Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

Non-OPEC production will decline sharply in coming years, increasing the importance of the Persian Gulf region. The point about excess capacity is this: The US in 2005 produced over 7 million barrels of petroleum a day, but consumes all of it, and then imports two times that from abroad (using nearly 22 million barrels a day in 2005). So US petroleum is essentially off the market. But Saudi Arabia produces 9.5 million barrels a day and exports over 7 million of that. It doesn't use it all up at home. Even now, the excess production is in the Gulf, and that excess production will become more important over time.

It may be that that hawks are thinking this way: Destroy Lebanon, and destroy Hizbullah, and you reduce Iran's strategic depth. Destroy the Iranian nuclear program and you leave it helpless and vulnerable to having done to it what the Israelis did to Lebanon. You leave it vulnerable to regime change, and a dragooning of Iran back into the US sphere of influence, denying it to China and assuring its 500 tcf of natural gas to US corporations. You also politically reorient the entire Gulf, with both Saddam and Khamenei gone, toward the United States. Voila, you avoid peak oil problems in the US until a technological fix can be found, and you avoid a situation where China and India have special access to Iran and the Gulf.

The second American Century ensues. The "New Middle East" means the "American Middle East."

And it all starts with the destruction of Lebanon.

More wars to come, in this scenario, since hitting Lebanon was like hitting a politician's bodyguard. You don't kill a bodyguard just to kill the bodyguard. It is phase I of a bigger operation.

If the theory is even remotely correct, then global warming is not the only danger in continuing to rely so heavily on hydrocarbons for energy. Green energy--wind, sun, geothermal-- is all around us and does not require any wars to obtain it. Indeed, if we had spent as much on alternative energy research as we have already spent on the Iraq War, we'd be much closer to affordable solar. A choice lies ahead: hydrocarbons, a 20 foot rise in sea level, and a praetorian state. Or we could go green and maybe keep our republic and tame militarism.

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Pentagon knows that the US is addicted to oil, the American way of life is non-negotiable, and we are late for alternatives. Pentagon is also well aware of the facts that American economy and the US dollar are in big danger.

But Pentagon is the world’s biggest power. Besides, it consumes at least 400 thousand barrels per day (half of which overseas) and hence is the largest oil consumer and purchaser in the US; it is one of the world’s largest landlords; by directly employing more than three million people it is the world’s largest employer; and its Armed Forces are deployed or stationed in approximately 130 countries. See my DoD Factsheet for more on this.

Pentagon knows how important the future of oil is. Moreover, Pentagon is well aware of Peak Oil. More and more publication citing or discussing Peak Oil in military publications is just one indication.

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Falcon said:

There are several mechanisms that readily account for the presence of hydrocarbon in inorganic zones.

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The drilling mud can be contaminated and mistaken for production oil (Drilling mud is, after all, usually oil based).

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In the process of drilling through overlying sedimentary rock, oil can be expelled downward so that it appears to come from below.

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Hydrocarbons can migrate from sedimentary rock (the most likely cause in the notorious Krayushkin example you supply, as there are many sedimentary source rocks in the Dneiper-Donets region).

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But the simple fact is, the Russian abiotic oil hypothesis predates the development of modern plate tectoniocs theory. Tectonic movements are now known to be able to radically reshuffle rock strata, leaving younger sedimentary oil- or gas-bearing rock beneath basement rock, leading in some cases to the appearance that oil has its source in Precambrian crystalline basement, when this is not actually the case.

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Here is a reasonably unsensational summary of the position by a guy [Richard Heinberg] who is trying hard to be impartial:

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Over billions of years of seepage in the amounts considered, we would be swimming in oil, drowned in oil.

here (with a mention of Gold's drilling mud contamination)

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• If abiotic oil were making a significant contribution to averting depletion, it would be replenishing fields by ~25Gbbl/year =~ 4 billion cubic metres.
  
• There is no reason to believe that the processes in the mantle would miraculously turn on to accomodate human need - the mantle doesn't know we're here.
  
• Conservatively, let's imagine those abiotic oil processes had been running for 3000 million years of the Earth's 4500 million year history.
  
• That would be 3 billion years x 4 billion cubic metres / year = 12 * 10^18 cubic metres.
  
• Surface area of the Earth = 510 million km² = 5.1 * 10^14 m²
  
• So by now (absent oxidation) we'd be ~ 2 * 10^4 metres - 20 kilometres - deep in oil.
  
• If that were all oxidised to CO2 at current atmospheric pressure it'd be roughly 20,000 kilometres deep. We'd be looking at worse-than-Venus surface conditions.

BP is now inspecting its entire network of pipelines at Prudhoe
The price of oil in London hit a new record after BP said it would have to close one of the largest oilfields in the US because of a pipeline leak.
Brent crude futures touched a high of $78.44 late on Monday - beating the previous record set on July 17.

The indefinite shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, which produces about 8% of US daily oil output, comes at a time when oil markets are already jittery.

The ongoing conflict in Lebanon has kept prices close to record highs.

Producers' group Opec expressed worry at the closure, but said it had enough spare capacity to meet any shortfall.

US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said the government would loan oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve if needed.

The Brent crude record was hit after the extent of the problems affecting Prudhoe became clear. It later slipped back slightly to $78.42.

US light, sweet crude was trading up $1.69 at $76.45.

Meanwhile, BP shares fell 2% to 622.5 pence as investors speculated that the lost production could hurt BP's bottom line.

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bigfish said:

Heinberg is a stinking piece of fascist filth who is openly calling for the mass depopulation of the planet. He quotes favorably Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel (a favourite poster child of Bernie Gunther's, incidentally): “If all people are to be fed adequately and equitably, we must have a gradual transition to a global population of 2 billion

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me said:

* Awaits bigfish's "middling abiotic oil hypothesis" in which the Earth's mantle has magically decided to produce just the right amount of oil to convince him, against all the evidence, that he is sane *​

#1325

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... in one of the more fascinating examples of geopolitical chutzpah, the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom gas monopoly entered quiet negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert through his billionaire friend, Benny Steinmetz, to secure Russian natural-gas supplies to Israel via an undersea pipeline from Turkey to Israel.

According to the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, Olmert's office has said it will support the Gazprom proposal. In several years Israel faces a shortage of gas from Tethys Sea drilling and soon from Egypt. Tethys Sea gas is projected to run dry in a few years. British Gas is in talks to supply gas from Gaza but Israel disputes BG's right to drill.

But even with Egypt and Gaza, gas shortages are expected by 2010 unless Israel is able to find new sources. Enter Gazprom and Putin. The gas would be diverted from the under-used Russia-Turkey Bluestream Pipeline, which Russia built to increase its influence over Turkey two years ago. Putin clearly seeks to gain a lever inside Israel over the one-sided US influence on Israeli policy.

China energy geopolitics also in high gear
For its part, Beijing is also moving to "secure energy at the sources". China's booming economy, with 10% growth, requires massive natural resources. China became a net importer of oil in 1993. By 2045, China will depend on imported oil for 45% of its energy needs.

On May 26, crude oil began to flow into China through a newly completed pipeline from Atasu, Kazakhstan, to the Alataw Pass in China's far-western region of Xinjiang, a 1,000-kilometer route announced only last year. It marked the first time oil is being pumped directly into China. Kazakhstan is also a member of the SCO, but had been regarded by Washington since the collapse of the Soviet Union as in its sphere of influence, with ChevronTexaco, Rice's former oil company, the major oil developer.

By 2011 the pipeline with extend some 3,000km to Dushanzi, where the Chinese are building their largest oil refinery, due to completed by 2008. China financed the entire $700 million pipeline and will buy the oil. Last year the China National Petroleum Corp bought PetroKazakhstan for $4.2 billion and will use it to develop oilfields in Kazakhstan.

China is also in negotiations with Russia for a pipeline to deliver Siberian oil to northeastern China, a project that could be completed by 2008, and a natural-gas pipeline from Russia to Heilongjiang province in China's northeast. China just passed Japan to rank as world's second-largest oil importer behind the United States.

Beijing and Moscow are also integrating their electricity grids. Late last month the China State Grid Corp announced plans to increase imports of Russian electricity fivefold by 2010.

In its relentless quest to secure future oil supplies "at the source", China has also moved into traditional US, British and French oil domains in Africa. In addition to being the major developer of Sudan's oil pipeline, which ships some 7% of total China oil imports, Beijing has been more than active in West Africa, the source of vast fields of highly prized low-sulfur oil.

Since the creation of the China-Africa Forum in 2000, China has scrapped tariffs on 190 imported goods from 28 of the least developed African countries, and canceled $1.2 billion in debt.

...

The mainstream US foreign-policy organization, the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, has also recently weighed in on the question of Chinese energy pursuits. In a recent report, the CFR accuses the Bush administration of lacking any comprehensive long-term strategy for Africa. It criticizes US focus on humanitarian issues such as in Darfur southern Sudan, demanding instead that the US "act on its rising national interests on the continent". Those interests? The CFR lists oil and gas as No 1; growing competition with China (closely related to No 1) as No 2.

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TOKYO, Aug 22 (KUNA) -- The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the nation's largest oil producer, announced the discovery in oil reserves of about 260 million tons in the first half this year in northern China, the official media reported Tuesday.

The four oil-rich blocks are located in Heilongjiang Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, near the Daqing Oilfield, one of China's major oilfields in Heilongjiang, according to Xinhua News Agency. Two blocks, one holding about 73 million tons and the other 60 million tons, were found in the Mongolian Autonomous County in Heilongjiang, 96 million tons in a block at Zhaoyuan County in the same province and 30 million tons in the Hailaer Basin in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Oil reserves discovered in China from 2000 to 2005 reached 2.42 billion tons. CNPC has invested USD 7.36 billion in verifying 1.48 billion tons of oil reserve over that period, said the report.

China is the fifth leading oil producer but a sharp rise in domestic demand turned the country into a net importer beginning in 1993. The nation is now the world's second-largest oil importer.

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iROBOT said:

I was watching Megastuctures last night (as you do) and the operation in Canada extracting oil from "oil sand" apparently this reserve is as big as Saudi Arabia's.

80 trillion barrells.....

How do you guys think this will effect geo-politics....it feels as if it's very significant.

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iROBOT said:

I was watching Megastuctures last night (as you do) and the operation in Canada extracting oil from "oil sand" apparently this reserve is as big as Saudi Arabia's.

80 trillion barrells.....

How do you guys think this will effect geo-politics....it feels as if it's very significant.

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Backatcha Bandit said:

The difference between Tar sands / oil sands / oil shale in Canada and Saudi reserves is that the Saudi ('conventional') reserves have an EROEI of 30+, while the Tar sands are more like 1.5.

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Crispy said:

This means that of your 60 trillion barrels, you only get 36 trillion net energy output. Still a lot, but not as much as you thought.

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iROBOT said:

36 trillion does sound a lot, and if this helps to divert reliance on the Middle East, is it a price worth paying?

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Crispy said:

I don't know enough about the technology to know if that's a reasonable goal to aim for.

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laptop said:

One back-of-an-envelope approach would be to consider for a moment the Gunther Plan for using nuclear energy to extract carbon from tar sands (ignoring for the moment the Crispy Corollorary that this means pumping all that carbon into the air).

How many nuclear power stations equal world use of fuel for transport?

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bigfish said:

.....Personally, I'm reasonably sure that competent chemists are more than capable of telling the difference between "drilling mud" (guffaw!), on the one hand, and crude oil, on the other.......

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Crispy said:

There's plenty of info on this thread about why oil-sands are a bad iea. Here's a precis:

1. Tar sands are oil millions of years too early. They still need a long slow cook under pressure underground...

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China, the world's second-largest energy consumer after the United States, wants to invest $100 million over the next 10 years to conduct a study for the next generation fuel, known as natural gas hydrates, as the country seeks to reduce its reliance on oil imports in the long run.

China hopes the technology will be viable between 2010 and 2015 as a trial exploration of the new energy source. The fuel is a crystalline compound of water and natural gas with methane as its major ingredient, according to a report posted on the National Development and Reform Commission Web site.

"But further technical breakthroughs need to be made before the fuel can be commercially developed," the report published Monday.

When ignited, every cubic meter of gas hydrate, commonly known as "fire in ice," has a capacity of releasing as much energy as 160 to 180 cubic meters of natural gas.

Industry optimists hope gas hydrates, which has abundant deposits under the sea, could reliably replace the conventional oil and coal.

They believe the world's gas hydrates reserves are equivalent to as much as twice the combined amount of coal, oil and natural gas, sufficient to meet global energy demands for a thousand years.

Beijing began its preliminary research in 1999, and plans to work with its German counterparts to sample the fuel in the northern part of the South China Sea within the year.

"China so far has discovered enormous reserves of gas hydrates in the offshore areas only those spotted in the northern part of the South China Sea are expected to amount to half the oil resources on the land," the NDRC report said.

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HARDMAN Resources, the company prospecting for oil in Western Uganda has struck more oil deposits at their second well, Mputa-1, further elevating Uganda's hopes of joining the oil producers club.

Mputa-1 lies 8 kilometres from Lake Albert and 19 kilometres southeast of Waraga-1 well, the first well in Western Uganda to be tested for commercial petroleum production. That well, after flow testing all of its three sedimentary zones, was found to possess a daily crude oil output capacity of 12,000 barrels.

In a press statement yesterday, Hardman said tests conducted on August 12 on the lowermost zone of Mputa-1 well located in Block 2 of the Albertine Graben yielded 300 barrels of oil per day. Block 2 is jointly owned by Hardman and Ireland-based Tullow Oil with 50% shareholding each.

Immediately the news of new oil discovery hit the Australian Stock Exchange (ASE) where the company is listed, its shares rose markedly, trading 1.4 % percent higher than the previous prices.

The release explained further that the oil whose viscosity (liquid thickness) is a good 32° API is not contaminated with water and has a "low gas to oil ratio."

Oil discovered at Mputa-1, Harman said, is much similar to that found at Waraga-1 well, 19 kilometres away indicating that the two hydrocarbon reservoirs may have a similar origin. In total, Uganda can now at least produce over 15,000 bopd, a great figure, according to local petroleum experts, considering that some of the African petrol giants like Nigeria, Angola and others started with smaller fractions of the capacity already confirmed in Uganda. According to the government geologists, the size of the oil deposits that have discovered are a good sign Uganda might produce in millions of bopd when commercial exploitation eventually begins.

Hardman country Manager, Mr John Morley however downplayed the possibility that the Waraga reservoir spreads this far.

"We are talking about a distance in between of 20 kilometres and it is extremely unlikely that the reservoir comes this far but once again, this is why we are doing the tests," he said on phone. He added that it is still a long way before Uganda can make any confirmation of commercially exploitable oil.

"We are just 2 percent through the process and it will take us at least another 18 months to know exactly what it is we are up against," he said.

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bigfish said:

It's beginning to look like there may be a large petroleum reserve in the lake Albert region of Uganda...

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bigfish said:

..at least produce over 15,000 bopd, a great figure, according to local petroleum experts...

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bigfish said:

..is still a long way before Uganda can make any confirmation of commercially exploitable oil.

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