peak fossil fuels by 2017

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

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

Tar sand is such an unattractive proposition...

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.

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 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

I know what peak production means. The problem was that you had a typo and said 2010 instead of 2100

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.

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

Furthermore there's no missing geopolitical rogue state external cost with Canadian tar sand oil, as there is with imported Middle Eastern oil.

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

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

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

And how many reactors could we build, or turbines erect, in seven years?

And how many reactors could we build, or turbines erect, in seven years?