Peak of oil production

There is a long history of failed forecasts regarding the peaking of oil production and experience shows that reserves are usually underestimated. However, there are... 

The International Energy Agency (lEA) based in Paris believes the peak of oil production is in sight. This analysis includes the oil that can be recovered in the Caspian Sea area. They believe that the peak in production, 80 million barrels per day, will occur some time between 2010 and 2020. After the peak, oil production will steadily decline. They forecast that after the peak, the price of oil would dance around wildly while we build the infrastructure to manufacture oil from shale and coal. When this investment and work is completed, the price will settle down at a more stable but higher level. 

In analogy to oil, in the following it is analysed how the projected increase in natural gas consumption will affect the time of the mid-depletion point of gas production. The methodological approach is the same as described for oil in Section 3.3.4. The discussion about a possible peaking of gas production is (still) less controversial than for oil. 

Figure 1.1.18 Peak oil. The graphics shows on a crude timescale the temporal evolution of oil production. The low resolution was chosen to identify the main trend irrespective of multiple events in shorter timescales such as the oil crisis. Units 1 Gba is 1.56 x 1011 L crude oil. Source Data from http //www.peakoil.com.

What the future holds for oil supply and demand has been the subject of a number of recent books, with conflicting viewpoints expressed on such issues as the time-scale for reaching the Hubbard Peak in oil production, current oil reserve estimates, the ability of economic forces to drive exploration and expansion of oil reserves, and the role of more difficult to obtain and expensive sources of oil (such as tar sands) to satisfy demand. A related issue to natural oil supply is the dependence of many nations, including the U.S., on imported oil for the bulk of their energy requirements and the impact this has on their national security. Historically, in terms of national policies, energy security has typically translated into short-term military security. 

Figure 2.13 illustrates the pattern of oil production in the United States from 1954 to 2003. The bell-shaped curve shows peak production occurring in the early 1970s, as initially predicted by Hubbert. 

The limited supplies, uneven distribution, and rising costs of petroleum and natural gas, create a need to change to more sustainable energy sources. With as much dependence that the United States currently has for petroleum and with the peaking limits of oil production (Hubbert s peak), various countries are already feeling (Hubbert s peak) and societies will begin to feel the dechne in the... 

For the United States, the prediction of petroleum being a depletable resource turned out to be correct (as it would with any natnrally occurring resource), and, after the United States peaked in 1971 and thus lost its excess production capacity, the OPEC consortium was (literally) given a free hand at the manipulation of petrolenm prices. Since then petroleum production in several other countries has also peaked. However, for a variety of reasons, it is difficult to predict the oil peak in any given region. Based on available production data, proponents have previously (and incorrectly) predicted the peak for the world to be in years 1989,1995, or in the 1995-2000 period. Other predictions chose 2007 and beyond for the peak of petroleum production. 

The increased emphasis on biofuels is due primarily to the increasing cost and demand for liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel, and our desire to be less dependent on foreign oil. In addition to increased demand, the higher cost of petroleum may be related to the peak oil theory, discussed in the essay on petroleum and fossil fuels. According to this theory, the amount of petroleum in the earth is finite and at some point, the total amount of petroleum produced each year will begin to decrease. Many experts believe that we have either already reached the peak in oil production, or we will reach it within a few years. 

An intermediate vision is presented by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) which estimates that there are enough petroleum reserves to continue current production rates for 50-100 years. In 2000, a USGS study of worldwide oil reserves predicted a possible peak in oil production around the year 2037 [5]. The US Department of Energy predicts that global oil production will peak somewhere between 2020 and 2050, but that the output is likely to increase at a substantially slower rate after 2020 [6]. Price speculation is likely to increase petrochemical prices before peak oil production is reached. 

Batch deodorization is best suited to low capacity plants where the flexibility of the process can be exploited to handle a multiplicity of oil products with minimal cross-contamination. Vessel oil capacities range from 25,000 to 50,000 lb, and overall refinery throughput will typically be on the order of 250,000 Ib/day. The typical issues associated with this type of installation are the high steam usage occasioned by the continual need to reheat the equipment, the poor opportunities for heat recovery, and the peak demands on services that operating a number of batch units in parallel can develop. 

All fossil fuels are considered unsustainable because someday they will reach a point of depletion when it becomes uneconomic to produce. Petroleum is the least sustainable because it is the most finite fossil fuel. Although levels of production are expected to begin declining no later than 2030 (U.S. production peaked in 1970), the U.S. and world resei ves could be further expanded by technological advances that continue to improve discoveiy rates and individual well productivity. The extraction of oils found in shales (exceeds three trillion barrels of oil equivalent worldwide) and sands (resei ves of at least two trillion barrels worldwide) could also significantly increase reserves. The reserves of natural gas are comparable to that of oil, but natural gas is considered a more sustainable resource since consumption rates are lower and it burns cleaner than petroleum products (more environmentally sustainable). 

As shown in Fig. 2, the NH3 TPD technique provides information on acid sites over catalysts. While Al-MCM-41-P and Al-MCM-41-D have almost the same acid strengths due to their similar temperature peak of around 250°C, Al-MCM-41-P has more acid sites compared to Al-MCM-41-D. It can be gleaned from this result that the catalytic activity of Al-MCM-P is better than that of Al-MCM-D not because of Al-MCM-P s acid strength but because it has more acid sites. The oil products over... 

Under utilities should be included the costs for items that enter the plant but do not enter directly into the material formulation of the products or by-products. This includes coal, oil, gas, electricity, water, air, and inert gases. The amounts of cooling, process, and potable water should each be specified. Potable water is water that can be used for drinking and food preparation. It is usually purchased from a nearby municipality. The average electrical power required, peak power required, and demand power need to be calculated. Demand power is the number of kilowatts of energy that the utility company agrees to supply on an uninterrupted basis. A premium price is charged for this power. 

In positive ion mode, the characteristic peaks representative of the binding media were fatty acids from lead soaps (of palmitic acid at m/z 461 463 and of stearic acid at m/z 489 491). Other peaks corresponding to mono- and diacylglycerol cations, protonated stearic acid or its acylium ions could be found in the spectra of the reference products but not in the paint sample. The spectrum of lead white egg tempera paint exhibits peaks of phosphocholine (m/z 184) and protonated ketocholesterol (m/z 401). These peaks were not found in the spectrum from the cross-section. In negative ion mode, the spectrum of the oil... 

U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and the peak of world oil production has been predicted to occur from 2005 to 2036. For 100 years Americans have enjoyed relatively inexpensive gas, diesel fuel and petroleum products. As recently as the 1990s, gas prices were below one dollar per a gallon. Now, prices seem to be rising most of the time along with the cost of a barrel of oil. 

It is generally agreed that worldwide petroleum supply will eventually reach its productive limit, peak, and begin a long term decline. One of the alternatives is the Nation s untapped oil shale as a strategically located, long-term source of reliable, affordable, and secure oil. The extent of U.S. oil shale resources, which amounts to more than 2 trillion barrels, has been known for a century. In 1912, the President established the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves. There have been several commercial attempts to produce oil from oil shale, but these have failed because of the lower cost of petroleum at the time. With future declines in petroleum production, market forces are expected to improve the economic viability of oil shale. 

World oil-shale production fell from its peak of 46 Mt in 1980 to about 16 Mt in 2000 (Brendow, 2003). At present, about 69% of world oil-shale production is used for the generation of electricity and heat, about 6% for cement production and other industrial uses, and 25% is processed into shale oil. Oil shale has been burned directly as a very low-grade, high-ash-content fuel in a few countries, such as Estonia, which is also the only country in Europe where oil shale is of any importance. With a yearly production of about 14 Mt, oil shale still generated more than 90% of the electricity in Estonia at the time of writing, and also most of Estonia s 7000 b/d oil production comes from oil shale. Other countries where surface retorting of oil shale has been used for many years to yield shale oil are Brazil and China, which produced 3100 b/d and 1500 b/d in 2002,... 

The peaking of world oil production could create enormous economic disruption, as only glimpsed during the 1973 oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian oil cut-off. 

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