Some Finer-Scale Mapping of the Ongoing Petroleum Depletion Process

Courtesy of the underlying labor of several young academic biophysical economists

The basic framework for examining and understanding the fossil fuels depletion problem pioneered by people like Hubbert, Odum, Hall, and Mearns, has lately been elaborated and made more quantitative and useful by a number of younger academics.

Fizaine and Court (2016), for example, have used the detailed economic data available for the US to more rigorously statistically estimate the minimum societal energy return on energy invested (EROI) necessary to maintain and grow the kind of industrialized societies and institutions that arose during the post-World War II global economic expansion. In the case of the US, these authors have determined that it is impossible for the country to maintain its post-World War II industrial way of life if it spends more than 11% of its annual gross domestic product on energy costs. This cost corresponds to a societal EROI of 11:1 – a value slightly different than the older, qualitatively-determined values of 10:1 and 15:1.

Note here that a societal EROI differs from the EROIs for a particular fuel like petroleum or fire wood in that the societal EROI indicates the ratio of all societal consumption and growth (numerator) divided by all the energy consumed in producing the materials and services for that consumption and growth.In the case of a fuel EROI, on the other hand, its EROI more locally represents only the energy initially consumed in producing the surplus fuel of a certain type and use for a society.As will be shown later, the societal EROI can be approximated very easily by using the national accounts GDP data freely available for many countries, and by employing the EROI formula, societal EROI = (100-%GDP energy expenditures)/%GDP energy expenditures.¹

Figure 1. Source. Fizaine and Court (2016) Table 3. Comparison of US oil EROI with overall societal EROI. The net minimum societal EROI is significantly less than the EROI obtained after just completing the oil production process. The societal economic processes are not all that efficient. There is much room for improvement.

In 2017 the same authors graphically published their laboriously established estimates of the global well-head and mine mouth EROIs for petroleum, natural gas, and coal for the 1800-2012 time period.

Figure 2. Source. Court and Fizaine (2017) Figure 8. Note that the authors expressed surprise over the illustrated post-1980 coal EROI increase. The authors do not say, but it seems likely this increase has occurred because of the major coal mining mechanical underground and open pit mining innovations described here. The coal EROI levels shown currently exceed those evidenced by petroleum production even in its early hey-days.

Digitization of the global petroleum EROI data from this graph and use of a logarithmic scale make it clear in Figure 3 that Morgan’s (2024) data are correct, and the global EROI value for oil is now about only 10:1. According to Table 3 of Fizaine and Court above, this oil EROI is now too far below the minimum necessary 19:1 EROI value to provide sufficient support – on its own – to the continued maintenance and growth of modern societies.

Figure 3. Re-graphed data digitized from Figure 2. Note the use of a logarithmic scale on the Y-axis Since about 2005, the global EROI for petroleum has been too low to independently support continued maintenance and growth of Western-style societies like that of the US. Increased substitution of natural gas and coal indicated where possible.

Next, Dupont et al. (2021) estimated the global societal EROI for the year 2018. Their published societal data point is employed below as a check of an application of the simpler GDP-based societal EROI estimation technique mentioned earlier.

Figure 4. An estimation of the effects of fossil fuels depletion on the US and the other OECD nations since the 1970s oil shocks.

According to the Figure 4 data array, the OECD nations have – in the aggregate -- been left high and dry with regard to energy since about 1973, while the US enjoyed two brief respites from the effects of fossil fuels depletion: ~1985-1989 (“Reagan era boom”), and 1996-2002 (“United States boom”). Both of these minor US economic respites are marked above by dips of the US societal EROIs below the minimum 11:1 societal EROI threshold. Without the US military spending then being directly applied to the benefit of the energy industry, it appears that the period between 1989 and the present would (blue line) have been a period of continued economic maintenance and growth. On the other hand, without that military spending, things might have been even worse for both the US and the other developed countries.

Post-1988 US GDP percentages spent on military spending were obtained from https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget. They are extremely significant (3-5% of annual US GDP) in view of the total now-normal 6-8% GDP scale of US %GDP energy expenditures per se.

Fizaine and Court (2016) provide the following reconstruction of the US energy source mix through time. Biomass includes fire wood, animal fodder, and human food. Among other things, this diagram illustrates the reasons for the generally waning degree of social and economic influence of skilled and unskilled workers, and the small-scale farmer and rancher as the US got older.

Figure 5. Biomass includes fire wood, animal fodder, and human food. Among other things, this diagram explains the generally waning degree of social and economic influence (and real compensation) of skilled and unskilled workers, and the small-scale farmer and rancher over time.

Converting the above US historical %GDP energy expenditure data into societal EROIs yields a long run historical perspective of the US with regard to energy use and surplus energy availability.

Figure 6. Variation in available surplus energy through time for the United States societal example.

Societal EROI in the US began increasing from its early subsistence biomass-dependent level of 5-7 up to about 12 as coal use spread throughout the economy from the 1850s through the start of the 20^th century.² The then historically high level of societal EROI of 11-13 from 1890 to 1910 was matched by economic growth rates of greater than 7%/year. Immediately thereafter, however, the US economy evidently overshot the mark by too rapidly investing in initially inefficient industrial electrification, and thereby displacing much labor and creating economically-crippling chronic unemployment – a high level of unemployment that did not slacken except briefly during World War I, and then during and after World War II.

Following that long period of economic stagnation (and its included Great Depression), the US economy was buoyed upward by a deep, energy-rich pool of oil and gas capable of generating high societal EROI values much greater than the minimum 11:1 required for economic systems maintenance and growth.

This pool was sufficiently depleted, however, by the mid-1970s to drop the US societal EROI below this minimum required societal EROI for significant periods of time, consequently damaging the upkeep and growth of systems established during the post-World War II economic expansion.

Figure 7. The interior table of Figure 7 was taken from Figure 19.6 of Source. This diagram constitutes a ‘harbor’ map, with more energy intensive, higher minimum required EROEI/EROI activities on the landward parts of the harbor bottom, and less energy intensive, lower minimum EROEI/EROI human activities on the deeper seaward parts of the harbor, closest to the receding fossil fuels supply sea. Human activities on the landward, higher elevations of the harbor will first lose necessary fossil fuels support (economic buoyancy), while most of those on its seaward deeper elevations will remain sufficiently afloat for longer. Dates shown in the right hand column of the Table indicate the year that Morgan 2024 estimated that the global fossil fuels supply mix will fall to the minimum fossil fuels EROEIs indicated as being needed for the function of each industrial society activity or system named.

Recall this earlier presented Figure 7 “harbor model” of the societal effects of fossil fuels depletion on Western style industrialized polities. It qualitatively highlights the proposition that as fossil fuels depletion occurs, formerly functional systems in industrialized countries sequentially suffer degradation and decreasing effectiveness. The detailed record for the US shown in Figure 6 of this post shows that it is more complicated than Figure 7 above suggests. Each of the systems listed below have taken repeated damaging hits since the oil crises of the 1970s, damage that sequentially occurs over and over again as societal EROI levels repeatedly drop below the minimum required 11:1 societal EROI for the US. See Figure 6 and note the major societal EROI drops that occurred within the current energy era marked there with light red shading. The periods of societal EROI perigee there correspond very closely, if not exactly, with the timing of academic achievement score failures and decreases in US and other country life expectancy documented in my last post.

1. All of the younger economists cited here for some reason have chosen to independently duplicate the results of national accounting by their own independent labors, working to the same end from the ground up all over again. Perhaps they mistrust government accounting, but I suspect it only follows the modern tendency in academic economics of working to prove scientific credibility through published display of involved mathematical operations. This reminds me of over nice home ale brewers who meticulously clean out their fermentation vat with detergents and bleaches when the preliminary boiling and the hops used in the ordinary fermentation process act as sufficient preventatives against feared wort and ale souring.

2. Notice in Figure 6 that the US did not start to become appreciably urbanized until coal significantly entered the economy, and that this urbanization process further accelerated upon the later entry of oil and gas into American life. This long urbanization trend started flattening out after the two 1970s oil crises, however.