More filling in the deafening silence while we wait for your spreadsheet. You'd set yourself the remarkable task, you remember, of proving numerically that replacing a fuel source of high EROEI with fuel sources of successively lower EROEI yields increasing net energy. I for one am awaiting this revolution in physics with some considerable anticipation...
Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")
- Thread starter Bernie_Gunther
- Start date
free spirit
more tea vicar?
If I remember right, it was you that made the claim, and you who has failed to supply a single source to back up that specific claim - I've just run the figures myself to check if your claim had any validity in the real world or not.
you've then posted up another claim based on a complete misrepresentation of the actual situation, followed by a load of irrelevant guff when called on that specific point.
you missed a vital part of the equation there - ie when total oil (all liquids) volumes are increasing, what is the overall impact of reducing EROEI, and energy densities of the replacement oil in net energy terms.
You stated clearly that the actual net energy currently was falling, despite overall volumes rising. I dispute that, and you have produced nothing at all to back up your assertion other than a load of ill considered waffle / total misrepresentation such as the post quoted.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The answer is b)
Let's say you're driving 240 miles a day. So in scenario c), you need 6 gallons net production a day. So the well needs to produce 12 gallons per day - 6 for the car and 6 for the next day's production.
In b), you need 8 net gallons. The well produces 10 gallons per day: 8 for the car and 2 for the next day's production.
In a), you need 12 net gallons. Without working it out precisely, you need just over 12 gallons per day production. It doesn't matter if the well has an EROI of 8000:1, it will take more than 12 gallons per day to produce the 12 gallons for the car.
The order of efficiency is: b) c) a)
Something to bear in mind with EROI: 5:1 is much better than 2:1, but 80:1 is only somewhat better than 5:1. Another way to express the same numbers is to call them: 1/2, 1/5 and 1/80. This is the proportion of your production that you have to hold back for further production to maintain a steady supply. So useful production is: 1/2, 4/5 and 79/80. I think this last way of expressing it is the most useful (after all, useful production is what we're interested in here), so:
Instead of 80:1, you call it 79/80
instead of 5:1, you call it 4/5
instead of 2:1, you call it 1/2
That's a better indication of their relative worth. Otherwise, it is misleading. For instance, 80:1 is not twice as good as 40:1. It is the difference between 79/80 and 78/80. It is only 1/78 better.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
you're cheating and using actual numbers and maths though LBJ.
The proper scientific way of analysing the situation is to run around waving your hands in the air screaming about the sky falling in because this EROEI thing is falling off an energy cliff man.
The proper scientific way of analysing the situation is to run around waving your hands in the air screaming about the sky falling in because this EROEI thing is falling off an energy cliff man.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Well, as a non-expert, this strikes me as one of the big holes in Falcon's argument. I can't remember him ever talking about energy efficiency and how energy prices drive efficiency.
An example: in the 1970s, my dad was working as an engineer in an aluminium factory. During the energy crisis, its water was rationed, so they had to work out more efficient ways to use the water they were allowed. They came up with a solution that meant that, when the crisis was over, they never went back to their previous system - necessity had driven them to find something better. Without the crisis, it would never have occurred to them to search for this solution.
We're dealing with human beings here. These kinds of responses to crisis need to be factored in to any sensible discussion of crisis. Today's energy use is conditioned among other things by today's energy prices and availability, basically. It isn't an independent variable. Falcon treats it as if it were, which is a bad, fundamentally bad, error.
An example: in the 1970s, my dad was working as an engineer in an aluminium factory. During the energy crisis, its water was rationed, so they had to work out more efficient ways to use the water they were allowed. They came up with a solution that meant that, when the crisis was over, they never went back to their previous system - necessity had driven them to find something better. Without the crisis, it would never have occurred to them to search for this solution.
We're dealing with human beings here. These kinds of responses to crisis need to be factored in to any sensible discussion of crisis. Today's energy use is conditioned among other things by today's energy prices and availability, basically. It isn't an independent variable. Falcon treats it as if it were, which is a bad, fundamentally bad, error.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
There is a prepacked response to that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
That said those efficiency savings themselves come as economic activity, new cars, more rail, more insulation etc etc. We did see just such a big drop in oil consumption just after the late 70s oil price spike. This was as the oil shock had become long enough for people to start investing in structural efficiency savings (as you have illustrated) this, together with the capital inflow of high oil prices allowed for new oil to come on stream.
The net result was to crash the price of oil. This time round there are a couple of different factors driving everything. First up the new oil is often pretty expensive stuff. Break evens for tight oil formations are routinely given at above the $80 range. I am never too convinced of any figure for this sort of thing as there is too much hog wash from companies seeking investors and doomers rationalizing their positions. But I know from the horses mouth it aint cheap (about $ 3 million a well), the technology has been around for a while (people were drilling and fracking tight formations in the early 80s, just the price was not right), also unlike last time the huge numbers of people entering the consuming classes is pretty intense. The emergence of large chunks of Asia means that huge consumption savings in miles driven and lower milage vehicles in the west is being swallowed up by new consumers in the East.
It is a very fluid situation where a big crack in western economies (US cutting back on the debt or so on) could plunge consumption below a critical threshold and start killing marginal wells. On the other hand it may just be that the 'Asian miracle' becomes self sustaining and pulls the rest of the global economy with it.
Pick whatever scenario fits your ideology\hopes\fears\ interpretations of the data.
elbows
Well-Known Member
To add a little more explanation to that:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8625
Net Energy = Eout – Ein
EROI = Eout/Ein
so
Net Energy = Eout*((EROI-1)/EROI)
Implications in graph form:
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
The problem with EROI is that it is not really meaningful in calculating extractable reserves. Oil could have an EROI of less than 1 and still be economic to extract if you used something like coal or wind to do the lifting. If you get 1000 calories of oil per 2000 calories of coal yet that coal costs less than half of the value you get from selling the oil, you have an economically viable low EROI resource.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's an interesting phenomenon, but it's only going to hold in certain circumstances. Also, this is rather the other way around, as you yourself touch on: the Jevons paradox suggests that increased efficiency may increase demand for a resource; but here we have a situation where reduced availability of a resource increases efficiency. This is demonstrably - and totally unsurprisingly true - rationing concentrates minds and leads to the search for more efficient ways of doing things. And this is the bit that's missing from Falcon's analysis: as energy becomes more expensive to produce, how will that affect the way we use energy? It's not all doom and gloom, and the example of the 1970s shows this - we're clever beasts sometimes, particularly when we pool our talents into a collective effort, and we can and do find smarter ways to do things when we have to.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Interesting, too. The choice of 8 for the threshold is more or less arbitrary, though.To add a little more explanation to that:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8625
Net Energy = Eout – Ein
EROI = Eout/Ein
so
Net Energy = Eout*((EROI-1)/EROI)
Implications in graph form:
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
Its happening right now in the UK. Petrol sales are down 20% as people either shift to diesel, drive less or simply abandon their cars to the scrappers. The number of under 30s taking driving lessons has dropped, though the rise of the much derided digital world has reduced the need to visit friends and the new trendyness of cycling is also helping.
We are seeing structural shifts away from large cars, from petrol cars and from driving altogether. First hit are the marginal users, but the problem here from a social context is not younger folk tweeting and cycling. Its poorer people in more remote parts of Britain.
For the first couple of decades, buses, trains, electric bikes. Its not exactly putting a man on Mars type stuff.
(1) We already covered the infrastructure multiplier effect which simplistic treatments of EROEI fail to capture.
(2) In economics, an externality is a consequence of an industrial activity which affects others without it being reflected in the price (or energy utilisation estimate). The increase in performance of the vehicle from 20mpg to 40mpg has been achieved (and is then sustained through its economic life) through the construction of entire classes of extraordinarily energy intensive industrial manufacturing capabilities, such as advanced lightweight alloys, polymers and plastics, rubbers, carbon fibre, synthetic lubricants, computer design and modelling, automotive electronics, fuel additives, precision robotic manufacturing devices, etc. etc. etc. We've talked about the thousands of energy intensive supply chains feeding each of those elements, the total energy requirements of which rise as EROEI falls. While your vehicle's mpg has benefited from that energy investment, that energy investment over the life of the vehicle is not incorporated into the "mpg" estimate, which is correspondingly optimistic.
(3) The governing constraint in this system is the quantity of discretionary cash that can be spent on motoring, not the number of miles that need to be driven. Thus, the effect of halving fuel consumption is to double the number of miles driven (to a first approximation). Any money saved from genuinely reduced fuel consumption is spent on other energy consuming appliances which incorporate huge quantities of energy in their manufacture and use (TVs, etc.), which is why energy efficiency improvements result in net increased energy consumption. Moreover, the same externalities that have reduced fuel consumption have also reduced cost (a Tata is about $2,000), increasing the number of fuel consuming appliances. To achieve absolute decoupling (which is what rover is referring to without realising it), technological improvement has to halve energy intensity by 2040. The IEA forecasts it will rise in that period (obviously).
The answer is (a).
Yes. 3:1 is thought to be the absolute minimum, below which structure cannot be maintained. (ref)
In single digits, you are really making choices about which comforts you are forgoing (medicine, clean water, freedom from cannibalism, etc.)
That logic only holds when you enjoy a discretionary surplus of energy, and therefore a rational allocation choice.
When you are in energy deficit, you will never rationally choose to substitute a high EROEI source for a low one because to do so will be to increase your energy deficit.
To put it another way, in energy deficit no-one will choose to keep warm by burning the dollars derived from an "economic" choice over burning the coal saved by avoiding a sub-economic one.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
however, I'm pretty sure that this has only been tested in a scenario where the increased efficiency led to cheaper travel etc.
I'd dispute that the same applies in a scenario where the cost rise of the raw materials is offsetting or more than offsetting the efficiency improvements.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
in that scenario the oil would be acting as a low efficiency carrier for the energy from coal / wind - basically no different to a battery other than the fact it'd be adding carbon (major flaw to the scenario).
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I'd like to see some number-crunching on that one, because companies still consider it economically sensible to invest in technology aimed at increased efficiency.
As for this, it doesn't apply where increased efficiency has come about as a direct result of rationing. An upward trend in energy costs will drive efficiency savings without necessarily increasing consumption. As I touched on above, the 'Jevons paradox' only holds under certain conditions - conditions in which the energy supply can easily be expanded.
You're trying to have things both ways here. Either we face an intractable reduction in energy supplies, in which case none of this reasoning applies, or we don't, in which case none of the rest of your doom and gloom applies.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
How can you expect to be taken seriously when you say idiotic things like this?
Let's say we have a scenario where we move from eroi around 50 to around 5, so the net energy supply is reduced by about 20%. There is enormous room for dealing with this kind of reduction in energy supply, and the problems involved in the changes in organisation required to cope are political in nature. Among other things, politics is missing from your analysis - and it will require quite radical change in political thinking, reversing the trend away from collectivism in places like the UK. But your doom-mongering has no basis in reality. There is no reason whatever to assume that a world run on 20% less energy than is currently available would be the dystopia you confidently predict.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
Oil is needed to produce coal and coal is needed to produce oil. EROI is useful to illustrate to new people how the quality of energy is changing, but when people are planning to develop new resources or for the bigger global picture its not really important. Economically its all about rate of return and for the big picture net global energy is far more important.
Energy from gas and coal will continue to grow for a good few years yet, enough to subsidize oil production. Id go so far as to suggest that so long as you ratio is you get more oil from an oil field by using coal\gas as a energy source than you would oil from the Fischer-Topp coal to liquid process you will continue to get oil from those geological resources.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
The Oil Drum calls it a day.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/10059
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/10059
Ahem.
You just have to review the "blogroll", and compare them to the sort of nonsense oil drum permitted, to see why. There are a lot of very qualified people writing first rate material now and it is difficult for a multi-author site to maintain adequate signal-noise ratio amidst the sort of nonsense quoted here. I stopped checking it some time ago.
elbows
Well-Known Member
They peaked too soon, boom tish.
Given the rather long and drawn out nature of this stuff, its not surprising that it will ebb and flow as the years fly by. Peak oil is out of fashion for an unknown length of time, though it won't take many events to bring it back again quickly one day. Dramatic data is required, absent that I am stuck in a dull loop myself as should be evident from my posts in this thread for the last several years.
Given the rather long and drawn out nature of this stuff, its not surprising that it will ebb and flow as the years fly by. Peak oil is out of fashion for an unknown length of time, though it won't take many events to bring it back again quickly one day. Dramatic data is required, absent that I am stuck in a dull loop myself as should be evident from my posts in this thread for the last several years.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
Peak oil lives, but will kill the economy
This is how capital intense all these new tight sources of oil and gas are.
That giant figure for the US represents 1 million barrels a day vs the 75 million barrels a day the worlds conventional fields are producing. Most are in decline, when the new fields coming online cannot match, over all decline will set in.
This is all well known.
We have seen it in many commodity industries before. As price goes up, consumers stop buying, this crashes prices and if the fundamentals are for tight supply, price goes back up after producers drop out. Volatility, as bad as or worse than high prices. We are seeing exactly this volatility in the US tight gas market as very high prices brought huge amounts of capital into the market so they could afford the binge on horizontal drilling wells. This crashed the price and killed dry well drillers*, it has also harmed coal, nuclear and renewables which are all not being built to replace the gas. However the gas supply is now being subsidized by oil production. There has been a blood bath among tight gas producers but as most tight oil wells produce some gas, high oil prices have helped bring gas to the market. If\when the next big recession happens and the price of oil drops, those tight oil producers will pack away the drill rigs and lay off the workers as the lives of current wells starts to drop in 6-18 months after production starts. The US will be faced with little gas being drilled and not enough coal, nuclear and renewable to replace it.
Cue a wallet bursting leap in gas prices during a recession\ recovery phase from a recession.....
Oil below $75 is likely to be the signal, though current drilling activity does seem to have peaked...
*'Tight' gas or oil is oil and gas in a rock formation that has much smaller holes in it than usual. This means it takes more energy to force it through the pores in the rock than conventional sources, this is what 'shale gas' and 'shale oil' is, conventional oil in terms of its API (meaning its chemical structure is the same as conventional oil) but the reservoir takes a lot more energy to move the oil and gas. So you drill a horizontal well along the line of the oil\ gas bearing rock so your well covers much more area then fracture that rock by pumping water into to create cracks to help open bigger pores in the rock. Because the flow is so weak it takes lots of wells over the same area and those wells have to be horizontal and also frac the rock. Expensive and energy intensive.
By 'dry gas' they mean you are drilling in an area where it is mostly CH4 coming out the ground, a 'wet' well means it has a much higher oil content. Where it is mostly oil and with oil going for $95-$110 you can get a fat profit on the oil on a wet hole and sell the gas as a by product, enough is being produced to keep the gas price low.... for now.
This is how capital intense all these new tight sources of oil and gas are.
That giant figure for the US represents 1 million barrels a day vs the 75 million barrels a day the worlds conventional fields are producing. Most are in decline, when the new fields coming online cannot match, over all decline will set in.
This is all well known.
We have seen it in many commodity industries before. As price goes up, consumers stop buying, this crashes prices and if the fundamentals are for tight supply, price goes back up after producers drop out. Volatility, as bad as or worse than high prices. We are seeing exactly this volatility in the US tight gas market as very high prices brought huge amounts of capital into the market so they could afford the binge on horizontal drilling wells. This crashed the price and killed dry well drillers*, it has also harmed coal, nuclear and renewables which are all not being built to replace the gas. However the gas supply is now being subsidized by oil production. There has been a blood bath among tight gas producers but as most tight oil wells produce some gas, high oil prices have helped bring gas to the market. If\when the next big recession happens and the price of oil drops, those tight oil producers will pack away the drill rigs and lay off the workers as the lives of current wells starts to drop in 6-18 months after production starts. The US will be faced with little gas being drilled and not enough coal, nuclear and renewable to replace it.
Cue a wallet bursting leap in gas prices during a recession\ recovery phase from a recession.....
Oil below $75 is likely to be the signal, though current drilling activity does seem to have peaked...
*'Tight' gas or oil is oil and gas in a rock formation that has much smaller holes in it than usual. This means it takes more energy to force it through the pores in the rock than conventional sources, this is what 'shale gas' and 'shale oil' is, conventional oil in terms of its API (meaning its chemical structure is the same as conventional oil) but the reservoir takes a lot more energy to move the oil and gas. So you drill a horizontal well along the line of the oil\ gas bearing rock so your well covers much more area then fracture that rock by pumping water into to create cracks to help open bigger pores in the rock. Because the flow is so weak it takes lots of wells over the same area and those wells have to be horizontal and also frac the rock. Expensive and energy intensive.
By 'dry gas' they mean you are drilling in an area where it is mostly CH4 coming out the ground, a 'wet' well means it has a much higher oil content. Where it is mostly oil and with oil going for $95-$110 you can get a fat profit on the oil on a wet hole and sell the gas as a by product, enough is being produced to keep the gas price low.... for now.
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