Forest Man

(Part 1 of this series  and Part 2 of this series  and Part 3 of this series and Part 4 of this series)

 

 

 

I have, through calculations on my blog, arrived to the conclusion that some time during the year 2026 not a few store shelves in Sweden might be empty because of the lack of diesel in the world. Sweden may be without diesel to import during 2026, 2027 at the latest, according to my calculations. 2026 the world has only 430 000 barrels of diesel to share, which China and India very quickly will consume, while the world had over 9 million barrels of diesel to share in 2005, when diesel exports peaked. 430 000 barrels is only about 5% of what we had 2005, or 1/20. I.e. the world economy will shrink drastically, the 85 oil import countries (according to Jeffrey J. Brown in the article "Commentary: The export capacity index" on Resilience.org, February 18, 2013, see Summary, there were 155 net oil importing countries already in 2005) will maybe shrink by half or three quarters in their GDP in 2026. Because our economy builds upon eternal growth, it will collapse from this, and the store shelves will empty soon. This means that I might starve to death already during the winter 2025-2026, maybe already in April 2006, instead of in 1.1.2036, as I believed before, if I for some reason cannot pay for parttaking in farming in the countryside, or survive in some underground bunker. 

 

 

I subtract 17 % from my number of overall oil export volume

According to this graph in the article "Monthly petroleum and other liquids consumption worldwide from August 2019 to August 2022, with a forecast until December 2023" (published by N. Sönnichsen, Oct 13, 2022 on the website “Statista”), the world produced, in August 2019, 102,06 million barrels per day (mbd) of All Liquid Fuels. 

Around at least 14,7 % of this amount (this is a very conservative estimate), is Shale Oil (~10 %), Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) and Biofuels (peak crude+condensate in November 2018 was about 84,5 mbd, according to EIA, see this article: Peak Oil is Here! World oil production peaked in 2018, posted on February 1, 2022 by Alice Friedemann on the blog “Energy Skeptic”), which all contains little diesel. So my subtraction of 10 % from the 30 mbd of net export oil that I did in part 4 of this series was way too conservative, the real amount of subtraction should be around 14,7 %, and in this number I have taken into account the little diesel that is in the shale oil, otherwise this number would be ~17%.

14,7 % of 30 mbd is ~4,4 mbd.

30 mbd – 4,4 mbd is 25,6 mbd.

20 % (a barrel of oil contains only 20 % diesel) of 25,6 mbd is 5,12 mbd. 

 

THE EROEI calculations

Before we go to our actual calculation, let's review what EROEI will be for every year we calculate upon, and a few years before that, too. I base my calculations upon “Crash Watcher's” blogpost from February 13, 2011, An Export Land Model Analysis for the USA-Part 4, being, though, slightly more optimistic. We calculate a 0,7-0,8 points of yearly, linear decline here (“Crash Watcher” calculates with a 0,9 points of yearly decline), which is about a 7-8 % decline rate per year of the overall decline from 10:1 to 2:1, in the beginning. “Crash Watcher's” EROEI calculations are based on professor Charles A. S. Hall's calculations. Our calculations are also in full accordance with Richard Heinberg's statement already in 2014 that "costs of oil exploration/production is rising 10,9 % per year" (Douglas-Westwood) (quoted from his 2014 speech recorded on youtube titled "Richard Heinberg on Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future"). Or, in fact Heinberg is even more radical than us, because if the costs would rise 10,9, then EROEI would fall by about 10,9 % every year, instead of our 7-8 % (and remember that the cost rises with time). But, as usual, I want to be conservative in my calculations, because otherwise I have trouble believing my own calculations, everything changes so fast:

 

2020: 10:1 (10 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2021: 9,2:1: (11,7 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2022: 8,5:1 (13,4 % of the energy  obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2023: 7,8:1 (15,1 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2024: 7:1 (16,8 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2025: 6,3:1 (18,5 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2026: 5,5:1 (20,2 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2027: 4,8:1 (21,9 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2028: 4:1 (25 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2029: 3:1 (33 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

2030: 2,5:1 (40 % of the energy obtained goes into producing more energy)

 

"...if (or when) ERoEI decreases to the 2:1 to 3:1 range, oil exports would rapidly decline to zero."

(from the blogpost An Export Land Model Analysis for the USA-Part 4, February 13, 2011 on “Crash Watcher”)

"Second, the ERoEI of the oil extracted from Bakken Shale and Eagle Ford is likely a lot lower than tradition oil reserves (less than 2:1 according to Cleveland, in Oil Shale's Energy Return on Energy Investment or An Assessment of the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of Oil Shale)."

(from the same blogpost)

 

My actual calculations

Then to my actual calculations of the remaining global net diesel export volumes after 2021:

The volumes we calculate are squeezed from three directions, from three exponential functions (mostly a repeat from part 4 in our series) (“Crash Watcher” puts it like this when he calculates the net oil export volume of the top ten exporting countries: "Similarly, the ERoEI-adjusted net exports from the top ten, as a group, are the sum of a triple exponential effect:  exponentially decreasing production; exponentially increasing domestic consumption, and, exponentially increasing energy expenditures to produce the petroleum". From the blogpost "An Export Land Model Analysis for the USA-Part 3", 6.2.2011):

1) Exponential decline in production (let's take a 5 % average decline rate per year for the time 2021-2027. I assume that the production of overall conventional crude oil declines at this rate going forward (on average), and it is the conventional crude oil that really matters, because the rest of the fossil liquids contain little diesel. But now to diesel volumes: 5 % of 5,12 makes 0,26, our starting point here.  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. 2,5 % of 5,12 makes 0,13, our starting point here. "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 (we take here, anyway, a 0,7-0,8 points of yearly, linear decline here, which is about a 7-8 % 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).

 

I begin my calculations with the year 2022:

 

2022: 5,12 mbd - 0,26 mbd = 4,86 mbd

          4,86 mbd - 0,13 mbd = 4,73 mbd

          13,4 % of 5,12 mbd = 0,66 mbd

          4,73 mbd - 0,66 mbd = 4,07 mbd

In 2022 we may have 4,07 mbd of diesel exports left.  

 

2023: 4,07 mbd - 0,28 mbd (0,26 growing with 5 %) =

         ~3,80  mbd

          3,80 mbd - 0,133 mbd (0,13 growing with 2,5 %) =

         ~3,70 mbd

          15,1 % of 4,07 mbd is ~0,70

          3,70 mbd - 0,70 mbd = 3,00 mbd

In 2023 we may have 3,00 mbd of diesel exports left.  

 

2024: 3,00 mbd - 0,30 mbd = 2,70 mbd

          2,70 mbd - 0,15 mbd = 2,55 mbd

          16,8 % of 3,00 mbd is ~0,55 mbd

           2,55 mbd - 0,55 mbd = 2,00 mbd

In 2024 we may have 2,00 mbd of diesel exports left.  

 

2025: 2,00 mbd - 0,32 mbd = 1,68 mbd

          1,68 mbd - 0,16 mbd = 1,52 mbd

          18,5 % of 2,00 mbd is 0,37 mbd

          1,52 mbd - 0,37 mbd = 1,15 mbd

In 2025 we may have 1,15 mbd of diesel exports left.  

 

2026: 1,15 mbd - 0,34 mbd = 0,81 mbd

           0,81 mbd - 0,17 mbd = 0,64 mbd

           20,2 % of 1,15 mbd is 0,21 mbd

           0,64 mbd - 0,21 mbd = 0,43 mbd

In 2026 we may have 0,43 mbd of diesel exports left.  

 

2027: 0,43 mbd - 0,36 mbd = 0,07 mbd

          0,07 mbd - 0,18 mbd = 0

In 2027 we may have 0,00 mbd of diesel exports left.  

 

My previous calculations confirmed

As I said in the previous part (4), "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."

These new, more exact calculations, confirm what I said. And these new calculations are also very conservative, because according to Jeffrey J. Brown, oil exports decline at an accelerated rate of decline, and my decline curve begins to accelerate only in the very end. It declines with roughly the same amount from 2021 to 2025, after which, in 2026, it takes off. Remember that a curve with an accelerated rate of decline begins slowly, and goes very fast in the end, declines with 5 %, then 7 %, then 10 %, then 14 %, then 19 % and so on. My curve had its start point already in 2005, when oil exports peaked, so the pace of acceleration should be fast already in 2021. My first calculation of the volume of global net diesel exports after 2021 (in part 4), was more in accordance with the accelerated rate of decline curve. But its calculations were rough, a guess work, mostly. I come to almost the same results as these in part 4, in my later calculations in this blogpost, there is only about one year to half a year of a difference. 

“Crash Watcher” wrote in 2011: "Rather, the sum of exports from the top ten, as a group, are on a steady -6%/yr decline until hitting zero net exports in 2027."

6 % yearly decline is an exponential decline, or an accelerated rate of decline, which is the same thing in this book.

Jeffrey Brown talks about this decline rate in this manner: 

"So, the easy way to state it is: giving an ongoing, inevitable decline in production, unless an exporting country cuts their domestic oil consumption at the same rate as the rate of decline in production, or at a faster rate, it’s a mathematical certainty that the net export decline rate—what they actually ship out to consumers—will exceed the rate of decline in production. And, furthermore, it accelerates.

So, you look at exponential declines in oil production and hyperbolic—hyperbolic just means that the decline rate slows with time. Well, this is an accelerating decline rate. So, it’d start out like at 5% and then 10% and then 15% and 25%."

(from the article "To Understand The Oil Story, You Need To Understand Exports", by Chris Martenson and Jeffrey J. Brown, on the site “Resilience.org” on September 15, 2015).

“Crash Watcher”, surely, didn't account for the shale oil revolution in his estimates, it was too early for that (2011), so, if we account for that, we would maybe anyway land on something like 2028 as the end of the oil exports for the top ten exporting countries. Precisely the result of my own calculations, maybe plus one year. 

Observe that I also, in my calculations in this blogpost, did not account for my "ten critical factors" referred to in part 4 of this series.