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| ▲ | Unearned5161 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Peak Oil has always and always will be about production rates, going back to Hubbert's paper in the 50s. We never solved the production rate issue, we just threw more money at it, see the shale boom of the 2010s. Relying on "technology" and "science" gets a lot shakier when you realize that oil itself is what has largely funded the ability to do technology and science. We've been gluttonous in an age of cheap energy, the world is in no way prepared for what comes after the cheap part is over. | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Adjusted for inflation, the price of oil has been similar for the last 20 years[1]. As PV ramps up further, there will be less demand for oil, and therefore the price will fall and extraction will reduce. It's not clear to me if that means the peak is 2026 or 2036, but either way, there will be all the oil we need to accomplish everything we want to use it for, even as we use less and less of it. 1. https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-cha... | | |
| ▲ | Unearned5161 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | A bit wild to say the prices have been "similar" for the last 20 years and then cite a source that not only shows a coefficient of variation of 28% on regular prices but one that goes to 31% when you "adjust for inflation". If your salary had a coefficient of variation above 20% I don't think you'd be saying "I make similar amounts year to year". What part of this graph of global energy consumption [1] do you envision PV storming oil and nat gas out of? Notice how we never transitioned from anything in the past on a global scale, sure, coal tapered here in the US, but thats because we have nice oil fields to play with. Developing countries and co are trying to get the same that we got in our boom, i.e we're far from "maturing" away from any energy source as a globe. There's also the thermodynamic note of energy density and temporal coverage, i.e oil and oil derivatives are non-fungible for a bulk of their uses, see planes, ships, and mining. That last one conviniently being the gatekeeper to most of our ideals of renewable energy sources. 1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio... | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I used “similar” to say that it hasn’t been trending clearly up (or down, thus far). The line is definitely a bit chaotic, I’ll agree, but growth is pretty flat at the lowest granularity. The argument I’m refuting is that oil prices are rising in the way you’d expect if production was becoming problematic. It seems other factors, world events, etc, are more impactful. | | |
| ▲ | Unearned5161 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I see what you're trying to say, the issue with this frame of mind, however, is that it appears rather oblivious to the absolutely central role that oil prices have in the economy itself. The price of oil should be viewed as a proxy for the cost of movement in an economy, and when you recall that an economy is defined by its movement, the ouroborus becomes rather apparent. Money isn't the blood of the economy, energy is, oil is. To make this clearer we can take a look at historic prices and the journey they've taken coming to where we are now. If you squint your eyes at the crude graph zoomed all the way out, you can piece together 3 general "tiers" in the pricing, levels where prices have oscillated around. Starting with the one from 1950s to the mid 1970s, this was $3, cheap conventional plays, we were swimming in this stuff, the modern world got built with this foundation. Then there's a rise to about $20 that "stabilizes" in the 80s, the hike up from $3 came due to conventional plays peaking in the 70s just as Hubbert said they would and then Alaska came online. The price didnt go back down to sub 10's because this new oil needed a new price floor to justify commercial viability. It stayed at this $20 range. And then Alaska peaked, China industrialized, global demand surged, and you see the long rise in the 2000s, leading to the recession, then shale comes online, this is the third tier. This is where we are now. Oscillating around $55-60, this is the new floor, fracking is expensive as hell, the only way we've been able to keep production alive at all is just by incinerating money at it. The reason you don't see a clear price increase happening is because we're still on the shale tier. The treadmill is set to fast (check out how many wells need to be drilled for shale production to stay constant). Once this tier exhausts itself, however, that's when the market will correct, the price will rise until the even harder plays become viable. That fourth tier, if it even exists, won't be at a price any of our modern economic conveniences thrive in. It's a ratchet with wiplash, not a steady climb. |
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| ▲ | defrost 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > will help, here. Yes, it's a useful reminder to those that thought Peak Oil related to oil running out when it fact, as your link shows, it was largely always about the relative costs of energy. I had hoped that globally we would pivot harder into cleaner energies much sooner; the continuation and increase in fossil fuel usage has worsened an issue that much of the world will increasingly encounter in the lifetimes of those born today. | | |
| ▲ | randallsquared 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | To be clear, the second paragraph starts "Peak oil relates closely to oil depletion; while petroleum reserves are finite, the key issue is the economic viability of extraction at current prices.[6][7] Initially, it was believed that oil production would decline due to reserve depletion, but [...]" (emphasis mine) |
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