... say reports. The above graph is the long term series (millions of barrels per day of US field crude production). We will probably not be at imminent risk of retesting the US peak in 1970, but it does seem that the high prices since the mid aughties have caused a minor resurgence in US production.
Orlov said: world peak different from local peak because nowhere to import from. Alternative view: world peak different from local peak because prices rise leading to higher production everywhere. At this point oil has decoupled from other energy sources and is now increasingly an energy carrier rather than energy source. We are not limited by EROEI, if there is other cheap energy to use when extracting oil from tar sands and other dubious sources. Of course there are other reasons for not doing those things, and certainly the push is on to convert things to natgas and electricity, but it doesn't seem impossible that we might stay on liquid hydrocarbons forever for transport (at some stage need to switch to creating from thin air by algae or other means).
ReplyDeleteTrough Oil.
ReplyDeleteNow all a nation has to do to claim successful adaptation to current prices is to have a year where debt grows less than gdp.
It will be interesting to see if the current uptick is any more meaningful long term than that obtained in the lower 48 30 years ago, when a monstrous drilling program merely served to bump things up a titch.
ReplyDeleteThis new oil seems to derive primarily from the GOM, ND, and the Permian Basin. Lots of horizontal drilling operations that small operators can get in on; I'm waiting to hear about that being employed in other mature regions.