The PeakOilWhen Initiative purpose is to develop a Global Best Estimate for the timing of Global Peak Oil in order to leverage the powers that be into a decisive remedial action.

Method: An aggressive outreach to oil-thoughtful people everywhere, extracting their wisdom in an integratable way, integrating those opinions through a scientific, results-neutral methodology; completely transparent, totaly exposed to critique and indepedent evaluation.

Tool: BiPSA: Binary Polling Scenrio Analysis. A scientifically sanctioned procedure developed by Dr. Gideon Samid, head of the Innovation Appraisal Group at The Department of Chemical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University.

“Do NOT believe anybody’s ‘conclusions’ unless they present you with their data and methodology.”

Sorry for that. Wrote in haste.

Insider,

let me clarify. You don’t have to trust Simmons, or Oxburgh, or ExxonMobil.

Trust the data and the method to get the data, if you think it is sound.

Then draw conclusions on those.

If you are an oil industry insider, you know better than the rest of us, that:

A) Much of the publicly given data has been (and could still be) incorrect or even in part deliberately misleading

B) Several conclusions can be drawn, if one uses whatever unscientific methods or “proprietary data” to which others have no access and which cannot be validated

So, what is one to do? Find the most trustworthy looking data -> draw conclusions based on that. Find another set of data (different source, different method) -> again draw conclusions from those. Compare. Analyze. Estimate error & uncertainty.

Let’s not jump to conclusions (anyone’s) straight away – optimistic OR pessimistic. And do not trust anyone’s opinion/public announcement, unless they back it up with data/methodology that you can review.

That’s what I meant with “trust the data” (as far as it can be trusted in this climate of data hiding and obscuring).

As for the which source/person can be trusted and who is being the most objective, we can keep playing that game forever. Only if we can at least attempt to analyze the data and the methodology (and not just the author), do we have any chance of getting closer to the truth.

That’s my 2 cents, fwiw.

Trust simmons over others? Without wanting to cast aspersions on him, I want to test your trust meter.

Isn’t this a guy who makes his money investing in oil and their service companies? And every time people such as Simmons talk of coming shortages wouldn’t that tend to support a high oil price? ANd who benefits from that? Isn’t it the people who invest in oil adn their service companies?

On the other hand if you say there is no medium term problem with supply wouldn’t that logically tend to soften prices? So why do BP, Shell, EM all say similar things on supply?

And wouldn’t you trust people who have been right more often than wrong?

1) the effects of oil depletion on countries like China and India as they increase their consumption due to their growth. At 10%/yr, in 14 years China will consume more oil than the US will at that time. This is obviously unsustainable in it’s own right. Which begs the question, what will China do to get more oil? Oil wars?

2) the US debt load is enormous. There is no way that the US can finance a whole sale switch over to alternatives on the scale required. As we have already seen in the banking industry, any hickup in the system has wide ranging, and negative, effects. Can the world economy handle the change over?

3) over population. In 30 years the world population could hit 9 billion. Will the system of infrastructure handle the load? Already we are seeing food for biofuels putting the squeeze on the price and availability of food crops. I realize he wishes for non-food to do the job, but can it be scaled up to the volume required? Don’t forget that in 20 years there will be more people to feed. If we can’t feed both the biofuels and the population now, how are we going to feed 3 billion more, especially with oil going into terminal decline? We can’t.

This does not include the huge amount of additional oil consumed in a radical and rapid change over (before 2030 say).

He may wish for a rosy, happy end to the oil era, and I hope he is right, but if human history is any lesson it’s that it won’t be a smooth transition.

It is heartening to see yet another industry “insider” raising a red flag about our energy predicament, however, Lord Oxburgh’s comments strike me as those of somebody who -although he sees that we are heading for trouble- has yet to fully think through the major ramifications of the situation he has identified. He knows about peak oil, but if the views above are an honest representation of what he really thinks, then I don’t think he really “gets it” yet. I detect that in his reluctance to call this spade -a spade. He’s uneasy about using the term peak oil, almost like he just can’t permit himself to be heard saying it. On the other hand he seems completely comfortable when discussing carbon emmissions and the need to manage them.

If vehicles propelled in different ways means bicycles, then he may be on to something. However, the aspect of conservation is so weak in his statements as to reduce them to insignificance, which I believe is a mistake, as much of the source our waste stream, for example, relies on abundant, inexpensive petroleum. Once the price of petroleum becomes increasingly prohibitive, these waste streams will slow significantly.

Oxburgh’s view on biofuel from my point is way too optimistic you just have to read David Strahan’s book to get some reality check on this. If we do not seriously decrease our oil demand they will never be able to fullfil it. Besides burning oil or converting it to petroleum is the most stupid usage of it in the first place. We will need all the oil we can get to let our chemical industry running in the future.

Do we really want to rely on market forces to make the move away from crude oil? I don’t think we have the time for that.

Nick Stewart brings up a good point about timing estimates confusing the public.

However, it should NOT confuse decision makers.

Lord Oxburghs main point and the point of any serious oil depletion analyst has been for some time already as follows:

The timing of the peak: now or in 20 years is of little consequence. We need to start acting now (preferably yesterday) to mitigate the problems and prepare for a whole infrastructure change.

Sure, normal people may be confused about this, but people doing infrastructure financing or policy planning do understand 20 years horizons. It is they job to do so.

As for 2040-2050 peaking scenarios, I wouldn’t give too much credence to them.

Those have been given by people with:

– no data to back up the claims
– using “proprietary methods” (i.e. not available to scientific peer review)
– have a vested interest in peak NOT being early (i.e. stock prices of Exxon Mobil)
– have a recent history of completely flat out denying the whole peak (e.g. a pattern of stalling game, in which they are now in phase II)

Go with Matthew Simmons on this: Trust the data, then draw conclusions. Do believe anybody else’s ‘conclusions’ unless they present you with their data and methodology.

Given Lord Oxburgh’s new venture it’s perhaps not so surprising that he’s making this pitch now. His choice of year for a supply crunch is nicely in the middle of the above range and reflects his very British attitiude … “I don’t think we need face a way of life that is very different from that which we have at present … I think we can probably get away without a crisis, but it may be a bit of a squeeze”. Interesting to contrast that with some of the more apocalyptically minded Americans like James Howard kunstler and Matt Savinar at LATOC, both of whom deall in ‘The End Is Nigh’ polemics at every opportunity.