[Shinrei]

Since my other thread is gone, I thought I'd share this and add more doom and gloom to my other thread on the world economy. Enjoy and begin building your bunker and supply of canned goods (and ammunition).
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http://www.silverbea...twillweeat.html

[Cold Iron]

There are alternative sources of oil such as shale and tar sands as well as abandoned wells that will become economical to access once the price has risen over certain thresholds. Unfortunately this will not be the apocalypse some of us are hoping for.

That being said, it will still devastate the poor due to rising food prices.

[paladin]

we are fairly far from peak oil if it ever happens. deep sea oil exploration is revealing deposits all the time and the US has a humungous amount of untapped reserves as well as the largest shale oil reserves in the world. due to other fuels becoming more viable, i doubt we'll see it in my lifetime.

[Lost Marine]

That's one of the drawbacks of urbanization though, too many mouths that don't have easy access to food or the means to grow it.

Also whenever I hear someone say a war is "just about oil" I always wonder if they understand the implications of any industrialized nation running out of oil before alternate technology is in place. It's like saying that breathing is "just about air".

[paladin]

spaceballs tries to take over a planet for air

[Lost Marine]

paladin;247968 said:

spaceballs tries to take over a planet for air

Yep, cause it's essential to their way of life.

[Cold Iron]

paladin;247940 said:

we are fairly far from peak oil if it ever happens. deep sea oil exploration is revealing deposits all the time and the US has a humungous amount of untapped reserves as well as the largest shale oil reserves in the world. due to other fuels becoming more viable, i doubt we'll see it in my lifetime.

No. Expensive alternative sources are not included in the calculation. Peak oil is about now. Fuel from sources that cost 3 or more times as much to extract is not what we conventionally know as oil. "New oil" can be thus threated as an almost entirely separate commodity.

[paladin]

wells are already living long beyond what people thought and like any technology, cost goes down as investment and use goes up. theres vast potential for oil in russia(especially serbia, which is becoming more accessible), and they are still budding as an international oil power. venezuela has large reserves that remain untapped and tied in red tape or poorly ran. us hardly touches their large alaskan reserves and deep sea drilling in the caribbean is constantly growing.

peak oil is when oil starts to decline/plateau, and we have yet to see any decline or plateau based on wells running dry. the only major factors we've seen have been economic and social factors, such as war(persian gulf) and government interference(russia, venezuela, usa) and opec changing output to boost or lower prices.

shale oil is seperate, but that can change if a cost effective process is developed. it could also change the balance of power internationally since the US and Israel have large shale reserves.

[Shinrei]

I don't know paladin, from what I've read the alaskan reserves are a barely drop in the bucket. Graphs I've seen show that oil discoveries have greatly tailed off in recent decades, the last significant spike occurring in the early 90's (which was about half the previous spike around 1980). The main issue is, the world's demand grows considerably every year with no signs of genuinely slowing down, especially with the economic expansion going on in China and India. So new discoveries are down, while demand rises. The crunch could come sooner than you think.

[Dag]

paladin;248121 said:

theres vast potential for oil in russia(especially serbia, which is becoming more accessible), and they are still budding as an international oil power.

Slightly off topic, but...

I am sorry, maybe it is just a matter of unfortunate formulation, but I do not understand what you mean to say... Serbia is not a part of Russia and it certainly has no "vast" potential for oil (it has some oil and gas reseves, but not in amounts that could be called "signifficant").

Serbia is, however, a strategic point for transport of Russian/Caspian oil and gas to Europe, being located at the heart of Balkans and thus so to say "in the way" of major oil/gas pipeline routes that are currently being planed (PEOP, Nabucco, Southstream, etc) and which are supposed to offer an alternative to currently existing pipelines that bring oil/gas supplies to Europe. Through the aquisition of Serbian oil monopolist NIS by Gazprom (the deal should be officially signed today in Moscow), Russia has managed to secure for itself a strategic advantage in the region. But, as already said, the focus is on transport of oil/gas (and maybe setting up and developing the refining industry), but not on exploration and extraction.

[paladin]

the potential estimates put it up to about 20billion barrels, with a mean around 15billion or so. not a huge stockpile, but include it with the 20billion barrels the us has already and thats not too bad(the us does not include wells that it is not actively pumping in their totals). venezuela is at about 60billion in proven reserves and is the largest in the western hemisphere.

[paladin]

Dag;248256 said:

Slightly off topic, but...

I am sorry, maybe it is just a matter of unfortunate formulation, but I do not understand what you mean to say... Serbia is not a part of Russia and it certainly has no "vast" potential for oil (it has some oil and gas reseves, but not in amounts that could be called "signifficant").

Serbia is, however, a strategic point for transport of Russian and Caspian oil and gas to Europe, being located at the heart of Balkans and thus so to say "in the way" of major oil/gas pipeline routes that are currently being planed (PEOP, Nabucco, Southstream, etc) and which are supposed to offer an alternative to currently existing pipelines that bring oil/gas supplies to Europe. Through the aquisition of Serbian oil monopolist NIS by Gazprom (the deal should be officially signed today in Moscow), Russia has managed to secure for itself a strategic advantage in the region. But, as already said, the focus is on transport of oil/gas (and maybe setting up and developing the refining industry), but not on exploration and extraction.

i meant siberia. spelling error, sorry. (guesses at somewhere of 30-40billion barrels i believe, but relatively unexplored)

[Shinrei]

Current global oil consumption is estimated between 75 to 82 million barrels of oil a day. If we assume the lower number, 75, that's 27,375,000,000 (27 billion) barrels used in one year. So, a reserve of 20 billion barrels will be gone in LESS THAN A YEAR.

Sure, not all of the oil used comes from a single place, but you can't put out 20 billion barrels in reserve as some sort of savior statistic...

And remember, global demand increases every year.

[Wanderer]

I found an article describing ( with some slightly insane ideas towards the end) the effects of the Oil Peak. The date of the peak that I found stated that the world , as a whole, would reach a point where the oil industry begins to see more demand than supply somewhere between 2008-2018.

I personally haven't read enough source material to fully believe in the catastrophe, but I don't doubt that when the Oil Peak comes the world will indeed go down the toilet.

The Oil Wars - has a nice ring to it.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

[cerveza_fiesta]

interesting article wanderer. Definitely a pessimistic view, but not unbelievable at all.

[Wanderer]

I don't fully agree with the scale of the catastrophe, but I definitley think the world will change drastically if , or when, this Oil Peak happens.

Something along the lines of " My Country Needs Oil More than Your Country"

* Countries proceed to " Put 'em up " and have at it.*

[Mentalist]

wow, talk about pessimistic.. not that I highly disagree...
Once again, glad I'll be back in the Breadbasket of Europe when this happens..

Incidentally, UA has a ridiculous amount of coal. My father (a geologyst), once said that UA has enough coal to sustain itself fro bout 200 years... the only problem being, we'd all die of the unclean air..

Anyways, if economy's gonna start collapsing, land will become key again.If money economy mfails and you have food shortages, you'll have no choice but to go back to basicks..

[Shinrei]

"When" is the big question, not "if". Even if the "when" is 100 years from now, it still has to happen sometime as oil (or rather oil we can tap) is a finite resource.

I personally hope for a scenario where other forms of energy and technological advances allows for life for the most part to continue on as is. It would be a real shame if the information age died because we can't get the energy to run our computers. Also, I wish we could stop using plastic so uncaringly.

Some of the things of the top of my head that I see the human race having to give up no matter what the peak oil scenario is:

Air travel. Cars that run entirely on gasoline. Fruits/Vegetables and other produce that are out of season (too costly to truck that stuff around).

This is why I'm a big supporter of "buy local" campaigns. Buy a water purifier instead of buying platic bottle water from some far away local. The more infrastructure we can develop around local enterprise, the better.

The air travel one would make me really sad if it happens in my life time, as I'm planning on settling overseas from my family.

[Mentalist]

You'd have to get used to looong boat travels then...

[RodeoRanch]

Ugh. Gas prices are going to make traveling this sumer suck.