we live on a finite planet.
いつまでも石油の生産が増える訳がないです。
問題はwhen, not ifです。
whenの答えは証拠を見たうえでの個人的な判断でしょう。
「そろそろ」だと判断する人は自分なりの準備をするでしょう。
「自分は何もできない」という人も多いだろうけど、
とにかく自分と自分の家族を守るために
具体的な対策をとる人も多いでしょう。
かつてPeakOilの議論にもよく参加していたMichael Lynch氏がNYTimesに、いまさらピークオイル批判の記事「'Peak Oil' Is a Waste of Energy」(8・24)が出て、驚いていました。紹介するかどうか迷ったのですが、英語圏では随分論争になっており、ASPO会長のKjell Aleklett氏も反論の記事をNYTimesに投稿し、submittされたようです。
‘Peak Oil’ Is a Waste of Energy
By MICHAEL LYNCH
Published: August 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/opinion/25lynch.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&bl&ei=5087&en=f0a941c577e3a21f&ex=1251345600
REMEMBER “peak oil”? It’s the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe. Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, along comes Fatih Birol, the top economist at the International Energy Agency, to insist that we’ll reach the peak moment in 10 years, a decade sooner than most previous predictions (although a few ardent pessimists believe the moment of no return has already come and gone).
Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material. But because the news media and prominent figures like James Schlesinger, a former secretary of energy, and the oilman T. Boone Pickens have taken peak oil seriously, the public is understandably alarmed.
A careful examination of the facts shows that most arguments about peak oil are based on anecdotal information, vague references and ignorance of how the oil industry goes about finding fields and extracting petroleum. And this has been demonstrated over and over again: the founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil first claimed in 1989 that the peak had already been reached, and Mr. Schlesinger argued a decade earlier that production was unlikely to ever go much higher.
Mr. Birol isn’t the only one still worrying. One leading proponent of peak oil, the writer Paul Roberts, recently expressed shock to discover that the liquid coming out of the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest known deposit, is around 35 percent water and rising. But this is hardly a concern ― the buildup is caused by the Saudis pumping seawater into the field to keep pressure up and make extraction easier. The global average for water in oil field yields is estimated to be as high as 75 percent.
Another critic, a prominent consultant and investor named Matthew Simmons, has raised concerns over oil engineers using “fuzzy logic” to estimate reservoir holdings. But fuzzy logic is a programming method that has been used since I was in graduate school in situations where the factors are hazy and variable ― everything from physical science to international relations ― and its track record in oil geology has been quite good.
But those are just the latest arguments ― for the most part the peak-oil crowd rests its case on three major claims: that the world is discovering only one barrel for every three or four produced; that political instability in oil-producing countries puts us at an unprecedented risk of having the spigots turned off; and that we have already used half of the two trillion barrels of oil that the earth contained.
Let’s take the rate-of-discovery argument first: it is a statement that reflects ignorance of industry terminology. When a new field is found, it is given a size estimate that indicates how much is thought to be recoverable at that point in time. But as years pass, the estimate is almost always revised upward, either because more pockets of oil are found in the field or because new technology makes it possible to extract oil that was previously unreachable. Yet because petroleum geologists don’t report that additional recoverable oil as “newly discovered,” the peak oil advocates tend to ignore it. In truth, the combination of new discoveries and revisions to size estimates of older fields has been keeping pace with production for many years.
A related argument ― that the “easy oil” is gone and that extraction can only become more difficult and cost-ineffective ― should be recognized as vague and irrelevant. Drillers in Persia a century ago certainly didn’t consider their work easy, and the mechanized, computerized industry of today is a far sight from 19th-century mule-drawn rigs. Hundreds of fields that produce “easy oil” today were once thought technologically unreachable.
The latest acorn in the discovery debate is a recent increase in the overall estimated rate at which production is declining in large oil fields. This is assumed to be the result of the “superstraw” technologies that have become dominant over the past decade, which can drain fields faster than ever. True, because quicker extraction causes the fluid pressure in the field to drop rapidly, the wells become less and less productive over time. But this declining return on individual wells doesn’t necessarily mean that whole fields are being cleaned out. As the Saudis have proved in recent years at Ghawar, additional investment ― to find new deposits and drill new wells ― can keep a field’s overall production from falling.
When their shaky claims on geology are exposed, the peak-oil advocates tend to argue that today’s geopolitical instability needs to be taken into consideration. But political risk is hardly new: a leading Communist labor organizer in the Baku oil industry in the early 1900s would later be known to the world as Josef Stalin.
When the large supply disruptions of 1973 and 1979 led to skyrocketing prices, nearly all oil experts said the underlying cause was resource scarcity and that prices would go ever higher in the future. The oil companies diversified their investments ― Mobil even started buying up department stores! ― and President Jimmy Carter pushed for the development of synthetic fuels like shale oil, arguing that markets were too myopic to realize the imminent need for substitutes. All sorts of policy wonks, energy consultants and Nobel-prize-winning economists jumped on the bandwagon to explain that prices would only go up ― even though they had never done so historically. Prices instead proceeded to slide for two decades, rather as the tide ignored King Canute.
Just as, in the 1970s, it was the Arab oil embargo and the Iranian Revolution, today it is the invasion of Iraq and instability in Venezuela and Nigeria. But the solution, as ever, is for the industry to shift investment into new regions, and that’s what it is doing. Yet peak-oil advocates take advantage of the inevitable delay in bringing this new production on line to claim that global production is on an irreversible decline.
In the end, perhaps the most misleading claim of the peak-oil advocates is that the earth was endowed with only 2 trillion barrels of “recoverable” oil. Actually, the consensus among geologists is that there are some 10 trillion barrels out there. A century ago, only 10 percent of it was considered recoverable, but improvements in technology should allow us to recover some 35 percent ― another 2.5 trillion barrels ― in an economically viable way. And this doesn’t even include such potential sources as tar sands, which in time we may be able to efficiently tap.
Oil remains abundant, and the price will likely come down closer to the historical level of $30 a barrel as new supplies come forward in the deep waters off West Africa and Latin America, in East Africa, and perhaps in the Bakken oil shale fields of Montana and North Dakota. But that may not keep the Chicken Littles from convincing policymakers in Washington and elsewhere that oil, being finite, must increase in price. (That’s the logic that led the Carter administration to create the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, a $3 billion boondoggle that never produced a gallon of useable fuel.)
This is not to say that we shouldn’t keep looking for other cost-effective, low-pollution energy sources ― why not broaden our options? But we can’t let the false threat of disappearing oil lead the government to throw money away on harebrained renewable energy schemes or impose unnecessary and expensive conservation measures on a public already struggling through tough economic times.
Michael Lynch, the former director for Asian energy and security at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an energy consultant.
Is there a peak oil problem?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/08/is_there_a_peak_oil_problem.cfm
I SUGGESTED yesterday that recent changes in oil prices may indicate that supply is increasingly tight, and that oil prices will therefore act as a check on economic growth for the near future. This isn't exactly an embrace of the "peak oil" world view, but it's similar in nature; I believe limits on supply growth will lead to rationing by price.
In yesterday's New York Times, Michael Lynch came out firing against peak oil believers, suggesting that most claims in support of the idea that supply is running low are a result of a misunderstand of geological and energy industry language and data. He concludes:
In the end, perhaps the most misleading claim of the peak-oil advocates is that the earth was endowed with only 2 trillion barrels of “recoverable” oil. Actually, the consensus among geologists is that there are some 10 trillion barrels out there. A century ago, only 10 percent of it was considered recoverable, but improvements in technology should allow us to recover some 35 percent ― another 2.5 trillion barrels ― in an economically viable way. And this doesn’t even include such potential sources as tar sands, which in time we may be able to efficiently tap.
Oil remains abundant, and the price will likely come down closer to the historical level of $30 a barrel as new supplies come forward in the deep waters off West Africa and Latin America, in East Africa, and perhaps in the Bakken oil shale fields of Montana and North Dakota. But that may not keep the Chicken Littles from convincing policymakers in Washington and elsewhere that oil, being finite, must increase in price. (That’s the logic that led the Carter administration to create the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, a $3 billion boondoggle that never produced a gallon of useable fuel.)
This is not to say that we shouldn’t keep looking for other cost-effective, low-pollution energy sources ― why not broaden our options? But we can’t let the false threat of disappearing oil lead the government to throw money away on harebrained renewable energy schemes or impose unnecessary and expensive conservation measures on a public already struggling through tough economic times.
As an aside, any world in which an additional 2.5 trillion barrels of oil is burnt, along with fuels derived from tar sands, is going to be a very hot and unpleasant one. Even if started raining oil, we'd do well to limit consumption of the black stuff.
I'm not a geological expert, so I can't speak to the truth of Mr Lynch's assertions. Even so, there is reason to be sceptical of his conclusions. Relative to the real oil prices that have prevailed for most of the past 40 years, $30 per barrel is fairly cheap―cheap enough to allow people in rapidly developing nations like China, and India, and Brazil to take up driving. At present, the average American uses nearly 25 barrels of oil per year. The average Briton uses roughly 11, while in China the average is 1.9 and in India 0.8. As China and India grow richer, we can expect their per capita petroleum usage to increase, particularly if oil prices remain low. Given the populations involved, usage doesn't need to grow by very much at all to boost global oil consumption significantly.
Currently, there are about 6.7 billion people in the world, who use about 4.8 barrels of oil per year each, for about 32 billion barrels per year. By 2020 there will be nearly 8 billion people. If oil prices remain low, it's reasonable to expect per capita consumption globally to rise to perhaps 5.5 barrels of oil per year each by then. That would give us an increase in annual global petroleum consumption of nearly 40% in a decade's time. Does it seem reasonable that global production can expand at even half that pace using only supply that can profitably be withdrawn at $30 per barrel?
Perhaps so, but I have my doubts. The simple fact is, at cheap prices, the billions of people in emerging markets will consume a lot of oil, and billions of people can't consume a lot of oil without global production ramping up faster than it has at any time in the past half century. The only way to prevent large growth in petroleum use in rapidly developing nations is for prices to make such growth unattractive. But that implies prices that are high enough to bite in petroleum-thirsty countries like America.
Peak Oil is not a theory; Peak Oil is the reality of past and future oil production.
Kjell Aleklett, Professor in global energy systems at Uppsala University and president of ASPO International
Over the past five years, Mr. Michael Lynch and I have debated future global oil production at meetings in Gothenburg(Sweden), Paris and Shanghai. We have also conducted the debate through an exchange of emails published in the British journal Sciece and Public Affairs in December 2008. The arguments that Mr. Lynch advances are, therefore, well known to me. The fact that he is an economist and I am a natural scientist means that we see the future of oil production from two different perspectives, but are in agreement that access to oil is of great importance to the world economy and our future.
What has prompted Mr. Lynch to write his recent opinion piece in the New York Times appears to be a statement from Dr. Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency(IEA) that Peak Oil is near. At the same time, Mr. Lynch attempts to discredit a number of dedicated and qualified people who work on the Peak Oil issue as well as ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas. To suggest that Dr. Birol would base his assertion on "anecdotal information" is astonishing. One wonders what secret information Mr. Lynch possesses and does not wish to share with the IEA.
Oil was formed millions of years ago. Now that the entire world(with the exception fo some offshore regions) has been explored to assess its oil resources, we know quite well where the favorable geological structures are located in which oil might be found. We know also that oil resources are unevenly distributed and that more than half of the entire world's original and its remaining oil is concentrated in the Middle East. Additionally, most of those nations that had lesser quantities of oil have already, at some point in their history, passed the point of peak production. Not even Mr. Lynch can deny that the USA's year of peak oil production(1970) has come and gone. This fact means that Peak Oil is now reality for the USA. Examining oil productionin most of the oil-producing nations outside of the Middele East shows that they have also passed their use-by-date, i.e. they have also experienced Peak Oil.
The claim that the few nations not yet at their maximum production could compensate for other nations' declining production, while at the same time continuously increasing their own rate of production without reaching Peak Oil and thereby permitting global produciton to grow for the remainder of this century, is suspect at best. Those who believe this are, primarily, highly educated economists who assert the the peak oil reality that many nations have experienced is nothing but a theory without foundation. On the contrary, there are many well-grounded theoretical models that describe future oil production.
In his article, Mr. Lynch referred to what is known as the "Hubbert model", a theoretical model that describes quite well the historical and probable future production of oil in the USA. This model characteristically predicts maximum production when half the oil reserves have been produced. For global oil production, there is general agreement that this model does not approximate reality. By studying the production from individual fields in detail, one can see that there are other parameters that have greater importance for the future rate of production. One of these is the propotion of reserves remaining in an oilfield that can be produced every year. We call this parameter "depletion of remaining reserves". Different fields show different values for this parameter but, for the lagest and most important fields, the depletion rate lies somewhere between 4 and 10 percent. When a field reaches a plateau or the maximum depletion rate for its field type, the field's production thereafter declines by this percentage value year after year. Investments and new technology can slow this trend but the changes in production thus obtained are significantly less than the volumes produced by the field in its heyday.
Nowadays new projects must be financed with capital from the international finace market, obtained on the basis of a detailed description of geological factors. The IEA, CERA(Cambridge Energy Research Associates) and we at Global Enegy Systems(Uppsala University, Sweden), all agree that it is these new projects that will slow the decline in production from existing fields. Uncertainties in the data on old oil fields will not determine the future; rather it will be by the realities that apply when financing must be found for new production.
When is oil discoverd in an oil field? At some point the first well must be drilled so that one can state that oil exists underground. Then, to map the total volume of oil, more wells must be drilled. When an oilfield is announced, the entire field is considered to have been discovered although its total structure is not understood. In the BP Statistical Review of World Energy(a publication used by many economysts), revisions in the volume of proven reserves in old fields are reported as discoveries in the year the revisions are made, giving the impression that the greatest volume of oil was discovered during the 1980s. However, backdating these revisions to the date of discovery shows that the greatest volume of oil was discovered during the 1960s.
For those observers of this debate who do not understand the details of reserves and production, the arguments can seem chaotic. We at Global Energy Systems always attempt to support our assertions by publishing our scientific analyses in peer-reviewed journal articles. It is these articles that form the foudation for my assertion that peak oil is imminent. The current reality seems to be a production plateau with production varying within plus or minus 4% of 85 million barrels per day. The plateau began in 2005 and production may well decline from that point during the next five to ten years. This includes Dr. Birol's peak oil date.
World Oil Supply Outlook: Supply Growth Through 2030 with No Peak Evident
http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/client/report/report.aspx?KID=5&CID=10720
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ExxonMobil: Global energy demand to rise 35% through 2030
Global energy demand will be about 35% higher in 2030 than it was in 2005, requiring trillions of dollars of investment and a commitment to innovation and technology, ExxonMobil Corp. said in its latest long-term energy outlook.
http://ogjo-media.com/portal/wts/cgmczibTnFaq-z2LkFnzmcmTfNysa
Leonardo Maugeri
イタリアの石油会社エニのエコノミストで上級副社長。マサチューセッツ工科大学の客員で、同大学の対外エネルギー顧問委員会のメンバーでもある。著書「The Age of Oil」が2007年のUSチョイス・アワードを受賞した。近著「Beyond the Age of Oil: The Myths, Realities, and Future of Fossil Fuels and Their Alternatives」がプレーガー社から2010年前半に出版予定。