Defining Peak Oil

"There’s nothing new under the sun," saith Qohelith. And although we sure don’t feel this way nowadays, especially in talking about gene technology, i-pad and co and other cybernetics, there’s one discussion that hasn’t changed in the last 100 years – even if the vocabulary is new and exciting.

But let’s start in modern times. For the Peak Oil movement, the modern way of looking at oil production and depletion had its 55th aniversary 2011, commemorating the M. King Hubbert’s speech before the American Petroleum Institute where he made the prediction that the United States was about a decade away from reaching its peak in oil production. This event is generally seen as occurring in 1971 as especially Texan production began its first stumbling act. 1981, as oil prices were pushing all time highs, a second but lower peak occurred as Prudhoe Bay came on line. Boy, were those good years for an oil producer.

Now, going back to Qoheleth:
Hubbert was a Technocrat who, of course, looked for technical solutions for our everyday problems. Even back then oil defined America’s energy paradigm, so Hubbert’s solution was on the energy track, coaxing the Powers that Be to turn full fledged to atomic energy. Well, yes, since then the energy discussion has been pretty much framed.

In the 1980s, our high school discussion with our catholic ethics teacher followed these lines: Oil, nuclear, solar. Btw, Thomas Edison was convinced (ca. 1930) that our future would be solar. He did, however, get a couple of things wrong, like direct current vs. alternating. In the last 30 years, the only thing new (again, "old") in the discussion is the addition of wind to the mix. Meaning, today we discuss passionately oil, wind, solar and nuclear. The lines may fuzz a bit til something like Fukushima happens, when suddenly Germany, with the most secured nuclear reactors in the world and with much less plate-techtonic risk than most countries in the world, outlaws domestic atomic energy.

Go figure.

Anyway, the lines regarding oil are fuzzing up again especially in the U.S. because of various tight-oil (and gas, of course) plays that are incredible local phenomena but show hardly any influence in the larger scheme of things. Oil is staying quite stubbornly around $100 a barrel, making quite a few smaller formations profitable. At the same time, discussion turns back to Mid-East politics and again to the topic of peak oil. Since the term is as ambiguous as the science of climatology (yes, I love to talk about the weather just like the next guy), and since I will be referring to it time and again, I’ll side up here with Chris Nelder and his definition:

I feel compelled to, once again, try to set the record [about peak oil] straight.
"Peak oil" refers to the maximum rate of production of regular crude oil. Period. It’s a number.
It is not a theory.
It does not mean "running out of oil."
It is not the moral equivalent of Malthusianism.
It is not a political movement, or a religion.
It’s not a dessert topping. It is not a floor wax.

It is not about oil reserves (oil that has been proved to exist and to be producible at a profit), or resources (oil that may exist in the ground, irrespective of its potential to be produced profitably). Those quantities do play a role in estimating the peak, but do not determine it in any way.
"Peak oil" is not the same as "the end of cheap oil," although the latter is also true. Price is not a proxy for production.

"Unconventional" liquids such as biofuels, natural gas liquids, synthetic oil made from bitumen in tar sands or from kerogen in shales, and liquids made from coal or natural gas are not regular crude oil, nor are they equivalent to crude on several important counts. When you’re talking about unconventional liquids, you are not talking about oil, and lumping them in with oil does not increase the volume of oil. That’s why it’s called "peak oil" and not "peak liquid fuels."
This is why I insist on the term "tar sands." They contain not oil, but bitumen, a low-grade hydrocarbon which is a tar-like solid at room temperature, and must be upgraded with substantial inputs of energy to turn it into a synthetic oil. Calling them "oil sands" is nothing but a PR stunt.

etc.. (http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/energy-futurist/the-politics-of-peak-oil/326)

If anyone wants to talk to me about oil, prices, energy and markets, they need to know what I’m referring to when I talk about peak.

And although I’m basically with the crowd of "Thanksgiving day 2005", the chart says we’ve reached not a peak but a plateau:



Source: http://gregor.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Global-Average-Annual-Crude-Oil-Production-2001-2011.png

And thanks to Gregor Macdonald who is going to end up getting his little chart shown everywhere, just because he's capable of putting an excel chart together.

Top of the mornin’ to you.