Peak Oil Matters

Last month, I came across a interesting article showing the production breakdown of a barrel (approximately 45 gallons) of oil.

I found it a bit surprising that only 4 gallons, or approximately 11 %, from every barrel of oil is typically produced as aviation fuel.

As Dave Jackson noted in another recent article:

“A-1 jet fuel, a high grade, moisture free kerosene, competes directly with the production of diesel. A refiner has a certain amount of leeway when extracting fuels from each barrel of crude oil. By and large, however, a choice must be made between kerosene or diesel.”

Jackson then asked pretty much the same question I have: What happens when there isn’t enough crude oil to satisfy the full demands of freight transportation and the airline industry? Can’t satisfy them both once oil production begins its continual decline, so what happens? As it stands now and if my math is correct, airlines use somewhere in the neighborhood of two billion barrels of oil each year. That cannot continue in the face of Peak Oil.

What decisions are the various transportation industries—freight and aviation in particular—going to be faced with when the worldwide supply of oil cannot ever match demand again? Who decides which of those two will have priority? It’s unlikely that only one industry will have all of its demand met, so that means both industries will suffer reductions in what is available to them. Then what?

As other writers have duly noted, once Peak Oil’s impact is being felt immediately and daily by the transportation industry, the foods and goods and services we’ve grown accustomed to having on hand 24/7/365 … won’t be. We’re going to have to start making do without some of those products and services we like to enjoy or use whenever the mood strikes, and if we’re being deprived, somewhere along the supply and distribution chain there will be employment and production cutbacks. We all now know what happens when people start losing their jobs and industries stop making or supplying goods and services.

A broader question as it affects aviation: what happens to air travel in general? Once Peak Oil is in full swing, we clearly cannot assume that that same eleven percent of each barrel of oil will still be devoted to producing aviation fuel. What then?

One obvious outcome is that the then more restricted air travel will become more expensive. I’m no economics whiz, but when supply decreases and demand remains steady, prices increase. So get ready for more expensive air travel as well as higher crude oil prices. For many, that means no more air travel. Then what? I’m fairly confident that airlines aren’t going to survive if their increasing costs for fuel lead to fewer passengers (who are obliged to pay much higher fares), and on and on the dominoes tumble.

When the price of a barrel of oil shot up to nearly $150.00 two short years ago, Brad Plumer—in a terrific New Republic article well worth reading—noted that nearly 25 airlines bit the dust just in 2008, almost four times the average. Should we expect anything different the next go-‘round?

On a more personal note, what will families do? As the parent of two daughters currently in college, I recognize first-hand the concerns any parent has when their graduating children decide to take jobs far from home. The emotional pull of wanting the best for your child while nonetheless wanting them close by has a powerful influence on our well-being. What happens if my daughter accepts a job in Portland, Oregon and in the not-too-distant future, the several dozen reasonably priced daily flights currently available out of Boston’s Logan Airport are reduced to just a handful, and the acceptable $550 flight through Dallas suddenly become a $1700 flight with multiple connecting stops en route, and an 8 hour trip is suddenly a two day adventure?

I am well aware that my daughter’s employment and location choices won’t depend one iota on what dear-old-Dad would prefer, but if my daughter does make the choice to live in a locale that is now an airplane ride away and a few years down the road I no longer have that as a feasible option to see her, dear-old-Dad is not going to be a happy camper. (I will let my daughter speak for herself on this subject!)

What happens to business meetings, to governmental business, to international negotiations, to sports travel, to family visits, and a host of other lifestyle and industry needs when we have less aviation fuel competing for our business and personal demands? What happens then?

Who decides which of the limited and now much more expensive flights have priority? Are your business meetings in Chicago more important than the Boston Red Sox seven-game road trip, or a fact-finding mission by several U.S. Congressional leaders, or seeing your parents? We cannot possibly hope to sustain the same level of air service when aviation fuel has doubled or tripled in price, and when perhaps only 4% or 5% of each barrel of a smaller supply of oil is now produced as aviation fuel because somewhere along the line, someone will have decreed that that is the most we can expect from each barrel because of countless other priorities.

To its great credit, Britain recently turned down construction of a 3rd runway at Heathrow Airport in favor of committing that same amount of funding to high speed rail, as noted here. Perhaps more insightful than most, the decision-makers likely recognized the pointlessness of committing billions to a service that will likely exist in a greatly-diminished capacity a few short years from now.

As Brad Plumer also noted in his 2008 essay:

“Small towns will be especially vulnerable to losing scheduled air service. That’s already happened to nearly 30 U.S. cities in the past year, from Wilmington, Delaware (population 72,000) to Boulder City, Nevada (14,000). Hagerstown, Maryland, lost all commercial air service recently, rendering its new $61.8 million, 7,000-foot runway useless.”

It won’t end there. What are the ripple effects to communities and regions when airports shut down, or flights are offered on a greatly restricted or reduced basis? What of the people accustomed to relying on those services? What happens then?

Technology is not close to finding adequate alternatives sufficient to meet current and projected demand increases, so what happens? And biofuels, for all their promise, are not close to being deemed an appropriate substitute.

So we can either start making plans, considering alternative forms of transportation, making a greater commitment to seeking alternative sources of energy, or try to come up with last-minute solutions to deal with the problems Peak Oil is going to force upon us.

Hint: That strategy is not likely to work

Michael Lind is the Policy Director of New America’s Economic Growth Program and a frequent contributor to Salon.com—a publication (and writer) whose perspectives I usually agree with. The new America website is quite good.

However, Mr. Lind recently published an article at Salon regarding the future of transportation—fixed/high-speed rail, specifically—that I take issue with. I do so not so much because his information might be incorrect (and I don’t dispute his knowledge and information on the subject), but I disagree because he offers up an attitude regarding our approach to transportation and automobiles that can only cause us more problems as we confront Peak Oil. It’s an all-too-familiar refrain Peak Oil proponents encounter, and is one we find especially distressing in light of the challenges Peak Oil is going to impose upon all of us.

Lind begins his article advocating more government spending on infrastructure—a position with which I wholeheartedly agree. (Readers familiar with Bob Herbert’s op-eds in the New York Times—which I’ve referenced in several posts—will recall that Mr. Herbert is likewise a passionate advocate of our need to repair, maintain, and enhance infrastructure spending for a host of sound, well-considered reasons.) Enough studies are out there demonstrating the many positive benefits and effects those spending priorities have on our economy and employment numbers.

Despite his advocacy for this essential governmental strategy, Lind criticizes support for high speed rail. In doing so, he raises common objections to funding and planning for alternative forms of transportation. While factually there may be merit to his arguments, the problem is that despite the rhetoric, the reality of Peak Oil is going to make the stated objections entirely irrelevant.

There is little chance that we’re going to devise a perfect public transportation solution, but to dismiss the approach outright because we’re too spoiled to recognize the need for change is at best foolish. We’re in need of some serious attitude adjustments, and transportation woes are another consequence of Peak Oil that we can either prepare for voluntarily, or have imposed upon us. Something is going to have be done. We can either throw our hands up and keep hoping, or start taking steps to figure out the solutions that just might work. It seems quite obvious that public transportation is going to have to be part of that mix.

Lind observes that “As nations grow more affluent, their people prefer the convenience of personal automobile transportation to the inflexibility of mass transit.” Of course they do! I much prefer jumping in one of our cars to run errands or to go to our beach house or do any number of other things when I feel like doing so rather than walking up and down my lengthy and very steep hill and then figuring out how many different modes of public transit I might need to get where I want to go. Millions and millions of other car owners harbor their own legitimate reasons why they favor the comfort and convenience of their own autos.

If fossil-fuel supplies were unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready, we would not be having these discussions. But facts are annoying—especially the true ones!

All of the factors this blog and other writers have set forth regarding the imminence of Peak Oil tell us that unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready oil is not going to be an option for much longer—some reports suggest in as few as a couple of years. Many writers have already noted one of Peak Oil’s many obvious warning signs: we’re drilling thousands of feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere because “cheap” and easy-to-find oil no longer exists. It’s just one sign among many. “Affluence” isn’t going to buy anyone bonus points when it comes to oil supply and demand … the transportation needs of the rich won’t stave off Peak Oil.

So when the ever-diminishing supply of unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready oil is a factor with which we are all contending every day, preferring “the convenience of personal automobile transportation to the inflexibility of mass transit” won’t be worth the paper that comment is printed on. Peak Oil doesn’t much care about our “preferences,” or whether long-distance air or passenger car travel is “more practical,” as Lind also argued.

That’s simply not going to matter … not a little, not a lot, not at all. It’s nice to discuss preferences and wishes and hopes and all the rest, but geology and reality are what they are, and soon enough we are not going to have anywhere near the amounts of inexpensive oil readily available to each of us so that we can drive wherever and whenever we want. That’s a fact. Wishing it away is a nice sentiment but utterly meaningless. Peak Oil doesn’t much care for wishes and prayers, either.

So objections notwithstanding, we need to be thinking about, planning for, and finding ways to fund, create, and construct the types of public transportation we’re all going to need in the decades to come. It’s painful, but it’s that simple.

It’s no doubt true that implementing passenger rail and other forms of alternative transportation (and sources of energy, which Lind also criticizes) on a scale even remotely approaching the levels we’ll need in the decades to come is a jaw-dropping, almost unfathomably expensive proposition … until you realize we will have no rational alternatives other than to truly shrink our growth and become a nation of many local economies.

There is going to be a lengthy list of items and services and needs that are going to have to continue to be fulfilled by an ever-declining amount of crude oil, and I daresay that your and my carefree choices to run a couple of errands on a near-daily basis or visit with friends on the weekend aren’t going to have much priority on that list of who gets what, when, and how much.

Those who are waiting for a low-cost, ideal alternative to our current forms of personal transportation are in for a very rude awakening somewhere down the road.

Likewise, Lind’s urging that we devote more financial resources to enhance freight transportation on our roadways is just as misguided. Truckers won’t be exempt from Peak Oil’s impact … no one will. He is unfairly and inaccurately dismissive in suggesting that all of our urgings to provide more funding for high-speed rail and the like is so that we can “cut five minutes off the daily commutes of office workers in New York and New Jersey.” Enough high speed rail proposals have been put forth, and the Obama Administration has at least opened the door to enough other high-speed rail projects, to dismiss Lind’s snarky contentions outright. That’s something I’d expect to hear from someone on the Right, for whom facts are all-too-often useless and/or irrelevant when choosing to perpetuate narrow-minded ideology instead.

“Focusing on freight infrastructure improvements means that, among other things, we need to build more highway lanes and in some cases new highways for the trucks that will continue to carry most freight.” I’m hard-pressed to understand how that could possibly be a legitimate solution. Not only will not be able to afford that; higher gas prices and declining supply will leave less cars and trucks on the road. What a waste of limited resources!

And despite Lind’s claims about asphalt as some kind of magic solution, the truth is that asphalt is one of the countless products derived from crude oil, or from the energy-intensive and more expensive extraction process of the tar sands. (See this Oil Drum post for a discussion of asphalt.) Less crude oil equals less asphalt—as some cities have already witnessed first-hand.

Thinking that the enormous population increases expected in the coming decades is going to be properly addressed by building more roads and creating more suburban sprawl where owners are going to be left entirely dependent on automobiles they won’t be able to regularly or readily fuel seems ass-backwards at the very least. Asphalt is not nearly the savior Lind asserts it to be.

Two items of note on this subject from an extremely informative 2009 article by Phillip Longman (a Lind colleague) in The Washington Monthly [1]:

“The Environmental Protection Agency calculates that for distances of more than 1,000 miles, a system in which trucks haul containers only as far as the nearest railhead and then transfer them to a train produces a 65 percent reduction in both fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. As the volume of freight is expected to increase by 57 percent between 2000 and 2020, the potential economic and environmental benefits of such an intermodal system will go higher and higher. Railroads are also potentially very labor efficient. Even in the days of the object-lesson train, when brakes had to be set manually and firemen were needed to stoke steam engines, a five-man crew could easily handle a fifty-car freight train, doing the work of ten times as many modern long-haul truckers.”

and

“Failing to rebuild rail infrastructure will simply further move the burden of ever-increasing shipping demands onto the highways, the expansion and maintenance of which does not come free. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (hardly a shill for the rail industry) estimates that without public investment in rail capacity 450 million tons of freight will shift to highways, costing shippers $162 billion and highway users $238 billion (in travel time, operating, and accident costs), and adding $10 billion to highway costs over the next twenty years. ‘Inclusion of costs for bridges, interchanges, etc., could double this estimate,’ their report adds.”

And Lind wants to increase freight transportation on our roads?

As for his urging that we build more airports … seriously? In a few short decades—as things stand now and for the foreseeable future—we’ll be lucky to have one-third the number of airports now existing. It’s also quite likely that only a very small percentage of the population anywhere will be able to afford air travel in any event—assuming jet fuel remains available in any semblance of reasonable supply. How is that a solution?! Ignoring the effects of Peak Oil isn’t going to get us much except more difficulties.

Lind urges us to consider a “harsh reality” that makes no sense in light of Peak Oil: “The greatest economic crisis since the Depression shows no signs of ending soon. A major, long-term program of public investment is needed more than ever. But the public investments must pass the reality test. And the harsh reality is this: There isn’t going to be a significant high-speed rail system in the U.S. in the near- or medium-term future. There isn’t going to be a continental electric grid permitting solar panels on condo buildings in Berkeley, Calif., to power heirloom-poultry farms in Maine. Most Americans are not going to sell their cars and move back from the suburbs to the cities in order to live in tiny apartments or condos and ride the rails to work. These are romantic daydreams that Democrats could afford to indulge only as long as they were out of office and were not responsible for results.”

So how does he reconcile those statements with the fact that majority of the world’s population already lives in cities, with estimates suggesting that as much as 75% of the world’s population will reside in cities by 2050? [2] Hate to say it, but “romantic daydreams” or some reasonable approximations may very well be our only options in the not-too-distant future. That is the very harsh reality we will have to contend with in the face of Peak Oil. The fossil fuel choices he seems to think we’re going to endlessly possess are simply not going to be available to us. Ignoring that truth is an option … just not a very good one.

Lind is absolutely correct that we need a massive commitment to our woefully ill-maintained infrastructure. (See this and the referenced links therein.) But his assertions that we need to rely on more roadways and more fossil-fuel-consuming trucks is not a solution. We will cater to consumer demands or for more suburban sprawl at our collective peril. We won’t have those options once Peak Oil is upon us, either.

Again I’ll emphasize how critical it is that we begin considering alternatives to transportation, the nature of our infrastructure, and our sources of energy. The dislocations will be challenging enough; let’s not make them worse by waiting for some “better” day to get started. (And let’s not forget that putting into place the infrastructure and technologies needed to make the transitions a reality are themselves going to require a lot of fossil fuel. We’re simply not going to have enough to do all of that and still maintain our lifestyles and industries as we do now. Something is going to have to give.)

While Lind is correct that “There is no public support in the U.S. or any other industrial democracy for the combination of self-imposed austerity and massive subsidies that would be necessary to create an economy based on renewable energy,” that is likewise not going to matter. Who among us wants to sacrifice the lifestyles we’ve come to insist upon?! The real issue is that when Peak Oil is here, lack of public support (predicated on selfishness and an unwillingness/inability to make sacrifices voluntarily) won’t matter either. We either suffer from the harsh impact of Peak Oil by choosing to do nothing, or start working on the next best options, whatever they may be (while understanding those undefined options are no guarantee of harsh-free changes).

I fully recognize that the energy, affordability, and efficiencies derived from fossil fuels/crude oil are as yet unmatched by any forms of alternative or renewable sources of energy. That’s a major part of the challenge of Peak Oil: there will be no seamless transitions to something else to keep life going as it does now because we don’t have that option. Changes—perhaps even drastic ones—are looming.

So do we wait until we’re really battered and beleaguered by Peak Oil, or do we make a national commitment (and act upon it) to finding some reasonable means of supplanting fossil fuel usage—especially for transportation, given that it’s going to take us many years (decades is more likely) to effectively and permanently transition away from oil? We’re already too far behind, and we have no guarantees of finding a successful solution in any event. Is waiting and doing nothing the better option? Is that our legacy?

There are no easy fixes. There are no inexpensive fixes. There are no quick fixes, either. But we clearly can no longer rely on what got us here.

The sooner we all understand that and begin acting on that knowing, the sooner we can begin digging our way out of a mess our own successes and innovations have created.

Sources:

[1] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.longman.html – Back on Tracks: A nineteenth-century technology could be the solution to our twenty-first-century problems by Phillip Longman

[2] http://www.slate.com/id/2256666/- Nimble Cities: Help Slate make transportation in and between cities more efficient, safe, and pleasant by Tom Vanderbilt

I’m still planning my next series of posts, which I don’t expect to begin until sometime next week, but two more articles of note crossed my desk in the last day or two, and are worth passing along if for no other reason than the fact that it clearly appears that other nations “get it” when it comes to the importance of high-speed rail and investing in transportation infrastructure.

 “Two years ago, nearly 90 percent of the six million people traveling between Madrid and Barcelona went by air. But early this  year the number of train travelers on the route surpassed fliers. The trajectory is ever upward.”

Like their counterparts in Germany and France, travelers in Spain are discovering the values inherent in high-speed rail travel, as this recent New York Times article makes clear.

And no nation seems more prepared and willing to devote the financial resources to this than China, as is evidenced here.

As that article notes, China is planning to connect its high speed rail line through 17 other countries in Asia and Eastern Europe, with additional plans to build in Southeast Asia and Russia. That is not an insignificant project, and if successful will clearly help position them as a solid economic leader for decades to come. That level of infrastructure and transportation commitment, as I have stressed frequently in recent posts, is absolutely vital to economic prosperity. Notwithstanding President Obama’s solid leadership, vision, and understanding of this, we fall woefully short in measuring up against China’s progress in these areas.

Our recent $8 billion down payment on high-speed rail transit, important as it is, doesn’t quite cut it when you consider that (as the New York Times articles noted) by 2020, half of Spain’s $160 billion transportation will be devoted to rail travel.

If we don’t figure it out that we have to join the high-speed rail game soon, we’ll pay a hefty price for a long time. As I keep insisting, short-term thinking and planning cannot be our strategy for economic revival and sustained growth. Transportation and infrastructure investments are of critical importance, and we ignore this at our peril.

More choices … and more opportunities

Before I get started on my next series of posts beginning either later this week or early next week, I came across a couple of posts related to my recent series on Transportation that are worth noting today.

First up is another informative piece by Chris Nelder (here) in the form of an open letter to Congress. It contains some very straightforward information about the state of our energy future, and as I discussed in my last post also, he calls on our leaders to begin thinking long term, and to make rail transit a fundamental part of our economic revitalization. (Growth of rail transit infrastructure = jobs.) Of necessity, he is blunt in warning Congress not to make decisions that are only “politically expedient.” That approach, the one Congress is far more comfortable in adopting, simply won’t get it done.

The process of transforming our infrastructure will take decades, and as I continue to insist, waiting to formulate the plans we’ll need to guide us is sure to make things worse.

Just as important, Nelder makes it clear that all Americans need to understand what is at stake here, as I and others continue to urge as often as we can. We’re all in this together, much as we may think—or wish—that the solutions are in the hands of “others.”

It’s well worth the read.

This weekend, I also came across this terrific article from early in 2009. Anyone looking for a solid primer on the basics and importance of high-speed rail can’t do much better than this one.

The author also makes clear the challenges faced by rail proponents (including, shocking as it may be, shortsighted Congressional opposition). Understanding those issues moves us many steps closer to finding solutions and overcoming obstacles that simply should not be factors at all. Narrow-mindedness usually doesn’t get you very far, and so education remains a vital component in the process of economic renewal and future prosperity.

The vital message in author Craig Canine’s article on the critical importance of high-speed rail is this:

“…countries that aspire to participate fully in the twenty-first-century economy are coming to see that a high-speed rail network is as essential as a robust Internet or mobile-phone infrastructure.”

No one is saying any of this will be easy, or quick. But if we truly want this country to return to solid economic footing so as remain a world leader, the re-building of our infrastructure, with rail transit as one of its most essential components, is simply not negotiable. We need to understand this yesterday, and start working on making this happen today.