Facts and reality continue to screw up the narrative offered by fossil fuel industry cheerleaders that all is well and we are at the dawn of an almost completely worry-free future of limitless supplies of energy.
From Chris Martenson:
The reason I say in the title that shale oil proves that Peak Oil is upon us is that we would not be drilling them if there were anything better left to drill. The simple yet profound reason that we're going after this more difficult and expensive oil is—drum roll, please—the easy and cheap stuff is all gone.
Rather than proving that Peak Oil is dead, as many have claimed, the new focus on shale plays indicates to me that we've indeed moved down the resource ladder to the next best (i.e., less good) options because the better ones are all gone….
Again, the shale plays are magnificent in many respects, but they are not permanent game-changers that afford us the choice of neither examining our beliefs nor changing our behaviors. Indeed, they are a reinforcing indicator that we now live in the age of Peak Cheap Oil.
No one doubts that there is great appeal in attesting to the marvels of technology and ingenuity which have provided us with a recent oil-production increase. It is a legitimate accolade. But once you move past the pom-poms, geology and facts remain in place. No matter how fervent the Happy Talk about energy independence and being awash with vast this and that, in the end we are still dealing with the realities and limitations Mother Earth affords us.
What we’re relying upon now does not offer anyone the same energy efficiencies and qualities as has conventional crude oil. The primary reason for our recent production uptick—hydraulic fracturing (fracking)—is a much more expensive process. The shale formations supplying the industry with that tight oil create their own extraction challenges, and the unpleasant truth rarely mentioned in all the cheerleader stories is that those fields deplete much more rapidly than do the long-relied-upon conventional crude oil fields (which, by the way, are still finite). Those are just the highlights.
Meanwhile, conventional crude oil production remains stuck on its nearly full-decade plateau. And demand is not going away.
So while we’re all breathlessly assured that we’re not running out of oil—a favorite straw man argument which continues to be mentioned by the peak oil deniers because no one else is making that claim—we’re butting heads with the limitations innate in finite conventional and unconventional or alternate resources. What’s underground (or beneath the sea) won’t come roaring to the surface because some are spinning tales about them. Extracting them will remain an incredible challenge, and as we dig ever deeper to find more and more of what we need to replace what we’re using up, the process won’t get any easier—or cheaper.
So while there may indeed still be billions of barrels of fossil fuel reserves, the unpleasant disruption to the Happy Talk is that it’s a lot more difficult and a lot more expensive to get at (assuming that’s even an option; geology has its own ideas about access). And that “a lot more expensive” part of the discussion is relevant for two reasons:
(1) We are the ones dealing with “more expensive,” and that impacts our own personal bottom lines. There’s only so many ways we can divide the household budget; and
(2) When we stop buying “more expensive,” the industry stops exploring and producing. So unless they have magic at their disposal, more expensive and not producing creates the problem peak oil proponents have been trying to explain despite the louder and better-funded voices.
Beliefs and behaviors at some point must bend to reality. Sooner is better.
(Adapted from a recent blog post of mine)
Top Comments Submission Made Easy
|