282. LAHERRERE: LIQUIDS WILL PEAK AROUND 2020
To his great credit as a scientist, Jean Laherrere has accepted the common-sense criticism that liquids are what matters, not the irrelevant cult-object subset of liquids which Colin Campbell calls "Regular Conventional Oil" (see #43, #52 and #230) . Laherrere now accepts that biomass liquids and synthetic oil from coal are a form of "oil" and must be counted as such if we are to face reality.
Laherrere's latest forecast (from the recent EGU meeting in Vienna):
I have access to several technical databases.So much for the near-term peak and deadly decline everyone's been hyping (unless, of course, somebody got to Laherrere and he's now "on the payroll"... LOL.)
Liquids production will significantly decline after a likely bumpy plateau 2010-2020 and likely chaotic oil prices.
30 years from now, production of easy oil will be 35% less than to day but production of all liquids (including from coal and biomass) only 5% less than to day.
5% down in 2030... Yup, that should give you plenty of time to get that rustic doomer hide-out you foolishly purchased up and running. Have fun cleaning out the barn for the next 25 years!! If you get tired, and want to know who to pin the blame on, click here.
Moving on... here's Laherrere's chart for all liquids. Note the URR of 3Tb likely, 4Tb possible (click graphs to enlarge):
And, for all you Hubbert-Linearization true-believers, here's Laherrere's new liquids linearization. Note how the linearization goes haywire after 2003. We were all set to hit 2250, and then Bing! the unexpected happens, and now we're heading for 3000 -- maybe even 4000. Which just goes to show how completely worthless HL is as a predictive technique:
-- by JD
posted by JD @ 4:23 AM
22 comments
22 Comments:
Your analysis has several holes in it. Here's a good quote to dissect:
I have access to several technical databases. Liquids production will significantly decline after a likely bumpy plateau 2010-2020 and likely chaotic oil prices.
30 years from now, production of easy oil will be 35% less than to day but production of all liquids (including from coal and biomass) only 5% less than to day.
Well, fuels made from biomass require more energy to produce than they provide. So how is biomass a solution to our high consumption lifestyle? Also, coal is terribly costly to convert to liquid fuel- a fact the makes it a poor replacement of petroluem. Don't believe me? Nazi Germany desperately turned to liquified coal during the waning years of WWII and utterly failed. Those same cost issues still exist today.
Finally, even if oil peaks from 2020 to 2030, we need to begin NOW to find REAL solutions to the coming energy crisis. Biomass, coal, solar, wind-- even with technological advances that will surly come, we won't be able to replace the efficency of oil. There IS a major problem out there and if we wish to avoid one, the time is NOW. The key to your misguided optimism is that you forget to think about EROEI, Energy Returned Over Energy Invested. No one is going to run our economy on biofuel and liquified coal, no matter how much faith in science you have. I'm not quite ready to clean out my barn, but the "bumpy plateau" mentioned will become very bumpy indeed when energy price provoke a recession and the elderly cannot pay their energy bills.
I'm glad I had the chance to set you straight. This is indeed a complicated topic. For more information to set you straight, see
peakoilworld.blogspot.com
patrick_david said "
Well, fuels made from biomass require more energy to produce than they provide."
From NY Times Article on Brazilian ethanol - see
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/world/americas/10brazil.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087&en=67cdf5cc49fb84f4&ex=1144900800
*****************
"Ethanol can be made through the fermentation of many natural substances, but sugar cane offers
advantages over others, like corn. For each unit of energy expended to turn cane into ethanol, 8.3 times as much energy is created, compared with a maximum of 1.3 times for corn, according to scientists at the Center for Sugarcane Technology here and other Brazilian research institutes.
"There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to improve that ratio to 10 to 1," said Suani Teixeira Coelho, director of the National Center for Biomass at the University of São Paulo. "It's no miracle. Our energy balance is so favorable not just because we have high yields, but also because we don't use any fossil fuels to process the cane, which is not the case with corn."
Brazilian producers estimate that they have an edge over gasoline as long as oil prices do not drop below $30 a barrel. But they have already embarked on technical improvements that promise to lift yields and cut costs even more."
**************
Also, you stated "coal is terribly costly to convert to liquid fuel". How costly? Does it cost $30 barrel, $40, $50, $80? maybe even $100?
If, as it seems you believe we will have a huge shortage of petroleum then its price should be $150 barrel or more. At that point , Coal to liquid will seem extremely cheap.
BTW, many people think CTL is cost effective if Oil stays above $40 barrel.
Your analysis seems to have holes in it.
patrick david,
Here's what you're saying:
BECAUSE the Nazi's failed at coal-to-liquid fuel conversion in the 40s, THEREFORE we will also fail.
Because we all know that nazi germany was the pinnacle of human technological achievement.
Ok, we all know that cornucopians like to change their definition of what oil is, but that's taking on two different arguments.
1) Peak Oil is geological. Produce CTL and it has nothing to do with the FACT of PO.
2) Will peak oil matter in the well-being of man? A COMPLETELY different question, dear JD. Don't care if you try to answer it - just don't mix up the issues, please.
Joe said:
Also, you stated "coal is terribly costly to convert to liquid fuel". How costly? Does it cost $30 barrel, $40, $50, $80? maybe even $100?
Right, how costly? Does OIL cost $30, $60 or $250 while you're trying to produce CTL? Then you'll know how much CTL will cost. Price (AKA US-Dollar) is relative! Not an objective measure, like you seem to think.
Here's a measured response to all your concerns.
1. JCK: NO! The world should not, cannot, and must not maintain a high energy lifesyle. Most people on this blog seem to think the our lifestyle does not need to change. WRONG!
2. JOE: The amount of land needed to produce enough ethanol to satisfy our needs would be unsustainable. YES Brazil produces sugar and YES the Midwest produces corn, but for ethanol to replace petroleum, the scale would be just too large. ALSO, remember this: large scale industrial farming requires OIL to run farm machines. See a problem? Ethanol WILL be part of our energy future, but it's a net energy loser and still dependent on petroluem. I suggest you read David Pimentel's work on the subject.
http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/ethanol_woes.html
3. EMTEL:
You are not reading closely. What I said was that the SAME issues the plagued the Nazis in their coal efforts, STILL plague the energy industry. I do have faith in American ingenuity, etc, but sometimes, blind faith that markets and science will solve all our problems is not enough.
4. FREAK:
We are not doing anything CLOSE to addressing the coming energy crisis. As I have successfully explained, ethanol will not even come close to replacing petroleum. Food systems, transportation, housing arrangements, heating? Have we even touched all of these KEY issues? Nope.
Also, I hardly support the idea that I'm a part of a mindless doom cult lie session. I think the FACTS speak for themselves. I prefer to rely on science and reality rather than markets and HOPE.
Again, I'm glad I've had the chance to clear up some common misconceptions and misunderstandings about several very important topics. It is important not to confuse cockiness with knowledge.
PEAKOILWORLD.BLOGSPOT.COM
Dom,
You said:
"Right, how costly? Does OIL cost $30, $60 or $250 while you're trying to produce CTL? Then you'll know how much CTL will cost. Price (AKA US-Dollar) is relative! Not an objective measure, like you seem to think."
Are you talking about using OIL to produce the power that is need to run the CTL process. You're kidding right? You have a pile of coal, why the heck would use oil?!
The main reason the cost of CTL will go up is if the cost of coal goes up... otherwise except for normal inflation, as the process is improved the cost goes down.
Just curious, do you also think we use oil to produce most of our electricity?
Patrick David:
You said:
"The amount of land needed to produce enough ethanol to satisfy our needs would be unsustainable."
I always laugh when I see this argument. What do you mean when you say satisfy all our needs? Its almost as if you are saying that as of 2010 we will have no more oil and we have to find ONE substitute!?
After oil peaks, production will slowly decline. Ethanol will be one of many substitues for oil that will take up this slack.
You also said: "large scale industrial farming requires OIL to run farm machines"
This again implies that we will have no more oil and you also seem to imply that it is impossible to run farm machinery without oil. If we have to, we could use CTL or ethanol but I am guessing that farm machinery will be a perfect application for fuel cells.
Finally, we are all making extrapolations here based on current technology. Fifty years from now, we will have dramatically different technology for doing everything.
Sameu,
Why do we need to do it 20 times faster than Brazilians? Also, why do we have to do it all? If sugar cane is a better alternative for ethanol, there are many tropical countries that could use the cash this crop would provide.
Hey guys,
have you looked at the price of sugar recently? Funny that it has also begun rising on a geometric curve...
Joe wrote,
Just curious, do you also think we use oil to produce most of our electricity?
OHH, you almost got me there;-)
Joe, I think that deserves a lecture from my side, don't you think?
Electricity is made of coal, Hydro, Uranium and gas, etc, etc.
(So far so good).
Have you looked at the price of ALL resources recently? (Good, I haven't either) I must admit, I don't know what the price of coal is at the moment. But compare gas, uranium, oil, iron ore, copper and what have you (even sugar...), and you'll notice that most are twice as expensive as five years ago.
Why? Because OIL supply is tight (or at least expensive) - not yet even short!
What will happen to the price of coal when 50% is used to power CTL and 50% used as coal turned to oil? You still have to produce existing electricity capacity AND power your mining machines, transport etc... Let's just assume :-) it will be more expensive.
Do YOU want to do the math? I sure don't...
From my perspective, the two largest issues surrounding the Solids-to-Liquids game are lead-time and environmental impact.
First, I’d like to know how Lahherrere knows the conversion capacity will be sufficient to meet the gap left by declining conventional. That sounds much more like the work of an economist or some (N)GO committee. He must be privy to some rather extensive and extremely confidential information regarding the investment decisions that will be required to put into place an industry of significant size in a relatively short time. Will the investment be large enough and provided soon enough to make this possible? Will the planning process and public hearings, etc. take place soon enough and conclude in short order to facilitate the growth?
Secondly, my understandings of the conversion processes themselves indicate they don’t play nice with the neighbourhood. Since I know someone will set me straight, I would not be too keen on CTL (tar sands, shale oil, et al.) turning the environment into a toxic waste dump. Given there seems to be issues with water availability globally these days, I’m not sure using large quantities of water would be a good idea either. So, all in all, from a strictly production point of view, is CTL et. al. such a good idea?
As an aside, maybe big oil wants high prices so they can get out of the Middle East dependency loop themselves. Imagine the strategy, it’s truly beautiful. The competition for Canada is even irrelevant. Although the Chinese have got contracts in place, I can’t imagine the US government would feel to bad about turfing them out. New industry, great location, no troublesome Mullahs and such, perfect.
byofuels,
No, it wouldn't be perpetual energy. The excess energy generated by biofuels comes from the sun. Plants are just solar->chemical energy converters.
If you don't believe its possible to get positive EROEI on biofuels, you'll have a tough time explaining how people heated their homes with wood before the discovery of oil.
Patrick David:
None of the arguments you've put forth are anything new to anybody who's spent more than a day reading about peak oil on the web. That would include, I imagine, everybody who regularly reads/comments on this blog. There's no point in responding to any of your specific claims, since JD has already written wonderful rebuttals to everything you've said (and actually cited his sources...) - but, you can't be bothered to read what JDs written already, so I won't waste my breath.
Rembrandt wrote:
Only thing is that he is chaotic but who is perfect anyway.
I have to agree, His paper is very hard to follow and is poorly structured, too bad!
His EH category seems to include a bunch of very different liquids: synfuel from tar sands, NGL, synfuels from CTL?
His green curve is conventional crude oil and the red curve is all the other non conventional sources (mainly NGL + tar sands). He performed a HL fit on the red curve which gave an URR around 1Tb. This URR should be for tar sands and NGL only. We have no historical data for CTL or other source of liquids for transportation so there is no way we can perform an HL anlysis on those. Note that NGL (condensate) are a byproduct of gas fields and are therefore harder to track but should be closely related to gas production.
Ideally, CTL, tar sands, etc. should have their own separate HL analysis.
patrick david spake thusly:
1. JCK: NO! The world should not, cannot, and must not maintain a high energy lifesyle. Most people on this blog seem to think the our lifestyle does not need to change. WRONG!
you must be new here or something. no one here has ever said our lifestyles won't need to change. in fact i'm willing to bet you that most of the contributors here have already made many changes to have a smaller energy footprint. most obvious of all is the blog's author, he doesn't drive, he uses a space heater, is considering a diet of grey mush from a pressure cooker (:D), etc.
my family has made major changes as well. i switched to a job where i telecommute 2-3 days a week, we all bike and walk a lot more, use public transport (e.g. 2 years ago we would have driven from oakland to sacramento to visit friends, now we take amtrak :D)
what have you done??
as far as ethanol, i think we all agree that traditional "ethanol from corn" is pretty much a loser. you should catch up on what's going on in the biofuels world these days. google for biofuels algae for a start.
byofuels (clever name, ha ha) spews:
Nice work Patrick David :) I see your "measured response" was met with invective and venom, by the usual BLOWhards here at Peak Oil Deloused.
Their responses show that facts are unwelcome.
what facts? this blog is all about facts. all you two "BLOWhards" have provided are regurgitated opinions and a link to a long debunked (not just by this blog) paper...
p.s. it would be nice to see both your ips ;)
byo: sources? this sounds like good info.
Dom
You said:
"What will happen to the price of coal when 50% is used to power CTL and 50% used as coal turned to oil? You still have to produce existing electricity capacity AND power your mining machines, transport etc... Let's just assume :-) it will be more expensive."
I agree, prices will rise. What I am much more worried about however is that they will rise too slowly. You see, I think we have too much cheap oil and way too much cheap coal. We need to fight the real problem - C02 and global warming.
Peak oil is just a small bump for the world economy... global warming, that is a huge issue.
What we need, and we need it soon, is a large carbon tax. That is the only thing that will wean the world of cheap fossil fuels.
I find it so funny that many bloggers here keep vomiting forth the idea that I and others don't have facts where ALL ALONG we have provided to links to CREDIBLE research!!!
Is this a case of see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil?
Or is this just a case where people are confronted by the reality of energy depletion and they cannot cope.
Well, if you MUST have more and more facts, here's more of them.
By the way, YES I and others have been repeating this argument for years. Indeed it is tired and old, mainly because people refuse to listen. For more truthiness, see
http://www.peakoilworld.blogspot.com/
gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/6/27/9325/57114
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825265.400
www.enginemanufacturers.org/ admin/library/upload/297.pdf
www.b100fuel.com/archives/2005/09/seattle_biofuel.html
www.worldchanging.com/archives/003786.html
www.mindfully.org/Energy/ 2003/Ethanol-In-Gas-Problems3jun03.htm
www.energyjustice.net/ethanol/
Buena suerte,
You said: You can't just appear at someone's blog saying it's all bullshit and expect everyone to believe you, just because you've read a few websites. You're free to debate us on specific issues, but stop constantly reiterating that you know better.
Hi Rolando,
Umm..... I AM debating you on SPECIFIC issues and stating my argument with SPECIFIC facts. So basically you are saying is that you've read it, you understand it, but you refuse to take credible research and facts into account? Pardon me if I scoff at those who still believe that the Earth is flat.
freak, of course not. depopulation so they can continue driving their hummers. i'm still waiting to hear what patrick is "doing about it"...
$US 1,000 says that global conventional crude oil production (no gas liquids, no heavy oil etc) will never hit 95 million per day. Any takers?
"It will take DECADES"
Um - I'm thinking we *have* decades.
Worst case scenario is a depletion curve of 10% per year - this is pretty hairy and something like this will cause societal collapse and then martial law. Unless we are retarded this will result in a *massive* decrease in consumption and probably some kind of *mandated* build program. We do *not* need oil to build things. The pyramids and machu pichu and imperial rome were all built without oil.
In any event - it's most likely that we will have a bumpy plateau which worst case scenario will be a string of recessions and recoveries. Not every single business will go bust and there will be MASSIVE incentive to create something that works.
As a matter of fact we already have it.
If we discount ethanol as being a total solution and we discount biodiesel as being a total solution then are we screwed?
Hell, no. We still have sh!tloads of electricity.
We no longer have to deal with the problem of intermittency either - we have technical solutions in various forms.
The best of all is that even though peak oil is mainly a *transport* problem it is at least possible to substantially mitigate it provided the market picks the winner and doesn't go down a stupid ethanol path - fortunately it *is*.
The best possible outcome is battery powered electric cars - we have the technology to produce acceptable vehicles right *now*.
So they are $10K-$20K more expensive than vehicles right now?
Big deal - so we extend the leasing period for a vehicle out to 10 years instead of 4 if need be. The fleet could be changed over entirely in less than a decade by a simple financing trick.
Where will the *energy* come from to build all these vehicles?
We don't NEED extra energy - we're ALREADY building cars and that is figured into our energy demands.
There's more:
The usual doomer contention is that we CANNOT scale up wind and solar because it is net energy negative. That might have been the case ten years ago when Jay Hansen came out with dieoff. It hasn't been the case for at least four years now. In addition: the contention that intermittent sources cannot be scaled up past 20% is a crock. The province of Navarra in Spain is doing that right now with 70% from renewables.
There's yet more:
California Utility PG&E is planning to use the degraded (but still useful) used battery packs from hybrids as a storage medium.
With a large hybrid fleet the intermittency problem goes away.
So what are we left with?
Transport problem? Nope
Food problem? Nope
We are left with an *infrastructure* problem.
"If you don't believe its possible to get positive EROEI on biofuels, you'll have a tough time explaining how people heated their homes with wood before the discovery of oil."
Emtel, that really is a remarkably poor example for the positive EROEI of present day biofuels, in fact it's hard to imagine one that more undermines your position. The only reason it was ever a positive equation was because NO energy had to be invested in the forests that were harvested for firewood-they were already there. As these pre-existing energy reserves were used up, the distances that needed to be travelled to get the wood, and the price of wood, became greater and greater, until the EROEI was negative. People, first in the UK, then in the rest of europe, first the poor and then everyone, were forced to use coal, even tho it was reviled as filthy and even considered devilish. Once energy input(replacement of forests) was required, firewood's EROEI was out of the question.
"The only reason it was ever a positive equation was because NO energy had to be invested in the forests that were harvested for firewood-they were already there."
So in other words, we stopped using forests because of declining EROEI?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
In fact we stopped using forests because the demand outstripped the supply and then a replacement was found.
Otherwise people would have starved until they fitted inside the amount of wood that could be sustainably harvested. Nothing to do with EROEI and everything to do with too many people.
If people could have built wood in the cities, they would have, but they didn't. Instead they invented mills such as water mills and windmills. If we hadn't discovered coal and oil we would likely have grown slower and been forced to rely on natural energy flows but would ultimately have been forced to develop those mills to a much greater degree and with likely human hardship along the way.
Fortunately, now that we are forced to look back at using natural energy flows, we have developed not only much better windmills and watermills but have also invented PV solar panels, Thermal Solar Panels and a host of other technologies we can use in the interrim (natural gas powerplants and ICEs as well as nuclear power).
We have plenty of options.
Place your bets gentlemen.
DB
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