Peak Oil

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
21

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]elano wrote:
What do they think it is Bill?[/quote]

I am not Bill, but I think that the theory is somewhere along the lines of Methan and similar stuff is trapped inside the planet and more or less oozes out and is converted into crude oil by heat and temperature.
[/quote]

It’s actually a very interesting thing.

Two things are a little unfortunate for discussing it in depth now:

  1. I’m not an organized person and I read to learn for myself rather than to have a stack of things to use to prove to other people. So there are many times where I can no longer find something that I’ve read before, and can’t think of an easy way to find by search. This is one of those times.

  2. The archival properties of the forum could be better. It is not unusual for threads to disappear entirely into the ether. It is also possible that at a time of posting, the site was using a URL different from http://tnation.tmuscle.com and therefore I’m searching the wrong domain when using Google. So there are cases where I had a paper previously and discussed it, and I would hope I could just find the old post, but it’s not possible.

So due to those problems, I can’t document this.

But anyway it is very interesting. The key (to me, not to the Russians) paper was demonstration of chemical conversion of methane to oil under rather moderate pressure and heat, with minerals commonly found in the Earth’s crust as catalysts.

The resulting oil was essentially identical to petroleum in various “fingerprint” measures of ratios of various isomers and chain lengths.

In contrast, hypothesized conversion of dead plant material to petroleum has so far as I know always been similar to the cartoon of a scientist at a chalkboard with a dense series of equations both in the top third and bottom third of the board, with the middle reading “And then a miracle happens…”

At any rate, the things is, it’s demonstrated that metnane indeed can convert to petroleum under conditions similar to what is found in the Earth’s crust, and it is believed that there are great stores of methane still remaining from the Earth’s formation.

The Russians reportedly choose where to drill based on their abiotic theory, and as you know they have done quite well in their oil exploration efforts. That does not prove that they are right, but it seems to me they well could be. [/quote]

Hmm not to call bullshit but that hypothesis is pretty out there. Not saying it’s not true just it seems unlikely. Where is the primordial methane stored? I assume in the mantle? What are the d13C values of mantle carbon and oil? What is the proposed transport mechanism from mantle to upper crust?

What is the proposed rates of formation of oil by this process?

You are aware that in anoxic conditions methane is a pretty likely breakdown product of dead animals?

Also if the Russians are so good at this why do they get western oil companies in to help with exploration?

22

[quote]orion wrote:

We could also liquify coal, turn Methane or wood into oil or just suck the CO2 out of the air and turn it into oil again.

The last one is a bit sci-fi though.

So lets worry about oil running out in a 300 years or so.
[/quote]

Turn wood into oil? You mean like biofuels? You must be some kind of econut to suggest that…

23

[quote]lou21 wrote:

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]elano wrote:
What do they think it is Bill?[/quote]

I am not Bill, but I think that the theory is somewhere along the lines of Methan and similar stuff is trapped inside the planet and more or less oozes out and is converted into crude oil by heat and temperature.
[/quote]

It’s actually a very interesting thing.

Two things are a little unfortunate for discussing it in depth now:

  1. I’m not an organized person and I read to learn for myself rather than to have a stack of things to use to prove to other people. So there are many times where I can no longer find something that I’ve read before, and can’t think of an easy way to find by search. This is one of those times.

  2. The archival properties of the forum could be better. It is not unusual for threads to disappear entirely into the ether. It is also possible that at a time of posting, the site was using a URL different from http://tnation.tmuscle.com and therefore I’m searching the wrong domain when using Google. So there are cases where I had a paper previously and discussed it, and I would hope I could just find the old post, but it’s not possible.

So due to those problems, I can’t document this.

But anyway it is very interesting. The key (to me, not to the Russians) paper was demonstration of chemical conversion of methane to oil under rather moderate pressure and heat, with minerals commonly found in the Earth’s crust as catalysts.

The resulting oil was essentially identical to petroleum in various “fingerprint” measures of ratios of various isomers and chain lengths.

In contrast, hypothesized conversion of dead plant material to petroleum has so far as I know always been similar to the cartoon of a scientist at a chalkboard with a dense series of equations both in the top third and bottom third of the board, with the middle reading “And then a miracle happens…”

At any rate, the things is, it’s demonstrated that metnane indeed can convert to petroleum under conditions similar to what is found in the Earth’s crust, and it is believed that there are great stores of methane still remaining from the Earth’s formation.

The Russians reportedly choose where to drill based on their abiotic theory, and as you know they have done quite well in their oil exploration efforts. That does not prove that they are right, but it seems to me they well could be. [/quote]

Hmm not to call bullshit but that hypothesis is pretty out there. Not saying it’s not true just it seems unlikely. Where is the primordial methane stored? I assume in the mantle? What are the d13C values of mantle carbon and oil? What is the proposed transport mechanism from mantle to upper crust?

What is the proposed rates of formation of oil by this process?

You are aware that in anoxic conditions methane is a pretty likely breakdown product of dead animals?

Also if the Russians are so good at this why do they get western oil companies in to help with exploration?[/quote]

24

No, I am not aware that in anoxic conditions methane is a likely breakdown product of dead animals except via methanogenic bacteria. Not chemically.

Is your argument that the scientists I referred to did solve the problem of how petroleum is formed with the properties that it has, but somehow this doesn’t occur from inorganic methane of which there is a great deal, but only occurs from methane produced by methanogenic bacteria feeding on organic material?

The rate of formation was pretty rapid. It didn’t take millions of years in their lab, but relatively brief reaction times at temperatures and pressures no more favorable than occurring in the crust. The rate limiting factor would be supply of methane.

I don’t recall at this time anything about isotopic composition. I do recall that the article seemed to me very thorough and there was not a single thing indicating clear difference between the oil produced from inorganic methane and petroleum that is found in practice.

As for why Western firms might be hired: Any method that produces good commercial results is a good method to use. My point on the Russians using their own method is that they’ve found oil repeatedly in places Western theory says not to look, but are promising under the abiotic theory. I’m unaware if locations favorable under Western theory are incompatible with oil being found there under the abiotic theory: I would think not, but really don’t know.

So far as I know, it is not an unusual or disproven theory that there is primordial methane in the mantle. For example volcanoes release methane. Not, I think, from dead dinosaurs.

25

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
No, I am not aware that in anoxic conditions methane is a likely breakdown product of dead animals except via methanogenic bacteria. Not chemically.

Is your argument that the scientists I referred to did solve the problem of how petroleum is formed with the properties that it has, but somehow this doesn’t occur from inorganic methane of which there is a great deal, but only occurs from methane produced by methanogenic bacteria feeding on organic material?

The rate of formation was pretty rapid. It didn’t take millions of years in their lab, but relatively brief reaction times at temperatures and pressures no more favorable than occurring in the crust. The rate limiting factor would be supply of methane.

I don’t recall at this time anything about isotopic composition. I do recall that the article seemed to me very thorough and there was not a single thing indicating clear difference between the oil produced from inorganic methane and petroleum that is found in practice.

As for why Western firms might be hired: Any method that produces good commercial results is a good method to use. My point on the Russians using their own method is that they’ve found oil repeatedly in places Western theory says not to look, but are promising under the abiotic theory. I’m unaware if locations favorable under Western theory are incompatible with oil being found there under the abiotic theory: I would think not, but really don’t know.

So far as I know, it is not an unusual or disproven theory that there is primordial methane in the mantle. For example volcanoes release methane. Not, I think, from dead dinosaurs.[/quote]

Not really up there with how oil forms. If it does form from methane and exeperiments exist to back this up I’d say it would form from any methane put under the correct conditions whether this be from dead things or inorganic methane. It’s just that there’s more likely to be lots of dead things buried in sedimentary basins than there is mantle carbon outgassing.

You’re sort of correct about primordial methane but also kind of wrong. There is indeed probably (although this is a topic of current debate) plenty of primordial carbon in the mantle in some form. It could maybe be as methane if at sufficiently low oxygen fugacity. It’s also been proposed to be as CO2, various carbonate minerals and of course diamond. The problem is how does it get from there into sedimentry basins? Mantle outgassing has been repeatedly suggested as being the cause of various things in geology and has been repeatedly shown to be flawed.

What I meant by how fast does it form is how fast would this theory suggest that new oil is forming today?

I think oil does generally have the wrong isotopic signiture. I think it generally has an organic signiture. Mantle carbon generally has a different signiture (not always- there are small amounts of organic carbon in various mantle derived materials).

We should remember that this is a pretty crackpot theory. I’d far rather my country based it’s energy security upon the rather better supported theory that oil will peak sometime in the next few years.

How many superfields have been found in the last 20 years? How many the 20 before that? and before that?

What is the extraction cost of the recent find? Compared to older ones?

It doesn’t really matter how the stuff formed. It matters that we’re going to shortly reach a peak in production.

26

“How many superfields have been found in the last 20 years? How many the 20 before that? and before that?”

Seems like a good question. Do you have the data handy? If not, I’ll take a look.

“The problem is how does it get from there into sedimentry basins?”

One of the posted articles theorized meteor impacts that cracked the mantle (I believe). It seemed to infer that this lead was a contributor to their (Russians) peculiar success in finding oil where the old theory would not suggest it to be.

None of this is remotely in my field of knowledge, but very interesting.

27

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote, in response to Lou21’s post:
Is your argument that the scientists I referred to did solve the problem of how petroleum is formed with the properties that it has, but somehow this doesn’t occur from inorganic methane of which there is a great deal, but only occurs from methane produced by methanogenic bacteria feeding on organic material?

.
.
.

So far as I know, it is not an unusual or disproven theory that there is primordial methane in the mantle. For example volcanoes release methane. Not, I think, from dead dinosaurs.[/quote]

Actually, combining:

  1. What I think Lou may have been suggesting that the same mineral-catalyzed process may have occurred with methane produced by decomposition of organic matter by methanogenic bacteria, while omitting a restriction on this also occurring with primordial methane, and

  2. An opinion in Orion’s link that abiotic formulation of petroleum is real and some petroleum has been found of such origin, but most is from biological matter

might give a good overall answer.

The classical “heat and pressure and hundreds of thousands or millions of years” argument has I think never been anything but relying on handwaving to back up a claim, as opposed to relying on sound chemistry.

28

[quote]theuofh wrote:
I just watched the movie ‘Collapse’ by a guy named Mike Ruppert. He may be called a conspiracy theorist, I hesitate to call him that though, whose career as an LAPD LEO got ruined when he allegated that the CIA approached him about selling drugs in the 70s.

He turned into somewhat of a government watch dog, published a news letter awhile back, wrote a couple books, and got into peak oil a bit 2001. His life is in shambles now and appeared to me as a martyred individual and the movie was an interview of him. Likeable guy though, and similar to Alex Jones who is much more radical than this guy, but you can tell he gives a shit. He even breaks down and cries in the interview.

Anyway, in this movie he directly mentions the tar sands. He describes them as a thick, sticky sand in layers 200, 300, 400 feet under the soil. They have to be strip mined, then transported, then steamed to extract the oil. This is the net energy problem, as you mentioned.

He put estimated production at 3-3.5 million barrels a day from the Canadian fields, which is rather paltry and didn’t mention how long this could be sustained or if it was a peak value or not. I’m not sure the mining process has the same bell curve dynamic as a well either. So, they are not really a fix to the problem.

I too am not an expert on this and that was part of my reason for making the thread, to try and sort some of the bullshit from fact. Today was the first I heard of the tar sands and I’m going to look more into them.

I’m skeptical of all the numbers, and still don’t have my head wrapped around the scale of this whole thing in terms of price per barrel, barrels consumed per day, etc. but I’m going to start paying closer attention to this information.

As to foreign oil, he did say straight out that he believes the US doesn’t plan on leaving Iraq. He cited the construction of an embassy complex as big as Vatican city and construction of 3 of the largest foreign military bases as evidence in Iraq as evidence. I have not verified any of the information.

Leaving US reserves and resources as a cache seems like a smart move by the powers that be, but it seems to just be delaying the inevitable.

I’ve read that to have cushioned the transition from oil to alternative energies, we would have had to started in the 70’s when peak oil was first theorized, but Reagan’s dropping dropping of oil prices in the 80’s leading to increased use was the death blow to the whole movement. It also led to the downfall of the Soviet Union who relied on energy exports for much of its revenue.

The other interesting thing in the movie was a graph of world population vs oil consumption and starting in the early 1900s when oil started to be used, population jumped and has been increasing to this day. Before that it was pretty much a constant. It is disturbing to think about what will happen in terms of the loss of human life and perhaps other more violent tragedies if this stuff plays out. [/quote]

I’m skeptic about your statement about Reagan putting a blow to the oil industry? Can you please explain? Did he establish a price ceiling?

29

I missed seeing where theuofh may have said anything about Reagan putting a blow to the oil industry.

I am not positive but I think it is the case that Reagan persuaded at least Saudi Arabia and possibly other countries to increase production so as to reduce price precisely for the reason theuofh stated: as part of an overall program to strangle the USSR of foreign currency earnings.

30

[quote]
I’m skeptic about your statement about Reagan putting a blow to the oil industry? Can you please explain? Did he establish a price ceiling? [/quote]

I may have mixed things up but I meant the death blow to the Soviet Union.

In the 70s there was a big oil shortage, I think when OPEC countries imposed an embargo that drove the price of oil sky high. In response, A lot of conservation measures were imposed, that actually reduced the demand for oil. I think this was the heyday for the start of the environmental movement too.

In the 80s, instead of continuing the efforts to switch to nuclear power or attempt to use less energy altogether, Reagan or somebody in his administration turned oil production on full blast in the Alaska and the North Sea. This in turn dropped oil prices further, as there was less demand and more of it.

An interesting metric to look at would be the price of energy and the health of the economy, as this fixed the stagnant economy and inflation of the 70s.

This easily available, cheap oil also reduced the reliance on Soviet Oil, which was a major source of revenue for them. Some people will argue that this is what led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Others may say, they would have fallen by themselves.

The one book I read, ‘The Long Descent’, uses the collapse of the Soviet Union as a model for what the beginning years of what this peak oil collapse might look like. The population plummets, as there isn’t a lot of free cash to pay for expensive end of life medical care to keep old people alive and people don’t have kids they can’t feed or care for, or if they do, they end up dying as there is nobody with enough money to give to charity to take care of other peoples children. Another example was workers getting paid in metal, to use for bartering/trade as the company couldn’t afford to pay them money. The whole premise of the book, is that it isn’t going to be an end of the world scenario, but a slow decline.

31

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34233

32

[quote]JEATON wrote:
“How many superfields have been found in the last 20 years? How many the 20 before that? and before that?”

Seems like a good question. Do you have the data handy? If not, I’ll take a look.

“The problem is how does it get from there into sedimentry basins?”

One of the posted articles theorized meteor impacts that cracked the mantle (I believe). It seemed to infer that this lead was a contributor to their (Russians) peculiar success in finding oil where the old theory would not suggest it to be.

None of this is remotely in my field of knowledge, but very interesting. [/quote]

In terms of conventional fields (ie not shale oils or tar sands) there was one superfield (over 6 billion barrels) find in the last 20. The one off the coast of Brazil. This under at 2km water and 2.5km sediments. Extraction was the last time I checked only economically viable at prices over 50 US a barrel.

As for the metorites allowing mantle degassing. That sort of thing is in the realm of people with underpants on their heads. Possible but highly unlikely.

Oil isn’t my field (although I’m recently and fairly well qualified to talk about it) but mantle volatile release definitely is!

33

[quote]lou21 wrote:

In terms of conventional fields (ie not shale oils or tar sands) there was one superfield (over 6 billion barrels) find in the last 20. The one off the coast of Brazil. This under at 2km water and 2.5km sediments. Extraction was the last time I checked only economically viable at prices over 50 US a barrel.
[/quote]

How much is a barrel now? $50 sounds pretty good right about now.

34

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
[/quote]

Actually, combining:

  1. What I think Lou may have been suggesting that the same mineral-catalyzed process may have occurred with methane produced by decomposition of organic matter by methanogenic bacteria, while omitting a restriction on this also occurring with primordial methane, and

  2. An opinion in Orion’s link that abiotic formulation of petroleum is real and some petroleum has been found of such origin, but most is from biological matter

might give a good overall answer.

The classical “heat and pressure and hundreds of thousands or millions of years” argument has I think never been anything but relying on handwaving to back up a claim, as opposed to relying on sound chemistry.[/quote]

Pretty much my thoughts. But I’d expect abiotic oil to be very very limited in extent and not the answer to the world’s shortage. And I still don’t believe the methane is primordial.

It’s true that whilst geologists learn where oil is, how to find it in a seismic survey etc- the how it forms bit was a bit sparsely discussed in my course. I always thought the chemists had it covered…

35

[quote]John S. wrote:

[quote]lou21 wrote:

In terms of conventional fields (ie not shale oils or tar sands) there was one superfield (over 6 billion barrels) find in the last 20. The one off the coast of Brazil. This under at 2km water and 2.5km sediments. Extraction was the last time I checked only economically viable at prices over 50 US a barrel.
[/quote]

How much is a barrel now? $50 sounds pretty good right about now.[/quote]

That’s the point. The end of the oil age won’t come as a sudden drying up and no one having any petrol in their cars. The peak oil idea - when related to some basic economics suggests that it will come (as we come towards the peak) as a first gradual then quite quickly a more rapid series of price hikes as production becomes more and more expenisive. A series of price spikes like we had the summer before last are expected- playing havoc with the economic cycles.

When world production has actually peaked we will actually still have half the world reserve in the ground. BUT supply rates will not be able to rise to meet demand. The price will rise rather rapidly.

Given that a major control upon economic growth is the price of energy this is scary stuff.

36

[quote]John S. wrote:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34233
[/quote]

This article mentioned coal and it appears that estimates of the amount of coal we have left are widely inflated. Also, coal is of varying grades: anthracite is the highest, containing about half as much energy as the same weight of petroleum, while white lignite, the lowest grade has as little as 1/6th. The lower grade stuff also has impurities like sulfur that need to be removed.

Most of the higher grade stuff has been mined already and due to the low qualities of what is available, some studies put the amount of energy to harvest and process it as double what will be produced by burning it.

Paraphrased from: ‘Coal: Research and Development to Support National Energies Policy’ by Corale L. Brierley, et al. Published in 2007

37

[quote]John S. wrote:

How much is a barrel now? $50 sounds pretty good right about now.[/quote]

$77.95

Wikipedia said the peak was in 1980 at an adjusted to current value of $91 per barrel. That site had the 1 year forecast at $90 per barrel, which can’t be good.

38

[quote]theuofh wrote:

[quote]John S. wrote:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34233
[/quote]

This article mentioned coal and it appears that estimates of the amount of coal we have left are widely inflated. Also, coal is of varying grades: anthracite is the highest, containing about half as much energy as the same weight of petroleum, while white lignite, the lowest grade has as little as 1/6th. The lower grade stuff also has impurities like sulfur that need to be removed.

Most of the higher grade stuff has been mined already and due to the low qualities of what is available, some studies put the amount of energy to harvest and process it as double what will be produced by burning it.

Paraphrased from: ‘Coal: Research and Development to Support National Energies Policy’ by Corale L. Brierley, et al. Published in 2007

[/quote]

There may be different qualities of coal, but what we see in the graph of fossil fuels we have more then enough for the time being.

As soon as we start drilling we will find a lot more oil. As we get more oil the cheaper oil becomes, the more money oil companies will put into alternative fuels research and the better our lives become. Isn’t life great when we follow Capitalism.

39

[quote]theuofh wrote:

[quote]John S. wrote:

How much is a barrel now? $50 sounds pretty good right about now.[/quote]

$77.95

Wikipedia said the peak was in 1980 at an adjusted to current value of $91 per barrel. That site had the 1 year forecast at $90 per barrel, which can’t be good. [/quote]

So if we can get oil for $50 a barrel, and right now it is 77.95 then it is cheaper to start drilling.

40

[quote]John S. wrote:
As soon as we start drilling we will find a lot more oil. As we get more oil the cheaper oil becomes, the more money oil companies will put into alternative fuels research and the better our lives become. Isn’t life great when we follow Capitalism.
[/quote]

That book I read, ‘The Long Descent’, the chapter 2 was the called “The Stories We Tell Ourselves”. Its the myth of progress and how science is the new Jesus coming to free us from all our sins.

I’ve heard ideas ranging from back yard nuclear reactors to wirelessly transmitting energy from solar panels in space. Uranium is a finite resource too and if we won’t give it to Iran who very well could be interested in pursuing nuclear energy given all this oil crap, I wonder how many people will get a mini reactor in there backyards. I’m a radar engineer and power transmitted through space has a loss of range^2, so even if you had a massive solar area in outer space, it still probably isn’t efficient enough to beam it down to earth with enough left over to do anything. If people are worried about cell phones causing cancer, I wonder how many studies will have to be performed concerning the safety of high power rf waves. Ethanol won’t work and what happened to all the predictions of and research and development put into hydrogen power cars. That stuff was in the news, popular science, and a bunch of other magazines over 2 years ago and I haven’t heard it mentioned since.

Or the same thing could happen that happened in the 80s, where there was a big movement towards developing new energy sources, then we just drilled more oil and said well forget that its not a problem anymore.

If we have 300 years of oil left, fair enough we may have a shot, given that it stays an issue and something productive actually comes of it. But, If we are at peak or near peak, I think we may be completely fucked.

Marx’s criticism of capitalism was that it is impossible with finite resources and infinite consumption. This might be the case, however this predicament may bring up something new. Capitalism, socialism, communism, whatever may be outdated paradigms and strategies that do not fit the current model.

I’m going to end my rant there, but people have too much faith in science and technology, that may come at the expense of missing the opportunity to act at the right time.