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## peak fossil fuels by 2017

Steve Mohr of Australia's Newcastle University has modelled the earth's fossil fuel reserves and come up with this massive study (warning: 13mb).

PROJECTION OF WORLD FOSSIL FUEL PRODUCTION WITH SUPPLY AND DEMAND INTERACTIONS
http://ogma.newcastle.edu.au:8080/vi...RCE4?view=true

Plenty of gems in the study, like current energy consumption being the equivalent of every person on earth having 90 slaves.

But headlines are that best guess for a production peak in fossil fuel is 2016–18 (at a total production rate of 509–525 EJ/y).

For the fossil fuels individually:

Coal - 2019 (212–214 EJ/y).

Oil - 2011-12 (179–188 EJ/y).

Natural gas - 2019-2062 (143-157 EJ/y).

Unconventional oil and gas will probably create a shoulder to the production curves, which will slow the fall-off the other side of their peaks, but will not change the peak dates themselves.

The most optimistic scenario for oil (p136 - case 2 dynamic) does see a second oil production peak circa 2110 that about matches the conventional oil peak. However this would have to be all shale oil (tar sands would be gone by then).

It is a little surprising that coal has so little time left (as China and India seemed to be rather relying on coal) and that gas will be such a big player in the final wash-up. On the other hand, it is what Mohr's group have learnt about Chinese coal consumption which is accelerating that peak.

On the optimistic side, Mohr notes, it sure puts a concrete limit on the carbon footprint issue .

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Slow internet connection, so it's gonna take me a bit to see the pdf. From your post though:

 The most optimistic scenario for oil (p136 - case 2 dynamic) does see a second oil production peak circa 2010 that about matches the conventional oil peak. However this would have to be all shale oil (tar sands would be gone by then).
Unless I missed something tar sands are not gone by 2010

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 Quote by Office_Shredder Unless I missed something tar sands are not gone by 2010
Peak production means you have burnt half, and still have another half to go. And the peak year is when the transition happens. So that is the year when you use the record amount. After that, production is forever in decline. And priced accordingly.

Tar sand is such an unattractive proposition that it has been left to last. We barely exploit tar sands yet but may have to ramp up fast (just as we are having to move into deep water drilling for conventional oil). However tar sands just plug the gap for a while.

Mohr's "best case" scenario shows no more conventional oil at all by 2100 and then no more useable tar sands by 2150. Shale oil would be pretty much done by 2180 - if you believe it can actually ever get started. Shale oil as a choice makes tar sands look pretty.

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## peak fossil fuels by 2017

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53509

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 Quote by apeiron On the optimistic side, Mohr notes, it sure puts a concrete limit on the carbon footprint issue .
I don't know about 'concrete' since as you stated above this is based on a model. What's optimistic about energy source depletion?

In general, since this posted in the political forum, did you intend this to be a political discussion?

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 Quote by apeiron Tar sand is such an unattractive proposition...
Unattractive how? Do you mean something other than the increased CO2 emissions?
 Tar sands and oil shale are much more expensive to extract useful oil from than light sweet crude. I also wanted to add, whether peak oil happens in 2017 or in 2037 or anything in between, it's still a blink of an eye when looking at civilization. Even if the peak doesn't happen quite that soon, the problem still needs to be addressed immediately.

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 Quote by apeiron Peak production means you have burnt half, and still have another half to go. And the peak year is when the transition happens. So that is the year when you use the record amount. After that, production is forever in decline. And priced accordingly. Tar sand is such an unattractive proposition that it has been left to last. We barely exploit tar sands yet but may have to ramp up fast (just as we are having to move into deep water drilling for conventional oil). However tar sands just plug the gap for a while.
I know what peak production means. The problem was that you had a typo and said 2010 instead of 2100

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 Quote by Jack21222 Tar sands and oil shale are much more expensive to extract useful oil from than light sweet crude.
I know that, but I don't know that tar sand oil reserves are 'unattractive' at a world crude price of $75/bbl. Without checking I though tar sands extraction ran around ~$50/bbl. Furthermore there's no missing geopolitical rogue state external cost with Canadian tar sand oil, as there is with imported Middle Eastern oil.

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 Quote by mheslep I know that, but I don't know that tar sands are 'unattractive' at a world crude price of $75/bbl. Without checking I though tar sands extraction ran around ~$50/bbl. Furthermore there's no missing geopolitical rogue state external cost with Canadian tar sand oil, as there is with imported Middle Eastern oil.
Oh, you just wait. Once the Canadians get filthy rich on tar sand money, there's no telling what they'll do

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 Quote by Office_Shredder Oh, you just wait. Once the Canadians get filthy rich on tar sand money, there's no telling what they'll do
Yes, could be, though I doubt they'll start flying airplanes into buildings containing bunches of Canucks arguing with Yanks about hockey.

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 Quote by Office_Shredder I know what peak production means. The problem was that you had a typo and said 2010 instead of 2100
Ahh, thanks. I've corrected that.

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 Quote by mheslep I know that, but I don't know that tar sand oil reserves are 'unattractive' at a world crude price of $75/bbl. Without checking I though tar sands extraction ran around ~$50/bbl.
Various snippets on tar sands.....

 At some point in the foreseeable future Canada's domestic energy needs and U.S. Energy policy are headed for an inevitable clash. Canada's conventional oil production is already in decline and will continue to decline. Natural gas production is barely holding despite an unprecedented amount of drilling in the last couple of years. And Canada's domestic energy needs are growing at 3-4% per year. It is a worrying prospect for Canadians as energy sovereignty was effectively surrendered under the NAFTA agreement. Canada's energy resources must, under the agreement, be open and accessible to corporate energy interests. To date, four of the five oil majors (Royal Dutch/Shell, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and TotalFina) have invested or committed themselves to invest billions of dollars in tar sands development. National oil companies have also staked their claim, ranging from Norway's Statoil to China's Sinopec.
 The Canadian region defined as "the Athabaska tar sands" covers an area over 140,000km2 of once virgin boreal forest, a larger area than the state of Florida. It is estimated to hold an equivalent 1.7 trillion barrels of oil or more. But of that only 150-200 billion barrels (about 10 percent) may be recoverable "with today's technology and under current and anticipated economic conditions".
 the tar sands as "Canada's dirty secret." The tar sands mines are each as big as 150 square miles and may be 300 feet deep, each leaving a tremendous scar on the landscape. Depending on the bitumen concentration, 4-6 tons of material must be moved and processed for every barrel of synthetic crude produced. Over 80 per cent of the established tar sands reserves are deeper and must be extracted in situ. Reclaiming and cleaning up the land damaged by tar sands operations will be a monumental task. According to the paper The Harm the Tar Sands Will Do, "after 40 years of mining, not a single operation has received a reclamation certificate from the government of Alberta. Suncor Energy's operation, the longest-operating tar sands mine, says it has reclaimed 858 hectares of land since starting operations in 1967, less than nine per cent of the land its operations have disturbed to date. Syncrude Canada, the largest daily producer of tar sands, says its operations have disturbed 18,653 hectares since 1978, with just 4,055 hectares of land reclaimed.
 In conclusion, tar sands are an economically and energetically viable, although hardly ideal, approach to maintaining liquid fuel supplies. The most severe problem is probably their local and global environmental impact, and they are already impacting Canadian CO2 releases significantly. But the tar sands are unlikely to make a large impact on overall supply of liquid fuels because their supply is likely to be rate, rather than total resource limited. If the maximum rate were to grow to about 2 billion barrels a year this would approximately meet Canada’s demand and could leave relatively little for export if Canada’s production of conventional oil continues to decline. Achieving even this rate of production from tar sands is uncertain because of growing concerns about environmental impacts downstream and insufficient hydrogen and water. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3839
 Quote by mheslep Furthermore there's no missing geopolitical rogue state external cost with Canadian tar sand oil, as there is with imported Middle Eastern oil.
Indeed and here is an estimate of that cost...

 The energy security cost to the U.S. of maintaining the uninterrupted flow of oil from this area is approximately $50 billion per year, and depending on various assumptions in several studies, can make the true cost of oil, counting military and energy security expenses, as high as$100-$150 per barrel. A study by the National Defense Council Foundation (NDCF) in 2003 provides the most in-depth examination of this subject since the 1987 study by the General Accounting office, which was prior to the first Gulf War. The NDCF study found that America spends$49.1 billion defending Persian Gulf oil, adding more than one dollar to the cost of a gallon of gasoline. The study further concluded that the overall economic toll of this dependence on foreign oil is staggering. The diversion of capital and investment resulting from spending nearly $100 billion annually on foreign oil, i.e. money that would otherwise be spent in the U.S., costs the U.S. economy more than 800,000 jobs per year, and costs federal, state and local government treasuries$13.4 billion in lost revenues. A National Defense Council Foundation study found that when taken together, the economic losses, the defense costs, and oil supply distribution costs bring the total cost of imported oil to approximately $250 billion per year, or close to$4.00 per gallon over the current purchase prices of gasoline. http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmg...ssue_Brief.pdf
The "good" news for the US is that it is rich in oil shale....

 While oil shale is found in many places worldwide, by far the largest deposits in the world are found in the United States in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.2 to 1.8 trillion barrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable; however, even a moderate estimate of 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from oil shale in the Green River Formation is three times greater than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.” Shale oil is guesstimated as approximately half as efficient to produce as oil from tar sands. American oil shales are also located in arid areas which are more ecologically sensitive than the tar sand areas of Canada. In conclusion, although shale oils represent a huge potential resource they have a history of “always a bridesmaid and never a bride” because as prices for oil increase the prices for extracting shale oil have increased as well. This history represents the very real problems of generating a useful product from the resource. The main problems include the distance of the shale from both the water and labor needed to extract it, the large environmental impact compared to conventional oil and the relatively low EROI . In addition, with both shale and tar sands there is some disagreement whether the in situ should be charged as an energy opportunity cost, (in the same sense that bagasse could be in sugar cane ethanol). Ultimately, the question is, if conventional oil becomes very scarce whether a resource such as shale oil will be developed regardless of cost. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3839
 We'll be pretty well screwed if we use up all the coal (unless someone figures out a great carbon sequestration method before then). The crazy thing is that the US still has subsidies for fossil fuels, and probably quite a bit more subsidies for fossil fuels than for renewables.

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 Quote by mheslep In general, since this posted in the political forum, did you intend this to be a political discussion?
Of course. What drives politics, economics and world affairs more than energy? It is the fundamental input. The British empire was built on its access to cheap coal, the US empire on its access to cheap oil.

Peak energy consumption will equal peak economic activity and peak global harmony (arguably ). After that, the game changes radically.

If it is to be BAU (business as usual) then we need a new cheap energy source in a very short time it seems. And how many reactors could we build, or turbines erect, in seven years?

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 Quote by apeiron And how many reactors could we build, or turbines erect, in seven years?
As many as we're willing to pay for of course. There were something like 9 million construction workers in 2009; a quarter of them are now unemployed. Assuming the federal government decides it's a no holds barred contest to break our fossil fuel usage, labor and material supplies are the limiting factor

Relying on

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/07/con...ear-power.html

Materials isn't the problem. If 1000 power plants takes up 10% of the world's annual concreete and steel supplies, over 5 years that's only 2% of the annual supply, which isn't bad. And if it takes 10,000 construction workers to build the thing in that time (a guess) that's 10 million jobs. A quarter of the workers are freely available, and the remaining three quarters can be taken from other sectors (there are some 15 million people unemployed in the US). Maybe that's an unfeasibly large inexperienced workforce, but certainly hundreds of new power plants could be built

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 Quote by apeiron And how many reactors could we build, or turbines erect, in seven years?
More like 100 years for oil (out to 2110) if we believe Mohr's case 3. Mohr has similar numbers for natural gas case 3. And in any worst case scenario, fossil fuels do not entirely collapse in seven years.