Washblog

Let's begin with a single oil field.  Once a drilling rig taps the reservoir of underground oil, production begins.  The initial flow is under pressure and is top quality oil - what they call "light, sweet crude."  Additional holes are drilled so that production increases.  As more and more oil is extracted, pressure is reduced and something (natural gas or sea water for example) is injected to keep the pressure up.  At some point, peak production occurs.  That is, the best quality (and easiest to extract) oil is out, and the remaining oil is increasingly hard to extract and of lesser quality.  This "peak" (or point of maximum extraction) occurs when about half the oil has been pumped.  You can drill more holes and employ "advanced extraction techniques" all you want.  That peak level of production will never be matched.  From that point forward, production in that field will decline.

In 1956, M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil geophysicist, reported that peak production followed peak discovery by about 40 years.  He projected that oil production in the continental U.S. would peak in 1970.  He was ridiculed and/or ignored, but he was right.  Using his methodology (more or less), various people have offered projections for the global peak ranging from 1995 to 2050.  Some people, including yours truly (and the Energy Watch Group of Germany,) believe the Global Peak occurred in 2005 or 2006.

To appreciate the implications for "My Community," it might help to think back to the days before fossil fuels came on line.  Mind you, I don't remember when most work was done by muscle power (either man or domesticated animal) but my 80 year old Mom does.  She was a child during the Great Depression, and her Dad was a tenant farmer, aka sharecropper.  Plowing was done behind oxen or mules.  They went to town in a horse drawn wagon.  No power tools, refrigerators or color TVs.

Fossil fuels, or hydrocarbon energy sources such as coal, crude oil and natural gas, allowed machines to do many, many times the amount of work a man or a mule could do.  From the time coal was first used to drive a crude steam engine in the late 17th century, right down to the present day, fossil fuels have done ever increasing amounts of our work for us.  And we like it that way, don't we?

Well, once global oil production peaks, it will begin to decline, just as the field above did.  If, as is universally expected, demand for oil and its products continues to rise, then we will have a "supply is not meeting demand" sort of situation.  Many people are saying that we are there now.

I should stop for a moment and explain that crude oil gives, by far, a better "bang for the buck" than either coal or natural gas.  It is easier to extract and transport than the other two, on a dollar for energy generated basis.  It is also more flexible.  You can do more things with it.  From fuel oil to jet fuel to gasoline; from plastics to pharmaceuticals; from petroleum jelly to pesticides; crude oil does it all.  (By the way, there are peak scenarios for coal, natural gas and even uranium as well.  I'll leave those for someone else.)

So, from that you should have a hint of what some of the implications will be.  Transportation is the one folks think of first, mainly in terms of commuting to work, shopping etc.  We feel it as a price crunch.  (I felt it just last night when I gassed up.)  But it is really a supply crunch, manifesting itself initially as rising prices.  Shortfalls in supply will follow.

The other aspect of transportation will hit home when you go shopping.  Almost nothing that we are accustomed to buying is made close to where we live.  From food to furniture to fine fabrics, it all travels by train, plane, ship and semi from faraway places like China, Guatemala and Fiji.  Rising fuel prices and supply disruptions will affect it all.

Suppose you own a small business that doesn't use much hydrocarbon energy.  You're probably feeling pretty safe, right?  But look downstream.  Will these circumstances affect your customer's ability to buy your products or services?  Or look upstream to your suppliers.  How will they be affected?

Most of us work for a living.  Will the price or availability of fuel affect our employer's willingness to keep us on the payroll if his bottom line is getting pinched?  Airlines have been seriously inconvenienced by recent fuel price increases.  Do you think that will affect the folks who make airplanes?

How much plastic do we use (and throw away) on a daily basis?  I don't just mean water bottles, either.  Almost everything we touch has some plastic associated with it.  Polyester and miracle micro-fibers as well as computers and cell phones - all depend on the amazing flexibility of crude oil (and natural gas.)

A few paragraphs back I casually dropped the word "food" into a list of things we buy when we go shopping.  I should tell you that this little item worries me more than all the rest.  You see, we need some of it every day.  When money or supply is short, we can't just do without it for a week or two.

It has been said that the age of the 2000 mile salad is coming to an end.  The same is true for tropical fruit in February.

Well, I think I'll stop now.  I expect you have enough to contemplate.  In fact, I think I will deal with the other two questions in a later post.  But before I shut off the computer, I have one more important thing to say.

Anyone who tells you that renewable energy will solve this problem for us is either delusional, dishonest or running for office.  (Mind you, the latter doesn't rule out either or both of the former.)  No combination of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal or even nuclear will allow us to keep doing what we are doing now.  In the absence of cheap, plentiful crude oil, the American lifestyle as we know it is unsustainable.  That goes for most of the so-called "first world" countries as well.  (Denmark, Iceland and a few others have already powered down enough that they may be able to stay about where they are.)

But that should properly be part of the "What can be done about it?" discussion, shouldn't it?

So comment, why doncha?  Let's dialogue.  I am ready to learn from you.