Peak Oil Matters

About twenty months ago, I discussed the topic of the Export Land Model, one defined and credited to Texas petroleum geologist Jeffrey Brown and a colleague (Dr. Samuel Foucher). Its premise begins with a simple question: “What happens to oil exports in a world with constrained oil supplies?”

As I noted in that prior post: “As oil-exporting nations use the profits generated from their production and sale to grow their own economies and strengthen their industries and infrastructure—while raising the standards of living of their own citizens—they must necessarily increase the amount of oil they retain for themselves. It is, after all, their oil. (And they function with fossil fuel-based infrastructures just as the rest of us do.) Seems fairly straightforward….

“What we tend to overlook … is that as oil production begins its inexorable decline (as it already has in many instances), and as this domestic use increases, the amount of oil available to the rest of us decreases even more drastically than it does based on a straight oil production decline.”

Uh-oh!

Let’s take a look at how this might work, using very simplified math (trying to help out certain political “leaders” as much as I can), and a scenario most can relate to.

I have 1000 bottles of water available to me each day from a reservoir located entirely on my property. My family has owned this land for hundreds of years. To extract the water and bottle it costs me, on average, just ten cents per bottle. So every day, like clockwork, investing the time and money needed, I extract 1000 bottles of water from my self-contained reservoir. My cost is a measly $100.00 every day.

Unfortunately, in my little community, we never get rain … ever! (Work with me here. I’m adopting a Republican leadership strategy: facts and science are inconvenient for purposes of my story, so off they go!)

The reservoir initially held, according to most water-bottling experts, approximately 100 million bottles of water way back when. Now I’m down to about 50 million bottles. Not an insignificant amount, to be sure! The reservoir is no longer just one big lake any longer, however. Draining away all that water over all these years has of course run it down quite a bit, and now some of that water tends to slide off here and there into little seams and pockets and shallower areas. That stuff is gonna be tough to get to, let me tell you!

But so far, I don’t have a lot of trouble getting to most of the water. Some days I have to work a bit more. Truth be told, more days are like that now than ever before, but not a big deal. I’ve had to buy some fancy do-hickeys to help me pump out the water, but I’m not worried. Just wish those things didn’t cost so much! But I’ve still got a lot of water on my property! Taking a good guess about those underwater nooks and crannies and eyeballing how deep I think the reservoir is, I’m pretty damn confident that I’ve still got “quite a few years” left before squeezing out all those bottles of water gets to be a bit too much for me.

Of course, water is absolutely essential to my continuing health. I can’t do without, that’s for sure! Every single day for the last many years, I’ve needed 50 of those bottles myself for all kinds of things. But those 50 that I first take out bottles every day for myself have been more than enough. I’ve never worried that I should start skimping here and there.

Now, I do like the finer things in life. A nice riding mower sure does help me out on the property, for one! Lots of TVs, too … can’t have enough of those! I like to take trips now and then, and as for new cars—the expensive kind—well, they’re a are a real treat for me. A few years back, I bought this really terrific piece of property and built a house. I like to spend a lot of time during the summer there. Lots of nice things in that house, too. Stuff is getting expensive! So I need some revenue to make sure I have all the stuff I want.

The neat thing about all of this is that with so much water on my property, every single day I’ve been able to share my good fortune with all my neighbors. It’s a small community, and most of them, unlike me, don’t have a lot of possessions yet and not a lot of needs, but they do need their water. And wouldn’t you know that each and every day, I’ve been able to sell all my bottles of extra water to my neighbors, all of whom are delighted to pay the $1.00 per bottle I ask. Win – win!

But here’s the thing: now I’m married (time travel into the future is way cool)! And wouldn’t you know, my wife needs her own supply of water every day. Not a problem, honey! We’ve got a lot of water. But I’ve been noticing recently that I’m not always getting the full 1000 bottles out every day. (That whole “no rain” thing is damned inconvenient!) Actually, I can’t remember the last time I did, but hey! We have enough for us, so no worries!

Neighbors grumbled a bit when I had to let them know I couldn’t meet all of their demands any longer, and because it’s getting a bit more difficult for me to get the water each day (gotta do some climbing down to get to the water nowadays, what with the level dropping and all), I had to start charging them a bit more. Truth be told, I’ve been kinda raising the prices regularly for quite some time. Wish it were different, but you know how it is!

Every now and then I’ve dropped the price when it made sense to do so, but most days I just can’t. (I do like buying all that stuff, you know, and it’s not free!)

And since my neighbors all need the water and would prefer getting it from me rather than having to waste time and money and effort driving all over the place to find a few bottles here and there in some of the outlying areas of our county (and it’s usually more expensive stuff, too; and some of it tastes funny, by the way), they keep buying whatever I put out on the card table I have out in front of my house.

No need to put up any fancy store decorations or anything like that. They’re gonna show up every day no matter what, so why spend the money? You would be amazed at all the cool stuff I buy from catalogs with all the money I save by not having to do anything to get my neighbors to buy my water! I’m sure I’ll use at least most of that stuff eventually.

Good news! We have a new baby (this fact-and science-free living is just amazing)! The baby sure does demand a lot, and it turns out that Junior needs a lot of water too! Not so much right now, ‘cuz after all he’s just a baby, but it’s just common sense that once he starts to grow, I know he’ll be needing more. Not a problem, ‘cuz I got lots of extra water!

Of course, while the neighbors are happy for me and delighted that my child is getting lots of chances to do things on my dime (amazing the stuff you can buy from baby catalogs!), I don’t have quite as many water bottles available for them each day. And you know how neighbors are: they do need their water!

There’s been some additional grumbling, and a few of the neighbors are starting to add some soda or tea to their daily routines, but that only goes so far. Those Dr. Pepper baths aren’t nearly as enjoyable as you might think, so they are definitely feeling the pinch now and then, but everyone is managing so far. There’s still just about enough water in the county to take care of everyone. Don’t for how long, but we’re all good at least today.

Fact is, I’ve got too much to think about right now as it is, so I really can’t be bothered thinking about tomorrow or next week, or even next month. That kind of long-term thinking just doesn’t work for me.

Of course, I could just tell my wife and Junior that they should do without all the water each of them needs, but I’m not having that conversation! So the bottom line is that I’m going to keep keeping for myself all the water my family needs every day and sell the rest.

More good news. Baby # 2 has arrived! Junior is starting to need a bit more water now that he’s starting to grow and have friends over, and well, with another thirst to quench, it looks like my neighbors’ supply has just gotten a bit smaller. And you know, I’m climbing down a bit more these days to get at all that water, so … well, you know how it is with costs and expenses and all.

Turns out that my parents are moving in. I’ve got a lot a space, and we do have that nice big second home (and man, that’s getting expensive to maintain). I hate to do it to my good neighbors, but it looks like the price is going to creep up just a bit more, and sad to say they are all going to have to start driving a bit farther out to get all they need, cuz most of the other suppliers in the county are having their own troubles keeping up with demand. I heard that just last week twenty of our neighbors had new babies! Six more of them started up new businesses, too. Good for them! They do need some water for all those new and shiny things, of course, and well, I’ve got more mouths to feed first and foremost, so  … well, you know how it is….

In fact, we just had baby # 3! Go figure! And man, do the other two growing children have their needs. Amazing how much more water I’m having to keep for myself these days. They all take showers; friends are now coming over; they’ve got school projects and sports activities and just about all of those events require water; and … well, the truth is that I’m needing a whole lot more water for my family than ever!

Neighbors are saying the same thing about their families, too! Go figure! A few of them are lucky because they have some smaller pools on their property, so they can usually make up for the county-wide shortfalls. Quality is not always as good, of course, but they’re fine. They do complain about how hard it is to get to those other reservoirs and how much work they have to do to get their water bottles back home, but no one seems to be worrying. Of course, they don’t have as much time to do other things, because getting that water home is now a lot more time-consuming than they imagined. Some of the store owners in town are complaining too. “Everyone in town keeps telling me that they can’t buy as much from me as they used to. Excuse is that they have to spend more money on that damn water! I’ve got expenses, too!” I hear that more and more these days.

This is kinda sad, but my sister’s husband lost his job, and they are having a tough time. Since I have a lot of water, I’m helping them out by giving them all they need. That’s one less thing they have to worry about, thankfully! After all, I do have lots of water! And my nephew … wow! He goes through water likes it … water! “It’s free, Uncle, and you’ve got a lot, so what’s the big deal?” I hear that all the time now. And my own Junior has this annoying habit of not turning the shower off, either. What a dummy! Twice a day, I have to clomp up the stairs to shut the water off. Good thing I have a lot of water to waste.

I know the neighbors understand, but I know they’re not happy. What can they say, really? It’s my water! It’s costing even more to get their water from me, I’m working harder, and my own water needs just keep growing! So glad I have a lot of water! Family is getting a bit antsy, ‘though. I had to buy my parents some new furniture because they were complaining so much. I think they’re happy now. But the kids! Every day they want something else, and I know there’s gonna be hell to pay if I don’t give in now and then. Truth is, it’s a lot more now than then these days….What can I do?

How’s all this math working for you so far?

Let me run by you this opening sentence from a recent Reuters report. Might be a good idea to take two minutes and read the entire story.

The world may have to live on a lot less Saudi Arabian crude towards the end of this decade as rampant internal demand eats into oil exports and the kingdom’s alternative energy plans may prove too little too late

Welcome to the Export Land Model … the one we need to consider here in the real, fact-based world.

More to come.

[NOTE: This post is part of an ongoing series (which started here) through the next few months whose purpose is to provide tangible examples of what our future might be like in a world where we will no longer have available to us the quality and quantity of fossil fuel energy sources as we have long been accustomed to possessing and using. Some examples will describe significant impacts beyond the most obvious one: less but more expensive gas to power our vehicles.
Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences affecting each of us that we can begin an intelligent national process of planning and implementing new methods of providing the goods and services we’ll need or desire.]

~~~

I am now the very proud father of a college graduate (a wonderful young woman who completed her four-year curriculum in only three years—impressive!—and has now returned to the Boston area). I could not be more delighted or happier for her!

Last week, I flew to New Orleans to attend her graduation, and stayed there for five nights (had to help pack the van in which she and her friend were traveling back home). My wife, her son and a friend of his flew down separately, and stayed in New Orleans for three nights.

No great surprise, but my daughter was not the only graduate. While I do not have the exact statistics, I believe the overwhelming majority of the approximately 2300 graduates came from someplace other than the immediate New Orleans area. That’s lot of graduates now driving/flying someplace else, and a lot of family members who attended the graduation after having flown in/driven from some other location. In what may be a stunning revelation, this is not the only year a graduation was held at Tulane University … shocking I know!

Even more shocking, this happened several times recently not just in New Orleans. Rumors abound that graduations were also held in Boston, New York, and possibly someplace in California, with more expected soon.

Putting aside the affordability of college for many if our economic path does not change soon, how are families going to deal with the impact of Peak Oil on just the most basic travel options for significant family events such as this?

What kind of choices will families and students be forced to make in the years to come when travel expenses to and from colleges become prohibitively expensive for many if not most of them? The college visits most engage in during senior year of high school has become an industry unto itself, and travel expenses for that aspect of college planning are not insignificant. Our trip to New Orleans was the only college visit we made via airplane, but there was also no small amount of driving involved as my daughter and I checked out a number of colleges here in the New England area.

When gas was $2 and change it was a barely noticeable expense. But at the current $4.29 per gallon (which was $3.99 six weeks ago), families are going to start taking note. Restaurants and hotels and assorted other merchants and service providers who derive no small amount of revenue from these travels by countless hundreds of thousands of prospective college students and their families will suffer in the process.

I’ve been to New Orleans nearly a dozen times in the three years that my daughter attended Tulane. My wife has joined me on three of those trips, and my daughter traveled home on multiple occasions as well.

Each of those trips required some combination of air fare and hotels and rental cars and cab fare and parking fees and gas expenditures and/or use of our own vehicles getting to and from airports….We’re fortunate in that our other daughter attends school in New York City, making Amtrak an enjoyable option, but how many families can or will be able to rely on mass transit for these types of travels? The complete failure of too many of our leaders to recognize the need for more investment in mass transit will prove a damning regret in years to come.

My daughter attended Tulane in part because it was one of the few that offered the major she sought (and a substantial scholarship to boot). What if traveling that far had not been an option? Or if it had been, what kind of dynamics would have been involved if she had moved down there, and we didn’t see each other for nearly 3 years because travel expenses had become prohibitively expensive for us (not that it wasn’t a drain on my finances to begin with)?

What kind of lifestyle changes would this young college student have had to make, knowing that she was essentially on her own for three or four years without the intangibles of family contact? (As it is, a week after she moved to New Orleans for the first time, hurricane warnings forced an evacuation of all area colleges, and she was on a plane back home about 8 days after she and I had said good-bye!) What happens in these or similar conditions when plane fare is out of the question for most? Buying airline tickets last minute is not exactly an inexpensive proposition! And what kind of options have to be put into place when vehicular travel is not feasible, and there is no mass transit available?

“Our friend of past online debates, Randall O’Toole, is a champion of both the auto-based transportation system and mobility in general. His argument is essential that there is a correlation between mobility and prosperity, that the more mobile a society is, the more at liberty people are to follow endeavors that enhance life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Greater mobility increases job opportunities, shopping selection, service competitiveness, school choices and even the gene pool people have a chance to select from when seeking a mate. There is no question that, in a broad sense, he is correct.” [1]

Greater mobility has been a wonderful option for many years for countless millions of us. What happens in the years to come when it’s not?

Sources:

[1] http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/4/4/mobilitys-diminishing-returns.html; Mobility’s Diminishing Returns by Charles Marohn – April 4, 2011

[NOTE: This post is part of an ongoing series (which started here) through the next few months whose purpose is to provide tangible examples of what our future might be like in a world where we will no longer have available to us the quality and quantity of fossil fuel energy sources as we have long been accustomed to possessing and using. Some examples will describe significant impacts beyond the most obvious one: less but more expensive gas to power our vehicles.
Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences affecting each of us that we can begin an intelligent national process of planning and implementing new methods of providing the goods and services we’ll need or desire.]

~~~

While rising gasoline prices at our local stations are the most immediate and obvious consequences of oil supply and demand problems, Peak Oil is about much more than how big a hit our wallets can take. It’s easy to get caught up with the financial impact in our own households, which may explain why there’s usually a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when prices at the pump increase, and a settled calm once the prices drop to more tolerable levels.

We are not likely to have the luxury of complaining and then having the most visible symptom treated so that we can then carry on in some semblance of “same old, same old” for much longer. The immediate and obvious effects of Peak Oil may certainly ride on the wings of higher prices, but the underlying causes and their potentially crippling effects across a wide swath of industry and society will prove to be more enduring and damaging in the long run. At some point, most of us are simply not going to be able to afford the next price hike, and in that regard, high prices will cease to have such a visceral impact on our daily lives.

But long before our individual budgets reach the breaking point, Peak Oil will have served notice on scores of other aspects of life-as-we-once-knew-it that change is coming. Prices have almost always been the sole concern for most of us. Early 1970’s shortages aside, we’ve never really concerned ourselves with whether or not we can get our tanks filled. How much is it going to cost? has been the entire conversation. Peak Oil is going to add a few more topics.

I recently posted about my trip to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras “festival,” and briefly noted some concerns about rising oil prices as they affect restaurants (and hotels). Certainly as delivery and product prices increase, restaurants of all kinds are feeling the pinch just a bit more each day. Given recent economic conditions across the nation, it’s safe to say that the food and beverage industry has not been immune to the Great Recession.

Most of us have in some manner curtailed our away-from-home dining plans. We’re all being a bit more cautious with our funds, and so we don’t go to the movies as often, or eat at nicer restaurants as frequently, or we cut back on travel. If we gained more confidence in our individual (and national) financial well-being, it’s probably safe to assume that most of us who have cut back on dining out will ease our way back into that usually enjoyable social activity.

But just in case the first message above didn’t catch your attention, I’ll repeat it here: Peak Oil is going to be about a lot more than just how much? As demand increases, and the cumulative effects of decreased investments over the years began to create havoc with supply (to say nothing of the fact that what is now being explored is on the decline in most parts of the world, or more difficult to extract, or suffers from more political/above-ground interference, or INSERT FACTOR HERE), our only concern will no longer be limited to how much? Soon enough (and picking the month and year when is entirely pointless), can I even buy gas today/nearby? will become a more frequent refrain.

As the size of the pie shrinks and even more hungry consumers sit at the table for their piece, even the most inept math student will quickly understand that not everyone will be served equally or even sufficiently. Some may have to do without; others will get a much smaller piece than is customary. Others may be told to come back only if another pie becomes available. It is that elementary.

And when this begins to happen, we’re all going to be making more sacrifices. Dining out will surely become much more of a challenge, and one which more and more of us will eventually decide is no longer feasible. Gas prices may simply be too high to warrant trips for a need we can just as easily (and, we hope, at less cost) substitute for at home. The simple steak and baked potato sitting on my dining room table may not satisfy nearly as much as a preferred Natural Angus Bavette Steak with wild mushroom risotto and bourbon-tinge reduction sauce served with fresh-baked Parmesan crusted rolls, and there may not be soft-jazz piped in from speakers placed unobtrusively in the far corners of the room as we’re bathed in warmth from the nearby fireplace, and I may very well be dining alone or (preferably) with my lovely wife rather than with my wife and several friends whom we see not nearly as often anymore, but I won’t go to bed hungry, and my wallet won’t suffer nearly as much trauma.

It’s just as likely that many of us will stay home and make our own ham and cheese on rye sandwich rather than making a run to the Subway sub shop two miles away or the Wendy’s at the food court in the local Mall six miles down the road.

Doing without a small treat like dining out, or losing the opportunity to socialize with friends may not strike any of us as an especially egregious consequence. Most of us wouldn’t even think of that as a direct consequence of declining oil production and limited supplies, but that’s the type of change we’ll see all too often in a world where gas prices are increasingly prohibitive, and/or supplies are simply not available today or this week or in our city or town.

I would certainly hope that that scenario, if it does materialize (which it will if we continue to sit on our hands and do nothing, or wait for others to do something, or just pretend that all will be well eventually), will be many years down the road, but I would not want to bet a lot of money on that happening. I certainly don’t think we’ll be looking at that unpleasant prospect later this year, or next summer, or soon beyond that. But the truth is that it’s not the product of an over-active, morose imagination. It’s all about those damned annoying facts.

Those kinds of trade-offs will increase in the years to come. Perhaps right now it might not seem like such a big deal, or even any kind of deal. But quality-of-life is not always or often measured in dollars and cents. When the customary social activities we engage in start dropping away because we can’t even afford to get “there,” wherever there might be, we will begin to feel the squeeze. Many of us now do not engage in those familiar social activities as or as often as we once did simply because of financial concerns. Tighter budgets require different spending priorities. Unpleasant though it may be, it’s an understood “sacrifice.” The expectation has always been that at some point life will return to the once-familiar “normal”, and thus soon enough we’ll be back meeting with friends at restaurants and ballgames and a host of other options.

But Peak Oil is different. Peak Oil is not a budget matter. Peak Oil is about having the energy needed at all. If one simply cannot get gas for their car—regardless of price—because there is no gas available that day or week, or what is then available has to likewise be “budgeted”, then that kind of a social change or “sacrifice” takes on a different hue. We’re not prepared to have those kinds of options denied to us entirely. Problems which cannot be rectified by money are a different breed.

And what of the restaurants who’ve long relied on our faithful appearances every couple of months? When a not-inconsequential number of diners stop patronizing those establishments, it’s very obvious what will happen soon enough. Many are no doubt experiencing those consequences in this moment, and surely have been for several years now. And when the employees are suddenly out of a job, and the chef finds herself just as unemployed with no prospects at all nearby because every other restaurant is suffering just as much, what then? What happen to the merchants they frequent when there is no longer a salary to spend because there are too few customers to prop up the restaurant? What of their suppliers? The drivers who deliver their goods? And the merchants all of these others in turn frequent? And then their employees? Getting the picture?

There aren’t that many dots to connect … it’s not as though this a new economic problem never before encountered. Multiply that by many thousands of neighborhoods and towns and counties and cities and metro-regions and states and pretty quickly, there’s a problem.

What then?

We—you; me; neighbors; family; friends; local, state, and federal officials—need to start thinking about how life will be a few short years down the road. We’re wasting time….

More to come.

[NOTE: This post is part of an ongoing series (which started here) through the next few months whose purpose is to provide tangible examples of what our future might be like in a world where we will no longer have available to us the quality and quantity of fossil fuel energy sources as we have long been accustomed to possessing and using. Some examples will describe significant impacts beyond the most obvious one: less but more expensive gas to power our vehicles.
Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences affecting each of us that we can begin an intelligent national process of planning and implementing new methods of providing the goods and services we’ll need or desire.]

~~~

Not too long ago, I had the good fortune of attending an outstanding concert performance by a blues/rock guitarist whose music I recently “discovered.”

The musician (Joe Bonamassa*) played in central Massachusetts, and I attended the performance with my brother, who lives at the western end of the state. While his trip was a bit shorter to the concert location, it was close to a 100 mile round trip for me from the Boston area. Several thousand other fans made the trip in to Worcester, no doubt almost all of them by private vehicle.

As for Bonamassa, I think it’s safe to assume he and his band/entourage either made the trip by bus or plane (in which case additional vehicle travel would have been necessary to wherever he was staying in the area). My recollection is that his next performance was somewhere in Pennsylvania several nights later, after having traveled to Massachusetts from his previous performance—out-of-state. I also understand that he travels almost year-round, and is in or en route to Europe now for an extended tour (after having made a stopover to play a few dates in Canada first)—all before returning to the States later in the year (including a performance in Boston, which I’ll be attending).

Why all of this in a blog about Peak Oil?

Take a look at the paragraph above once more. Mr. Bonamassa, and thousands of performers just like him, travel a lot. They don’t do so by themselves, either. Staff, road crews, family members, and assorted other necessary personnel no doubt accompany these musicians most if not all the time. Their equipment, instruments, stages, lighting, props, and assorted what-nots also have to get from one place to another. Given the amount of equipment this one musician and his three band members used while on stage, it’s probably safe to assume that they, like most of their peers, require something a wee bit larger than a cargo van to haul everything around.

Unless they are all now traveling by train (are any of them doing so?), that is a lot of fuel consumption for a lot of people and equipment for a lot of days. And unless Mr. Bonamassa et al are traveling by luxury liner across the Atlantic, I’m guessing there’s a lot of air fare being paid to an airline, and a lot more fuel consumption….

So when fuel prices have climbed above $4.00—which I now pay—(or $7? $10?) what happens to Joe Bonamassa and the thousands of other musicians who likewise tour the world; or actors who perform on stages worldwide; or comedians; or photographers and painters and sculptors who display their artistry in locales spanning the globe? Or what happens when they are advised that the locale where they are performing won’t have fuel for them to travel to their next stop until … next Friday? Or not at all because it has already been allocated to others? Or it just isn’t available for them under any circumstances because what they do is not “essential travel” in that area under who-knows-what kinds of restrictions may be the order of the day somewhere in the not-too-distant future?

What about their fans? Social activities like this offer intangibles which contribute to our and our communities’ well-being. What happens when most performances simply cannot continue? A little piece of what has made life enjoyable for millions may have to change its nature in ways we cannot envision right now—especially if no one is even thinking about it yet.

With some planning and a willingness to commit a lot more than the ninety-minute or so round trip in my SUV, I’m fairly certain I could have gotten from my home to the concert location with perhaps less than a mile’s worth of walking to and from. I could have walked from my home down the hill (which would of course have meant a very late night walk back up that monster) to an MBTA bus, and then on to an MBTA subway train to South Station in Boston, where I would have had several travel options (Amtrak, commuter rail, or bus) to make the approximate fifty-mile trip to Worcester, MA. None of it free, of course, and none of it a direct door-to-door adventure. I believe the City of Worcester offers bus service at least in the downtown area, and so I’m comfortable with the thought that I could have gotten very close to the concert’s Main Street location via local bus out there. Just a guess, but that would have to be close to a 5 hour round trip … minimum.

If I had to do that in order to see this performer, would I have done so? Probably not. CD’s and DVDs work just fine for me, also. Can’t think of any other performer I’d go to such lengths to see, come to think of it.

CD’s and DVD’s are not the same of course. Obviously I would have lost out on the chance to spend some time with my younger brother, as well as enjoying the intangibles of attending a live performance with several thousand other fans similarly enjoying the performance.

What if 90% of the performer’s audience members had to make the same decisions about how much they wanted to spend for gas and/or figure out some convoluted means of getting to the concert hall via sporadic and to-date insufficient levels of mass transit? What if, as I suspect, a substantial majority of them did not have readily-available public transportation options? Then what?

The dominoes start to tumble quickly. No fans = no revenue for the artist = no performance = no revenue for the entourage traveling with him = no revenue to the host city and the theater/concert hall/art center = no revenue for the restaurants and bars and hotels and retail stores who rely on the additional traffic into their community = no work for the many employees =….

Not a pretty picture.

Perhaps some plans might be a good idea? And while we’re at it, perhaps we might get some of our wise leadership to consider that now might be an excellent time to give just a bit more thought to the need for a lot more public transportation (a subject I’ll have a lot more to say about in the weeks to come). I don’t see anyone slapping together efficient alternative transportation options in just a few weeks … or months … or years. That calls for some long-term planning….

Ken Orski writes about transportation matters, and I’ll readily admit he is far more knowledgeable about those issues than I will ever be. Offering legitimate and well-reasoned arguments against the Obama Administration’s pursuit of a national high-speed rail program, Mr. Orski offered this:

“The President’s proposal came at a most inopportune time, when the nation is recovering from a serious recession and desperately trying to reduce the federal budget deficit and a mountain of debt. In time, however, the recession will end, the economy will start growing again, and the deficit will hopefully come under control. At that distant moment in time, perhaps toward the end of this decade, the nation might be able to resume its tradition of ‘bold endeavors’ — launching ambitious programs of public infrastructure renewal.
“That could be an appropriate time to revive the idea of a high-speed rail network, at least in the densely populated Northeast Corridor where road and air traffic congestion will soon be reaching levels that threaten its continued growth and productivity. For now, however, prudence, good sense and the common welfare dictate that we, as a nation, learn to live within our means.” [1]

For all his expertise and the wisdom offered as to why high-speed rail as Obama has set forth makes little sense (I don’t disagree entirely), the “vision”, or more accurately, the lack thereof, is precisely what we cannot afford. What problem-free, simple, inexpensive, unanimously-agreed upon set of criteria will determine when the proper “distant moment in time” is upon us? Can we thus safely assume that there will be no intervening issues of any significance that might postpone that “distant moment in time” until a better “distant moment in time” (assuming, of course, that there will then be no intervening issues of any significance that might postpone that following “distant moment in time” until an even better and later “distant moment in time”)?

Hard to imagine, but someone might—just might—come up with his or her own laundry list of why that eventual “distant moment in time” ought to be postponed for just a bit longer … you know, until there’s a much better “distant moment in time.” At what point do our experts and leaders figure out that we actually ought to be thinking beyond next week?

It’s all fine and well to decry wasteful spending, but keep in mind that short-sighted and narrow-minded ideologies and policies carry long term consequences, too.

Now might be a good time to get the ball rolling instead. Of course, if the future doesn’t matter, then I’m fine with how things are right now. You?

A lot of us (performers, too) may find ourselves elated by our demonstration of wisdom way back when in good ‘ole 2011 in having decided that Now was the right time after all….

* Anyone interested in blues/rock music should check out Bonamassa, who by all indications has already garnered a great reputation as one of that genre’s best musicians … he is an outstanding guitarist! (No better endorsement than Eric Clapton having joined him on stage….)

[NOTE TO MY READERS: I leave tomorrow morning for a trip to New Orleans once again. This time, I’m traveling—along with my wife, her son and a friend of his—to celebrate my daughter’s college graduation later in the week. This will be my only post of the week, and I don’t expect to post again until later next week after my return on the 16th, following several days of catching up thereafter. Thanks]

Sources:

[1] http://www.newgeography.com/content/002163-the-end-line-ambitious-high-speed-rail-program-hits-buffer-fiscal-reality?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Newgeography+%28Newgeography.com+-+Economic%2C+demographic%2C+and+political+commentary+about+places%29; The End of the Line: Ambitious High-speed Rail Program Hits the Buffer of Fiscal Reality by Ken Orski – 04/01/2011

As I have been consistently urging in most of my posts in recent months, planning for what happens in the wake of Peak Oil’s arrival must become a national priority—and not just one for Congress. This is an all-hands-on-deck necessity, and every day we choose not to begin the complex, lengthy process of figuring out how to adjust to a world where the basic energy source for almost everything that we’ve produced in the last 100+ years will no longer be available as we’ve come to expect and demand is another day of almost certain difficulty for all of us. That’s not a good formula for growth and prosperity in the years to come.

Given what is at stake, I thought it might help readers new to the Peak Oil discussion to review the observations and suggestions of one of the seminal works of the past decade (see a prior discussion here). Back in 2005, energy advisor Robert L. Hirsch and his colleagues, on behalf of the federal government, issued a report entitled “The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management”—commonly cited as the Hirsch Report—sponsored by the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the Department of Energy (PDF here). The Hirsch Report offered an informative assessment of the then-current state of oil/fossil fuel production in the early part of the 21st Century. Of greater importance, it presented a clear warning about the potential consequences if we all fail to plan for the day when oil production has begun its inevitable slide down the slope from its peak.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), peak oil production occurred about a year after the Hirsch Report was released. Not good.

The Hirsch Report begins with a stark advisory:

“The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.
“Dealing with world oil production peaking will be extremely complex, involve literally trillions of dollars and require many years of intense effort.” [p. 4]

Among its key recommendations, the Report suggested that a “crash-course” of mitigation efforts would need to be undertaken at least a full decade before Peak Oil’s arrival in order to avoid many if not all of the drastic challenges and consequences brought about by declining oil production and the availability of fossil fuels to meet our (increasing) needs. If the IEA assessment is correct—and there’s no reason to believe it is not substantially accurate as is—then we are already five years behind in preparing ourselves. Not good.

“Intervention by governments will be required, because the economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic.” [p. 5]

“Prudent risk management requires the planning and implementation of mitigation well before peaking. Early mitigation will almost certainly be less expensive than delayed mitigation.” [p. 6]

That’s just for starters. “Less expensive” seems to be out as an option for us now. What kind of “intervention” by governments might be needed has by all indications not yet been considered—at least publicly, as I discussed in my last post. That should be cause for concern.

A quick acknowledgement about how much of our nation’s transportation depends on a ready supply of inexpensive gas and oil suggests even to the entirely uninformed that adapting to the post-Peak Oil world is at a minimum going to be a monumental undertaking of almost-indescribable complexity … in other words, a big challenge! The transportation aspect is not just about dependence on our personal vehicles, either. A significant percentage of our produced goods are transported via trucked freight, and there’s a fair amount of air travel to keep in mind as well. This sobering observation offers plenty of motivation:

“We cannot conceive of any affordable government-sponsored “crash program” to accelerate normal replacement schedules so as to incorporate higher energy efficiency technologies into the privately-owned transportation sector; significant improvements in energy efficiency will thus be inherently time-consuming (of the order of a decade or more).” [p. 24]

So what’s the Plan? Business as usual and a whole lotta hope ought to be off the table already. Denial and ignoring it in the hopes it will just go away aren’t of much help, either. Three questions posed to readers [p. 10] when the report was issued have even greater relevance today. Do we have answers yet?

“What are the risks of heavy reliance on optimistic world oil production peaking projections?
“Must we wait for the onset of oil shortages before actions are taken?
“What can be done to ensure that prudent mitigation is initiated on a timely basis?”

Optimism is fine and well … up to a point. Believing that we’re doomed is not the best starting point, so a recognition that with great, concerted effort we may still be able to count on our nation’s great intellectual and cultural resources to lead the way is certainly advisable. But that notion alone, without planning and then implementation, is not much more than an empty platitude. Obviously waiting until we’re up to our eyeballs in Peak Oil’s impact and consequences is not the preferred approach, but time’s a-wastin’. We’re damn close to that point now.

“[D]oing the research required to bring new technologies to commercial readiness takes time under the best of
circumstances. Thereafter, more than a decade of intense implementation will be required for world scale impact, because of the inherently large scale of world oil consumption.” [p. 7]

Ensuring prudent mitigation is one of the key topics I’ll be devoting scores of posts to in the coming weeks and months. Suffice it to say, leaving it all up to our nearly-useless Congress without a great deal more involvement on our parts is a sure strategy for not-so-pleasant consequences which I don’t want to give even a first thought to. We need to start having difficult, painful, but honest public conversations about what happens in the years to come when the oil and gas we rely on every day is simply no longer as available as it has been for decades. There’s no getting around that fact.

“Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program action leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.” [p. 59]

That outcome ought to be scaring the bejesus out of us right about now—to least enough for us and our leadership to get off our asses and start having those conversations and putting plans into place starting today. That phase alone is going to take many months of thoughtful consideration and an examination and understanding of what makes our industries productive and successful, and in turn affords us the myriad options and opportunities we’ve enjoyed for decades. Plan B for all of that is not going to be the end result of a couple of chats at someone’s weekend retreat.

The concluding advisory is not comforting given how inadequate our preparation has been to date:

“In summary, the problem of the peaking of world conventional oil production is unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society. The challenges and uncertainties need to be much better understood. Technologies exist to mitigate the problem. Timely, aggressive risk management will be essential.” [p. 7]

We’ve past the point where “aggressive” is called for. Whatever comes after aggressive is where we need to be, and soon.

I don’t like the thought of crash-program anything, but with oil production having at a minimum plateaued half a decade ago, the signs are not good for a return to business as usual. A minor bump-up in production from oil shale is not a reason for concluding that the Peak Oil problem can again be put to bed. We need to have the courage and wisdom to recognize that, and then begin the process of putting our magnificent talents and the ethics and creativity of our peers to work as we lead the way into the post-Peak Oil world.

Crisis, or opportunity?

To be continued….

[NOTE: This is the latest installment in a new PeakOilMatters series (which started here). It’s about finding a new and better vision to get to, through, and beyond Peak Oil and its widespread impact on what we produce, how we produce, and how we live. We won’t be falling off a cliff tomorrow, and the full brunt of Peak Oil’s effects won’t be experienced all at once, either. Gas and oil do not have to disappear entirely, nor do gas prices have to rise into the stratosphere before Peak Oil’s impact is felt.
Gradually, but inexorably, changes will be in the offing, however. We need to come to a better understanding of this, and start preparing ourselves now for the lengthy transition and just as lengthy ongoing impact of Peak Oil on all of us. Many issues must of necessity be considered, and I hope to make a contribution to the public dialogue we need to have. I hope you’ll find these objectives enjoyable as well as beneficial. We have more of a voice than we think we do. Finding that voice just might be our best hope.]

~~~

[Greetings from lovely New Orleans. As mentioned in my last post, this will be my only entry for the week.]

So where do we go from here? The recent “mini-series” of posts on the subject of Peak Oil and how the issue is being either ignored by most or is expected—like most of our other pressing national concerns—to be readily solved in some non-arduous manner now opens the door for suggested (rational) dialogue as to what steps need to be taken by and from our government, media, corporate leaders and on down to you and me. It is this theme that I will now develop over an extended period and perhaps dozens of posts in the weeks ahead.

The dilemma … the challenges, in just preparing to face the effects of declining oil production matched against increasing demand:

“I believe the top three challenges to making progress on solutions are: 1) a lack of public and policy maker knowledge on these issues, and strong resistance to understanding and believing that such a profound threat to everything that many of us hold so dear–our big houses, automobile-centered lifestyles, frequent air travel, access to consumer goods from around the world– is close at hand; 2) very strong vested interests that will oppose changes in their industries and how they do business; and 3) our amazing lack of preparation for what we are facing, after investing in a built environment, food production system, transportation system, and overall economy that is so heavily reliant on cheap and plentiful oil. [1]

“What do you promise people who have been told they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? How do you tell them ‘the good times,’ as we have known them, are not coming back? Americans need a new vision that helps them deal with reality, a promising story of the future that helps them let go of the past.” [2]

“However you want to define the American dream, there is not much of it that’s left anymore….
“America will never get its act together until we recognize how much trouble we’re really in, and how much effort and shared sacrifice is needed to stop the decline. Only then will we be able to begin resuscitating the dream.” [3]

Crisis, or opportunity? I remain an optimist, and try not to get too bogged down in the doom-and-gloom prospects that surround Peak Oil. I’ll continue to believe we will come to an understanding of what faces us and then develop the strategies needed until or unless someone proves me wrong.

Which leads us to this: Someone needs to lay out some kind of an agenda for consideration so that there’s at least a framework for intelligent and meaningful contributions. The impact and consequences of Peak Oil are subjects that have still not quite fully registered with the great majority of citizens and politicians, but the facts are readily available.

What’s needed first, as I have argued in prior posts, is a nominal commitment on the part of the electorate to learn the general facts and considerations about the current and developing state of (declining) oil production. There is enough legitimate, independent information about depletion, the difficulties of today’s efforts in oil exploration, the number of producing fields and their current status, statistics galore about the static nature of oil production in recent years, and increasing demand—among other relevant considerations—for citizens to make an informed assessment that we’re not in a good place in terms of fossil fuel resources beyond a few short decades.

For instance, do 40 years’ worth of statistics showing almost consistent decline in U.S. oil production make more sense and fit better into an understanding of our looming energy challenges than pseudo-assertions like this proposition from a regular denier of peak oil (whose presumed effect and intent in making the statement seem rather uninspiring at best)?:

“Many analysts [citing exactly one finance professional – my comment] are expecting a lot of new oil supplies from multiple locations around the globe.
“Clever technologists [citing exactly one example – my comment] are finding ways to make every barrel of oil go that much further. This is true in many ways….” [4]

Why am I not finding much comfort in that? I suppose it’s possible to be even more vague, although I’m not sure how (see this post for more)!

The information gathered should make it clear even to a non-expert that a few hundred billion barrels of reserves locked away underground doesn’t mean all that much, especially when one realizes almost immediately that extracting those remaining reserves are now so much more difficult and costly an undertaking. A few decades worth of remaining oil reserves is not a solution, and affords us no opportunity to just sit on our hands and tuck this issue away for another decade or two.

Making their own assessments based on the veracity and logic of the information presented will then prove more meaningful and offer more of an impetus to become involved. There’s a lot to be said and much to be gained in contributing to both defining the near-infinite variety of challenges we’ll face and implementing the many strategies needed to create a future no longer dependent on fossil fuels. Nothing easy, simple, or inexpensive about that process, however….

So how do we do this? How do we impress upon the information-distributors (business and political leaders, as well as the media) to start acting with some intelligence and integrity? The dizzying array of misstatements, disingenuous half-truths, omissions, misrepresentations, and outright lies leave most of completely baffled as to what really is the truth. As with almost every other aspect of the peak in oil production subject, simple and quick are unavailable.

I’ll do my part via the other series I’m now running to give others a sense of how many ways declining oil production will affect us all (the first one is here), but so too must those of us who prefer dealing with reality make some effort to get the word out. It could be as simple as mentioning this topic in casual discussion, sending along relevant articles or blog posts to friends and colleagues, or to local newspapers and media outlets, or writing letters to the editor, or engaging in dialogue on the internet in the form of comments to blog posts or similar pursuits. The more citizens we encourage to begin the process of engaging in meaningful dialogue about the facts (no particular expertise required), the better our chances of reaching the ears of those whom we’ve entrusted to act on our behalf.

The key is that the conversation must begin … how is of limited importance right now except insofar as it must be truthful. No one is helped by half-truths, misrepresentation, or worse. As information is shared, understanding and awareness will take on lives of their own, as is usually the case with matters that affect large segments of the population. Surging prices at the gas pumps provide a needed opening, as does the current turmoil in the Middle East. It can thus only be more difficult to keep hiding facts.

Leaders will respond to pressure on this subject just as they do to others, and we’ll be making a huge mistake in judgment if we wait for them to pick up the banner of declining oil production. Not much good news there….

Armed with more information, however, we can begin the slow but necessary process of accepting and then dealing with the changes Peak Oil is going to impose on all of us. We have to start sometime and somewhere—now and here seems as good a place as any.

The proposals and observations I’ll be advancing are by no means exhaustive, and I have no doubt that there are many legitimate (and certainly many nonsensical) challenges to what I’ll offer. Others much more knowledgeable than I should feel free to chime in. But the dialogue and planning has to begin somewhere, and someone has to be the first to attempt to corral the scores of issues and ideas, and so here we are.

This is the reality: we’re NOT running out of oil, and we won’t for several more decades. But that is not the point and never is when discussing peak oil. Peak oil is about the rate of production, the quality of oil, the ease of access, refinement, availability, and affordability. Each of these production elements are now more challenging to meet, and is now happening when worldwide demand is ratcheting up. Finding fewer and smaller fields that consistently fail to keep up with depletion rates, producing less oil, often inferior in quality, more slowly, at greater expense, with much more effort required to satisfy increasing demand (just for starters) is not a recipe for success, profitability, and availability. And it’s not going to get any better. The steady march down the back slope of oil production is soon upon us, and very little that we produce, use, or depend on will remain unaffected by that truth.

Time to get busy.

To be continued….

Sources:

[1] http://countercurrents.org/cardoni230110.htm; Dealing With Peak Oil By Salvatore Cardoni & Dr. Brian Schwartz – January 23, 2010
[2] http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/greider?rel=hp_picks; The Future of the American Dream By William Greider – May 6, 2009 [Excerpted from Mr. Greider's book, Come Home, America.]
[3]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/opinion/20herbert.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1290258063-Iir1a5KQqz38a/ueTYMJBA; Hiding From Reality By BOB HERBERT – November 20, 2010
[4] http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Is-Peak-Oil-Slipping-Backwards-to-the-Year-2060-and-Beyond.html; Is Peak Oil Slipping Backwards to the Year 2060 and Beyond? by Al Fin – February 2, 2011

I’m well aware that there is an unfortunately successful and all-too-often-employed strategy (lack of integrity aside) used most often in politics but certainly in discussions about Peak Oil and global warming, where the frequent repetition of any combination of lies, half-truths, misstatements, misrepresentations, and disingenuous propositions eventually leads to belief on the part of far too many people.

I’ve mentioned in prior posts (here and here, for example) that I think it’s important to challenge widely-disseminated examples of peak oil denial rather than letting the disingenuous arguments take root. The decline in oil production is a big enough problem as it is; creating doubt for reasons having no discernible value is at best questionable and should not go unchallenged is possible.

To that end, I came across two articles last week that caught my attention. Predictably, the same patterns of “explanations” and offerings cropped up there just as they have in other articles I’ve highlighted before. I guess if you cannot deal with facts, there’s not a whole of room for much creativity when addressing fossil fuel production. I’ll deal with the first article today, and save my discussion for the other one for an upcoming post.

First up is a piece from Jeremy Bowden, whose first paragraph touts one of the more popular terms in denial-land: the finding of “massive” oil fields. Whenever I read that, the antenna goes up and into full lock mode. Usually accompanying glowing exhortations about these magical fields where solutions to all our problems reside are phrases touting the wonder of technology and ingenuity. Bowden does not disappoint.

This article of necessity raises the specter of OPEC’s role in world production: “It is the technical expertise and project management skills of the most dynamic multinational and independent oil companies that hold the key to these new hard-to-get-at reserves, rather than the whims of Arab dictators or the level of OPEC budget deficits.” Always good to have an enemy to whip out at a moment’s notice (not that I’m an OPEC fan, mind you.)

I’m still not entirely clear on why quotes like this are supposed to be persuasive, but they do frequent writings which dispute peak oil:

“James Burkhard, a managing director at energy consultancy IHS CERA, says the recent upstream developments mean oil and gas will continue to be pillars of global energy supply for decades to come. ‘The competitiveness of oil and gas and the scale at which they are produced mean that there are no readily available substitutes in either one year or 20 years,’ he added.”

He’s absolutely correct. There are no readily available substitutes, but that’s the problem! Saying that oil is currently our one and only is not even a bit helpful. All it does is to emphasize how utterly dependent we are on this finite resource—a resource that by all reasonable indications peaked several years ago and will continue a steady path along a not-always smooth or linear slope of decline … and we are woefully unprepared. (This recent post is only the latest in a lengthy list of concise and easily-understood explanations about Peak Oil.)

So what comfort does it offer us to indicate that all we have is all we have, when more of it is being demanded and less of it is being produced?! That math just doesn’t work.

Bowden also points out that Canadian oil sands now provide us with more oil that does Saudi Arabia. And….?

Saudi supply is being counted out by many other nations whose fossil fuel demands are only increasing; Saudi production is also being increasingly diverted to and for its own uses, and its fields are not immune to the same rates of depletion as are most other older fields, so … what’s the point here? Like most other articles which promote Canadian tar sands as the Great Salvation, no mention whatsoever is made here of the environmental degradation; the poisonous tailing ponds left behind; the immense demands on water; the costs, effort, and/or time involved in extraction, or the fact that production rates aren’t all that spectacular to begin with!

But why deal with any of those facts? They simply get in the way of a good insincere argument. (And Bowden also makes it a point of stating that U.S. oil production increased “for the first time in decades.” Our production peaked more than forty years ago! A slight one year uptick—from shale, which has its own set of environmental, cost, effort, and resource usage issues, also conveniently overlooked—is not exactly encouraging.)

Speaking of U.S. shale production, Bowden points out the following:

“… the Bakken shale field is now the country’s fastest-growing major oil field. Production has reached about 350,000bpd, from 100,000bpd a decade ago. In a recent report, consultancy firm PFC Energy projected production would climb to 450,000bpd by 2013. ‘The technology producing these resources has absolutely made the difference,’ Mr Marvin E Odum, President of Shell Oil, said. ‘It’s the same with the Arctic, with the shale oil, all over the world. Technology is the key.’”

Give or take a bit, the United States uses somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 billion barrels of oil per year … billion with a “b”. I’m definitely not a math whiz, but my trusty calculator tells me that 450,000 barrels per day times 365 days equals an impressive-sounding (approximate) 165 million barrels per year. I’m pretty certain that 165 million is a whole lot less than 7 billion. Rounding up to the approximate 20 million barrels of oil this nation uses each day, that means we’ll soon be producing enough to get us through sometime next week! Fantastic!

Another forty or so examples like that and we’re all set (and to hell with the rest of the world and their needs or demands).

This author also made it a point of using the same vague, subject-to-multiple-interpretations stock language others employ is discussing the magic of potential future technology, including this:

“A recent forecast produced by Shell suggests that Arctic production from North America, Europe, and western Russia – much of which will be deep offshore – could make up a quarter of global production within 20 years, provided that remaining technical, political and environmental challenges are met.” [My emphasis]

“… provided that remaining technical, political and environmental challenges are met”? Seriously? That’s what we’re supposed to derive great—or any—comfort from? And within 20 years? Wow! That’s not asking for too much, is it? A few pesky “technical, political and environmental challenges” met and we’re good to go!

And there’s this:

“Advances in directional drilling allow well operators to steer and carve through hard shale to expose more and hard-to-reach rock, and it also makes possible drilling under cities or into environmentally-sensitive areas….
“Faced with falling reserves and barred from acquiring fresh production in areas such as the Middle East, [nice to just skip past this – my comment] international oil majors began to search for new large deposits in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico….Exploration and drilling below 10,000ft of water and through miles of hard rock, thick salt and tightly-packed sands required the development of supercomputers and three-dimensional imaging techniques as well as equipment that could withstand the heat and pressures common at such depths, not to mention submarine robots to make repairs.”

Others have also pointed out these types of impressive displays of innovation and truly astounding technology. But why is this a good thing? That anyone has to go to these lengths and expenses and risks to find oil shouldn’t require any advanced technical degrees to understand that we’ve got some problems!

It would be nice if even some of the energy and effort expended in trying to prop up the dismal truths of oil production could instead be directed to conveying a more accurate and complete picture of what we face now and will have no choice but to deal with in the years to come. That might be a bit more helpful.

There’s always hope….

What kind of a nation do we want to be?

This will be, if not the most important question we’ll collectively ask ourselves in the months and years to come, in the top 2 or 3.

The answers we produce—“we” being our political leaders, our business leaders, the media, and perhaps most importantly: each and every one of us—will obviously determine the strategies we adopt and the successes and prosperity which (we hope) will remain available to us. In this new series, I’d like to offer my two cents’ worth and provide some talking points to help us sort things out.

If we are not standing at the most critical crossroad of our industrial and economic history, the signs on the side of the road are letting us know it is coming up soon.

We face some challenges. The headlines tell us all we need to know about employment and economic woes, the increasingly disheartening hypocrisy and gamesmanship that continue to define politics here in America, and a growing unease about the direction of our country. I begin writing this post only 24 hours after the tragic, senseless, idiotic massacre in Arizona that nearly claimed the life of a by-all-accounts well-respected Congresswoman, and did in fact kill several other just-as-innocent bystanders. (A nine-year-old girl? Really? How is that justified under even the most insane of insane defenses?)

Climate change evidence continues its daily march into reality—the inability of deniers to grasp simple truths notwithstanding. And atop and amid all of these lovely and encouraging challenges, we have some fossil fuel resource problems knocking on our door.

Let’s hope that the convergence of these issues sparks a different level and quality of public discourse. Most would be hard-pressed to think that that would not be a good thing….

As I and others have taken great pains to explain, if we have not yet reached the point where we have extracted and sent to market the highest level of oil production we’ll ever attain (I think we have, as does the International Energy Agency, among others much more in the know than me), we’re pretty damn close. And as I and those same others have taken other great pains to explain, we’re not on the verge of imminent collapse, either. The process of ever-declining oil production, and thus ever-declining amounts of oil available to us, will unfold over a fairly lengthy period of time. I have no plans for a Chicken-Little-Sky-Is-Falling party anytime soon. Despite the efforts of peak oil deniers to attribute this false claim to us, we are not running out of oil—at least not for many decades.

That does not mean we are problem-free for years or decades to come, however. We need to shine some light on that distinction while starting the very lengthy and complex process of transitioning our everything away from never-ending reliance on fossil fuels … oil, specifically.

There are still many billions of barrels of conventional oil still buried underground, and perhaps many more billions—hundreds, perhaps—of unconventional supplies buried as well. If that’s where the discussion could end, then Peak Oil would indeed be the rantings of another group of paranoid conspirators rightfully ignored as should be those who continue to think President Obama was born on Mars or wherever.

But it’s a wee bit more complicated than that.

The fact that we may have enormous quantities of unconventional reserves/resources underground isn’t the be-all and end-all of the are-we-or-aren’t-we-running-out-of-oil discussion. What must be understood more clearly is that having those presumed resources in the ground is one thing and all fine and well as a starting point. But getting unconventional resources (by fact and definition available only with considerable extra effort, time, and cost) out of the ground and into the marketplace at reasonable costs and in reasonable time frames while conventional supplies continue to decline is a very, very different thing. They are called “unconventional” for a number of reasons, after all!

If it costs more (and let’s not even discuss the environmental degradation and water resource consumption issues that are part and parcel of unconventional oil extraction and production), takes more time to get to the market, is of lesser quality, and clearly much more difficult to extract, the math doesn’t work. Unconventional resources aren’t the answer … not even close. (Tighter supplies of the conventional fossil fuels our engines are designed to burn means higher costs at your local gas station, for one thing. Anyone experiencing anything like that nowadays?)

Demand worldwide is increasing, regardless of where the charts suggest U.S. demand might be right now. As much as we like to admire our exceptionalism and burnish our lofty perch as the One and Only, we’re not alone on the planet, and what we want isn’t the beginning and the end of discussions about resource consumption and supply.

There are many billions of people on this planet who do not now enjoy and have never enjoyed the levels of growth and prosperity this nation has been blessed with, and there are very few among those billions who would not like their own chance at their own version of the American Dream—tarnished and bruised though it may be. We—they—are confronted with a pretty simple yet very powerful obstacle, however.

Finite resources are … finite. Not infinite. Not not finite. Whatever spin one may wish to employ to make the problem go away, the math is what it is. It takes some impressive contortions to suggest that the increasing demand clashing with declining supplies shouldn’t concern any of us. In one sense, those deniers are correct on the “any of us” scale … it concerns all of us.

Production is declining, however slowly that may be; unconventional resources are not making up the difference; alternative energy supplies are many, many years away from supplanting the fossil fuels we’ve depended on for the last 150 years or so, more people are asking for more of this declining resource, we don’t have an infrastructure in place to accommodate the requirements of non-fossil fuel resources, and there is no magic out there which will enable the increasing demand to be satisfied in full, at acceptable prices, quality, or timeliness. That is not going to change, and not going to get better. A month bump-up in production here and there sounds wonderful, but long term, it means next to nothing.

Facts are indeed annoying as hell. But the sooner more of us take the time to understand and appreciate what we must deal with, the sooner we can devise and then employ the strategies we’ll need, and the sooner we unleash the still-awesome capabilities of this nation and its remarkable citizenry to create a future that may just turn out okay despite our seemingly-best efforts to keep screwing it up.

I am by temperament a very optimistic person, and it is that attitude that will guide my efforts in this humble little blog to get us thinking and being and doing differently. Not easy? Check. Highly idealistic at the moment? Double check. Not enough to dissuade me? Triple check.

We need to take a look at where we are and what we are doing in a world now filled with relentless and great change, complexity on levels never before imagined, and widespread hopes for progress intersecting on the back side of a nearly-overwhelming global financial crisis. At the same time, these circumstances demand that we come to some better understandings and decisions about what we are doing to both adapt to energy and environmental concerns as well as participate in that adaptation if we continue to hold on to hope.

That’s the hyper-broad overview….

Recognition that change is taking place is the first step to then embracing it and participating in its evolution. Opportunity, or crises?

I’m no historian, but my vague recollections of American History suggest that “difficult” has never been the one insurmountable obstacle that has kept us from achievement. No reason to change that now.

I’m going with “Opportunity”, and will devote most of my posts in these next few months to exploring what that means and what we might do to seize the moments that now present themselves. Hope you’ll stay tuned.

To be continued next week….

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

Another brief “interruption” to the flow of planned posts:

Touching on a theme I raised previously (with similar observations from Ferdinand E. Banks as cited in that post), I recently came across two other articles (one by the always-informative Kurt Cobb) discussing concerns about increased domestic demand from oil-exporting nations. (See the references to those articles at the end of this post.)

Texas petroleum geologist Jeffrey Brown, noted for his Export Land Model theory, is featured in both articles, and he raises salient points that bear directly on the supply of readily available and relatively inexpensive oil we’ll likely have in the years to come. That supply is eventually going to be curtailed, as I’ve been discussing since this blog began. What that means to all of us is the primary purpose of Peak Oil Matters.

The two referenced items remind us that: (a) the consequences of Peak Oil aren’t solely the result of decreased production, (b) technology isn’t the magic answer.

As oil-exporting nations use the profits generated from their production and sale to grow their own economies and strengthen their industries and infrastructure—while raising the standards of living of their own citizens—they must necessarily increase the amount of oil they retain for themselves. It is, after all, their oil. (And they function with fossil fuel-based infrastructures just as the rest of us do.) Seems fairly straightforward….

What we tend to overlook, and what these two articles make clear, is that as oil production begins its inexorable decline (as it already has in many instances), and as this domestic use increases, the amount of oil available to the rest of us decreases even more drastically than it does based on a straight oil production decline. If the Export Land Model theory is correct, then we may be facing the challenges of Peak Oil even sooner than we anticipate. Existing technology isn’t going to overcome this accelerated decline.

And if that is true, then we’d better get moving on planning and implementing some new strategies quickly.

Referenced articles:

http://www.energybulletin.net/51715 ; Do Texas and the North Sea foretell the future of oil production? 
02/25/2010 by Scitizen (Kurt Cobb)

http://www.heatingoil.com/blog/another-take-on-peak-oil-exports-not-production-indicate-crisis224/; Another Take On Peak Oil: Exports, Not Production, Indicate Crisis by Zoe Macintosh on February 25, 2010