Talk:Oil depletion

debunking debunkers

The critiques section reads like an advertisement for Freddy Hutter. If you go to his webpage you will find that his business adress is a mailbox and that he sells his 'research' for money. Makes you wonder if it might not be Freddy himself using wikipedia as a money making sceme. I'm deleting everything Freddy related.

Also the site peakoildebunked is a blog. It has to go.

Peakoildebunked has the Doomers banana's in general. He's got better ideas than peakoil.com, why can't it get axed as well?

POV Tag

The POV tag was added by anon with this comment.

"noting NPOV dispute: this article takes the POV that oil depletion, not climate change, is the dominant factor driving the search for alternatives to oil - this is not what Nobel Prize winners say"

I happen to agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment - however, the POV label requires that a justification be made in the talk page, and because it was note made - I will remove the label, but leave the comments, thanking the contributor just the same. Benjamin Gatti

Don't be so quick, the talk update was coming:

This article is pure POV. It assumes that oil depletion matters so much that it drives a search for alternatives to oil. This is a nonsensical example of economism, in which supply and demand are assumed to be paramount in all decisions.

The truth is that the dominant scientific view is that climate change requires a shift to other energy sources long before the existing oil reserves run out. Accordingly, this depletion issue is simply irrelevant. Before it occurs, all coastal cities will look like New Orleans, and the refugees will be so vast in number that there will be no serious concern with how to get them all gas for their SUVs.

The article now states this, but, framing a POV is not quite the same as getting rid of it entirely. No talk about implications or alternatives should be permitted from the POV that "supply matters", because, according to a consensus of scientists, it doesn't.

Frankly, everything you have going here could be dealt with in a single section (or, God forbid, separate article), "Criticisms of oil depletion," rather than spamming the entire article in sheer reckless disregard for the idea of NPOV.

This article should be about oil depletion and whether it is or is not occurring, not whether global warming will make it irrelevant or not. Daniel Case 03:58, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Exactly, it should. At the moment, however, it assumes that oil depletion will occur (using, in the introduction, wording such as "inescapable" and "inevitable"), which is definately POV. Even if there was no controversy whatsoever that the world's oil reserves will, in fact, run out, the initial paragraphs strong language on this point would strike me as odd. MMad 12:26, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

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OK - I was a bit quick, but can we leave the big guns until after some edit war prevents you from correcting the bias. I encourage your corrections, i will defend and endorse them. This content was moved here from Hubbert peak theory, and so there was no overt effort to create a biased article, it just needs adjusting to its new (and more general role). Benjamin Gatti

You might find some balance in the original text of this same article which was written to contract HPO with GW. [1] Benjamin Gatti

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There is an entirely contrary body of evidence that oil is in fact not a "fossil" fuel at all, and that "Peak Oil" is just a myth. Just do a search in Google for "peak oil myth" and you will find many articles about this.

For that matter, have a look at the article on Abiogenic petroleum origin.

It appears that in the 1950s and 1960s, Russian scientists did a great deal of research into the origins of oil, and concluded that Lomonosov’s 1757 hypothesis that oil is of biogenic origin is not true.

And that's one more reason the Soviet Union is no longer around. People have lost a lot of money drilling into the Pre-Cambrian and (usually) finding nothing. There's no theoretical reason why there should be no oil down there, because there was biology long before the Cambrian, it just doesn't seem to have produced any oil. However, if the oil was buried deeper than 15,000 feet, the high temperatures have probably converted it to natural gas by cracking. People DO drill extremely deep wells, but usually looking for gas. RockyMtnGuy 03:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

There is no doubt in my mind that long before we run out of oil, we will have to change our approach as to how we use our planet's resources. Whilst in Africa, desertification is a reality, floods in Europe and North America appear to be worsening too. So, perhaps reality will bite, and Americans will finally realise that they cannot continue to waste resources at the current rate. A couple more hurricanes might do it.

Not only do 5% of the world's population consume 24% of the resources, but America is also the leading perpetrator of terrorism in the world. Since Teddy Rooseveldt's time, there hasn't been a single year in which the US wasn't involved in one or more armed conflict somewhere in the world.

According to people like Mike Ruppert, the two are linked. He claims that the current aggression against Afganistan and Iraq have nothing to do with a war on terrorism, and everything to do with the big corporations using the US military to protect their source of oil. And drugs, of course. The Taliban destroyed the opium crop in 2001, so they had to go. Now that the Northern Alliance are in power in Afganistan, the opium supply is back to "normal" levels again. While I think Mike Ruppert is wrong about Peak Oil, I think he is right about the CIA being the force behind the narcotic drug trade, but that's another issue altogether.

If oil is not really a limited resource, there isn't any need to fight wars over controlling the supply. Also, it means that the current soaring prices are not because of Peak Oil, and other factors are causing the high prices, not the availability of sources. But if burning "fossil" fuels is threatening our own survival, then alternative energy technology has to become a priority. In that sense, sky-high oil prices are good in that they encourage the development of alternative technologies.

In summary, to achieve a balanced article on Peak Oil, it is not sufficient to discuss whether production or consumption will be the ultimate limiting factor on oil use. It is necessary to refer to the Biogenic versus Abiogenic origin of petroleum too.

Just do a search in Google for "peak oil myth" and you will find many articles about this.

I did. Many of them also come hand-in-hand with mouthbreathing about how this is all some Zionist plot (how? Zionists wouldn't benefit from limited oil any more than the rest of us would)

For that matter, have a look at the article on Abiogenic petroleum origin

I did. Funny you didn't link it ... perhaps it's too well-written and objective for your tastes? It's actually where this discussion belongs.

But if burning "fossil" fuels is threatening our own survival, then alternative energy technology has to become a priority. In that sense, sky-high oil prices are good in that they encourage the development of alternative technologies.

Isn't that last sentence a perfect example of the "economism" you so deplore? Daniel Case 03:58, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

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Couldn't agree more with the above statement.

Also: Whether or not oil is a "fossil", the volume of discovered new oil deposits has distinctly declined in each of the last 4 decades. Since more than 20 years does consumption exceed new findings. So why would anyone who isnt paid for it propagate statements like "oil isn't finite, go figure abiogenic oil, stupid"? Petroconsult, Geneva predicts the peak to occur before 2010. I doubt companies pay $32.000 per issue of "World Oil Supply" for some groundless peaknik propaganda.

My deletion

I have deleted a massive chunk copied from or to Implications of peak oil. It can stay here or go there but this material does not deserve to be word for word in 2 afrticles. It makes editing extremely difficult if you have 2 versions that then start to slightly differ, and there was no good reason to text dump inthat way, SqueakBox 03:35, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Global warming vs oil depletion

As long as we keep using oil, eventually it will run out. That is a consequence of the simple fact that the size of the Earth is not infinite. It's not a TARDIS inside! :) Whether or not climate change will hit first, or oil depletion first, or both at once depends on the estimates and data one is using. Some oil-depletion anaylsts suggest that we may have only 50 years of oil left, particularly when growht is factored in, and as it depletes the prices will skyrocket and crash the economy even before them. By contrast, it is suggested that it will take at least 100 years for climate changes to really ruin things -- ie. oil depletion hits first. Some though go to 75 years for complete depletion, but still the economy will crash sooner. For conventional oil, these estimates are very accurate. However, if one factors in oil sands they could push out the depletion date further, but they bring the catastrophic climate-change date closer, so that if these are used climate change would come first. It depends on how you analyze and whose data you use, really. Some even suggest both will get bad around the same time. There are many complex interactions possible -- for example oil depletion makes it harder to consume oil and thus harder to emit CO2, lessening climate change. Switching to junk like shale and sands would pump a frick of a lot of CO2 and exacerbate climate change. This can in turn rebound off of oil use, etc. Really, only time will tell, and the best Wikipedia can do (since it for one is not a crystal ball), is just to neutrally report the various data. 74.38.35.171 05:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Question

Any reason why the lead talks at length about global warming? --Relata refero (disp.) 08:04, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Is crude oil still being naturally produced?

Regarding this edit, User:Arnoutf is questioning the assertion that crude oil is no longer being naturally produced. (I'm saying *naturally* produced, because some articles claim that oil is being produced from plankton in the lab.) Is crude oil still being naturally produced? What source, either way, do you have? Timhowardriley (talk) 16:14, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a wp:fringe hypothesis that says oil is being produced abiotically (meaning with no biological feedstocks) deep within the earth's crust. This hypothesis doesn't really say how fast this might be happening, and it is negated by the biomarkers found in all oil samples to date, and is not found to be predictive for petroleum drillers, but enough conspiracy theorists (such as Alex Jones (radio) and Stanley Monteith) keep bringing it up that people keep wanting to believe it. It is also possible that oil is being produced in the same way it was originally produced (from kerogen pyrolysis, in a variety of mostly endothermic reactions at high temperature and/or pressure[2]), but this process is so slow that it doesn't make a difference to current supplies. I changed the wording to account for that ("effectively fixed because petroleum formation takes millions of years"). If someone were to want to debate this, it would have to happen at the petroleum article, as it is beyond the scope of this article. NJGW (talk) 16:41, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Short answer yes.Oil is being produced naturally as we speek (biotically,abiotically is dubious).The problem is that is too slow, and the fact that it doesn't accumulate in a reservoir, it just get eaten up by bacteria or oxidized by O2.This is no different from the way we got our current oil,it got the chance to accumulate in a natural reservoir over millions of years.--88.82.47.67 (talk) 16:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

"there is still plenty of oil in the world"

This discussion is a continuation of the discussion in Talk:Peak oil. It is off-topic there and will be continued here.Kgrr (talk) 12:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

RockyMtnGuy, The subject of depletion has been removed out of Peak oil because of excessive POV pushing and put into this article. People confuse "peak oil" with the final death of the oil supply and continually wreck the peak oil article. When an article has reached GA status, it should not undergo excessive changes. By essentially dividing the article in two, we put the more controversial part here and the more stable part there. Nevertheless, we have newbies that want to invent their own peak oil theories, we have abiotic oil pushers, and all sorts of people in a panic wanting to change the article from the facts as they are presented in the literature. With that out of the way, let's resume the discussion here.Kgrr (talk) 13:07, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that production rate, the cumulative production curve and ultimately the total reserve are totally inter-related. In his time, Hubbert saw coal depletion and exponential growth in oil. He essentially needed to convince the oil industry that perpetual exponential depletion of oil was not possible and that peak oil was the outcome. He had the cumulative production curves and could, using derivatives point out that at some point production decreases. He showed this for one oil field after another. But his other problem was how much oil is there left. And, yes he very elegantly shows you how to calculate that in his paper.

The answer to "there is still plenty of oil in the world" is clearly yes. If we need to fix this article, please let me know what we need to do.Kgrr (talk) 13:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Reserves to depletion ratio

In the Peak oil article, TastyCakes left the following comment:

Simply dividing reserves by yearly consumption is obviously an inaccurate way of determining "how many years" of present consumption we have left because as the reserves approach exhaustion you produce at a slower and slower rate. That, in my opinion, is why statements like "we have enough oil in the ground" are misleading. You can't just extract an arbitrary amount at a whim, as time goes on you have to wait longer and longer to extract the same amount of oil. TastyCakes (talk) 18:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

You are correct. That's the fallacy of the reserves to production ratio everyone hurls around.Kgrr (talk) 05:21, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It's an important topic as to why depletion will actually happen sooner. Let's develop this idea a bit further and put it into the article.Kgrr (talk) 14:35, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Reference to oil depletion in space book

Hey guys. I recently saw this quote in a book from 1978 called "Colonizing Space" by Erik Berguast. It says the following: "Energy experts believe that our oil and gas will be depleted for purposes of generating power by the year 2000" "The Carter administration served warning of this to the American people in April, 1977. I found this very interesting. The launguage of the time was that less than 9 years ago we wouldn't be able to use oil or gas for energy anymore, yet we still do. As far as the energy experts part, the book doesn't mention any names that I can find. 68.51.41.46 (talk) 08:13, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

A) consumption rates fell dramatically after 78.

B) it sounds like once again depletion and Peak are being confused.

C) if there's no experts cited, it fails wp:V.

D) seems a bit old to be used as a ref.

E) it might just be propaganda for space colonization... though someone thinking we'd be ready for that by now might have been on drugs.

Interesting find, but I wouldn't quote it in a serious article. NJGW (talk) 09:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

No need to resort to ABC's, this was just an old book I felt like bringing up.

I found the sources:

Here are the Acknowledgments:

NASA

Professor Gerard K. O'Neill

Proceedings from 1974 Conference on Space Colonization

Princeton University

Proceedings of the May 1975 Conference on Space Manufacturing Facilities

Princeton University and the Colonization of Space Report 1975 NASA/Ames/Stanford/ASEE Summer Study

Julie Forbush editor the National Space Institute

Also just for the record, there are some pretty old references used on Wikipedia. But I didn't plan on this being used in an article, just as a find to consider or not. 68.51.41.46 (talk) 23:46, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if that came across as terse, but the oil related articles get all sorts of strange requests, notions, and demands on the talk pages. If you're not suggesting changes to the article, you should read wp:NOTFORUM. NJGW (talk) 04:31, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

You didn't come off terse to me, I just thought this was a good find to maybe consider using. I mean the sources it uses are all very reliable sources. The only issue I could see with it is where to put the quote or how to use it in this article. I'm not demanding you put it in. Nor am I requesting you put something in that doesn't have any real sources that's just some random person's hogwash. Another reason I asked is because I usually never add something without feedback. I think this "2000" prediction bares some sort of historically significance. Even if it was fruitless. The book itself is very thorough and doesn't seem to come off as misunderstanding or inaccurate of the topic.68.51.41.46 (talk) 05:05, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Well, I think it would be a good idea to have a history section (the evolution of the concept). As for quoting the 2000 date, it would be best if there were some context provided which explained why they chose 2000 (why did they?) and why they were wrong. NJGW (talk) 05:16, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

They only reference Carter's warnings of it. Here's the rest of the page:

"We still have vast deposits of coal, but tapping this energy source requires mining and transportation, as well as clean-burning systems and technology to meet environmental standards. There are also some nuclear energy solutions, such as nuclear fusion, which might become available in the somewhat distant future, perhaps fifty or more years hence"

I just viewed the actual speech from April 18th of 1977 and it doesn't seem to mention 2000, but I am still looking for the "energy experts" as quoted in the book. I'm not sure if they are part of the sources listed in the beginning or not. 68.51.41.46 (talk) 05:54, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Meaning of "depletion"

Fredhutter has been trying to change the definition of depletion used here to mean all the time after the first drop is extracted. This is one way of defining depletion, but another (according to Resource depletion) is when the last drop has been removed. The meaning used in this article is the terminal decline in production rates towards the ultimate depletion of the resource. As this is all semantics, let's get some consensus before continuing an edit war, because if we're using a different definition of "depletion" then we probably need a different title for this article (or at least a complete rewrite). My general feeling is that Fredhutter's definition is akin to "oil production" or "oil use", and serves no useful purpose here. NJGW (talk) 06:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

As do most of the posters at Peakoil.com & theOilDrum, NJGW exhibits her neophyte status by confusing Decline with Depletion. Depletion rates are calculated from Year 1 of production ... not the midpoint of the well/field/province's extraction. In juvenile fashion, NJGW has also UNDID an edit 3 x's in a six hour period and hence breaching Wikipedia convention rather discussing the issue. Disciplinary action is warranted. --FreddyH> (talk) 08:27, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

The EIA's definition: "Depletion is a natural phenomenon that accompanies the development of all nonrenewable resources. Taken most broadly, depletion is a progressive reduction of the overall stock (or volume in the instance of oil and natural gas) of a resource over time as the resource is produced." Reduction of the extraction rate is Decline ... not Depletion. Geologists are frustrated that this error is pervasive in Peak Oil discussions by pundits and the Media. --FreddyH> (talk) 09:34, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

You mention 2 blogs as your sources... not the mark of a seasoned Wikipedeo. You then mention that that the usage presented by this article is pervasive, showing you are unaware of WP's policy that articles are not written for the experts. It's a bit ironic therefore that you throw the word

"neophyte" around so brashly (perhaps even bizarre given the fact that you have been registered since 2005). NJGW (talk) 15:42, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• (Referred here from the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard where a report was filed regarding this matter). I have no opinion on the actual definition, and certainly not the expertise, however: Whichever definition is correct, it should be easy to find a reliable, third-party source to verify it. Please look at the links I highlighted and come up with the definition that can be agreed upon, based on reliable sources. Typically blogs are not considered reliable sources, though under some circumstances they may be, depending upon the author's credentials. The RS link goes into more detail on that. For COI purposes though, please do not link to any self-published sources unless they are fairly well peer-reviewed (See WP:SPS for more on what is acceptable there). And thanks to all for discussing the matter civilly here, rather than engaging in a revert-war which will get us all nowhere. Arakunem^Talk 16:25, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

n.b. from Resource depletion: Use of either of these forms of resources beyond their rate of replacement is considered to be resource depletion. this seems like a reasonable definition, although it too lacks source. 79.101.174.192 (talk) 09:54, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

This article begins: "Oil depletion occurs in the second half of the production curve of an oil well ..." As someone who deals with oil well production curves on a daily basis, I find this statement bizarre and meaningless. Can anyone explain to me how you define the "second half of the production curve of an oil well"? Plazak (talk) 19:01, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Some folks might find your request bizarre and meaningless. But since you've asked for help, you can start here: Depletion and Decline Curve Analysis in Crude Oil Production. 75.142.11.87 (talk) 07:48, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Inline

dear NJGW, you obviously didn't read This_article_does_not_cite_any_references_or_sources.#Inline_citations. if you have, you wouldn't provide such an edit summary. i would like to see this article become a good or even featured article, but your reverts are being everything but helpful. 79.101.174.192 (talk) 21:13, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Please don't say "this article does not cite any references or sources" when there are 19 inline citations, tons of wikilinks, and three sections which refer to a larger main article. If there is something you actually want a citation for (and for some reason can't find it already used in this article or clearly referred to at the main articles) feel free to make reasonable requests. Tagging every single sentence in an article for citation is not reasonable. NJGW (talk) 21:21, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Again, you misread what I wrote. Please be more careful. Although above link points to 'not cite any sources', the subsection i linked to talks about other cases too, and why inline citations should be used. I find my request for the inline tag reasonable, and your resistance to it quite odd. 79.101.174.192 (talk) 08:06, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Typical oil field depletion

There is a report available: Evolution of Giant Oil Field Production Behavior Especially Figure 4 on page 5 may be interesting. Uikku (talk) 02:56, 1 March 2010 (UTC)