Roger Biduk - U.S. Oil Production Peaked Years Ago - So What?

Roger Biduk writes:

Oil production in the U.S. peaked in 1970, which was accurately predicted by geologist M. King Hubbert in the 1950s. But it's not running out of oil.

I've read that there's one trillion barrels of oil left out of two trillion that the planet started with.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil


Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t44.xls (Excel spreadsheet).

The world is not finding enough new crude to replace the known declines, not to mention increasing production levels.

What happens with the shortfall in production? Crude prices rise. Frantic, nearly (previously) insane searches begin… tar sands; shale oil; deep, deep sea drilling; ANWR. Sound familiar?

And as a tidbit to fend off the prattle… the best estimate (shaky as all untested estimates are) for ANWR is 10 billion barrels of crude resources. On the same shaky basis, U.S. offshore… 20 billion barrels. Together… 30 billion barrels.

But that’s not the worst of it. Neither can begin producing for about 10 years. And either will require 20 years for full production. The bottom line is, at full bore production, both included, we’d get output starting in 2018 and have 1.5 billion barrels/year until 2037. The U.S. uses 21 million barrels per day, 7.67 billion barrels per year. That’s ignoring demand growth. Not exactly crude oil freedom at 20% of our 2007 demand.

Peak oil is here. Accept it. Do your own research. Bring me facts, and then let’s debate.

Nuclear power

Having finally accepted the fact that we aren’t going to have fossil fuels for transportation forever (and probably not at an acceptable cost within 10 years), what can we do?

Let’s start with reviewing the world’s energy use. Click here to get educated. And here.

And finally here, to which I’ll refer. This is a terrific resource. Don’t fail to read this. It’s the single best summary I’ve ever seen for the world’s energy use.

And this for the U.S.

World use (2004)



I’ll turn these numbers into percentages (2004 numbers):



Our discussion here is about transportation… cars, trucks, trains, and planes. They run on crude oil derivatives. Now let’s suppose that crude oil derivatives get too expensive to use (peak oil). Worst case… not available or affordable for transportation. Now look at the table above.

A full 40% of our energy supply would be gone. Let’s eliminate the presently unrealistic or non-cost-effective transportation sources… coal, hydro, nuclear (in the vehicle), renewable (in the vehicle). Hydrogen fuel cells will never work. Google it.

We are left with natural gas or electricity (however generated). Unfortunately, natural gas is widely used to heat homes and factories. And natural gas is a feedstock for many critical industrial processes… fabric, glass, steel, paint, and plastics and, of utmost importance, fertilizer. (More info here and here.)

Running vehicles on natural gas is not only possible, but is being pursued. Unfortunately, its value in other areas makes its use for transportation a very dicey proposition. Our grandkids would say in horror… “You burned it up!!??”

It’s not our best choice.
So we are left with electricity, however generated. Look at the table above and mentally add 40% to each source of electricity that is left.

Coal 23%==>63%.
Nuclear 8.1%==>48.1%
Renewables 3.3%==>43.3%

Which is most technically feasible to scale? Coal? Carbon emissions… cap and trade… coal cleanup costs… coal is an unlikely source of electricity to nearly triple. And, coal has important uses in the manufacture of metals and metal products.

Renewables? If only! But scaling up by a factor of 13 is a formidable challenge. Not in the next twenty years. Not even in the next 50 years.

Nuclear? The U.S. has 104 operating nuclear power plants. Scaling up by a factor of six would require 624 plants, or 520 new ones to replace crude oil totally. They cost about $4 billion to $5 billion each. For this, we would pay $2.34 trillion. We import 10 million barrels of crude every day. We send out of the U.S. $438 billion annually for purchased crude oil.

We’d pay off the nukes in five years and four months, and then we are ahead more than $1,430 per year for every citizen in America.

Of course it’s not quite so simple… I know that. It’s way oversimplified. But it does place a yardstick on the economics if we could make electric cars (I want a Tesla) powered by nuclear power plants sending electricity into every garage. Click here for the Michigan University case for nuclear power. It’s a good summary.