98. MATT SIMMONS ON CAFE STANDARDS
Matt Simmons is all mixed up. As we saw in #97, just a couple of days ago he was claiming we could lose 75-90% of world oil production by 2030. What's his solution? Drill ANWR -- which might (if the drillers luck out) produce 500,000 barrels a day for 10 years.
How in the world is that going to help? If we're going to lose 75-90% of world oil production by 2030, car culture is dead. The dealer is going to run out of dope. So what good is one last "hit" going to do? Wouldn't it be more proactive to begin the quitting process by implementing demand side measures like carpooling, speed restrictions, telecommuting, land use planning, driving bans etc. -- as described in the IEA Report Saving Oil in a Hurry: Measures for Rapid Demand Restraint in Transport(pdf)? (For an extensive list of demand side measures from the IEA report, see #35.)
According to Matt himself, there's a very real possibility that NOBODY will be driving a private auto in 2030, so why not get our feet wet?
The IEA Report (P. xii) states that the U.S. could reduce its fuel consumption by about 10% simply by enforcing car pooling and speed restrictions. That's about 1 million barrels a day -- or twice what ANWR is going to produce even in the best case scenario. Furthermore, those savings aren't going to deplete like ANWR. They also won't contribute to global warming, so you might save a few bucks on Gulf Coast city reconstruction, if you catch my drift.
One of the funnier parts of the transcript cited below is where Simmons says: "We can also never wean the country [i.e. the U.S.] from imported oil..."
Matt, with all due respect, if world oil production is going to be down 75-90% in 2030, the U.S. is going to get weaned hard. Like so hard their eyeballs are going to pop out and rot. Your little trickle from ANWR is going to be like a band-aid for President Kennedy's head wound.
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Transcript of Matthew R. Simmons, testifying on the topic of CAFE standards before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, April 3, 2001
Mr. Simmons. Let me give just two examples to illustrate this point. If we suddenly had a fleet of one million 80-mile-per-gallon vehicles on our roads taking the place of one million average automobiles, this would only save 50 thousand barrels of oil use each day. Ten wells or less in the deep water Gulf of Mexico produces an equivalent energy amount. Refrigerator----
The Chairman. Could you repeat that?
Mr. Simmons. If we created a fleet of one million 80-mile-per-gallon cars and they replaced one million conventional cars, that would save 50 thousand barrels a day. Not much.
[...]
The Chairman. I am sorry. Mr. Simmons, you were pretty much highlighting CAFE, too.
Mr. Simmons. The 80-miles-per-gallon car.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Mr. Simmons. You know, first of all I did that analysis myself, so I know the number is right. It is actually 49,600 barrels per day.
The Chairman. Just give us--slow us down again so we pick it up.
Mr. Simmons. You take an 80-mile-per-gallon car----
The Chairman. An 80-mile-per-gallon car. Do we have any of those now?
Mr. Simmons. No, we have a prototype that will be out in 2004. It is an imaginary----
The Chairman. We have got a 56-mile-per-gallon car if you want to buy one. Toyota makes one, Nissan makes one.
Mr. Simmons. And what we do is we replace that car with a car that gets an average of 17 miles a gallon, because if you take the vehicle fleet, that is our average today, and the delta is the savings. So a million 80-mile-per-gallon cars is a phenomenal concept, but it does not make a dent, a single dent.
The Chairman. A million 80-gallon cars would save us how much oil?
Mr. Simmons. 50 thousand barrels a day.
The Chairman. 50 thousand barrels a day, and we consume 19----
Mr. Simmons. Well, we are getting up a little over 20 million during the seasonal peaks, so it has absolutely no relevance. It is a great concept.
The Chairman. Okay, well--50 thousand barrels a day is what you would save if you had one million cars that go to 80. And how many cars do we have in this country? Somebody figured it out.
Mr. Simmons. 220 million vehicles.
The Chairman. 220 million. Well, I do not know if you could stretch the car buyers to that point.Source
posted by JD @ 1:53 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
JD:
Matt Simmons is all mixed up. As we saw in #97...
No JD. This was your invention. 'We' didn't see it.
JD:
just a couple of days ago he was claiming we could lose 75-90% of world oil production by 2030.
I've pointed out that it was probably a misprint. Have you checked with the author of the article? Let's take a look:
"But by 2030 we could easily have a world that can only produce 10 or 15 or 20 million barrels per day, and the shortfall from what we thought we were going to produce is only a modest 100 million barrels per day."
As you can see, this sentence is incoherent. Likely from misplace pieces of the authors notes. We can speculate all day about what the author meant to write. Said and done, it remains speculation. There is no good reason to believe that Matt said this.
JD:
One of the funnier parts of the transcript cited below is where Simmons says: "We can also never wean the country [i.e. the U.S.] from imported oil..."
Why is this so funny JD?
What is your conclusion? Yes, this is just another character attack without addressing the issue.
Just so it is clear, here is Matt's conclusion in a nut shell. It can be verified by reading his work. Cherry picking comments out of context and attributing third party words that are obviously wrong is JD's way.
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First and most importantly is to have industry disclosure. Without knowledge of future production, the act of timely mitigation cannot be properly addressed. The evidence, as it stands, indicates that OPEC proven reserves are badly over inflated. If so, and coupled with declining non OPEC production, the world faces a serious challenge.
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Best, Dan.
That sentence doesn't seem incoherent to me.
There is no good reason to believe that Matt said this.
Except for the fact that the author of the piece, Rose Ragsdale, confirms that he said it, and in fact there is an audio recording of him saying it, verbatim.
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I just found this web site, looking for some peak energy news.
This is an amusing, refreshing blog and I've added it to my bookmarks. I love it that you pose as a debunker, James, but you really know that there's an energy/economic crisis upon us.
The Greater Community orientation you display in the first two posts--which I read as "our destiny is out in the universe"--was quite inspiring.
I also apreciate your evaluation of how the truth of peak oil is being manipulated by experts for personal, corporate, or political gain.
Also thank you for shedding light on the neo-Malthusian die-off myths that go widely unquestioned.
Many blessings.
I agree with you 100% but at this point there is no way people are going cooperate on the demand side to any meaningful extent. I own a hybrid car and while lots of people are curious when I go driving I see few hybrids, usually driven by old people. What you are suggesting would sound to Americans like socialism, so the government won't help in those ways. People would rather shoot their neighbor to steal his gas than car pool. That points to a die-off scenario for the US hyperpower, so didn't you just debunk yourself? Otherwise excellent post.
Dukat said:
"peakoil.com has been down for 4 hours now, just when gold was is making new highs. Looks like something might be going on. The US government is backed in a corner now, high fuel prices and they released data saying inflation is 0% which everyone knows is a big fat lie. We circulated the news and I think the US government has done something to the site.
We'll see when it comes back online."
WOW. I thought you were just another skeptic with legitimate queries, but in two posts, you have shown yourself to be "superior" to Joe 6-pack (#99), and now a tin-foil hatter.
Watch out for those black helicopters Dukat, they're coming for ... YOU!
:P
"People would rather shoot their neighbor to steal his gas than car pool."
This is the main reason that doomers are full of crap - they make these wild cynical assumptions about humanity. Sure, you hear about this kind of thing on the news all the time, but the vast majority of people aren't evil.
dukat: I think peakoil.com is undergoing perfectly natural technical difficulties. Try getting their homepage now - they're still online, but returning some builerplate PHP code instead of an actual page.
"I was only joking, but it's been 24 hours now, that site is allways going down."
With gas prices the way they are these days, you know what they say: "Business is booming!"
:)
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