Russia believes that oil originates from the core of the earth and migrates to the earth’s surface under pressure until it is halted by a granite ‘roof’.
Engdahl believes that the Russians are right and that under the right circumstances oilfields could replenish.
Editor: without taking sides in this issue, it is interesting that oil accumulates in oil fields and that oil is not universally present, where in contrast life is.
At the time, when we started this blog, we were entirely in the Richard Heinberg mode of thinking, summarized as: ‘industrial society is going to be hit very soon by a truck, that few see coming and industrial society is doomed, because the world is running out of oil quickly.‘
We no longer think that is the case. That doesn’t mean that peak oil is not going to happen, but it is at least a little postponed and there is fossil fuel life after peak oil. On the fossil fuel supply front, we are much more optimistic than we were three years ago. Meanwhile we think that it is very well possible to have a sustainable light-weight industrial society for 100% based on renewable energy, to be largely realized by 2050, at least in Europe, North-America and China.
There is no video made by Aleklett since, so this could suggest that he quietly dropped the peak oil subject? Not really. Here a recent article from his blog, let’s see what he has to say on peak oil in 2015:
[aleklett.wordpress.com] – The crash in the price of oil may change the oil market – a look at the IEA’s “Oil Medium-Term Market Report 2015”
Aleklett argues that he and the other ASPO members were basically completely correct with their predictions concerning conventional oil and that production indeed peaked in 2005. The increase in oil production of 4.2 Mb/d we saw from 2008 to 2013 was not cheap (conventional) oil; It came from deepwater, from Canada’s oil-sands and as NGL and shale oil from fracking in the USA.
The world acording to the IEA
Aleklett explains that a reduced need for oil imports (US cars becoming 25% more efficient over the past decade) has led to the current oversupply of oil on the world market and corresponding price implosion. In other words: demand destruction was an important factor causing the drop in the oil prices.
According to Aleklett, OPEC has lost its significance, because it no longer has the will to set the price by varying production, like it did in the past. Everybody is now producing the maximum amount it can, which lead to price erosion.
Aleklett is skeptical of the IEA’s future prognoses. According to him neither shale oil nor the price crash of the past six months negate the fact that the world finds itself near Peak Oil and he concludes concerning conventional plus unconventional oil:
There are strong indications that 2015/2016 may see this global peak.
Editor: in our view, Aleklett might well be right about “peak oil=2016”, but he is focusing too much on oil, where he should concentrate on fossil fuel in general. With the current level of technology, oil, gas and coal are highly interchangeable, although they are not equally clean (read: dirty). When you add up all potentially combustible hydrocarbon material, still stored in the earth’s crust or laying around on the bottom of the ocean (methane-hydrates), we tentatively come to the conclusion that fossil fuel is indeed an infinite resource. Not in a literally sense, after all the earth is a sphere with 12,000 km diameter, but in a practical sense, namely that there is probably more fossil fuel around than the tiny earth’s atmosphere ever can handle. This is easy to exemplify: the atmosphere measures about 30 km. If in a thought experiment the atmosphere would be cooled to near zero degrees Kelvin, that atmosphere would shrink to a pool of ca. 10 meter liquid oxygen and nitrogen. The atmosphere is that thin. And it is in that tiny pool that cars, airplanes, home heating equipment, etc., etc. discharge their combustion waste into.
To illustrate the huge fossil fuel reserves, take for example the recent report about the discoveries of huge coal reserves under the North Sea, 20-150 times the total amount of oil burned so far in the entire history.
Another question is if that fossil fuel is accessible. Key parameter is EROEI (energy return on energy investment), that is: do you get more energy in return compared to the amount of energy you need to invest to harvest the fuel? That’s a matter of technology and that is a very dynamic factor.
The fact that the atmosphere could be the final limiting factor in global fossil fuel consumption is acknowledged in the IEA report:
“There is a rapidly growing discussion within the oil industry regarding what are called ‘stranded assets’ – the fact that the larger part of the world’s fossil fuel reserves cannot be produced if the world is to avoid serious climate change. New calculations presented in the journal Nature in January show that 80% of the world’s coal reserves and one third of the world’s oil reserves cannot be used, at least not before 2050.
Conclusion: for better or for worse, there is a near endless amount of fossil fuel waiting in the earth’s crust, but it will be technology that will determine if these reserves can be exploited economically. The end of the fossil fuel age will probably come in leaps and bounds. Perhaps that in a year time oil prices will sky-rocket again, if the world does indeed pass peak oil (conventional + unconventional). This will cause a shift to other fossil fuels. The best energy strategy is to be not distracted by fossil fuel price variations and continue on the path of installation of renewable energy (wind/solar) and demand destruction.
Plants are able to store solar energy by converting CO2 and H2O into biomass. Scientists have been trying to mimic this process in an attempt to speed the natural photosynthesis up and create fuel, literally from the air and now scientists from Berkeley claim they have made considerable progress.
Key ingredients: mixture of nanotechnology (silicon and titanium oxide nano-wires) and biology (Sporomusa ovata bacteria). The wires absorb the sunlight and the energy is used by the bacteria to convert the CO2 in the air into acetate, which can be used for more complex chemicals, fuel and plastics.
Current energy conversion efficiency is a meager 0.38%. The team is working on a ‘second generation’ system which should bring 3%. They hope to achieve 10% in the future, in order to make the process ‘commercial viable’.
[Berkeley Lab] – Major Advance in Artificial Photosynthesis Poses Win/Win for the Environment
[wikipedia.org] – Artificial photosynthesis
Editor: as long as ever cheaper solar panels can achieve efficiencies of 10-15%, it remains unclear why this biochemical process would represent an advantage, except for niche applications, for instance in areas where there is no grid plus mass pumped hydro storage.
Published 28 March 2015
Travel from Daejeon to Sejong by bike (Watch it from the air)
Aerial view of the bicycle road between Daejeon and Sejong, both cities are located 2~3 hours south of Seoul. Solar panels not only generate power but also provide protection to cyclists from sun and rain. Taken by a drone camera in fall, see the golden rice fields!
[gas2.org] – Korea’s Solar Panel-Covered Bike Highway A Model For America
Projection of newly installed capacity of energy sources. Renewables surpassed fossil in 2013.
Solar, the newest major source of energy in the mix, makes up less than 1 percent of the electricity market today but could be the world’s biggest single source by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.
The question is no longer if the world will transition to cleaner energy, but how long it will take.
[bloomberg.com] – Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables
To be constructed: Gwadar-Kashgar road, railroad and pipeline infrastructure.
The AIIB infrastructure investment bank is in place, now let the fun begin! The Chinese president has arrived in Pakistan on Monday, to sign energy ($34B) and infrastructure ($12B) contracts. Focal point is the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), between Gwadar, Pakistan and Kashgar, West-China, see map above, part of the massive Chinese New Silk Road strategy.
The creation of road, rail and pipeline links that will cut several thousand kilometers off the transport route for oil from the Middle East to China, bypassing rival India is also one of the aspects of the investment project.
On top of that, China will finance the so-called Peace Pipeline between Iran and Pakistan:
Peace Pipeline Iran-Pakistan, an an essential leg connecting Iran with China.
Furthermore, China and Pakistan will ‘cooperate’ (read: China will invest) in 16.4 GW new power (gas, coal, solar), an amount equal to what is already installed in Pakistan and every now and then works.
[rt.com] – China to invest $46bn in economic corridor with Pakistan – media
[theguardian.com] – China president arrives in Pakistan to sign £30bn ‘land corridor’ agreement
Editor: get this, after completion, China will not only be able to import oil from the Middle-East via pipelines, rather than via the vulnerable sea route, at the mercy of India and the US, but will also be able to bring troops over land directly to SCO-ally Iran, obviously in consent with the government of Pakistan (and consent will probably not even be necessary in the worst case, just like Germany didn’t need the consent from the Belgian government in 1914 to meet the French army in France). In comparison: the US invested a meager $5B recently in ‘ally’ Pakistan. Conclusion: China will gradually replace the US in Pakistan, giving China indirect access to the Indian Ocean.
The geopolitical consequences are breathtaking. Everything what Brzezinsky feared, as expressed in his 1998 bookThe Grand Chessboard (core message: it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger should emerge capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America’s global pre-eminence) is happening before his eyes, because thanks to US policy in Ukraine, Heartland giants Russia and China were pushed into each others arms and began to act as one “Eurasian Challenger”. It doesn’t even matter that much if the US will be able to keep Europe isolated from Eurasia or not. China plus Russia combined have more than enough gravitas to withstand the assaults of the US-led West.
Analysing public data on offshore wind in Denmark, energy consultant Mike Parr concludes that existing offshore wind is already cheaper than gas-fired power plants. Future offshore wind farms will be cheaper still – and up to 60% less expensive than the proposed nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point C in the UK. This means, writes Parr, that government support for offshore wind can be quickly and substantially reduced.
[energypost.eu] – The myth of expensive offshore wind: it’s already cheaper than gas-fired and nuclear
Published 16 apr. 2015
In this short video, Richard Heinberg explores why The Great Burning — the combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas — must come to an end during the next few decades. If the twentieth century was all about increasing our burn rate year after blazing year, the dominant trend of twenty-first century will be a gradual flame-out.
This video is the second in a four-part series by Richard Heinberg and Post Carbon Institute. The themes covered in these videos are much more thoroughly explored in Heinberg’s latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
During the Autumn of 2014, 43 foundation piles were installed on behalf of the new Eneco Luchterduinen wind park, 23 km from the coast at Noordwijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. Project: 43 Vestas wind turbines of 3 MW, 129 MW in total (135,000 homes).
The US company JuiceBoxSolar brought a 8.6 kWh energy storage system to the market, specifically designed to support a domestic solar system. This kind of storage provides for the missing link between electricity production during the day and electricity consumption at night, when people return home from work. The system is advertised as maintenance free for a minimum of ten years and can be installed outdoors, against a wall.
Editor: the price is still a mystery and for that reason probably high.
DeepResource 
