bragi

That about sums it up, doesn't it?

lyeinyoureye

Considering we use the majority of oil based products with an efficiency of around, say, ~10-15%, and in order to bump this figure up, use more of it slightly more efficiently, even if it means wasting even more of it compared to using it slightly inefficiently, it shouldn't be too hard.

wheel

87 bucks now
This drive or run up is intense. The day has come for no more cheap petro.

https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/com...rgyprices.html

acroy

that's what they said back in the late 70's.
I'm lovin it
yet gas prices hold steady around $2.50 here. seems a lot of the runup in price is due to plain speculation. lots of money managers, trying to make a quick buck, pouring zillions of leveraged dollars into futures.
i suspect history will repeat itself and the glamor and attention around enegy will come a-tumblin down. when, i dunno, and i might be wrong, it may stay high. Yet the traffic noise outside my airport hotle window is ceasless!

lyeinyoureye

I hope so. That'll be the only way VW will roll out their 1L car. Bastids!

Petro is the same as it's always been for the most part, it's just that the dollar's been tanking. Damn thing dropped 7% against the Euro in just a couple months, and almost double that against the loonie. No more hoser jokes for me...

Roody

Adjusted for inflation, the record high for crude oil was $90/bbl in, I believe, 1980 (a time of world wide recession, nearing depression). We're getting very close to beating the record right now. Interesting times....

gerv 

I keep thinking that at some point, an oil supplying nation will request payment in Euros instead of dollars. I wonder what would happen at that point? Curious... because last year the Canadian dollar was at $.91 against the US $ and now it is $1.02 last time I looked. I guess this is the price of running huge deficits year after year... As Roody say, interesting times..

bmclaughlin807

There are treaties in place that they(OPEC) will only sell oil for dollars... Some people have said that's the only reason that the dollar has been as strong as it was.

Roody

Iran has been trying to start a Euro market for a couple years now. Funny how they became our No. 1 Enemy at about the same time.

gwd

This seems funny. A year or so ago it was $80 adjusted for inflation. Last week it became $90. Today it went up to $95. The BBC seems to report it as always a little above the current price. A few years ago there were dire warnings that if OPEC doesn't do something to keep oil below $50 the world economy would go into a recession. Now we're humming along fine in the $80 range. No disaster, no wars for oil, no flight from car culture, no emergency.

lyeinyoureye

Dollar's dropping, so what may have been $80 eq last year is $90 eq now, or whatevs.

Dahon.Steve

Agreed.

They really believe OPEC is in business to sell cheap oil. LOL. Even if they could flip the switch, there's no incentive to do so since we will pay whatever they want to continue motoring. OPEC is clearly in the drivers seat!

Platy

One poster on theoildrum.com made an acute observation today. He/she pointed out that a few months ago, Secretary of Energy Bodman was saying there was a possible near term supply problem and that he would try to persuade OPEC to increase production. That was a few months ago. Lately, he's just been saying there is a supply problem.

Edit: However, it's possible that demand for oil would decrease sharply if the economy turns down.

gerv 

We tend to blame OPEC for prices, but isn't it just a small part of the picture? What incentive is there for Exxon Mobil to sell cheap oil? With the recent drop in the market for ethanol, many are left wondering why ethanol should not be in high demand... however, now that there has been a flurry of investment activity in ethanol, suddenly, the

I don't think we could point the finger at OPEC in this case.

https://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs...710070313/1001

Specialized fan

There is no shortage of oil, the problem is 1) dependence on foreign oil. 2) the lack of refining capacity, every time someone burps we have a refinery go down and oops there goes the price of gas.

scottieie

Actually, we are finding less sources than we are using up. The new sources we do find typically have higher extraction costs. Couple that with increased demand from China and the rest of the developing world and the supply will be even less in relation to demand.

Yes, our dependence on foreign oil is a problem. We not only are hemorrhaging cash out of the American economy and ruining the dollar, but we are supporting sponsors of terrorism (Saudi Arabia namely).

Yes, the major oil companies have limited refining capacity in the United States. They will happily profit off of whatever they can. A decrease in supply will mean an increase in price. More money per unit of oil.

So, we have cleared up a few things. Yes/no?

Since you seem to not understand what this whole living car free idea relates to based on your trolling posts (alternatively, perhaps you like to be an advocate of the devil's point of view), maybe you can now see that we do this for a variety of reasons, some political, some environmental, some social.

I myself make attempts at being car free for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest is that I don't like the idea of supporting foreign nations who have questionable ties to nether-do-well organizations. I also don't like the idea of making some oil baron rich because I am too lazy to ride my bike to get a loaf of bread or something.

Maybe I am talking to a brick wall, but maybe not.

Platy

Most people are surprised to learn how much our domestic US petroleum production has declined since 1970.

1970 - 11.3 million barrels per day
2006 - 6.9

It's been a steady, unrelenting decline.

https://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec5_5.pdf

cerewa

Platy- I had heard that US oil production started to fall around 1970 but I had never seen the statistics. According to your numbers, production declined to about 61% of its prior rate over 36 years.

Platy

Correct. Another thing you can see from that table, we must now import 66% of the petroleum we consume in the United States.

JeffS

That's debatable. There is a shortage of high-quality oil, which is increasing refining time and thus reducing capacity. If the drop in quality isn't a sign of shortage, I don't know what is. Either way, it's causing a shortage and increasing the price.

I've never really understood why the price has stayed as low as it has. Political pressure is the only thing holding the price down, and that won't work forever.

wahoonc

May not be a shortage, but there isn't any overage either. At any given time the US is less than 24 hours away from a problem. It would only take a hit to any single item in the whole chain to cause shortages. There have been spot shortages in the Dakotas this summer. Also world production has remained flat for the past 2 years with consumption continuing to increase. I think we have hit peak oil and it will be downhill from here. But that is my ignorant uninformed opinion garnered by reading articles and papers by people that actually have a clue. We may get a slight reprieve if the US economy tanks and people stop driving as much because they can't afford it, but that will generate an whole different set of issues. Yes oil is available and the main reason we haven't seen larger shortages in this country is because we are out bididng other poorer countries for it and they are going with out.

Aaron

Roody

In the ancient world, which relied on human power and animal power, grain was the major fuel. Now it's gas.

so, in ancient Rome, the government stabilized and subsidized the price of bread in order to keep the proletariat from rioting. Our governments today do the same thing, only with the price of oil.

gooch

Why do you not believe this? They did it in the late 1970's when we were supposedly running out of oil. I remember the news reports of "we will be out of oil by 1995". (Ooops!) All the while the price went sky high and the value of the US Dollar was sinking. Sound like a familiar scenario?

I work in the oil business on the production end. There are a lot of myths floating around this thread to say the least!

Dave.

pedex

US production of oil did peak in the 70's and has declined without mercy ever since despite heroic efforts to stop it. US production of coal energy wise peaked in the late 90's and has declined ever since.

All resources that are extracted from the earth follow a similar pattern, oil is no different. The easy to get cheap high quality stuff comes first, after that it gets progressively harder and more expensive. When you get to roughly halfway of what the original endowment was peak production tends to occur.

based on available data, from places like the IEA and EIA world oil production of crude plus condensate peaked a couple years ago and has not climbed above that peak since, the data from new projects and upgrades of existing projects shows that they will not be able to get above the established peak before declines of existing projects wipe out any gains coming anytime soon...........now if someone has HARD data to the contrary post it, post it at theoildrum.com too PLEASE !!! put it out there for all to see and take a shot at refuting it

ChipSeal

Some of this is due to bureaucratic bungling, but these are public statements. If continued world production must rise, it would be great if other similar sized deposits like the Cantarell field were found.

https://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/...berg/bxatm.php

While individual fields have steep post peak drop offs of production, I doubt that post world peak declines will be as dramatic. This is because of the many smaller fields that have and will be exploited, the staggered timing of their exploitation, and technologies that will extend the production of all fields.

The real bug in the ointment is the rise in world consumption. The USA powerless to affect that trend as most of the energy use growth is in Asia, and then someday Africa and South America. We will soon experience a gap between supply and demand. This will naturally (though quite painfully) cause a change in the priority's of petroleum use through the wonderfully egalitarian method of free market forces.

When oil prices pull back to about $65, buy oil companies with large oil reserves. And as oil prices rise, there will be more oilfield work-overs and exploration going on. Boom time for the suppliers of such related things: NOV, DRC, DRQ, HERO, HAL and SLB for example.