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Off the keyboard of Geoffrey Chia

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Published on the Doomstead Diner on November 12, 2016

Discuss this article at the Energy Table inside the Diner

by Geoffrey Chia, November 2016

These slides (four figures followed by four graphs) are for any Diner readers who wish to explain the looming decline in global petroleum supply to their family, friends or community. This impending sudden energy curtailment will guarantee that the collapse of global industrial civilisation will be complete within 15 years (which is an exceedingly conservative estimate – Dr Louis Arnoux believes a 10 year timeline is more likely and I fear he is probably right). This does NOT mean we have a 10 or 15 year window to prepare for an offgrid fossil fuel free lifestyle, it means global industrial collapse will be complete by then.

Those fortunate enough to be able to prepare, have at best a 2 to 3 year window of opportunity, however it is possible that if global financial collapse occurs sooner, then our ability to act will be lost sooner.

The slides can be explained to your audience using background information from my previous Diner articles:

The appendices explaining EROEI from my articles " How the world works " parts i and ii

" Peak oil revisited part 1a "

"Open letter to TZM" which I wrote in lieu of my "Peak oil revisited part 2" article.

SOME BASIC FACTS:

"Easy" oil (high net energy conventional petroleum on the upslope of the Hubbert curve) is the keystone commodity which enables industry and large scale agriculture (and the debt based economy) to function. Even the supply chains and infrastructures for coal, natural gas and nuclear energies require petroleum. Even the construction and maintenance of "renewable energy" infrastructure requires petroleum. "Difficult" oil (unconventional oil or conventional petroleum well past the Hubbert peak) is no substitute for easy oil. Unconventional oil is in fact a fools' errand and a financial scam. We will continue to extract post peak conventional oil until the net return falls off a cliff.* Oil price is an inaccurate and misleading index with which to judge oil availability. Price in itself is meaningless. What is important to the consumer is affordability. Gross production of crude oil (or other liquid hydrocarbons eg light tight oil) at the wellhead is meaningless. It is the NET availablity of refined petroleum products delivered to our point of consumption which is valuable to us, which enables us to do useful things. This is best analysed by EROEI methods** This idea is exactly analogous to the fact that your gross salary is meaningless and it is only your net income after business expenses and taxes which allows you to do useful things. Oil importing nations need to consider the rising domestic consumption of oil exporting nations (most exporters have increasing populations) when estimating the oil available in the coming years. This concept is the ELM which is simple primary school subtraction arithmetic. The ELM concept is also important to oil exporting nations because once their rising consumption curve intersects with their falling production curve, their oil export income will vanish to zero which will trigger economic collapse if they lack a diverse economy. The only realistic way to judge future net oil availability is therefore to superimpose the ELM curve on the post peak NET Hubbert curve One of the biggest impediments to public understanding of these urgent issues (apart from people equating low oil prices with petroleum abundance) is faulty linear or symmetrical thinking. It may take 10 minutes to build a Jenga tower, however once it reaches its maximum height, it will NOT gradually decline over another 10 minutes. It will suddenly collapse in a split second. Similarly the graph showing that Net oil availability falls of a cliff once EROI goes below 5:1 explains why societies will suddenly shift from a seemingly "normal" lifestyle, to severe privation in the blink of an eye.

Footnotes:

*The only possible carbon neutral substitutes for petroleum are either: biofuels from algae (which must NOT encroach on food producing areas) OR artificial photosynthesis, both of which I discussed in various articles dating back to 1999 (first in the Australian Skeptic journal). As things now stand, the former cannot be scaled up and the latter remains a pipe dream. Hoping for a breakthrough in either in the next couple of years is like depending on a lottery win to pay off your mortgage, the false hope of a fool. Furthermore, energy decline is but one of many threats which will cause civilisation to collapse, the others being depletion of other resources, climate catastrophe and ecosystem destruction, all driven by the massive consumer and waste footprint of 7.5 billion homo stupidus. The key measures to survive must therefore be simplification of individual lifestyles by reduction of consumption and waste production (ideally combined with "closing the loop" eg using humanure for local crop production). Population reduction will take care of itself in the form of massive human die-off ,which may occur over decades (famines, regional wars, epidemics especially among war and climate refugees and the spread of tropical vectors) or may occur overnight (global thermonuclear war).

**EROI analytical methods continue to be refined by those working in the field. At this time, even basic definitions are unclear, for example, what exactly are "Energy Returned" and "Energy Invested"?

Consider a post peak "nodding donkey" oil rig which requires saline to be actively injected into the oil well to enable a saline/crude oil mix to be extracted. Saline injection is performed by a diesel pump, hence that diesel is the "Energy Invested". That diesel is a refined petroleum product which has been delivered to its final point of consumption.

In order to compare apples with apples, we should therefore define the Energy Returned NOT in the form of crude oil, but in the form of refined petroleum products which have been delivered their final points of consumption. I would argue that "Energy returned" is NOT the calorific value of the crude oil produced at the wellhead. Crude oil in itself is NOT a useful energy source, it is nothing more than a toxic pollutant. Energy Returned must be the calorific value of the refined petroleum products derived from the crude oil and delivered to their final points of consumption. Energy Returned must subtract the sum of energies required to transport the crude oil to the refinery, to refine that crude into usable petroleum products and to transport those refined products to their final destinations.

Please not that this Energy Returned is NOT the same as Net Energy available.

Net Energy available is Energy Returned from the previous cycle of energy production MINUS the Energy Investment required for the next cycle of energy production.

EROEI is Energy Returned DIVIDED by Energy Invested.

Previous overestimations of EROEI were because ER was defined as the calorific value of crude oil produced at the wellhead which in my view is inappropriate and does not reflect the real world.

Clearly using solar or wind energy to power a "nodding donkey" pump will increase the net energy gain from a depleting well, which may be a final act of desperation for many producers.

G. Chia Nov.2016