Yes, I don't really understand this infatuation with what I consider noise riding on top of the more important overall scaled profile. There must be a need to see this magnified view that I don't quite grasp.

Is it because people are accustomed to using the information for futures trading or anticipating the stock market? I presume that every little glitch is a chance to make some money.

Or is it climate change envy where temperature trends are studied to death? Well that requires a different context because temperatures normally occupy a narrow range and the signal is kind of hard to extract from the measurement noise.

Or are we looking for that sudden, precipitous drop that will signal us going over the cliff? Could be, but then we should just devise a metric that can display a "cliff-meter" based on the month-to-month numbers.

More likely the answer is that we continue to plot the magnified view because we can and it gives us a strawman to argue back and forth over. Word-of-the-day: tasseography

But Algeria do produce a lot of condensate: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Algeria/Oil.html

Algeria produced an estimated average of 1.33 million barrels per day (Mmbbl/d) of crude oil in 2009, down from the 1.42 it produced in 2008, in part due to OPEC quota cuts. Together with 457,000 bbl/d of condensate and 345,000 bbl/d of natural gas liquids, which are not included in its OPEC quota, Algeria averaged 2.13 Mmbbl/d of total oil liquids production during 2009, according to EIA estimates.

EIA (IPM) Table 1.2 excludes condensate: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/supply.html

Nothing like the reductions Japan shows, and their economy did better.

Yes, we can expect that there will be simultaneous trends: one trend in which oil is being replaced by substitutes or reduced by efficency improvements, and another in which variations in GDP cause variations in economic activity (transportation, etc) which causes changes in oil consumption.

If we're looking at two countries which are working to reduce oil consumption, but one has higher economic growth, then we might see the kind of thing you're talking about. Eventually, of course, oil will be replaced entirely by substitutes, and the partial correlation will end. A good example is electrical generation, which went from 20% oil in the US in 1979 to .8% oil in the present. 30 years ago rising GPD would have increased electrical consumption, and that would have increased oil consumption. Now, that no longer happens. Eventually the same will happen in other sectors.

There have been detailed studies on the correlation between GDP and oil, too

There's the study by Ayres, which found that primary energy accounted for 13% of growth in GDP.

Such study would have to be done carefully: it would have to look at the difference between periods where GDP was the independent variable, and oil consumption followed GDP, versus periods where changes in oil supply affected GDP.

There was a study by the Philadelphia Fed which found a one-time 2% reduction in GDP from a 10% reduction in oil consumption. source.

Maybe because France is networked (through its geography) to the rest of Europe it can keep an economy going on less oil. People come and go over the borders, the same person crossing back and forth maybe every day, to trade.

Japan is an island and exports/imports are expensive to ship in and out.

Recently there have been a lot of MCDonalds shutting down in Japan (600 out of 3000 and mostly the drive-in kind where motorists were main customer. The ones that are left are in the cities and big train stations geared towards pedestrians). All the paper, plastic, the food from far-flung networks---it was a cost nightmare and the restaurants couldn`t pass along the costs to the (broke) customers so "sayonara". Some of the shut-down MCDonalds were there for 20 years, ever since the bubble burst and people looked for low-cost fast food. If you`re wondering why oil use is decreasing here, look no further than the shut-down McDonalds!

I think the recent French experience with MCDonalds is quite different. McDonalds is doing OK there. Maybe they can get food from nearby countries where costs are lower. Maybe their customers aren`t quite as broke as the ones here.

Check out the McDonalds in your country as a bellwether of PO. When the McDonalds start to shut down some stores, check where in the country they still operate. Have fun with it. I am!

Conventional oil is what we're talking about here.

Let us hope we get ahead of the depletion curve, by reducing our need for oil.

That's only useful if you think you know which way the curve will bend in the future.

Higher resolution is useful if you've misplaced your crystal ball...

WHT,

I think knowing the exact date is important to the extent that if affects our collective credibility when talking to folks who are ignorant or denying of peak oil. After all, the big picture is the collection of all the data points. It's helpful to show people that we are on top of the data. Consider the following: it's much more rhetorically effective to say "US oil production peaked in 1970" than to say "US production peaked about four decades ago (the exact date doesn't matter)."

I assume what you mean to say is that in the 2nd period prices rose, but production didn't respond, signalling a peak?

Relative to the 2005 production rate of 73.72 mbpd, in the following three year period, 2006-2008 inclusive, the cumulative three year decline in production was 632 mb, versus a three increase in oil prices of $43.

How are cumulative production shortfalls useful to the analysis? I mean, first you'd have to prove that production declines in 2006-07 were involuntary, which as we both know is mighty controversial.

2005 production was also impacted by the hurricanes

Gail and me did some calcs on that in 2007:

Did Katrina Hide the Real Peak in World Oil Production? and Other Oil Supply Insights
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3052

We're talking about production, not consumption.

I agree, and if we start using multi-year moving averages we might as well displaying a wider time interval, because we are acknowledging that changes of 5 years or less hold little significance. That is the hallmark of low-pass filters.

The Dispersive Discovery curve applies to discovery data, which has shown a confirmed peak in the past, almost 40 years ago to some time in the early 1960's. That curve definitely has a standard shape as it is based on accelerating search efforts on a finite volume. It doesn't have to be a logistic, and actually can't unless you believe in sustainable exponential growth in search technology. That is the Blue curve in the figure. It has a fatter tail than the logistic because I assumed search can't sustain at an exponentially increasing rate.

The Oil Shock Model predicts the greedy rate-driven behaviour that we would see as producers extract from the reserve. This can go through all sorts of perturbations such as showing negative shocks (less extraction pressure) and positive shocks (greater extraction pressure). The latter can give the impression that we are sitting on a plateau, where actually what it means is that we are simply counteracting the decline.

The idea that production will follow your curves is illogical if the data doesn't resemble your model.

As a tautology, that is certainly true. If the future data doesn't fit the model, the model won't fit the data. But don't turn around and say that proves something. Tautologies will never get you anywhere.

Yes both were growing. The EIA's Short Term Energy Outlook predicts that both the US and Russia will decline in 2011 verses 2010. In fact both will show significant declines in the second half of 2010 verses the first half of 2010. The serious decline, I believe, will start in August of 2010.

I don't track All Liquids. NGLs have very little to do with transportation fuel, which is about 70 percent of all crude oil production. Peak oil is crude + condensate. When Crude + Condensate peaks, (actually it already has), then that is the peak.

Ron P.

Saudi Arabia lost production share to Russia, indicating the Saudi production drop was not really voluntary

That logic only holds if we assume that KSA thinks that market share is more important than keeping the price high. I don't think that assumption makes sense.

In fact, keeping prices high but conserving production for later is probably much better for them. That strategy is consistent with their public statements lately.

Dude,

You may want to read this about coal.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48240

"The U.S. almost certainly does not have a 250-year supply of coal. The nation will be fortunate if its coal supplies can stretch for another century. And even if the U.S. continues to use coal at current levels of output — which is unlikely in the face of the looming political controls on carbon — the supply issue will almost surely come to a head in as few as 10–20 years."