Energy Status Overview - Good Luck to Us All….
Friends,
Climate change due to alterations in atmospheric chemistry has been elevated to scientific truth and front page news. The primary culprit is CO2 emissions due to our use of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.
Fossil fuels are storehouses of ancient sunlight, formed from algae and other organic matter during a brief period in the earth’s history, roughly 90 to 150 million years ago.
In the last 100 years or so humans have learned to find, extract and use crude oil, natural gas and coal for hundreds of thousands of products and services that now define our modern way of life: Surface and air transportation, industrial scale farming, farm chemicals and food processing, space and water heating, the manufacturing of concrete, steel, asphalt, paper, packaging, plastics, glass, ceramics and pharmaceuticals… virtually all of the conveniences we enjoy today, are created or empowered by the use of crude oil, natural gas and coal (for electricity).
Now, here is the bad news: global reserves of oil, natural gas and coal are depleting rapidly.
Global discovery of crude oil peaked in 1964. Oil fields typically have a peak in production in 40 to 60 years, the point at which about half of the recoverable oil has been produced.
The largest field in the world, the Ghawar in Saudi Arabia was discovered in 1948, about 48 years ago. It is now pumping about 50% water with its oil, a very bad sign of an aging field. Over seven million barrels a day of brine are injected each day in an effort to maintain production. In recent weeks, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi National Oil Company, notified Korean and Japanese importers that their contracted deliveries of crude oil would be reduced by 9 to 10% this year. What does this suggest to you?
The Burgan field in Kuwait, the second largest ever discovered (1938) is now in decline after 60 years of production.
Production from the Cantarell (1976) field in Mexico, the third largest field ever discovered, peaked in 2005 and dropped by ~20% in 2006. Production in 2007 is down 14% to date.
Discovery of crude oil in the US peaked in 1930, production in the US peaked in 1970. Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska, the largest single US oil field ever found, was discovered in 1968, and began producing in 1977. It peaked at ~1.5 mbd in the late eighties and is now below 0.7 mbd.
North Sea oil production by Norway and the UK (1969) has also peaked and begun to decline in the last half dozen years, after about 30 years of production.
Canadian oil production has peaked and entered decline. There is a lot of bitumen in Canadian oil sands, but huge problems related to energy inputs, water, pollution, emissions, skilled labor, and infrastructure limit the amount that can be produced there. Likewise for the similarly hyped oil shale in NW Colorado. It is mostly hype!
Two-thirds of the nearly one-hundred oil producing nations have already peaked. Expect ongoing price increases and growing shortages.
And natural gas? Production of natural gas in the US peaked in 1973, peaked again in 2001 and is now falling in spite of monumental efforts to explore and produce from our ever shrinking conventional reserves and non-conventional sources like western coal beds and Texas shale formations.
Natural gas production has already peaked and entered decline in Mexico, and, Canada is on the same track. The US imports 56% of Canada’s natural gas production. Production from existing wells falls about 20% per year, so frantic drilling of ever smaller fields and unconventional sources like coal bed methane in the US and Canada are barely maintaining production volumes. There is growing resentment in Canada about shipping so much natural gas and oil(60%) to the US…they are also getting concerned about resource depletion and “shivering in the dark someday.”
There are large reserves of natural gas and oil left, but most of them are controlled by foreign governments or national oil companies. Our manufactured product imports and off-shoring of work have created a huge overseas demand growth for crude oil and natural gas, especially in China and India where a car-hungry new middle-class is being funded by our purchases. China and India each produce only a third of the natural gas that they need to power their economies and are both are major importers of crude oil, natural gas and other natural resources. Expect natural gas prices to rise sharply and for shortages to develop in the years ahead.
Well, wait a minute you say. How about coal? A report of updated global coal reserves issued recently by Energy Watch in Germany estimates that global coal production will peak in 15-20 years. The US has already peaked in terms of “steam BTUs” being produced. Anthracite peaked decades ago, softer bituminous coal is peaking now, and the lower grade sub-bituminous coal from western mines is now being hauled farther to meet growing demand. See the report at: http://www.energywaatchgroup.org/files/Coalreport.pdf
The US is now a net coal importer! So much for the “trust us we have 200 or 300 years worth of coal reserves” story so widely quoted.
Expect electricity prices to continue to rise for the foreseeable future because of growing demand, depleting coal reserves, ever increasing coal transportation costs and climate issues.
Bio-renewables? Some help, but: We do not have enough farm land to replace our liquid fuel demand with ethanol or other biofuels, and, substantial fossil energy inputs negate much of the claimed bio-energy production. All of our corn and soybean production converted to biofuels would produce about 12% of our gasoline and 6% of our diesel fuels, but reduce imports by only 3% because of the high energy inputs for growing and processing corn and soybeans (UMN Tilman & Lehman). There are process improvements coming, but ethanol will still be unable to replace much crude oil.
Huge subsidies will flow to producers and blenders, food prices will rise and world resentment toward the US will increase. Hard to be a breadbasket for the world when food is turned into fuel. Cellulosic ethanol, dimethyl ether (DME) or biobutanol may be better alternatives [butanol.com]. Biofuel feedstocks will have to come from perennial plants and waste streams or a significant contribution to energy imports will not be realized.
Uranium? Good luck. It also is a finite resource and the best ore has already been found. Minable Reserves may last less than 50 years as the nations of the world scramble to “go nuclear” and hoarding of stockpiles and reserves begin to dominate energy policy.
What is left? Conservation, efficiency and “the other nuclear energy.” The safest, most reliable reactor in existence: the sun. It powers the formation of winds, surface heating, growth of forests, field crops and ocean life. We need to redirect money we are now spending on global military imperialism and destruction to the development of a society that is gradually freed from dependence on fossil fuels.
Sunlight is free, inflation proof, secure, safe and reliable. We are not going to get to vote on whether we will use less fossil fuels. We cannot produce and use what we cannot find.
We are headed into uncharted territory with a myriad of possibilities for changes unfriendly to the peoples of the world, and especially to industrialized nations. Energy descent will threaten our economy, food production, population growth, jobs, housing, recreation, equity markets, health care, social programs, education, environment, transportation, pensions and SSA, and affect political and military alignments, globalization trends, and political stability, to name a few.
The need to embrace a shift to renewables, AND conservation, efficiency, and life-style changes will be imposed on us by nature as remaining reserves disappear. We must accelerate our investments in sustainable energy technologies and infrastructure while the fossil energy resources needed to power the transformation are still available and relatively affordable.
Norm Erickson
Rochester, MN
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From Chevron and ConocoPhillips see:
www.willyoujoinus.com
www.conocophillips.com/energy/
Read: The Party’s Over by Richard Heinberg, a good introduction to energy supply issues. There are many others books on the topic.
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See: The Hirsch Report at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_report
CRUDE OIL Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production For Congress at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07283.pdf
Web sites to watch:
www.peakoil.net Association for the Study of Peak Oil
http://www.aspo-usa.org/ Association for the Study of Peak Oil – USA
http://www.aspocanada.ca Association for the Study of Peak Oil - Canada
Peak oil news clearinghouse [comprehensive energy news coverage]
http://theoildrum.com More technical discussions of energy issues
http://www.postcarbon.org Networking and news regarding energy descent issues
New solar community using seasonal thermal energy storage in Okotoks, Alberta (sold out) http://www.sterlinghomesgroup.com/drake/northamerica.html
MN Pollution Control Agency site: http://www.nextstep.state.mn.us
Search for Peak Oil here
US Military energy concerns: http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
Energy news clips: http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/EnergyMay2007.htm