Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

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Peak oil kinda happened. All of the abundant easy to access oil is gone. We're gradually moving to other sources like offshore and fracking while using more technology in existing locations like pumping seawater into old wells to get more out of them.

Tech has done wonderful things to keep costs down, but it's a lot tougher to get that barrel of oil now days. I think there are, at least to some degree, costs being offset by increased risk. Deepwater horizon is a pretty obvious example. Groundwater contamination from fracking is another. I think the price per barrel has been on a steady downward trend, but I'd bet that including the environmental impact just from accessing (not burning) oil, we're paying more. I'm not aware of any such study.

In any case, we're the first, but also last technological civilization to use oil. If a wizard waved a magic wand, and we were suddenly sent back to a 1700's level of technology, i don't see how we'd be able to get much oil at all. It's not bubbling up out of the ground anywhere anymore. The easy stuff is gone. there's no way to get the hard stuff by hand.

"The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil."

– Ahmed Zaki Yamani (Saudi & OPEC Minister for Oil)

I think oil is just one of those resources that we're never going to have to worry about. We've got two things going for us these days - first, the majority of oil production goes to powering cars which are becoming increasingly efficient, and, second the technology for extracting oil is also becoming more efficient. Fracking techniques right now only recover a small percentage of the actual oil that's in place - as those techniques are optimized, recovery rates will go through the roof.

I think we'll be way past the need for oil, long before we run out of it.

> I think we'll be way past the need for oil, long before we run out of it.

Oil isn't just used for fuel. What will replace the oil products in pharma, plastics, etc?

Plastics are probably the largest semi-direct user of hydrocarbons other than energy production, and according to the US Energy Information Administration [1] plastics used the equivalent of 2.7% of the total oil consumption in the US in 2010.

If we just stop burning the stuff we'll have enough for other uses for a very very long time.

We can synthetize all petroleum products from carbon feedstocks, so long as we can pay the energy cost. This is generally true of almost everything these days -- all resources that the modern economy depends on are substitutable or synthetizable with energy.

You can't spray your fields with efficient cars.

Watch me

Peak oil is here, and have been for more than 10 years. Yet, a phrase like this would sound impossible 15 years ago.

It's not that peak oil didn't happen, or that it wasn't traumatic. It did come, just like predicted, and we are on the way to adjust from a growth based society to a society where "if we work hard and right, we can improve the world!", and the transition has been traumatic, just like predicted.

Where predictions failed was that people expected a one in a 1000 years calamity (because it is a one in a 1000 years event), instead we got what looks like just a one in 100 years calamity.

>It's not that peak oil didn't happen, or that it wasn't traumatic

What trauma do you mean?

Something like this? http://twincharts.com/dow-jones-oil.html

I'm pretty sure at least some future economic historians will argue that what really killed the economy in 2008 was the "superspike" in energy prices.

You may not have noticed, but about the entire world has stopped growing by now.

Everything looks like growth will resume, but in a different way, and conditioned to a different social organization.

That's not because of high oil prices, it's because of financial chaos and general market turmoil. The oil boom across the Dakotas collapsed, but not because of lack of oil....?

> and the transition has been traumatic, just like predicted.

What trauma? What transition?

We currently have more oil than we know what to do with. It's piling up in huge storage containers, and the price keeps falling because no one needs any.

Other than the fact that there isn't evidence of fracking contaminating groundwater...

huh. weird. I thought it was known to be happening, but not yet widespread.

http://ofmpub.epa.gov/eims/eimscomm.getfile?p_download_id=52... "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells. The number of identified cases, however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells. "

Also the sort of vague claim with no support that "well it hasn't happened yet" is kind of annoying. Nothing is zero risk. we can argue about p(bad_things) <.001 or .1 or whatever, but i think it's foolish to just pretend everything will be sunshine and rainbows forever.

I actually asked a family member who is an ecologically minded geologist about this (while we were at Yellowstone, no less). He said the primary issues now are twofold.

1) Law relating to public land use is terrible and biases insanely in the way of leasing for exploitation. In that the government is both required by law to lease and that the price is far shy of what a market would support (as it hasn't been updated in decades)

2) Inspection and fining of terrestrial operations is typically more self-reported (though only necessary if "sufficient" oil / chemicals have spilled). Measures are then put in place afterwards to monitor the well / location.

Admittedly, he wasn't in legal, but thought I'd share. Also, have to put a plug, if anyone has a lead on good-conscience geology jobs looking for someone with a BSc, I'd be thrilled to forward you on to him (contact me at {username}.co at gmail). He could have made easy money working in petrogeology but felt that wasn't something he could support.

When we were signing up for fracking under our land, we contacted the Ohio Dept of Natural Resources fellow who's responsible for tracking such things (groundwater contamination), and he said he had seen no evidence in 30 years of drilling (including recent) fracking. That's a pretty strong statement from the person whom you'd assume feels responsible for environmental protection

> That's a pretty strong statement from the person whom you'd assume feels responsible for environmental protection

Heh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

I'd expect them to be made up of folks with cozy ties to industry, just like the Federal version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Management_Service#Gi...

As I said, he'd been there 30 years. If that's a revolving door, it ain't spinnin' very fast.

I'm as cynical as anyone, but in this case I don't think it's warranted.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6325.abstract

It has been proven that it does contaminate. That also doesn't consider the pools of wastewater on the surface. There are peer reviewed studies out there that state the evidence. Sadly, there is also a lot of misinformation being pushed by the oil and gas industry.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/new-science-shows-fracking-con...

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