Forest Man

(Part 1 of this series and Part 2 of this series and Part 3 of this series)

 

According to licensed professional oil geologist Jeffrey J. Brown in the article "The Road To Clean Energy Is Messier Than We Thought" from 14.10.2021, we had 30 mbd (million barrels per day) left of global net oil exports in the end of 2021.

 

According to professional oil geologist Art Berman in Nate Hagens' interview with him recently, titled "Arthur Berman: “The Devil is in the Diesel” | The Great Simplification #44", 20 % of a barrel of oil becomes, in the end, diesel.

 

20 % of 30 is 6, so in 2021 we had 6 mbd of diesel exports left globally. But. When we know that shale oil has very little diesel, and we know that shale oil comprises almost around 10 % of global oil production (only US produced 7.23 million barrels per day of shale oil in 2021, (put in perspective, "Global oil production (All Fossil Liquids) amounted to 89.9 million barrels per day in 2021"), there are several other countries which produce substantial amounts of shale oil, for example, "Canada’s production of shale oil in the country was approximately 335,000 barrels a day in 2018", and "Oil shale provides 70% of the energy supply in Estonia" (I think they should have written "shale oil", not "oil shale", the latter being much more costly to produce), and "China produced 35,000 barrels per day (bpd) of shale oil in 2021"), we actually have to subtract up to 3 mbd from the 30 mbd of oil exports we have, if we want to calculate future diesel export volumes, so we get 27 mbd of oil exports where diesel in turn comprises 20 % of it, and 20 % of 27 is 5,4. So in 2021 the world had 5,4 mbd of global net diesel exports left. This is a very important and very good starting point. 

 

If we then assume a modest, pretty conservative accelerated decline rate of these 5,4 mbd (the decline rate accelerates, because the volume is squeezed by three exponential functions),

 

1) exponential decline in production (let's take a modest 5 % decline rate per year). According to Alice Friedemann in the youtubeinterview with her titled "Alice Friedemann—Life After Fossil Fuels book—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio 2021-09-05" "80 % of oil production is declining at 8,5 % a year", this is the natural decline rate, how much oil production would decline if we didn't add any new oil fields to production. Steve St. Angelo said in the youtubevideo "Steve St. Angelo: The Financial World is One Giant Ponzi Scheme" 3 weeks ago that this rate was 10 % for all oil production.

 

2) exponential increase in consumption (let's take a modest 2,5 % increase rate per year). "The world's average GDP growth rate is equal to 2.9 %" (this was 2013, the quote is from the article "GDP growth rate - by country" on the website mecometer.com)

 

3) exponential decline in EROEI (let's take a 10 % decline rate per year, starting from about 10:1 in 2021) (Observe: "If we start at 50 and work our way down the ERoEI scale moving to the right, we see that energy invested (red) increases very slowly from 2% at ERoEI=50 to 10% at ERoEI=10. But beyond 10, the energy invested increases exponentially to 20% at ERoEI=5 and to 50% at ERoEI=2. At ERoEI = 1, 100% of the energy used is spent gathering energy and we are left with zero gain." From the blogpost "ERoEI for Beginners", posted on May 25, 2016 on the blog “Energy Matters”, by Euan Mearns),

 

we get the following results*: The global net diesel exports volume goes to zero in five years after 2021, i.e. in 2026, according to my pretty rough calculations (in 2027 at the latest, leaving room for optimism, but this date is not the result of any calculation). I estimate that the EROEI would be somewhere arround 7:1-6:1 in 2026, for the whole global oil industry. The blog “Crash Watcher” calculates that EROEI will be around 2:1 in 2030 (this is where 50 % of the energy obtained will be invested in producing energy), see the article by “Crash Watcher” from February 13, 2011, An Export Land Model Analysis for the USA-Part 4. So with his calculations, which use a linear approach, even though we know that EROEI declines exponentially with time, it is reasonable to assume that EROEI globally is at most 7:1-6:1 in 2026. As Euan Mearns point out in the graph below, 5:1-7:1 is the minimum requirement for society to function. Veteran systems ecologist Charles S.A.Hall puts this already at 12:1 to 13:1 (See the blogpost Net Energy Cliff Will Lead to Collapse of Civilization, posted on December 11, 2019 by Alice Friedemann on the “Energy Skeptic” blog).

 

So we find that, remembering my calculation that global net oil exports will reach zero in 2026 at the latest, global net diesel exports decline slightly faster than the overall global net oil exports, and that the world will run out of net diesel exports before it runs out of oil at large or gasoline, because diesel comprises such a little portion of the barrel of oil, and because the fact that when you plot two bell curves in a chart, and the first is much bigger than the other, the smaller bell curve will reach is end before the bigger will. This fact we also see in full action in the history of the oil market. There was first a global diesel shortage, not a gasoline shortage, but now there is also a gasoline shortage, at last.  

 

Thinking about how important diesel is to the world economy, being its Achilles heel, we should, when calculating global net oil exports, focus on global net diesel exports (1), because diesel is what really counts here. We can live without gasoline, without personal cars, but without diesel, trucks stop running, and the store shelves will soon be empty. The global diesel shortage is a direct result of declining global net diesel exports, and not only because of the war in Ukraina. 

 

The pace at which global net diesel exports decline, is flabbergasting. It declines so fast, that we could well see the world economy collapsing already in 2025, or 2026 at the latest. 

 

We should all begin to ration diesel, globally, planning for a post carbon future, and then it's vital to know how much diesel we will have globally in the years to come. That's why I have written this blogpost. 

 

If we do not subtract the shale oil from the 30 mbd of global oil exports (guessing that Brown’s 30 mbd of oil exports did not include shale oil), then we only win 10 % of the time from 2021 to 2030, which is one year, at most. This postpones the end of the diesel export market to 2027, at the latest.

 

Note also that my calculations in this blogpost does not take into account the "ten critical factors" which I added to my first post in this series (2).

 

 

 

* the following are my calculations with a modest accelerated decline rate, modest when taking into account that our data is squeeded by three exponential functions (I'm not able to calculate directly the effect of the third one here, I have only secondary school math in the backpack):

 

We begin with 5,4 mbd of global net diesel export volume (observe that the volume of global net diesel exports has declined already since 2005, and is nearing the end of the depletion curve. In the end of a depletion curve declining at an accelerating rate, decline goes very, very fast. In our curve from 2005 the overall net oil export volume decline starts with about 0,4 mbd or 400 000 barrels per day of decline per year, on average. In 2005, when there was about 6,4 mbd of global net diesel exports, the volume of diesel exports declined by on average 0,08 mbd, or 80 000 barrels per day per year. In the beginning of 2022 the decline is already 0,41 mbd or 410 000 barrels per day per year. In 2026 the decline is already 1,35 mbd or 1 350 00 barrels per day per year. The total net oil exports volume is declining at the same time by about 5-6 mbd). I will add a very substantial amount to the 5 % decline of diesel production per year and 2,5 % of diesel consumption per year, due to what I said in the 3) above about exponentially declining EROEI, but I will add the same amount every year, for simplicity's sake, and then the added decline of the falling EROEI will in fact decline at a slightly accelerated pace, as it also does in the Net Energy Cliff chart (3) below:

 

1:st year: 5 % of 5,4 mbd is 0,27 mbd in diesel production

                5,4-0.27=5,13

                2,5% of 5,4 mbd is 0,14 mbd in diesel consumption

                5,13-0.14=4,99.

 

                In 2022 we may have 4,99 mbd of diesel exports

                 left. 

 

2:nd year: 4,99-0,54 (adding a certain amount because of the

                 falling EROEI)=4,55

                 4,55-0,28=4,27 (adding a certain amount because of

                 falling EROEI [4]).

 

                 In 2023 we may have 4,27 mbd of diesel exports

                 left. 

 

3:rd year: 4,27-081=3,46

                 3,46-0,42=3,04.

 

                 In 2024 we may have 3,04 mbd of diesel exports

                 left. 

 

4:th year: 3,04-1,08=1,96

                1,96-0,56=1,40.

 

                In 2025 we may have 1,40 mbd of diesel exports

                left. 

 

5:th year: 1,40-1,35=0,05. 

 

                In 2026 we may have 0,05 mbd or 50 000 barrels

                per day of diesel exports left. 

 

Note: As the late Albert Bartlett said, "the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function", and I would add that maybe an even greater shortcoming is our inability to understand the accelerated rate of decline function. How can diesel exports stop so quickly? I have trouble with believing my own calculations. This means empty shelves in 2025, one year before the doomsday year of Guy McPherson (5), for all the diesel importing countries. 

 

 

(1) Unfortunately I do not find anyone on the internet who has calculated global net diesel exports.

 

(2) Here are my "ten critical factors":

One: possible wars that will disrupt the oil industry (think an escalation of the Ukraine war, a possible third world war, not to mention a nuclear war between Russia and USA).

Two: natural disasters like abrupt climate change, super solar storms, supervolcanoes and hurricanes which will disrupt the oil industry (especially the offshore oil industry and coast line refineries). Note especially that the cost of abrupt climate change is a part of the overall EROEI of oil and all fossil fuels.

 

Three: the possibility of our oil reserves being overstated by half (note that Jeffrey Brown's calculations are based on BP Statistical Review data, which is the official data, the optimistic corporation and government data), see Ron Patterson's article about it: "50% Of Proved Oil Reserves May Have Just Vanished", Apr 27, 2016 on OilPrice.com. 

 

Four: the bursting of the shale oil bubble and the fall of the Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme which leads to a very steep decline of the shale oil production.

 

Five: the very steep decline rate of conventional oil production due to a long time of "Enhanced Oil Recovery" (things like pumping water into the oil wells).

 

Six: the collapse of future oil discovery because of lack of upstream capital investment, due to the bursting of the Everything Bubble, civilizational collapse, oil scarcity and climate concerns. 

 

Seven: the possibility of civilization collapsing around 2025-2030 because of a combination of energy shortages and abrupt climate change, which will lead to the collapse and demise of the oil industry because everything is linked. See a video about it here.

Eight: the issue of the lack of affordability in the oil industry and the world. According to Gail Tverberg most of the oil reserves will be left in the ground in the future because it will be uneconomical to exploit, because of too high EROEI (Energy return on Energy investment). "A large share of the world’s oil reserves are unconventional oil reserves, of one type or another. The fact that rising oil prices are a real problem for citizens means that these unconventional reserves are unlikely to be tapped. Instead, we may be dealing with seriously short supplies of products we need for operating our economies, including diesel oil and jet fuel." (from the blogpost "Today’s Energy Crisis Is Very Different from the Energy Crisis of 2005", posted on November 17, 2022 by Gail Tverberg on the blog "Our Finite World")

 

Nine: the wish for energy conservation in countries that wake up to the reality of Peak Oil, keeping oil in the ground for future generations. The wish by governments for reducing carbon emissions, thereby keeping oil in the ground. 

 

Ten: fungible sharing of the remaining exportable oil between the ex-exporting countries. This means that when an exporting country becomes an importing country, it begins to eat from the remaining volume of export oil of the remaining exporting countries, making it shrink very fast, with an accelerated decline rate. 

...and so on. 

 

As I said, none of these ten risk factors are accounted for in my calculations. They may make my calculations miss the mark. 

 

(3)

 

 (4) the reason why I add so much as 0,28 mbd to the subtraction of the volume of net diesel exports in 2023 and even more further down, is that EROEI or the energy cost of energy invested, is rising with an accelerating rate throughout history, and rises very fast in the end of the Net Energy Cliff curve. So if EROEI is, as I calculate, around 9:1 to 8:1 in 2023, around 15 % of the energy obtained has to be invested in new energy production, and in 2026, at 7:1-6:1, 18 % has to be invested. 0,28 is much less than 15 % of 4,99 (15 % of 4,99 is about 0,75), so if we would calculate the volume of diesel we would lose for every barrel to investment in new diesel production, it would be 0,75 mbd in 2021, i.e. 750 000 barrels per day in one year, and I account only for 210 000 barrels per day per year (the figure is rising somewhat in the coming years). Again, I use very modest and conservative numbers in my calculations. This make it very unlikely that we will have diesel exports beyond 2026, but I yet leave some hope that we will still have some in 2027. If my calculations in former parts of this series is correct, i.e. that we lose overall net oil exports in 2025-2026, then we have 2026 as the latest date when we have net diesel exports. But in the 2025-2026 period, we would have only around 1 mbd of diesel exports at most, and it would quickly be consumed by China and India. Can the world economy operate on 1 mbd of diesel exports? I really doubt that. Because there would be so little diesel to operate with in the end of the 2021-2026 period, in 2025 we would practically be bankrupt, leaving the 85 oil importing countries without diesel, perhaps with the exception of China and India, two countries which will, in 2025, consume all of the available diesel exports on the market.   

 

(5) "There is a 90% chance that humanity will go extinct by 2026." (professor Guy McPherson, quoted in the article "No Surrender? A Critique of Guy McPherson’s Prediction of Near-Term Human Extinction" by Moti Nissani posted in March 5, 2017 on the blog "Uncommon thought since 2002"). The end of the diesel market might happen in 2025, and then civilization pretty much stops, which will lead to loss of global dimming, which will lead to extreme runaway global warming, which will make humanity extinct pretty fast. So McPherson's prediction is not very outlandish, it may contain a grain of truth, but my bet is on somewhere between 2030-2040 for the complete extinction of the human race, because many will survive for a long time in underground bunkers.