Chief energy economist says oil reserves are drying up more quickly than previously thought

Dr Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), says his agency's recent study of 800 oil fields around the world (representing three quarter's of the world's oil reserves) reveal that we are facing a global energy catastrophe even sooner than researchers thought.

The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.

This means the pressure will be on to start using enivonmentally-disastrous tar sands in Canada.

Catastrophic oil shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world's top energy economist

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Uniquack

I’ve been following peak oil for 10 years, and recently, I’ve come to have some more hope about the energy situation, in the midst of the financial calamities we are seeing now. The ride will be bumpy, but the energy picture has turned around a lot with the discover of much greater US reserves of natural gas. It’s quite possible, though expensive, for the US to stop importing oil and replace it with natural gas, especially if it starts by converting its trucking, mass transit and fleet vehicles. See this recent discussion at The Oil Drum: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5615
This isn’t a permanent solution, but if we get another, say 50 years of lifeline, I hope we’ll have the time to figure out technological solutions to the energy problem. Who knows what it will be like in 50 years? If we’re not nuking each other into the stoneage, that is.
Anonymous

Canadians love to piss on Americans? Excuse me? Do you ave any idea how the rest of the world views us, and how freaking arrogant we come across? Piss on us is probably the least we deserve.
spazzm

Nuclear is relatively safe and clean. And by relative I mean relative to coal.

To get X amount of energy from coal, far more must be mined than from Uranium or Thorium, which means far higher risks of mining accidents and far worse environmental consequences.

In addition, coal plants actually produce more radioactive waste than nuclear plants. Radioactive waste from coal plants goes up the smokestack or into ash piles, not into nicely contained concentrated waste barrels.

Finally, coal plants also spew out lots of other pollutants, notably mercury. Mercury pollution is the reason pregnant women shouldn’t eat certain types of fish (e.g. tuna) and the rest of us has to limit our intake.

Once oil becomes expensive, the choice for many will be between coal and nuclear. I don’t think there’s any doubt about what’s the right choice.

Of course, it would be nice if we could get all our energy from solar, hydro, wind and unicorn farts, but that’s not looking likely any time soon.
Anonymous

Using pebble-bed nuclear plants to charge electic motor vehicles would make a lot of sense.

To bad Barry HO pulled the rug out from under the only US firm doing anything to increase the supply of nuclear fuel.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/07/29/usec-recoils-after-loan-falls-through.aspx

PS. Don’t want to hear any of the usual “sky is falling” canards about the “dangers” of nuclear power – any alternative is clearly more dangerous.
nosehat

“thought”
Takuan

this should suddenly make the northern British Columbia pipeline bombings more newsworthy.
teufelsdroch

@21 uniquack:

The problem is, even assuming we switch over to carbon-free energy that puts the carbon per joule at half of natural gas (the IPCC ‘business as usual’ model)–carbon emissions still quadruple by the end of the century.

@15 montreal:

On a watt-per-research-dollar basis, nuclear is the best performing carbon-free energy. By far. Pebble bed reactors with breeder reactors are also safe and clean, by any standard. Self-described ecologists who oppose nuclear just don’t grok the numbers–nuclear must be in the mix.

A nuclear plant DOES cost about $5/watt to build, whereas coal costs more like $1/watt. Wind competes if and only if somebody else is buying the transmission lines: at some point somebody in the US is going to take superconducting transmission seriously, which would be a trillion-dollar project.

But, unfortunately we have to wait for the himalayas to melt before anyone starts working at it. How long do you guys think that will take?
nosehat

“than”

(Feel free to delete these if you fix the headline)
Takuan

effort into stopping waste and increasing efficiency is better than building potential Chernobyls.
Anonymous

We’re already using the environmentally disastrous tar sands. Why do you think Fort McMurray exists?
Takuan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
rechnen

So why isn’t President Obama pushing for nuclear power? It’s safe, clean and efficient. Wind and solar are nice and work well in certain areas, but it’s nuclear that will get us off of fossil fuels.

If his motto is “be more like France”, they produce the majority of their electricity from nuclear power.
Anonymous

Once you have energy, you can make oil.

There’s a plant in southern missouri making oil from turkey blood:

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
Takuan

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/toxic/toxic-alberta-1-of-3
Takuan

nuclear power is not “safe”, it is “safe” to a degree of “safe” that is highly debatable. Nor is it “clean”, nor is it “efficient”.
Takuan

http://www.edmontonsun.com/money/2009/09/16/10927466-sun.html
Rindan

So why isn’t President Obama pushing for nuclear power? It’s safe, clean and efficient. Wind and solar are nice and work well in certain areas, but it’s nuclear that will get us off of fossil fuels.

You do realize that nuclear power is of ZERO help when it comes to reducing dependence on oil, don’t you? All of the worlds oil supply could vanish tomorrow and the lights would stay on in the US and your electric bill wouldn’t budge. We don’t use oil to power the grid. The US gets 1.4% of its grid power from oil, and that paltry 1.4% is just generators turning on occasionally to meet the occasional very high peak loads and are easily replaced with natural gas or any number of quickly turning on power generation sources.

Suggesting nuclear power as a way to reduce dependence on oil is like suggesting someone go eat a pizza because their hair is long. You can eat a pizza but your hair will still be long.
rAMPANTiDIOCY

“…than thought” by whom? geologists have known this for a long time.
Shay Guy

Technically, he said “fossil fuels,” not “oil.”
dderidex

Technically, he said “fossil fuels,” not “oil.”

I think we can assume that the “800 oil fields” surveyed don’t contribute appreciably to coal production. Which is still where most of our power generation comes from.

So, indeed, ‘go nuclear’ is not the solution to this problem. Unless you are also suggesting a requirement that all cars go to electric-charged-from-the-wall designs. Then it would at least link the topics.
fnc

The trouble with oil is that (as the article mentions) the more it costs, the more oil there is worth extracting. There are a lot of known reserves today that are just sitting there but with rising cost and advancing technology will get extracted in the future. I’m more afraid of how much oil is left to go through than by running out of it. So I don’t think the oil economy will crash, but it will undergo a bumpy forced landing, hopefully to the betterment of our air quality. I’m guessing the electric cars we see today represent the thin edge of the wedge as far as electrification of personal transportation goes. That leaves us with the problem of electrical generation and transmission down the *ahem* road, but that’s a problem that will be far easier to deal with than multiple countries fussing over dwindling oil reserves.
Bloodboiler

Something tells me this disaster is going to hit the world the same way current economical retardation. Price of oil and oil company stocks are just going up and up, until one day there’s no more oil left.
Ernunnos

It’s worse than that. Peak oil isn’t ten years in the future. It’s five years in the past. We’ve been on a plateau of 84-85 million barrels a day since late 2004. And the world population keeps increasing.

And we’re already seeing the effects. The housing bubble was a last desperate attempt to maintain a cheap-oil standard of living by taking on debt and cashing out equity. That’s gone now too.
Anonymous

Or maybe this is just a way to get energy prices in the stock market up again by re-igniting the fears of scarcity.

Remember that many people stand to gain if this thought becomes common.
Anonymous

Grid electricity comes from two sources, basically: coal and nuclear. Yes, there is a small component of propane/gas. Solar and wind power with current technology are geographically limited.

So, since TANSTAAFL, the choices are:

1) Stop using electricity. Not happening.
2) Take (lots of) air pollution from coal.
3) Take (quite small) waste storage from nuclear.

Absolutely we should also work on improving all of these. Still, for now nuclear is our best bet, mathematically, provided the plants are run by the right people.

I don’t know about France, but the biggest meltdown in Canada happened 40-odd years ago, and not only did the containment system keep it inside the facility, it taught us how to be even more cautious in future.

Giving Homer Simpson the job has been the cause of the worst nuclear disasters, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
CanuckView

So much talk about Nuclear Power from Uranium.
The reality is that Uranium is a FOSSIL FUEL!
The supply of Uranium will be depleted and the very expensive Nuclear Power Plants will sit idle.

The discussions about Peak Oil seem to argue the point about when oil will run out. The end may be sooner than we all realize … but the fact is, oil will run out and probably in one lifespan
( ~80 years ).

Please see Dr. Albert Bartlett ” The most important video you’ll ever see! ” on YouTube.
JT Montreal

As Ontario found out, Nuclear energy, while reasonably safe and reasonably clean, it’s not worth it economically.

The problem is to build it such that the reactor is SAFE, the fuel delivery and storage is SAFE and CLEAN, and the waste product processing and storage is SAFE and CLEAN, you have to spend a lot of money. And you’ll have to keep spending a lot of money to keep all of this SAFE and CLEAN.

Suddenly, flooding a few valleys or annoying farmers in flat places doesn’t seem such a bad idea anymore.
teufelsdroch

@32 the $10-100 trillion number is absolutely unavoidable for anyone who looks at the problem. Unfortuantely it is not dependent on what form the carbon-free energy plants take. It’s gonna be spent.
mdh

rechnen, that’s two strawmen in one statement. I’ve never heard (or seen evidence to believe) that A) buclear power is clean, or B) that obama wants to do “like France” does.

Your caricature of our president and the issues before him saddens me, and misinforms you.
ivan256

You do realize that nuclear power is of ZERO help when it comes to reducing dependence on oil, don’t you?

To the contrary, converting to nuclear power would cause a significant reduction in oil consumption.

Nuclear power reduces the upwards price pressure of additional demand for electricity. In other words, we could use far more electricity without driving the price up significantly. That means we could heat homes in the northern part of the US using electricity (nuclear) instead of heating them with oil. Spending 10 years investing in grid reliability and nuclear power plants could cause a double digit percentage point drop in oil consumption *and* reduce our coal burning to near zero. It would be a spectacular environmental win.
ivan256

I’d also point out that a conversion for Coal to Nuclear is extremely unlikely, because the most recent election, and likely the next election, won’t be won without the votes of coal workers in Pennsylvania. Given the choice between seriously advocating to save the environment, or winning a national election, every winning politician will have chosen the latter by definition.
Anonymous

Uranium isn’t a fossil fuel, but it is a non-renewable fuel. Fortunately, if we could get our act together, there appears to be sufficient fissile materials (Uranium and Thorium, primarily) for many hundreds of years of the current consumption rates.

It is unrealistic to assume we will not continue increasing the rate of use, but we would at least have more time and increased awareness of our dependence on non-renewables, and so might possibly develop renewable power sources.
mn_camera

Anyone who advocates one thing, whatever it is, as a way out of this, is fooling themselves.

What we will need to do is deploy multiple solutions in locations where they make sense, (yes, including nuclear) and continue to innovate in cleaning up the use of coal. Technologies for this are in development and some are promising, as well as things like algae-derived biodiesel, and while there will inevitably be adjustments, the doomsayers as well as the single-solution advocates are wrong.
teufelsdroch

@26 yesh there was 40 years’ worth of developed oil fields 40 years ago, and today, and there will be 40 years from now. Mark’s second link (implying that lack of oil will stall the economy in 1-2 years) is alarmist nonsense for this reason.

The first link is quite right, though. There’s plenty of oil left: but it’s trapped in environmentally or politically ugly places. Canadians love to piss on Americans but the fact is they’re our #1 source of oil and they’re doing a lot of sightly things to their country to get our money.
Anonymous

While I agree The Nuke Plants are the way to go, My back of the napkin math says it would cost $50 Trillion to make the switch, Not something that will be done in a year or even a decade, And that’s if we start today.

Req. Disclosure, I work for the Oil Companies.

Alot has changed in the industry since the Tar sands were popular. Shale oil Really has come down in price. It’s expensive, But There’s Tons of it, It’s here in america to boot. As long as oil stays in the $75 range, This means gas prices will be about 2.80 a gallon. These Might be low estimates but once the techniques are perfected the costs will come down.

It takes 2 Technologies to makes this Happen, one is here The other is very close.

1. Directional Drilling – This isn’t the slant drilling Iraq invaded over. Computerized well planning and Modern downhole motors and sensors have made it possible to drill 150Ms through a 10M thick reservoir, Truly Horizontal. This does take a pretty modern rig, So these only really work on bigger projects.

2. In-sito Conversion is still in the early stages from my understanding, But if it works it really will drive the cost of shale oil to the above mentioned prices. The Main Concern with this is it’s not as enviromentally friendly as a normal well, But It’s not nearly as bad as Tar Sands.
Anonymous

“[G]lobal production is likely to peak in about 10 years.”

That’s from the linked-to article – and I think it’s the most important point in this discussion.

The “Cash for Clunkers” program just got 250,000 gas guzzler junked in 10 days. So it seems like our 5 million most gas-guzzling vehicles could be eliminated for another $20 billion. (And who knows what other energy savers will come out of Obama’s push for new green energies.)

But the real problem with “peak oil” is it assumes that even after supplies decrease and oil prices rise – we’ll still do nothing. In fact, people reduce their energy consumption when prices rise, a lot of alternate energy sources become more cost-competitive when oil is more expensive, etc. (Here’s an economist who basically makes the same point.)

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=76325