Hi again guys! Just wanted to let you know that I have made a follow up conversation with my friend Ron Swenson a solar entrepreneur and inventor from California that is an expert on Peak oil and familiar with the challenge, he gives his perspectives on what we can do to meet the fossil energy dependance with solar energy and many other clever ideas! I hope you like it! ruclips.net/video/C7TkoPMDv8Y/видео.html Cheers, Johan
reducing energy consumption by 20-30% means the breakdown of capitalism, because capitalism need constant growth so be stable. if the economy shrinks the capitalistic system will break down.
@@thunderstorm6630Hi! The current system of economic growth will collapse anyway as a result of the current rate of resource extraction, ecosystem collapse and overpopulation. My recent guest Ron Swenson put it very clear: Either we continue like now to burn oil, natural gas and coal to consume a bunch of stuff we don't need to survive until we hit a wall and oil production etc declines sharply totally out of our controll with devasting consequences for our current civilisation. Or, we prepare and transition now with a less steep decline installing as much solar and other clever food production and energy solutions for a world without economic growth. In both cases the system will have to change completely but in the latter millions or even billions more pepole will be able to adapt and survive until we reach balance with Nature/the planetary boundaries. We have to face the reality like adults and stop ignoring the bills Nature is sending us. Cheers, Johan
Great interview. I have followed Art for several years. One thing that doesn't get enough attention is that the World's population has exploded since WWII, from 2B then to 8B now, thus driving oil consumption demand, especially as the majority of the World's population strives to become more allulent.
Average people don't WANT to know, and that's why they're so generally annoying. You can see the same flaky attitudes in EV purchases like the bloated Cybertruck.
thank you for the great conversation, Love from Iranian living in New Zealand, that is a big issue for oil rich area in our planet when the supply is declined, what all humanity can do 🎉 ❤
I just discovered this channel. What a straight up good imterview this was. Between the two uploaded videos encompassing this interview, I was curious about Art's view of the destinies of the 3 largest oil reserves on the planet. S. Arabia, at #2, can still produce at low cost (to them!) a conventional supply that presumably could see out the remainder of the oil age. We have to get off fossil fuels for pressing environmental reasons which will rum out the clock before that large reserve is emptied. If that is not the case, then there is another price point, where we have already been before the fracking bonanza, where the Canadian and Venezuelan oil sands and heavy oil can carry the world much longer than the S. Arabian reserves. I think, therfore, that it is highly highly unlikely we will run out of oil before we are off of it. We will be compelled off of it to evade the worst case scenarios of climate change not by the economics of scarcity.
Hi! I just made a follow up video with solar entrepreneur Ron Swenson, a friend of mine and a friend of Art. Ron has some really interesting perpectives, feel free to check it out! ruclips.net/video/C7TkoPMDv8Y/видео.html&t Cheers, Johan
Peak oil and gas has been forecast for decades, and the oil producers keep finding more. Why, because there is lots more there. When the price is high enough, they keep finding ways to produce more in order to make more money.
@@johndoe1909 You cannot mass produce vehicles without fossil fuel inputs. There won't be any new "transports" produced a few decades from now. Buy a bicycle and a good pair of sneakers.
You need to invest in nuclear and many powerplants. And you also need to check the uranium resources, how much we have and for how long. Also our rare earth metals aren't enough according to research but if we use it for public transport it can be feasible.
Art is a great source of realism in the energy future. He estimates near the end that energy use needs to decline by twenty percent or so in the very near future. What is difficult to really understand is what this (or a possibly greater reduction) will do to general availability and price. This problem of a chaotic future seems to be the stuff of war and societal breakdown. No one wants to be the one to volunteer to lower their standard of living and give up the privileges that our so called wealth has endowed us with. The downward slide of the availability of easily accessed power has fear, pain and dislocation written all over it. Be ready!
The 1960's had a stable climate perfect for large scale agriculture, 3 billion people, tons of fertile lands and healthy ecosystems, thriving animal and insect populations. It also wasn't facing the collapse of the AMOC, the death of all coral reefs and kelp forests, the disappearance of most aquifers and the mountain glaciers much of our drinkable water sources depend on. Temperatures were also not starting to soar at levels plants and animals are already reaching their limits of tolerance in certain areas (and we are a decade away from feeling the full effect of even 1.5.... while currently shooting for 3+!!!). There was also MUCH more livable/usable land than there will be once the oceans rise a meter and certain areas become too hot even for desert animals. We are NOT "going back to living like in the 1960's". According to several top climate scientists? We don't have several decades to cut back on fossil fuels by 20%. We don't have the luxury of waiting for those companies to choose to change out of the kindness of their hearts. Are they evil? Yes. 100%. They knew the science before (and better) than anyone else... and yet spent the past 40+ years funding climate denial projects, derailing attempts at divesting from fossil fuels, bribing politicians to get rid of ecological protections, and bribing politicians to implement tons of projects that would cement our societies dependence on their product. Are we fully dependent on fossil fuels? Yes. Can we stop ALL fossil fuels? No. Does this mean we just shrug and pray that these companies won't drive us all off a cliff? That is complete (un@living) madness.
Most are in denial - and denial is what allows them to maintain their "buy, buy, buy" mentality. I've watched this previously. Will it be ignored this time, too. Thank you Johanne. Is Sweden still pushing ESG for their survival into the future?
I 1st became aware of peak oil from Michael C. Ruppert's documentary "Collapse". Ruppert didn't anticipate the Shale boom before his death but I firmly believe he's right about what happens when oil cannot grow anymore. Human industrial civilization will simply cease to exist.
Much like the technological innovation of shale oil, it’s quite likely that we can innovate a solution for our future energy problems. Nuclear is capable of solving much of it with current technology, it just requires significant infrastructure investment.
If you stop burning oil the atmosphere will be clear of particulates very quickly. This will lead to catastrophic temperature rises due to elimination of the dimming particles.
It is likely possible to produce synthetic lubricants but it will come at a much higher energy cost, could probably be useful in some high tech applications thugh. But I am no expert in the how far this development has come and if even with abundannt solar power, it would make economic sense. Future will tell! Cheers, Johan
I have followed and listened to many interviews of Art Berman and respect his expertise. I also follow Doomberg and respect their articles and interviews on energy. This Peak Oil debate really needs to go to the next level with some sort of expert panel debate for and against Peak Oil. I hear some solid analysis on both sides.
A reply to Arts 2 talks comes next week with solar entrepreneur, Ron Swenson. Ron recognizes the Peak cheap oil problem but have a different approach on what we should do about it, stay tuned! Cheers, Johan
Very likely, here in Sweden we will similarly probably look back at these "super high electricity bills", with awe! Since Sweden since about 10 years back, increasingly is exporting power to European continent. While Sweden is importing European (mainly natural gas based)-prices! The price model to set 4 different prices in Sweden is not working anymore as southern Sweden pay a disproportinate much higher price because it is located closer to the continent (and because the hydro power plants in the north are unable to export sufficient power to the southern parts of the country. The energy conpanies blame the lack of sizeable power transmission cables but have no problem to dig down large ones to the continent where the eneegy companies, including state owned Vattenfall, pay more for the Swedish generated power... Do the math! Cheers, Johan
Brilliant conversation. Arthur Berman is very respectful geologist who know in depth energy supply demand and bring facts that oil and gas supply worldwide has reached the tipping point. Uncertain is the present and even more the future. The price increase that has happened and suggested as solution from Arthur is austerity policy and not rational solution. These policy will realize Peak oil demand from peoples and will kill many jobs on industry. Peoples with less energy consumption will relieve somehow the industry but every barrel less on production will decrease the industry accordingly. Then most of the people worldwide use the minimum possible of energy and can not cut more, if they do they will live "the Stone Age". US citizens and many on western world see on practice Peak oil demand but many have reached the limit poverty from inflation everywhere. When good and services increase then peak oil demand is easy to be reached. Never forget that most of the energy is to work and not for domestic use. Domestic use has low limit cooking cooling heating. So if peoples will not use cars they have used until today, they will not deliver the same work for economy, and the GDP will decrease gradually, and these will decrease many jobs, on refining, chemical plant, car industries, chemical plants etc. etc..
The cure for high commodity prices is high commodity prices. There may come a point where there is a shortage of oil. But rest assured, high prices will incentivize new production. Eventually bringing prices down.
Peak oil means peak low cost oil. The easy to get to oil runs out, the only option to keep up supply is harder to get oil. This is why the price for oil will always go up no matter what the demand. Because it is constantly getting more expensive to bring oil to market.
I read in Daniel Yergin's "The Quest" that there is still approximately 8 trillion barrels of tight oil left and 6 trillion of which is in the Rocky Mountains.
Hi! Most of oil that is left, especially tight oil, oil shale and tar sands cost too much/require too much energy to be extracted to make sense for the current economic system to use. Same goes for most oil in the Arctic area. All oil resources are simply not equal or even comparable in terms of energy return on energy invested (EROI) which determines if the resources are useful or not. That said, there are of course places that are uneconomic today that might be used in the future, albeit at much lower volumes but it wont stop the overall decline in world oil production that likely will happen within 10 years due to geological conditions/EROI in the major fields, especially shale oil production in US. This is Art Berman's point, future will tell if he is right. Cheers, Johan
Daniel Yergin´s "The Prize" is THE BOOK for the history of the oil industry and it´s importance for the modern economy. I´m sure you have read it, I used it alot in my history chapter for my Swedish book on the world´s oil dependance that was published in 2015. A book you might not have read is the "Oracle of Oil" by Mason Inman, the biography of M.King Hubbert, a fantastic man far ahead of his time as a pioneering geologist and expert on nuclear power including maybe the very first to lay out the importance of nuclear waste management to protect workers and people from radiation. Cheers, Johan
There is plenty of solar energy in the US. The models show that we can generate enough energy to supply our needs and take care of intermittencies. I don't see any decline in the standard of living due to energy. We just have to get moving on the transition before we run out of oil.
I think aviation will be massively affected. The jet thrust required to get an Airbus into the sky is a massive challenge for lithium electric jet technology.
@@hardypermaculture In late April I will record a new conversation with CEO and founder of Heart Aerospace, Anders Forslund a Swedish company that is developing a 30 seater hybrid-electric plane (up to 200km fully electric). You might find my previous talks with Anders interesting, latest talk below: ruclips.net/video/cSDGID1g_QI/видео.html Cheers, Johan
Some economists are predicting a second (or more) phase of inflation (based upon history); the first phase being that observed during covid pandemic. The good-old "peak production" issue combined with the need to combat climate change would be realistic to explain the coming inflation waves...
Just think about all the asepticly packaged goods you need 4 medicines and normal hospital operations...unimaginable without plastics. You can pyrolyse them and get basically natural gas back. But that costs energy...
Now, without addressing the population growth - child(1-2) per family policy - we are facing grimm future of conflict and confrontations. Most troubling development would be collapse of societies in lesser developing countries and then whole world, which we see in Haiti.
I follow Art Berman daily and I would ask him to calculate the impact of global warming on reducing the need of energy for heating. For example here in Italy we are using much less natural gas and heating oil simply because it is much warmer than in the past in winter. In the summer, when it is getting warmer and warmer, we are using much more electric power for air conditioning but it is also the period where the sun is more effective for solar PV energy production, so the two effects in part compensate each other. Does the global warming give us, for a short period of years, the opportunity to accelerate the use of rebuildable energy sources like Solar and Wind simply because we need less heating fuel?
The first thing we will cut back when the price of oil goes up will be transportation: fewer trips, carpools, buses, grocery delivery. That will probably be the visible extent of it for several years. Disposable plastics will be cut back and companies will greenwash that as much as they can. By the 2040’s, we’ll start to think about home energy use-cutting back home heating and entertainment. Sometime that decade, nitrogen fertilizer will begin to be scarce, and countries will compete to get what they need.
Nvidia produced 1.5 million 700 watt AI graphics cards every year. Just Nvidia. Our energy usage isn’t going to drop per person, it’s going to skyrocket as AI is adopted in the developed world. Uranium prices have more than doubled this year due to an imminent shortage of supply. Energy is about to get very expensive and this will have an incredible inflationary effect on commodities and we’ll see that in all parts of our lives.
One nice thing with nuclear is that even if the price of uranium doubles again that really barely changes the cost of energy. The uranium price is such a small part of the overall cost of energy.
@@pin65371 yeah that’s what gets me excited about investing in uranium miners. The upside potential for uranium is huge because even a 10x in price wouldn’t destroy the demand for it.
@@SzymonStas we just need to start building more nuclear power plants. Its sorta ridiculous that Vogtle is built and nothing else is really planned. Nuclear gets cheaper to build once you have a supply chain built out, a trained workforce and engineering done. In Canada back in the 70s Ontario started a plan to build out a nuclear fleet. They brought 1 reactor online per year for 20 years straight. Now they are refurbing some of the original plants to extend the life for another 30 years. Those refurbs are on budget and 6 months ahead of schedule. The problem is everyone wants the newest shiny reactor instead of just building what we know works already. Its not like there is a safety issue building a reactor from 30 years ago. The safety record has been great. I actually saw someone argue that the problem with nuclear is its too safe so when they do have an issue it turns into a big deal.
The issues are more uranium availability and waste handling. Plus this little item of overall safety. But the largest concern is the cost of both energy and finance to construct a plant, and to replace anything meaningful it would take thousands and thousands. Sorry, I just can't get my hopes up. More practical to try to use less and less matching the declining flows.
I totally agree! I will invite prof. Olle Häggström back to talk about the effects of the exponential AI development Chat GPT5 and energy use soon. Häggström is renowned AI researcher, mathematician and writer. Check out previous talks on AI, you might find them interesting: ruclips.net/video/1uEL6gOrln0/видео.htmlsi=AG1D42GV6H_bsDvR
Remember the famous book “twilight in the desert” written by an expert in the 1990s about how Saudi oil production was about to crash. Didn’t work out that way. I take these predictions with a huge grain of salt.
Matthew Simmons, that wrote the classic was right at the core: most crude oil producers have peaked or are close to peak production classic examples UK, Mexico and Norway but their are many more and Saudi Arabia has had a basically flat production since 2010 (yes they probably have a production capacity reserve of 1.5-2 million barrels per day) but while they could have competed with a more energy dense and cheap oil they have choosen to hold back production with US taking the lead. I heard Matthew Simmons daughter hold a keynote at an energy conference in Washington DC I attended in 2010 that was very memorable, clearly the daughter of a brilliant man far ahead of his time. We will only know the exact date of total world oil production peak ( NGLs, condensate and crude oil including from tar sands and shale oil) in the future. What is relevant is how the world and we as individuals prepare for such extremely challenging time. Cheers, Johan
@@EvolutionShowNr1 yup.. a while back Biden was asking the Saudis to pump more oil and the president of France was overheard telling Biden that the Saudis couldnt increase production. The only advantage the Saudis have is their oil is already so cheap to produce that even if it starts costing more to produce they can still make a profit for a long time. The key for them at this point is to use the oil money to find ways to make more money in other ways so as their revenue from oil drops they can still keep the country operating. They need to go the Norway route. They are sorta doing that but it seems like they are looking too much at shiny things that might just result in them wasting a bunch of money.
The oil industry is a HUGE industry. Its like an aircraft carrier. It will take a long time for the momentum (change in the situation) to turn the boat. But in Simmons' defense, conventional oil prod has been on a plateau since 2005.
@@jivefive99 Or the boat may turn very quickly. BYD, the largest EV producer, just started making an EV that is very close to the size of a Camry, has a 170 mile EPA range, and sells for $15,000. EVs are a lot cheaper to operate per mile. Market forces are likely to move transportation off oil very rapidly. It doesn't matter how large the oil industry might be. When there is a cheaper and adequate replacement for oil then oil will die.
There is no sign of anything cheaper or of replacing oil anytime soon. And anyone who buys a dedicated electric vehicle with no gas engine for electricity backup deserves whats coming -- electric only also isnt ready yet, and my never be. The auto manufacturers knew that and did dedicateds anyway -- and got their butts handed to them :)@@bobwallace9753
I would see Art at one or two of the peak oil conferences I went to (2011-2012? Washington DC?) before they pretty much gave up "screaming to the heavens." He'd be one or two tables away from me, and he was already known online in the peak oil world. I always wondered why he was being so quiet. He'd just sit there and say nothing during the Q&A (he wasnt out front like Matt Simmons.) I wondered if he just was waiting for things to become more clear, or if he knew a long time ago that crude oil was finite, but ringing the alarm bells was premature (oil shale started in earnest in 2014+). So now I wonder if he's just late, or was it always the plan to be the 4th guy in the relay race ...
I attended ASPO-USA energy conferences in Washington D.C. 2010 and 2011. I recall their were about 300 attendees each conf. and at the time Art was not as known as today and the other speakers present were famous people like John Michael Greer, Richard Heinberg, Prof. Tad Patzek, a us kongress person (forgot his name but he booked the whole Auditorium at Capitol Hill for several hours so we could hold several sessions their). My point is Art was far from main star at the time and the respectful and modest man he is, he would hardly stand out in a crowd among these prominent speakers so to speak. Cheers, Johan
The peak oil movement (I found it in 2006) was listening to people who actually knew something about oil and even natgas production. Art was somewhat rare -- an actual petroleum geologist (like Colin Campbell RIP). Rapier and Simmons at least had some experience with oil. Art wasnt an academic or an energy bombthrower. But he didnt say a thing at these conferences (at least the ones I attended) for years. Just wondered why. :) @@EvolutionShowNr1
@@jivefive99 Good observation but sometimes people don´t share their thoughts as much as you would like/expect at big events like conferences. And as you say, Art is one of those rare birds that really gets it, both the big picture AND have the inside view from the oil and gas industry with the technical understanding and knows the key numbers to look for etc. Art like several others admit that they missed in their prediction with 10-15 years in terms of world total peak fossil liquid fluids and US shale oil/gas production. In the long term I think he will be right though. Cheers, Johan
One of the improvements at the margin for stimulating conventional exploration in the US would be to mandate that existing leases would expire below the lowest stratigraphic level of production. This is the approach taken in Canada, and it stimulated a bunch of new exploration.
Another good way is to conserve the oil via efficiency improvement. The oil is most useful in transportation consumed via ICEs (internal combustion engines), especially diesel. There is a new ICE technology call "Diesoline" engines. Which is a diesel-gasoline engine hybrid having the high efficiency of diesel but without the evil soot or NOx emissions like the gasoline engines - or the gasoline engine to have the diesel engines' efficiency. The new technology could save the oil consumption by at least 1/4 up to 1/3. The technology can retrofit billions of current engines, or new engines in production or in design stage. This technology can achieve the 20% to 30% Mr. Berman talked about. Can we talk?
Why has conventional flat lined? Because we started fracking shale and shale has low risk so no need to drill expensive conventional wells in high risk places. Conventional Exploration capital has plummeted over last 10 years and it continues. It will catch up with us. Peak HCs won’t happen anytime soon. Happy to debate.
The known reserves of fossil fuels continue to increase eventhough the demand has expanded dramatically. In 1980 there were 30 years of oil left (so it ran out in 2010!). In 2020 there were 57 years of oil left. The Earth is awash with hydrocarbons, as the fracking revolution has demonstrated in the US. To put it another way, the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones, and the Oil Age won't end because we ran out of oil.
Well we did not run out of stones, the Stone Age in fact never ended. We use more stones than ever before in fact, just in many more sophisticated ways and yes with exponential growth of the global population, came an exponential growth in the use of stones. But to your point. Firstly, far from all total world oil reserves are ever going to be extracted, due to geological and economic constraints. Secondly, the US Shale boom is a much more costly, read lower energy return on energy invested than conventional oil extraction in say Saudi Arabia or Russia. If the world were to run on shale oil extraction we would live in a total different, extremely poor economy. As Art Berman has pointed out many times, the shale oil boom is built on extracting the low hanging fruit first, with loans/the financial system based on a future of continued energy growth linked to the fossil energy sector. Yet that will not happen at today´s level due to geological and followingly, economic constrains. Thus we will stop drilling for oil long before "we run out" of oil, it simply wont make economic sense. Also remember, the shale oil numbers are very flawed as they include NGL:s and other substances derived from Natural Gas that are not crude oil. US Shale oil often lack the same properties as conventional oil so it must be mixed to be used in wider applications. That said, US Shale oil production has bought the world some time to find alternatives and adapt to a world with declining fossil energy availability, if it is 5 years or 10 years or more is hard to say but 50 years, not a chance. But I worry more about the exponential AI development than our energy predicament at the moment, yes they are linked but I would not count on a Super AI to solve our energy needs, at least not with Humanity still being around to enjoy it... Cheers! / Johan
@@OldScientist Coal reserves may indeed last longer but they will not replace oil at today´s economy of scale and every process that involves transforming a solid based energy form to liquid form has alot of transformtion losses/lower energy return on energy invested. Coal is indeed powerful to genereate electricity and heat and kick started the industrial revolution with the steam engine, whether we like it not. But the future involves thinking different how we use energy and how we combine different energy sources, inbedded energy in materials already produced etc. The problem is that most people think linearly,, as if a business as usual scenario is necessary or even possible. To quote Einstein "The measure of Intelligence is the ability to change", or adapt to a new energy reality in this case. Will it be hard? Yes. Will everybody survive or flourish in the transition, very unlikely no. But it does not mean we should not prepare and make the best of it. I have great hope in humanity, when we work together we can achieve almost anything! :) Cheers, Johan
Stop burning for the fuels. Make plastics more durable. Recycle as much as you can. Going back to the 1950s is no option ( 28:08 ). The transsition has to involve economics.
If you can't use methane, propane and butane for transport - I think you're missing a trick. Any of those will burn in an internal combustion engine, or a gas turbine - no trouble at all. There is nothing disadvantageous about them at all. The only limitation is around flight, where liquid fuel is necessary because a suitable pressure vessel for gaseous fuel is too heavy. I would suggest that the only problem with natural gas liquids is that there isn't enough of it.
@@hardypermaculture No problem at all. I mean, you can't just put Butane in your Diesel SUV. But if you want to mass produce Butane powered SUV's its no problem at all. If you already produce LPG SUV's (and many do) you don't even have to change the production line, only the software in the ECU.
Peak oil...again! This well worn "crisis" has been popping up regularly since the early 70s. In fact I remember a headline from around that time: Oil Gone by 1990! This kind of marketing is how we are conditioned to accept the continued price and tax increases that benefit the oil companies and governments.
Art adds good data and when he sticks to issues directly related to his data he has good points. However he tends to make big statements which are not supported by the data he discussed and ignores studies which opposed him. In the end he is a subtle supporter of fossil fuels as he believes they are the only system capable of supporting humanity. When he talks about investing he is certainly supportive of investment in fossil fuels which is holding back transition to low carbon fuels. Art has a bad case of fossil fuels path dependency and a subtle presentation which makes him appear as neutral. I agree that the developed world needs to drop back a couple of decades in our energy use but that we will only do that when forced.
Hi guys! Hope you are great! If you like this talk with Art, feel free to check out part 1 where we focus on US Shale gas production and why Art Berman thinks it will decline in the next couple of years translating to a decline in world natural gas production! ruclips.net/video/rv85LTMO8TQ/видео.htmlsi=-QQz-xpJPuW008gy Cheers, Johan, host of the Evolution Show
World fossil fuel supply is finite/limited. The cheap stuff has been extracted and used it’s gone. The half that is remaining is spread out, harder to collect and/or less dense. The joules invested for a joule returned has peaked globally and is declining.
As fossil fuel reserve decline, it means the price will go up, which will make alternative fuel more competitive. When oil and gas gets too expensive, we will finally turn to nuclear which is more sustainable.
What do you mean? At 30 dollars a barrel most shale oil companies can't even breakeven, and then we are talking about the best play formations and most effecient shale companies or am I missing something?? Cheers, Johan
I remember 20 years ago they all kept saying the same thing. While I agreed at that time then I am really starting to have my doubts I often wonder if the prep/collapse thing is a carrot for people who have given up.......but keep them buying stuff?
One question, I assume you are aware Venezuela has ridiculous amounts of crappy oil. If it ever got problematic in the US you could just engineer a 'change' in access?
Hi! Venezuela´s largest oil deposits are much like the Canadian oil sands, just useful at very high oil prices but it comes with a high cost, ie energy return on energy invested is significantly lower than with conventional oil and even shale oil has much higher energy returns. This translates into much higher inflation when a larger degree of the oil extracted need to be used from low energy return oil resources. It simply means a whole other economy than we see today, you cannot a run the global economy on expensive venezualian and canadian oil unless you at the same time decrease overall energy consumption significantly which will have immense impact on the financial system when there are no short term altneratives. That said, oil from Venezuela will surely be extracted as long as the market is willing to pay the price but it will not change the overall challenge we face with a nearby decline of cheap oil and natural gas. Cheers, Johan
Art, energy companies are not terrible. They are what they are and they are needed. Stop with the rhetoric. Also, don't forget about the Anwar. By some estimates there is as much oil in the Anwar as there was in Saudi Arabia at it's peak. The trick is getting permission to access it and to do it in the most environmentally non traumatic fashion as possible.
25:25 "plastic has no other source than oil and natural gas"... not true. For economic reasons and lack of technology it has been oil and gas the only source for plastic, but plastic is nothing more than a long molecule if carbon strings mixed with other minerals, you can literally make plastic out of any heavy carbon source, it would be extremely economically expensive and energy intensive.
that is a bit of an absurd argument. You can extract gold from sea water, but no one will discuss you if you say that "the only source of gold is mining". You also can produce oil from coal, go with an spaceship to a meteorite to get some iridium, but this not makes these "A source", but a sink.
Art meant that due to laws of thermo dynamics, energy density etc oil and natural gas enables production of plastics at mass scale that makes economic sense. No other alternatives, that we are aware of today can do the same. That does not mean we shouldn't pursue alternatives, especially using LESS plastics and other recyclable materials. We just need to be realistic in our expectations and understand what makes the world spin today if we are to adapt and find sustainable ways forward. Cheers, Johan
@@ignaciofernandezclavel3535 bad analogy from your part, we can already produce methane from decomposing organic matter and it is possible to turn methane into plastic. Is it economically viable at this point? no! but it is possible. And as prices of oil continue to rise, plastics will also increase in value, making the prospect of making plastic from methane a real possibility. Plastic use can be reduced, but it cannot be entirely eliminated.
@@pedrolopes3542 if oil price rises, not only the "normal plastic" value rises. Everything's price rises. Also "bioplastics" or "plastics made from methane" or whatever you call it. You need fossil fuel to produce basically everything: from were you get your organic matter? From crops? they will be more expensive, as crops need fossil fuels to grow. From cattle? the same, squared. In the end, you need to pack, transport, unpack, refine, manufacture, transport again, process, blah blah blah... All these, with fossil fuels.
@ofernandezclavel3535 Plastics only begun to be used in the early 20th century, we had agriculture before that, we also had fertilizers before that, we had an entire chemical industry before that too. Based on what you wrote I can only assume that you don't understand what oil is or that you are deliberately being disingenuous about it, oil is just a bunch of carbon-hydrogen molecules, around 80% carbon, there is nothing special about it. while plastic is mostly just long carbon molecules, you can produce plastic from timber if necessary. You claim that when oil becomes more difficult to extract or when we ran out of it that the price of Everything will go up, but you ignorantly failed to mention that not all products are directly dependent on oil, some products are going to increase in price more than others and some uses for plastics will become too expensive, so they will be replaced by other solutions, like plastic packages, fuels, clothing, simple households items that are currently made of simple plastics will have to be made of other composite materials. Oil is cheap, that is what makes plastics cheaper than timber or natural rubber, but once oil becomes scarce plastic will also become expensive, more expensive than timber. This change in price will make the industry of bio-gases lucrative, because the future cost of extracting the little oil and gas left on the ground will surpass the cost of growing algae for biomass in order to produce bio-gas. And, no! algae do not grow on farm fields so it will not increase the price of food. Cost is the only thing holding bio-gas from being mass produced, (it is still more expensive than extracting gas from the ground)... for now. From a technological point of view, there is nothing preventing bio-gas from taking off and replacing the current fossil-gas market.
A 30% energy consumption decline will be accompanied by long lasting economic depression. Consider that economic depression was a root cause of the rise of Nazi Germany. This next epoch of the human story is likely to be a return of the kind of racial/ethnic violence that characterised most of human history. These are important factors I don’t hear spoken about in energy decline scenarios when people are trying to figure out where to live to adapt to this new paradigm.
The price of oil and gas is going to rocket because of one very obvious fact and that is oil and gas production will drop 90% in the coming decades. Renewables account for only 5% of todays global energy production. Russia will have all the oil and gas left on the planet soon.
Fossil fuels (fuels, not industrial feedstock) provide energy. We may be running low on fossil fuel but we have a much cheaper source of energy that we are now harvesting. The argument that we will suffer economic decline is foolish. Cheaper energy means more economic growth. Just consider EVs which are replacing ICEVs. EVs are becoming cheaper to manufacture than are ICEVs as the cost of batteries plummet and economies of scale accelerate. It's already far cheaper to drive a mile with electricity than with gasoline or diesel. And the cost of wind/solar electricity continues to fall. How about space heating? Electric heat pumps are becoming more and more efficient. And they will run on renewable electricity which continues to become cheaper.
Our society is so incredibly wasteful that we could shave half the waste and improve our standard of living while slashing our energy needs. A car, for example, is about 0.5% efficient at doing it's primary job of moving a single person from A to B. That is simply insane! Even an EV is only about 2% efficient. A massive improvement - but not on the order we need. In cities we can make walking and transit the most desirable way of getting around for most trips and decimate energy demand in doing so. But you just can't beat the bicycle for energy efficiency. Nothing comes close. I'm not proposing everybody ride a bike. But why would we not encourage cycling to the extent that many more people would gladly make the switch? Most may see this as unrealistic but only through the lens of the disaster of modern land use. Suburban development of the last 7 or 8 decades has been catastrophic for our wellbeing. We waste energy because it has been way too cheap. Supply constraint and rising prices are exactly what we need to start behaving like adults.
We can and do produce plastics from plant wastes. It is just more expensive because a lot of our plastics are produced from the waste products of oil production. That makes for incredibly cheap plastics.
I would hazard that yes we have reached peak production (praise the stars) but not because there isn’t more. There is plenty. My own country huge gas reserves in 2022. Still untapped. The reason for peak is demand. Demand is falling. The falling cost curves of EV production are plummeting. Best selling car in Europe is an EV. Oil great, battery storage cheaper and better. What you can refer to as an asymmetric bet. Oil and gas fucked
What are you going to do if the DRC actually starts preventing child slave labor to mine the cobalt for your batteries, or China decides that the people of Baotou deserve a better environment where an agonizing early death from cancer caused by toxic rare earth mining tailings is avoided? Sanctimonious middle class “stop oil” activists are more than happy to devastate the third world, it seems.
The absolute blistering idiocy of this conversation is shocking when this guy is a so-called expert. It will be obvious in several years that Berman is 💯 wrong and standards of living - esp. in developing countries - will continue to progress and more energy demand AND production will be happening.
8 years ago there was a couple of hundred thousand EV’s on the road, globally, today, there’s over 10 million EV’s, including 2 in my garage, with many millions more coming over the years, continuing the decline of oil demand and consumption, until oil hits close to zero, in the late 2040’s.
You'll have to drive 40000 km to be even with an combustion engine due to the increases input of basemetals in the car You need to build 150 new mines to get the nickel ,copper lithium needed. BTW all the "science" is finalen by the rockefeller companies since the 50;s The co 2 is needed by the banks to print green bonds to keep the moneyprinting going
Yes, how we use oil a limited resource is very important. To burn it mindlessly in super sized SUVs 1-person commutes, wastefully in throwaway Amazon gadgets that add no value or just too short sighted to create an economy that recycles plastics instead of pretending to do so. My fam for one reduced ⛽ for 🚗 by 95%, with EVs, solar. Solar absolutely can give you free sustainable energy after 3-6 years to break-even. We reduced our HVAC load on gas generated ⚡ by installing an efficient mini split heat pump, only heat/cool rooms we're in. Now, I completely agree we must save oil for critical use such as medical etc. But have you looked at the mindless amount of single use throw away whatnots? Big palm sized devices get tossed in one use, when with a little thought, a little less convenience, we can save so much plastics from ending up in landfills, 🌊. Edit: To claim EV battery minerals are unrecyclable is flat out wrong.
Couldn't agree more. Many good examples, especially solar and single use stuff we just throw is an immense waste of energy not to mention the environmental impact and indeed health related issues it causes. Most living people now have plastic substances in their bodies from things we get via water/sea and plastics from food containers etc etc. Helped my parent install a solar roof and energy storage 2019, they have saved about 30 % in energy costs anually and during summer they power everything in the house including hot water and electricity from solar energy even during the night (except very rainy periods) Cheers! /Johan
Bear in mind it´s not "end of oil", it´s end of cheap abundant oil, the engine for economic growth as we know it. We will use crude oil long into the foreseable future but much less and under totally different economic conditions and likely living standards. Chees, Johan
@@EvolutionShowNr1 Lower living standards will include lower food and heating fuel production. I look toward this future with much less equanimity than do some.
The idea of reverting to the standards of living of the 50's is quite reasonable, in principle. However, the sociodemographic makeup of the actual US population is substantially different, if not totally incompatible, with the demographics of the past. The quality of the current demographics, driven by welfare, dismal immigration, reverse discrimination, and quota mentality, make it impossible to replicate the transaction cost of the past, now that decent people have to cage themselves to avoid all the calamities lurking in the surroundings.
Hi again guys! Just wanted to let you know that I have made a follow up conversation with my friend Ron Swenson a solar entrepreneur and inventor from California that is an expert on Peak oil and familiar with the challenge, he gives his perspectives on what we can do to meet the fossil energy dependance with solar energy and many other clever ideas! I hope you like it!
ruclips.net/video/C7TkoPMDv8Y/видео.html
Cheers,
Johan
reducing energy consumption by 20-30% means the breakdown of capitalism, because capitalism need constant growth so be stable. if the economy shrinks the capitalistic system will break down.
@@thunderstorm6630Hi! The current system of economic growth will collapse anyway as a result of the current rate of resource extraction, ecosystem collapse and overpopulation. My recent guest Ron Swenson put it very clear: Either we continue like now to burn oil, natural gas and coal to consume a bunch of stuff we don't need to survive until we hit a wall and oil production etc declines sharply totally out of our controll with devasting consequences for our current civilisation. Or, we prepare and transition now with a less steep decline installing as much solar and other clever food production and energy solutions for a world without economic growth. In both cases the system will have to change completely but in the latter millions or even billions more pepole will be able to adapt and survive until we reach balance with Nature/the planetary boundaries. We have to face the reality like adults and stop ignoring the bills Nature is sending us. Cheers, Johan
@@EvolutionShowNr1 I know and I agree
It's a basic fact of life that we so often overlook: if we fail to impose limits on ourselves sooner or later they will be imposed upon us by nature.
Art Berman is a great guest.
I always want to hear from him.
Thanks Johan
Great interview. I have followed Art for several years. One thing that doesn't get enough attention is that the World's population has exploded since WWII, from 2B then to 8B now, thus driving oil consumption demand, especially as the majority of the World's population strives to become more allulent.
Too bad that doesn’t matter when geological limits are reached.
Some would say the oil production has driven world population.
*Affluent
People mention that all the time, what is allulent
And World Population is now declining, quite rapidly in many countries.
You got it!
It's amazing we made it this far with the luxuries of energy. Unfortunately energy always has a beginning and end. The mass has no clue whats coming.
Average people don't WANT to know, and that's why they're so generally annoying. You can see the same flaky attitudes in EV purchases like the bloated Cybertruck.
Johan!! Great job on the podcast. Art is an impressive guest
Thanks Stewart! Glad you liked our talk! I plan to invite Art back for a talk on nuclear power later, stay tuned for that! :) Cheers! /Johan
Great podcast Art Berman is the number one person to talk to when it comes to fossil fuels.
Art has always been a very clear communicator 👍..great charts..excellent info.!! 🎯
Have never seen your channel before. Very impressed. Art Berman is excellent guest. next time hit on uranium and nuclear.
Ya I just discovered him recently. Good stuff.
thank you for the great conversation, Love from Iranian living in New Zealand, that is a big issue for oil rich area in our planet when the supply is declined, what all humanity can do 🎉 ❤
I just discovered this channel. What a straight up good imterview this was. Between the two uploaded videos encompassing this interview, I was curious about Art's view of the destinies of the 3 largest oil reserves on the planet. S. Arabia, at #2, can still produce at low cost (to them!) a conventional supply that presumably could see out the remainder of the oil age. We have to get off fossil fuels for pressing environmental reasons which will rum out the clock before that large reserve is emptied. If that is not the case, then there is another price point, where we have already been before the fracking bonanza, where the Canadian and Venezuelan oil sands and heavy oil can carry the world much longer than the S. Arabian reserves. I think, therfore, that it is highly highly unlikely we will run out of oil before we are off of it. We will be compelled off of it to evade the worst case scenarios of climate change not by the economics of scarcity.
Hi! I just made a follow up video with solar entrepreneur Ron Swenson, a friend of mine and a friend of Art. Ron has some really interesting perpectives, feel free to check it out!
ruclips.net/video/C7TkoPMDv8Y/видео.html&t
Cheers,
Johan
Peak oil and gas has been forecast for decades, and the oil producers keep finding more. Why, because there is lots more there. When the price is high enough, they keep finding ways to produce more in order to make more money.
I used to be a battery operator in Alberta we used the distillates to help heavy oil flow in a pipeline. They did a lot of chemical witchcraft.
Thank you! So illuminating.
Love the graphs & the insight. I truly appreciate your information
Thank you
this is actually good news on the whole. the oil prices will go up naturally forcing the shift to electrified transports even faster.
No sir. We dont have enough resources for electric anything to become mainstream. You are misinformed.
@@henriknasmark sorry. thats one of the many ev myths you are propagating there. and myths doesnt get real just because you repeat them
@@johndoe1909 You cannot mass produce vehicles without fossil fuel inputs. There won't be any new "transports" produced a few decades from now. Buy a bicycle and a good pair of sneakers.
You need to invest in nuclear and many powerplants. And you also need to check the uranium resources, how much we have and for how long. Also our rare earth metals aren't enough according to research but if we use it for public transport it can be feasible.
Art is a great source of realism in the energy future. He estimates near the end that energy use needs to decline by twenty percent or so in the very near future. What is difficult to really understand is what this (or a possibly greater reduction) will do to general availability and price. This problem of a chaotic future seems to be the stuff of war and societal breakdown. No one wants to be the one to volunteer to lower their standard of living and give up the privileges that our so called wealth has endowed us with. The downward slide of the availability of easily accessed power has fear, pain and dislocation written all over it. Be ready!
And yet the population is still accelerating especially in Africa.
It's nearly impossible to prep for the collapse of civilization.
The 1960's had a stable climate perfect for large scale agriculture, 3 billion people, tons of fertile lands and healthy ecosystems, thriving animal and insect populations.
It also wasn't facing the collapse of the AMOC, the death of all coral reefs and kelp forests, the disappearance of most aquifers and the mountain glaciers much of our drinkable water sources depend on. Temperatures were also not starting to soar at levels plants and animals are already reaching their limits of tolerance in certain areas (and we are a decade away from feeling the full effect of even 1.5.... while currently shooting for 3+!!!). There was also MUCH more livable/usable land than there will be once the oceans rise a meter and certain areas become too hot even for desert animals. We are NOT "going back to living like in the 1960's".
According to several top climate scientists? We don't have several decades to cut back on fossil fuels by 20%. We don't have the luxury of waiting for those companies to choose to change out of the kindness of their hearts. Are they evil? Yes. 100%. They knew the science before (and better) than anyone else... and yet spent the past 40+ years funding climate denial projects, derailing attempts at divesting from fossil fuels, bribing politicians to get rid of ecological protections, and bribing politicians to implement tons of projects that would cement our societies dependence on their product. Are we fully dependent on fossil fuels? Yes. Can we stop ALL fossil fuels? No. Does this mean we just shrug and pray that these companies won't drive us all off a cliff? That is complete (un@living) madness.
Yay Art Berman!! Just subscibed.
This was great.
Most are in denial - and denial is what allows them to maintain their "buy, buy, buy" mentality. I've watched this previously. Will it be ignored this time, too. Thank you Johanne. Is Sweden still pushing ESG for their survival into the future?
The public is more aware of P. Diddy's personal scandals than critical geology. Priorities are completely skewed.
Art, butane is blended into gasoline. in winter in Europe, it can be up to 8% reducing to 5% in summer. it has a RON circa 100
I 1st became aware of peak oil from Michael C. Ruppert's documentary "Collapse". Ruppert didn't anticipate the Shale boom before his death but I firmly believe he's right about what happens when oil cannot grow anymore. Human industrial civilization will simply cease to exist.
Much like the technological innovation of shale oil, it’s quite likely that we can innovate a solution for our future energy problems. Nuclear is capable of solving much of it with current technology, it just requires significant infrastructure investment.
If you stop burning oil the atmosphere will be clear of particulates very quickly. This will lead to catastrophic temperature rises due to elimination of the dimming particles.
Interesting insights on the oil/energy situation.
Industry also needs oil for lubrication. Solar can provide energy but factories and vehicles will literally screech to a halt without grease.
It is likely possible to produce synthetic lubricants but it will come at a much higher energy cost, could probably be useful in some high tech applications thugh. But I am no expert in the how far this development has come and if even with abundannt solar power, it would make economic sense. Future will tell! Cheers, Johan
XOM 11 billion barrel discovery in Guyana….
Usually, the big discoveries off the coast of Africa are stated as barrel of oil equivalent. And if you read the report, mostly natural gas.
Which can supply world energy needs for four months.
I have followed and listened to many interviews of Art Berman and respect his expertise. I also follow Doomberg and respect their articles and interviews on energy. This Peak Oil debate really needs to go to the next level with some sort of expert panel debate for and against Peak Oil. I hear some solid analysis on both sides.
A reply to Arts 2 talks comes next week with solar entrepreneur, Ron Swenson. Ron recognizes the Peak cheap oil problem but have a different approach on what we should do about it, stay tuned! Cheers, Johan
You can debate all you want but geology and limited amounts of molecules (here oil ) wont give a crap.
soon when gas is 8 bucks per gallon....we will look back at these as the good ole days....
Very likely, here in Sweden we will similarly probably look back at these "super high electricity bills", with awe! Since Sweden since about 10 years back, increasingly is exporting power to European continent. While Sweden is importing European (mainly natural gas based)-prices! The price model to set 4 different prices in Sweden is not working anymore as southern Sweden pay a disproportinate much higher price because it is located closer to the continent (and because the hydro power plants in the north are unable to export sufficient power to the southern parts of the country. The energy conpanies blame the lack of sizeable power transmission cables but have no problem to dig down large ones to the continent where the eneegy companies, including state owned Vattenfall, pay more for the Swedish generated power... Do the math! Cheers, Johan
Brilliant conversation. Arthur Berman is very respectful geologist who know in depth energy supply demand and bring facts that oil and gas supply worldwide has reached the tipping point. Uncertain is the present and even more the future. The price increase that has happened and suggested as solution from Arthur is austerity policy and not rational solution. These policy will realize Peak oil demand from peoples and will kill many jobs on industry. Peoples with less energy consumption will relieve somehow the industry but every barrel less on production will decrease the industry accordingly. Then most of the people worldwide use the minimum possible of energy and can not cut more, if they do they will live "the Stone Age". US citizens and many on western world see on practice Peak oil demand but many have reached the limit poverty from inflation everywhere. When good and services increase then peak oil demand is easy to be reached. Never forget that most of the energy is to work and not for domestic use. Domestic use has low limit cooking cooling heating. So if peoples will not use cars they have used until today, they will not deliver the same work for economy, and the GDP will decrease gradually, and these will decrease many jobs, on refining, chemical plant, car industries, chemical plants etc. etc..
What are you talking about, people who consume the least energy will be in the "Stone Age", that's not a truthful.objectification at all
2008-2014, oil in récord and companies losing big for invest in exploración finding near nothing!
The cure for high commodity prices is high commodity prices. There may come a point where there is a shortage of oil. But rest assured, high prices will incentivize new production. Eventually bringing prices down.
Until it runs out.
Peak oil means peak low cost oil.
The easy to get to oil runs out, the only option to keep up supply is harder to get oil.
This is why the price for oil will always go up no matter what the demand. Because it is constantly getting more expensive to bring oil to market.
I read in Daniel Yergin's "The Quest" that there is still approximately 8 trillion barrels of tight oil left and 6 trillion of which is in the Rocky Mountains.
Hi! Most of oil that is left, especially tight oil, oil shale and tar sands cost too much/require too much energy to be extracted to make sense for the current economic system to use. Same goes for most oil in the Arctic area. All oil resources are simply not equal or even comparable in terms of energy return on energy invested (EROI) which determines if the resources are useful or not. That said, there are of course places that are uneconomic today that might be used in the future, albeit at much lower volumes but it wont stop the overall decline in world oil production that likely will happen within 10 years due to geological conditions/EROI in the major fields, especially shale oil production in US. This is Art Berman's point, future will tell if he is right. Cheers, Johan
Daniel Yergin´s "The Prize" is THE BOOK for the history of the oil industry and it´s importance for the modern economy. I´m sure you have read it, I used it alot in my history chapter for my Swedish book on the world´s oil dependance that was published in 2015. A book you might not have read is the "Oracle of Oil" by Mason Inman, the biography of M.King Hubbert, a fantastic man far ahead of his time as a pioneering geologist and expert on nuclear power including maybe the very first to lay out the importance of nuclear waste management to protect workers and people from radiation. Cheers, Johan
@@EvolutionShowNr1 Thanks. Appreciate the thorough explanation
There is plenty of solar energy in the US. The models show that we can generate enough energy to supply our needs and take care of intermittencies. I don't see any decline in the standard of living due to energy. We just have to get moving on the transition before we run out of oil.
Check out next episode, it will be on solar energy with my californian friend, solar entrepreneur Ron Swenson, very inspiring dude! :)
I think aviation will be massively affected. The jet thrust required to get an Airbus into the sky is a massive challenge for lithium electric jet technology.
@@hardypermaculture In late April I will record a new conversation with CEO and founder of Heart Aerospace, Anders Forslund a Swedish company that is developing a 30 seater hybrid-electric plane (up to 200km fully electric). You might find my previous talks with Anders interesting, latest talk below:
ruclips.net/video/cSDGID1g_QI/видео.html
Cheers,
Johan
Good! nothing is faster than change.
Yeah like a car accident.
Some economists are predicting a second (or more) phase of inflation (based upon history); the first phase being that observed during covid pandemic. The good-old "peak production" issue combined with the need to combat climate change would be realistic to explain the coming inflation waves...
Just think about all the asepticly packaged goods you need 4 medicines and normal hospital operations...unimaginable without plastics.
You can pyrolyse them and get basically natural gas back.
But that costs energy...
Now, without addressing the population growth - child(1-2) per family policy - we are facing grimm future of conflict and confrontations. Most troubling development would be collapse of societies in lesser developing countries and then whole world, which we see in Haiti.
I follow Art Berman daily and I would ask him to calculate the impact of global warming on reducing the need of energy for heating. For example here in Italy we are using much less natural gas and heating oil simply because it is much warmer than in the past in winter. In the summer, when it is getting warmer and warmer, we are using much more electric power for air conditioning but it is also the period where the sun is more effective for solar PV energy production, so the two effects in part compensate each other. Does the global warming give us, for a short period of years, the opportunity to accelerate the use of rebuildable energy sources like Solar and Wind simply because we need less heating fuel?
The first thing we will cut back when the price of oil goes up will be transportation: fewer trips, carpools, buses, grocery delivery. That will probably be the visible extent of it for several years. Disposable plastics will be cut back and companies will greenwash that as much as they can. By the 2040’s, we’ll start to think about home energy use-cutting back home heating and entertainment. Sometime that decade, nitrogen fertilizer will begin to be scarce, and countries will compete to get what they need.
Nvidia produced 1.5 million 700 watt AI graphics cards every year. Just Nvidia. Our energy usage isn’t going to drop per person, it’s going to skyrocket as AI is adopted in the developed world. Uranium prices have more than doubled this year due to an imminent shortage of supply. Energy is about to get very expensive and this will have an incredible inflationary effect on commodities and we’ll see that in all parts of our lives.
One nice thing with nuclear is that even if the price of uranium doubles again that really barely changes the cost of energy. The uranium price is such a small part of the overall cost of energy.
@@pin65371 yeah that’s what gets me excited about investing in uranium miners. The upside potential for uranium is huge because even a 10x in price wouldn’t destroy the demand for it.
@@SzymonStas we just need to start building more nuclear power plants. Its sorta ridiculous that Vogtle is built and nothing else is really planned. Nuclear gets cheaper to build once you have a supply chain built out, a trained workforce and engineering done. In Canada back in the 70s Ontario started a plan to build out a nuclear fleet. They brought 1 reactor online per year for 20 years straight. Now they are refurbing some of the original plants to extend the life for another 30 years. Those refurbs are on budget and 6 months ahead of schedule. The problem is everyone wants the newest shiny reactor instead of just building what we know works already. Its not like there is a safety issue building a reactor from 30 years ago. The safety record has been great. I actually saw someone argue that the problem with nuclear is its too safe so when they do have an issue it turns into a big deal.
The issues are more uranium availability and waste handling. Plus this little item of overall safety. But the largest concern is the cost of both energy and finance to construct a plant, and to replace anything meaningful it would take thousands and thousands. Sorry, I just can't get my hopes up. More practical to try to use less and less matching the declining flows.
I totally agree! I will invite prof. Olle Häggström back to talk about the effects of the exponential AI development Chat GPT5 and energy use soon. Häggström is renowned AI researcher, mathematician and writer. Check out previous talks on AI, you might find them interesting: ruclips.net/video/1uEL6gOrln0/видео.htmlsi=AG1D42GV6H_bsDvR
Remember the famous book “twilight in the desert” written by an expert in the 1990s about how Saudi oil production was about to crash. Didn’t work out that way. I take these predictions with a huge grain of salt.
Matthew Simmons, that wrote the classic was right at the core: most crude oil producers have peaked or are close to peak production classic examples UK, Mexico and Norway but their are many more and Saudi Arabia has had a basically flat production since 2010 (yes they probably have a production capacity reserve of 1.5-2 million barrels per day) but while they could have competed with a more energy dense and cheap oil they have choosen to hold back production with US taking the lead.
I heard Matthew Simmons daughter hold a keynote at an energy conference in Washington DC I attended in 2010 that was very memorable, clearly the daughter of a brilliant man far ahead of his time. We will only know the exact date of total world oil production peak ( NGLs, condensate and crude oil including from tar sands and shale oil) in the future. What is relevant is how the world and we as individuals prepare for such extremely challenging time. Cheers, Johan
@@EvolutionShowNr1 yup.. a while back Biden was asking the Saudis to pump more oil and the president of France was overheard telling Biden that the Saudis couldnt increase production. The only advantage the Saudis have is their oil is already so cheap to produce that even if it starts costing more to produce they can still make a profit for a long time. The key for them at this point is to use the oil money to find ways to make more money in other ways so as their revenue from oil drops they can still keep the country operating. They need to go the Norway route. They are sorta doing that but it seems like they are looking too much at shiny things that might just result in them wasting a bunch of money.
The oil industry is a HUGE industry. Its like an aircraft carrier. It will take a long time for the momentum (change in the situation) to turn the boat. But in Simmons' defense, conventional oil prod has been on a plateau since 2005.
@@jivefive99
Or the boat may turn very quickly. BYD, the largest EV producer, just started making an EV that is very close to the size of a Camry, has a 170 mile EPA range, and sells for $15,000. EVs are a lot cheaper to operate per mile.
Market forces are likely to move transportation off oil very rapidly. It doesn't matter how large the oil industry might be. When there is a cheaper and adequate replacement for oil then oil will die.
There is no sign of anything cheaper or of replacing oil anytime soon. And anyone who buys a dedicated electric vehicle with no gas engine for electricity backup deserves whats coming -- electric only also isnt ready yet, and my never be. The auto manufacturers knew that and did dedicateds anyway -- and got their butts handed to them :)@@bobwallace9753
I would see Art at one or two of the peak oil conferences I went to (2011-2012? Washington DC?) before they pretty much gave up "screaming to the heavens." He'd be one or two tables away from me, and he was already known online in the peak oil world. I always wondered why he was being so quiet. He'd just sit there and say nothing during the Q&A (he wasnt out front like Matt Simmons.) I wondered if he just was waiting for things to become more clear, or if he knew a long time ago that crude oil was finite, but ringing the alarm bells was premature (oil shale started in earnest in 2014+). So now I wonder if he's just late, or was it always the plan to be the 4th guy in the relay race ...
I attended ASPO-USA energy conferences in Washington D.C. 2010 and 2011. I recall their were about 300 attendees each conf. and at the time Art was not as known as today and the other speakers present were famous people like John Michael Greer, Richard Heinberg, Prof. Tad Patzek, a us kongress person (forgot his name but he booked the whole Auditorium at Capitol Hill for several hours so we could hold several sessions their). My point is Art was far from main star at the time and the respectful and modest man he is, he would hardly stand out in a crowd among these prominent speakers so to speak. Cheers, Johan
The peak oil movement (I found it in 2006) was listening to people who actually knew something about oil and even natgas production. Art was somewhat rare -- an actual petroleum geologist (like Colin Campbell RIP). Rapier and Simmons at least had some experience with oil. Art wasnt an academic or an energy bombthrower. But he didnt say a thing at these conferences (at least the ones I attended) for years. Just wondered why. :) @@EvolutionShowNr1
@@jivefive99 Good observation but sometimes people don´t share their thoughts as much as you would like/expect at big events like conferences. And as you say, Art is one of those rare birds that really gets it, both the big picture AND have the inside view from the oil and gas industry with the technical understanding and knows the key numbers to look for etc. Art like several others admit that they missed in their prediction with 10-15 years in terms of world total peak fossil liquid fluids and US shale oil/gas production. In the long term I think he will be right though. Cheers, Johan
He may be one of the few left to actually be around when the total peak comes. Watch the prices -- theyll tell you. @@EvolutionShowNr1
thamx....art is the man!
The end of tight oil means....the end of conventional western economic growth. Period
....without gasoline....my car don't run
Nope. It will mean a transition to another form of energy. Probably solar.
One of the improvements at the margin for stimulating conventional exploration in the US would be to mandate that existing leases would expire below the lowest stratigraphic level of production. This is the approach taken in Canada, and it stimulated a bunch of new exploration.
Another good way is to conserve the oil via efficiency improvement. The oil is most useful in transportation consumed via ICEs (internal combustion engines), especially diesel. There is a new ICE technology call "Diesoline" engines. Which is a diesel-gasoline engine hybrid having the high efficiency of diesel but without the evil soot or NOx emissions like the gasoline engines - or the gasoline engine to have the diesel engines' efficiency. The new technology could save the oil consumption by at least 1/4 up to 1/3. The technology can retrofit billions of current engines, or new engines in production or in design stage. This technology can achieve the 20% to 30% Mr. Berman talked about. Can we talk?
Why has conventional flat lined? Because we started fracking shale and shale has low risk so no need to drill expensive conventional wells in high risk places. Conventional Exploration capital has plummeted over last 10 years and it continues. It will catch up with us. Peak HCs won’t happen anytime soon. Happy to debate.
The known reserves of fossil fuels continue to increase eventhough the demand has expanded dramatically. In 1980 there were 30 years of oil left (so it ran out in 2010!). In 2020 there were 57 years of oil left. The Earth is awash with hydrocarbons, as the fracking revolution has demonstrated in the US. To put it another way, the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones, and the Oil Age won't end because we ran out of oil.
Well we did not run out of stones, the Stone Age in fact never ended. We use more stones than ever before in fact, just in many more sophisticated ways and yes with exponential growth of the global population, came an exponential growth in the use of stones. But to your point.
Firstly, far from all total world oil reserves are ever going to be extracted, due to geological and economic constraints.
Secondly, the US Shale boom is a much more costly, read lower energy return on energy invested than conventional oil extraction in say Saudi Arabia or Russia. If the world were to run on shale oil extraction we would live in a total different, extremely poor economy. As Art Berman has pointed out many times, the shale oil boom is built on extracting the low hanging fruit first, with loans/the financial system based on a future of continued energy growth linked to the fossil energy sector. Yet that will not happen at today´s level due to geological and followingly, economic constrains. Thus we will stop drilling for oil long before "we run out" of oil, it simply wont make economic sense.
Also remember, the shale oil numbers are very flawed as they include NGL:s and other substances derived from Natural Gas that are not crude oil. US Shale oil often lack the same properties as conventional oil so it must be mixed to be used in wider applications. That said, US Shale oil production has bought the world some time to find alternatives and adapt to a world with declining fossil energy availability, if it is 5 years or 10 years or more is hard to say but 50 years, not a chance. But I worry more about the exponential AI development than our energy predicament at the moment, yes they are linked but I would not count on a Super AI to solve our energy needs, at least not with Humanity still being around to enjoy it... Cheers! / Johan
@@EvolutionShowNr1 Coal reserves will last for at least one hundred years if not a lot lot longer.
@@OldScientist Coal reserves may indeed last longer but they will not replace oil at today´s economy of scale and every process that involves transforming a solid based energy form to liquid form has alot of transformtion losses/lower energy return on energy invested. Coal is indeed powerful to genereate electricity and heat and kick started the industrial revolution with the steam engine, whether we like it not. But the future involves thinking different how we use energy and how we combine different energy sources, inbedded energy in materials already produced etc. The problem is that most people think linearly,, as if a business as usual scenario is necessary or even possible. To quote Einstein "The measure of Intelligence is the ability to change", or adapt to a new energy reality in this case. Will it be hard? Yes. Will everybody survive or flourish in the transition, very unlikely no. But it does not mean we should not prepare and make the best of it. I have great hope in humanity, when we work together we can achieve almost anything! :) Cheers, Johan
This explains why airfares are so expensive these days compared to 5 or 6 years ago
Stop burning for the fuels.
Make plastics more durable.
Recycle as much as you can.
Going back to the 1950s is no option ( 28:08 ).
The transsition has to involve economics.
It's not really a survival issue only a sector issue. Lots of energy sources to choose from.
It's not just about energy. Plastic substitutes?
supposed to reach 109,000 flights per day in 2024
If you can't use methane, propane and butane for transport - I think you're missing a trick. Any of those will burn in an internal combustion engine, or a gas turbine - no trouble at all.
There is nothing disadvantageous about them at all. The only limitation is around flight, where liquid fuel is necessary because a suitable pressure vessel for gaseous fuel is too heavy. I would suggest that the only problem with natural gas liquids is that there isn't enough of it.
A butane powered SUV?
@@hardypermaculture No problem at all. I mean, you can't just put Butane in your Diesel SUV. But if you want to mass produce Butane powered SUV's its no problem at all. If you already produce LPG SUV's (and many do) you don't even have to change the production line, only the software in the ECU.
So why is nat gas around 1.50 now
Peak oil...again! This well worn "crisis" has been popping up regularly since the early 70s. In fact I remember a headline from around that time: Oil Gone by 1990! This kind of marketing is how we are conditioned to accept the continued price and tax increases that benefit the oil companies and governments.
Yes! It will never run out!
Art adds good data and when he sticks to issues directly related to his data he has good points. However he tends to make big statements which are not supported by the data he discussed and ignores studies which opposed him. In the end he is a subtle supporter of fossil fuels as he believes they are the only system capable of supporting humanity. When he talks about investing he is certainly supportive of investment in fossil fuels which is holding back transition to low carbon fuels. Art has a bad case of fossil fuels path dependency and a subtle presentation which makes him appear as neutral. I agree that the developed world needs to drop back a couple of decades in our energy use but that we will only do that when forced.
You will like next guest Ron Swenson, he gets peak oil and gas but explains why we can and need to go solar while we can. Cheers, Johan
Hi guys! Hope you are great!
If you like this talk with Art, feel free to check out part 1 where we focus on US Shale gas production and why Art Berman thinks it will decline in the next couple of years translating to a decline in world natural gas production!
ruclips.net/video/rv85LTMO8TQ/видео.htmlsi=-QQz-xpJPuW008gy
Cheers,
Johan, host of the Evolution Show
The peak of world energy ruclips.net/video/kZA9Hnp3aV4/видео.html
World fossil fuel supply is finite/limited. The cheap stuff has been extracted and used it’s gone. The half that is remaining is spread out, harder to collect and/or less dense. The joules invested for a joule returned has peaked globally and is declining.
Global problems ruclips.net/p/PLhH8w0wcKSeDpkunKyRWBkPCcjiEk6AL7
RUclips is deleting any of my comments with links to other videos...
ruclips.net/video/kZA9Hnp3aV4/видео.html
Keep extracting oil and gas but stop burning the stuff. Make important materials. It's too valuable.
As fossil fuel reserve decline, it means the price will go up, which will make alternative fuel more competitive. When oil and gas gets too expensive, we will finally turn to nuclear which is more sustainable.
Shale extraction hadto wait until the barrel price approached 30$
What do you mean? At 30 dollars a barrel most shale oil companies can't even breakeven, and then we are talking about the best play formations and most effecient shale companies or am I missing something?? Cheers, Johan
I remember 20 years ago they all kept saying the same thing.
While I agreed at that time then I am really starting to have my doubts
I often wonder if the prep/collapse thing is a carrot for people who have given up.......but keep them buying stuff?
One question, I assume you are aware Venezuela has ridiculous amounts of crappy oil. If it ever got problematic in the US you could just engineer a 'change' in access?
Hi! Venezuela´s largest oil deposits are much like the Canadian oil sands, just useful at very high oil prices but it comes with a high cost, ie energy return on energy invested is significantly lower than with conventional oil and even shale oil has much higher energy returns. This translates into much higher inflation when a larger degree of the oil extracted need to be used from low energy return oil resources.
It simply means a whole other economy than we see today, you cannot a run the global economy on expensive venezualian and canadian oil unless you at the same time decrease overall energy consumption significantly which will have immense impact on the financial system when there are no short term altneratives.
That said, oil from Venezuela will surely be extracted as long as the market is willing to pay the price but it will not change the overall challenge we face with a nearby decline of cheap oil and natural gas.
Cheers,
Johan
Art, energy companies are not terrible. They are what they are and they are needed. Stop with the rhetoric. Also, don't forget about the Anwar. By some estimates there is as much oil in the Anwar as there was in Saudi Arabia at it's peak. The trick is getting permission to access it and to do it in the most environmentally non traumatic fashion as possible.
25:25 "plastic has no other source than oil and natural gas"... not true. For economic reasons and lack of technology it has been oil and gas the only source for plastic, but plastic is nothing more than a long molecule if carbon strings mixed with other minerals, you can literally make plastic out of any heavy carbon source, it would be extremely economically expensive and energy intensive.
that is a bit of an absurd argument. You can extract gold from sea water, but no one will discuss you if you say that "the only source of gold is mining". You also can produce oil from coal, go with an spaceship to a meteorite to get some iridium, but this not makes these "A source", but a sink.
Art meant that due to laws of thermo dynamics, energy density etc oil and natural gas enables production of plastics at mass scale that makes economic sense. No other alternatives, that we are aware of today can do the same. That does not mean we shouldn't pursue alternatives, especially using LESS plastics and other recyclable materials. We just need to be realistic in our expectations and understand what makes the world spin today if we are to adapt and find sustainable ways forward. Cheers, Johan
@@ignaciofernandezclavel3535 bad analogy from your part, we can already produce methane from decomposing organic matter and it is possible to turn methane into plastic.
Is it economically viable at this point? no! but it is possible. And as prices of oil continue to rise, plastics will also increase in value, making the prospect of making plastic from methane a real possibility.
Plastic use can be reduced, but it cannot be entirely eliminated.
@@pedrolopes3542 if oil price rises, not only the "normal plastic" value rises. Everything's price rises. Also "bioplastics" or "plastics made from methane" or whatever you call it.
You need fossil fuel to produce basically everything: from were you get your organic matter? From crops? they will be more expensive, as crops need fossil fuels to grow. From cattle? the same, squared.
In the end, you need to pack, transport, unpack, refine, manufacture, transport again, process, blah blah blah... All these, with fossil fuels.
@ofernandezclavel3535 Plastics only begun to be used in the early 20th century, we had agriculture before that, we also had fertilizers before that, we had an entire chemical industry before that too.
Based on what you wrote I can only assume that you don't understand what oil is or that you are deliberately being disingenuous about it, oil is just a bunch of carbon-hydrogen molecules, around 80% carbon, there is nothing special about it. while plastic is mostly just long carbon molecules, you can produce plastic from timber if necessary.
You claim that when oil becomes more difficult to extract or when we ran out of it that the price of Everything will go up, but you ignorantly failed to mention that not all products are directly dependent on oil, some products are going to increase in price more than others and some uses for plastics will become too expensive, so they will be replaced by other solutions, like plastic packages, fuels, clothing, simple households items that are currently made of simple plastics will have to be made of other composite materials.
Oil is cheap, that is what makes plastics cheaper than timber or natural rubber, but once oil becomes scarce plastic will also become expensive, more expensive than timber. This change in price will make the industry of bio-gases lucrative, because the future cost of extracting the little oil and gas left on the ground will surpass the cost of growing algae for biomass in order to produce bio-gas. And, no! algae do not grow on farm fields so it will not increase the price of food. Cost is the only thing holding bio-gas from being mass produced, (it is still more expensive than extracting gas from the ground)... for now.
From a technological point of view, there is nothing preventing bio-gas from taking off and replacing the current fossil-gas market.
Natural gas can be used in vehicles. In Pakistan for example, many of th vehicles are dual fuel, they use CNG (compressed natural gas) and petrol
A 30% energy consumption decline will be accompanied by long lasting economic depression. Consider that economic depression was a root cause of the rise of Nazi Germany. This next epoch of the human story is likely to be a return of the kind of racial/ethnic violence that characterised most of human history. These are important factors I don’t hear spoken about in energy decline scenarios when people are trying to figure out where to live to adapt to this new paradigm.
The price of oil and gas is going to rocket because of one very obvious fact and that is oil and gas production will drop 90% in the coming decades.
Renewables account for only 5% of todays global energy production.
Russia will have all the oil and gas left on the planet soon.
Fossil fuels (fuels, not industrial feedstock) provide energy. We may be running low on fossil fuel but we have a much cheaper source of energy that we are now harvesting. The argument that we will suffer economic decline is foolish. Cheaper energy means more economic growth.
Just consider EVs which are replacing ICEVs. EVs are becoming cheaper to manufacture than are ICEVs as the cost of batteries plummet and economies of scale accelerate. It's already far cheaper to drive a mile with electricity than with gasoline or diesel. And the cost of wind/solar electricity continues to fall.
How about space heating? Electric heat pumps are becoming more and more efficient. And they will run on renewable electricity which continues to become cheaper.
Plastic only represents roughly 20% of an EV.
Our society is so incredibly wasteful that we could shave half the waste and improve our standard of living while slashing our energy needs.
A car, for example, is about 0.5% efficient at doing it's primary job of moving a single person from A to B. That is simply insane! Even an EV is only about 2% efficient. A massive improvement - but not on the order we need. In cities we can make walking and transit the most desirable way of getting around for most trips and decimate energy demand in doing so. But you just can't beat the bicycle for energy efficiency. Nothing comes close.
I'm not proposing everybody ride a bike. But why would we not encourage cycling to the extent that many more people would gladly make the switch? Most may see this as unrealistic but only through the lens of the disaster of modern land use. Suburban development of the last 7 or 8 decades has been catastrophic for our wellbeing.
We waste energy because it has been way too cheap. Supply constraint and rising prices are exactly what we need to start behaving like adults.
You can derive plastic from peanuts and soy beans 😂
Trump will enable the keystone pipeline and Alaskan drilling.
Read a book
Yes, great conversation. Art is certainly knowledgeable, interesting, informative and understandable. I find energy to be a fascinating subject.
Art Berman: stop oil but we need plastics, lol🤣
We can and do produce plastics from plant wastes. It is just more expensive because a lot of our plastics are produced from the waste products of oil production. That makes for incredibly cheap plastics.
What is peak energy? ruclips.net/video/kZA9Hnp3aV4/видео.html
Read the Bible.
I would hazard that yes we have reached peak production (praise the stars) but not because there isn’t more. There is plenty. My own country huge gas reserves in 2022. Still untapped. The reason for peak is demand. Demand is falling. The falling cost curves of EV production are plummeting. Best selling car in Europe is an EV. Oil great, battery storage cheaper and better. What you can refer to as an asymmetric bet. Oil and gas fucked
What are you going to do if the DRC actually starts preventing child slave labor to mine the cobalt for your batteries, or China decides that the people of Baotou deserve a better environment where an agonizing early death from cancer caused by toxic rare earth mining tailings is avoided? Sanctimonious middle class “stop oil” activists are more than happy to devastate the third world, it seems.
You have been misinformed on multiple points.
The absolute blistering idiocy of this conversation is shocking when this guy is a so-called expert. It will be obvious in several years that Berman is 💯 wrong and standards of living - esp. in developing countries - will continue to progress and more energy demand AND production will be happening.
No, not an enjoying conversation!
8 years ago there was a couple of hundred thousand EV’s on the road, globally, today, there’s over 10 million EV’s, including 2 in my garage, with many millions more coming over the years, continuing the decline of oil demand and consumption, until oil hits close to zero, in the late 2040’s.
In Germany the EV cars are driven by 53% coal. Good job by the "Energiwende"🤡
@@danholmstrom9883 Even so they produce far less C02 because they get far better milage per unit of energy.
You'll have to drive 40000 km to be even with an combustion engine due to the increases input of basemetals in the car
You need to build 150 new mines to get the nickel ,copper lithium needed.
BTW all the "science" is finalen by the rockefeller companies since the 50;s
The co 2 is needed by the banks to print green bonds to keep the moneyprinting going
You need energy to make EV’s.
Yes, how we use oil a limited resource is very important. To burn it mindlessly in super sized SUVs 1-person commutes, wastefully in throwaway Amazon gadgets that add no value or just too short sighted to create an economy that recycles plastics instead of pretending to do so. My fam for one reduced ⛽ for 🚗 by 95%, with EVs, solar. Solar absolutely can give you free sustainable energy after 3-6 years to break-even. We reduced our HVAC load on gas generated ⚡ by installing an efficient mini split heat pump, only heat/cool rooms we're in. Now, I completely agree we must save oil for critical use such as medical etc. But have you looked at the mindless amount of single use throw away whatnots? Big palm sized devices get tossed in one use, when with a little thought, a little less convenience, we can save so much plastics from ending up in landfills, 🌊. Edit: To claim EV battery minerals are unrecyclable is flat out wrong.
Couldn't agree more. Many good examples, especially solar and single use stuff we just throw is an immense waste of energy not to mention the environmental impact and indeed health related issues it causes. Most living people now have plastic substances in their bodies from things we get via water/sea and plastics from food containers etc etc. Helped my parent install a solar roof and energy storage 2019, they have saved about 30 % in energy costs anually and during summer they power everything in the house including hot water and electricity from solar energy even during the night (except very rainy periods) Cheers! /Johan
Ahh .. peak gas, this time. Total BS in other words ..
No need to watch, thumbs down ..
I can't wait. End of oil
Yahoo. Time to move on dinosaurs
You can wait and you will wait.
50 years, at least.
Bear in mind it´s not "end of oil", it´s end of cheap abundant oil, the engine for economic growth as we know it. We will use crude oil long into the foreseable future but much less and under totally different economic conditions and likely living standards. Chees, Johan
@@EvolutionShowNr1 Lower living standards will include lower food and heating fuel production. I look toward this future with much less equanimity than do some.
The idea of reverting to the standards of living of the 50's is quite reasonable, in principle. However, the sociodemographic makeup of the actual US population is substantially different, if not totally incompatible, with the demographics of the past. The quality of the current demographics, driven by welfare, dismal immigration, reverse discrimination, and quota mentality, make it impossible to replicate the transaction cost of the past, now that decent people have to cage themselves to avoid all the calamities lurking in the surroundings.