U.S. Oil Output to Overtake Saudi Arabia’s by 2020 | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Oil Output to Overtake Saudi Arabia’s by 2020

bloomberg.com

103 pointsjackfoxy95 comments

Thee article seems to skip pretty quickly over what, to me, is the important point:

>Will transform the U.S. into the largest producer for about five years starting in 2020

So the us is going to start pulling it's oil out of the ground a lot faster. And then it's going to run out of oil. I think it might be better to just keep buying from the Saudis and keep a little bit in the ground.

I always come back to this point as well. Buy till there is no more, use nothing till everyone has ran out.

Invest a little over a lot of time versus a lot in a little time since like the winner to me.

But how does this help us? The oil market is international. If we wait until everyone else runs out of oil, then start drilling ourselves, we're still paying ultra-high prices for it.

Of course, unless you are suggesting we don't sell any of our own oil at that point. Sounds good in theory, until you realize that keeping oil product for domestic use (at say $100/bbl) leaves a lot of money on the table when you can sell it to another country for $400/bbl.

Using our own oil last is more about military strategy and less about prices at the pump.

Stating the obvious, energy directly affects military strategy.

The oil market is international, but not immune from politics. The Saudis are currently willing to sell their oil to the US for a fair price. That isn't a situation that is guaranteed to continue, if the US digs up all their oil now they lose the future negotiating position of "screw you guys, we'll just dig up our own oil".

Another argument against this approach is that North American oil sources aren't as easily extracted as Middle Eastern sources. Part of the transition to North American sources includes developing better extraction technology as these sources start to be exploited. That requires real experience and years of R&D. If we just ignored our sources until we became 100% dependent on them, we're not going to be able to extract them quickly enough or efficiently enough. We've got to build up the technology and infrastructure before we become dependent.

I agree with this argument. Yea, pulling oil out of sand is not as easy and needs the financials for R&D.

Norway is highly regarded for it's approach to limited oil exploration: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/06/140110346/how-to-a...

"So the us is going to start pulling it's oil out of the ground a lot faster. And then it's going to run out of oil."

This does not appear to be an entirely accurate conclusion, according to the article. For example, the article explains that:

"The desert kingdom is due to become the biggest producer again by 2030, pumping 11.4 million barrels a day versus 10.2 million in the U.S."

That said, if the numbers and projections are accurate, then the U.S. will still be producing, but the output will be lower, largely because of changes in the sources of energy:

"'In the United States, low prices and abundant supply see gas overtake oil around 2030 to become the largest fuel in the energy mix,' according to the report, written by a team of researchers led by Birol."

On the topic of running out of oil, I have always wondered (just a theory for discussion here): maybe oil will never physically run out, but rather what will happen is that once all of the easily-accessible supplies have been expended, it will simply become so cost-prohibitive to extract that we will eventually be forced to change and adapt. Hopefully we will change sooner than later. (Also, when I say "we", I mean all of us as humans, not a specific country).

Edit: Thanks for responding roc and checker. You gave me a further reading point (i.e., peak oil).

I believe your theory is essentially peak oil: When the price of extraction exceeds demand. Oil will still be there, but it would be economically unfeasible to tap, especially with the rise of alternative fuels.

No, that's not peak oil. Peak oil is the point were we have extracted the maximum amount of oil in a given year, after that productions starts reducing - but production could continue for centuries after that.

Physical peak oil is uninteresting. Economic peak oil is much more relevant.

Look in to EROEI for a rigorous treatment of the idea.

It's pretty well accepted that oil will never physically run out.

Long before even extraction/refining costs make remaining oil infeasibly expensive, supply/demand will send the price spiking to uneconomical levels as soon as oil production so much as slows down relative to growth in world-wide demand.

That's what the US increase in extraction is primarily about: trying to avoid price shocks between now and when the economy is, or can be, substantially run on natural gas and renewables as global demand outstrips supply. And even then, all we'll likely have done is smoothed the increase in price over the next 20 years.

Similarly, the increased CAFE standards are much more about lowering American dependence on oil, fleet-wide, than environmental concerns.

The problem with oil, is that it is an inelastic commodity. During the oil shocks of the 70's prices had to rise by 400% before demand started to fall.

Also the notion of a country being energy independent when relying upon oil is a silly one. In the global economy, we want everyone to have relatively cheap energy, if not the global standard of living will fall.

It's inelastic in the short term, because there are limits to what people can do to change: they aren't necessarily able to immediately dump their existing car and trade up; they still have to commute to work; cargo still has to be transported to its destination; factories will not replace their inefficient equipment overnight. Costs go up but behavior doesn't change, so an increase in energy costs just replaces spending on other goods, hurting the rest of the economy.

Over the longer run, though, if prices have risen significantly and permanently, and that coincides with a point where a consumer decides they need to replace their car, then oil consumption does start becoming more elastic: the consumer is more likely to choose the more fuel efficient vehicle. We've seen some of this in the rise in sales of small vehicles versus trucks and SUVs lately.

This is where building a long-term steady upward price trend is important, versus short-term price shocks, since the former allows the economy to react appropriately by increasing efficiency.

> "Also the notion of a country being energy independent when relying upon oil is a silly one."

Sure. But there's no path to energy independence that doesn't include either: A.) huge economic shocks or B.) extending use of fossil fuels during the transition.

Increasing efficiency increases consumption , as more activities become economical to more people. ("Sunday drives", commuting to work, etc)

Although this might be covered in peak oil, there's a specific term that you might find interesting. EROEI - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inves...

Basically, if you need to burn one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil from the ground, then you have already lost. Here, "burn" is used very loosely and is an all encompassing term including electricity for workers, rigs etc. and also the physical petrol required for transport to the refinery and end customers. The cost obviously also includes the initial investment and factors in the life of the rig installation itself as well.

It seems that we're currently at an EROEI of 10:1 and it's declining pretty steadily (kind of obvious). The wiki article is pretty informative. And, a cursory search on reddit for the term "peak oil" also returns quite a few interesting results. Caveat Emptor though, since there are some loony conspiracy theories posted as well, so it's up to you to sift the wheat from the chaff.

if you interpret "need to burn one barrel of oil" as "need the energy of one barrel of oil", there will probably be some leeway, even below 1:1; oil is a very good energy carrier, and pumping up oil carrying a kWh of energy at the cost of more than one kWh of solar electricity or solar heat will probably be more efficient than using that energy to produce (in the literal sense, by chemistry, starting with CO2 and H2O) oil for some time.

As other commenters have pointed out, the US only overtakes SA for a few years before falling behind again:

"By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer (overtaking Saudi Arabia until the mid-2020s)"

So maybe that part of the story is overblown. But perhaps more interesting is that the US will supposedly become a net exporter shortly thereafter:

"The result is a continued fall in US oil imports, to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030."

Source: IEA World Energy Outlook 2012 - Executive Summary http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication... [PDF]

US != North America.

Good point. I didn't see that. When you throw in Canada's tar sands, it's a lot less surprising that North America could be a net exporter in <20 years.

I believe Mexico figures in those calculations also. According to this field they have large reserves, though extraction is expensive (like oil shale and tar sands).

All it took was $4 gas.

All the Saudis have to do is drop their price to the point where gas is $2.50 again and suddenly all the US companies go under in 12 months.

But think how much we'll save by having less than 10k troops in the middle-east someday.

I have come to the realization that oil prices do not translate directly to gas prices we pay at the pump. Even with a glut of oil, the gas prices at the pump depends on refineries which are controlled by the local companies. I think the $4 gas is the new normal. Also, the Saudi economy rely a lot on high oil prices so they wont dump more oil in the market.

> oil prices do not translate directly to gas prices we pay at the pump

Technically true, but the correlation is usually very strong: http://www.gasbuddy.com/retail_price_chart.aspx?city1=USA%20...

Gas prices increases follow oil price increases. Gas prices don't decrease much following oil price decreases.

The Saudis and other oil exporters don't actually set the price of oil directly. OPEC have historically controlled oil prices indirectly by dialling their output up or down, but most producers are running flat out and have been for ages.

Saudi used to keep around 1.5m BPD production in hand to moderate supply disruptions and keep prices stable, but now they are running much closer to their maximum practical output capacity. Even if they opened all the taps and pushed forward more aggressively to bring more on line it would have a much more subdued effect than in the past. The days when they could materially affect prices on an ongoing basis are over.

Contrary to popular opinion $4 gas isn't really the producer's fault. Maybe they could get it down to $3.50 for a while (pure guess), but the idea they could just turn a spigot and gas would be £2.50 a gallon again is unrealistic.

also because it's not just about production - the value of the dollar fluctuates as well, what $2.50 bought you a few years isn't the same today, and won't be the same tomorrow.

Some might argue that won't always be a possibility, assuming it even is right now.

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/05/northern_ghawar....

Since restrictions were removed on commodity speculation, a great deal (I'd argue the majority of the big spikes) of the price fluctuation in gas has very little to do with the oil producers and an awful lot to do with speculators. They would not be happy to watch the price drop so far and I expect they'd do something about it.

Our increased production of oil is due to the new technology of fracking (fracturing the ground to get oil out of it). The situation is certainly not "We could have been fracking 15 years ago, but we didn't feel like it because Saudi gas was cheap". The energy sector is subject to the same process of technological advance that any other industry is. We came up with a new way to get oil out of the ground and figured out how to deploy it at scale. Saudi Arabia didn't have much to do with it. Gas could be selling for $2/gallon and people would still be tripping over themselves to get more of it out of the ground.

Secondly, the idea that we're keeping troops in the middle-east in order to get oil for ourselves is rather naive. There was nothing in the article about all the free oil that the US gets just because we have troops in Iraq. The different political factions there are fighting so hard over every drop of oil that there isn't any left for the iraqi people, much less the united states.

There are no conspiracies here. No international intrigues. Technology improved, so now we have more oil. The energy sector is about to go into a boom that's going to lift the whole country's economy.

The reason that American troops are in Iraq is completely different from, say, the reason that the Fifth Fleet is in Bahrain.

American troops left Iraq nearly a year ago.

Wrong. There are currently 15k to 16k Americans working in Iraq, under the auspices of the State Department. I guarantee they aren't all working desk jobs and God knows how many mercenaries...I mean contractors are still running around. Just because they aren't labelled "combat troops" doesn't mean they don't carry guns and kill people.

Those are not troops. Are Americans working or visiting, say, New Zealand to be considered an occupying force?

Do Americans working or visiting, say, New Zealand have legal immunity from murder prosecution? Were they imposed by an invading army?

Yes but the all-encompassing rhetoric about regional political stability is just dog whistling about oil price stability [1].

[1] Alan Greenspan

Even if you ignore all the externalities, hydro-fracking is still much more expensive than traditional shallow well land drilling operations, and it requires higher oil prices to sustain them. The 8 massive oil fields in Saudi Arabia (as well as many of those in Venezuela) fall into the "easy oil" category.

It's true that technology has improved, but it's likely that with more price pressure to improve the technology, these innovations would have come sooner. In addition, fracking is more work, period. It requires more energy than traditional drilling, and while this can be incrementally improved, it's fundamentally a much more energy intensive process that can't just be "optimized away."

To be fair: oil being fungible means that it doesn't much matter who gets Iraqi production or the direct profits from it. So long as that oil can be produced and sold by a regime not under international sanctions, it will increase market supply thus lowering price and giving the market a little more wiggle room to absorb supply shocks.

Which are goals much more in-line with American defense strategy in the region as a whole.

So while the view of our having invaded Iraq to steal their oil remains naive, it's hard to argue that the US receives no benefits from that oil being produced by a non-sanctioned (non-Saddam) regime.

You can't currently frak $2 a gallon gas yet. It's the higher price that makes these new techniques profitable.

"There was nothing in the article about all the free oil that the US gets just because we have troops in Iraq."

Quiz: how many US troops are in Iraq right now?

Isn't fracking terrible for the environment though? I realize that's not the point of this article, but it makes me wonder if we're setting ourselves up for even more ecological damage.

I'm wondering the same. The whole idea of fracking sounds like a very high risk with uncertain aftermath.

Maybe the U.S. should invest more in green energy then in "bad" energy and a new even worse way to get to it..

Most of the anti-fracking rhetoric you see online is overblown. Sure, it might have some negative externalities (like all energy production), but domestic fracking is certainly more environmentally friendly than Saudi oil production.

Do those troops have more pressing engagements elsewhere? Or are they just going to be unemployed? To the extent that it's the latter, we really won't save anything.

It'll be interesting to see the extent to which this ends up being good or bad. In direct economic terms, most likely good: lower energy prices make some industries more competitive, and direct fuel exports (like any commodity export) are a source of income. On the other hand, technological advancements tend to come from constraints, so the U.S. could be setting itself up for 10-30 years of easy living on cheap oil/gas, but fall behind places like Europe, or perhaps even Asia, on R&D and production of more energy-efficient technologies, or other sources of power generation, which might eventually turn out to be important. Hard to say.

I think stopping the destruction of our planet's climate is more important than becoming oil independent and having cheap petroleum, personally. This is troubling news to me, I was hoping that peak oil would start people down the track of dealing with these problems.

People are on track to deal with these problems (or at least are attempting to be). There are hybrid cars all over the place now, Tesla Motors is doing well as a company and there is a ton of research going into clean energy. These are just extremely difficult problems to deal with. In the meantime, the country can't just let society fail as a whole. The whole world would descend into chaos and war.

The US has to do something to protect the country and the economy. It can't allow itself to become wholly dependent on oil produced by enemies of the state in an inherently unstable region ran by crazy dictators and terrorists. So what do they do? They hedge and ensure the country can keep a seat at the negotiation table when things get tough. Given the size of the US and the dependance on trucks, rail, and shipping to move cargo, even rather small changes in the price of oil can drastically alter the economy.

$4 a gallon is peanuts. Price of gas in Rome, Italy was 1.87 euro per litre when I was there in July. Per litre, not gallon!

So people get around town on little mopeds, motorbikes, small cars and a lot of SMART cars around as well. I agree there is a lot of forward momentum with hybrid/electric cars in terms on technological advancement, but the uptake in the US is abysmal. Just because you drive an electric car does not mean there is no CO2, that electricity needs to be generated from somewhere and unless that source is renewable energy then you are back to square one. But it's not just cars you need to think about: generation of electricity, airplanes, ships, cheap exports from the rest of the world... I remember reding a study a few years ago stating that shipping outputs a lot more CO2 than air travel. Also, ships use the cheapest, nastiest, left over fuel from the refinement process so ends up throwing our more CO2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/mar/03/travelsenv...

I agree the US probably feels like it has to do something, but constantly patching over the cracks is never really going to fix the problem.

It can't allow itself to become wholly dependent on oil produced by enemies of the state in an inherently unstable region ran by crazy dictators and terrorists.

Yes. Thanks for the insightful comments. I'll be sure to vote you in for president when you run for election.</sarc>

Consumers are not the issue here really. It's cargo that's the concern. That's where most of the pollution is (from oil anyways) and that's where the price of oil affects the economy. I don't think people realize just how much the US is dependent on oil for it's goods. Most consumer products are made overseas, shipped into a port, offloaded onto a train, and then delivered to retail locations via trucks. On top of that, it's already an incredibly efficient process, so it's going to take a major shift before industry moves to another solution (sorry, don't have a better link right now): http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/how-efficient-is-a...

Remember, the reason why is because of this: http://mapfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/02/countries.html

Also, there's no need for sarcasm. Please provide a rebuttal if you disagree. My argument is that Russia and the middle east is inherently unstable (I do not care to go into why as I understand fully how much a part the US has in that). The US needs to maintain it's oil producing capacity or else it becomes pretty easy to hurt the US without ever attacking it.

Yes, I know consumers are not the issue. Cargo is, and that's why I brought it up, your original argument only mentions cars specifically and everyone driving hybrid is going to make little impact and as things currently stand everyone driving fully electric won't do squat. I think we are beating the same drum though.

The map of country size comparison... should the land mass off a country determine your "allowed usage" or should be be proportional to population? Since the higher your population the more energy needs you have... I'm sure there is some complex set of graphs related to this somewhere...

The sarc comment is for your extremely generalized comment, it's very much an American view on the "rest of world" and makes you sound very ignorant. I fully agree with your US influence comment though, and not just within that region, but that's a whole other story...

What the US needs to do is reduce it dependence on oil so that it becomes less difficult to hurt it's economy. Oil will run out at some point (aside from the irreparable harm that is being down to the environment) and at the moment all they are doing is shifting the problem on to the next generation.

Why do you keep attacking me? I've been civil to you.

The reason I compare land mass is because the infrastructure is different. The US has to move cargo over large distances and buys much of it's products from producers over seas. It's completely dependent on oil from that perspective. The size of the country also hurts development of things like high speed rail and public transportation due to issues with urban sprawl unlike it's european and asian counterparts where these projects have done well. There's a land mass nearly the size of Russia with very sparsely populated areas strewn about and tons of existing infrastructure in the way. Then there are also cities that are in some cases the size of small European countries with a population that's less dense. The logistics of these make solving the cargo and transportation issues very difficult. In the mean time, the US can't sit idle and just let things collapse unless it wants risk civil unrest. Combine all this with military and economic threats from China, Russia, and the middle east and it's no surprise to me that the government wants to ensure the US can continue to play a major role in oil production. Keep in mind that oil is a commodity, so it's not about the money. This is purely about the future of the country.

Regarding my comment about cars, see the reply above to someone who made a similar point. There's evidence that progress is being made. It's just developing in niche markets where innovation typically happens (consumer cars, race cars, small power companies, etc..). I wasn't trying to say that CSX would start moving cargo via tesla cars. Please tell me you didn't really believe that.

I'm not convinced the issue is one of a lack of demand. It's just a really difficult problem to solve and when the well being of the country is at state, the politicians aren't going to willing throw it's economy into a depression or risk one of it's enemies forcing it's hand. Hope is not a strategy.

Finally, no sane country is going to willing limit it's oil usage. That's especially true for a country that's been in a recession for over 4 years and every good and service is impacted by the cost of oil.

I'm not attacking you personally, sorry if it comes across that way but it is not my intention.

No I don't believe Tesla will start moving goods... but until we get near to that point then I don't believe just targeting consumers will have much impact. If they want some immediate impact then people should stop driving arounf in 4 litre V8 SUVs just to drop their kids off to school. But I can see the other comment on this, no need to go back in to this.

I am not American, and so I think we share different views on this, you viewing internally will see this much more different than me externally. Personally I don't care what happens to the US market or economy. There will be some knock on effect for the rest of the world in the short term but then things will just move on. Very true that no sane country will limit their oil usage, but soon they may well be left with no other choice. So better to be prepared now and find alternative sources of energy now.

Ahh, ok. No harm no foul then.

I'm not necessarily taking sides though; Just pointing out how the situation is much different from most parts of the world. Developed infrastructure, a large geographic region, and a complete dependance on oil make the US extremely sensitive to external pressure in the oil commodities market. As a result, the government hedges, just like any sane investor would do.

American cars are a teeny tiny part of world CO2 emissions. Whatever else their pros and cons, hybrids and Teslas aren't going to matter to global warming.

Of course they aren't the solution, but technological progress typically happens in low volume, niche markets. My point wasn't that a solution is here today. Quite the opposite, but it's disingenuous to claim that people aren't working on the problem or that progress isn't being made. It's also a bit dubious to claim that simply making oil more expensive would solve things. There's a balance. At one end of the spectrum you destroy humanity via global warming at the other, you do so via war. The government has to play both options to strike a balance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...

18.27% of global c02

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/Downloads/ghgemissions/US-G...

"Transportation activities (excluding international bunker fuels) accounted for 32 percent of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in 2010."

almost 6% of global C02 emmisions. I think thats substantial, but you are correct that hybrids and teslas aren't going to do much. However if we help push electric vehicles and clean power production there is obviously a substantial benefit to be reaped.

You need one more step -- cars as a % of American transportation activities.

I agree. http://climate.dot.gov/about/transportations-role/overview.h... looks like maybe 82% if you include trucks with cars

Good breakdown. As far as things that can be replaced by Priuses and Teslas (original point upthread), I think you're looking at just the 34% from passenger cars. So you end up with taking a bite out of (not zeroing) 2% of global emissions.

well - I would still say that is a bit optimistic. For instance what portion of consumers can afford a prius or tesla type vehicle?

I do think it is fair to point out that as there is more industry adoption (starting with teslas and priuses) the tech should become cheaper and better, affected other markets in other places. So directly, they aren't going to do much, but in the long term, adoption of teslas and priuses could have a substantial impact.

When people talk of peak oil, all I see is solutions to oil-as-fuel problems. What about the other industries where you still use oil? Petroleum products are practically everywhere.

You can make petroleum out of literally air. All the necessary atoms are available in air.

What you need to do is join them in the right way - and we know how. All that is necessary is input of energy.

Plus peak oil doesn't mean it has run out, it means we are producing less and less - but we will always produce some.

If it's really true that with other forms of energy, how much ever dense or otherwise, we'd be able to produce all the hydrocarbons/petroleum products (like wax, plastics etc.) then it's good news to me. Atleast, this will help scientists focus only on one problem for the time-being, viz. hunting for a form to store energy at the highest density possible, safely.

Yes, I do understand peak oil. My concern stems from the fact that if we're producing less oil each successive day, we shouldn't have to make the tough choice between sending oil to refine for gas, or to send it to make plastics, naphtha and wax. That is the dynamic I'm worried about.

Agreed. Nuclear has had a rough go of it as a result of Japan's problems (and vise versa to be fair) but in general it seems like electric cars and nuclear are our only real options to at least try and keep up with climate change. There are also some strong cases for cost reductions and safety improvements for new Nuclear facilities as a result of improved building techniques and more generic designs.

It is important that we be energy independent but I am totally disappointed at the lack of energy (minimal pun intended) for renewables and alternatives. In the presidential debates the bulk of energy conversation was dedicated to strutting thier oil and fossil fuel cred - hardly any other focus.

So you're a supporter of fracking then, right?

I interpreted the opposite; that (s)he is opposed to anything that makes fuel prices cheaper. This is the viewpoint that I personally hold. I would like fuel prices to go up and match the rest of the world as that would create a huge push towards much more efficient transportation technologies.

Of course it isn't that black and white as prices of commodities would increase, possibly decrease sales, etc, but it is an interesting thought that has been in the back of my mind.

Let me make my point more clearly. If CO2 emissions are such a huge threat to the world then it makes the most sense to push for fracking in the short term because switching to natural gas over kerosene/gasoline and especially over coal reduces carbon emissions substantially. If a hybrid compact car makes sense from an environmental standpoint then shifting hydrocarbon usage to natural gas makes as much if not more sense.

"Let me make my point more clearly" - yes please do because your first attempt was gawd awful...

Part of the reason I would rather not invest in fracking (aside from the immediate environmental issues) is that if we want to end up at clean and sustainable energy then why make expensive investments into intermediate technologies that don't significantly impact the underlying problem. While it would reduce emissions that doesn't make it a good choice. If we gave someone 4/5s of a vote instead of 3/5s of a vote that would still leave a lot of people in our country pretty ticked.

The post you were responding to is saying they want to pay more for our energy because that is the only way people will understand that it needs to be used (and obviously produced) wisely. Fracking and natural gas allow for us to use more energy at cheaper rates albeit a bit cleaner. Bottom line, the poster above wants to pay more for energy and encourage people to use less/produce cleaner.

"... if we want to end up at clean and sustainable energy then why make expensive investments into intermediate technologies that don't significantly impact the underlying problem."

So we shouldn't develop hybrid cars either? Or wind power? Or biofuels?

If you want to get from A to B you can't just teleport there, you need to travel the distance between, and that typically involves lots of incremental and partial advancements and often also many compromises.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/09/climate-ch...

No teleportation needed, Nuclear is available and works. :-)

Yes there are safety concerns but ignore the impacts of rising sea level and global warming is way less responsible than nuclear.

I agree (about climate) and I don't think we can wait for peak oil to hit before we start making much deeper cuts in emissions.

Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone shows that proven fossil fuel reserves are around 5 times higher than we can burn to avoid a very dangerous climate change (beyond the 2C guardrail):

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-te...

More info here: http://math.350.org/

I find this hard to believe. Compare http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9584

You can always be assured that predictions based on extrapolation in systems like energy are always wrong. The claim (that we'll out produce Saudi Aramco by 2020) is bogus.

You read comments like this "U.S. oil imports will drop to about 4 million barrels a day in 10 years from a current average of 10 million because of new production and stricter fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, which will curb demand, Birol said." and you want to say 'Bzzzt! And thanks for playing' as you consider that people with better gas mileage drive more, they don't 'not drive'. The reason is not intuitive (see the Jevon's Paradox [1]) but it is also not unexplainable either.

It will be interesting if significant chunks of our driving population switches to electrics. That is because the electricity production facilities are built on coal, gas, and nuclear and that could shift our consumption needle off oil toward those other forms. But nobody is yet extrapolating even 10% electric car ownership by 2020 much less the 20 - 30% that would be needed to move the numbers on a national scale.

So the the next question is, "OK if this is bogus, why even write it?" and if I had to guess I would say it was a 'feel good' piece about Fracking to try to offset the ever growing evidence that the dangers of hydraulic fracturing require much more oversight and regulation if we want to do it safely. The extraction companies have not shown a particular willingness to choose 'safety' over 'get it done' yet.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

> The extraction companies have not shown a particular willingness to choose 'safety' over 'get it done' yet.

I'm not as negative as most people I know on fracking, but I do have some worry that there's a culture like this in place currently. I've been particularly surprised by surface spills/leaks of fracking chemicals in Pennsylvania, which just seems sloppy. If you're trying to convince the public that a fairly new technology, which people have concerns about, is safe and won't contaminate groundwater, you should definitely be sure to get the "easy" parts completely right, such as competently storing chemicals above ground.

>if I had to guess I would say it was a 'feel good' piece about Fracking to try to offset the ever growing evidence that the dangers of hydraulic fracturing require much more oversight and regulation if we want to do it safely

Fracking is indeed extremely dangerous:http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/09... and many hard to believe promises of jobs and cost reductions in energy have come from the companies and even government. Check out the gasland documentary.

I find these oil report news pieces to be incredibly lacking almost all of the time. First of all, this person is speaking predictions and postulations without showing a single piece of data. Not a good sign.

I'm very skeptical, because the net return on oil reserves has been steadily declining since the early 1900s. Shale oil is extremely expensive to extract/process and also relatively dangerous. The production cost ratio is less than 10:1 if I recall correctly, while in the early days of oil drilling the ratio was in the hundreds to one. You could pretty much poke a hole in the ground and have sellable oil gushing out with no further effort. Now it's a struggle to get just past the "economically feasible" point.

The tarsands in Canada are a great example of this. Currently they are sitting at a ratio of about 5:1. And that's also a very dangerous, and highly polluting extraction process.

Another problem is oil reporting is context. They'll throw out a number like 169 billion barrels of oil. That's the current reported bitumen content in the tarsands. Sounds huge. If you do the math, that's about five years' worth at current world consumption. Five years. For one of North Americas largest and most championed reserves. With the extraction ratio taken into account, we can slice one year off of that. And if the demand trend continues it's even less. I'm not convinced that a few percentage points of extra fuel efficiency in consumer vehicles is really going to make a significant dent in demand.

@ChuckMcM is correct - this is an advertisement for fracking.

Even if output reaches that level, exports won't because the US uses so much more oil than Saudi Arabia. As demand grows, the US can still be a net importer and still have the same problems related to petroleum reliance.

The article addresses that, domestic use is down. We already export quite a lot of refined oil as it is to countries that don't have refining capacity.

The US was a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011.

At $110 for Brent, all sorts of odd and difficult oil supplies will get developed. What's the net energy extracted for the economy to do useful work with, though? The energy (and dollar) cost of extracting oil shales and deepwater is enormous compared to the Kingdom's costs for their supergiant fields.

This is good news, if true, for the US' balance of trade, but sustained $100+/barrel oil will induce major structural shifts in our economy whether we're exporting or importing.

The EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) implications of these prices are even worse. At a certain point, the only reason to continue to drill is because it's marginally cheaper than the energy intensive task of creating liquid fuels from organic feedstocks (i.e. - ethanol). We'll have to have switch at that point to something else as the primary source of energy for our economy, but nothing else is even close to being ready.

I hope you're all ready to work like Joey Hess, netbook battery by candle light: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4721645

I have to say I'm skeptical about this, although a Saudi Arabia decline in production could make it possible.

It's interesting that the IEA is also projecting 90% of Middle Eastern oil exports will go to Asia by 2035.

http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2012/nove...

If for some reason, coal to oil (synfuel or syncrude) were to be ramped up, it could be quite astounding. There are only trial runs at this point, however.

Germany during the WWII era was able to produce 75% of their oil needs due to synfuels. Once the plants were bombed or disrupted, Germany ran out of fuel and lost the war.

Not only trial runs. See this http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/news/south-afri... . This is a faciltiy that works, operated by Sasol. They plan to build a 80k barrel/day facility in China.

PS. noteworthy in the article is the mentioning of Obama, who was pushing for such a coal-to-oil technology to be brought to US.

From the article: "Iraq will be the biggest contributor to new oil supplies, raising production to 6 million barrels a day by 2020."

So Iraq's oil is our (US) oil? Or am I misreading that statement? I guess they could be saying that overall Iraq will see the biggest jump of all nations? Not sure.

Just a brief pointer that we are heading at 8,50$ per gallon in Germany right now.

Oil is a stock resource. There is a finite amount of it.

It is treated as a flow resource. Discussion focusses on annual production, rather than total extractable stock.

It is not impressive to run through a stock of resources at a faster rate.

By 2020 I hope there won't be so much need for oil (i.e. electric cars).

Wonderful - we'll be living in an oil rich utopia - right?

awesome! this will let us save tons of money by not forcing us to invest in solar, wind or other sustainable sources of energy! DRILL BABY DRILL!

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