"Since Hubbert, people in and out of the international petroleum industry have been waiting for world petroleum production to crest – an event that apparently has yet to happen."
Oh, it's happened, alright!
As Art Berman notes, it's been disguised.
We probably hit peak oil in 2018, but they've been "cooking the books". They've added things like "natural gas liquids", "refinery gain", and even biofuels to the official oil production numbers so they can keep propping that number up.
More importantly, "peak oil energy" if not volume, is certainly past. A barrel of oil has only about 90-95% of the energy that it had ten years ago, due to the predominance of fracked oil, which is a lighter grade. Also, the NGL that have been incorporated in production figures are very light. And "refinery gain" is also light, as it is what you get when you "crack" heavier oil into grades suitable for gasoline production.
This is bad news, because the world runs on diesel, not lighter grades. Electric cars help conserve gasoline, but not diesel, which is indispensable for mining, long-haul transportation, and agriculture.
OPEC nations are facing decline of their conventional fields. This means they're going to be holding back exports — especially of diesel — for their own use.
The next four years are going to be interesting, indeed!
Thanks -- I hadn't looked into the chemical nature of the new production and its ramifications. I'd imagine the Canadian tar sands are still good for diesel production, though, and point to another reason for resurrecting the Keystone pipe line work.
Well, the stuff does have to be transported somehow to users in any case -- whether a refinery does its work in Canada or somewhere in the US. The refinery cost in the article you link to is in about the same neighborhood (magnitude) as the trans-mountain pipeline (especially after converting Canadian dollars to US$) -- and the planned refinery end points of the Keystone pipeline have presumably already been paid for.
The point is that Canada is exporting a relatively low-value, high-volume product and importing a high-value, low-volume product.
It might make more sense to ship the finished product by truck or train to Canadian consumers, rather than to the border via pipeline. That "star topology" is more versatile than the single-point constraint of a pipeline.
Refineries are often specific to a particular grade of crude. On-site refining might make more sense for tar sands, rather than importing light grades for dilution (to create "dilbit", or diluted bitumen) in order to coax the stuff to flow in pipelines and to be more compatible with conventional refining.
Thanks, Steve. I guess most non-listeners may just be cursed with slow processors and/or small memory capacity. I imagine as the ongoing economic pressure further accelerates, more will cast about for explanations of what's happening, however, and more and more will start to listen to Morgan and others. It happened during the COVID brouhaha, after all -- but that was all a lot more obvious.
I looked at your virid blog and saw your remarks about hazelnuts. Yours put mine to shame, although the ones I've planted below the garage and workshop roof drip edge just a year ago are showing promise. We've pretty droughty soil, and drought has been a problem 2 of the last 3 growing seasons. The Shepherd mutts I planted 3 years ago are barely staying alive presumably because of the first two drought years they suffered. They did show more life this year with increased spring and early summer rains.
Shepard mutts, as in Mark Shepard? See my Sept. 2020 entry for more background on the hazels. We planted in 2012, which was a drought year, and nearly all died back, but came back the next year. Tough plants, and all (those that bear nuts) are pretty much at full production.
I'm in Wisconsin, only a few miles from Mark's farm. You must be in the midwest if you have Shepard plants? (We had drought last year as well, and drought for the late summer/fall this year).
Yes -- just on the other side of the Mississippi from you, in SE central MN between MSP and Rochester, MN. My youngest daughter is a Mark Shepard enthusiast, so we planted some of his experimental hybrids after she pointed out his endeavor to us. The latest planting under the garage and shop eaves, however, is ff the native variety obtained from our local county extension agent.
Important post, thanks Larry. Declining EROEI and it's impact on maintaining technological civilization is a critical concept that too few people understand.
Makes for a very interesting and motivating problem to try to solve. Just another reason for free speech, as it'll take a lot of simultaneous tinkering and thinking by a lot of 'regular' people to do it.
<i>very interesting and motivating problem to try to solve</i>
I'm very doubtful that it can be solved, so the "problem" is really a predicament. We can mitigate energy decline a little at the margins (should the powers that be decide to do so), but the core overall impact will be a rapid reduction in social complexity and human population. Industrial civilization will collapse.
The deplorable, yet fascinating, thing about this predicament is, as Neoliberal notes, so few people are paying attention. The warnings have been coming thick and fast for the last half century, but industrial civilization just keeps chugging along even though the end of the track is fast approaching. And yet almost everyone acts like business as usual will go on forever. Perhaps that's best. Awareness of impending doom is a real buzzkill.
Well, it's not like civilization contractions haven't occurred before. See Murphy's great book (no exaggeration in saying that) that I linked previously here: https://grundvilk.substack.com/p/an-entirely-unexpected-finding for example after example of such. However, I'm confident it can all be worked out -- or ridden out, at least locally. Regarding a "real buzzkill": that in itself is helpful in that it tends to reduce expectations and helps changes point-of-view. See again M.K. Hubbert's quote at the top of this whole thing.
"Since Hubbert, people in and out of the international petroleum industry have been waiting for world petroleum production to crest – an event that apparently has yet to happen."
Oh, it's happened, alright!
As Art Berman notes, it's been disguised.
We probably hit peak oil in 2018, but they've been "cooking the books". They've added things like "natural gas liquids", "refinery gain", and even biofuels to the official oil production numbers so they can keep propping that number up.
More importantly, "peak oil energy" if not volume, is certainly past. A barrel of oil has only about 90-95% of the energy that it had ten years ago, due to the predominance of fracked oil, which is a lighter grade. Also, the NGL that have been incorporated in production figures are very light. And "refinery gain" is also light, as it is what you get when you "crack" heavier oil into grades suitable for gasoline production.
This is bad news, because the world runs on diesel, not lighter grades. Electric cars help conserve gasoline, but not diesel, which is indispensable for mining, long-haul transportation, and agriculture.
OPEC nations are facing decline of their conventional fields. This means they're going to be holding back exports — especially of diesel — for their own use.
The next four years are going to be interesting, indeed!
Thanks -- I hadn't looked into the chemical nature of the new production and its ramifications. I'd imagine the Canadian tar sands are still good for diesel production, though, and point to another reason for resurrecting the Keystone pipe line work.
I'm not fond of the environmental destruction that pipelines cause.
Canada spent NINE BILLION on the Trans-mountain pipeline. They could have built a refinery, on Canadain soil, for that!
https://www.profitableventure.com/long-cost-build-refinery/
Well, the stuff does have to be transported somehow to users in any case -- whether a refinery does its work in Canada or somewhere in the US. The refinery cost in the article you link to is in about the same neighborhood (magnitude) as the trans-mountain pipeline (especially after converting Canadian dollars to US$) -- and the planned refinery end points of the Keystone pipeline have presumably already been paid for.
The point is that Canada is exporting a relatively low-value, high-volume product and importing a high-value, low-volume product.
It might make more sense to ship the finished product by truck or train to Canadian consumers, rather than to the border via pipeline. That "star topology" is more versatile than the single-point constraint of a pipeline.
Refineries are often specific to a particular grade of crude. On-site refining might make more sense for tar sands, rather than importing light grades for dilution (to create "dilbit", or diluted bitumen) in order to coax the stuff to flow in pipelines and to be more compatible with conventional refining.
I imagine -- am not sure -- that most of the consumers of the tar sand products are in the US.
This is only true because there are no refineries for it in Canada! Thus, my original point.
I'd rather sell diesel to the US than dilbit!
First time here, followed the link from Dr. Morgan's site. Excellent summation and work. Too bad extremely few are listening.
Thanks, Steve. I guess most non-listeners may just be cursed with slow processors and/or small memory capacity. I imagine as the ongoing economic pressure further accelerates, more will cast about for explanations of what's happening, however, and more and more will start to listen to Morgan and others. It happened during the COVID brouhaha, after all -- but that was all a lot more obvious.
I looked at your virid blog and saw your remarks about hazelnuts. Yours put mine to shame, although the ones I've planted below the garage and workshop roof drip edge just a year ago are showing promise. We've pretty droughty soil, and drought has been a problem 2 of the last 3 growing seasons. The Shepherd mutts I planted 3 years ago are barely staying alive presumably because of the first two drought years they suffered. They did show more life this year with increased spring and early summer rains.
Shepard mutts, as in Mark Shepard? See my Sept. 2020 entry for more background on the hazels. We planted in 2012, which was a drought year, and nearly all died back, but came back the next year. Tough plants, and all (those that bear nuts) are pretty much at full production.
I'm in Wisconsin, only a few miles from Mark's farm. You must be in the midwest if you have Shepard plants? (We had drought last year as well, and drought for the late summer/fall this year).
Yes -- just on the other side of the Mississippi from you, in SE central MN between MSP and Rochester, MN. My youngest daughter is a Mark Shepard enthusiast, so we planted some of his experimental hybrids after she pointed out his endeavor to us. The latest planting under the garage and shop eaves, however, is ff the native variety obtained from our local county extension agent.
Important post, thanks Larry. Declining EROEI and it's impact on maintaining technological civilization is a critical concept that too few people understand.
Makes for a very interesting and motivating problem to try to solve. Just another reason for free speech, as it'll take a lot of simultaneous tinkering and thinking by a lot of 'regular' people to do it.
<i>very interesting and motivating problem to try to solve</i>
I'm very doubtful that it can be solved, so the "problem" is really a predicament. We can mitigate energy decline a little at the margins (should the powers that be decide to do so), but the core overall impact will be a rapid reduction in social complexity and human population. Industrial civilization will collapse.
The deplorable, yet fascinating, thing about this predicament is, as Neoliberal notes, so few people are paying attention. The warnings have been coming thick and fast for the last half century, but industrial civilization just keeps chugging along even though the end of the track is fast approaching. And yet almost everyone acts like business as usual will go on forever. Perhaps that's best. Awareness of impending doom is a real buzzkill.
Well, it's not like civilization contractions haven't occurred before. See Murphy's great book (no exaggeration in saying that) that I linked previously here: https://grundvilk.substack.com/p/an-entirely-unexpected-finding for example after example of such. However, I'm confident it can all be worked out -- or ridden out, at least locally. Regarding a "real buzzkill": that in itself is helpful in that it tends to reduce expectations and helps changes point-of-view. See again M.K. Hubbert's quote at the top of this whole thing.