The concept of peak oil is well known, according to the Hubbert theory which I discussed in "Hubbert Peak Oil" a couple of days ago, wherein the amount of oil extractable from the ground is finite and accordingly its production is expected to peak at a point where about half the resource of it has been used up. All resources are finite and will ultimately be extracted only to the limit where it is feasible to do so, whereupon either financial costs or those of energy dictate that to proceed further only yields diminishing returns. The Hubbert theory was originally applied to oil, but there are potential and similar fits to gas and coal reserves too and a recent analysis has been made using the approach to a study of 57 different minerals, as reported by Ugo Burdi and Marco Pagini in a guest posting in the blog "The Oil Drum", which covers many aspects of Peak Oil and related matters.
These authors have fitted both logistic and Gaussian functions to mineral production data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and it is interesting that for mercury, lead, cadmium and selenium, there is good accord found between the "ultimate recoverable resources" URR determined from the curve-fitting to the data and those reported in the USGS tables + the amount of each already extracted. For tellurium, phosphorus, thallium, Zircon(ium) and rhenium, the agreement is quite close but tends to smaller values than are indicated from the figures for cumulative production plus the USGS reserves. For gallium, the figure obtained from the fitting analysis is significantly lower than the USGS estimate (by about a factor of seven).
Evidence of peaking is found for a number of the minerals, e.g. mercury around 1962; lead in 1986; Zircon in 1990; selenium in 1994; gallium in 2000. The results for gallium are significant, both in that the peak occurred seven years ago and in the size of its total reserve, which when compared with the amount used worldwide by the electronics industry implies that we may run short of gallium any time soon. Tellurium and selenium are two other minerals that underpin the semiconductor industry and it appears that their fall in production may also impact negatively on future technologies that are entirely reliant upon them, since there are no obvious substitute materials with precisely equivalent properties.
For vanadium, although a production peak is indicated in 2005, the data in the "mineral commodities handbook" show a later and sudden surge in production, which is not fully explained but thought may potentially relate to uncertainties in reporting from countries like China. So, there may be a real and ongoing upsurge in production from e.g. the Chinese economy which is quoted as being "out of sync" with the rest of the world, such is its massive expansion, or it might be a red herring.
Interestingly, copper, zinc, tin, nickel and platinum show an almost exponential increase in production; however, as I have noted previously, the stocks of some metals may be insufficient to supply the technological demands of the modern developed world into the far (or even near) future. There is also the issue of how quickly a rare and difficultly extractable metal such as platinum might be produced in comparison with an overall demand for it. Copper production can be fitted with an exponential function up to 2006, while a logistic function provides about the same quality of fit, yet indicates a peak in about 2040. The latter agrees reasonably well with the USGS estimated copper reserves of 0.5 - 1.0 Gigatons, while the fit gives 2 Gigatons. Notably, the world price of copper has skyrocketed during the past few years, which is again attributed to demand in China, as was the cost and shortage of wood earlier in the year.
Burdi and Pagini note that all of the above analyses rest upon the notion that the determined "peaks" represent actual global production maxima. Indeed, more reserves of all minerals may yet be found if we look assiduously enough for them; but herein lies the issue of underpinning costs, both in terms of finance and energy. It is the latter that may determine the real peaking and decline of minerals, which extend beyond the simple facts, say, of mining and refining a metal from its crude ore. There is also the cost-contribution from the energy needed to garner energy-materials such as oil, gas, coal and uranium, and thence to turn them into power and machinery; and since fossil fuels are being relentlessly depleted, it takes an inexorable amount energy to produce them, resulting in a cumulative and rising energy demand overall.
Saliently, the authors point out that the whole "extractive system" is interconnected through required underpinning supplies of fossil fuels, and it is perhaps this that explains why the production of so many minerals seems to be peaking during the period between the latter part of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, in a virtual mirror-image of the era when troubles in the production of fossil fuels were experienced across the globe. Hence, it may be the lack of the latter which determines the real amount of all other minerals that can be brought onto the world markets.
Related Reading.
"Peak Minerals", By Ugo Bardi and Marco Pagani. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3086.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
World Platinum Price Soars.
The cost of platinum has risen over $1,450 an once following worries over the supply of this rare metal as two mines in South Africa were closed because of recent fatal accidents. It is thought that there will be a market deficit of 100,000 ounces of platinum this year. The biggest producer of platinum in the world is Anglo Platinum, which closed its Paardekraal shaft in Rustenburg after a worker died in an accident, and the South African Northern Platinum Ltd. also closed its mine when a worker was killed by a rockfall.
The world market for platinum closed in 2006 with a small surplus of around 10,000 ounces after being in deficit for seven years, outstripping the world demand of 6.775 million ounces, or about 192 tonnes of it. About 42% of that is used to make jewelry and is almost exactly the same as goes into making catalytic convertors; the rest is used to make scientific apparatus. I have commented previously, that the introduction of PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells to run cars fuelled by hydrogen is likely to be hampered by the limited amount of platinum that could be produced for this purpose. Even if all the platinum which currently goes into cleaning the exhaust emissions from cars that burn oil-fuels internal combustion engines, could be skimmed-off for the PEM sector, it would be just enough for:
(0.4 x 192 tonnes/year x 1000 kg/tonne x 1000 g/kg)/50g platinum/car = 1,536,000 cars/year.
Compared with the numbers of road vehicles there are altogether, which I believe is 700 million, this is quite a small figure. I suppose it is possible that more platinum may be found and maybe the world could do without its jewelry in the interests of "saving the planet", but a hydrogen economy based around precious metals looks to me of limited likelihood.
Gold prices have also soared to around $750 per ounce, which is the highest since 1980, when it hit $850. Tensions in the Middle East are partly blamed, especially the decision by Turkey to send its troops into northern Iraq to hunt-down Kurdish rebels, although the country's allies in the West and in Baghdad have urged them to refrain from invading Iraq. There is an issue of how much of many metals and minerals might be supplied in the future, along with oil, gas, uranium and eventually coal, and the prices of all of them will reflect how much can be brought onto the world markets, and indeed how much there is available at any prices.
Related Reading.
"Supply concerns propel platinum to record highs", By Atul Prakash. http://today.reuters.co.uk
The world market for platinum closed in 2006 with a small surplus of around 10,000 ounces after being in deficit for seven years, outstripping the world demand of 6.775 million ounces, or about 192 tonnes of it. About 42% of that is used to make jewelry and is almost exactly the same as goes into making catalytic convertors; the rest is used to make scientific apparatus. I have commented previously, that the introduction of PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells to run cars fuelled by hydrogen is likely to be hampered by the limited amount of platinum that could be produced for this purpose. Even if all the platinum which currently goes into cleaning the exhaust emissions from cars that burn oil-fuels internal combustion engines, could be skimmed-off for the PEM sector, it would be just enough for:
(0.4 x 192 tonnes/year x 1000 kg/tonne x 1000 g/kg)/50g platinum/car = 1,536,000 cars/year.
Compared with the numbers of road vehicles there are altogether, which I believe is 700 million, this is quite a small figure. I suppose it is possible that more platinum may be found and maybe the world could do without its jewelry in the interests of "saving the planet", but a hydrogen economy based around precious metals looks to me of limited likelihood.
Gold prices have also soared to around $750 per ounce, which is the highest since 1980, when it hit $850. Tensions in the Middle East are partly blamed, especially the decision by Turkey to send its troops into northern Iraq to hunt-down Kurdish rebels, although the country's allies in the West and in Baghdad have urged them to refrain from invading Iraq. There is an issue of how much of many metals and minerals might be supplied in the future, along with oil, gas, uranium and eventually coal, and the prices of all of them will reflect how much can be brought onto the world markets, and indeed how much there is available at any prices.
Related Reading.
"Supply concerns propel platinum to record highs", By Atul Prakash. http://today.reuters.co.uk
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Hubbert Peak Oil.
In 1956 a paper was published which will be of greater significance to the future of humankind than those reporting on the structure of DNA or the Theory of Relativity. Its title was "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels", and it was written and presented by M. King Hubbert at an oil-industry conference in Houston, Texas, while he was in the employ of the Shell Development Company. At first Hubbert was not taken seriously in his conclusions that the peak in oil production would follow the peak in oil discovery by about forty years, and so the best year for US oil output would be around 1965 - 1970, roughly 40 years after the most successful year of oil finds, in 1930. He was right, and thenceforth US home oil production has fallen to the extent that the nation now imports two thirds of all the oil it uses, a colossal 20 million or so barrels a day, or one quarter of the world's requirement of oil.
In days before computers, Hubbert would have drawn the graph by hand (probably with the aid of a flexy-curve, or simply freehand as I used to find best, before PC's were available routinely, and mathematical analysis packages such as the Origin programme, which is installed on this machine). The Hubbert peak is based on a logistic function, which is a restricted exponential, and the first derivative of it corresponds to a peak. The derivative of this (i.e. the second derivative of the logistic function) gives an inflexion, where the point at which the curve crosses the baseline corresponds to the peak maximum. The logistic function includes the familiar S-shaped curves that relate to the growth of bacteria and to enzyme kinetics such as those of Michaelis and Menton.
The Hubbert curve (peak) may be defined as:
Q(t) = Q(max)/(1 + ae^bt),
where Q(max) is the total recoverable amount of crude oil in the ground to start off with, Q(t) is the cumulative production (i.e. how much oil has been pulled out of the ground to date) and a and b are constants. Accordingly, the year of maximum production (peak oil) is given by:
t(max) = (1/b)ln(1/a),
and for the world altogether, with a peak discovery year of 1965, this appears as 2005. There is much speculation and analysis that oil production has already peaked, and it is my suggestion that enhanced recovery methods alone have maintained the present output of oil, much of it from the giant fields in the Middle East. It is obvious that the resource is concentrated in only a few particular regions of the Earth, vide supra, and also Russia, South America and Indonesia. Countries such as Iraq and Iran may become swing-producers, i.e. that produce more oil than they use, and I have read opinions to the effect that the Iraq war if not started in the interests of obtaining oil for the West, might become a worthy swing-producer, thus averting economic starvation at least for a few years. Iraq has about 140 billion barrels of oil, and Iran about the same, and so at a level consumption of 30 billion barrels a year for the world in total, we might get almost 10 years worth of supply from there. It is significant that Western companies such as BP and ExxonMobil have been granted 30 year contracts to exploit the Iraqi oil.
Not everybody agrees with the Hubbert analysis and some argue that we will be able to access around four times as much oil as there is present under the Earth in the form of crude-oil, by which they mean the Canadian tar-sands, oil shale, oil made from coal or from gas, biomass and so on. However, this does Hubbert a considerable disservice because he was talking explicitly about cheap oil, and it is this that will inexorably run out, most likely during the next 5 - 10 years. Hence there is no consolation to be found in any putative 3.7 trillion barrels of oil figure, because bringing that into reality will be extremely expensive both financially (to take an economist's standpoint) and more precisely in terms of the energy and other resources such as water that are mandatory in those actions necessary to do so.
We are not about to run out of oil. We will be able to produce hydrocarbons (oil) for decades to come, but not at the cheap prices we are used to. I am working on a rough figure of assuming that everything (and I mean everything - food, clothes, and all else) will cost about twice what it does now in that 5 - 10 year period. That would correspond to a $200 barrel. This will be uncomfortable especially for those who already bear considerable debts, particularly in the UK, which is the most indebted nation in Europe. We also drink more than anyone else apparently, and have a greater incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, which makes me think that the era of the "stiff upper lip" has rather passed for the English. Many of these problems may well be "cured" by a huge hiking-up of general costs in terms of booze, travel and the overused "plastic friend" - the credit card which often proves less than amicable.
Another feature of Britain is that we have "lost" most of our manufacturing industry, and so we buy cheap imports from e.g. China and therefore fuel the economic enterprise of that nation. Without imports to the West of washing machines, TV's and so on, the Chinese economy will grind onto the hard shoulder, and our own economy, based as it is around the "service sector" will crash too meaning that less service-businesses will survive if people have less cash in their pockets to buy their services, and an according loss of jobs in that industry.
The mathematics of Hubbert's theory is very interesting but as I have pointed out before, there were only so many squares on that sheet of graph paper in reflection that there is only so much cheap oil that can be drawn up from the Earth, [i.e. Q(max) in the above equation], hence no matter what values we chose for the constants (a) and (b) or whether we use a Gaussian or Lorenzian distribution or some other mathematical device, the future of humanity will unfold, in ways that will be only evident to later history, upon a world devoid of cheap oil, and to kid ourselves otherwise is an act of addicted denial. We need to plan a society based on localised communities and less dependent on apparently limitless cheap transport, and cheap products made from oil.
(1) http://www.energybulletin.net/print.php?id=13650
(2) http://www.answers.com/topic/hubbert-curve?linktext+Hubbert%20
(3) "The Hubbert Curve: Its strengths and weaknesses" By, J.H.Laherrere: http://dieoff.org/page191.ht,m
(4) "Hubbert's Peak - the mathematics behind it", By Luis de Sousa: http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/hubbertmaths
(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory
In days before computers, Hubbert would have drawn the graph by hand (probably with the aid of a flexy-curve, or simply freehand as I used to find best, before PC's were available routinely, and mathematical analysis packages such as the Origin programme, which is installed on this machine). The Hubbert peak is based on a logistic function, which is a restricted exponential, and the first derivative of it corresponds to a peak. The derivative of this (i.e. the second derivative of the logistic function) gives an inflexion, where the point at which the curve crosses the baseline corresponds to the peak maximum. The logistic function includes the familiar S-shaped curves that relate to the growth of bacteria and to enzyme kinetics such as those of Michaelis and Menton.
The Hubbert curve (peak) may be defined as:
Q(t) = Q(max)/(1 + ae^bt),
where Q(max) is the total recoverable amount of crude oil in the ground to start off with, Q(t) is the cumulative production (i.e. how much oil has been pulled out of the ground to date) and a and b are constants. Accordingly, the year of maximum production (peak oil) is given by:
t(max) = (1/b)ln(1/a),
and for the world altogether, with a peak discovery year of 1965, this appears as 2005. There is much speculation and analysis that oil production has already peaked, and it is my suggestion that enhanced recovery methods alone have maintained the present output of oil, much of it from the giant fields in the Middle East. It is obvious that the resource is concentrated in only a few particular regions of the Earth, vide supra, and also Russia, South America and Indonesia. Countries such as Iraq and Iran may become swing-producers, i.e. that produce more oil than they use, and I have read opinions to the effect that the Iraq war if not started in the interests of obtaining oil for the West, might become a worthy swing-producer, thus averting economic starvation at least for a few years. Iraq has about 140 billion barrels of oil, and Iran about the same, and so at a level consumption of 30 billion barrels a year for the world in total, we might get almost 10 years worth of supply from there. It is significant that Western companies such as BP and ExxonMobil have been granted 30 year contracts to exploit the Iraqi oil.
Not everybody agrees with the Hubbert analysis and some argue that we will be able to access around four times as much oil as there is present under the Earth in the form of crude-oil, by which they mean the Canadian tar-sands, oil shale, oil made from coal or from gas, biomass and so on. However, this does Hubbert a considerable disservice because he was talking explicitly about cheap oil, and it is this that will inexorably run out, most likely during the next 5 - 10 years. Hence there is no consolation to be found in any putative 3.7 trillion barrels of oil figure, because bringing that into reality will be extremely expensive both financially (to take an economist's standpoint) and more precisely in terms of the energy and other resources such as water that are mandatory in those actions necessary to do so.
We are not about to run out of oil. We will be able to produce hydrocarbons (oil) for decades to come, but not at the cheap prices we are used to. I am working on a rough figure of assuming that everything (and I mean everything - food, clothes, and all else) will cost about twice what it does now in that 5 - 10 year period. That would correspond to a $200 barrel. This will be uncomfortable especially for those who already bear considerable debts, particularly in the UK, which is the most indebted nation in Europe. We also drink more than anyone else apparently, and have a greater incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, which makes me think that the era of the "stiff upper lip" has rather passed for the English. Many of these problems may well be "cured" by a huge hiking-up of general costs in terms of booze, travel and the overused "plastic friend" - the credit card which often proves less than amicable.
Another feature of Britain is that we have "lost" most of our manufacturing industry, and so we buy cheap imports from e.g. China and therefore fuel the economic enterprise of that nation. Without imports to the West of washing machines, TV's and so on, the Chinese economy will grind onto the hard shoulder, and our own economy, based as it is around the "service sector" will crash too meaning that less service-businesses will survive if people have less cash in their pockets to buy their services, and an according loss of jobs in that industry.
The mathematics of Hubbert's theory is very interesting but as I have pointed out before, there were only so many squares on that sheet of graph paper in reflection that there is only so much cheap oil that can be drawn up from the Earth, [i.e. Q(max) in the above equation], hence no matter what values we chose for the constants (a) and (b) or whether we use a Gaussian or Lorenzian distribution or some other mathematical device, the future of humanity will unfold, in ways that will be only evident to later history, upon a world devoid of cheap oil, and to kid ourselves otherwise is an act of addicted denial. We need to plan a society based on localised communities and less dependent on apparently limitless cheap transport, and cheap products made from oil.
(1) http://www.energybulletin.net/print.php?id=13650
(2) http://www.answers.com/topic/hubbert-curve?linktext+Hubbert%20
(3) "The Hubbert Curve: Its strengths and weaknesses" By, J.H.Laherrere: http://dieoff.org/page191.ht,m
(4) "Hubbert's Peak - the mathematics behind it", By Luis de Sousa: http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/hubbertmaths
(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory
Monday, October 22, 2007
Oil Wars!
We can only plan the future of civilization in terms of energy resources other than cheap oil. The title of this article is is not a euphemism for the war in Iraq nor any potential strife elsewhere in the Middle East, in the cause of Western countries obtaining oil, but a reference to the concept that world oil production has already peaked and hence we cannot expect civilization to depend on it as a source of energy into the future. A new report by the German-based Energy Watch Group released its conclusions today that global oil production peaked in 2006. Furthermore, the group believes that global reserves of oil are only about two-thirds the 1,255 billion barrels the oil industry finds consensus on. This sounds to me that they do not believe the remarkable increase in estimates made of the reserves under Saudi, which houses the world's major oil wells.
There are many different figures as to precisely when "peak oil" will strike, but even if it is not already with us, it will come soon. My personal opinion is that production has been artificially maintained, meaning that rather than a smooth decline in the availability of oil, as is most simply indicated by the Hubbert Peak which roughly mirrors the rise in production over history, when present output can no longer be maintained, even by enhanced recovery methods, supply will plummet beyond our worst nightmares, if we dream about it at all.
I will write about the mathematics behind the Hubbert theory in subsequent postings here, but in essence Hubbert only had so many squares on the sheet of graph paper to count underneath his "curve" emphasising the simple fact that there is only so much "cheap" and relatively accessible oil in the ground. I do not dispute (and have explained its sources) that we will be able to conjure-up oil for decades to come, either by pulling it out of the ground, by cracking bitumen from Canadian or Venezuelan tar-sands or synthesising it from coal, gas or even algae, but the age of cheap oil is over. It would therefore be a criminal disservice to humanity to pretend otherwise. The fact of this matter is signified by a huge ramping-up of the price of oil: almost $90 compared with less than a quarter of than only 5 years ago, and the instability of the world financial markets which will now be up-and-down in perpetuity.
Yes, it is easy to blame the "sub-prime" markets and greedy and irresponsible lenders of cash to those who could never be expected to pay it back, but the real underpinning framework of financial instability is the availability and cost of that basic necessity upon which the modern industrialised world has been built - oil!
The days of cheap oil are over. The vampiric $100 dollar barrel in already in sight; and then we can expect $150, $200 or who knows how much? Since everything in our modern global village depends on oil, we can expect the price of everything to increase markedly. It is not only the cost of fuel, and of everything that is transported over colossal distances to supermarket shelves, hence increased costs to be borne by the consumer, but an increase in the basic costs of manufacture, from everything from food to plastics, since oil is the underpinning raw feedstock from which everything is made. It really is the proverbial double-whammy.
We can only therefore make realistic plans for the future in the absence of thoughts about cheap oil. I am speculative about what can really be provided in terms of renewable energy, or at least in time to head-off the dearth of oil that will hit us within a decade, and even nuclear power which the UK government has made a firm commitment to, will be hard pressed to substitute for fast depleting supplies of oil and gas. Jeremy Leggett (CEO of a major solar-energy company) and author of "The Carbon War" and "Half Gone" (a reference to the fact that according to Hubbert Peak theory, when the peak in oil production is reached half the oil there in the first place has been used-up) is of the opinion that both the UK government and the energy industry are in "institutionalised denial" and that action should have been taken sooner.
I have commented as much, and it is also my opinion that appropriate action should have been taken in the early 1970's when the OPEC artificially hiked-up the price of oil, leading to a political "oil crisis". Now the crisis is not a matter of politics but of geology and there is simply not enough of the stuff in the ground to be extracted at the low costs we have been used to. Furthermore, "half gone" is an optimistic delineation of the resource, the production of which is more likely to follow a skewed Hubbert curve, with a very rapid decline in supply beyond the putative peak, and a see-sawing ramp in its cost and thence of all goods.
Economic hardships and wars are the QED of this simple fact, as humanity in its various artificial nation states struggles to survive. But in accepting the reality of peak oil and all it implies, let's think ahead in the absence of "cheap" oil. Our lives will be less softened by cheap energy, and we need to be aware of this now, and not fool ourselves into false security of alternatives such as wind or wave power or the hydrogen or methanol economies. It is too late to introduce them anyway, and only the proverbial paradigm shift in thinking in terms of plentiful oil to those of oil dearth will preserve us from war and per se as a human civilization.
Related Reading.
"Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says study," By Ashley Seager, Guardian Monday October 22, 2007. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,331028371 - 110373.00.html
There are many different figures as to precisely when "peak oil" will strike, but even if it is not already with us, it will come soon. My personal opinion is that production has been artificially maintained, meaning that rather than a smooth decline in the availability of oil, as is most simply indicated by the Hubbert Peak which roughly mirrors the rise in production over history, when present output can no longer be maintained, even by enhanced recovery methods, supply will plummet beyond our worst nightmares, if we dream about it at all.
I will write about the mathematics behind the Hubbert theory in subsequent postings here, but in essence Hubbert only had so many squares on the sheet of graph paper to count underneath his "curve" emphasising the simple fact that there is only so much "cheap" and relatively accessible oil in the ground. I do not dispute (and have explained its sources) that we will be able to conjure-up oil for decades to come, either by pulling it out of the ground, by cracking bitumen from Canadian or Venezuelan tar-sands or synthesising it from coal, gas or even algae, but the age of cheap oil is over. It would therefore be a criminal disservice to humanity to pretend otherwise. The fact of this matter is signified by a huge ramping-up of the price of oil: almost $90 compared with less than a quarter of than only 5 years ago, and the instability of the world financial markets which will now be up-and-down in perpetuity.
Yes, it is easy to blame the "sub-prime" markets and greedy and irresponsible lenders of cash to those who could never be expected to pay it back, but the real underpinning framework of financial instability is the availability and cost of that basic necessity upon which the modern industrialised world has been built - oil!
The days of cheap oil are over. The vampiric $100 dollar barrel in already in sight; and then we can expect $150, $200 or who knows how much? Since everything in our modern global village depends on oil, we can expect the price of everything to increase markedly. It is not only the cost of fuel, and of everything that is transported over colossal distances to supermarket shelves, hence increased costs to be borne by the consumer, but an increase in the basic costs of manufacture, from everything from food to plastics, since oil is the underpinning raw feedstock from which everything is made. It really is the proverbial double-whammy.
We can only therefore make realistic plans for the future in the absence of thoughts about cheap oil. I am speculative about what can really be provided in terms of renewable energy, or at least in time to head-off the dearth of oil that will hit us within a decade, and even nuclear power which the UK government has made a firm commitment to, will be hard pressed to substitute for fast depleting supplies of oil and gas. Jeremy Leggett (CEO of a major solar-energy company) and author of "The Carbon War" and "Half Gone" (a reference to the fact that according to Hubbert Peak theory, when the peak in oil production is reached half the oil there in the first place has been used-up) is of the opinion that both the UK government and the energy industry are in "institutionalised denial" and that action should have been taken sooner.
I have commented as much, and it is also my opinion that appropriate action should have been taken in the early 1970's when the OPEC artificially hiked-up the price of oil, leading to a political "oil crisis". Now the crisis is not a matter of politics but of geology and there is simply not enough of the stuff in the ground to be extracted at the low costs we have been used to. Furthermore, "half gone" is an optimistic delineation of the resource, the production of which is more likely to follow a skewed Hubbert curve, with a very rapid decline in supply beyond the putative peak, and a see-sawing ramp in its cost and thence of all goods.
Economic hardships and wars are the QED of this simple fact, as humanity in its various artificial nation states struggles to survive. But in accepting the reality of peak oil and all it implies, let's think ahead in the absence of "cheap" oil. Our lives will be less softened by cheap energy, and we need to be aware of this now, and not fool ourselves into false security of alternatives such as wind or wave power or the hydrogen or methanol economies. It is too late to introduce them anyway, and only the proverbial paradigm shift in thinking in terms of plentiful oil to those of oil dearth will preserve us from war and per se as a human civilization.
Related Reading.
"Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says study," By Ashley Seager, Guardian Monday October 22, 2007. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,331028371 - 110373.00.html
Thursday, October 18, 2007
British Claim to Antarctic Seabed.
The UK proposes to claim its sovereign rights over an area of more than 1 million square kilometres (386,000 square miles) of the seabed off Antarctica, in defiance of the Antarctic treaty, which it signed-up to in 1959. The Foreign Office told the Guardian newspaper that an evaluation is being made of information with the intention of submitting a claim to the United Nations (UN) which could extend Britain's rights to exploration for oil, gas and minerals by up to 350 miles offshore from Antarctica into the Southern Ocean (the ring of ocean that circles Antarctica). However, in consequence of its great depth (4 km in parts), the actual extraction of these resources is not as yet feasible, but the claim will undoubtedly anger neighbouring south American countries, notably Chile and Argentina, who feel redoubted in their own rights to them.
This year is the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, and I remember at the time in 1982, there was some proposition that part of the UK's reluctance to give-up the Falklands Islands to Argentina, who had invaded them, was indeed down to potential future "mineral rights" in the region. The Falklands War suited both sides at the time, since Argentina had huge levels of unemployment while in the UK, Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular Prime Minister ever, mainly in consequence of the collapse of our manufacturing industries (as part of her war against the trade unions and aided by their economic uncompetitiveness against imports from other nations), in addition to the universally despised and loathed "poll tax". A hefty dose of nationalism that only a war could provide was just the thing to distract attention from such home troubles on both sides. In the end, the islands were liberated from Argentine rule through the self-sacrifice of many brave men. 25 years on, and with impending shortages of oil and gas, winning the Falklands Islands may have led to a beneficial legacy for the UK, in terms of new resources of these key energy components.
There are other UK claims to undersea resources too: in the Atlantic Ocean around South Georgia and the Falkland Islands; around Ascension Island; in the Hatton/Rockall basin (I mentioned the latter in "Undersea Oil Claims - Rockall", last month), and there is another claim being made for a large area of seabed under the Bay of Biscay by a consortium involving the UK, Spain, France and Ireland, which the UN is currently considering. The claims are based on article 76 of the UN convention of the law of the sea.
There are environmental concerns regarding the impact of such future exploration on the ecology of the region; however, relatively little is known about what exactly is down there. We know more about the surface of the Moon that we do about the seabed on Earth. British biologists recently made a dive down to depths of over two miles in a small submersible and identified krill, different kinds of shrimp, sea cucumbers and starfish-like creatures, all present in flourishing numbers. The British Antarctic Territory is a triangular wedge covering 660,000 square miles (almost 2 million square kilometres) with its apex at the south pole, and with two permanently manned research stations there. It was first claimed in 1908, making next year the centenary of its inauguration, when it is planned to issue its first ever legal tender coin, by way of celebration. A taste of things to come?
There is international intention to exploit certainly oil and gas reserves from undersea locations, despite the considerable technical difficulty in doing so, for example the recent claim by Russia to undersea land off northern Siberia where oil is believed to be present in quantity. If peak oil were a hoax, as a few still contest, the world would not even be considering going to lengths of this kind to secure further supplies of the stuff, and clearly it is expected that the reality of oil-supply will become desperate in the foreseeable future, (i.e. within a decade).
Related Reading.
"Britain to claim more than 1m square km of Antarctica", By Owen Boycott, The Guardian, Wednesday 17.10.07.
This year is the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, and I remember at the time in 1982, there was some proposition that part of the UK's reluctance to give-up the Falklands Islands to Argentina, who had invaded them, was indeed down to potential future "mineral rights" in the region. The Falklands War suited both sides at the time, since Argentina had huge levels of unemployment while in the UK, Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular Prime Minister ever, mainly in consequence of the collapse of our manufacturing industries (as part of her war against the trade unions and aided by their economic uncompetitiveness against imports from other nations), in addition to the universally despised and loathed "poll tax". A hefty dose of nationalism that only a war could provide was just the thing to distract attention from such home troubles on both sides. In the end, the islands were liberated from Argentine rule through the self-sacrifice of many brave men. 25 years on, and with impending shortages of oil and gas, winning the Falklands Islands may have led to a beneficial legacy for the UK, in terms of new resources of these key energy components.
There are other UK claims to undersea resources too: in the Atlantic Ocean around South Georgia and the Falkland Islands; around Ascension Island; in the Hatton/Rockall basin (I mentioned the latter in "Undersea Oil Claims - Rockall", last month), and there is another claim being made for a large area of seabed under the Bay of Biscay by a consortium involving the UK, Spain, France and Ireland, which the UN is currently considering. The claims are based on article 76 of the UN convention of the law of the sea.
There are environmental concerns regarding the impact of such future exploration on the ecology of the region; however, relatively little is known about what exactly is down there. We know more about the surface of the Moon that we do about the seabed on Earth. British biologists recently made a dive down to depths of over two miles in a small submersible and identified krill, different kinds of shrimp, sea cucumbers and starfish-like creatures, all present in flourishing numbers. The British Antarctic Territory is a triangular wedge covering 660,000 square miles (almost 2 million square kilometres) with its apex at the south pole, and with two permanently manned research stations there. It was first claimed in 1908, making next year the centenary of its inauguration, when it is planned to issue its first ever legal tender coin, by way of celebration. A taste of things to come?
There is international intention to exploit certainly oil and gas reserves from undersea locations, despite the considerable technical difficulty in doing so, for example the recent claim by Russia to undersea land off northern Siberia where oil is believed to be present in quantity. If peak oil were a hoax, as a few still contest, the world would not even be considering going to lengths of this kind to secure further supplies of the stuff, and clearly it is expected that the reality of oil-supply will become desperate in the foreseeable future, (i.e. within a decade).
Related Reading.
"Britain to claim more than 1m square km of Antarctica", By Owen Boycott, The Guardian, Wednesday 17.10.07.
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