The EIA just published their latest Drilling Productivity Report. They kept their very linear increase for all LTO plays except for the Bakken. Strangely they updated their Bakken data right up through January according to the data they apparently received from North Dakota.
The last data point is February for the North Dakota data and May for the DPR data.
But the EIA posted some strange Legacy Decline numbers for the Bakken;
Now this just doesn’t make any sense. The legacy decline is supposed to be the number of barrels per day all the wells in the combined declined. That number should increase, but gradually as new production comes on line. That is the more production the greater the decline. They have the decline rate at 60,553 bp/d in November, jumping to 123,248 in December, then falling back to 63,459 in January. That is impossible! The decline, in barrels per day, increases as production increases. But if production decreases then the number of barrels per day that declines must decrease, not increase.
The primary purpose of this report is to show that drilling rigs in the Bakken, Eagle Ford and other shale plays are getting more and more efficient. But all that really matters is: Are drilling companies getting more oil out of the ground per dollar spent to get that oil? Unfortunately that data is a little hard to find. The very latest data is almost one year old. From May 29, 2013:
US shale oil is increasing the marginal cost of production
Sanford C. Bernstein, the Wall Street research company, calls the rapid increase in production costs “the dark side of the golden age of shale”. In a recent analysis, it estimates that non-Opec marginal cost of production rose last year to $104.5 a barrel, up more than 13 per cent from $92.3 a barrel in 2011.
Marginal cost rose more than 13 percent in 2012 but what did it do in 2013 and what is it in 2014? And how can drilling companies make money at that cost per barrel? Well the answer is, they can’t.
Dream of U.S. Oil Independence Slams Against Shale Costs
Just a few of the roadblocks: Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back.
Even with crude prices above $100 a barrel, U.S. independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back from selling oil and gas and will carry debt that is twice as much as annual earnings.
By contrast, the net debt of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest energy explorer by market value, is less than half of the cash earned from operations last year. The company will spend 68 cents for every dollar it gets back this year.
“There is a point at which investors become worried about debt levels and how that spending is going to be financed,” Oatman said. “How do you accelerate and drill without making investors worried about the balance sheet? That’s the key tension in this industry.”
The EIA releases the full AEO 2014 on April 30. But parts are coming out in early release. I gleaned the below graph from a Youtube video by the EIA at Morgan Stanley. I could not find it in any of the early releases of AEO 2014.
CGEP: EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2014: Projections through 2040
Notice that they are counting lower 48 offshore for about 2 million barrels per day. That is 700,000 barrels per day more than the lower 48 offshore is producing today. The last data point is January 2014 and the data is in thousand barrels per day.
The above chart is the sum of California offshore and GOM offshore. GOM offshore is treading water. New production is coming on line all the time but it is just keeping up with the steep decline of around 20% per year of deep water projects already on line. But federal offshore production will defiantly not increase production by 700,000 barrels per day by 2016. I expect it to be very close to where it is today, about 1,300,000 barrels per day.
California offshore is in decline. It peaked in August 1995 at 205 kb/d and currently stands at 45 kb/d.
Be sure to check out Kurt Cobb’s latest blog report:
Did Crude Oil Production Actually Peak In 2005?
But, when they talk about the total production of oil, they actually mean something quite different–namely, a much broader category that includes all kinds of things that are simply not oil and that could never be sold on the world market as oil.
I’ve written about this issue of the true definition of oil before. But Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown has been bending my ear recently about looking even deeper into the issue.
If you would like to receive an email notification of when I have a new post please post me at DarwinianOne at Gmail.com
I thought Kurt Cobb’s article on crude oil versus Crude + Condensate + NGL’s + Biofuels was very good, and it reminds me once again about how good the pros are at writing.
Basically, in my opinion our global ability to continue to increase actual crude oil production* appears to have peaked in 2005, while global gas production–and associated liquids, condensates and natural gas liquids–continued to increase.
Insofar as I know, no one has argued that substitution, e.g., liquids associated with natural gas production, will not make an incremental difference, but the Cornucopians have argued that a global crude oil production peak is nowhere in sight, and in my opinion that argument is categorically false.
*For Americans of a certain age, we are talking about the “Black gold, Texas tea’ surface seep that Jed Clampitt found on his land in the TV sitcom, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” i.e., crude oil with an API gravity of about 45 or less.
The primary purpose of this report is to show that drilling rigs in the Bakken, Eagle Ford and other shale plays are getting more and more efficient.
Can I assume that this is due to drilling more wells per well pad?
That and longer laterals. They are now almost four miles long.
The longer laterals would explain why the average production per well has held up. Also, this would mean that the sweet spots are being used up even faster than the well count would indicate.
As far as the Bakken/Three Forks, very, very few laterals are three miles long. I do not know of any that are four miles long. Two miles has been the standard since 2010 or so and so the majority of Bakken/Three Forks wells are that long. Before 2010, one mile or less was typical.
I said the almost four miles long. And when the average lateral length is 21000 feet, that is 3.9 miles. Dagnabbit that is almost four miles long.
Bakken 5-Year Drilling & Completion Trends
Longer laterals are allowing for more fracture stages along the horizontal section of the well and thus increased production. Bakken and Three Forks oil production figures from the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources show a significant jump since the beginning of 2008, going from an average of just over 75 barrels per day per well in early 2008 to 130 barrels per day per well in 2013.
In addition to drilling an extra 5,000 feet or more, the time to drill a well to TD has decreased significantly. Five years ago, 16,000-foot wells were taking an average of 32 days to drill. Now, the average drill time for 21,000-foot wells is 18 days or less. Sometimes these wells can be drilled in as few as 12 days.
They are saying that they are getting this data from the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.
You’re confusing lateral length with total depth. As that image shows, average lateral length is currently about two miles (10,000 ft), while total depth is about four miles (21,000 ft).
You are correct.
Well done, Ron.
Wes453,
Would the increase depth result in even lighter HCs? My understanding is that the deeper the deposit the hotter the rock temperatures leading to smaller HC, is Methane, Ethane, instead of Oil. Perhaps the extra mile of depth isn’t enough to make a big difference. Can you comment on this? -Thanks
The “depth” word is deceptive. Much of it is horizontal and not increasingly deep, and the target is the Bakken or Three Forks levels, not deeper.
But in general your presumption is correct. Really deep (hot) stuff will always be quoted in BOE because the mix coming up has shorter and shorter CH chains, i.e., less oil, more NGLs and gas.
See Watcher’s comment. 🙂 The term total “depth” when applied to horizontal wells is a bit of a misnomer.
NDDMR infographic is confusing. There is no reason for drillers to go deeper as the formation isn’t running away.
Rather, the total depth looks to include the lateral, so that a well drilled five years ago was 16,000 feet total including a 5,000′ lateral on an 11,000′ deep hole. Today, there is a 10,000′ lateral on an 11,000′ deep hole = 21,000 total feet.
Meanwhile, there is adding a lot more fracking stages. Drilling might be quick but completion certainly isn’t … and all of it for a measly 130 barrels per day is embarrassing.
Bingo. Want more stages? Truck in 4 million pounds of proppant and a million plus of water vs 3 million and 1 million.
No way in hell the EROEI people knew this was going on. All this talk of profitability is measured in pieces of paper created at the Fed’s whim. It can’t mean anything.
Instead, let’s talk joules profitability.
It’s sortof an informal definition but total depth = vertical length + horizontal length.
Ron, Thanks for keeping us up to date. Reporting data for May in April is some feat 😉 The data as they stand confirm that the recent glitch is due to weather. The December decline figure is clearly a data error.
But what do the decline numbers mean? You have maybe discussed this before. Normally decline is quoted on an annualised basis, but these are monthly figures. 70,000 barrels decline / month (??) on 1,000,000 bpd production suggests 7% decline per month. Doesn’t seem feasible. What do the decline numbers mean?
Euan, I may be confused on a lot of things but this one, legacy decline, I have down pat. First a person must understand what “yearly decline” means. If a well pumps 1,000 barrels per day one year and 900 barrels per day the next year, then it has an annual decline rate of 10%. Or expressed in barrels per day, it had a decline or 100 barrels per day that year. That is an annual decline rate expressed in barrels per day.
The legacy decline rate is no different. Just like any other decline rate, it can be expressed in barrels per day. The only difference is they are giving you the monthly decline rate instead of the yearly decline rate. They are saying that in May they will have 86,000 barrels per day of new oil come on line. (Rounded off to the nearest 1,000 barrels.) But in April the rest of the Bakken will decline by 68,000 barrels per day. That means the Bakken, in April, will have a monthly increase of 18,000 barrels per day.
Expressed in simple math starting with March’s production numbers:
1,016,656 barrels per day in March +85,515 barrels per day in new production -67,795 barrels per day of old wells declined =1,034,376 barrels per day of for April's production numbersAnd by the way that is a decline rate of 6.66% per month. And of course they are just guessing at March and April’s production numbers. And I think they are guessing at a lot more than that. However….
My latest. Will get around to the USA soon.
Does the UK Economy Run on Energy or Hot Air?
A reasonable summary on the energy front, ruined by your climate change denialism.
Yes really good charting of dire predicament of UK situation, like your other really good country analyses but I’m sorry Euan I haven’t been tweeting or otherwise recommending it because of the added unsupportable denialist editorialising and silly attacks on renewables.
Andy, I agree.
The denialism discounts and makes me question Euans work.
I do have his site bookmarked, and I check it frequently.
Thanks to everyone for the chewy analysis.
Denialism neither undercuts nor strengthens the work. It’s irrelevant. The less talk of such things in reference to oil and gas (and coal) output, the better.
We all realized Scotland could not keep drawing oil out of a dying North Sea, but the impact on the budget is powerful and . . . boomage is measured in jobs. Odds seem high Cameron will push fracking hard.
Really?
How can one assume that other data is worthwhile when he is this far out of sync with peer review on climate?
http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/01/14/climatedenial_published.gif.CROP.original-original.gif
I said somewhere on this thread that using the term denier is derogatory. The opinion of those who choose this type of discourse is worthless to me. If you are unable to evaluate the work I do on energy objectively, judge it for what it is, then you will also be incapable of evaluating peer reviewed papers on climate science. Peer review is no guarantee of accuracy, and science is not democratic. The state of academia in most of the UK is plumbing the depths these days. All the smart minds are working in industry.
So the Brits are now importing oil, gas, and coal. Has any UK politician actually seen a graph like this?
I have a mail list with all 650 UK MPs which I use sparingly, but they will be getting this post in the post 😉
Andy, Patrick, I’m not going to bring the climate debate over to Ron’s blog, but would advise you to resist using the term denier which is derogatory. My views, based upon a very sound understanding of vast array of evidence, would class me as a luke warmer, actually fitting into the spectrum of IPCC opinion towards an equilibrium climate sensitivity less than 1.5˚C.
This I can address. I don't know whether you stay in Europe or N America? Here's how the European system works. Large renewables generators are given priority to the grid – what they generate has to be used, and they are paid a high guaranteed price for their output – that many consumers cannot afford to pay. Quite often, the grid just cant take it and producers get paid for switching off their turbines. I think it is legitimate to have a debate about this. What's more, when it is windy, we have over production of electricity and wholesale prices get dumped. This does not get passed on to the consumer, but what does happen is that the conventional producers – mainly CCGT operators – need to reduce their output to balance the grid and get paid less for their power. Instead of being paid for providing load balancing they are penalised. The UK has 32 GW of installed CCGTs, most are sitting idle for most of the time, their owners losing money are going out of business. The CCGTs are vital for balancing our grid, and yet the way our system is rigged they are going out of business. Of course this won't be allowed to happen and one likely outcome is that they go under state control – costing the consumer and tax payer even more.
I am less against solar which at least is well correlated with the diurnal load cycle though negatively correlated with the annual load cycle. Solar may be great in sunny climates. Where I stay the sun seldom shines and I see little sense in consumers subsidising solar installations that are all but useless here in Aberdeen.
Wind could be great with scalable economic storage which currently does not exist and I think it is a grave mistake to be spending so much on deploying what is currently a partial technology.
Blackout Britain?
Parasitic wind killing its host
Andy, Patrick, I’m not going to bring the climate debate over to Ron’s blog, but …..
Hey, bring it on. I don’t mind. But my two cents worth:
Yes, we do have anthropocentric global warming. No, there is not a damn thing we can, or will, do about it. We, the USA, can lower our CO2 emissions. But we cannot control China or India or anyone else for that matter. And even if they succeed in reducing emissions they cannot stop them. The CO2 is cumulative. It just stays there… and will keep building up and up and… Then there is the methane which could be a tipping point. But I won’t go there right now.
That being said I don’t think it will be the cause catastrophic collapse. A contributing factor perhaps, but it will be that and all the other mitigating factors that will eventually cause collapse.
I do not believe we can alter the behavior of 7 billion people. People who think they can have visions of grandeur. We are but observers to this drama of climate change and resource depletion.
Kingsnorth has come to your conclusion:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6599/
OK Ron, your position is not too far removed from my own and is also very close to that held by Lord Lawson, one of our most outspoken climate policy critics. He has long advocated adaptation over mitigation. I am actually concerned about CO2 heading north of 1000 ppm and am therefore cautious about the enthusiasm for shale and undergound coal gasification which could provide a short cut to 1000 ppm. I am often criticised for believing in BAU, but believe that is exactly what we can have with nuclear ± some solar and tidal stream.
In his April 11, 2014 commentary, Leslie Corrice addresses the “hot particle” claims of Arnie Gundersen. http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-commentary.html
“Like all of us, I am a foot soldier of empire. It is the empire of Homo sapiens sapiens and it stretches from Tasmania to Baffin Island. Like all empires, it is built on expropriation and exploitation, and like all empires it dresses these things up in the language of morality and duty. When we turn wilderness over to agriculture, we speak of our duty to feed the poor. When we industrialize the wild places, we speak of our duty to stop the climate from changing. When we spear whales, we speak of our duty to science. When we raze forests, we speak of our duty to develop. We alter the atmospheric makeup of the entire world: half of us pretend it’s not happening, the other half immediately start looking for new machines that will reverse it. This is how empires work, particularly when they have started to decay. Denial, displacement, anger, fear.”
-Kingsnorth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsnorth_power_station
When you mentioned Kingsnorth, I thought you meant this 😉
Don’t get me wrong, I value your work—-
Unfortunately, underground coal gasification is about the only energy source the UK will be able to afford.
Euan, BAU appears so chock full of holes as to be gas. Why bother?
“It’s the terror of knowing
What the world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming ‘Let me out’!”
~ Queen/Bowie
RIP, Michael Ruppert… Some thought you may have been on some levels, ‘nuts’, but then, what did Krishnamurti once say? You wore your world well perhaps, and you took it with you, as it may take those who remain.
See you on the other side.
“Yes, we do have anthropocentric global warming. No, there is not a damn thing we can, or will, do about it. We, the USA, can lower our CO2 emissions. But we cannot control China or India or anyone else for that matter.”
Exactly, so talking about it here is somewhat useless. The US has reduced driving miles. The Chinese have not. So the global warming people should find Chinese blogs to post on. It’s not relevant to oil output.
Hi Euan,
If you can fix your blog so people can comment by signing up it would be very good. I personally read it but I do not like Facebook and that sort of stuff.
You have a legit argument involving the CCGT owners being put in a untenable position but the right answer is not opposition to wind power.
The whole entire useful aspect of wind power from an environmental point of view is to cut back on the use of depleting fossil fuels and lessen the pollution associated with burning them.
A country boy’s common sense business case for wind rests on the fact that every kilowatt hour you get from wind saves you the cost of importing that much natural gas.
It is a no brainer to use the wind to the maximum extent possible and idle the gas plants to the maximum extent possible.
The solution that make sense is that the owners of the little used gas plants be paid on a different basis.This could be a much higher per kilowatt hour rate for their production or it could take the form of a simpler cash (subsidy ) payment annually depending on the size of the ccgt plant.
This would allow you to use all the wind you can get built and still main tain the necessary gas backup capacity.
I have always been a pessimist in regards to the price of fossil fuels and so far I am batting about eight hundred and have confidence that I will continue to do so when I say that the price of oil and coal and gas are going to continue to go up and go up considerably faster than most observers expect.
Any wind and nuclear power you can lock in now at a fixed rate in nominal money will look like an incredible bargain when you pay back the loan back in the depreciated money of the future that would otherwise have to be spent on coal and gas at much higher prices.
I agree with you about home grown solar power in your part of the world.Totally.
If you want solar juice in your part of the world you need to buy up some African desert and put the Union Jack on the flag poles- no lease and no partnership with African governments is ever going to be safe over the long haul- and build a few giant solar farms and the HVDC lines needed to get the juice home.
The Germans may never be able to make solar work well enough to pay off their investment in it but they are on the other hand counting on being a leader in exporting the technology and recovering a major part of their investment that way.I think they are also looking at solar as a national security type of issue – meaning that in the smoky back rooms they agree among themselves that there is time coming when they won’t be able to import coal and natural gas and even the dribble of juice they get from their solar installations will be precious as drinking water in a desert.
Mac – it should be as straight forward to comment on my blog as this one. You left a lengthy comment this past weekend. It is set however, to close comments down on posts older than 2 weeks.
The point you make about wind extending gas reserves is a reasonable one, apart from the loss of efficiency ramping CCGTs up and down to balance chews most of any saving you may make – so I have been told. Plant that should be 60% efficient is often operating at less than 40%. There is no easy answer. We do have a new pricing system on its way that I don’t understand – it is so complex and opaque. Dreamt up by City Boys who no doubt want to make a killing.
I have said before that capitalism as we knew it was a feature of growing supplies of cheap FF. And now we are on the down curve, capitalism may fail. And so it may inevitable that our energy industries go into State control. I believe the only wau we will get sensible new nuclear build in the UK is if the State takes control of the building program and then perhaps lease plant to the private sector. But as things stand we have yet to begin building a new nuke and we have yet to frack a shale well.
Euan Mearns Wrote:
“.I believe the only wa[y] we will get sensible new nuclear build in the UK is if the State takes control of the building program”
1. Does the UK had a permanent storage for all its spent fuel and other high-radioactive waste? and does it protect the public should an accident occur?
2. As the UK’s economy continues to decline, I would be very worried about the state or any company keeping up maintenance and decommissioning reactors that reach their end of life. I think pressures to cut costs will lead to big corner cutting leaving the population irradiated. Much like Japan, Britain cannot afford a serious nuclear disaster that could render thousand of square Kilometers uninhabitable, Its an island nation. I suspect that the UK probably already has several reactors already extended beyond their end-of-life, because like in the USA, there is no money to decommission them, or to replace them with new reactors.
Better to be poor, living in the dark, than glowing in the dark! Nuclear isn’t the solution, it just amplifies the problems with declining energy resources and over-population, by leveraging the risks.
I also doubt there is sufficient Uranium to supply the current demand for much longer. Prices should start to rise now that Russia has exhausted is Weapons grade stock pile that was sold to USA nuclear power plants.
As oil prices rise, so will mining and refining for Uranium fuel.
As for climate change is likely a non-issue long term. Sooner or later the global economy will breach a tipping point causing CO2 emissions to plunge to early 20th century levels.
If you are concerned about climate change, it may be wiser NOT to notify UK MP’s since it very well could result in the funding for coal gasification or worse, in situ coal gasification.
I see that my problem is the two week cutoff period then. I didn’t know about that and assumed I had to be on one of the social sites to comment. I have trie posting on your blog about four or five times and did not realize that even one post made it to actual publication.
Now as far as the inefficiency of gas turbines ramping up and down goes to balance wind output I have not been able to find any good data that has been published by a public utility.Everything I find looks as if it has been cherry picked either by a wind opponent or a wind advocate.
If I had the statistical skills to do so and the time available I would try to solve this problem. It shouldn’t be that hard in principle since we have supposedly good data on the total amount of electricity produced and the amount produced by each type of fuel in this country.
Personally I find it almost impossible to believe that there are not substantial savings of gas made via the use of wind farms.
Some data I have seen indicates that a modern gas plant can run at what mechanics of my sort refer to a hot fast idle on only ten percent of the fuel needed for flat-out production and that the ramping time can be as little as a minute or two both up and down
I know wind is highly variable but I don’t think it takes a whole fleet of gas plants on hot standby to balance the loads and I strongly suspect that those people who say it does have reasons to twist the actual data into pretzels so as to make their own arguments sound better.
At any rate an importing country must scrape up the wherewithal sooner or later to pay for imported gas whereas domestic wind requires no foreign exchange and contributes something to the domestic economy in terms of employment that must other wise be made up by somebody working in an export industry.
And except for natural resources it appears to me that as globalization proceeds apace exporting manufactured goods is going to be a race to the bottom.
Your domestic manufacturers will move production overseas when it gets cheaper or when competition from countries with cheaper labor forces the move.
I wonder if even the Germans will be able hang in there as exporters – they are superb engineers and have superb workers but at some point it may prove impossible for them to maintain the necessary technological lead and hold onto their foreign customers.
A Mercedes is a better car than a Chevy but the actual cost of ownership and the opportunity value of the extra money needed to buy a Mercedes means that a Chevy is a far better deal in every respect except status and perhaps high performance.
Like wise a Mercedes truck is probably somewhat better than a domestic make but the domestic make is cheaper to buy and cheaper to repair and the overall cost of the domestic make over the years is less.
The Russians have a saying about this sort of thing.
They say that better is the enemy of good enough and it is a saying that is well worth serious thought.
I was an Operations Manager at a combined cycle power plant. One of our tasks was managing grid frequency in combination with lots of wind and other renewables on the grid. Combustion turbines are great for balancing variable renewable output since they can ramp (change power output) very rapidly.
It is important to remember that (in the US at least) power plants are paid for two attributes. One is the capacity to generate power and the other is the actual generation of electricity. At the plant I worked at, the capacity payments alone were enough to cover the construction loan. We could cover our loan payments even if we never operated. That never happened, since the utility we were contracted to had a great incentive to use the capacity they were paying for. A wind or solar plant is virtually never paid for capacity, only the energy they produce.
The efficiency of any combined cycle power plant is related to the efficiency of a typical turbine/steam generation block. If a plant has three power blocks, for example, each are as efficient as the others, so fuel efficiency is the same if one block is operating at full load or two or three blocks are operating at full load. It is true that part load operation is less efficient, but most utilities ask their power providers to operate near their point of maximum efficiency, leaving a few plants to operate below maximum output so they can ramp up or down to regulate grid frequency.
In summary, combustion turbine based combined cycle plants are a great compliment to renewable plants. They are cheap to build but, depending on fuel costs, can be expensive to run. Renewables are expensive to build, but cheap to operate.
Hello Joe!!
You are the closest yet to answering the question I am asking!
Can you point me to a site or company or organization that has some actual figures on the AMOUNT OF GAS that is burned exclusively for load balancing purposes DUE TO HAVING WIND IN THE MIX?
I was able to figure out for myself that most gas plants would be running flat out for reasons of fuel efficiency and no more than necessary kept as a hot spinning reserve.
The anti wind people on a lot of sites are claiming that there is no net savings of gas due to having wind in the mix.
Finding hard data about this issue is so hard it almost makes me think they are right since nobody who advocates wind seems to publish any actual figures. All the arguments are qualitative coming from both sides.
My own personal common sense interpretation is that if utility has for example ten megawatts of wind juice coming in it does not vary up and down so fast that ten megawatts worth of gas plant has to be kept on standby as a hot spinning reserve. Something less than that would be needed.
And even if the entire ten megawatts were to be needed as hot spinning reserve the fuel consumption would be substantially less than it would be if the plant were running loaded.
As a matter of fact to the best of my knowledge so far the consumption of a ccgt running as a hot spinning reserve unit- not supplying any power but ready to do so on a few seconds notice- is only ten percent or less of it’s loaded fuel consumption.
Of course this question can be complicated endlessly by the fact that it may be necessary to start up some cold ccgts and get them hot and then not even need them so that whatever gas is needed to get them up to ready status is burned in effect only as an insurance premium.
I will bet my proverbial last can of beans(actually I use mostly dried beans but keep a few cases in the pantry as emergency rations for the day TSHTF.) that the bean counters at every utility have this data at their fingertips.
And it would be averaged over a period of time and weather conditions and therefore far more enlightening.
Cherrypickers can always find cherries both sweet and sour depending on what they are looking for.
The grid my plant was connected to never had any plants that were pure ‘spinning reserve’. I doubt that many grids do that any more.
A large grid will have dozens of power plants. These are differentiated by function. Baseload plants operate at more or less fixed output because they supply the power that is needed 24 hours per day. Frequency regulating plants will operate at near full load, but still be able to ramp up and down to maintain constant grid frequency as needed. Unregulated generation is almost entirely comprised of renewable plants. Their variation in output will affect the need for frequency regulation, but so do load changes, which usually will also not be under the control of the grid operator.
The important thing to remember is that grids are so large and relative load changes are so slow, that grid operators adjust generation to match load by starting and stopping entire plants rather than keeping them all operating all the time. Some plants only operate during the daily evening peak or during hot spells when AC loads peak.
The effects of renewables on grid stability are minimal until their proportion of generation is quite large, say 30-40%. On a large grid aggregate renewable output will change very slowly, so grid operators can easily adjust by starting or stopping fueled generation. The effect of renewables on overall grid fuel efficiency is minimal. The effect on costs is another matter, since the grid must usually pay for fossil plant capacity, even if it is unused. But that’s a whole new topic.
I agree that the term denier is derogatory! Not only that is is also unscientific! Science is suppose to be all about trying to disprove the null hypothesis. When proponents of a hypothesis, such as global warming, take to calling people who question or attempt to disprove the hypothesis deniers, they have moved from the scientific to the religious domain.
On the flip side when proponents of the hypothesis also ask how many believe in the hypothesis, they have also moved into the religious domain.
There are other issues as well. When proponents of a hypothesis gather social momentum and official organizations, the risk of confirmation bias increases significantly. This results in a tenancy to assume that the hypothesis is true or to only look for confirmation of the hypothesis.
Confirmation bias also tends to result in investigators withholding questionable data. And even if the investigators attempt to publish the results questioning the hypothesis, they may find it difficult to publish. And should they succeed with publishing, then they may find funding for their next study unavailable.
I have not looked into confirmation bias with respect to global warming, but it is rampant in the science public policy area. It makes a mockery of our so called science based technology driven civilization.
What I find particularity distasteful is when the term denier is not a casual decision, but based on a deliberate policy (perhaps not publicly stated).
Everyone needs to remember that 1) correlation is not causation and 2) a hypothesis is never proved only failed to be rejected. As a corollary an hypothesis can never really be settled science. That is an oxymoron, especially when support for the hypothesis is only based on observational and reconstructed historical data.
I too would happily label Euan Mearns a denier. It is a shame because his other charts on GDP and energy use are fantastic.
A denier because he seems to have an irrational dislike of wind energy.
A denier because he is very selective in distorting the reality of changes in the sea ice.
Here where I live the local energy company has the sensible PR strategy of donating 25% of turnover towards the local population. Deniers do not well against this.
“A total of 1 billion won was also offered to local households over the year. The corporation offered 500 million won to low-income families to subsidize electricity bills and another 500 million won was given to house-holds to help in the installation of solar energy panels.”
See http://www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=3969
His comments on the increase in sea ice make it seem that sea ice is increasing everywhere and that in future climate scientists will use this fact to falsely promote global warming. I believe this is a deliberate deception on his part, which is why I use the derogatory label ‘denier’.
He doesn’t show or mention this chart http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png despite it being on the same page as the one he uses.
The increase in Antarctic ice has already been linked to global warming by scientists. It is already published.
Or http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/full/ngeo1767.html
The problem with climate debate is the strident voices. I too believe unforseen feedback will perhaps..(notice the fudge word perhaps because I don’t know)…slow or limit the dire trends. I also don’t believe that life will end with 2-4 degrees rise, but definitely some places will fare worse than others.
But, there are those who do know…(and probably know much more than me)..who do passionately follow climate change and they tend to demonize those with different opinions with their passion. They might as well say, “how can you believe that stupid” and/or “how can you be that stupid”.
For my own example our climate is much like Euan’s Aberdeen. Maybe a bit better. But when I mentioned on TOD that crunching the numbers indicate it would be sure folloy to install home solar when hydro was so inexpensive, I would be nay sayed and occasionally lambasted. Climate change discussion is like that.
I remember when Fukishima started to unfold. Our local environmental guru, David Suzuki, said the northern hemisphere would have to be evacuated. I saw the interview. After awhile you just back away because there is no point trying to argue with a zealot who harbours different opinions…
Just a warning. Renewables is the same kind of topic. It is easy to see how intermittant wind power is if you live where I do. We have weeks of little breeze, and then quite often 2-3 weeks of 30-40 kt westerlies. With hydro you can simply close the penstocks and fill the reservoirs. If the same utility operates both sources then idle hands at one does not impact the other as total power is still being produced and sold. However, if one is in competition to the other, furthermore, is subsidized for capex and placed first in line with favoured status at the expense of the other, the process is flawed despite good intentions.
This has to be addressed before renewables ramp up in scale, climate notwithstanding.
Paulo
re: above
Excuse the typos and grammar…need another coffee.
Euan,
I actually agree with you on many of your points on renewables. However, the IPCC is a very conservative organization that must agree via a political consensus. So, what we get is a sort of watered-down approach to reporting the data. The problem with the IPCC in regards to many climate scientists is that the conditions in the climate are changing more rapidly than what the IPCC is reporting.
According to the article, Climate Risks Have Been Understated For The Past 20 Years:
A comparison of past IPCC predictions against 22 years of weather data and the latest climate science find that the IPCC has consistently underplayed the intensity of global warming in each of its four major reports released since 1990.
The drastic decline of summer Arctic sea ice is one recent example: In the 2007 report, the IPCC concluded the Arctic would not lose its summer ice before 2070 at the earliest. But the ice pack has shrunk far faster than any scenario scientists felt policymakers should consider; now researchers say the region could see ice-free summers within 20 years.
—————-
Actually, the U.S. Navy has a climate model showing the possibility that the Arctic could be ice-free by Sept 2016, with a more likely scenario by 2018-2020.
This is the problem with the world today…. BRAIN DAMAGE. So, I gather we will continue to play the POOR ME HUMAN role for another 5 years until the world realizes what a complete out-of-control mess the climate has become.
I believe within 5 years, the majority of the public will understand climate change as the conditions, weather events and changes will be too drastic to deny at this time.
steve
Steve, I am not going to get involved in a long debate since the only way the climate issue will be resolved is through finding out what happens. But is does puzzle me how, lets say the opposing sides of the debate, manage to look at the same data and reach different conclusions. Let me just focus on sea ice. I look at global sea ice anomaly and see +1 million sq kms. It is as high as it has been for about 15 years:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
I look at the Arctic Sea Ice and see 6 years with larger melt back than in recent decades, and then the possibility that things may be returning to “normal” (far too early to say):
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
There is of course no “normal” climate is in a continuous state of flux, some places more than others. USA has had an extreme cold winter, UK a very mild one, but huge amounts of snow in the Scottish Mountains when we were told a few years ago that snow wold be a thing of the past.
The average “weather” where I stay is pretty well undistinguishable from the 1960s and 1970s when I was growing up. Our weather is controlled by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) when it was in positive mode, 80s, 90s and 00s our weather was noticably wetter and warmer. And now it has switched back to what it was like in the 60s and 70s (negative NAO), that periodically results in reverse atmospheric flows in winter time bringing Siberia to Europe, but not this year.
Euan,
Thanks for your reply. However, I have to agree with you that exchanging details may be counter-intuitive. That being said, that wonderful chart you linked has to do with AREA, not volume. Volume is more important. Arctic sea-ice volume has been falling continuously and more rapidly in the past decade.
Furthermore, the warming of the Arctic forces more warm air from the Tropics to head south to the Antarctic. Thus, the hotter air meeting the cold air at the Antarctic actually speeds up the Jet Stream causing a build in ice area in the southern polar region. However, the climate scientists that I have been reading say once the ice is removed from the Arctic altogether, the build of ice in the Antarctic will reverse course.
You did not include the link for the Arctic sea ice melt-down in the past.
Lastly, the reason for the collapse of the Polar Vortex to the more southern latitudes this winter seems to be due to extreme warming of the Arctic slowing Jet Stream and allowing the cold air to move south where it should stay over the Polar region.
The methane releases coming from the Arctic are quite high and I imagine in time this may turn out to be quite alarming. We will see.
I am not 100% sure that the information I am reading is correct, but my gut tells me we have run out the clock. I gather we will be around in the next 5-10 years to see who was less correct than the other.
steve
Wanted to include two more interesting charts.
Here is one:
And here is the other. You will notice that the data is up until 2008. If we add the past 6 years, the OBSERVED data trend line would be below the chart shown above.
steve
I hink the fat lady has sung:
Well, all those climate scientists could not POSSIBLY be wrong, could they? Not too long ago, a similar majority of doctors thought bleeding was the best treatment for almost all illness. Including excessive blood loss.
I would discount the word of ANY person who cites a consensus of scientists as a reason to believe anything. Simple herd mentality is hardly the basis for excellence in science.
Lord have mercy RegEx…. is that the best logic you got?
Steve
Researchers who support the AGW hypothesis receive well over 100x the funding to do their research. Less than 1% of climate change funding goes to researchers committed to discovering the actual processes that drive the climate. Opposition research has to essentially be self supporting. This results in 100x more papers supporting the AGW hypothesis. And, to add insult to injury, opposing scientists are blackballed by the “consensus” community which means that almost none of the papers get published in peer reviewed journals. The result is you get a misleading image like the one above trumpeting the lack of opposing scientific papers, suggesting that only serious research supports the AGW hypothesis.
This begs the question, “why would scientists blackball other scientists doing serious research?” I know … It’s a naive question, especially since I already gave you the answer. More than 100x more funding is available if you know beforehand your research will support the AGW hypothesis. In addition, the reputations of some very influential scientists are dependent on the AGW hypothesis being correct. Since a scientist only has his/her reputation, the influential ones will do anything to protect it, including destroying another colleague’s reputation and livelihood. At least they no longer burn them at the stake.
It takes an incredible amount of courage to go against the supposed “consensus” of the scientific community. Now add to this the desire of capitalists to redistribute the wealth upward by raising taxes on the lower and middle classes (where the available money really is) and the mainstream media’s love of a “sky is falling” story and you get a “perfect storm” of AGW believers. The amusing and surprising thing is that with all of this fire power they still can’t convince the public that there is a significant problem. This is so frustrating to some of the AGW fanatics that a college professor recently called for the arrest and imprisonment of all deniers.
Hopefully I’ve opened your eyes as to what’s really going on with the AGW scheme.
I understand your argument and it is a good one except that it doesn’t work.
The reason it doesn’t is that the opportunity to be the next NEWTON or EINSTEIN or HAWKINGS is irresistible and any body who has real evidence that the consensus is wrong is free to pursue it.
Basically climate science is a computer exercise at bottom because just about all the data is available to any body who wants it.
You do not need a large amount of money or manpower to crunch data these days.
In the end we rely on the historical record of the oldest laws of chemistry and physics being ” correct or right” in the sense that they have stood without being disproven for centuries now.
Warming is consistent with what these laws tell us.
Cooling could be too of course – over the short term or even the long term.
But we aren’t talking geological time here.
Warming is being considered in the time frame of human life spans.
A climate scientist is working like a doctor that is evaluating the health of a given patient.
A doctor evaluating a man who is twenty five for health issues over the next five years is not going to be putting much weight on the chances of accidents or the diseases of old age but rather the effect of the life style choices the that man is making in the short term- what he eats how much he drinks the work he does the exercise he gets.
We are in effect insulating the world we live in.And we are adding insulation at a very fast rate compared to what nature has done in the past.
The output of the sun is just about constant and so we can expect the world to get a little hotter right along. And a little this year and a little next year and each year after that …… adds up.
Good god….
Long on rhetoric and woefully short on content, or classic denialti behaviour…
If you want to convince people AGW is not as serious as some make it, talk like a scientist using data in a honest way and not like some a lawyer-like shill driven by naive faith in “free markets”…
well, there’s the physics and the chemistry
all that is theory, but it’s worked pretty well… in fact, physics and chemistry are the bedrock of industrial civilization
.
but maybe the Dept of MindF*ck can cause enough confusion to …what?
it gets tiresome
maybe they’ll wear us out
maybe we’ll give up
.
more likely, though, as it starts to collapse, more people will start trying to figure out what’s happening to them
and it’s all so easily understood
there’s this “global dimming” thing… lots of studies that seem to show that particulates are masking a degree or two of warming… you can google “global dimming”
burning fossil fuels causes shade
the IPCC seems to downplay global dimming, which doesnt make much sense unless they’re being pressure by the climate/fossil fuel denial industry
.
anyhow, what it boils down to is, industry is making lots of shade (particulates) by burning fossil fuel
the weird part comes when we run out of fuel, the shade settles out and goes away in a few years, but the co2 stays and its effects are no longer masked
then the methane gets away
then our goose is cooked
.
.
the weirdest part of all, from my personal experience, was seismicing on the arctic sea ice in 1975 when the camp boss is saying that there’s no way to get the stuff out if we find anything because of the ice
it’s just another case of not knowing how paranoid to be
here’s a couple maps of the exploration dont in the canadian arctic from 1974 to 1984
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img89/7469/no1f.jpg
wadosy,
Yeah, the sulfites and aerosols emitted by the modern industrial machine help buffer the warming. Furthermore, it looks like El Nino will come out and play this year. It is still not certain, but the percentages are increasing every day that we will have an El Nino.
If this is the case, then we can experience how mother nature removes stored heat in the Oceans and throws it back into the lower atmosphere. I imagine we will blow past the previous high global temperature record set in 1998… IN SPADES.
God Hath a Sense of Humor…
steve
i got to admit it’s kinda humorous… but that woman who told me i was a ridiculous man also said i had a mean streak
when a woman like that says something like that, you think about it
Just a comment about 1998. The warmest years globally were 2005 and 2010, then 1998, a particularly powerful El Nino year. The more important ‘figures’ are really the decadal world temperatures, which have been “increasing” since the 1970’s. The 10 year averages are more important that yearly numbers, since there are still and always natural factors inducing warming (and cooling – think volcanoes). The decade of 2000 through 2010 was warmer than all previous decades of the “industrial era”. I don’t want to sound nit-picking, but choosing short term anomalies is part of the ‘denier’ bailiwick.
They have been increasing since the ’50s….
And it would have been since the 1880s if not for a few 1/100ths of a degree in the 40’s….
Look it up the wiki article on instrumental temperature record…
the “paranoia” part gets kinda interesting when you hitch it to ron’s opinion that we’re not gonna do anything to stop global warming…
for instance, what if big oil has the same opinion, and that’s why they spent all that money to do that exploration on the ice? …do they think the north polar ice is gonna go away? …did they think that back in 1974?
or is it some kind of chicken-egg question, in which big oil has enough juice to deliberately thaw the arctic so they can get at that gas?
that’s where the paranoia comes in
wadosy,
I don’t follow you here… on your meaning of paranoia. I actually agree with Ron that nothing will be done to stop the Climate Freight Train. Actually, we ran out the clock probably a decade or two ago.
We must remember, there is a 40 year lag from emissions to causation. So, the warming is BAKED IN THE CAKE so to speak.
All we can do now is grab a bag of popcorn and watch how things unfold. Sure, many simpletons will continue to propose solutions… but again, this is another form of BRAIN DAMAGE.
steve
well, i also got to admit it’s getting easier to think exxon, for instance, would deliberately encourage the use of fossil fuels to cause warming that would thaw the arctic so they could get that gas and oil up there
Sure, many simpletons will continue to propose solutions… but again, this is another form of BRAIN DAMAGE.
Naw, they were born that way. People, lots of people, really believe they can propose solutions, announce those solutions to the world, the world will follow and the problem will be solved.
This is a holdover from our evolution as hunter-gatherers. Members of a tribe or group could actually do that. They could see a problem, announce it to the group and if it their presentation was convincing enough, the group would follow. They would have changed their little world.
That scenario no longer applies to a group of 7 billion people.
my big problem is, it all makes sense… all of it…
…from exploring for hydrocarbons on the sea ice in 1975 to israel’s abandoing gaza while continuing to grab high ground in the west bank, to exxon’s alliance in warming and peak oil denial with the neocons of the AEI, to 9/11 and everything that’s happened since
maybe you got to be ridiculous with a mean streak to make sense of it
…it makes sense if you’re a psychopath…
long term, this operation will backfire… but it will probably last long enough for the instigators to loot, buy refuge someplace, and die of oil age
so from their point of view, the operation is a success
.
the rest of us –our kids and grandkids– will be left behind to deal with the consequences
Why is it that you think Israel ”grabbing high ground in the west bank” has something to do with peak oil and climate change?
Isreal is a very small country surrounded by hostile neighbors and engaged in a long term fight for survival.
Countries in such situations frequently fight for high ground and frequently give up ground that is too expensive to hold in terms of using up manpower and resources.
Holding the high ground- given the local geography and military reality- is often the difference between winning and losing a war.
That is more than ample reason for any country to seize critically located high ground.
It is a Darwinian world and life is about survival rather than right and wrong.
Mother Nature doesn’t deal in right and wrong.
But you are onto something in relation to giant corporations such as Exon. They are immortal alien life forms that were created in the laboratories of lawyers and politicians and they don’t have to obey the laws of nature.
These corporations have in a very real sense taken over a large part of the world and they are obviously more powerful than a lot of small countries.
I read many a story and novel when I was younger about robots taking over the world.It didn’t work out that way.
But the lawyers have made the engineers look like kids with erectors sets haven’t they?
the problem is this:
if peak oil is real, and global warming is real, and neither of them can be stopped, and industrial civilization is dependent on oil…
…and even if none of it is real, but the israelis think it’s eal…
then israel must e secured from sea level rise before its american protection goes tits up from oil shortages
Ron,
I agree with you. However, the term BRAIN DAMAGE tends to add a little humor to a situation that is indeed quite dire. I just listened to Mike Rupperts Sunday night LifeBoat Hour.
Can’t believe the man is gone… but I gather from some who knew him quite well, he spoke of this sort of thing before.
steve
Somewhat off topic …but not, the medical definition of paranoia is unjustified feelings of persecution. My father,mother and uncle were or are psychiatrists and a sister, brother in law and cousin are clinical psychologists. I am not but I learned this at the supper table …weather I wanted to or not. Paranoia can be a symptom of mental illness…..or a valuable survival skill depending on the circumstance. In a hall of mirrors I think the latter applies. I thank you all for your work and comments.
Copied and pasted from PeakOil.com. I have never copied a complete post before but this is worth the exception.
IN MEMORIAM MICHAEL C. RUPPERT, February 3, 1951–April 13, 2014.
Sunday night following Mike’s Lifeboat Hour radio show, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. This was not a “fake” suicide. It was very well planned by Mike who gave us few clues but elaborate instructions for how to proceed without him. His wishes were to be cremated, and as of this moment, there are no plans for a memorial service. However, I will be taking his show this coming Sunday night, April 20, and the entire show will be an In Memoriam show for Mike with opportunities for listeners to call in.
It was my privilege to have known Mike for 14 years, to have worked with him, to have been mentored by him, and to have supported him in some of his darkest hours, including the more recent ones. I am posting this announcement with the blessing of his partner Jesse Re and his landlord, Jack Martin.
Thank you Mike for all of the truth you courageously exposed and for the legacy of truth-telling you left us. Goodbye my friend. Your memory will live in hour hearts forever.
I have no more details to share than I am posting here. We should have much more information by Sunday night.
Link: Carolyne Baker – Facebook
Ron,
Thanks for posting that. What a SHOCKER. I have been listening to his LifeBoat Hour for a few years now. What a shame.
steve
A media link: Journalist Michael C. Ruppert Commits Suicide
Former LAPD narcotics investigator Michael C. Ruppert — best known as an investigative journalist and peak oil awareness advocate — is dead. While details are sketchy, various sources and his Facebook page say that he committed suicide.
He was 63 years old.
Mike was great as a peak oil man. And he could have been a lot greater had he not been such a conspiracy theorist. I think being a “truther” might have added to his despair. It most definitely added to his critics.
It is people like Ruppert who give the anti-peak forces fodder for their “these guys are nuts” arguments. I’m not sure where the boundary between “truther” and “fantasizer” is, but he tread on both sides, in my opinion, and in so doing weakened the peak oil message.
I don’t wish ill of anyone, but I don’t see him as a positive force for energy enlightenment.
I expect the conspiracy theories over his death will be forthcoming.
Calhoun,
Of course you are welcome to your opinion of Ruppert, however, I would like to offer the OTHERSIDE of that position. Ruppert had flaws and weaknesses, but what he didn’t have was an INCORRECT assessment of the world.
The world is heading into a Financial, Economic and Climate collapse with no way out in sight. If individuals truly believe conspiracies only take place on TV or MOVIES… then it is certainly true that IQ’s have fallen precipitously.
There is a great deal more at risk than just Peak oil…. which Ruppert was trying to convey in his weekly radio shows. Unfortunately, humans have lost the ability to reason effectively on what is IMPORTANT and what is NOT.
So… now we just get to wait around while driving our SUV’s to get Starbucks as the world heads over the cliff.
steve
Steve, let’s not lose our perspective here. Ruppert did have a correct world view as far as peak oil and natural resources go. But he had an incorrect world view as far as conspiracy theories go. Had he not been such a 9/11 truther, he could have been a major force in the peak oil world. But as a result of his books and video appearances on that subject and other conspiracies, he was regarded as a nut case by much of the mainstream media.
A person is judged by the media and the public by the opinions they express in their work. One may very well be a genus on one subject and a nut case on another. But the media will see only the nut case and ignore the genus.
Ruppert had a large following but his followers at least partially agreed with him concerning his conspiracy theories. But just imagine what kind of following he could of had, had he not held such screwballed theories.
Jim Kunstler has a large following and he shares your views on conspiracy theories Ron. What difference would it have made if Mike Ruppert agreed with you on 911? As you have rightly pointed out many times trying to change the behavior of 7 billion people is impossible. Mike tried to and it shortened his life.
I never met Mike Ruppert but I believe he was a passionate and caring human being. I tried to help him out with financial donations. I’m sorry he had to kill himself.
What difference would it have made if Mike Ruppert agreed with you on 911?
I really don’t understand your question. Are you implying it would have made no difference?
And it has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with me. It has to do with seeing the world through the lens of conspiracy theories everywhere. 99 out of every 100 conspiracy theorists see conspiracy theories everywhere. They see airline vapor trails as “chemtrails”. They see the government as being controlled by the Bilderberg Group or some other covert group. They think the government, or some group of Wall Street bankers control all of MSM. They think the HAARP antenna array in Alaska causes hurricanes, tornadoes and even earthquakes.
It has nothing to do with agreeing with me. It is whether you are a conspiracy theory nutcase or a normal sane human being.
Ron,
Good points. I think we should get back to the important subject of hand… PEAK OIL.
steve
there’s quite a few problems with the official conspiracy theory… probably wouldnt have flown too well withut a massive propaganda campaign in support…
thank goodness the main media responded so well to the anthrax letters…. and potential critics in congress got letters, too
.
so it works, at least it works well enough to continue the project…
it’s just a crying shame that those PNAC guys said they needed a new pearl harbor a couple months before they got powerful enough to make it happen
.
but the lies are piling up, the atrocities are piling up, and it’s hard to say whether or not humans are communicating on some level that is immune to propaganda
You know we have completely lost OUR MARBLES when we have to read this in today’s FUNNIES:
Energy Department Seeks Methane Hydrate Proposals
The U.S. Department of Energy is soliciting for another round of research into methane hydrates, the potentially huge energy source of “frozen gas” that could step in for shortages of other fossil fuels.
The department is looking for research projects on the North Slope of Alaska that could explore how to economically extract the gas locked in ice far below the Earth’s surface.
DOE is also seeking researchers to document methane hydrate deposits in outer continental shelf waters of coastal states.
http://peakoil.com/production/energy-department-seeks-methane-hydrate-proposals/comment-page-1#comment-79464
—————–
Now, I don’t know why we have to spend money researching how to extract methane hydrates when all its being released in SPADES in the Arctic.
Again… another example of BRAIN DAMAGE.
steve
I get so damn tired of crap like this:
Former Navy Officers Say Stop Saddling the Military with Renewables
Importantly, the drive to saddle the U.S. military and domestic economy with expensive renewable fuels rests on the premise that “peak oil” threatens the availability of conventional energy sources in the near future. Instead, recent oil and natural gas discoveries, coupled with technological advances allowing access to previously unavailable deposits, have blessed our nation with abundant inexpensive conventional energy sources.
Got that? The premise was that “peak oil” was a threat. But instead recent discoveries and technological advances have blessed us with abundant inexpensive conventional energy sources.
No, those resources are not conventional, they are not abundant and they sure as hell are not inexpensive. And on top of all that they will peter out in just a few years.
That is what all this “energy independence hype” by MSM has done. It has mislead a whole nation into believing there is absolutely nothing to worry about. They say peak oil is dead and we will not need to import a single barrel by 2036. In fact we should start exporting today just to get the hang of it.
Ron,
You have to admit after reading that… I don’t what else to describe it but as pure Brain Damage. Not to beat a dead horse.
steve
In “somewhat” ironic comment, Simon Hobbs on CNBC this morning said something to the effect that if you say something (presumably untrue) often enough, it’s amazing how many people will believe it.
Of course, Mr. Hobbs noted last year that “The US is already a net crude oil exporter.”
Jeff,
What a FRICKEN HOOT. The world is being run and advertised by some of the biggest NITWITS & LUNATICS imaginable.
For all those who are serious in their religion no matter what FLAVOR it is, I don’t believe God will be stepping in any time soon to save a species not worthy of saving.
LOL… steve
“Less than 20 percent of U.S. oil comes from OPEC. Nevertheless, if the United States desires to close out that OPEC oil, a simple way of doing so would be to produce more domestic oil.”
20% of about 18 million bpd domestic total liquids consumption is 3.6 million bpd of additional domestic liquids production required – “to close out that OPEC oil”
Thank God we have former naval officers to point out this simple solution. Why didn’t we think of that and try it sooner?
I’ll step up and defend those guys. Knee jerking here. The focus of their report was that 20% issue. It wasn’t anything else.
The extracted single sentences here and there as red meat for the oil scarcity people ignores the focus. The focus was simply that when only 20% of oil consumption is coming from OPEC, it makes no sense to point military consumption (380K bpd btw) strictly at the most expensive alternatives. Why not point the military at Canadian oil imports for 20% of that 380K bpd?
This is what you would expect from senior officers trying to maximize their budget. Don’t force us to buy the most expensive oil. Let someone else fund that from their budget.
Guilty as charged – it really is easy to cherry pick sometimes, though, when those of authority attempt to present a compelling case for something, then veer off-message and offer “solutions” to their primary concern that anyone knowledgeable on the solution subject know is nonsense and can quickly demonstrate that.
Their main message is that it is is foolish to waste money on RE for military purposes, as RE doesn’t have the necessary energy density or cost-effectiveness. They should have stayed on-topic. They also missed an important point about military readiness and energy – Obama (and others) tapping the strategic oil reserve in an attempt to reduce domestic oil prices. What a waste of a vital resource! It is strategic and reserved for a reason – like if/when things really get nasty and we are cut off from oil imports and need to do some real defending. Ask the Germans and the Japanese about how important oil is to running a military. RE can’t fuel our most powerful weapons of defense.
I remember hearing a story about some oak forests in England that were aggressively controlled and protected by the British military. They were the “strategic reserves” of premium oak used to build British naval sailing ships.
Yup. The oak stuff is on record.
Oil scarcity for the military is a very dangerous thing. If you deny a president the ability to respond to a circumstance with conventional forces because they have no fuel, you force him to respond with nuclear weapons launched by non oil fueled rocket.
frank herbert, the “dune” guy, wrote a bleak little book in 1956 called “the dragon of the sea”…
submarine tugs are stealing huge bladders of oil from the russian arctic…
there’s a government agency called “BuPsych” that manipulates public opinion and provides military units with political commissars that ensure politically correct thought
i’ve always thought of BuPsych as “the “Department of Mindf*ck”
…and i cant avoid the feeling that the chemtrail operation was a Department of Mindf*ck, along with peak oil denial and global warming denial
.
.
but i’m paranoid
arent i…
I had Herbert as a guest prof at UCSB in a Future on Man class.
He was deep into seeing our predicament, even in the late 60’s. Buckminster Fuller and BF Skinner were also guest profs. Fuller was getting a bit bitter by then.
In Belgium our national TV weather forecaster gave 16 tips to save the climate. Tip 15: “Try to limit the amount of children to 2 per family.” I was surprised no hell broke loose. There is no debate, no controversy. People seem to be ready to accept this kind of information.
Sanford C. Bernstein, the Wall Street research company, calls the rapid increase in production costs “the dark side of the golden age of shale”. In a recent analysis, it estimates that non-Opec marginal cost of production rose last year to $104.5 a barrel, up more than 13 per cent from $92.3 a barrel in 2011.
Thanks Ron, great find. Our model which is based on a thermodynamic evaluation of petroleum production gives almost exactly the same numbers. 2013 – $102.15/b : 2011 – $89.11/b. When we tell people what oil costs to produce you almost always hear, “NO, oil cost $5 per barrel. The oil companies are ripping us off”. As an API lobbyist told me fairly recently, “people have just no idea how much this stuff cost to produce”. She was right on the money.
I’m going to print this out, cut into nice little 2 X 3 inch strips, and the next time I hear $5; staple it to someone’s forehead!
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/
Who says the $102 number is right? That’s just another generic study from some Wall Street company.
Where are the academic studies? You can trust those to have an agenda of grant renewal, but unless we have some of those confirming $102, there’s no reason to believe $102 (and let’s keep in mind that’s $102 Quantitatively Eased pieced of paper most of which is on deposit as Excess Reserves at the Fed from the Primary Dealers).
It’s not a very good measurement parameter, but it’s widely quoted (aka, dollars).
Speaking of which, want to see something that looks inexpensive?
2000 truck trips of 20 miles is 40,000 miles. X 2 for round trip is 80,000 miles.
Fully loaded (80,000 pounds) trucks not on any highway, some of it dirt roads, going up and down hills will get about 5 miles per gallon of diesel.
That’s 16,000 gallons of fuel. / 42 =
380 barrels of fuel to get a Bakken well operating its first year.
Looks cheap.
Oops, meant the $104 number.
We don’t calculate in $s, we use BTU, and convert the determination to $s. Our numbers don’t just agree with a Wall St analyst, they agree with Campbell, Leharrere, Robelius, and half a dozen other “academics”. Guess you’re waiting for Arch Angle Gabriel to descend with it all engraved on a gold platter?
Cool. How many BTUs to drill a well?
Cool. How many BTUs to drill a well?
It’s a function of the time frame. In SA in 1970 it took 14.6 billion BTU to drill the average well. For the Bakken in 2012 it took 54.2 billion BTU to drill the average well. In 1970 the average SA well produced 50K barrels per day; in 2012 the average Bakken well produced 89. The energy needed to produce energy from petroleum is increasing with time. A point will be reached when the energy content of a barrel of oil will no longer be sufficient to support its own production.
http://www.thehillsgroup.org
Can we see some details of these BTU estimates?
Does the drill equipment require more power now to get through rock? Is the oil deeper (Bakken is down 10,000 feet)?
Don’t want to seem provocative. That’s not the point. Just what are the constituent parts to the final number?
BTW that 2012 number is less than 1000 barrels (5.6 million btus/barrel). In total.
This article uses the EIA productivity reports to explain why the shale plays are getting better in spite of the rapid decline rates, which are also mentioned.
Is America’s Energy Boom Slowing? Not Quite
If we truly want to tap the full potential of our shale resources, maximizing our understanding of these plays is the first step. The only way to offset high decline rates and the complementary “Red Queen” effect is to translate our growing knowledge of shale to greater efficiency and the development of new technology.
If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that producers (and the companies that provide them with technical support) can and will figure out a way to continue growing shale production. As long as oil and gas prices are high enough to keep the incentives in place, the technology to extract it will follow. In the end, the biggest threat to America’s energy resurgence isn’t that we can’t produce enough to meet our needs, it’s that there will be cheaper options elsewhere.
HA! So the biggest threat to my energy security is cheaper options? Just junk news, like most of the stuff on motley fool.
“In the end, the biggest threat to America’s energy resurgence isn’t that we can’t produce enough to meet our needs, it’s that there will be cheaper options elsewhere.”
Or they run out of gullible investors to fund non-profitable production.
The bottom-line reason to continue to study climate science is to glean information that would allow better predictions of climate movements, whether it be wind, temperature, etc.
The revelation about the skeptic, deniers, whatever you want to call them, is that they often score “own-goals” — in that they produce analyses that actually hurt their cause more than it helps to disprove the effects of AGW. So if some skeptics say that the lunar influences on climate are important, then look at that and include it in a model of variability. This turns out to be an own-goal because lunar tidal effects are zero-sum and don’t influence the overall AGW but help to improve our understanding of climate variability.
This all contributes to practical application of renewables.
Hi WHT,
Thanks for joining the conversation.
For others interested in climate change there are some interesting posts at context earth, especially the CSALT model see
http://contextearth.com/2013/10/26/csalt-model/
Note that the context server which allows you to play with the model does not work with internet explorer, I use firefox or google chrome.
Chart below for CSALT model from the entroplot web server designed by Webhubbletelescope.
Texas Cotton Desert Boosting Costs for Makers of Clothing
By Marvin G. Perez, Bloomberg, Apr 9, 2014 4:47 PM ET
Withered California Fruit Seen Raising Food Costs
By Alan Bjerga, Bloomberg, Apr 9, 2014 3:43 PM ET
I have always wondered who came up with the term ”exceptional” as indicating greater than ”extreme”.
Things are worse in our schools than we think. 😉
Worth reading the latest Master Resource Report from Jim Hansen. He looks at the various factors that will determine the final natural gas injection volume into U.S. underground storage for next winter. Lots of good charts and clearly written, as usual.
And he dug up this great quote from a G&M article…
http://www.ravennacapitalmanagement.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/The-Master-Resource-Report-2014-04-11.pdf
I’ll take this opportunity to re-post a graph on annual natural gas demand for Alberta (with the province of Ontario included as a comparison with a large province that has a large manufacturing industry)
There is no reason why with respect to natural gas Jeffrey’s Land Export Model does not apply to Alberta?
For context…
Rising prices for natural gas put pressure on oil sands producers
Carrie Tait, Calgary — The Globe and Mail Published Monday, Apr. 14 2014, 5:00 AM EDT
Think what it would be if the oil sands had more than one customer.
Tracking the Drilling Rig Feeding Frenzy
Posted on March 4, 2014, Drilling Info/blog
Sioux Falls, SD record high temperature stats:
100 DEGREES OR HIGHER OCCURRED MOST OFTEN IN 1936. THE TOP
12 YEARS WERE…
1936 21 TIMES
1988 14 TIMES
1894 12 TIMES
1934 10 TIMES
1974 8 TIMES
1947 7 TIMES
1941 7 TIMES
1931 7 TIMES
1930 7 TIMES
1975 6 TIMES
1911 6 TIMES
1901 6 TIMES
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/?n=daysabove100
100 DEGREES OR HIGHER OCCURRED MOST OFTEN DURING THE DECADE OF
1930-1939. THE BREAKDOWN BY DECADES…
1893 – 1899 19 TIMES (PARTIAL DECADE)
1900 – 1909 9 TIMES
1910 – 1919 12 TIMES
1920 – 1929 8 TIMES
1930 – 1939 58 TIMES
1940 – 1949 22 TIMES
1950 – 1959 13 TIMES
1960 – 1969 10 TIMES
1970 – 1979 31 TIMES
1980 – 1989 23 TIMES
1990 – 1995 6 TIMES (PARTIAL DECADE)
Looks like the 1930’s were hot in Sioux Falls.
https://weatherspark.com/history/30301/1976/Sioux-Falls-South-Dakota-United-States
It was 106 in Sioux Falls in 1976.
https://weatherspark.com/history/30301/2012/Sioux-Falls-South-Dakota-United-States
In 2012, the temp in Sioux Falls made it to 103.
2012 was hot during the summer but there is no way that it was as hot as the summer of 1988.
https://weatherspark.com/history/30301/1988/Sioux-Falls-South-Dakota-United-States
Sioux Falls hit a temperature of 109 in the summer of 1988, eclipsing 2012 by 6 degrees.
2012 is just another hot year, not unlike many others.
Global warming and climate change was more alarming during the decade of the 30’s than they are today, must be of some significance.
The real positive behind high gasoline prices is there are fewer highway deaths due to people driving less.
Reduced consumption of oil products is a blessing in disguise.
Bakken oil is good for the ethane content for tar sands oil extraction at the Athabasca Tar Sands. Bakken oil is shipped/exported to Canada.
Energy invested to obtain oil to be used to as an energy source to obtain tar sands oil. uff da
The reason why wind has no capacity value is it is not dependable. Capacity value translates to a dependable source of power generation. Coal, above any other resource, fills that need.
Without coal, oil would be hoarded with force, free market flow would be non-existent.
If William Faulkner were alive and blogging, I suppose this is an example of what it would look like.
That is interesting data at one location…
However, there are many more locations on our planet that do not reflect the same temperatures as seen in Sioux Falls.
Not the name in NOT “Sioux Falls Warming”, but global warming.
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