Forest Man

The article "Will peak oil save Earth's climate" by Rex Weyler at www.greenpeace.org 14.12.2018 is an eye-opener. In it, Weyler states that Peak Oil was in some absolute sense reached already 2005 (1). It depends on how we count oil, and if we account for net energy decline of oil. He says:

"Oil companies and oil producing nations will claim that peak oil is not a real phenomenon or will not occur for many decades. To support this opinion, they use deception, re-defining what we once meant by “oil.” In late 2004, conventional oil production — typically from drilled wells — stopped growing and has since been on a long plateau, indicating the natural production peak.

Meanwhile, the alleged “increase” in oil production has been achieved with dirty, marginal, low-net energy grunge petroleum, financed with massive debt, stock scams, and outright Ponzi schemes."

He writes about tar sands oil, which also can be applied to fracking oil, this: 

"Tar sands bitumen can be burned for energy, but it is not “oil,” and adding bitumen onto “oil production” is like tacking the chaff onto the wheat harvest, a deception designed to disguise peak conventional oil and forestall the urgent transition to renewable energy."

I have before on this blog touted that November 2018 was the time of Peak Oil. But then I in fact give the enemy a little playroom. It may be the latest possible date of Peak Oil, if we count all fossil liquids, also the extremely expensive, but for all practical purposes the peak happened in 2005. Conventional oil has been roughly on a plateau since, a plateau which ended in the end of 2018, after which conventional oil production began to decline.

Another way to say it, is that 2005 was the peak of cheap oil, which is the only thing that matters for the world. And maybe, I guess, 2005 was the peak year for diesel, because unconventional oil contains very little diesel. Chris Martenson has a video about peak cheap oil, here. He says: "But we need to be careful here because it’s a mistake to lump all types of energy together because they have very different uses in our economy and they are not interchangeable."

In fact, the first famous article written about Peak Oil in recent times (if we do not count Marion K. Hubbert) was an article called "The end of cheap oil" by  Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrre on March 1, 1998, in Scientific American, which you can read here if you pay. It was the article that sparked the Peak Oil movement, or the Peak Oil revival. And this was all about peak cheap oil. 

This is extremely important to understand, so we can prepare for the future of extremely expensive energy. 

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Here is some more articles about peak cheap oil:

Peak “Cheap” Oil: Shale Oil Proves Peak Oil Is Indeed Upon Us (by Casey Research posted on Peak Oil news and message boards 2.11.2013)

Peak Oil Is All About Cheap Oil (by Kevin Drum on Mother Jones 30.9.2014)

Peak affordable oil (by Matt Mushalik, on Resilience 3.2.2015)

Peak Cheap Oil - Why you should invest in oil today (on youtube by EnergyneResources 6.1.2015)

Peak (Cheap) Oil (by mnold on the blog jdemeta 2.6.2019)

Peak Oil - Peak Oil Vs. Peak Cheap Oil (Wikipedia oil)

 

 

(1) as a curiosum, a heavenly synchronity maybe, 2005 was the year of my own environmental awakening, awakened by the ecotheologian Harry Månsus (1941-), and the year when I made a covenant with nature, in june 2005, when I married a pine, with a wedding ceremony in the forest in the outskirts of Turku, Finland (I even bought a golden ring to myself, which I engraved with the name of the pine, Shekinah, but I lost it 2008 because of losing too much fat). 2005 was also the year I founded the Order of the Holy Nature, my monastery order. My mission began by that, and I left academia for a homeless life in the forests of Stockholm, in early spring 2006.