EROI | Vital Football

EROI

BodyButter

Vital Football Legend
I stumbled across www.peakprosperity.com yesterday and ended up staying up until 2am doing their 'crash course'. One of the important points of this crash course is peak oil. Most of the facts presented are easily verifiable but one; the energy return on investment has proved difficult to verify.

I'm hoping that some of the smart people on VV will be able to help me out with this. I don't imagine that Shell are publishing their EROI on their website.
 
http://www.peakprosperity.com/

I have to admit, I'm none the wiser having looked!
 
EROI is a measure of the amount of energy it takes to produce a unit of energy. In the 1900s the ratio for oil extraction was around 1:100. It took one unit of energy to produce 100 units of energy. Now-a-days, the ratio is said to be around 1:3 as the easy oil has been extracted and oil companies have to go to further and further lengths to get to the oil. Obviously, when the ratio hits 1:1, we're fucked.
 
Jonah - 11/7/2013 21:21

You need to get out more BB.

Indeed and I do, Jonah. Still, ye know, this stuff is interesting to me. As a father of young kids I need to be watching out for the medium and long term trends. It certainly beats endlessly arguing about Benteke.
 
Jonah - 11/7/2013 23:04

Who?

I think his name is Simpson Betekkers or something like that. We are signing him from Spurs for £25m. He scored more than 100 goals last season.
 
BB are you into eco friendly lifestyle? Solar panels, wind energy, rain water harvesting etc?
 
Green Tea - 12/7/2013 02:15

BB are you into eco friendly lifestyle? Solar panels, wind energy, rain water harvesting etc?

No, not at all. I live in a condo so those aren't really options. If I lived in a cabin in the woods, I'd probably look into it.

I watched that Crash Course and most of the stuff he was talking about isn't new but is fairly grim. The dollar is toast and the measures they are taking are just helping to keep it going a little bit longer but the end result is the same. I think most people understand that now. The baby-boomer demographic problems have been well documented for years. Peak oil I'd heard of but the information he was using to back it up was new to me and all easily verifiable except the EROI. If it's at 1:3 then we are likely to run out of oil in the next decade and we are completely unprepared for that.
 
They have now worked out that there is three times more Oil to be gained from Fracking as previously thought. I've been told by an insider at BP that there is many, many decades of supply still available.
 
HeathfieldRoad1874 - 12/7/2013 23:52

They have now worked out that there is three times more Oil to be gained from Fracking as previously thought. I've been told by an insider at BP that there is many, many decades of supply still available.

That's what I thought. I'm going on the word of this guy who may or may not be a loon but everything else he talked about was accurate if some of it was a little presumptuous.

His point was that the energy it takes to get to the remaining oil will get to even soon and then we are fucked.

Wikipedia has 'oil imports 2005' at 18 and 'oil imports 2007' at 12 so that would at least back up this guy's slippery slope theory but he could have written that Wikipedia article himself.
 
You see we humans like to cling to things if they are dumb or retarded... Oil is just that a stupid move we should be preparing for life after it and we are to a degree but oil is still cheap so we are doing the bare minimum to change...

I personally feel the amount of oil we have left is a lie and we've a lot more in the tank if you will... The people running these companies have spotted an opportunity... Make it out that oil is getting scarcer and we can make more money...

We have all the resources we need to live without oil but we're not prepared for that because we'd have to change a lot and many would lose a lot of money if there is any changes... Fuck the USA gives oil companies tax breaks and such for fuck sakes...
 
Absolutely spot on CDX.

Something like 6 of the top 10 companies world wide are energy or oil and gas companies. Why would they want to tell everyone they have 100+ years of 'known' reserves? Technology has made it possible to find more and extract more for less money. Mining is a prime example with tailings of old deposits being reprocessed. Back when I was at primary school in the 80s, text books from the 70s were saying we only had oil reserves to see us through until 2000.

The likes of BP, Shell, Chevron, eni, etc all have huge research and development divisions and partnerships with motor companies and engineering firms to make and design different technology related to things such as hybrid cars, engines, batteries, etc. Hybrid cars have been around for a long time but were never truly marketed or took off and there has been a delay in the release because as you say - there is a buck to be made.

These partnerships may even extend to part ownership of technology or products. I remember reading that Chevron purchased the battery company that was used in hybrid electric vehicles so that production was slowed or delayed while oil prices were high (Iraq war), etc and then cash in once prices settled. These are companies with a trillion dollars turnover.

There will be a huge amount of gas resources added and available through coal seam gas developments.

Also fission technology will eventually become more prevalent and apart from renewables - is the cleanest form of energy on the planet, even when disposal of waste is considered. There are massive reserves of uranium and with new and more efficient reactor technology I think our energy crisis needs will take a while to hit. Fusion technology can't be too far away either. You can bet your backside these big companies have their fingers in these pies too.

 
Oil is one big rip off, i sometimes wonder if we took the wrong path when mankind decided in taking the fossil fuel route or is this just a process of species that all over the universe would take that have so called intelligence, but i do sometimes wonder and hope that somewhere out there there is a planet that is not run by money corruption hatred and they actually look after the planet they were blessed to live on man i am weird!