Net Hubbert Curve aka Goodbye!, Oil
Posted on July 10th, 2009 by ryan.
It’s been a few days, so here comes the first of a few posts I’ve had on the back burner for a while.
The Hubbert Curve is a graph depicting the expected world-wide oil extraction before and after ‘peak oil‘. Ignoring arguments about the existence or timing of ‘peak oil’ as well as the accuracy of the shape of the Hubbert Curve, let’s look at another frightening aspect of oil extraction: its efficiency over time. As the ‘low hanging fruit’ gets picked, extracting oil becomes increasingly difficult, which means that more and more energy is required to extract the oil (energy). Obviously technology can ameliorate this to some extent, but take a look at this graph showing the energy return on investment since the beginning of the century:
This clearly shows that as we extract more and more energy in the form of oil, we waste more and more energy in the extraction process. Returning to the Hubbert curve, this is a graph showing the net Hubbert curve superimposed on the gross Hubbert curve:
In other words, the oil supply is likely to plummet precipitously once we reach peak oil, due both to the dwindling supply and to the increasing cost of extraction. Maybe postponing those wind farms isn’t such a great idea after all…
via The Oil Drum
Category: Information | Tags: collapse, commodities, sustainability 4 comments »
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
[...] ties into my earlier post regarding the Net Hubbert Curve; as we use up the easily accessible oil supplies, the amount of energy required to extract energy [...]
August 12th, 2009 at 10:40 am
[...] density beyond which redevelopment isn’t worth the energy, and as fuel prices increase over the next decade, that level of density is likely to increase dramatically. One of the basic assumptions of the [...]
September 29th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
wind farms are eco friendly and can generate massive amounts of electricity”`-
October 14th, 2010 at 1:09 am
wind farms in germany are great! i hope that we could install those in every country:”*