Perpetual motion (continued)

[Nightjar]

Nobody believes the OPEC countries' figures for their potential reserves; they are entirely political. However, the oil industry has a fairly good idea of what the proven reserves really are. It is not that difficult to deduct what the Saudis have taken from their oil fields since they last produced verifiable figures.

...

Corrected for inflation, it is hardly any more expensive today than it was in the 1980s. It is cheaper than it was in 1920.

Last year a single onshore oil field was found with an estimated 50 billion barrel recoverable capacity and similar finds are expected in the same area. By comparison, between 1955 and 1980, the average discovery rate was 40 billion barrels a year and the best year ever was

1960, when 60 billion barrels were discovered. We are not chasing smaller and less accessible fields and the fields we already have still have lots of recoverable oil in them.

As I said above, at around $100 a barrel a whole new set of oil reserves become viable - Alberta oil sands alone could yield 170 billion barrels, while Venezuela claims to have enough oil sands to supply the entire world for 44 years - as do esoteric recovery techniques to get more oil out of existing fields. As I also said, those who actually understand the industry expect oil prices to fall as we come out of the recession.

I know you would like oil to become more expensive, but that is not probable in the foreseeable future and the sort of increases in road fuel costs you are predicting are not even possible, except by taxation.

We already have an excellent alternative for non-mobile use; nuclear power.

The idiots are the ones looking to wind and solar energy instead of nuclear power.

Colin Bignell

[tim.....]

Eh

It may be free in the sense that as we freely dig it out of the ground we could make no charge for it. But unfortunately, we have created a capitalist model where someone is deemed to "own" it and that person makes a windfall profit by charging us (market rates) for it.

It is most definitely not free from the consumers pov.

tim

[Nightjar]

How many copper mines do we have in the UK? ;-)

Colin Bignell

[tim.....]

Are you sure?

I am unaware of any significant new finds of oil in the past 10 years. Where are they? (OK I've Goggled and it seems that Iran has found an extra

100 billion barrels, I'm wondering if that's a change in the political climate that has "found" that, rather than any actual exploratory work)

In any case "faster than demand is growing" isn't enough, supply has to increase by more than "actual demand" for there not to be a point on the curve where will run out. Which if the 1,200 billion barrels that I found on Wikipedia is correct, will be in 38 years time (at current usage).

Even if we find as much (new) oil in the next 30 years as we have found in the past 70, this still isn't a problem that we can sweep under the carpet. And oil exploration is not an immature science. We have looked in all of the obvious places, whilst there will be some gain from new extraction techniques enabling us to make better use of the finds that we have, I doubt very much that there is a new Saudia Arabia (or even another North Sea) out there waiting to be found BICBW

(NMP I won't see out the 38 years)

tim

[Steve Firth]

There's one at Llandudno.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Like wind turbines and solar panels

To make windmills out of. Where do you think windmills and solar panels come from? Hint. It's stuff that comes out of the ground. Windmill blades are made from petroleum, using fossil fuel energy to make.

Liker windmills and solar panels have to be transported?

Like windmills and solar panels?

Like windmills and solar panels? Except in that case, it isn't actually very useful at all...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Exactly so

Exactly so. Wind turbines and PV arrays are being lied about and built to prevent people looking at theh real alternatives, and lies are told about it to fool idiots like you. Except in this case, you are the liar, not the idiot.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Because its more profitable.

[Steve Firth]

Why do you, and others, promote your ignorance as if it were fact and seemingly deduce that if you don't know something then anyone who states a verifiable fact must be telling lies?

Oil discovery happens continuously.

5/July/13 - Shell announces discovery of Mississippi Canyon Block 393. 100 million barrels. 2/April/2012 - Shell announces Appomattox discovery 500 million barrels, Mississippi Canyon Block 348 28/May/2013 Statoil announces 33 million barrel strike in the North Sea (7km north of Grane)

And on and on ... read the Oil and Gas Journal.

Finds are all around the world, Egypt, Ethiopia, Australia, New Zealand, Tierra del Fuego, Gulf of Mexico, South China (etc)

[John Rumm]

Where were your solar panels made harry?

Where does the neodymium or copper used for wind turbines come from harry?

How did your panels get here? What about the lithium in the battery for your car?

What do you suggest we do when 3% of the population has an electric car and there is no more raw material left to make new batteries?

Have you seen a rare earth open cast mine harry?

Hot air perhaps harry.

[John Rumm]

Idiots like us, are all for looking for alternative energy sources. Unlike idiots like you however. we are keen to look for ones that actually have a chance of producing power in the quantities that are needed and all the time, not just when its sunny/windy.

For certain values of "we".

[John Rumm]

Don't be so hard on him, he could be both!

[Nightjar]

Yes. Apart from a couple of years in the last decade, when discoveries only equalled the amount demand grew by, mainly due to unusually high demand from China, the rate of discovery has continuously exceeded the rate of increase of demand, often by a very large margin.

China is expected to move towards exploiting its large reserves of unconventional gas as a source of energy, which means that a similar level of demand for oil from China is unlikely. If they move away entirely from oil as a source of power generation, the forecasts for oil demand growth by 2035 will be more than halved.

They managed to find 50bn barrels in one field in the USA last year, which compares with 60bn found in all of 1960, which was the best year ever.

It probably has more to do with the way OPEC quotas are calculated than any real oil discoveries.

Except that is the proven reserves at P90 - the amount that it is 90% certain can be recovered economically at today's prices and with current technology. It also increases over time due to a factor known as oil reserve growth, resulting from things like an improved knowledge of individual fields and improvements in recovery techniques. The January

2012 figure was 1,354bn or 1,532bn barrels, depending which source you take.

While P90 is a safe figure to use if you are looking at investing in a particular well, globally production runs at P50. The P50 reserves are probably at least twice the P90 reserves and could be up to three times. If you factor in expected advances in recovery techniques, recoverable reserves could be 10 times the proven reserves.

That is without any increase in price, which would make unconventional oil sources more viable. Venezuela claims to have enough oil in its oil sands to supply the whole world for 44 years. Other sources put the world P90 figure for unconventional oil reserves at 2,129bn barrels.

That would probably be a rather pessimistic forecast. New advances in deep drilling techniques mean that we can start looking in areas where oil almost certainly exists, but which have not been accessible until now.

Not really. The USA was supposed to have reached Peak Oil in the 1970s (the only known success of the theory), but that is where they found the new 50bn barrel oil field and the area is expected to yield similar finds in the near future.

There are certainly places which could have such fields, but which nobody thinks worth exploring because of unstable politics. We don't need new oil fields that badly.

Meanwhile, people are exploring different ways to convert waste materials into synthetic oil:

Colin Bignell

[Tim Streater]

And neither is wind. And neither is water as delivered to your kitchen tap. But harry says wind is "free". If wind is "free" then so is water, since we don't have to pay anyone to make it rain. Neither do we have to pay anyone to create the oil under the ground, or the coal.

As delivered to somewhere useful, none of these things is free, but that's a statement of the bleeding obvious. As delivered to somewhere useful, wind energy isn't free either. You need a turbine (£££) and you need cables (£££) and you have ongoing maintenance costs (£££).

Geddit?

[harryagain]

Er, I thought we were discussing fuel? The means to convert the fuel (to electricity) is another issue.

[harryagain]

The last one close din 1998. It may reopen if copper prices rise.

So what?

[harryagain]

The discussion was about energy. All forms need work to convert them.

[harryagain]

Moving the goal posts as usual I see. We were discussing energy extraction nor the means of converting it.

Lithium is the 25th most common element earth. As usual,the easy sources are being worked on first.

Tell me about rare earth opencast mines then.

Oh damn! "Rare" earths are actually quite common.

We don't actually need themfor electric cars. Just it makes them a bit more efficient. The same reason you might have one in your washingmachine.

[harryagain]

On the other hand PV is doing exceptionally well. I shall have a bumper month.

[harryagain]

Which new oil field was that? Re tar sands there's another whole issue.