Skip to main content

Peak, What Peak?

Before I discuss the logic behind negating a peak of production of anything, let me sum up where we are in the U.S. in terms of crude oil production.  According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA):

"The United States consumed 18.8 million barrels per day (MMbd) of petroleum products during 2011, making us the world's largest petroleum consumer. The United States was third in crude oil production at 5.7 MMbd. But crude oil alone does not constitute all U.S. petroleum supplies. Significant gains occur, because crude oil expands in the refining process, liquid fuel is captured in the processing of natural gas, and we have other sources of liquid fuel, including biofuels. These additional supplies totaled 4.6 MMbd in 2011."


Let me parse this quote.  First, let's look at the history of oil production in the U.S., shown in the chart below.  The vertical axis is scaled with a unit of power, exajoules (EJ) per year, very close to quadrillion BTUs (quads) per year.  To convert from EJ/year to millions of barrels of crude oil per day (MMbopd), divide the vertical axis by roughly two, so 20 EJ/year is roughly equal to 10 MMbopd.
Historic production of crude oil and lease condensate in the U.S. is resolved into several Hubbert curves.  The tallest one is the original Hubbert curve published in 1956.  The smaller curves starting from 1960 were generated by producing shallow, deep and ultra-deep Gulf of Mexico, Alaska (mostly Prudhoe Bay), and then everything else that was not in the original curve: large waterflood projects, thermal and carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects, horizontal wells, hydrofractured wells, etc.  The broad curve peaking in 2002 was introduced in late 2002, and the model represented fairly well the U.S. crude oil production until 2010.  The last small green curve on the right was introduced last month to describe the Bakken and Eagle Ford shales, as well as the increased production of crude oil from the Permian Basin near Midland, TX.  The right-most black curve depicts a hypothetical production of 7 billion barrels of oil from the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.  The last point on the blue step-line represents 5.7 MMbopd produced in the U.S. in 2011. This rate is predicted by EIA to grow to over 6 MMbopd in 2012.

Now, let's look at the refinery gains in the second chart. These gains arise because petroleum products are usually less dense than the crudes they are made from. Therefore, refinery gains are not really a replacement of imported crude oil, and demonstrate only that since 1993, the U.S. refining has been moving towards heavier crude oil feedstocks.
Oil refinery gains reported by EIA since 1993 hover around 1 million barrels of all petroleum products per day.  These gains arise because the densities of petroleum products (gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, jet fuel, heating oil, etc.) are less than the density of crude oil they were made from.  It is like making a low calorie butter or cheese from a normal butter or cheese by puffing them up with bubbles of air.  Through refinery gains, we have not created new energy. Instead, we have just puffed up the crude oil feedstock by cracking heavier hydrocarbons and hydrogenation, both requiring considerable energy inputs. Thus, refinery gains do not really count as a new source of energy, but only as a source of an increased volume of petroleum products.

Corn ethanol comes next.  I described the ethanol story completely in 2004, in my most popular paper ever. There was nothing new I would add in the intervening 8 years. Basically, ethanol is obtained from burning methane, coal, diesel fuel, gasoline, corn kernels, soil and the environment. We destroy perhaps as many as 7 units of free energy in the environment and human economy to produce 1 unit of free energy as corn ethanol, and make a few clueless environmentalists happier and a few super rich corporations richer. The story is even worse for switchgrass ethanol. Finally, your mileage would drop by 33% if you were to use pure ethanol as a fuel for your car.
Production of corn ethanol in the U.S.  Because ethanol has a lower heating value, its volume would be much lower when converted to equivalent crude oil. 
Production of soybean biodiesel in the U.S. is too low to get excited.
Production of soybean biodiesel in the U.S. is almost irrelevant, but also highly environmentally damaging. Since most of the obliteration of the irreplaceable biota occurs in the tropics, in Brazil, Argentina, Africa, and Asia Pacific, we really don't care.  Either way, the rate of biodiesel production in the U.S. is too low to write home about it.

In summary, of the 4.6 million barrels of the other "oil"  produced in 2011, 1.1 MMbopd were refinery gains, and another 0.6 MMbopd was the equivalent volume of oil corresponding to the production of roughly 0.9 MMbpd of ethanol.  Biodiesel production was in the noise. I fear that EIA simply added volumes of the various fuels without converting them to oil equivalents based on a common oil density and heating value. The rest of the other "oil", 2.9 or 2.6 million barrels of oil equivalent (again I do not know how EIA made their conversions) were natural gas plant liquids.  All of these liquids are significantly less dense than crude oil, and a proper conversion lowers their volume contribution by 35 percent.

Needless to say, refinery gains do not inject new energy into the U.S. economy, just add volume. Also, propane and butane are not crude oil, and ethanol is not a hydrocarbon. The only hard number here, 5.7 MMbopd of crude oil production is something to write home about.  This level of production requires an incredible amount of new technology and technical skills that are available only in the U.S. My department graduates each year about 150 petroleum engineers of all levels, who make this huge effort such a smashing success. Their starting salaries are in excess of three-four times the national average for college graduates. And they all have jobs.

In conclusion, Russia is using similar technology to increase their rate of crude oil production to over 11 MMbopd, and Saudi Arabia is barely hanging in at 9-10 MMbopd.  Both these countries also produce large volumes of lease condensates and natural gas plant liquids. The rate of U.S. crude oil production is a little more than 1/2 of either of these two rates, and we are no Russia or Saudi Arabia when it comes to producing oil per unit time. But this is just fine, so let's stop deluding ourselves with such tenacity.

In the next blog, I will talk about the various techniques of denying existence of peak oil (or climate change, or anything else we fear or do not like).

P.S.  So, did I miss anything in my discussion of the EIA quote at the top of this blog?  Think carefully... Yes, I did.

In 2011, we consumed 18.8 MMbpd of petroleum products, less by 1.6 MMbpd than our consumption of petroleum products in 2005.  With less cash in pocket, less driving, and more efficient cars, we have destroyed demand for almost as much of real crude oil as all other imaginary "oils" quoted by EIA and dutifully propagated through the clueless mediadom.

Why isn't this achievement front-page news?  We finally use less crude oil!  We are more efficient! This incredible news is evidently not as sexy as making up imaginary "oil" to be on par with the Saudis. Have we gone mad?!  I take it back: Have we stumbled even deeper into the destructive imperial madness that has infected us for the last 11 years?

And, you, corn ethanol lovers, read this and fear the future.

P.S.P.S.  Five years after my well-researched plea to the EU Ministers of Environment and Transportation, EU is considering limiting use of biofuels:

"The European Commission intends to limit the use of biofuels derived from food crops to 5% for transport fuel. This would be a substantial change to its present biofuels policy. According to the EU’s climate-change and energy commissioners, Europe wants to cap the share of energy in the transport sector from food crop-based biofuels at current levels. The proposal, a draft of which was reported by Dow Jones Newswires, clashes with the target of having 10% of the energy used in transport coming from renewable sources by 2020. This goal was set by the EU three years ago because food crop-based biofuels account for most biofuels available in volumes at the moment. New types of alternative fuels are being developed, but they are mostly at the laboratory stage. At the same time, biofuels are expected to be the main renewable energy source used in transport in 2020."

Despite the obvious insanity of the last sentence, I say: Better late than never, dear Europe, and much better than the U.S.A., which seems to have a policy of accepting campaign donations from mega agricultural companies and all kinds of other companies, rather than having an energy policy.

(P.S.)-cubed on 11/13/2012. The Wall Street Journal insists on an alternative reality view of EIA reporting, by stating in a Review&Outlook piece, "Saudi America," that:

"The U.S. will increase its production to about 23 million barrels a day in 10 years from about 18 million barrels a day now, the IEA predicts."

I have no idea what IEA predicts, but I surely know that this number is incorrect, if it implies current production of liquid hydrocarbons in the U.S.A.

Comments

  1. The current propaganda machine is becoming truly frightening (but how it could behave otherwise considering the situation ?).

    Anyway not sure if you know the story, but about the IEA, a very interesting read is below :
    http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/how-the-global-oil-watchdog-failed-its-mission

    Basically about the IEA team of 1998 having tried to produce an "honest" report, and basically everybody got fired except Fatigh Birol (current head of the IEA).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tad - have you done a post on your multi-cyclic Hubbert analysis above? If not, would you be willing to? There haven't been many peak oil analyses recently that try to account for the current shale / deepwater spike in U.S. oil production, and yours seems very interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Not yet. I have published a paper on this subject in the Energy Journal. Here are my links:

    http://gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/EnergyCoalPaperPublished.pdf

    and

    http://gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/EnergyCoalPaperSOM.pdf

    I hope this helps. - Tad

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great post and much discussion generated at theoildrum.com/node/9619

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice Website. You should think more about RSS Feeds as a traffic source. They bring me a nice bit of traffic
    suppliers of dried fruit

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I would like to learn what you are thinking about my posts and encourage you to share

Popular posts from this blog

Ascent of the Angry and Stupid

Scientifically speaking,  stupid  people harm themselves while also harming others. In addition, stupid people are irrational and erratic, and are very dangerous to others. After discussing the destructive role of the stupid in any society whatsoever, I will focus on the delicate interplay of actions of intelligent and helpless people, who in balance make or break a functioning democracy.  Unless things change fast in the US, we can kiss our democracy goodbye for decades. If you want to see how a virulent ascent of the stupid looks up close, and what implications it has for our fight against social injustice and climate change, please watch the brilliant " Don't Look Up " movie. Unvaccinated people demonstrating in Los Angeles. There are tens of millions of the raving mad and/or angry, stupid people in the US and other developed countries. Source: New York Times , 12/25/2021. I overlapped at UC Berkeley with Professor Carlo M. Cipolla for a decade, until his death in t

Confessions of a Petroleum Engineer and Ecologist

I just attended an SPE workshop, "Oil and Gas Technology for a Net-Zero World – Defining Our Grand Challenges for the Next Decade."  Of the 60 people in the audience, I knew 1/3, some very well.  It makes sense, because I have been an SPE member for 40 years, and a Distinguished Member for 20 years.  Last year, I received an SPE EOR/IOR Pioneer Award for my work at Shell and UC Berkeley on the thermal enhanced oil recovery processes that involved foams, and their upscaling to field operations. This was nice, because Shell recognized me as one of their best reservoir engineers, and in 1985 I received an internal Shell Recognition Award for the same work. But I am not a mere oil & gas reservoir engineer.  First and foremost, I am a chemical engineer and physicist, who has thought rigorously about the sustainability of human civilization , ecology and thermodynamics of industrial agriculture and large biofuel systems, as well as about the overall gross and net primary produc

Net Ecosystem Productivity is Zero on Planet Earth

In the last bog , I told you how the law of mass conservation governs the large-scale behavior of Earth's households - ecosystems - that must recycle all mass on average and export only low quality heat into the cold universe.  Now, I will give you a few useful definitions of cyclic processes, sustainability, and ecosystem productivity. Let me start from stating the obvious:  We live in a spaceship we cannot leave, a gorgeous blue, white and green planet Earth that takes us for a spin around her star, the Sun, each year. But this statement is imprecise. We really live on a vanishingly thin skin of the Earth, her ecosphere .   Think of this skin as of a thin delicate membrane, teaming with life and beauty, but incredibly fragile. We trample on this membrane and poison it.  Then we act surprised when it brakes and shrivels. Practically all life on the Earth exists between two concentric spheres defined by the mean Earth surface at the radial distance from the Earth's