420. MATT SIMMONS: THE BUFFOONERY NEVER ENDS
Man, this is some funny stuff... our old buddy Matt Simmons is pulling the fire alarm again. Seems there's some crackpots out there making unfounded predictions about natural gas production!!!
"In the 40 years I've followed the industry I've been continuously amazed at the tangent people are willing to go off on without any data, or by getting the data wrong," Simmons said. LinkOh, the irony...
Matt seems to have forgotten that in 2003 he himself predicted* that a natural gas cliff -- a veritable natural gas armageddon -- was a certainty in the US by 2005. And yet here we are, 6 years later, swimming in a glut of natural gas, with production at a historic high last reached in 1974.
Simmons' credibility is shot, but he just keeps blustering on, oblivious.The disappointing part is the guy who interviewed Simmons. Doesn't anybody do any research? I could name you five Simmons predictions that have imploded off the top of my head. And soon, we've got the much-ballyhooed Simmons-Tierney bet where he's fixing to lose $5,000 to a cornucopian disciple of Julian Simon, and be exposed in the New York Times as a laughing stock.
It's becoming ever clearer that Simmons is a buffoon who really can't get anything right. His instincts are bad. He has an intemperate personality. He tends to get over-excited and let his mouth get away from him. He's sort of like the "Joe Biden" of the peak oil community.
You wanna see what I mean? Listen to Simmons in this interview. He talks like someone who's been up all night smoking crack -- and I'm not exaggerating.
********
*)For your reading enjoyment, vintage Simmons from the summer of 2003:
Simmons: As you know, I have been talking for some time about the natural gas cliff we are experiencing.
[...]
Well, I know you understand it, but people need to understand the concept of peaking and irreversible decline. It's a sharper issue with gas, which doesn't follow a bell curve but tends to fall off a cliff.
[...]
Someone's going to be left holding the bag big time. If natural gas consumption surges in ten days of excessive heat then it would require almost a complete shutdown of industrial consumption to compensate and protect the grid. As I have been reporting for years now, there isn't going to be enough gas to run those plants, let alone new ones.
[...]
Pray for no hurricanes and to stop the erosion of natural gas supplies. Under the best of circumstances, if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two years. After that it's a certainty. Source
by JD
posted by JD @ 6:14 AM
21 comments
21 Comments:
Nice post, JD. Don't forget Ruppert's pathetic predictions for this year alone. These two posts from earlier in the year predicted the following:
http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2008/11/mumbai-and-collapse-of-industrialized.html
http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2008/11/after-citigroup-look-ahead-now-that-i.html
-"The end" of the U.S. economy by March or April.
-Gold $2000 an oz. by March
-People starving and screaming for food by August
-Greater than 25% unemployment by August
-Conditions 10x worse than The Great Depression by August
-Oil above $100, gas above $3.00 by Summer.
Not one of them came true. LOL.
The price mechanism works wonders. Although the biggest wonder is that the doomer crowd never gets it.
We are now glutted with oil and gas, even as lithium batteries show rapid improvement, and some biofuels show promise.
Oil tankers have been moored for months, looking to offload. Natural gas---fuhgeddaboutit.
This is the end of the world? 2010 is nearly here--the year we were told doom was due.
JD....just stay alive for a few more years. THE SHALE GAS PLAYS are the biggest HYPE next to the GREEN SHOOTS THEORY. If you think this so called GLUT will remain...I would like to remind you what the OIL ANAL-LISTS were saying in 1999. And that is....OIL was going to $5 a barrel.
JD....the USA will get a LARGE 2 X 4 across the FOREHEAD when they realize the GAS GLUT was an illusion just like SOCIAL SECURITY, 401K's and the SUBURBAN DREAM.
remember when he told the fast money crew that we would be living in villages right at the top of the oil bubble?
Matt Simmons and Peak Oil: How to Silence Fast Money Team
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/matt-simmons-peak-oil.php
I believe the all time high for US natural gas production was 2008, not 1974. I think the second highest year was 2007, and then the third highest year was back at the original peak in the 70s.
Perhaps another poster can double check this, but if not I can try and track down the links for this.
" THE SHALE GAS PLAYS are the biggest HYPE next to the GREEN SHOOTS THEORY."
we are way past green shots, the economy is recovering and the stock market is certainly showing it.
less bad is good. pretty soon we will be at good.
> I believe the all time high for US
> natural gas production was 2008,
> not 1974.
You are correct; EIA data shows gross natural gas withdrawals in 2008 were about 8% higher than anything reached in the 70s. In fact, 8 of the last 13 years have been higher than the 70s peak.
It's funny how doomers still think shale gas is a myth, when (a) natural gas is priced at a 7 year low and (b) natural gas production is at an all time high.
If shale gas is a myth, then how did the US extract more gas in 2008 then at any point during the original peak in the 70s?
The truly amazing thing is that shale gas extraction methods have only seen limited use outside of the US. Wait till the Canadiens really get cracking with this stuff ... then you'll see a reall gas glut.
If shale gas is a myth, then how did the US extract more gas in 2008 then at any point during the original peak in the 70s?
Because of its high depletion rates after the first year, 70% in some cases. What most doomtards fail to realize is there is a hell of a lot more shale gas than conventional, so even the high depletion rates don't matter, at least yet. Doomtards also fail to realize you can do biogas-injection into natural gas pipelines to combat declines, although it must first be processed.
I am still 100% against changing cars to NG en masse. Switching from 1 finite resource to another is a logic fail, IMO.
rockdoc123 (a geologist at peakoil.com) had a comment the other day on rapid depletion of shale gas wells :
"I assume you are referring to the article by Art Berman that suggests the Barnett is not doing so well. I had a very interesting discussion yesterday with a couple of the shale gas experts from IHS CERA and their comment was that Art's database is extremely sparse whereas IHS CERA have data on almost all of the shale gas wells drilled in N.A. Their comment is that he is incorrect statistically, which is what drives the shale gas play. You may have a few wells that don't do so well and peter out after a few years but you also have a lot of wells that produce for a long time. CERA's point of view is that irrespective of his poor database the history of production he is looking at is too short for a very accurate picture and more production history is needed."
So, the ghost of Mike Ruppert lives on. The quote from his latest ghost article is "blackouts are spreading as predicted". The report that prompts this observation actually predicts "shortfalls" in he UK by 2017, presumably if nothing is done. I live in the UK, and while the energy policy is a shocking mess and energy supply more or less controlled by the private sector, a lot of which is foreign owned, we are not actually experiencing any blackouts just yet.
The fact we don't have blackouts despite such a laissez-faire policy suggests the system may be more resilient than we think. Certainly the continuing rise in energy prices is making everyone consider how to reduce bills.
The Fast Money segment is pretty funny, the look of "is this guy that crazy or is my hearing really bad?" on the team's faces.
The other phenomena that surrounds nat gas is the extent to which alternative energy will reduce consumption. Nat gas power plants are the second most "dispatchable" form of power. That is to say, nat gas plants are much better at turning on and off at short notice than are coal or nuclear plants. (Hydro power is the most dispatchable).
Thus, as wind power grows, especially in areas like TX that have a large installed based of nat gas power, the inevitable result is more idling of nat gas plants. This is in fact already occurring, as TX nat gas consumption started to decline even before the recession started in earnest.
The combination of shale gas production, and wind power displacement of nat gas consumption, looks to be potent for the forseeable future.
The real question for me is the what form of "nat gas for oil" substituion the market will develop, as nat gas is now trading at a significant discount relative to oil.
"I am still 100% against changing cars to NG en masse. Switching from 1 finite resource to another is a logic fail, IMO."
I agree.
I think, however, we should convert the big rig heavy duty trucks to natural gas to give battery tech or alternate means of long distance ground transportation a chance to catch up.
We're already there with replacements for commuting and medium duty trucking. Long distance ground based logistics not so much.
DB
""I am still 100% against changing cars to NG en masse. Switching from 1 finite resource to another is a logic fail, IMO."
what infinite resources do you think we should run cars on!!!?
2008 was a banner year for Matt Simmons. His testimony to a Minnesota State Legislature committee inferred that All Liquids production would decline at 7.2% per annum from 2007 to 2015.
He told the Aberdeen Journal that crude prices could reach $600/barrel within 20 years.
In a Jim Puplava interview he boasts that replacing deteriorating oil related infrastructure will cost $100 Trillion by 2015.
In reality, 2008 set a new extraction record, we know that sustained crude prices over $70/barrel induces Recessions among some G-20 nations & most experts (incl IEA) put the infrastructure cost at $3 Trillion.
Matt was an early candidate for our Lunatic Fringe venue!
what infinite resources do you think we should run cars on!!!?
Electricity! The world could run indefinitely on electric transportation powered by nukes and a mix of other renewable sources. It might be lackluster compared to gas guzzlers, but it still beats a horse and buggy.
“It might be lackluster compared to gas guzzlers, but it still beats a horse and buggy.”
Well said, plus it would make the air safer to breathe by getting rid of a lot of the nitrogen oxides, particulates and other nasty stuff that gets spewed into the atmosphere by internal combustion engines and coal fired power plants. Reducing the “need” to drive through better urban planning would be a further improvement.
Getting back to the original topic of the post, I have to say the comparison between Matt Simmons and Joe Biden is an apt one.
Simmons also reminds me of Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows, because as soon as he crashes with one of his doomsday theories he hops on another one and it’s off to the races all over again.
Gentlemen...you might be slapping yourselves on the back prematurely. I agree, Matt tends to take some forecasts a bit far, but he has been right on LONG TERM CALLS.
Back in the 70's, he told the oil industry that it better start repluming its pipelines from the interior of the country to the exterior. A few years later he was laughed at. He reminded them....within a decade. Now, we have most of our pipelines from the coast inward as we import 2/3's of our oil.
Also, SIMMONS did the first white paper on the LARGEST OIL FIELDS in 2000. The IEA basically confirmed last year with their owen report what SIMMONS found 8 years earlier.
Furthermore....if you want to believe the CLOWNS and NIMWITS at CERA...LOL...be my FRICKEN GUEST. Those BOZO's couldn't throw a DART and hit the side of a BARN to tell the world when the world would peak.
Lastly, the IEA missed their forecast of the WORLD DEPLETION by DOUBLE....so if you want to start NAME CALLING at one individual...you might be missing a lot of other CLOWNS who really deserve it.
S, I'll leave it to people more knowledgeable than me to discuss your arguments, but I'd like to offer a helpful piece of advice:
When you RANDOMLY capitalise individual WORDS it makes it SEEM LIKE you're bursting out with shouted words MID sentence, WHICH MAKES it SEEM like you're either AN idiot, or you have TOURETTE'S.
You'd be a lot easier to take seriously if you'd cut it out.
“It might be lackluster compared to gas guzzlers, but it still beats a horse and buggy.”
The Tesla isn't lackluster (0-60 in 3.9 seconds).
The Chevy Volt does 0-60 in 8.5 seconds - that's not lackluster either.
He went by the data but he turned out to be wrong due to the fracturing revolution creating lots of nonconventional gas. His prediction was rational but turned out to be wrong due to a change in technology & methods. That doesn't mean it was bad prediction.
If you make predictions thinking 'technology with magically save us'. That would be a bad prediction. You may end up correct but it was only by luck.
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