Flaws in the analysis of reports from the leading government agencies.
ASPO is a network of European institutions and universities with an interest in
determining the date and impact of the peak and decline of world oil production,
due to resource constraints which was founded in 2000.
ASPO stands for "Association for the Study of Peak Oil"
http://www.energyshortage.com
http://www.energiekrise.de/e/articles/LBST_Countdown_2004-10-12.pdf
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/10/02/global.warming/
Oil production in decline
http://www.energybulletin.net/85.html
April 8, 2004
Oman's Oil Yield Long in Decline, Shell Data Show
http://www.peaceredding.org/Oman's%20Oil%20Yield%20Long%20in%20Decline,%20Shell%20Data%20Show.htm
Russia’s Oil Exports Reach Maximum, Decline to Start in 2 Years — Official
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2004/11/09/oilproduction.shtml
In 2005 Russia’s Oil Production May Fall
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2004/06/07/oilproduction.shtml
New study raises doubts about Saudi oil reserves
http://www.iags.org/n0331043.htm
Money cannot create energy
The problem is not solved by throwing enough money at it.
The wishful thinking that the market - supply and demand- will solve the problem,
is nonsense.
In order to compensate for the 3-6% production drop per year after the peak, a huge non existing
alternative energy network needs to be built.
In order to built this network, energy = oil is needed. The market will wait until
decline has started, however the necessary oil needed to invest in new energies
is then used to feed an eroding world market and energy system.
banks make money, banks give more loans.
Even if steady state is reached, the system doesn't work anymore. Banks don't give loans without making money through interests.
Our industrial societies and our financial systems were built on the assumption of constant
growth, growth based on ever more readily available cheap fossil fuels. Oil in particular is
the most convenient and multi-purposed of these fossil fuels. Oil currently accounts for about
40% of the world's commercial energy, and about 90% of transportation energy. Oil is so
important that the peak will have vast implications across the realms of geopolitics, lifestyle,
agriculture and economic stability.
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
As geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer points out in his article entitled, “Eating Fossil Fuels,” approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US.
The size of this ratio stems from the fact that every step of modern food production is fossil fuel and petrochemical powered:
1. Pesticides are made from oil;
2. Commercial fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is made from
natural gas, which is also about to peak.
3. Farming implements such as tractors and trailers are constructed
and powered using oil;
4. Food distribution networks are entirely dependant on oil. In the US,
the average piece of food is transported 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate;
Polynesians colonized the Easter Isands around 500AD.Over the next 1000 years the population grew between 7000-20000.
Polynesians depended on wood as the one resource for building, transportation and energy.
Eventually the islanders started using more trees than grew back.
They never bothered to figure out how much reserves were left.
After the depletion of the island's wood resources, chaos became so widespread, the island is
still spread with weopons used by the islanders.
Food became so scarce, the islanders resorted to cannibalism.
(Jared Diamond,http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/042.html)
Peak oil and the US economy
-Historically, oil and most resources are traded in dollars. Revenues made from oil
allows the US to print more dollars.
(The Nation’s international deficit in goods and services increased to $617.7 billion in
2004 from $496.5 billion in 2003.
http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html)
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_archive_01152003
IMF alarmed by U.S. foreign debt http://www.iht.com/articles/123915.html
The difference in value between U.S. holdings of foreign assets
(officially termed U.S. gross assets) and foreign holdings of U.S. assets
(U.S. gross liabilities)—$2.3 trillion—is a measure of the U.S. net debt to the rest
of the world, or the U.S. net international investment position.
http://www.ny.frb.org/newsevents/news/research/2003/rp020205.html).
.:This only works because the US can write checks that can be cashed in for oil,
oil that is neither produced nor sold in the US.
If US dollar drops, countries loose money, since their dollar reserves drop with respect to
their own and other currencies.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-11-19-voa81.cfm
Party time is over, the bill collector is coming.
There are no known alternatives to compensate for the decrease in oil production.
In order to transform to an alternative source of energy, energy obtained from oil is needed.
To evaluate other energy sources it's important to understand the concepts of embodied energy and Net Energy or ERoEI – Energy Return on Energy Invested. One of the reasons our economies use ever increasing quantities of oil is precisely because oil has a comparatively high ERoEI. Historically, for every barrel of oil used for exploration and drilling of oil, 100 barrels were found. This was an unprecedentedly high ratio, although these days the ratio is far lower. Certain alternative energy 'sources' actually have ERoEI ratios of less than one, such as photovoltaics (arguably) and most methods of industrially producing biodiesel and ethanol. That is, when all factors are considered, you probably need to invest more energy into the process than you get back. Hydrogen, touted by many as a seamless solution, is actually an energy carrier, but not an energy source - it must be produced using an energy source such as nuclear, so while it may or may not be a convenient store of energy, it's Net Energy will be negative. Some alternatives such as wind and hydro have better ERoEI, however their potential expansion may be limited by physical factors. Even in combination it may not be possible to gather from renewable sources of energy anything like the amount of energy we are used to. For certain tasks, such as air travel, no other energy source can readily be substituted for oil. Alternative energy infrastructures require long periods of investment, on the scale of decades, to be widely implemented. We may be already leaving the period of cheap energy before we have begun seriously embarking on this task.
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
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