Comment by njarboe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by njarboe | Hacker News Reader

The title should be "Peak Oil Will Never Happen"

"Peak Oil" theory is about running out of oil supply. With all the fracking oil sources now available to tap in the US at relatively short notice, the world of oil is very different now. OPEC used to be able to control supply, demand was inelastic, and thus they could control the price. Fracking is expensive, but you can produce a huge amount of oil by just spending more $/barrel to get it out of the ground. A lot of the oil is owned privately in west Texas and will be available for extraction for the foreseeable future. For the first time since the 1970's(maybe earlier/never?) oil pricing will closely follow classic supply and demand curves.

Another interesting thing is that the US is now producing more oil than it is consuming. It will probably be a net exporter going forward. This changes the realpolitik view of the Middle East. The US could definitely get the hell out of there militarily and just keep a lookout for nuclear weapons production projects (or even just leave that to the Israelis who we already massively support). This is a huge deal that I don't see discussed at all.

There won't always be low hanging fruit or a reliable rate of breakthroughs. Peak oil doesn't mean all possible supply on Earth. But rather the point at which one must spend so much energy to extract and develop a barrel of crude that it's net negative, or even just less optimal than alternatives.

Physics has hard limits and the rate of crude accumulating naturally is far below extraction. Besides the oceans have enough acidity and mercury already, they certainly don't need more.

Edit: there not they're

Solar panels, at their present and sustained rate of price decline, will obsolete oil in a number of decades. The peak oil prophecies will come true only if they can come true on a timeline. "It has to run out eventually," as an argument, only hold water if we're going to be needing it for an infinite amount of time.

Solar panels have their own peaks. In general anything depending on minerals and construction techniques that themselves include energy has...

Oil could double in price before markets start to not support its production. There is a long way to go before that happens.

Perhaps but production could still peak long before it stops completely. Consider a future where oil is used only for medical necessities.

Are you certain what you write is true? Fracking is in serious trouble. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.desmogblog.com/2019/10/03/f... The us is not a net crude oil exporter. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42735#

Fracking and tar sands oil are in trouble only because oil is too cheap and too abundant. The parent comment holds, OPEC does not have the ability to increase prices above the cost of tracked oil.

Your second link shows that the US is now a net exporter of oil. The leading graph even has text on it stating "The United States has been a net exporter of petroleum since Sept 2019".

That US oil self sufficiency means that it will get out of the Middle East is a key part of Peter Zeihan’s Disunited Nations. His premise is that the US will disengage from the world no matter who won the election and that will have far reaching ramifications for the world.

A major reason of the ability for the US to do this is energy self sufficiency.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062913689/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm...

A counter-argument:

The military presence to protect oil supplies is not just to protect US supplies. Even before self sufficiency, the US did not import much oil from the middle east - 5x more came from Canada than all the Persian Gulf for example: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727

The reason is to protect world supplies, not just US supplies. A cutoff in gulf supplies would have a huge impact on world oil prices and hence economies, and would also impact US oil prices since oil is a (mostly) fungible commodity. So there are still self-interest reasons to maintain a presence even if the country is self sufficient in oil.

This completely ignores the economics of commodity pricing. Oil is the ultimate commodity so the price of a barrel of a particular grade of crude is essentially the same around the globe. Thus if demand outside the US drives prices up, US suppliers will export instead of selling domestically until prices equilabrate. Thus the US protects oil shipping from Saudi to China in order to improve the stability of US prices (and to reduce the incentive for China to expand its military reserve in the Gulf — which has expanded over the last 2-3 years as the us has signaled its intent to pull back.

In fact the US is “net” self sufficient: the same issues (plus differing grades and the geography of shipping) cause the US to simultaneously import and export. Driving actual imports to zero would be more expensive.

Finally, fracking appears to “spoil” the wells: cheaper and faster but in the end you get less of the reserve than you could more conventionally. I say “appears” as this analysis has only surfaced recently (though I believe the big frackers knew this already)

"Finally, fracking appears to “spoil” the wells: cheaper and faster but in the end you get less of the reserve than you could more conventionally. I say “appears” as this analysis has only surfaced recently (though I believe the big frackers knew this already)"

This is incorrect. The oil that comes from fracking wells are stuck in the rocks because they have poor porosity. Conventionally this oil is not extractable on human timescales (less than millions of years).

I welcome citations to the contrary to update my geologic knowledge (PhD in Earth Science, 2010)

Exactly. The point of Peak Oil was about an energy problem of depending upon it. You can define whatever you like to be peak oil but if it's not that it's not worth discussing in the context of an energy shortage.

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