Intersting Paper on World Oil Economics by a UCSD Professor

[haha]

Peak Production for U.S. Oil-Producing Regions at Oil Price

Page down to bottom of page to get link to PDF giving more detail. Basically, he feels that oil is being priced as an inexhaustable resource, and perhaps it is not truly inexhaustable.

Ha

 

[mb]

Intellectually, I think that it is difficult to not realize the oil is an exhaustible resource unless you believe in an abiogenic origin.

However, I don't think that it is a very important factor in the current supply/demand equation.

 

[M Paquette]

Intellectually, I think that it is difficult to not realize the oil is an exhaustible resource unless you believe in an abiogenic origin.

However, I don't think that it is a very important factor in the current supply/demand equation.

Even the abiogenic fans have a problem, in that the rate at which trapped deep carbon deposits seep and convert to petroleum compounds must be lower than the rate at which we drill and extract oil.

If the rate were greater, we would observe that oil deposits are not depleted over time, as they would be replenished from the abiogenic seepage upward into the trapping dome structures, and we would be able to find new oil deposits as they formed, rather than having to explore at greater depths to strike oil as shallow deposits are exhausted and not renewed.

Abiogenic oil also fails to explain why we see carbon isotope ratios indicative of biological concentration of carbon, along with helium concentrations typical of a crustal origin. That's sort of incidental to the observed mismatch between oil formation and extraction, though.

 

[TromboneAl]

For those of you who are double-negative-challenged:

Perhaps it is truly exhaustible. It is easy to realize that it is exhaustible.

 

[HFWR]

I'm exhausted...

 

[haha]

I see that this paper has drawn many eyeball minutes. Here's an executive summary.


"Coping with a final peak in world oil production could look pretty similar to what we observed as the economy adapted to the production plateau encountered over 2005-2009. That experience appeared to have much in common with previous historical episodes that resulted from temporary geopolitical conflict, being associated with significant declines in employment and output.


If the future decades look like the last 5 years, we are in for a rough time."

 

[Masquernom]

Check out the web site "The Oil Drum" if you're interested in peak oil and resource depletion topics. The future will have some interesting problems. It's possible Malthus was right....