also the current upheavals in the Arab world can hardly be used as a measure for Islam as a whole since 80% of Muslims are not Arabs.
Ilambiquated, the Afghans are not Arabs either, and neither are the Pakistanis or the Iranians.
What is happening in Iraq and in Afghanistan and in a lot of other places is not Arab thing, or even a Middle East thing. It is a religious thing.
No, it’s a political think. Or do you think what is going on in the Ukraine is a Christian thing?
No, it a religious thing. What’s going on in the Ukraine is not even remotely related. What’s going on in the Ukraine is a Putin thing.
It’s Catholics against Orthodox Christians. That’s the only real difference between Ukrainians and Russians. Just like Serbs and Croatians, same story.
Oh get real. It all Putin wanting to restore the glory of Mother Russia and bring back her empire.
Religious perennialism is pure delusion.
Same people, just hosts for different religious parasites competing for replication.
http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/01/shared-genetic-heritage-of-jews-and.html
My thoughts on conflicts revolving around religion would still generally happen regardless.
Poverty, inequality, and income/wealth disparity have always been the true roots of any conflict. ISIS members would surely say it is entirely about religion, but my hunch is that ISIS militants probably have a history of being economically disadvantaged.
The fact is that periods of economic turmoil, droughts, poor harvests, and inequality generally preceed religious conflict. Coincidence? I highly doubt it.
But of course. And the crusaders would have probably tried to take back the Holy Land regardless. Probably because of economic turmoil, droughts, poor harvests. 🙁
Ron,
“That’s a Putin thing.” Ron… with all due respect, you can’t be that naive.
Steve
Reply to Steve in new fresh thread at the bottom of the page.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/imminent-peak-us-oil-production/comment-page-2/#comment-67034
Anyway blaming the mess in Afghanistan on the Afghanis, when it is clearly the result of decades of Russian, American and Pakistani meddling is a bit rich.
Hey, you left out the British. I am not blaming anyone. Religion is not a person or a people. It is a meme. A meme is like a virus takes over the mind and corrupts it. If that meme is strong enough it can cause a person to want to kill everyone who is not infected with that meme, or is infected with a different meme.
The meme is the problem, not the people. The people are just the helpless victims of this killer meme.
Never mind, I won’t comment on this any more. Don’t really care anyway.
I wish like hell sometimes Ron that you were not the old Darwinian of TOD days because I am inhibited about claiming Darwinian as a handle. It would feel like theft to me.
From a somewhat limited point of view it is ok to view religions as mind corrupting memes.
But if you step back a little farther from the trees far enough to see the forest- and then far enough back to see the forest as part of the entire geographical and biological landscape – then at that point you come to understand that everything that exists in terms of often repeated behaviors in animals including the human animal is an evolved response that enhances fitness- that enhances survival and reproduction ON AVERAGE.
Religions evolved by the process of selective survival in the lottery of existence and are nearly universal manifestations of human behavior because under the conditions that pertained during our evolution they conferred enormous survival value. They still confer enormous survival value in pratical day to day terms. I an an atheist and a very hard core Darwinist myself ( although I am a cultural Christian and hold to Christian morality for the most part.) My own fitness is greatly enhanced by my good standing in the local Christian community.The members of the Baptist church look after each other.I can be on the side of the road at three am walking and good looking young women alone who attend the same church will stop and offer me a ride even though I look somewhat like the villain in novels about dirty old men kidnapping young women.Their mothers came to visit my bedridden mother quite often. I have many very liberal acquaintances who vote for an expanded safety net but none of them ever came to visit my bed ridden mother and none of them come to visit my very frail father now. But his old church mates continue to come to visit and offer moral support and bring something good to eat too most times.
Now understanding this involves understanding that religion is an outgrowth and extension of our basic tribalism- our evolved world view is based on ” us ” and ” them” , insider and outsider status.
We are all insiders within any given religious faction and GOD is our evolved tribal leader in the same sense that a Patton or a Robert E Lee achieved godlike status to the troops they commanded who in far more cases than not never actually laid eyes on their commanding general.
What I am saying is religion is just another manifestation of our evolved tribalism that also manifests as nationalism and racial superiority memes and various cultural memes that have nothing to do with religion.We can be insiders or outsiders depending on how we dress and cut our hair or based on what we like to eat or at a minor level even on the basis of rooting for one ball club or another.People do occasionally fight at stadiums and they virtually always fight over team loyalties.
Mother Nature does not give a damn whether religion in particular and tribalism in general are still effective in enhancing fitness. She is unable to give a damn not being a sentient being.
Religion and tribalism survive as human behavioral memes because insiders and groups survive at higher rates than loners.
It is unfortunate that such memes as religion are actually often counterproductive these days when viewed as problems that prevent us from cooperating in solving larger problems but again from a biologist’s pov this is irrelevant in terms of understanding our behavior.
We will continue to follow our tribalist ways until ( if ever ) they work less well than cooperating with outsiders.
I am not holding my breath waiting for this sea change in human behavior to come to pass. We aren’t programmed that way.
Religions are not diseases. They are evolved survival strategies and that have worked very well in the past and mostly continue to work rather well today.
Look at what’s happening in Nigeria…Boko Haram.
Look what’s happening in Myanmar… Buddhists.
Look what’s happening in South Sudan… Christians.
And so on.
You need to stop watching Fox News and take a look around the world. American preoccupation with Mideastern politics is pretty stupid, and trying to apply “lessons learned” there to the wider world is even worse.
You see what you want to see, or what the TV has trained you to see. Most Muslims live in the Asia Pacific.
Ilambiquated, you are so far out in left field here it is not even funny. All wars are not religious wars. What is happening right in the Ukraine is has nothing to do with religion.
The civil war that separated the Muslim north from the mostly non-Muslim south was largely influenced by religion.
I don’t know what’s going on in Burma but I seriously doubt it has anything to do with religion.
Again all wars are not religious wars! The US civil war had nothing to do with religion. What is going on in Northern Iraq right now has everything to do with religion.
And I never watch Fox News. I am a liberal. MSNBC is my channel.
MSNBC isn’t much better. CNN is the worst. It’s all just “Look something went bang!” If they would spend half the time providing background information they do advertising their own programs (to people already watching them!) they would do everyone a service.
I don’t exactly know what a “religious war” is, but my take on the current Mideast (and Afghan) mess is that there has been a breakdown of order in several countries and religions, the tribes/regions and the military are the only institutions around.
People who say the problems are religious ignore the fact that Libya is a tribal/regional war, Kurds are not a religious group, Yemen is all about tribes. The war is Syria is as ethnic as the Yugoslavia or Ukrainian war, and started as a pro democracy movement.
I don’t see what Islam has to do with any of this. It’s just that Americans WANT to see it as Muslim, because it saves them the trouble of understanding what is really going on. Also Muslim religious people often have facial hair, which makes them good TV villains, saving lazy journalists lots of time.
I don’t give a crap about Islam or any other religion, but most Muslims live in places like Indonesia or Bangladesh where there isn’t a war going on, not the Mideast, so Islam obviously isn’t the problem or there’d be a war going on there.
I don’t see what Islam has to do with any of this.
Oh my God! Are you serious? Really? It has everything to do with Islam, all two branches of it. Click on the link below and watch a short two minute video and then you will know.
Why Sunnis and Shiites are fighting, explained in two minutes
I must disagree about the American Civil War not being a religious war. On the surface and at the more elementary levels of analysis it certainly was not but the people who got the slavery issue whipped up to such a hot burning affair as to result in war were almost all of them very religious people motivated mostly by their religious beliefs.
They constituted the core of the critical mass that made the war possible.There would probably not have been a civil war without their involvement and if there had been it would almost certainly have been delayed by at least a few decades.
In that few decades we might possibly have solved the slavery problem without a war.
Most other western countries that formerly allowed slavery managed to abolish it without civil wars..
Religion of Peace is a mistranslation. Islam means something like submission. Your web site is just Republican propaganda to justify Bush’s dumb wars. But whatever.
It’s amazing how important it is to people to attack Islam. Who cares anyway? My remark could have been treated as a throwaway.
All religion is poison.
Islam is just a bit more lethal than almost all the rest.
Fromm the 7th century to the 12th century the Islamic Empire was a hub of technology, math, scientific understanding, and was much more peaceful to those within its borders than is seen today.
The Islamic Empire preserved and even furthered the knowledge of the Romans and Greeks, which was then passed back to Europe leading to the Renaissance Period.
Lets also not forget the the most populous Muslim country is Indonesia. If we’re going to create a hypothesis about how terrible Islam is, and ignore that religions most populated country, then… well… I think we can safely throw your hypothesis in a category labeled “prejudice”.
I am an atheist myself, but I do not pretend that religion makes people evil. Find me an evil Muslim, and I will show you a generous and kind one.
People may use religion as their justification for all sorts of terrible acts, but chances are that particular person is probably just a bad person regardless of their religion.
I am an atheist myself, but I do not pretend that religion makes people evil.
Brian, no one is claiming that it is the people that are evil. The people are all just the poor victims of the insanity. The evil is in the religious meme, not in the person.
Did you take two minutes to watch the video? It is not inflammatory, just a calm older lady explaining what it is all about.
Why Sunnis and Shiites are fighting, explained in two minutes
I agree, the whole good vs evil thing is a mess. Violence (on a large scale) best viewed as an epidemic. In other words passing moral judgements on the individuals who commit acts of violence is irrelevant to the tsk of reducing it.
It is revealing on how infected even this board is, as Ron is the only other person grasping the meme centric of religious parasites.
Somewhat disconcerting that we have infection on this level.
I’m not entirely sure we’re truly in disagreement.
My point is really that group think and mob mentality are psychological effects that can and do come from religious belief, but these things are not exclusive to religion.
When people form a group around a common cause, be it religion, politics, social issues, whatever, they are prone to doing things people wouldn’t do as an individual.
We can ad hominem attack an entire group of over 1 billion people with broad statements or we can discuss the more fascinating currents that drive in-group/out-group psychology.
Obviously religion is capable of corrupting people, but it is also capable of the opposite. Whether we are talking about Muslims, Germans, or Star Trek fans it is inaccurate at best to put a single label on a diverse group of individuals. It strips them of their humanity, and brings us all one step closer to our own harmful in-group/out-group paradigm.
Overall, I’d prefer to talk about psychology, statistics, studies, you know, reality, instead of throwing around derogatory rhetoric with no pragmatic goal.
Hey Brian,
Just so you know, your comment is definitely one of the wisest posts I have ever read on internet forums. Congrats from a lurker who looks forward to reading more from you.
It is comments like yours, lobodomar, that compel me to take the time and effort to continue not just commenting, but commenting thoughtfully.
We are lucky to have stumbled upon a site that has such a rich ecosystem of well spoken, thorough, and insightful individuals. I can only hope to be an adequate contribution when there is already so much knowledge and wisdom in this community.
Brian, please get real. No one is attacking the man, we are all attacking the meme. Have you watched TV news lately? Did you see the ISIS troops making members of the Shia schism of Islam, lay down in a ditch then shooting them in the head one at a time?
Now let me ask you, is attacking the meme that was responsible for this behavior an ad hominem attack?
We are not attacking the people, we are attacking the goddamn religion!
But I can say one good thing about that faith, they do have a lower rate of adulty.
When all is said and done in this discussion I am still with Ron in the end.
It is certainly true that many or most Muslims are peaceful people and likewise many or most followers of Islam and that many people are mistakenly taken for Muslims and mistakenly thought to be followers of Islam.
Within the Muslims and within the adherents of Islam there are expansionist factions and these factions are currently on an expansionist binge and certainly responsible for most and maybe even all (by extension) of the current shooting troubles in Sand Country. ( Sand Country is my own personal favorite euphemism for that broad part of the world where oil exists although strictly speaking the Ukraine is not part of it not being dry and sandy like say Saudia Arabia.)
On another day another faction of the adherents of some other religion will be acting the same way.If they win- and they do win sometimes- their genes will dominate the local human genome for a long time to come- until some other faction gains the upper hand.
At different times some of the preachers of my own faction – the Baptists faction of the Protestant branch of Christianity — have actively advocated genocide of native Americans.
On other days other Baptist preachers advocated the abolition of slavery at the price of war- although the the more peaceful Quaker faction was mostly responsible for getting the Baptists riled up to the extent of actually going to war–some in defense of slavery some others willing to see people die in order to abolish it.
It doesn’t matter if we’re attacking a person, a meme, a fairy godmother, or what.
Attacking anything merely acts as a distraction from the much broader issue our civilization faces.
How are we ever going to convince anyone of the very serious threats the world faces if we’re focused on “attacking” things? The least effective way to get someone to your side is to attack something they may even vaguely relate to.
So we’re going to attack religion? Or, sorry, the religion meme? Well now we just lost 80% of the world population.
If we’re to make any progress we need to have the fortitude to avoid alienating groups of people. ESPECIALLY the largest group of people that exists on Earth – religious people.
I agree with Ron in more ways than he realizes, but I refuse to let that toothpaste out of the bottle because it does nothing to help us include others. It is merely a way of building barriers that, once erected, will not come down easy.
People already have a hard time understanding the nature of our predicament, and now we’re going to waste our time alienating even more people?
We should only be asking ourselves one thing: Regardless of my opinions and feelings, what can I say that will make people MORE likely to join us? What can I avoid saying that will make people LESS likely to join us?
These are the only two questions that matter when it comes down to brass tax, and I think a glance at tghe comments on this post quickly reveals that we are failing at properly addressing those two questions.
We need to be as ind and inclusive of ALL people as possible. Talking about ISIS, then generalizing that toward attacking Islam, then generalizing further to attacking all religious memes is hands down the best way to permanently keep our message in the dark recesses of societies dumpster.
So lets keep it up, let’s form a special club that laughs at the irrational memes of the masses. Let me know how far that goes toward making legitimate progress with waking people up to peak oil.
FOCUS PEOPLE!
I always wondered why it was called the “Islamic Empire”. After all the contemporary Byzantine Empire is never referred to as “The Christian Empire”. Why not call it the “Arab Empire”, or (perhaps more accurately) the “Persian Empire between the Plagues” referring to the 6th century plagues and the 14th century plague.
Indonesia is a bunch of islands.
The preservation of Greek Thought was important.
The Psychopathic Sky Daddy’s is a liability.
Haha Agreed
Dave,
“All religion is poison.”
I normally agree with your comments but this is going too far. I’m a confirmed atheist and I don’t think there’s been a religious person in my family for three generations (four if you count Grandchildren). However, I’ve known numerous honest and generous people from all major religious orders. I’ve also dealt with mendacious back stabbing bastards who’d stab their own grandmother for a dollar and who go to a church regularly – from virtually all orders (excepting Buddhists I suppose, assuming you call Buddhism religion not a philosophy).
So, generalizations don’t wash. Self righteous on this doesn’t wash either. Don’t forget, it’s not long ago that Protestants and Catholics were killing and torturing one another in Ireland.
Doug
P.S. Didn’t mean to be Anonymous.
Until we confront the liberal “belief in the belief in religion” we are essentially religious apologists.
It is poison.
I have a colleague (Ph.D. neuroscientist) who once told me that if he were to find out that there is no God he would put a bullet to his brain-stem. The need that exists deep within the psyche of some people to believe is powerful. I don’t understand it–whatever gene(s) people are born with that create the need to believe I was born without.
Now that is one neuroscientist that I would give a very very wide berth…
Count me among those that were born with a natural immunity to the god meme!
Though it still remains to be seen if this is a long term beneficial trait with respect to survival of the fittest when faced with the forces of natural selection. >;-)
”Though it still remains to be seen if this is a long term beneficial trait with respect to survival of the fittest when faced with the forces of natural selection. >;-)”
I believe the experiment has been running long enough to verify the usefulness of religion as a survival strategy without a shadow of a doubt.
Given your background to the extent I know about it from reading your comments I find it hard to believe you would still consider this an open question.
Perhaps you are merely phrasing your remarks in diplomatic fashion?
It is possible of course that given the rise of scientific literacy that scientifically literate non religious people will eventually band together and outcompete the religious faction.
But I don’t expect this to happen any time soon- certainly not within my own lifetime or yours.;-)
Big Mo died without leaving a will, cursing the Jews and blaming his death on his Jewish slave girl who to tried to poison him with a poisoned mutton chop. If you want to know why the Israelis are having a rough time look no further, he was a rich man who took 20 percent of the cut from all the 28 wars that he persecuted during the later part of his reign. The Sunni Shiite fighting is nothing more than two parties fighting over who gets the money. If the sick sociopath had only left a will this would never have happened. follow the money it is as simple as that
Fig 2: It would be better to stack, from bottom, lowest growing counties first, then on top the highest growing (McKenzie). In this way we get a better view of how much is growing only slowly.
Are we now going to see US and Russian crude starting to peak at the same time?
MOSCOW, July 7 (UPI) –An anticipated drop in oil production by 2016 is
expected to hurt the Russian economy, the Russian Finance Ministry said
Monday.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2014/07/07/Russian-oil-production-expected-to-drop/4391404741593/#ixzz38Fy4lGgX
http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/739324
Australian agricultural sector now also collateral damage:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/russia-imposes-sanctions-on-australian-beef-dairy-fruit-and-vegetables-20140807-101oc8.html
From my website:
29/7/2014
The Ukraine conflict, peak cheap gas and the MH17 tragedy
http://crudeoilpeak.info/the-ukraine-conflict-peak-cheap-gas-and-the-mh17-tragedy
Are we now going to see US and Russian crude starting to peak at the same time?
No, Russia has already peaked, in November-December of 2013. The highest 12 month average of Russian production will be July 2013 thru June 2014. The US will likely peak 18 to 24 months later.
Of course, the absolute Russian oil production peak, based on numbers that Sam Foucher pulled together, was about 12 mbpd (total petroleum liquids), circa 1984.
I think that was for the entire Former Soviet Union, currently referred to as “Eurasia”. That included Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and several other lesser producers. The EIA only started listing the FSU nations separately in 1992.
The below chart is in Thousand Barrels per Day.
Does the EIA really consider the FSU and Eurasia the same entity? That will be news to people living in, oh, Andorra, or Sumatra.
I used to have to cobble together FSU numbers by aggregating the various ex-Soviet countries together.
I have no idea. However they used to have a category called “FSU”. they don’t anymore. They now have a geographical oil producing area called “Eurasia”. And as far as oil production goes that good enough. All the oil producing nations that formally were listed as FSU are now listed under Eurasia.
Below are all the listed Eurasia nations listed by the EIA:
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Estonia
Georgia
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova
Russia
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Ukraine
Uzbekistan
Those were all formerly listed as FSU countries. They are now all listed as Eurasia countries. No other oil producing countries were listed under either catagory.
Well, the commonly understood meaning for “Eurasia” is Europe + Asia. EIA’s choice of terminology here is puzzling in the extreme, what was so wrong with “FSU”? I’d persist in using that for your own charts, too, to avoid confusion.
I am not so sure. In 2008 it looked like Russia had peaked in Sep 2007 at 9.5 mb/d but since then production has inched up to above 10 mb/d. The graph shows Russia’s crude and condensate production in 3 year periods. Peaking usually takes several years. What is interesting is the warning from the Russian Ministry of Finance.
Very good correlations and good job. However these types of forecasts are valid only for conventional oil reservoirs, and let say even for unconventional tight oil reservoirs. These last one, the tight oil reservoirs, I think just have started to contribute, more drilling will bring more production, and this may help to keep the production or even increase. It depends from investments. The peak oil is not achieved yet, and it depends haw the operators will work.
The probability that the forecasts presented become true, are high but there are limitations, and the boundary conditions. Here we have a big IF. If the technology will not advance, then yes, we can expect the peak soon, or even being achieved, we do not talk with milligrams, we see the millions of barrels needed. It is true that we consume billions of barrels every year, and we have not replaced the oil reserves consumed for a long time.
Even this is true, we have another parameter on oil industry, and this is how many resources we have. Answering this question, I know the Earth has trillions of oil resources spread on the pore space of conventional and unconventional oil reservoirs. These trillions of barrels of oil can be recoverable with new technology. This will only postpone the so called Peak Oil, of course. Give me an oil operator willing to increase the oil production and oil recovery from conventional and unconventional oil reservoirs, and we will change the graphs. This can be done, and with less investment than actually are planned.
The problem of unconventional tight oil reservoirs is open, but the oil operating companies are happy only with new drillings, and on this way they keep growing the assets. On this point Oil Operators are not showing any interest to increase the recovery factor which as we know, does not reach more than 5-7%. We can increase this and we can decrease the declining rates from conventional and unconventional reservoirs. Once this can be done, then the Peak Oil will only come later in time. Hope this is worth for the readers, and hope this is worth for Oil Operators. Working together is better than investing and spending the capital with low efficiency.
The Saudis put a lot of effort into increasing their recovery factor.
Thanks David (and of course Ron ^_^) for the post. Have you done a similar analysis for shale gas? You say that “…The shale gas boom has different dynamics and will be more enduring”: can you please elaborate? Thanks.
As Fig 5 above shows, natural gas used to trade at the oil price in energy equivalent terms. Now it is a quarter of the price. Ok, we could plot up US shale gas production and see what it tells us. Analysis I respect says that there is 2,500 TCF of shale gas in the US which will come on at prices up to $10/mcf which is still only 60% of the current oil price. The Haynesville shut down due to price and will come on again due to price, for example. So shale gas production will be more nibbling away at the resource rather than being over in a flash. Part of the shale oil boom may be due to the very low cost of money at the moment.
Bakken production comes 87% from those four counties. It is possible that the bulk of the Bakken is not profitable at any oil price in that energy costs are a large part of the cost of drilling. Similar to the fact that PV panels are made using energy at 4 cents/kWh while producing it at 20 cents/kWh. You can’t make PV panels using energy produced by PV panels. Thus the Bazhenov Fm in Russia is likely to be a big fizzer with production characteristics similar to marginal Bakken.
>Similar to the fact that PV panels are made using energy at 4 cents/kWh while producing it at 20 cents/kWh. You can’t make PV panels using energy produced by PV panels.
The marginal cost of solar energy is near zero, not 20 cents. If the EROI is high, the impact of the cost of input energy is low.
Check out what other stuff David Archibald is involved with:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/david-archibald-exaggerates-solar-influence-on-future-climate-change.html
Just so you know.
Ha, climate skeptics taking an interest in peak oil is almost a time honored tradition by now though, what with your Euan Mearnes and Dave Summers.
Just about everything has been figured out in climate science. Now are are just waiting around for the cooling to get serious. Then follows the impact to grain yields and societal collapse in countries that import food, which is most of them. Energy is the basis of our standard of living and the fossil fuels are running our faster than most people realise. Seemingly China is building power plants that will run out of coal before they wear out from use. They are now building syngas plants as well which will up their burn rate by 400 mtpa. The Chinese thorium team has been told to develop a commercial reactor in ten years instead of twenty. As I say in this post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/28/a-cool-question-answered/
stock up on tinned lard with 9,020 calories per kilo. A pallet load could save your life.
Does David Archibald actually apply any science to his global warming analysis?
I certainly do — Check out my CSALT model of warming.
As KLR suggests, there is a time-honored tradition of certain peak oilers playing dual roles as global warming skeptics.
But there is a problem with that when you consider that science is not about picking and choosing according to an ideology. Science is about seeking the objective truth.
As an example, I don’t like Hubbert Linearization as a method to extrapolate depletion trends. As R^2 and I have pointed out, it is simply a heuristic that may only apply to specific situations at best.
Much better to use the detailed analysis of Dennis Coyne and Rune Likvern for fracking analysis.
+10
Hi All,
I question this analysis. I have pointed out many times before that a Hubbert Linearization of 3 years of data for the Bakken is not very useful for finding the URR of the Bakken/Three Forks of North Dakota (Which is the data that Jean Laherrere uses from the NDIC). In addition the proved reserves plus production from the Bakken/Three Forks in North Dakota were about 3.9 Gb at the end of 2012, Proved plus probable reserves are probably about 4.8 Gb and when production is added we get about 5.5 Gb if there are no 2P reserves added in the future ( a highly unlikely proposition). A much better analysis by David Hughes (who is a geologist) is in the Chart below (only for the Bakken and Eagle Ford), which suggests about 11 Gb for a URR, if we add the Permian and Niobrara it is likely at least 17 Gb for total LTO URR in the US, my estimates are a little higher than David Hughes for the bakken and lower for the Eagle Ford, but the total is similar, David Hughes knows far more about geology than I do, and quite a bit more than Mr Archibald as well
http://www.davidarchibald.info/
Know more geology than I do? Possibly, because I have forgotten a lot. I think I am now operating on the minimum instruction set. I was an exploration geologist for Esso from 1980 to 1984. There was one year in which I was given three months worth of EPRCO courses (Esso Production Research Company). I have read the Yellow Book. Some of you will know what that is. The graph you show above is very similar to mine but has a bigger right shoulder. More realistic than the EIA’s long plateau. By the way I was fired from Esso Australia because I had a habit of predicting why all the wells we were drilling would be dry. That upset the management for some reason.
Ya can be totally right about your geology and totally wrong about yer climatology old buddy..
I am an agriculturist by profession when I bother to work. I was a believer in the more or less business as usual model for the first half of my life although I never forgot the red faces and impassioned lectures I heard in the lecture halls over in the biology department where I took many many credits.
(Most of any real agriculture degree must consist of courses in chemisty and biology- which at my university were taught at the same hour in the same classrooms by the same professors who taught the students majoring in chemistry and biology.)
The biologists were a little early in their predictions of the clusterfxxks that are currently resulting from the excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers and irrigating with fossil water etc but they have been proven right in the end.I am man enough to admit it and that I was wrong to disregard their warnings in lieu of believing the short term evidence presented by my own colleagues that everything was/is just hunky dory.( Most of them are still insisting things are still hunky dory with pesticides and fertilizers etc although they are nowadays singing a different tune about that fossil water.)
The argument for global climate change in general and global warming in particular is based on the most elementary sort of physics. We are not ever going to overturn the basic laws of physics- they are wrote in the stone of centuries of observations and experimental results.
Warming is going on and it is going to get a hell of a lot worse barring the emergence of some unanticipated negative feedback processes that might stop it. I haven’t seen any such proposed feedbacks that might turn that trick other than massive long term volcanic eruptions which to put it conservatively are extremely unlikely in any given century.
A lot of people overlook the fact that we live in the CURRENT century and that time machines simply do not exist.LOL
To say that there is no evidence of warming is to make yourself out to be a zealot unwilling to look at the evidence.
I suggest you begin by reading a few accounts of the search for the Northwest Passage and historical pictures of glaciers taken a century or more in the early days of photography.
The ” excess” solar energy that used to make it to the ground and escape back into space is mostly going into the top few hundred feet of seawater these days.
The odds are very high that before too long a new balance will be achieved between the water and the air and that air temperatures will continue to climb even as they are climbing NOW despite any cherry picked evidence to the contrary.
Now as far as cherry picking a little anecdotal evidence goes May and June here where I live are usually quite pleasant but this year I ran my ac almost continuously the last week of May and the whole of June for the first time ever.I readily admit as I type this comment that it is unusually cool for an August morning today compared to recent years.
I have used a blanket half a dozen times in the last few weeks.BUT back when I was a kid living in this same house I used a blanket almost every night all summer every summer except during heat waves. The blanket that used to be the rule is now the exception and I often need the ac to get to sleep now.
Lots of my neighbors are planting pecans and figs as I am myself. We couldn’t get either to grow here well enough to get a useful crop a half a century ago although we tried occasionally.Too cold.
They do ok in this new century- not well enough for large scale commercial production but plenty for personal use and some to sell in local farm markets.
The evidence that matters at a personal level is the evidence you are willing to look at.
The evidence that matters objectively is statistical and figuring out who is cherry picking and who isn’t is not always easy.
But ya done been busted!!- by other commenters here.
I on the other hand readily admit that I have cherry picked my evidence insofar as this one comment is concerned.
Hi David,
I was claiming David Hughes may know more geology than you, I know very little, but I find your analysis pretty poor considering your background.
What is your basis for the Eagle Ford, and Permian URR?
At the end of 2012 the EIA has proved reserves in the Bakken at about 3.2 Gb and for the Eagle Ford at 3.4 Gb at the end of 2012. Proved plus probable reserves are likely about 30% higher which would bring us from 6.6 Gb of proved reserves to 8.6 Gb of proved plus probable reserves for only the Eagle Ford and Bakken/Three Forks of North Dakota.
Do you think that there will be no additions to proved plus probable reserves? I find that an unrealistically pessimistic assumption.
Do you think a Hubbert Linearization of 29 months of data (as in Jean Laherrere’s chart from your post) is likely to give a reliable result?
For that matter would you think that a Hubbert Linearization would give reliable results at all?
It is not at all uncommon for people to be advocates of the truth in respect to one issue and advocates of falsehoods in another. Most of the time it is because they are honestly mistaken in respect to one or another of the two issues.
In the case of Mearnes and Summers I think they are just stuck in engineering mode thinking and if the instruments don’t indicate warming according to their engineer’s way of thinking fast enough to suit them then they just don’t believe in warming.Or maybe they are fudging a bit on warming in order to make their primary case. I have not read Summers recently but I have been following Mearnes and he is pretty much dead set against renewables on economic grounds of the checkbook sort, the here and now and near future cost of renewables versus fossil fuels.
Fudging and painting with a broad fuzzy brush is a very useful technique when building political coalitions. The best and easiest hunting grounds for anti renewable followers is obviously enough in the camp of political opponents of warming. They are primed to believe renewables are a scam to bankrupt consumers and hurt the owners of coal companies but a good many of them never the less have enough hayseed farmer common sense to understand that oil and gas and coal come out of holes in the ground and do not grow back or get replenished as falling lumps and drops from the sky like water.
I don’t know about Summers. Mearnes is presently basically saying that nuclear power is our only real hope of long term prosperity but that we will have and be able to count on affordable fossil fuels for a long time yet.
Want some more? I know you do:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/18/dial-m-for-maunder/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/14/studies-weaker-solar-activity-means-colder-and-colder-also-means-drier/
The role of TSI (Total Solar Irradiance variations) in the global warming signal is minor.
I worked out a multivariate analysis of the global warming trend and estimated the contributing factor of all the factors that global warming skeptics scream about here:
Relative Strengths of the CSALT Factors
The main factor of course is CO2, with other factors such as SOI and LOD showing greater influence than TSI.
15 year hiatus? http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/08/06/nasa-climate-scientist-explains-15-year-global-warming-hiatus/
Global Warming, oops, Climate Change as its now called, has as its goal the reduction in use of fossil fuels. As that dovetails nicely with Peak Oil, I’m all for it. Mitigating Climate Change sounds positive and good for Wall Street, coping with Peak Oil, not so much.
I have seen that argument before and find it intriguing. There is a reason for climate change concerns to have the visibility it does, and the challenge of solving global warming does sound positive.
One of the approaches that I have seen used to “tag-team” climate change and peak oil is called the No Regrets policy. With a No Regrets policy in place, one can push for renewable technologies and assert that if Peak Oil doesn’t pan out then at least we will have some technology to fight climate change. That is, we have no regrets based on the decision no matter which way it turns out. If both have impact, then we are killing two birds with one stone.
I still call it global warming. On the other hand, the German word is “Klimawandel”, climate change. Now the term “globale Erwärmung” is not unknown, but it has never much been used, perhaps because it doesn’t roll off the tongue very well.
You seem to be hinting at some kind of nefarious reasons for preferring one term over the other. Do you think it applies to German as well? Do you think Wall Street controls the German language as tightly as it does English?
Yeah I think the important point being, how do people in power use language? That has always been one of their key ways to control people.
The scientists and those who tilt toward the environmental left recognize the reality of global warming and its effects. They are probably correct. On the other end of the spectrum is the oil industry and those who tilt right who often deny global warming outright, and they are probably wrong. And the limits to growth people say we will collapse and short circuit global warming.
To the bankers and their puppets in government, none of this matters. It’s just another tool to keep people divided and guessing. They are obviously planning to use global warming as the excuse needed to de-invest the aging fossil fuel industry all the while keeping the currency spigots flowing to them first. There will be alot of turmoil involved, sure, but everything can be kept under control with a technologically able military and debt. You simply extend credit to whoever wants to drill somewhere in the world (Bakken, offshore, etc.), and when the fields are exhausted the debt is defaulted on and the wells are abandoned. You keep the debts off your books by swapping with the Fed for new dollars at 0%. You naked short paper gold and make sure any new mine supply disappears unaudited into China and India. In this way, you manage the long decline while continuing to make more dollars, and even throw a bone or two to renewable energy, knowing it will never work. And fund anybody who says “peak oil is not real” even as you fund anybody who says “global warming is the end.”
They did the same thing with other heavy industries, they shipped them to Asia and then said we would all be tech entrepreneurs in a “new economy.”
Clean, green, renewable, environmentally friendly, sustainable, jobs, GROWTH, profits, hope vs. austerity, collapse, shortages, lines, shrinking, resource wars, plateauing, limits to growth, despair…
Right wingers! Right wingers! Every time information is not in line with “left winger” brainiac club it’s a dem darn right wingers issue. DAH! Try this on for size! Goddard (Steven) shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data fabricated by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data Tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the 1930’s, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on fabricated data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrades per century. “Climate change” is nothing but sick game the wealth craving extreme “left winger” Obamazombies are playing.
Isn’t Tammy Bruce one of those demented right-wing radio talk-show hosts that seem to be prevalent on the american airwaves?
These are the ones that believe in abiotic oil and that pollution regulations are not necessary, etc etc
Good job Ron, you are getting a wider audience 🙂
yep that’s her. not sure what her beliefs are on abiotic oil and pollution reqs, but she is running with the Tea Party and Sarah Palin now.
kind of weird she would jump in here
maybe if she stays and explores what this blog has to offer, she might learn something
then again…maybe not
Dearest Tammy Bruce, sweetie pie, honey bunch,
In case you haven’t figured it out for yourself yet, Remocrat and or Depublican ignorant ideology doesn’t hold a candle to physical reality.
For the record here is how the data gathering and analysis actual works.
http://goo.gl/E95lpp
“All processing code is provided, for openness and transparency. Users are encouraged to experiment with the techniques used in these algorithms. The programs are designed to be modular, so that individuals have the option to develop and implement other methods that may be more robust than described here. We will remain open to releases of new versions should such techniques be constructed and verified. – See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/07/release-of-the-international-surface-temperature-initiatives-istis-global-land-surface-databank-an-expanded-set-of-fundamental-surface-temperature-records/#sthash.qyun20bF.dpuf”
You are hereby encouraged to do some exploration of your own. Unless of course you can’t do the math yourself, in which case please go do something at which you can show yourself to be competent.
As for : “Climate change” is nothing but sick game the wealth craving extreme “left winger” Obamazombies are playing.
Most of the people here are actually mathematically scientifically literate so statements such as the one above just make us roll our eyes as we consider them to be pretty stupid and irrelevant to physical reality!
Cheers,
Fred
Tammy,
Both curves show temps rising about 0.5C since 1880 – that trend is the issue not the weather any particular year. Your conspiracy theories are nonsense.
The ISIS bombing provides Russia with a nice precedent for bombing Ukraine troops attacking the eastern areas.
Given the careful phrasing of defense of American lives and interests, clearly Americans can be sent to areas where the next bombing is desired (by the Iraqi gov’t) to orchestrate justification.
Amusing reports about winter coming in Eastern Europe and how . . . get this . . . “Europe is 15% dependent on Russia for natural gas”. That number has been in freefall for about 8 months now. It’s hilarious. Pretty sure is started the year north of 40%.
Yeah, pretty shocking isn’t it? I can’t remember the Pentagon ever bombing anyone before. It’s unprecedented.
It’s the obvious maneuver for the Russians. No invasion. Air support. You can achieve victory risking ground troops.
But that is actually less important than the second point. The claimed level of Europe dependency on Russia is falling as 1) winter approaches and 2) a need is thought to exist to reassure the public and maybe also persuade the Russian public that they don’t really have overwhelming leverage.
errr without risking
Russia really doesn’t have much leverage. If they cut energy exports to Europe, they will rapidly run out of cash for day-to-day operations, both government and imports. Now, Russia likes doing self-harmful things on the subject of Ukraine, but this one is different. Their entire economy is dependent on that system of gas-for-Euro-for-imports.
Russia also won’t dare do it because the results would show how weak they actually are to the general global public.
That is a common error.
A presumption that cash is a more urgent need in early January than warmth.
The whole interdependency concept always tries to measure extent of dependence, never urgency. This is the big error. Besides which Germany will get its flow from Nordstream, and pay for it. The Czechs will get cold and elect candidates that position themselves as moderates, ending this Russia hatred and moving closer to them. Pretty easy to vote for someone that will keep you warm.
Four new Ebola cases in Nigeria all related to American who brought virus there
The new cases bring the total number of probable or suspected cases in Nigeria to 13, according to the new WHO statistics released Friday. Any spread beyond the transmission chain started by Sawyer in Lagos, a city of 21 million, or Nigeria, a country of perhaps 175 million, would be cause for great concern, but officials are hopeful that has not occurred. Contacts of the people who have fallen ill also are being traced, Hartl said, but Ebola is not contagious until its victims begin to show symptoms, such as high fever.
Ebola is not contagious until the victims begin to show symptoms! I did not know that.
Didn’t know it either. Maybe still don’t.
This is exactly why the Ebola outbreak is not even newsworthy. More people die of malaria every day, but of course news networks don’t cover that cause it’s “expected” and “normal”.
The only reason this outbreak is as bad as it is is because of pervasive beliefs that the symptoms and deaths are due to witchcraft. People avoid the clinics because of widespread beliefs that it is a conspiracy to harvest organs and kill people (which is actually reasonable since most people do not come out alive).
Even though they are told not to touch the deceased families ignore the warnings and handle the bodies for burial rituals.
Their indigenous belief systems are basically optimized for spreading Ebola, and STILL only 961 people have died.
Being that a person is only contagious through direct fluid transmission, and even then only after the grotesque symptoms have begun, it’s fair to say that anyone worrying about this affecting the 1st world has not the slightest clue what they are talking about.
The problem of course is that the traditional African customs have not changed, but this outbreak of Ebola is far worse than earlier outbreaks, leading the WHO to declare a global health emergency.
So, what changed? Perhaps the Zaire Ebola strain?
Following are two items from 2012 regarding an experiment with the Zaire Ebola strain (ZEBOV), that demonstrated airborne transmission from pigs to non-human primates. Apparently, given the lack of primate to primate airborne transmission, the theory is that there is something unique about pigs’ ability to generate larger fluid droplets, incasing the virus. However, two points: (1) Pigs could presumably transmit Ebola to humans via airborne methods and (2) It’s not whether Ebola can be transmitted in an airborne manner, in fluid droplets, it’s a question of under what conditions that Ebola can be transmitted in an airborne manner. What if the Zaire Ebola strain mutated slightly to allow it to remain viable longer in smaller airborne fluid droplets?
Also, presumably the Nigerian medical staff that treated the Liberian-American patient (Patrick Sawyer), who became symptomatic on a flight from Liberia to Nigeria presumably had masks, gloves and gowns, but at last count 12 people who came in contact with Sawyer have Ebola. But we can be certain that the two American doctors who contracted Ebola had, at a minimum, masks, gloves and gowns (if not biohazard suits), but they still came down with it.
Following the 2012 items about airborne Ebola research is an item about congressional testimony on Ebola. Note Dr. Frieden’s very careful comments about possible airborne transmission.
Transmission of Ebola virus from pigs to non-human primates (April, 2012)
http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00811/full/srep00811.html
Growing concerns over ‘in the air’ transmission of Ebola (November, 2012)
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423
Relief official (Ken Isaacs) says Ebola crisis more serious than reported (August, 2014)
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/07/235794/relief-official-says-ebola-crisis.html#storylink=cpy
Dr. Frieden: “If an infected person had no symptoms of the disease, they couldn’t pass the virus by sneezing or coughing.”
What if a symptomatic Ebola person sneezed or coughed directly on you?
Text of testimony by Ken Isaacs, VP of Samaritan’s Purse (SP):
http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA16/20140807/102607/HHRG-113-FA16-Wstate-IsaacsK-20140807.pdf
I wonder if anyone has done research on what the world would be like if the oil supply was +2 Mbbl/day, and at different price points? And then do the same for +5, -2, and -5 Mbbl/day.
I suspect that over a five-year window, standard supply & demand economics operates.
Peak Everything…
Greece is broke…this was such a waste of time, money, land, energy, and hope:
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/olympics/28693970
Brazil is next to build these shrines to BAU.
How long will we be able to piss resources away on useless enterprises like this?
I guess this goes back to my supposition about TPTB keeping the prols distracted with bread and circuses. That will work right up until it doesn’t anymore.
I wonder what kind of Olympic venues will be built in 2032?
Maybe if we have a full-court press/wartime-like effort to build thousands of nuclear reactors? I wonder how that would pan out…
More Waste…
U.S. warplanes bombing U.S. -made ground equipment in IRAQ:
http://intercepts.defensenews.com/2014/08/us-navy-bombing-american-made-equipment-in-iraq/
Hey as long as it keeps the GNP numbers up! /sarc
Please tell me this isn’t the same Archibald that says we have entered an era of Global Cooling which will result in a new Ice age….http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/14/meet-david-archibald-the-fringe-scientist-predi/198886
If so, the accuracy of this post is in question.
HN
Now that the pause has gone on for eighteen years, there is no child alive who has experience global warming. To paraphrase Darth Vader, your faith in the ancient religion of global warming is touching. There is no physical evidence for global warming’s existance. Or has the missing global warming been stolen and held for ransom: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=13266
David
Do youtself a favor… stick with your peak oil charts and let the 98% of cimate scientists who agree on human caused climste change do there work
Steve
Excuse all the damn typos… I hate texting a comment from my phone.
Steve
*face palm*
Why do you conveniently cherry pick an exceptionally large El Nino (1998) where temperatures were significantly higher as your starting point?! Wouldn’t looking at the longer term trend be more sensible!? FYI most people with a degree of scientific education are aware that the oceans have received the bulk of the excess heat and have continued to warm. The atmosphere receives only a small fraction in comparison.
Overall your statements are highly disingenuous. Interesting to note the world has just had the hottest May and June on record this year! Must be your ‘global cooling’ at work. Now run along and receive some more $$$ from The Heartland Institute and your oil companies. How’s the tobbaco denial campaign going these days?
That’s funny I didn’t even have to turn on my central air this year until June, usually it’s much earlier than that. But I guess you leftists know more than I do. I just wish you would all use George Soros’ money to build “scientific consensus” with your fellow socialists in Europe and leave us taxpayers in the USA alone…
Of course the typical anti-science and anti-statistics ploy is to use anecdotal information.
The USA is about 2% of the world’s surface area. And Tammy Bruce’s living quarters are a fraction of that.
Tammy
Leftists?? LOLOL… you can always gauge how much BRAIN DAMAGE an individual suffers from by the terms and adjectives they use.
Steve
careful Steve, you don’t want to blow your chance at a Soros funded European vacation
ezrydermike,
…or possibly blow my chance to enjoy fine CIGARS and NEW YORK STRIP with Rush Limbaugh at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
Either way… when an individual looks at life as either being on the RIGHT or the LEFT, you might as well just shut ya trap and move on. Cause there’s no use debating someone who has been programmed to think in that IDIOTIC FASHION.
steve
IN ADDITION… this also holds true for those who adhere to one of the many FLAVORS of RELGION. While I believe its important to be spiritual, going to church on Sunday in your finest Suit so you will be guaranteed a TICKET TO HEAVEN… is just another example of an individual who suffers from BRAIN DAMAGE.
As you can infer… there’s no shortage of Brain Damage in the good ole U.S. of A.
steve
steve,
I’ve long suspected that the cause is blowdriers.
Every day almost every person in the country holds this little whining motor near the ear and just barely away from the brain, and it goes on for years and years; am I supposed to believe that there are no neurological effects from this?
Full disclosure: I do not now use and have never used a blowdrier.
QED
Synapsid,
Quite an interesting theory on how the use of Hair Blow-Dryers causes BRAIN DAMAGE in humans. If you don’t mind, I am going to run it across my personal Climate Change scientist… ELMER FUDD and see what he thinks.
So, are you saying that the PRETTIER people with nicer hair are the larger percentage of climate deniers?
Maybe there is a connection.
steve
steve,
I’m afraid we can’t tie it to a group–though it’s just an impression of mine, it looks like everyone uses the things.
Woe, woe.
And think of what those screeching espresso machines are doing to baristas. I’m almost out of hope for the human race, I am. Time for Grand Marnier.
Tammy,
I’d rather read your take on the topic of this article. Do you agree with its premise of near-term peak in US shale oil production?
are you referring to this graph of global temperature? Even with an 18-year plateau, there is still an up-trend.
I don’t think you understand this subject at all, yet you are willing to make sweeping pronouncements that large number of specialists in the field are full of it. Drawing back to 1998 is cherry-picking because of the blow-off top El Nino. Not addressing climate science discussion of this subject (less than expected short-term rise in atmospheric temperature) is lazy and/or biased and/or not technically literate.
All of this DOES raise questions about how bias informs your work on other scientific fields.
Praise Jeebus, Praise Jeebus….see what I mean?
HN
Oh Damn!…..just found this…
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/06/david-archibalds-funny-sunny-prediction.html
Hi Hiruit,
We cannot discount the analysis simply because other published work seem to be lacking.
The problem with using Hubbert Linearization to predict a URR is that it tens to be very unstable. For the United States lower 48 we had 80 years of data in 1950 and it was still underestimating the eventual URR. In this case for the Bakken/Three Forks we have 2.5 years of data (used for the linearization starting in 2012), this is unlikely to give a reliable result.
Also note that the county level hubbert linearizations does not distinguish between Bakken and non-Bakken production and thus tells us very little. We need about 10 years of annual data at minimum for Hubbert Linearization to be useful at all, and even then you need a very specific set of conditions to be met for it to have any physical basis (it is a special case of the more general oil shock model).
Over the years, I have found that persons lacking in integrity in one discipline tend to be lacking integrity in other disciplines….For example a man who is Dishonest with his Family, will rarely be Honest with his Business.
I assume he is using Roy Spencers data, where Spencer picks a 5 year moving average carefully chosen during an abnorbally warm period (late 80’s) to obfuscate the real Climate Date. Similarly I cannot trust his Oil Production Data.
HN
Data misspelled, and name appear as anonymous. Sorry.
HN
As a follow up to an earlier discussion in the previous posting regarding Ebola, below is a link to a video with Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D. who explains the situation. Towards the end he says it is not easily transmissible because it requires fluids transfer, so we need to take it down a notch. He says just what I said, it is not airborne so it is not going to cause a pandemic like a flu possibly could. And this is from a Doctor.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ontario-hospital-treating-patient-ebola-symptoms-n176691
See my comments up the thread, including the CDC director’s careful comments on possible airborne transmission.
Too bad the author is a climate denier.
Hello, I just wanted to inform you that you have a formatting error in your article.
“Analysis by county confirms the play-wide assessment. Based on data to May 2014,Table 1 details the amount of oil produced to date, the estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) and the percentage depleted:”
You forgot a space after 2014.
Ron,
I have read your site since its inception, and followed you and the other posters on TOD.
I find your site interesting…too bad the trolls (paid or otherwise) have started to descend upon this forum.
It seems as if the climate change discussions are the chum for the sharks.
It is a shame, because climate change is one of a multitude of issues in the Limits to Growth (LTG),.
I don’t go troll wattsupwiththat or freerepublic…although there is value in honest discourse among people with differing views, I don’t see the value of feeding trolls who parachute into your site.
Next they will invade Gail’s site…
Just my thoughts…
Another Lurker,
What do you mean by “Climate Change Trolls?” Yeah, maybe at times there are many comments on climate change, but why is this such a bad thing? Especially, if an individual believes in human caused climate change… fossil fuels are a big part of that equation.
steve
steve,
I will be more explicit and hopefully clear: I consider the several people who posted today claiming we are heading for a significant global cooling (stock up on that lard!) and folks who claim anyone agreeing with the scientific consensus on Global Warming is an ‘Obamazombie’ as ‘Climate Change Trolls’.
One does not ‘believe’ science…
A ‘Belief’ is when one thinks some premise is true without requiring objective evidence. (not some Deus-ex-Machina contsruct, either).
http://theweek.com/article/index/265653/why-you-should-stop-believing-in-evolution
Sub-Title: You don’t believe in it — you either understand it or you don’t
Amother Lurker
Okay then….. I don’t fit into any of those fine groups of outstanding citizens.
We’re cool.
Steve
Evolution is clearly visible in the relationships between species. You don’t really see the pattern very well until you spend a lot of time learning to classify something, say ants and wasps, or birds, or wildflowers. If you do take the time, you end up believing. It’s inescapable.
Since you mention deus ex machina, if Ron permits, I’ll share with you the finest example of deus ex machina ever. It is the very paragon of deus ex machina if ever there was one.
The first 13 or so seconds is all you need to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-4la8Go3ys
And that’s the extent of my contribution to this discussion. Heh!
Our denier friends are frightened, and if they accept global warming, it means capitalism is probably dead (it will be dead anyway).
They are clinging to a solid pillar that is collapsing, and they would rather run off the cliff than see reality emerge through the smoke (screaming in a fetal position is not their style).
Great article and great comments … regarding a proposed “slap-down” of ISIS, it may be harder than it looks, however, according to some analysts, see below …
ISIS rebels secretly trained by USA
http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan/
and
French Report ISIL(ISIS) Leader Al-Baghdadi Jewish Mossad Agent.
4 Aug 2014 Simon Elliot, https://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/french-report-isilisis-leader-al-baghdadi-jewish-mossad-agent/
From the article:
“This is the method that M. King Hubbert famously used in 1956 to predict the peak of US oil production in 1970.”
“He was also largely correct in predicting the rate of decline from that peak.”
Really???????….. US oil production is presently rising, and rising rapidly, yet Hubbert was “largely correct” in predicting the rate of decline from that peak???
So, if you believe in US peak oil,….. then rising production = decline,….. or what?
David Archibald,….. Please clarify this!
Ron,…..Your website is progressively getting kidnapped. Why don’t you separate the comments that have NOTHING to do with the articles you post, and put them under other relevant issues, instead? I used to actually enjoy coming to this site as oil production/decline is my main interest. I usually go to other web sites for OTHER issues. Just sayin’….. I wonder how many others feel the same way?
Peaks are only applicable to defined resources. Hubbert was not including light tight oil resources since, to the extent they were even defined back then, they would be unextractable. His original paper presentation specifically discussed unconventional resources (Venezuela and the Canadian tar sands, namely), but either they are included or they’re not. All these curves are about how you go through 100% of X and what it looks like after you hit 50% of X.
Alaska wasn’t in the calculation either since that wasn’t a thing when he was doing the paper.
Tight oil probably is better treated as a separate resource because it’s so different in production characteristics. It must be extracted rapidly because of the mass drilling called for by very high decline rates. This has attendant real-world physical problems that far exceed anything you normally run into with an oil field.
According to Ivanhoe, Hubbert’s projections were for the lower 48 states. This would not include Alaska or offshore beyond three miles. http://hubbert.mines.edu/news/Ivanhoe_97-1.pdf
Anon,
“All these curves are about how you go through 100% of X and what it looks like after you hit 50% of X. ”
I really don’t think I could have said it any better, than that.
I do hope you realize that as of today, NOBODY, I repeat, NOBODY (!) even knows what the OOIP of any US tight oil field actually is (X). Besides that little item, NOBODY, I repeat, NOBODY (!) happens to know, or really have any realistic idea of what percent of this unknown (X) is actually recoverable, even when you grossly limit the situation to today’s known technology and known economics (mostly influenced by oil price).
So, what we have here is an article about exactly when an unknown percent (X), of an unknown amount of oil (X) with (perhaps) unknown to come technology (X), and with an unknown future oil price, yet another (X), will peak…….and all because of some now thoroughly discredited Peak Oil theory, which was not only discredited by rational humans many years ago, but has also now been discredited by the simple passage of time, itself.
YIKES!!!!!
No wonder you folks so heatedly discuss every other topic under the sun, here. All Peak Oil Theories must be dead by now, right?
dear troll,
it’d be more effective if your analysis was more detailed than just using the term “unknown” a lot.
love,
the elephant
I told my gramndother how you helped. She said, “bake them a cake!”
Conventional oil. This has been stated a thousand times, but it’s hard for some to comprehend when they view everything in an aroused emotional/political state. Also, I think you missed the part about fracking not being profitable (debt) at current prices. Things change – Deal with it.
Apneaman,
As to, “fracking not being profitable (debt) at current prices.”
Exactly where do you get that kind of (MIS) information???
It is commonly stated that companies sourcing Bakken oil, (and by extension more or less all other US tight oil resources in play right now), can break even at an oil price of about $60, but certain players in certain areas of said oil fields will get into some economic trouble if/when oil is at $80. That is why, it is currently believed, that WTIC oil is presently heading downward towards $90, but it could easily temporarily spike down to as low as $80 for short periods of time. But, it won’t be able to maintain $80, because at that price it will start to impact some marginal shale oil production.
It is the large amounts of shale oil coming on line that is finally pushing the price downward, as well as the expected large INCREASES in shale oil soon expected to be coming on line in the next six months, or so. The oil price is determined by the FUTURES market, not by actual supply and demand, or by oil companies, or by politicians, or for that matter, PO theories.
Yesterday’s closing price was $97.85. It is only unrest in the Middle East (and the usual oil traders) that can push the price above $100 these days. This is all due to the large amounts of shale oil coming on line.
I have absolutely no reason to believe that you follow these issues at all. I believe you simply blindly repeat this PO non-sense, that you can so easily pick up at sites like this.
According to yahoo/finance, CLR, (which functions as a proxy for all Bakken producers), is making PROFITS of $4.59/share which are trading at about $144 right now. That said, it recently failed to live up to it’s economic expectations last quarter even though it’s oil production increased, as usual. I have not yet determined why.
But, PROFITS are not losses! You are a victim of PO propaganda, that’s all. Try getting in touch with HONEST sources of information. It certainly helps.
By the way, did you happen to know, that in the real world it usually costs money (debt) to make money? I want all the shale oil companies I invest in to take on massive amounts of debt by buying lucrative shale oil leases, then developing them. Or, in other words, the oil business, as usual. I don’t believe you know anything at all about the oil business, because you think fracking is not profitable at current prices.
Please post some facts to back up your assertion, or withdraw it, because I’m saying, it is not true.
Carl Martin,
Its those damn Socialists and Communists. I say let’s get back to debating oil.
I’ll start the debate.
How long before Abiotic oil becomes commercial?
Steve
Steve my friend,
Abiotic oil would be commercial today if it weren’t for those ‘leftie Obamatrolls’ and ‘environmentalists’. It’s a ‘left-wing’ conspiracy I tell you Steve, just like those other leftie conspiracies such as: ‘the earth being round’, ‘microbes causing disease’, ‘smoking causing lung cancer’ and their newest lie ‘anthropogenic climate change’!!
Beyond all these wonderful leftie righty conspiracies we must remember what our old buddy Rockman has often said about abiotic oil.
An oil man could care less where oil comes FROM. His only real concern is finding out where it IS.
Once he knows that the only really hard part left is raising money to drill for it.
Now an abiotic oil field would be a real find indeed. Ya could go back and get a new harvest every year just like a cornfield.It need never run dry.
Mother Nature sure has done a good job of hiding her abiotic oil hasn’t she?
There is a theory that used to be popular in the 50s and 60s that oil is actually manna from heaven. The Israelites were aided by aliens, you see, and the Ark of the Covenant was a high tech device controlling it. but it all went wrong, and the oil all over the Mideast is a residue of that.
Blessed are those who believes that. I don’t know if there are any left. It always annoyed my father (a chemist) that people don’t know the difference between hydrocarbons and carbohydrates.
SRSrocco,
As to your question, “How long before Abiotic oil becomes commercial?”
I would have absolutely no idea, as the whole notion of even the existence of abiotic oil on this planet is in dispute. But, obviously it would have to first be proven to exist, before it could be commercialized. But, here are some rational thoughts on the subject for you to ponder…….
“Though the current accepted theory of oil formation involves the slow transformation of animal and plant matter into hydrocarbon (the biotic or biogenic theory), it is not the only theory that has been put forth. As early as the 16th century, one theory of the origin of oil claimed that it resulted from deep carbon deposits that have been around far longer than life on this planet. The theory, which came to be known as the abiotic oil formation (AOF) theory, was largely forgotten until rather recently when a few people (some of them scientists) revived it.
The newest version of the AOF theory states that oil arises from inorganic processes that occur deep within the core or lower mantle of the Earth. Here, they say, oil is formed and then percolates up through cracks and porous rock to fill the reservoirs that humans tap to get oil. If this claim is true, then oil may not be nearly as limited in quantity as proponents of the biotic theory claim. This would mean oil is more “renewable” than we have been led to believe.
Origins
The AOF theory has been championed for a number of reasons, but many current proponents point to the presence of methane on comets, meteors, and other lifeless planets as evidence that organic material is not needed to produce petroleum. Other supporters point to other clues about the origins of oil such as the distribution of metals in oil, the association of hydrocarbons with helium, and the presence of oil deposits in large-scale structures rather than patchy sedimentary deposits. These, proponents claim, are all reasons to believe that oil does not come from plant and animal matter, but rather from some natural chemical process involving inorganic materials.
The theory persists for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that no one has actually ever witnessed the formation of oil. Because it takes millions of years for a fossil fuel to form, any theories we have about the process of formation is based on observations of current material. It is possible to speculate, make predictions and test those predictions to gain evidence to support or reject a given theory, but it is not possible to be as certain about the formation of oil as we are about something like the formation ice, which we can directly observe. So, which theory has more supporting evidence?
Evidence
Most scientists believe the evidence comes down decidedly on the side of oil forming from deceased organic matter. They point to very strong chemical evidence (so called “biomarkers”) that show hydrocarbons have an organic origin and not an inorganic origin. They also point out that various stages of hydrocarbon development have been uncovered, showing the progression from say peat all the way to anthracite coal or from algae to oil. They also argue that small quantities of hydrocarbon can be produced in laboratories, thus strong supporting their stance.
Proponents of the abiotic theory are not without their evidence, however. These scientists point to the fact that oil reservoirs have been shown to refill when left alone for periods of time, something that does not fit with the biotic theory. They also point to the presence of oil on meteors and other bodies that do not and never have supported life. They also suggest that claims about the chemical nature of oil are spurious because we do not know what processes occur deep in the Earth that may cause oil to look as though it came from an organic source when it did not. It is also true that oil can be produced from inorganic material, lending support to this theory.
Consensus
Most scientists support the biotic theory of oil production for a number of reasons. In response to the evidence for the abiotic theory, they say the following.
First, refilling of wells can be explained by two phenomena. One, our ability to extract oil from more difficult environments is constantly increasing. As a result, wells that were once “tapped out” can now be reopened and produce again using new technology. Two, because oil moves and is of different densities, it is true that pumping oil from a well may relieve pressure, which then allows oil trapped in cracks, faults, and other pockets to enter the well over time.
The second reason many scientists doubt the abiotic theory is that its basic tenets don’t seem to be viable. Namely, the idea that rocks at great depth are porous is the opposite of what research shows. Of course, proponents of the theory point to the fact that magma manages to escape, so why not petroleum.
The third and most substantial reason for discounting the abiotic theory is that the chemistry doesn’t add up. First, there doesn’t seem to be enough CO2 below the surface of the Earth to make the formation of oil possible. In scientific terms, the mass balance of the equation is errant. More importantly, however, is the distinct isotopic and biochemical structure of oil, which strongly support and organic origin. For example, helium that is trapped with hydrocarbon deposits (and is an inert gas so it does not react with anything), is of a specific character that means it almost certainly came from the surface of the Earth and not anywhere else.
What is clear is that these issues require more research and, given the importance of oil to our energy needs, many prestigious institutions are working to solve the dilemma. In the United States, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute are attempting to determine just how deep oil deposits can be found. The deeper they are, the less likely it is that they came from biotic origin.
The other possibility here is the both groups are right. Oil may form through both processes. If so, then oil may not be as limited a resource as we currently surmise.
Politics
Like many issues, politics play a major role in the abiotic versus biotic oil formation argument. Until recent decades, the main argument propelling each was the supposedly limited supply of fossil fuel available. For those pumping it from the ground, limiting supply has financial gain. For politicians, a limited supply can be used to control people and as justification for actions like war. An unlimited supply, on the other hand, means that we need not worry about running out, that we ought to be able to drill for more oil and increase the daily supply so as to decrease price, and so forth.
The arguments above, however, have been pushed aside in recent years by fears that global warming is directly attributable to carbon dioxide produced by burning hydrocarbons. If this is true, it doesn’t matter if oil is limited or not because using it is causing immense damage.
In the end, science will settle the debate, but what science gets funded is directly related to which politicians are in power and who is footing the bill. At some point we will know the definitive answers to questions about the origin of oil and to questions about the impact of CO2 on the environment.”
Do you have any other questions for me to answer?
According to a feature on a prime time TV news feature in my neck of the woods, the imminent peak in US and in fact world oil production, might be irrelevant. The program is about a self taught inventor, Harlo Mayne who, has invented a product that, can be installed in a car allowing it to “run on water”! Water CarMy attention was called to the program more than half way through the original broadcast so, I had to visit the above link to watch the whole hour. The “invention” uses some elementary chemistry to take advantage of the reaction between aluminium and a sodium hydroxide solution which, produces hydrogen and aluminium oxide (alumina). Pure aluminium would react with water to produce hydrogen and alumina were it not for the thin layer of alumina that coats aluminium as soon as it is exposed to oxygen. It would be just as correct to say that this invention makes cars run on water as it would be to say that regular cars run on air. The key reactants are caustic soda and aluminium which unlike water, do not fall from the sky, flow in rivers or make up the oceans but, the headline focused on the water, not the US$20 “cartridge” of aluminium that actually steals the oxygen from the water releasing hydrogen.Of interest to readers of this site is that, Mayne gives Peak Oil for a motive for his invention (3 min. 50 sec.) after which, the TV program then features a 2 minute animated excerpt outlining the concept of Peak Oil, with references to M King Hubbert and all. Mayne clearly has a good grip on the concept of Peak Oil, so much so that at 6 min. 12 sec in, he clearly pegs Peak Oil as the sole/main cause of the 2008 financial crisis and went on to elaborate how dependent modern civilization is on oil.Interesting stuff! I wonder how low the supplies of scrap aluminium would last if this technology was adopted on a wide scale and how feasible it would be to establish a cartridge recycling infrastructure to convert alumina back into aluminium. At about 10 minutes in, Mayne displays an awareness of the energy embedded in aluminium and discusses the use of hydroelectricity to smelt aluminium but, I do not think enough emphasis was placed on the energy required to smelt aluminium and the electricity prices and scales of production that make aluminium smelting feasible.Despite my opening sentence, I am absolutely certain that we would face the spectre of unintended consequences were this idea to be widely accepted.Warning! A fair amount of inaccuracies and conspiracy theories are presented in the liked video.
This is a complete non starter from an energy efficiency point of view. Making the reactant chemicals would consume far too much energy to be cost effective.
It is very true that this process is extremely wasteful of energy and will never be used except by a few naive customers to run an automobile and then for only a few days until they figure out that it costs several times as much as gasoline.
But there may be a chance that it will be useful as a sort of throw away hydrogen battery if small portable hydrogen powered devices ever become common.
Wasteful of energy it certainly is and always will be but it might turn out to be an efficient generator of money for the guy who invented it.LOL
A set of plans emailed for a few bucks times ten thousand is a nice chunk of change.
Sorry, something does not compute. The inventor claims that a single US$20 cartridge containing about 1 kg of aluminium should take a small (2,000 lb.) car about 300 miles. One kilogram of aluminium from one source should work out to close US$2 and scrap aluminium would be even cheaper so there is less than $2 worth of aluminium in that $20 cartridge. Assuming a cost for caustic soda of about $2 per dry kg It is probably safe to say that the cost of that reactant per cartridge is negligible. It would not take enterprising individuals long to figure out how to refill cartridges with the waste from machining operations for example, resulting in price reductions on the cartridges.
OFM, you yourself repeatedly point out how much more work you can get done with a tractor rather than using draft animals so, technology like this, even if the cost calculations are way off, could be cheaper than $20 a gallon diesel.
In my neck of the woods, alumina (aluminium oxide) production used to be big business but, get this, energy cost have made it uncompetitive with other producers. In 2006 the island produced a total of 4.1 million metric tons of alumina according to some sources, ranking it as the fifth largest producer in the world, the USA being the fourth. Alumina production used to be a large source of income and wealth in the areas around the alumina production facilities. As outlined in this web page from the Jamaica Bauxite Institutes web site, since the 2008 financial crisis, two out of four alumina production facilities, amounting to some 2.3 million metric tons of production capacity have been shut down as, the majority shareholder and operator UC Rusal has declared them nonviable at current energy costs. This resulted in 2012 production figures of some 1.75 million metric tons, according to this article. The areas around the two closed plants have been hard hit economically, making them a poster child for the effects of Peak Oil, one might say.
Back to the matter at hand, the reason given for the closure of the islands alumina production facilities is that the production costs, using oil as an energy source are close to or in excess of current world market prices for alumina, currently less than US$350 per metric ton. If the US 70 cent cost of the roughly 2 kg alumina needed to make the 1kg of aluminium is subtracted, that leaves a production cost of somewhere in the region of US$1.30. Assuming that it takes 15 kWh of electricity to make a kilogram of aluminium and that is the only production cost, the electricity would have to cost 130/15=8.67 cents per kWh or less for any smelting operation to be viable. In reality the electricity will probably have to cost far far less to account for other costs of production.
In doing the research for this post, I ran into a US Department of Energy, “Study of Issues Related to the Use of Aluminum for On-Board Vehicular Hydrogen Storage”.(PDF) that, spells out why just about all versions of this idea are not viable. On the basis of that document, I question the inventors claim that “1 kg of aluminium should take a small (2,000 lb.) car about 300 miles”. From the DOE document, 1kg of aluminium should produce about 111g of hydrogen so, according to the inventor, a small ICE powered car should be able to achieve about 3 miles per gram or 0.1667 miles per litre of hydrogen (at STP). When one takes into account the fact that, the BMW Hydrogen 7 can only travel 15.625 miles on a kg of hydrogen, or 1.73 per 111g, or 0.0156 miles per gram, or 0.00086 miles per litre of hydrogen (at STP), the inventor’s claim is that, his small car can travel 192 times further than the BMW Hydrogen 7 can on a given amount of hydrogen. Highly unlikely!
My apologies for the lack of paragraph breaks in the above post. I haven’t figured out what HTML tags to use as br tags don’t work.
Islandboy, what works is a simply hitting the “enter” key. Hitting it once will give what the old “carriage return” did on the old typewriter. Hitting it twice will give you a nice paragraph break.
You need no HTML tags whatsoever.
Hmm…. I seem to remember trying that and it not working. Let’s try again. Here’s where my first paragraph break should appear.
Have gotten thoroughly fed up with Micr$oft and their antics (changing the operation of their interface after years of users becoming accustomed to it), including the horrible way they’ve implemented the upgrade process and their chosen strategy of security through obfuscation which, has not led to better security, I switched to linux for my day to day web browsing years ago. Here’s where my second paragraph break should appear.
I don’t know if the fact that I am running Ubuntu Linux (14.04) has anything to do with it .
OK it works!
It’s just that, I seem to remember having made at least one post previously where, I had everything laid out complete with paragraphs and yet still my post appeared without the paragraph breaks.
If nothing has been done at the web site/server end of things, it could just have been a bug in my OS/Browser combination (Ubuntu 14.04/Firefox 31.0) that, was fixed during one of the automatic updates.
It’s nice that this method led to a prediction, and it is nice that some Belgian mathematician suggested it, but what is the actual justification for the claim?
To clarify, I imagin this is related to Gaussian distribution (bell curve) and the logistic (S) curve (which is the integral of the bell curve, showing the cumulative value). Here is an example:
http://visionlab.harvard.edu/Members/Anne/Math/Gaussian-Logistic
The Hubbert linearization would be the height of the S curve divided by the height of the bell curve at any time.
I think the claim that the decline rate is the same as ramp up is just saying recovery follows a Gaussian distribution, but how do we know that?
See Hubbert Center link above for what Hubbert actually said about the decline side of the curve
Yeah, I get
“There is no necessity that the curve P as a function of t, have a single maximum or that it be symmetrical. In fact, the smaller the region, the more irregular in shape is the curve likely to be.”
This suggests to me that the method is not well suited for predicting the peak DATE at the county level. While there is no need for the decline side to be symmetrical to determine the amount of oil, but there is a need to determine the peak date.
I also read “It is commonly overlooked by economists and the general public that crude oil must be discovered before it can be produced”. How much oil is really recoverable in ND is subject to various (and varying) estimates. My understanding is that the argument here is that recovery rates should be used to get real-world estimates.
But it seems to me this method is only applicable to large numbers of geographically widespread wells. That is certainly what Hubbert did. That is how he gets around the problem of irregularly shaped production curves. If you use the method on a specific field, it will always be suceptible to attack using the “economic” counterargument.
Good article and good comments – But regarding the idea of “slapping down” ISIS, it may be more problematic than it looks according to some analysts.
ISIS Fighters Secretly Trained by U.S. in Jordan , http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan/
and
French Report ISIL(ISIS) Leader Al-Baghdadi Jewish Mossad Agent!
https://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/french-report-isilisis-leader-al-baghdadi-jewish-mossad-agent/
Your news sources are terrible.
Life was scary in 1947 http://www.newspapers.com/clip/839826/the_amarillo_globetimes/?
These two articles are almost a month old, but they offer a very informative look at slickwater fracturing. This method improves EURs in the Middle Bakken and consequently has become a much more common procedure in the Bakken this year, with many operators mentioning slickwater in their investor presentations and conference calls. Note, however, that there is apparently still debate on whether slickwater fracs can improve EURs in any of the oil-producing benches of the Three Forks formation.
The Secrets of Slickwater
[Excerpt from article]
Traditional hydraulic fracturing techniques are often compared to interconnected channels. A conventional fracture method utilizes a viscous fluid to carry proppant into a horizontal lateral. The fluid-proppant mixture is pumped downhole to wedge the rock open, creating long, wide channels for trapped hydrocarbons to flow through. These bilateral fractures can extend between 500 and 1,000 feet outwards from the wellbore. The fluid mixture is typically pumped into the well at 20 to 40 barrels per minute. The maximum proppant concentrations in the fluid range from 4 to 12 pounds per gallon. The permeability of the rock to be fractured dramatically affects the type of treatment required. The tighter the rock, the more fracture complexity required. Conventional hydraulic fracturing methods typically do not create this complexity.
A slickwater frack offers a peculiar outcome. The technique is simple by design, but it can create a larger, more complex fracture network. The method creates a fracture network that is closely related to a broken pane of safety glass with all the tiny fragments attached. “If you have ever seen a piece of safety glass and it has shattered into a thousand little pieces but they all stay connected,” [Mike Stemp, corporate engineering advisor for fracturing at Sanjel Corp.] says, “that is more or less what we are trying to do with slickwater fracks but in a three dimensional network.”…
“By lowering the fluid viscosity and changing the proppant type, we can essentially improve production by increasing the total fracture network. We call them slickwater because the fluid used is non-viscous and slick.”
Because a slickwater fluid does not include gels or other viscosity enhancers, more fluid is required to move the amount of proppant necessary to effectively prop open the stimulated reservoir. “We pump at a very high rate,” Stemp says. A conventional frack job would be pumped at 20 to 40 barrels per minute. A slickwater job is pumped at 60 barrels of fluid per minute or more. The main additive to the fluid is a friction reducer, an element of the fluid necessary to allow for the high pumping rate. For every gallon of fluid pumped, a completions crew will add from 0.25 to a maximum 2 pounds of proppant.
To effectively pump the fluid mixture at the desired rate, Sanjel’s teams typically use 15 to 20 pumping trucks, a large increase from the 5 to 10 trucks used on a well site in the past. Although Sanjel works with operators who complete their wells in various stages or with differing designs, Stemp says most are running three perforation clusters per discrete fracture zone and each well is completed with 25 to 40 zones. For each discrete fracture zone, Sanjel’s team will pump slickwater first to initiate the fracture, followed by ramps of low proppant concentration, then a PAD or a sweep stage to create additional fractures, followed by additional stages of 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.5 pound per gal of proppant. In some instances that process would be repeated three to four times per zone. In the end, the results are massive. On a per zone basis, a well could use 150,000 pounds of proppant and 250,000 to 300,000 gallons of water. The end result could push the well totals for proppant and water to 4.5 million pounds or greater, and 8 million gallons or greater. “In many cases, the vast quantity of fluid and proppant can make or destroy the economics of the treatment,” he says….
For Sanjel and the entire industry, designing a fracture network based on the abilities of slickwater was not as difficult as learning the most efficient way to physically align the elements needed to perform the frack job. “It has been a massive learning curve for the region,” he says. “The logistics for all of the proppant required, the trucks to move the fluid, and everything else involved was difficult. But now, the industry is comfortable doing this. We are comfortable, and successful in doing this,” he says.
[End of excerpt]
The Slickwater Story
[Excerpt from article]
When Halcón Resources reported a record initial production rate [4,224 barrels of oil equivalent per day] for a well in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in a June presentation, slickwater fracks were recognized as the reason for the record. Oasis Petroleum has already said that in the second half of 2014, 60 percent of all new Oasis wells will be completed using slickwater fracks after test results revealed a production increase of nearly 25 percent over wells completed with other methods. Triangle Petroleum Corp. said it has increased production by as much as 40 percent with the combination of cemented liners and slickwater fracks and reduced well-completion costs by $400,000 per well thanks to slickwater. Liberty Resources II, the exploration and production firm considered a leading-edge completion designer, has gone almost exclusively to slickwater fracks. And Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, said earlier this year that one of the major trends his office is seeing is the use of more water (slickwater) in frack jobs performed in the state….
The basics of the method involve water combined with a polyacrylamide friction reducer. The slickening agents reduce the friction of the water in the pipe and the viscosity of the fluid. Because the fluid is less viscous and the water is lighter, more volume is needed to carry the same amount of proppant to effectively prop open the fracture networks responsible for draining the reservoir. Higher rates of pressure are also required to move the water. Pumping rates of 100 barrels per minute are common—a much higher rate than other unconventional fracturing pumping method requirements. The high pressure needed to perform a slickwater frack also helps to stimulate more rock and create more fractures. The absence of gel also allows for a quicker and easier placement of proppant into the fractures allowing the hydrocarbons to flow back quicker.
Of all the concerns about slickwater treatments, the greatest is the water volume required. Because the Williston Basin is situated in a geographic region with an abundant water supply, operators are able to deploy the method without incurring high water costs. The amount of water needed to perform a slickwater frack job typically exceeds 4 to 8 million gallons. In some cases, the quantity of pumping trucks used to inject the pressurized water into the wellbore needs to be doubled. Because the fluid treatment doesn’t rely on additives, slickwater fracks are more conducive for produce and flowback water recycling efforts, the authors [of a Society of Petroleum Engineers paper] also wrote….
The continued implementation of slickwater frack designs will increase the amount of oil retrieved. It will also alter the way water providers and infrastructure design and construction teams operate. AE2S Water Solutions currently designs water supply and takeaway systems for several operators in North Dakota. Grant Slick, principal engineer for the water and engineering firm, believes slickwater fracking will impact how his team designs and operates infrastructure. “In order to handle the amount of water needed to complete a slickwater frack, which is often in the range of 250,000-plus bbls there has to be greater focus on hydraulic modeling of the entire [infrastructure] system.” The enhanced modeling needs to include pipe size information, pumps and storage containers, all of which have to be part of the overall water supply infrastructure. The design of the entire system is necessary, Slick says, because when a well is fracked with a slickwater design, a high volume of water will be needed at the well site, but over time, the volume of water needed is drastically reduced.
Slick and his team are proponents of the pipeline system for fracking and well maintenance. “With the increased amount of water used, you are basically tripling or even quadrupling [assuming approximately 60,000 to 80,000 bbls needed for the frack job] the amount of truck trips needed to deliver the freshwater to the well pad,” Slick says. “The economics for putting in a pipeline certainly are more favorable with the increased water use, but there are also other variables at play such as geography from source to end use, topography, quantity of wells served and other parameters.”…
The rise of slickwater fracking methods may be the hot topic now, but for Slick it won’t always be the most important. “Maintenance water over the lifetime of the well can actually add up cumulatively to quite a bit of water,” he says. Some areas of the Bakken may not need fresh water for well maintenance flushing, while others could require as much as 100 bbls per day per well. According to Slick, if an operator installs both produced gathering pipelines and freshwater pipelines, the system could operate on a closed loop cycle. Recycled water taken and treated from the gathering line could be reinjected into the freshwater pipeline. “Although recycle is in its infancy, proactive infrastructure planning can reduce the investment later.”
[End of excerpt]
(Photo below, from Sanjel Corp.)
Sanjel Corp. uses 18 to 20 pressure pumping trucks for slickwater jobs. Non-slickwater jobs require as few as five to ten pumping trucks.
Now that picture made me think of this… ‘Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwzaxUF0k18
LOL! Actually that picture is even funnier!
I’ve been reading these articles for decades, loaded with downward sloping graphs so beloved by greenies. The notion of Peak Oil has been around since 1975, almost 140 years, and it will always be with us. Fortunately so will oil.
Yeah .
There will always be oil.
But less and less at higher and higher prices.
Get used to it.
If you are rich and the peasants like me don’t lynch you on general principles you can drive a four hundred mile range Tesla in twenty years or less.
This is sarcasm and rough country humor in case anybody doesn’t get it.
But I suggest you get the high ground clearance SUV model rather than that slick looking sedan.
The potholes are going to be a real problem by then.
Maybe you ought to consider having it bullet proofed before you take delivery.
Poor hillbillies like me might want your car for the batteries which we could charge up with stolen pv panels and thus still have a refrigerator when the far ends of the grid go dark.More sarcasm for people who can’t recognize it without a label.
Steve wrote in a link that has just got too narow, referring to the Ukraine uprising by Russian separatist:
Ron, “That’s a Putin thing.” Ron… with all due respect, you can’t be that naive.
With all due respect Steve, if you think the Ukraine invasion by Russian troops an the Crimean land grab is anything but a Putin thing then…. This entire thing is Putin trying to restore the glory of Mother Russia. Putin ordered all those weapons into the Ukraine, those were Russian troops in Crimea. That was a Russian rocket that shot down the passenger plane, and there are Russian troops, advisers and instructors inside Ukraine teaching the Russian separatist how to use those very sophisticated rocket launch systems.
Putin could stop this thing today if he wished by just pulling his weapons and troops back out of the Ukraine.
If you think it is something else Steve, then it would behoove you to tell me what it really is rather than posting smirky remarks calling me naive.
Ron,
I thought you didn’t even see my comment. However, I will go ahead with your request and say a few things… but I doubt they will change your mind.
Factions in the U.S. Govt… call them NEO-CONS or whatever, have been working to destabilize Ukraine for a decade. They finally were successful by getting the democratically elected Ukrainian officials over-thrown.
Ron, if you believe the U.S. Corporate media on what is taking place in Russia… I CAN”T HELP YOU….LOL. I am surprised that you believe and write the things you stated in your comment.
Actually, I am going to leave it right there… because it’s really a waste of time trying to debate this issue. The U.S. Govt is trying to destabilize Russia and is using the Press to BAMBOOZLE the American public into war.
FRICKEN INSANE.
steve
Oh, now I understand where you are coming from. It’s all a giant conspiracy by the US government. Question, are the republicans in on this conspiracy or is it just the Obama team?
That was a rhetorical question, doesn’t need an answer. Now that I know you are a conspiracy theorist that explains everything.
Ron,
I thought after you saw that OIL VIDEO SERIES on how a few major oil companies basically controlled the worlds oil and gas resources you would realize a bit more what is going on in the world.
Furthermore, I thought it was a given that Americans realized that the U.S. Govt was overthrowing foreign governments and countries for the past 5 decades plus. Don’t you remember that was the case in Iran in the Oil Video Series?
Ron, you can call me a conspiracy nut and that’s fine. However, if by chance you want to listen to what ex-Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts has to say about our situation in Ukraine… here is a link to the interview below:
http://kkrn.org/broadcasts/view/590
Ron, I really enjoy the work you do here on your site and the openness in allowing a diverse debate on all subjects. But, I really believe if you had access to more information and data, I think you would see the world in a totally different way.
steve
But of course. If I were just a little bit smarter then I might start buying into all kinds of conspiracy theories.
Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories
“The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories,” says Viren Swami, a psychology professor who studies conspiracy belief at the University of Westminster in England. Psychologists say that’s because a conspiracy theory isn’t so much a response to a single event as it is an expression of an overarching worldview.
Ron
If you spend a day at a local courtroom and listen to all the different cases the Judge has to listen to… 1 out of 10 are based a on some sort of conspiracy. This is true.
I now understand how you look at life. I gather we will just have to disagree on this subject matter.
Steve
Steve, of course there are petty conspiracies. Two bank robbers conspiring to rob a bank is a conspiracy. Surely you know the difference between that and a conspiracy that involves thousands of co conspirators.
I think you know what I am talking about and you are just trying to be silly by bringing up crimes that involves conspiracies between criminals.
Ron… I gather you didn’t hear that the top banks conspired to rig the LIBOR rate. This was proven. Is that what you call petty?
Ron I focus on the financial markets. And I have spoken on the phone with guys who were high up in the system. If you heard the stuff from their experiences… I think you would see the world in a different way.
Anyhow.. the collapse of the Dollar is coming. Hope you don’t have to depend on a retirement to survive.
Steve
Steve, sometimes people have trouble seeing things from the ‘inside of the empire’. Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
‘Her strong statement of preference for how Ukraine’s government should be formed – and apparent confidence that the US has major influence over that – is a reminder of the disconnect between US government assurances that it doesn’t meddle in nations’ internal politics and its actual behavior (White House spokesman Jay Carney repeats this canard in his comment on the tape.) This was not a conversation analyzing unfolding events and how to respond to what comes next. This was about molding a situation according to US interests.’
Peak oil discussion, anyone?
Apparently not at this site anymore…… Everything else, but.
The article presented has nothing to do with the reality of the present day US oil production situation, and most of the comments have nothing to do with the article, anyway.
Looks to me like Peak Oil is no more, and chaos has simply overtaken this thread, instead.
Slickwater fracturing does have quite a lot to do with all this. Those were some good links to a reality many here seem to be having considerable difficulties dealing with. But the facts are that there has been a quantum leap in tight oil production recently, and right across the board, and everyone says that it’s because of slickwater fracturing.
You can expect monthly Bakken production to be at the least in the range of +25-35,000 BO/day, every month for the next six months, or so until December. Last month’s results (+ 36,653 BO) were no fluke. In just a few days the June results will be in. Then you can all start to see what the US oil reality actually is, and where it is heading to.
Theories about reality seldom have much to do with reality. If both are available at the same time, then why would anyone ever want to choose theory over reality? Must be that reality is just too harsh to handle for some people.
Carl, on this site we discuss any and all subjects related to energy and occasionally climate change. I am happy with the site just as it is and have no intention of changing it. Restrictions on what people can post only drive away readers as well as posters.
Ron,
Climate change IS connected to energy, but I think you know that anyway.
I’m not suggesting restricting, I’m just suggesting keeping all comments not directly related to the articles another place. In other words, you could run a website on say, your ten favorite subjects all at once. All you have to do is re-place comments to where they are more/most relevant. I believe that would increase the quality of your site, as well as increase your readership and the number of posters and postings. Just sayin’.
Perhaps but I don’t know how you would do that with only one domain name. And it would be quite a chore doing all that. I am spending enough time just as it is without making it more difficult and time consuming. I think I will just keep it as it is. Messy I know but it is all the time I have for it.
Ron,
I would probably be the last person to know how to do it, but I believe you can install links to other subjects at this site, but still have people remain at this site.
You could also start off simply by just having one link to a general discussion, where anything and everything goes. Later, you could consider if you wanted to divide the general discussion up into more specific areas if necessary, or desired.
At first you would probably have to direct a lot of traffic there, but I think people would learn fast, and see the wisdom in reserving the space under the articles just for comments pertaining to such. But, I think there are many people here in need of a more general forum to comment upon whatever is concerning them most at the moment. There certainly is a wide range of issues out there to be concerned about. But, sometimes I wonder if most people here even read the articles at all. I see no reason to believe that they actually do.
I think your site has unfortunately morphed into a general commentary site, where somewhat opposing groups are constantly vying for control of the commentary just to further the selfish purposes of their own private group.
By the by….. In case you already have happened to view the latest Bakken results for the month of June, I hope you still have both your socks on!!! This is what I was trying to prepare you folks for, because I knew it was coming down the pipeline sometime soon. But, all that (!) and just from 185 new wells. The increase in well efficiency from 127 bpd to 131 bpd is absolutely massive, and tells the whole story right there. The huge increase in 30 day average IP rates due to slick water fracturing is finally starting to show up in the statistics. I don’t belive that this is merely a one month wonder, but we’ll see about that…..
But, all that (!) and just from 185 new wells. The increase in well efficiency from 127 bpd to 131 bpd is absolutely massive, and tells the whole story right there.
Carl, you have it all wrong. That was not 185 new wells, it was 185 additional wells. I don’t know how many new wells there were because for the first time Helms did not say how many wells were completed. I suspect it was somewhere around 250 however. How do I know this? Well there were 227 new well completions last month and…
Director’s Cut
The drilling rig count was up one from May to June, and up two more from June to July. The number of well completions increased as weather impacts eased in June with significant rainfall on 2 days near Minot and 1 day near Dickinson. However, there were still 6 to 8 days with wind speeds in excess of 35 mph (too high for completion work).
There had to be a lot of wells shut in. That is how the barrels per well increased. Old low or no producing wells were shut down. That increased the barrels per well figure.
I will think about the links thing. I will not likely get a post out on the Bakken and North Dakota until tomorrow or more likely Sunday. I have a lot of other things going on and I just don’t have the time.
A good many valuables you’ve given me.