Peak Oil vs Plateau Oil

The notoin of Peak Oil is rooted in Hubberts Peak as applied to US Oil production in the lower 48 states, but this does not necessarily translate in to global peak oil, as we will later see.

Basically Hubbert published a paper in 1956 in which he asserted that US Oil production would peak just a few years later in 1971 and no one believed him. He turned out to be correct because he assumed that consumption of oil was expoentially increasing.

The correct equation for calculating the exponential exhaustion timescale (T_e) of any resource (should be required knowledge for any one elected to congress):

T_e = 1/k * ln (Rk/r_o +1)     The derivation of this equation

where k = growth rate
R = total resource available
r_o = initial consumption rate

Note that peak production occurs on a timescale of 1/2 of T_e as the production curve is assumed to be symmetric. In the real world, when resources reach peak production, prices tend to go up which can then serve to lower consumption and extend the exhaustion timescale.

In 1956, M. King Hubbert published an ignored paper based on this methodology as applied to US Oil production. In that paper he assumed the following:

• Measured Growth rate of oil production in the US over period of 1945-1955 was 3% (.03)

• Starting period of calculation is 1946

• Hubbert estimates the ratio of R/r_o in 1946 to be 120

He then published his 1956 paper which predicted that the lower 48 states would reach peak production in 1971. Of course, no one believed him at all and he was not taken seriously even though his methodology was secure and he even turned about to be correct (which usually happens when you characterize the problem correctly from the outset)

But during this time, increasing in refining capacity could keep up with increasing new discoveries and production to support increases in consumption. Since about 2005 (see more later), the distribution of crude oil for consumption is limited by the number of global refineries - we have saturated that infrastructure and that saturation leds to the idea of "plateau oil" as evidence by the following:



This shows that new discoveries of oil are not likely to be anywhere near what has been discovered in the past.

It is also evidence from the past the rapid manner in which oil and the subsequent fuel for machines rapidly replaced a people dominated work force with one that is machine dominated.



And high agriculture yield requires a lot of fossil fuel energy input



The issue of replacing oil is non-trivial. The very high material energy content of crude oil (which is why we use it) can really not be met by alternatives (refer to the previous module on Energy Storage). Although there is a wide range of alternatives, none of them can match the energy density of oil.







What has been clear for a long time is that the only way to keep our production high is increaing future reliance on unconventional sources of oil. In general, it is more costly to harvest oil in this manner so while the end of oil may not be near, the end of cheap oil is rapidly approaching.



The sheer scale of our oil use is alarming and best represented by the following graphic



A view of our fossil fuel use from the lens of Geologic Time provides a useful context for our current desperation as we are extracting this resource over a very brief period of time.











And finally it is useful to compare American in 1950 with Amnerica about 50 years later: