Unconventional Oil and the Gift of the Undulating Peak (original) (raw)
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Peak Oil: Assessment, Critique of the Current Solutions, and Proposition of Alternatives
Energy and Economy are tightly bound to each other, primarily due to physical reasons. Indeed, energy is the unit measuring the quantity of transformation in a system, and the economic activities transform resources into useful goods and services. Due to transport, oil is the ultimate source of energy for a globalised economy. In this context, the peak of oil, corresponding to the moment when the global oil production reaches a maximum, and then declines, might be a critical issue. This thesis studies what the European Commission might plan in this context. In a first chapter the expectable future of oil supply is exposed. It appears that the global oil production is likely to peak before the end of the current decade. Moreover, the conventional oil production peaked in 2006, and the European production peaked in 2000 (declined by 46% in 2011). Besides, the post-peak decline rate is around 6% per year, and at least 16 out of the 20 biggest oil fields have already passed their peak (these 20 fields represent 25% of the oil production). Then, the second chapter is dedicated to the impacts of an energy shortage on the socio-economic system, and to the solutions planned. Based on the academic literature, the impacts are assessed from historical events during which societies suffered from a huge energy crunch (North Korea and Cuba after the Soviet Union demise). Furthermore, the historical oil price is analysed, especially the price elasticity (based on empirical data from EIA and World Bank). It results that the volume of oil produced is almost unresponsive to the price since 2004-5. Moreover, based on the fiscal break-even of Saudi Arabia and on the carrying capacity of China, the range of future prices is [100;120] dollars per barrel, while the carrying capacity of western societies is around 90 dollars. Finally, the chapter discusses the technological solutions (liquid fuels production from coal, gas and biomass, mainly) and their limits. Apart from the negative impacts in terms of greenhouse gases and potential scarcities (lithium, lands, coal and gas), the most problematic limit is probably the EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested), which is decreasing. It means that the energy surplus available for the society is shrinking. An increasing amount of resources (energy included) is diverted for the sake of oil and gas industry. The last chapter describes the reasons why we cannot rely on decoupling and dematerialisation, to maintain economic growth while the energy supply diminishes. In particular, based on empirical data (World Bank and International Labour Organization) the absence of negative correlation between the energy consumption per capita and the share of labour force in services is evidenced. Besides, the decoupling effect has never been observed at the global scale, and the partial one is controversial. Consequently, another paradigm is proposed and briefly discussed, namely degrowth, based on the dedicated academic literature. Finally, the last section gathers some unusual proposals, which the European Commission might examine to cope with the Peak Oil, without economic growth.
Change is coming faster than most can appreciate, much less plan for. As time passes, new technology has emerged and it has radically changed lifestyles. Other changes such as an increase in warming temperatures are already causing mass migrations and the displacement of ever-increasing populations into mega-cities. An important, but barely noticed change is that the fossil fuel industries (that have led the unprecedented economic growth and technical progress during the last 250 years) are starting to run out of affordable energy sources. The objective of this paper is to examine one of these industries: oil; and the possible changes to be seen in the next decade or two
The brink of oil and gas energy: a great loss?
2015
There are many persistent local and international conflicts in oil producing countries due to power struggles among the leaders, to have a total control on oil and gas supplies, etc. These conflicts have disrupted the oil and gas production and supplies which at one point saw the world?s oil price hit an all time high of US$147.27 on 11 July 2008. The high oil price was due to escalated demand than supply, and in reality there is no shortage of conventional oil and gas resources. In fact, the Earth has nearly 1.688 trillion barrels of proven crude oil, which will last 53.3 years at current rates of extraction. The problem lies in produceability and accessibility to those resources. Currently the oil and gas industry is facing a very challenging period with the world?s oil price has dropped sharply from above US$100 per barrel to US$50 per barrel as of 5 November 2015 due to the slowing demand from China, the United States of America, Japan, and Europe. As a result, many local and in...
Up until recently Peak Oil was a major discussion point crossing from academic research into mainstream journalism, yet it now attracts far less interest. This paper evaluates the reasons for this and on-going relevance of Peak Oil, considering variations in predictive dates for the phenomenon supported by technological, economic and political issues. Using data from agencies, the validity of each position is assessed looking at reserves, industrial developments and alternative fuels. The complicating issue of demand is also considered. The conclusions are that, supported by commercial interests, an unsubstantiated belief in market and technical solutions, and a narrow paradigmatic focus, critics of Peak Oil theory have used unreliable reserve data, optimistic assumptions about utilisation of unconventional supplies and unrealistic predictions for alternative energy production to discredit the evidence that the resource-limited peak in the world's production of conventional oil has arrived, diverting discussion from what should be a serious topic for energy policy: how we respond to decreasing supplies of one of our most important energy sources.
Review: Gordon, Jon. "Unsustainable Oil: Facts, Counterfacts and Fictions"
In the introduction to Unsustainable Oil: Facts, Counterfacts and Fictions, Jon Gordon offers a sub-heading that works as a fairly straightforward summation of the book's concerns: " Literature's Counterfactual Response to All the Factual Bullshit. " Gordon's analysis of the literary, economic and political representations of the Albertan bitumen extraction and refinement processes is grounded in discursive and rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis allows Gordon, and by extension his readers, to get past the bullshit – not just in the sense of getting to the " real " facts that bullshit tends to obscure, but in the sense of moving towards ways of knowing that are, unlike bullshit, directly related to the matter and material at hand. Unsustainable Oil argues that literature provides opportunities for imagining the ethical, ecological and social unknowns that are routinely excised by dominant narratives that appeal to the familiar Western tradition of tying reason and rationality to authority and, ultimately, prosperity.
The Capitalist Pressure to Extract, an Ecological and Political Economy of Extreme Oil in Canada.
Barely five years ago, the debate about humanity's energy future was still organized by the paradigm of "peak oil." That is, the existence of a relative threshold beyond which the planetary consumption of oil would grow more quickly than the advances in new methods of extraction within a given margin of economic viability. 1 The end of the oil era was fast approaching, as the reserves would eventually run dry. 2 The peak oil paradigm garnered two kinds of responses. On one side, those who were convinced of the necessity to get away from oil advocated a transition toward a new energy base consisting of renewables and/or toward much less energy-intensive societies. 3 Others, particularly the stakeholders in the hydrocarbon industry, claimed that we were far from a "peak," because the reserves of hydrocarbons were actually much larger than we thought if we included the vast potential of unconventional oil sources in the form of fracked gas and oil, the tar sands, certain deposits of coal and certain deposits of offshore oil and gas, along with the conventional oil reserves. These sources of hydrocarbons, the existence of which had been known for a very long time, suddenly became recoverable with the rise in the price of oil and gas in the early 2000s. And in fact, history has tended to side with the industry rather than the transition advocates, who watched with some astonishment as the prices rose -in keeping with the peak oil model -producing effects that were the complete opposite of what their theory predicted. The impact of demand overtaking supply, combined with geopolitical factors such as the two Gulf wars certainly translated into an increase in prices. However, this increase, rather than having an effect on demand by pushing energy consumers toward renewable sources and even technology that is more energy-efficient (as was the case during the last big energy crises in 1973 and 1978), played out on supply instead, stimulating the production of the so-called "unconventional" forms of oil, the extraction of which had become economically viable at the new heights of price per barrel. The global exponential increase in oil consumption has not been stopped by the equally rapid increase in prices. Instead, the reality since the 2010s has been a price ceiling and then a drop as these new sources of oil entered the market, which has allowed the consumption of oil to continue rising at a brisk pace. The price mechanism sent the wrong message: as the rate of increase in consumption accelerated faster than the rate of increase of extraction, prices moved upwards as expected 4 , but at a certain price threshold, the quantity of recoverable oil increased suddenly. Rather than telling us that the wells were running dry, the increase in prices promised abundance and pushed the pressure for a change of our energy base into the mists of the distant future. 5
A Doubtful Hope: Resource Affect in a Future Oil Economy
special issue “Visions of Environmental Futures”, ed. Jessica Barnes (April 2016)
In global debates about natural resource extraction, affect has played an increasingly prominent, if somewhat nameless, role. This article proposes a theorization of resource affect both as an intrinsic element of capitalist dynamics and an increasingly problematized object of corporate, government, and third sector practice. Drawing on ethnographic research in São Tomé and Príncipe (STP), I explore the affective horizons generated by the prospect of hydrocarbon exploration: a doubtful hope comprised of visions of material betterment, personal and collective transformation, as well as anticipations of failure, friction, and discontent. I also examine to the multitude of oil-related campaigns, activities, and programmes initiated by NGOs and global governance institutions in STP, animated by the specific conundrums presented by oil’s futurity. In light of this, I argue that what we see emerging is a new resource politics that revolves not simply around the democratic and technical aspects of resource exploitation but increasingly their associated affective dissonances and inconsistencies.