Yeah what this basically shows is that the IEA estimates for oil production weren’t that far off contrary to the doom and gloom predictions. However this is not petroleum but so called unconventional oil which is much more expensive to refine and turn into useable fuel. We knew we could make oil for natural gas or coal if it came to it (heck the Germans did it in WWII) the question was cost.
Repeat after me, oil shale != shale oil
Oil shale is that Colorado/Wyoming stuff. Kerogen, that is, a waxy hydrocarbon substance permeating a type of rock that some sticklers-about-definitions say isn’t really shale. Oil shale is what President Carter wanted to exploit with the gummint Synthetic Fuels boondogle that shriveled up when oil got cheap again. Getting a usable oil out of oil shale involves heating it, either in the ground using giant heating coils, or in an extraction plant, where you have the double environmental whammy of mining the shale and then discarding what is left after extraction.
Shale oil is the stuff from North Dakota, a high quality “sweet light” crude.
Oil that is . . . black gold . . . Texas tea. Shale oil is extracted with same kind of horizontal drilling and “fracking” as the new natural gas sources.
So when someone says that the U.S. has a bazilion barrels of oil shale, I go, yeah, yeah, that has been known since forever. Shale oil, however, gets my attention.
This would be an excellent time for a wise leader to expand our strategic oil reserves.
The appearance of complex hydrocarbons (higher alkanes and aromatics) on Titan would seem to resurrect the abiogenic theory of oil production. It’s highly unlikely that such tremendous quantities of fairly complex hydrocarbons could have been produced by living organisms on a body so far from the sun. Methane is a no-brainer. It’s almost a nuisance product any time hydrogen and carbon get within 10 feet of each other, completely without life. But propane isn’t, and aromatics certainly are not.
If we do have an abiogenic oil cycle here on earth, we may never, ever hit peak oil.
MfK – Most likely, on Earth the real truth is a mixture of both sources for oil. It is inevitable that abiogenic oil would be deeper and thus more difficult to get at.
The Titan situation is somewhat interesting. Probably, the enormous amounts of hydrocarbons there are a result of the very low temperatures; methane liquefies at around -200 C so any methane on Earth (even before life) would be gaseous and hence subject to photolytic splitting – the hydrogen escaping very rapidly, in geological terms.
Out Titan way, methane is mostly liquid – and sunlight intensity is much lower. Best guess for the source of ethane, propane, ethylene and the reddish gunk that forms most of the haze is photolysis over billions of years.
BTW, and interestingly enough, there are anomalies in the chemistry of Titan that have led some to speculate (really speculate!) that there might be some form of life on Titan. Its chemistry would be completely alien, of course.
You mean life, yes, . . . but not as we know it?
But… but… but… can we still demagogue the issue?
Paraphrasing a former U S President, depends on what the meaning of the the word “we”, is.
The Peak Oil doomers have made a “testable” (sort of ) prediction that we are indeed at the peak, and no qualifiers and weasle words. No, a dark, unrelenting warning that stuff is already hitting the ventilation device.
If the Doomers wanted to weasle, they could say, “Yes, we are using a variety of non-conventional oil sources, but we are indeed at peak for ‘the easy stuff'”, and indeed that wheel out their EROEI argument that it takes more and more energy input (not just money cost) to get a certain energy output. “Our” response (again, who is the “we”?) is that the argument that we-will-never-run-out-of-oil is based on the relentless march of human ingenuity and technological progress, and with respect to EROEI, who cares. If we use cheap natural gas to process Canadian tar sands, this may be a cost effective way to convert gas into liquid fuels, so important for transportation. If we use modular atomic reactors to do this in the future, that may be a cheap way to convert atomic power into hydrocarbon fuels, the best “battery” for storing energy.
I am a strong advocate of “Drill here, drill now.” But at some point you reach limits. My engineering “Spider Sense” suggests that we are not yet at Peak Oil and not yet at the CO2 Catatrophic Climate Change crisis. But the fact that people are saying, “Oh yeah, there is all kinds of oil . . . if you are willing to spend $72/barrel” suggests that some of what the Peak Oil people are saying is true, that we are scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel.
What I am saying is that I agree that Peak Oil Doomers and Climate Doomers all have some kind of agenda, but let’s not get all snarky and smugly cocky about this.
Some of what the peak oil people are saying is always true. Economics takes that fully into account.
What I don’t get is the hate America and do whatever it takes to take her down crowd. I was amazed when I met the first one on a cab ride in NYC as a kid and I’m still amazed everytime I hear of one now 35 years later.
Yeah what this basically shows is that the IEA estimates for oil production weren’t that far off contrary to the doom and gloom predictions. However this is not petroleum but so called unconventional oil which is much more expensive to refine and turn into useable fuel. We knew we could make oil for natural gas or coal if it came to it (heck the Germans did it in WWII) the question was cost.
Repeat after me, oil shale != shale oil
Oil shale is that Colorado/Wyoming stuff. Kerogen, that is, a waxy hydrocarbon substance permeating a type of rock that some sticklers-about-definitions say isn’t really shale. Oil shale is what President Carter wanted to exploit with the gummint Synthetic Fuels boondogle that shriveled up when oil got cheap again. Getting a usable oil out of oil shale involves heating it, either in the ground using giant heating coils, or in an extraction plant, where you have the double environmental whammy of mining the shale and then discarding what is left after extraction.
Shale oil is the stuff from North Dakota, a high quality “sweet light” crude.
Oil that is . . . black gold . . . Texas tea. Shale oil is extracted with same kind of horizontal drilling and “fracking” as the new natural gas sources.
So when someone says that the U.S. has a bazilion barrels of oil shale, I go, yeah, yeah, that has been known since forever. Shale oil, however, gets my attention.
This would be an excellent time for a wise leader to expand our strategic oil reserves.
The appearance of complex hydrocarbons (higher alkanes and aromatics) on Titan would seem to resurrect the abiogenic theory of oil production. It’s highly unlikely that such tremendous quantities of fairly complex hydrocarbons could have been produced by living organisms on a body so far from the sun. Methane is a no-brainer. It’s almost a nuisance product any time hydrogen and carbon get within 10 feet of each other, completely without life. But propane isn’t, and aromatics certainly are not.
If we do have an abiogenic oil cycle here on earth, we may never, ever hit peak oil.
MfK – Most likely, on Earth the real truth is a mixture of both sources for oil. It is inevitable that abiogenic oil would be deeper and thus more difficult to get at.
The Titan situation is somewhat interesting. Probably, the enormous amounts of hydrocarbons there are a result of the very low temperatures; methane liquefies at around -200 C so any methane on Earth (even before life) would be gaseous and hence subject to photolytic splitting – the hydrogen escaping very rapidly, in geological terms.
Out Titan way, methane is mostly liquid – and sunlight intensity is much lower. Best guess for the source of ethane, propane, ethylene and the reddish gunk that forms most of the haze is photolysis over billions of years.
BTW, and interestingly enough, there are anomalies in the chemistry of Titan that have led some to speculate (really speculate!) that there might be some form of life on Titan. Its chemistry would be completely alien, of course.
You mean life, yes, . . . but not as we know it?
But… but… but… can we still demagogue the issue?
Paraphrasing a former U S President, depends on what the meaning of the the word “we”, is.
The Peak Oil doomers have made a “testable” (sort of ) prediction that we are indeed at the peak, and no qualifiers and weasle words. No, a dark, unrelenting warning that stuff is already hitting the ventilation device.
If the Doomers wanted to weasle, they could say, “Yes, we are using a variety of non-conventional oil sources, but we are indeed at peak for ‘the easy stuff'”, and indeed that wheel out their EROEI argument that it takes more and more energy input (not just money cost) to get a certain energy output. “Our” response (again, who is the “we”?) is that the argument that we-will-never-run-out-of-oil is based on the relentless march of human ingenuity and technological progress, and with respect to EROEI, who cares. If we use cheap natural gas to process Canadian tar sands, this may be a cost effective way to convert gas into liquid fuels, so important for transportation. If we use modular atomic reactors to do this in the future, that may be a cheap way to convert atomic power into hydrocarbon fuels, the best “battery” for storing energy.
I am a strong advocate of “Drill here, drill now.” But at some point you reach limits. My engineering “Spider Sense” suggests that we are not yet at Peak Oil and not yet at the CO2 Catatrophic Climate Change crisis. But the fact that people are saying, “Oh yeah, there is all kinds of oil . . . if you are willing to spend $72/barrel” suggests that some of what the Peak Oil people are saying is true, that we are scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel.
What I am saying is that I agree that Peak Oil Doomers and Climate Doomers all have some kind of agenda, but let’s not get all snarky and smugly cocky about this.
Some of what the peak oil people are saying is always true. Economics takes that fully into account.
What I don’t get is the hate America and do whatever it takes to take her down crowd. I was amazed when I met the first one on a cab ride in NYC as a kid and I’m still amazed everytime I hear of one now 35 years later.