"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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nightjar cpb@ wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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nightjar cpb@ wrote:
"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
news We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "nightjar" cpb@insert my
surname
here.me.uk saying something like:

There is a lot more oil in the ground that we can extract than the
peak oil
adherents would like us to believe.
Ah, but.
Are you an advocate of sitting on our arses and doing nothing because
you say there's more there than we think there is? Doesn't matter when
it will run out, it will run out for sure at some point and if we
haven't got off our arses and got something in place to compensate, we
will have a very bleak future indeed.
One of the fallacies is that oil will run out suddenly.
Last year it did run out suddenly.

Not as 'in the ground' but as refinery and extraction capacity.

With the result that prices rose, various non-conventional sources became
worth while exploiting, giving some increase in capacity, while demand
reduced until it matched supply. It is a self-limiting system and quite
different from the question of oil reserves.

There are complex reasons why its actually less profitable to pump more
oil. Or build more capacity.


We have decades, possibly a century or more, to do something, even
after supplies start to fail. For my money, that ought to be investing
in algal oil, which uses human and animal waste to replicate how nature
created oil, without the multi-million year wait, without the need to
take up any fertile land, with lots of CO2 being consumed from the
atmosphere and with fertiliser as a by-product.

Colin Bignell
Figures dont add up sadly.

The only figures that don't add up at the moment are the costs -
currently $800 a barrel. However, that is for a laboratory level
production and a ten-fold reduction in cost for full production is not an
unrealistic target.

At $50-60 a barrel nuclear electric heating with heatpumps is cost
competitive.At over $150 a barrel even windmills can be argued for..

Electric trains start to be really cost competitive over diesel and short
haul flights. Rail freight starts to be cheap, although rail pricing is
such a complete muddle due to the way its subsidised (or not) that it
makes it very hard to say.

At around $100 a barrel many industrial heating processes are cheaper with
nuclear electric than carbon fuels..

Higher commuter costs for many people will switch the housing market away
from suburbia, back to short to medium inner city rental properties.

Online shopping replaces going to the supermarket.

Those are the reasons I consider that oil has already passed its peak in
production. Not because its not still there, but because its getting too
expensive to be worth using.

My apologies. I thought you were supporting Hubbert's theory. Your arguments
are more logical, although I question whether, once we get clear of the
current blip, China (in particular) or India would simply sit back and allow
their economic growth to be held back by something as basic as a lack of
refining capacity.

Colin Bignell