JDY Fiction - Leonard Dobbs - Peak Oil Entrepreneu

[Jerry D Young]

"Leonard Dobbs - Peak Oil Entrepreneur" copyright 2008 by Jerry D Young

Comments welcome.

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[Jerry D Young]

And the .doc version:

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[patience]

Thanks! I'm really glad to read a story with Peak Oil as the subject problem. I've looked at this situation since the Arab Oil Embargo that impacted us in 1974, when I worked in a GM plant as an engineer in Kokomo, Indiana. Unemployment hit 24.6% that Spring, and that was just a taste of what it would be like with a serious shortage.

According to some reports I have read, world oil production peaked in 2005-6 and has plateaued since then. Most of the old major oil fields are in decline at varying rates of drop. Mexico's Cantarell fields are dropping precipitously. There is pretty good reason to assume that the main Saudi fields are peaked and may be declining, or will soon.

That leaves the US in a tight spot, with Canada being our main supplier and Mexico as our #2 supplier, if I got it right. Small wonder we have contention in the Mideast, huh?

This story could be on the 6:00 o'clock news any time now. I hope we do some of the right things to deal with it, but I have small hopes of that. I am convinced that the main reason that we haven't seen dramatic oil price increases is the depressed economy keeping consumption low. That means that if we do get the economy going better, we will bump our economic heads on limited oil supply. It's not really about how much is left, but about how fast it is produced and brought to market, relative to demand.

Yours was a good rousing tale, and a very realistic possibility, IMHO. Thanks again.

[Jerry D Young]

It is one of the things I hope I'm very wrong about.

[bunyip]

I'll play devils advocate (or at least advocate another POV anyway).

The middle east has caused lots of trouble. What if the strategy was to use up the middle east oil and then move on? Don't think that is a formal stategy, but if we do it that way, might be for the best in the end.

There is a cost in shipping crude half way round the world. ANWR (eg) has got to be cheaper!.

There's Canadian oil sands, Venezuelan heavy crude, Then there are the US shale oil reserves (we have lots of that too, as do places in Europe).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves

The Germans made synthetic petroleum/gasoline from coal during WW2 (Fischer-Tropsch process (Sth Africa still does - look up SASOL).

But the most interesting thing on the horizon is stuff called 'oilgae'. Using low grade water (sewage even), to grow specially selected algae. lookmit up.

It's certainly not all gloom and doom once peak oil does actually get here.

(We haven't even really started into the Timor Sea oil reserves yet either).

(Oil from coal via F-T process - have a look at the coal reserves in our Bowen and Sydney basins - just for starters. Or the Gladstone shale oil deposits.

[patience]

bunyip,

I hope you are right about using up the mideast oil first, whether it was planned or not. The problem I see with oil is higher cost. As we turn to less conventional sources of oil, the cost of extracting and refining it is higher. Higher cost at the pump hits the world's economies where it hurts, right at a time when we are all suffering to various degrees from economic troubles.

Big investors play games with oil the same as they do with all major commodities, which I think often causes more price swings than the supply and demand issues.

I see the oil problem as one of vulnerability. Any short term disruption for any reason is big trouble, because it takes so long to ramp up supply, even if you know where to find it.

I see the oil problem as one part of a larger picture, but all interconnected, since we are so dependent on oil for most aspects of our lives: food, transport, heating, electrical generation, chemicals, plastics and manufacturing feedstocks just off the top of my head.

It reminds me of living in a "one job town", where one industry controls the fate of everyone. Bad position to be in.