I concur with the opinion that weaning ourselves off oil, or at least fossil fuels in general, is not going to happen within 15 or even probably 30 years.

One additional factor however is, in my opinion, it has been found recently that we have a whole lot more natural gas in the US than previously thought, due to the fact that we now know how to tap into the "unconventional" sources like the "shales" (Barnett shale, etc)

Probably the stupidest energy strategy is to do nothing, in which case it won't be long before we are paying 4,5, 10 dollars per gallon for gasoline. As was pointed out in the original post on this thread, even with demand dropping in an economic downturn, supply will be dropping even faster based on the very rapid dropoff in oil production of existing fields that all analyses have been projecting.

A somewhat better strategy is if we start switching over our ground transportation system to natural gas. If we can do those as hybrids, all the better.

Once we did that we would probably be able to continue, as J Kunstler likes to put it, "happy motoring", in my opinion for 2-3 more decades. I agree with a lot of his assessment of what we may be facing in the future, but I think his time frame is way shorter than the way things are actually going to play out, particularly due to all the natural gas supplies that we now have in the US.

What about other countries? Not sure. They may be able to do a similar scenario relying heavily on LNG from places like Qatar.

Anyway, my view is the peak fossil fuel crisis is certainly coming, but it may very well be posponed a couple decades on account of natural gas.

Ironically, we may have a severe transportation fuel crisis in the next 10 years or so, not because of the time lag to switch over to renewables, but because of the time lag to switch over to natural gas.

What about electric cars? Well, if better batteries are perfected fast enough, maybe we can switch over to those in nearly the same time frame as a switchover to natural gas vehicles.

But functionally a natural gas vehicle will be very similar to a gasoline one, a little crummier because of the large tank, but otherwise about the same. Getting the same functionality out of a pure EV I think may still be quite a ways off.

Of course, if we didn't have fossil fuel vehicles, we would certainly settle for whatever we could get, people would certainly drive something along the lines of a battery powered golf cart than not have a personal vehicle at all. But, so long as there are fossil fuel vehicles to be had that aren't prohibitively expensive to run, which I believe will be the case for natural gas cars for several decades, people are liable to prefer those.

Unfortunately, that means we may wind up with a long period of complacency driving our natural gas cars instead of gasoline cars.

That era of course will eventually end as well. If society is smart enough to continue to improve EVs during that time, then perhaps they will be able to make a fairly painless switchover.

In terms of switching over to renewable energy in general (not just with regard to vehicles), I believe we are looking at about a 100 year transition.

When I talk to lay people who are renewables buffs they think I am nuts to believe it will take that long. However, when you look at the writings by experts on renewables, they talk in terms of goals like 20% of our electricity from renewables by 2020. If we just look at electricity, one would figure, well we ought to be able to do the remaining 80% a lot faster than just at a linear 1% more per year, which is the rate we would be going at if my 100 year hypothesis proved to be correct.

However, I think that there are some important challenges that most renewables advocates, especially those without science or engineering background, fail to recognize.

If to have a renewable electric grid all we had to do was replace all our existing power plants with wind and solar generators, then the switchover indeed could be quite fast, because economy of scale would allow us to ramp up our renewables sources at an exponential, not linear rate.

However, once we reach a certain percentage of renewables, the intermittency problem starts becoming a real thorny one. I saw a discussion on TV from some conference in Seattle recently and one utility guy seemed to be contending that the way you deal with intermittency is you simply change the price on a minute by minute basis. When the wind is blowing you buy your electricity dirt cheap, when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining then you pay through the nose.

I guess that's one approach, although not one that is likely to be too popular unless there is no alternative, the alternatives being as far as I can ascertain either 1). huge energy storage facilities or 2). a massive highly-efficient global power transmission system (I believe Al Gore is a proponent of the latter).

The technology does not yet exist for either of those. The second of the two not only has technological challenges; geopolitical considerations might also be a show stopper for that one.

Then of course the other big problem with transitioning to renewables is that not all end-uses of energy can run on electricity. The most commonly cited example, of course, is aircraft. If we're lucky, we may be able to produce enough biofuels for those things that absolutely need hydrocarbons.

Anyway, a renewables world is a long ways off. But for those who think we can get there a lot faster than I do, I think we can all agree on one point. We need to develop them as aggressively and quickly as possible.

FFS.

Would you like to tell me which fertilisers come directly from *oil*. Not natural gas, but oil?

Would you like to tell me just what percentage of oil goes into your laundary list of other products - is the entire output of Gwahar required for the pill? Would oil increasing in price by a factor of 100 affect the manifacturing costs of condoms much?

And, of course, how many of these uses are absolutely non-substitutable, even given that negative EROEI oil sources are prefectly OK as a source of industrial feedstocks?

Have you put even the slightest thought into this subject? Learned any science outside of the Offifial Doomer Line (tm)?

Subsitiution of static Oil and Gas use (Heating, some electric and feedstocks) is a relatively trivial problem to fix; Nuclear power with climate-appropriate renewable contributions can fix this on century-plus timescales. Substitution of transport varies in difficulty; most commuting a local travel can be substituted with EVs with current technology; Air travel and long distance haulage are the harder problems.. but we'll have enough oil for them for decades to come.

There is no particular reason why we need fast growth, this is not the requirement for debt repayment as commonly asserted here (you forget inflation).

Try to be critical of anything you read that agrees with what you already think.

I think there are alternatives to growth and it is not a case of affluence or death.
Ask the 36.4 million people below the poverty line in the US.

Right, I'm assuming it will exceed $150; dry humour is not easy with simple text.

I also disagree with Nate on this one. The oil will continue to be needed. There's no real alternative to it for transportation (despite what's said). The cost of producing it will continue going up. The price will, at some point, top off, collapse in fact, when the global oil based economy collapses. But I don't think this is the final collapse -- not yet. The world will come out of this with a much shrunken middle class, yes. As somebody said, was it Greenspan or Bernanke?, there's always the printing press. They can inflate us out of this to an extent. But a significant resumption of global growth is out of the question. Even if no-one else has oil, the military and their industrial base will have it, and will pay any price.

Anyway, that's what my crystal ball says -- today. No less accurate than the models used at Lehman and the rest.

There is probably a lot of oil in the ground that can be produced at $400 a barrel that will stay in the ground forever; I don't think it will ever be economically viable to produce oil at $400 a barrel except perhaps in extremely small volumes for highly specialized purposes.

It wont ever be produced at that price from fossil resources. At that price you can produce diesel fuel from water, limestone, and nuclear/solar power.

I don't think I quite agree. If I recall rightly, this whole crash thing started with a very slight lack of supply.

The oil companies are building/built billion dollar cokers that turns asphalt into gasoline and distillates. Which is why the price of asphalt tripled.

Unfortunately IEA wants money for the PDF file.
108 euros to be exact.

http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=353

iea.org

The various links will give you about 25-30 pages of the report.
Interesting charts.

Like I said I see no intrinsic reason it could not happen within a few months. Despite the hype and uncertainty we don't yet have evidence for a massive drop in demand. Most of the economic contraction is happing in the financial world which is not a big consumer of oil. We have evidence that the US economy is no longer growing and has started to shrink. We have evidence that China and India are not growing as rapidly. We have evidence that Non-OPEC supply has declined.

What we don't have is any evidence that overall demand has actually shrunk certainly the rate of growth has slowed but thats not the same as and overall global drop in demand.

Obviously a lot of people believe its shrunk and also short term i.e for the next several weeks the US is well supplied but this says nothing about even 30 days into the future.

Put it this way the current price is indicative of a 2-4 mbd drop in demand 4mbd is about the amount of oil imported by China to give you and example of the scale of change you would need to justify the price drop.

For example the sharp drop in imports has a ready explanation. Commercial Real Estate esp shopping malls are massively over built I'm sure a lot of retailers are planning on closing a large number of stores after Christmas. Thus even though they do JIT inventories they are now massively overstocked because of the stock in warehouses and stores that will be soon closed.
If you where in their shoes you would not stock up for Christmas but let your stores run out and probably move inventory around inside the country as the Christmas season progresses. Think of it as a stealth going out of business campaign. In this case its not going out of business but closing the massive over expansion that already exists that was built up in expectation of a continued growth in housing.

Consumer purchases are actually down only a small percentage like 0.3%.

On top of this you also have companies having problem securing loans and letters of credit from the on going credit crunch this would be demand thats simply not being filled for credit reasons not actual drops.

Understand I'm not saying that growth has not stopped or slowed to a crawl in the US and also I'm not saying that the rate of growth in China is not decreasing but what I am saying is slowing growth globally is not the same as and actual overall decline in oil demand. Its one thing to slow the growth in demand for oil and quite another to reverse it significantly.

Right now overall the world economy is probably still growing not shrinking.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/12/content_10343755.htm

An economic forecast issued by the commission last week indicated a bleak outlook for the European economy. Economic growth this year would be 1.4 percent in the EU and 1.2 percent in the euro zone, half what it was in 2007. In 2009 the EU and eurozone economy is expected to grind to a stand-still at 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent respectively.

"The outlook is not only bleak, it is also highly uncertain," Almunia said. "There is a real risk that if the financial stress intensifies or lasts longer, it may have a greater effect on the economy and could fuel the negative feedback loop between the economy and the financial sector."

In fact, the IMF predicted last Friday the eurozone economy will contract by 0.5 percent next year.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/china-october-exports-growth-rate/...

Exports grew 19.2% in October from a year earlier to $128.3 billion, decelerating from a 21.5% increase in September, the General Administration of Customs said Monday. Imports grew 15.6%, slower than economists' expectations of 18% and down from the 21.3% rise in September.
The trade surplus swelled to a record $35.2 billion, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $29.3 billion set in September. Analysts had forecast the trade surplus would reach $32 billion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/30/us-recession-gdp

The US economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.3% in the three months to September as anxious consumers cut their spending at the sharpest rate in almost 30 years.

The world has come to and end oils cheap demands down !!!

No the only thing thats happened is the US economy has shrunk by all of 0.3%.

In fact looking back

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/04/30/useconomy.html

The bruised U.S. economy limped through the first quarter, growing by an annualized rate of only 0.6 per cent as housing and credit problems forced people and businesses alike to hunker down.

This is when oil was approach 140 a barrel.

So we have a change in the US economy from +0.6% growth to -0.3% or about 1% and oil drops to 60 bucks a barrel.
Even as the rest of the world continues to grow.

I'm sorry if you look at the facts then the current oil price does not look like its in balance with demand.
I'm not saying 140 was in balance either but neither is 60. Again I'm surprised that people are willing to assume the market can overprice oil and I think everyone feels 140 was to high any yet few are willing to say wait a minute 60 is probably way to low.

The balanced price of oil this year ?
Probably should have traded in the range of 110-130 with a average of 115-120.

The low right now based on fundamentals should probably be 110.

Thus the market has probably significantly underpriced oil for a variety of reasons that has nothing to do with fundamental changes in supply in demand.

This is alarming since now OPEC is planning cuts and I fully expect them to implement at least what they have said if not more.
Also as I mentioned Russia is pulling back. So if a balanced market right now with resonable supply should have a price point at say 110 one in short supply could easily jump a lot higher.

Unfortunately I fear that whats going to happen is we are going to keep a low price until we have serious supply issues but at this point it will be clear that OPEC is more than capable of pushing the price as high as they wish.

Thats not a good position for the world to be in.