Eye opener: Oil used since Bush took office

[4dsc]

Boy does this person put oil depletion into perspective..

I will make three key points: (1) During George Bush’s first term, the world used about 10% of all crude oil that has ever been consumed; (2) Based on our mathematical modeling, at our current rate of consumption, during the second Bush term the world will use about 10% of all remaining conventional crude oil reserves and (3) Net oil exports are falling much faster than overall world crude oil production is declining.

In January, 2001, the US produced 5.9 million barrels per day (mbpd) of crude oil, and we imported 9.1 mbpd of crude oil.


Four years later, in January, 2005, the US produced 5.4 mbpd, an annual decline rate of 2.2% per year, and the US imported 10 mbpd of crude oil, an annual increase of 2.4% per year. (EIA data)


With flat to increasing product consumption, and with declining domestic production, our total crude oil plus product imports have been steadily increasing. The conventional wisdom is that this trend can continue indefinitely.


In this four year period, the world consumed about 100 billion barrels (100 Gb) of crude oil (crude oil = crude + condensate). So, during the first term of George Bush’s presidency, the world consumed about 10% of all crude oil that has been consumed to date.


Based on the Hubbert methods, this rate of consumption is unsustainable, since Deffeyes puts remaining conventional crude oil reserves at about 1,000 Gb as of January, 2006. So, based on this estimate we would consume about 10% of all remaining world conventional crude oil reserves in the second term of the Bush presidency, at this rate of consumption.


http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2007/03/march-26-2007-by-jeffrey-j.html

[Zenlitened]

1. "Conservation is not an energy strategy," said Dick Cheney, with his usual smirk.

:grr:

[Sal Minella]

2. He was snarkier than that as I remember -- something like "While conservation may be admirable as a

personal virtue, it will do nothing to increase the oil supply." paraphrase.

[GliderGuider]

3. Expanding on Jeffrey Brown's thoughts on oil bidding wars

I have two thoughts on oil prices. The first is that they are considered by Peak Oil analysts to be a relatively poor signal of the geological supply situation, which is what Peak oil is all about. The reason is that they are affected by so many above-ground factors - national and international politics (as in Nigeria and Iraq), perceived potential geopolitical risks to supply (like Iran), the state of large national stockpiles of oil and gasoline, consumer confidence (i.e. is there a recession looming for other reasons that might slow down the world's economy and therefore the demand for oil), the rapid rise in developing economies outstripping investments in new supply, etc. Certainly before oil has peaked these factors will have a greater influence on oil prices than pure geological supply constraints.

That being said, I do believe that current oil prices reflect a growing realization that supply is constrained relative to the world's needs. At the moment this is being attributed to a combination of those above-ground factors I cited above, but there is more of a tendency these days to wonder if the supply restrictions might not in fact have some geological component. The question, "Is this actually Peak Oil?" is being asked more and more frequently by traditional energy analysts. The fact that oil prices have been trading over $50/bbl for better than two years now (since the start of 2005), when as recently as 2004 OPEC's desired trading range was $22 to $28, should be sufficient to make us wonder if the tightness of supply has deeper roots than merely economic or geopolitical factors.

As we go definitively past the peak, I expect the price situation to remain somewhat the same - supply will tighten further, and demand will continue to outstrip it. this should cause repeated rounds of price bidding, which will raise the price to a point where some demand is outbid and withdraws from the market. This will happen to poor developing nations first, as is already happening in places like Zimbabwe and Nepal. The reduction demand will allow the price to stabilize to a new, higher level, where it will remain until further supply reductions prompt another round of bidding. Visually, this should produce a stair-step pattern on oil price charts. I believe we have seen two of these steps over the last eight years - one from 1999 to 2004, and the second from 2004 and continuing today. You can form your own opinion by looking at price charts such as this one. If this theory is correct, I expect we will see the beginning of the rise to the next step (which should stabilize around $80/bbl) sometime in the second half of this year.

Of course, this is ceteris paribus. If Bush nukes Iran, all bets are off, or as they say at the roulette table in Monte Carlo, "Rien ne va plus."

[FogerRox]

4. Important as a basic concept, KNR