It is interesting to listen to people's reasons for not wishing to consider hydrocarbon depletion.
One is that people have "cried wolf" before. The point about that story is that in the end there was a wolf.
Another is the Vince Cable (who used to be an economist for Shell) position who argues that as the price goes up there will be more oil extractable. There is some truth in this position, but it still does not deal with the fact that there will be a year of peak production and after that production will come down.
This is faced by the fact that the deposits of oil and gas people are going after are now smaller. Ramco's saga where they went for a gas field and found it didn't work as expected will happen more and more frequently. There will be a resource cost issue and a risk management issue for this.
The interesting question rests with some of Chris Vernon's analysis of potential gas shortages. It sounds nice and easy to import gas. There was a good photo in the press of a boy stealing gas in a big balloon and cycling away with it. Transporting gas is not easy. You either need a pipeline or to liquify it (liguifaction takes a lot of energy). It remains that the gas needs to come from somewhere.
40.6% of our primary energy consumption is Natural Gas and 31.8% Petroleum.
One is that people have "cried wolf" before. The point about that story is that in the end there was a wolf.
Another is the Vince Cable (who used to be an economist for Shell) position who argues that as the price goes up there will be more oil extractable. There is some truth in this position, but it still does not deal with the fact that there will be a year of peak production and after that production will come down.
This is faced by the fact that the deposits of oil and gas people are going after are now smaller. Ramco's saga where they went for a gas field and found it didn't work as expected will happen more and more frequently. There will be a resource cost issue and a risk management issue for this.
The interesting question rests with some of Chris Vernon's analysis of potential gas shortages. It sounds nice and easy to import gas. There was a good photo in the press of a boy stealing gas in a big balloon and cycling away with it. Transporting gas is not easy. You either need a pipeline or to liquify it (liguifaction takes a lot of energy). It remains that the gas needs to come from somewhere.
40.6% of our primary energy consumption is Natural Gas and 31.8% Petroleum.
Comments
Coal creates its own problems.
One key to this is air flight. Through the "dash to gas" the UK emissions (of CO2) have gone down with a consequent increase in H02.
This and certain changes in the chemical industry are the main factors influencing the fact that the UK is online.
My view is that the first step the UK government has to accept is that air flights cannot increase as they plan.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
The trouble is you can´t take such a decision. As long as hydrocarbons are cheaper than the alternatives, people will use them. A decision by one country to withdraw their use would simply mean that somone else would burn the fuel instead. It is just about conceivable that we could reach agreement to slow down the use of hydrocarbons by for example changing the tax regime for aviation fuel. And that is about it.
So if we are going to switch, either other sources will need to become cheaper or oil prices will have to rise bvecause it is becoming scarce.