Peter Tertzakian used to work as a field geologist for a major oil company. Today he makes his living consulting for companies that explore and drill for oil and gas. Peters thesis is that theres plenty of oil, and were not running out, but the easy-to-get, low-sulfur oil will become a thing of the past. We still have plenty of the heavier, harder-to-extract oil to keep us going for decades, though, even at todays ferocious world-wide rate of 1000 barrels a second. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Since the heavier stuff is harder to get and process, the price is going to keep going up. This increase in price will precipitate a break point after which there will be an energy rebalancing. The rebalancing will leave us less dependent on oil and able to grow our economies without increasing our consumption of petrol. He paints a difficult but overall optimistic view of the future - one in which other fuels gradually begin to take the place of oil, as oil becomes more and more costly. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;According to Tertzakian there are no silver bullets. It wont be like the days when we discovered crude oil just as whales neared extinction, and whale oil ran out. To balance our energy use well use more coal, more nuclear energy, and more liquid natural gas. He also admits that well use a bit more renewable sources. Most importantly, well have to be a lot more efficient, if for no other reason than the fact that energys going to get a lot more expensive. Well drive smaller, more efficient cars; will use energy more in line with the way Europeans use it today. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;It left me wondering why Americans dont do that already, and then I remembered that 30 years ago we had a visionary President named Jimmy Carter who set America on a path toward energy independence, only to be replaced by a generation of Republican administrations that systematically undid much of what Carter started. Tertzakian is disingenuous with his frequent accolades for George W. Bush (which are undeserved, given President Bushs irresponsible approach to energy policy), and his relative silence regarding Carters vision of an energy-independent America. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;I liked the way Tertzakian covers the history of energy development, describing curious anecdotes about the development of fuels from wood, coal, whale oil and petroleum. I particularly like his discussion of Britains decision to switch their navy from coal to oil, and the way Britain dominated, and really screwed up, the Middle East after World War II. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Conspicuously absent was the history of wind power. Though wind power drove mills, water pumps, and the worlds greatest navies, he has virtually nothing to say about it from a historical standpoint, and treats it only parenthetically as a viable alternative source of energy today. He goes out of his way, for example, to point out that thousands of windmills are needed to replace a single nuclear power plant, but fails to note that those thousands of windmills can be made in a factory assembly line for less cost than a nuclear power plant, and the energy (wind) is free. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Reading this book helped me understand why Vice President Cheneys secret energy panel is such a disaster - it was stacked by oil men. Like the carpenter who sees every problem as a nail, and every solution as a hammer, oil men see only what theyve learned to see, and tend not to have the broader vision of whats necessary for energy independence in an oil-free world. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;The biggest problem with Tertzakian is that hes really an old-school oil man. For him, energy is something you take out of the ground, distribute in pipes or tankers, and buy at a fueling station. He seems largely oblivious to the other major energy distribution network in America - electrical power lines. For example, according to Tertzakian: lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt; "you cant shovel coal into your fuel tank anymore than you can put in a uranium fuel rod or strap on a windmill" [page 79-80]. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;But we could, if we ran our cars off electricity that was generated with nuclear/wind/coal power. And, though hydrogen is not an energy source, it can be generated on site (who says you have to buy it at a pumping station?) using coal-generated electricity. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Electrical energy can also supply mass transit, as it does in Europe and Japan. Yet, amazingly, Tertzakian describes mass transit as "prohibitively expensive" even though a wide-ranging mass transit system wouldnt cost much more than the Iraqi war-for-oil that Bush lied us into. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Charts are an important feature of this book. For example, figure 4.14 displays a bar plot showing the yearly world-wide discoveries of new oil. The distribution is roughly Gaussian, with peak oil discoveries around 1965 and a standard deviation of 30-40 years. Today the world finds about 10 billion barrels of new oil reserves each year (it was about 60 billion barrels of oil at the peak). At the current rate of consumption, the world uses over 30 billion barrels of oil per year, so we are depleting our known oil reserves at the rate of 20 billion barrels each year. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Yet, amazingly, Tertzakian says: lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;"The intuitive angle is that we are indeed running out of reserves, but that is simply not the case. There are billions of barrels of oil reserves remaining on the planet." lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;This was a flabbergasting comment. A billion barrels of oil supplies the planet for less than 2 weeks (about 11 days) so having "billions of barrels of oil reserves" means almost nothing. We need *trillions* of barrels of oil reserves to last us more than a few decades. In spite of Tertzakians assertions to the contrary, we are depleting our known reserves at the rate of about 20 billion barrels each year. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Tertzakians book helps to frame the problem we must solve, but it only frames a small part of the solution. Though it was interesting - even gripping - reading, it was, in the end, a disappointment. lt;br /gt
The book gives a good historical perspective of energy use and how we have gotten ourselves to the point where we are so dependent on oil. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Then he outlines what is going to happen over the next decade or two and what we need to do to come out of the mess we will be in. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Very intelligently written.
This is the fourth book I have read in the last several weeks since I first became alerted to the peak oil issue. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;The others being: lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Beyond Oil (Deffeyes) lt;br /gt;The Long Emergency (Kuntzler) lt;br /gt;The Coming Economic Collapse (Leeb) lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;One excellent feature of Tertzakians book is his presentation of the history of the prevailing forms of energy that have been used in human history (whale oil, etc). This is a basis for his "break point" theory, which Im not sure I absorbed all that fully but involves the process by which the human race switches to new source(s) of energy when the dominant existing source is no longer tenable. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;He mentiones the debate regarding "Hubberts Peak", the hypothesis that we are reaching the peak of oil production in the current century. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;At one point he states it as a debate, but I have seen no fundamental disagreement on the issue. There seems to be a widespread agreement that oil, under the narrow definition as the light sweet crude we pump out of the ground, will reach a production peak in this century. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;There are, of course, the other large potential sources of oil- coal gasification, Oil Sands, and Oil Shale. These exist in large quantities and if oil were produced in large quantities from these sources, the bell curve for global oil production would likely peak at a considerably later date. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;But Deffeyes, who seems to be the most prominent advocate of the Hubberts Peak theory, makes clear that he is referring to conventional oil production. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;So I dont think there is actually any disagreement on this issue, except that there are, no doubt, some cornucopianists who would contend that there is a vast amount more recoverable oil than the Hubberts Peak curve would claim. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Anyway, moving on from that issue: Tertzakian concludes by painting a possible picture of what the energy future will be 10 or so years from now. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;He clearly is relatively optimistic, which is perhaps one reason his book has received a lot of praise from prominent people. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;But behind his generally upbeat tone, he is quite forthright in stating that he believes that part of the "rebalancing" process will be some major changes in lifestyle. So he clearly cannot be faulted for holding a "dont worry be happy" outlook regarding the challenges in dealing with peak oil. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Even so, I believe the "rebalancing" is likely to play out quite a bit differently than he envisions. There are a couple of issues I dont think he has given due weight to. First of all, in terms of the nature of the energy sources: lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Previous rebalancings, such as that of the 1970s, have primarily involved shifts between different types of fossil fuels. Perhaps the coming one will as well. With the huge resources of the "more difficult" sources of oil, the world could perhaps continue with an energy economy pretty much the way it is now for another century or so. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Eventually, those sources will run out and we will need to switch over to renewables. (although nuclear fusion is a wild card- if its ready by the time we have exhausted all the various forms of fossil fuels then that may pretty much resolve the energy issue once and for all. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;Assuming that we do need to go to renewables, either in the near term (next 10-20 years), or after exhausting the other forms of fossil fuels (80-100 years from now), there will be I think a much bigger disruption to society than what Tertzakian is describing. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;One part of the solution he envisions is more economical automobiles and industrial processes. I believe that will help greatly in us being able to deal with the next 20-30 years. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;But eventually, once ALL the fossil fuel sources have been depleted, and once MOST of the potential efficiency gains have been squeezed out of the processes that use fossil fuels, we are liable to face a big problem in figuring out how to, for example, continue to produce large quantities of food without heavy use of fossil fuels. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;In summary, our course for the future looks very unclear; I clearly am very conflicted on what it might look like. Im not sure much of what Tertzakian envisions will prove to be very accurate, but then he does seem to acknowledge that he is just throwing out ideas and that the future is liable to be considerably different than any of us can currently project. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt
