Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future Read Online Free Page A
Author: Richard Heinberg
.
THE REALITY IS:
The industry has overstated world oil reserves by about a third and is working harder and harder just to stand still.
2. THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM SAYS:
Unconventional oil (tar sands, tight oil) will seamlessly replace the current energy output from conventional sources.
THE REALITY IS:
It takes energy to get energy. The energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) of unconventional fossil fuels is significantly worse than for conventional resources.
Oil production technology is giving us ever-more expensive oil with ever-diminishing returns for the ever-increasing effort that needs to be invested.
— Raymond Pierrehumbert, Professor of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago
Chapter One
This Is What Peak Oil Looks Like
O il is the linchpin of our modern industrial way of life. Nearly all energy used for transport derives from it,and transport is essential to virtually all trade. Take petroleum away and the global economy would shudder to a halt in a matter of minutes.
It wasn’t always this way. The petroleum age started when the first commercial oil well was drilled in the late 1850s, and it wasn’t until the early 20th century that energy-dense, easily portable “rock oil” found widespread use.
With automobiles, airplanes, tractors, chainsaws, diesel-fueled trains, oil-powered ships, and diesel-powered mining and road-building equipment, it became possible to intensify and expand nearly every extractive and productive process known to humankind—including the process of drilling for oil. Agriculture, fishing, mining, transportation, manufacturing, and trade burgeoned as never before, lifting billions from poverty (or undermining their more sustainable traditional ways of life, depending on how you look at it) and providing several hundred million humans with a level of amenity, convenience, and mobility undreamt of even by the pharaohs and emperors of previous eras.
All these benefits have come at a cost. The growth of extractive industries has led to increasing rates of depletion of minerals, soil, water, fish, and forests. At the same time, the expansion of industry has created burgeoning streams of waste products that nature cannot absorb. The most pervasive of industrial wastes is carbon dioxide, released when oil and other fossil fuels are burned. As ambient levels of carbon dioxide rise, the planet’s atmosphere traps more heat, changing the climate and precipitating extreme weather events, potentially leading to conditions in which civilization cannot persist.
Resource depletion and climate change are problems that undermine the survival prospects of future generations. Many people still tend to think their impacts are decades away, but we are beginning to see those impacts unfold in real time all around us.
In this chapter, we will take a whirlwind tour of a controversy that has roiled the oil and gas industry for the past decade and more. The discussion about oil supplies, reserves, and production that goes by the name of “peak oil” is complex and subtle and has often been mischaracterized or ludicrously oversimplified (“We’re running out!” versus “We’re not running out!”). It is a discussion that readers must be familiar with in order to properly understand and evaluate the claims of abundance currently being made by representatives of the fossil fuel industry. What follows is intended both as an overview of the current state of that discussion, and as an effort to set the record straight with regard to economic life-or-death issues that have sometimes been distorted by those who profit from our fossil-fueled status quo.
Peak Oil: What the Fuss Is About
Individual oil wells have a finite life span. Sometimes aggressive techniques—such as water flooding—can be deployed to extend an oil well’s life, but depletion is inexorable, and eventually every oil well reaches the point where production rates decline severely and the cost of extraction efforts
THE REALITY IS:
The industry has overstated world oil reserves by about a third and is working harder and harder just to stand still.
2. THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM SAYS:
Unconventional oil (tar sands, tight oil) will seamlessly replace the current energy output from conventional sources.
THE REALITY IS:
It takes energy to get energy. The energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) of unconventional fossil fuels is significantly worse than for conventional resources.
Oil production technology is giving us ever-more expensive oil with ever-diminishing returns for the ever-increasing effort that needs to be invested.
— Raymond Pierrehumbert, Professor of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago
Chapter One
This Is What Peak Oil Looks Like
O il is the linchpin of our modern industrial way of life. Nearly all energy used for transport derives from it,and transport is essential to virtually all trade. Take petroleum away and the global economy would shudder to a halt in a matter of minutes.
It wasn’t always this way. The petroleum age started when the first commercial oil well was drilled in the late 1850s, and it wasn’t until the early 20th century that energy-dense, easily portable “rock oil” found widespread use.
With automobiles, airplanes, tractors, chainsaws, diesel-fueled trains, oil-powered ships, and diesel-powered mining and road-building equipment, it became possible to intensify and expand nearly every extractive and productive process known to humankind—including the process of drilling for oil. Agriculture, fishing, mining, transportation, manufacturing, and trade burgeoned as never before, lifting billions from poverty (or undermining their more sustainable traditional ways of life, depending on how you look at it) and providing several hundred million humans with a level of amenity, convenience, and mobility undreamt of even by the pharaohs and emperors of previous eras.
All these benefits have come at a cost. The growth of extractive industries has led to increasing rates of depletion of minerals, soil, water, fish, and forests. At the same time, the expansion of industry has created burgeoning streams of waste products that nature cannot absorb. The most pervasive of industrial wastes is carbon dioxide, released when oil and other fossil fuels are burned. As ambient levels of carbon dioxide rise, the planet’s atmosphere traps more heat, changing the climate and precipitating extreme weather events, potentially leading to conditions in which civilization cannot persist.
Resource depletion and climate change are problems that undermine the survival prospects of future generations. Many people still tend to think their impacts are decades away, but we are beginning to see those impacts unfold in real time all around us.
In this chapter, we will take a whirlwind tour of a controversy that has roiled the oil and gas industry for the past decade and more. The discussion about oil supplies, reserves, and production that goes by the name of “peak oil” is complex and subtle and has often been mischaracterized or ludicrously oversimplified (“We’re running out!” versus “We’re not running out!”). It is a discussion that readers must be familiar with in order to properly understand and evaluate the claims of abundance currently being made by representatives of the fossil fuel industry. What follows is intended both as an overview of the current state of that discussion, and as an effort to set the record straight with regard to economic life-or-death issues that have sometimes been distorted by those who profit from our fossil-fueled status quo.
Peak Oil: What the Fuss Is About
Individual oil wells have a finite life span. Sometimes aggressive techniques—such as water flooding—can be deployed to extend an oil well’s life, but depletion is inexorable, and eventually every oil well reaches the point where production rates decline severely and the cost of extraction efforts
Readers choose
Russ Watts
Susan Spann
Will Self
C. Alexander London
Alexie Aaron
KRIS NORRIS
Megan McDonald
Ryann Kerekes
Patricia MacLachlan
J. R. Roberts