Ugly is as Ugly does

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By way of the Energy Bulletin, I came across this article. The graphs are particularly telling, so open up your browser an extra time to keep them handy as you read.

"As many people now know, 50 years ago this March, M. King Hubbert predicted that US Lower 48 and Texas oil production would peak, and enter a terminal decline, somewhere between 1966 and 1971.

Dr. Hubbert also predicted that world oil production would peak, and enter a terminal decline within 50 years, i.e., by 2006.

To be clear, despite what is either a profound misunderstanding of or a misrepresentation of Dr. Hubber'ts work in some quarters, Dr. Hubbert was not predicting the end of world oil production by 2006; he was predicting that production peaks when producing regions have consumed about half of their recoverable conventional oil reserves.

In our previous article, "M. King Hubbert's Lower 48 Prediction Revisited," we outlined a simplified way of predicting what Kenneth Deffeyes designated as Qt, or total recoverable conventional oil production for a region.

The method has been designated Hubbert Linearization, or HL, by Stuart Staniford, with The Oil Drum blog.Using the HL technique, the purpose of this paper is to use historical Texas and Lower 48 oil production as a model for future oil production in Saudi Arabia and the world.


(snip)

Note that prior to its peak, Texas was the "swing producer," i.e., its production was regulated by the Texas Railroad Commission in order to keep oil prices within a certain range.

(snip)

Saudi Arabia succeeded Texas as the swing producer, at least until recently. The emerging "swing producer" is the release of petroleum from emergency reserves. The problem of course will be replenishing the emergency reserves.

(snip)

In summary, based on the HL method and based on our historical models, we believe that Saudi Arabia and the world are now on the verge of irreversible declines in conventional oil production. While there will be massive efforts directed toward unconventional sources of oil, we predict that unconventional sources of oil will only serve to slow and not reverse the decline in total world oil production.

As we stated in our previous article, in order to speed the adjustment to the realities of declining world oil production, we recommend that the United States abolish the Payroll Tax and replace it with either a liquid transportation fuel tax or an overall (nonrenewable) energy tax.

In effect we would tax energy consumption to fund Social Security and Medicare.

The primary reason for implementing the proposal is that it would cause an immediate and massive across the board push for greater energy efficiency and it would unleash enormous free market forces against profligate energy use. This proposal would also find favor with those concerned about Global Warming. "

A leading figure in the fight to recognize the peril of Global Warming

likes to talk about the Bad news and the Good news.

The Bad news is..Global Warming is real.

TheGood news is...We're running out of oil.

The good, the bad, and the ugly news is...

Some people think that burning coal is the answer.

Others think that nuclear is the answer.

Still, some people think we should go on

and just get the rest of the oil with our guns.

Ugly is,

as Ugly does.


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