RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak

["Mark Jones" <jones118@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sam Pawlett:

> to
> clarify, what
> you are saying is that energy supply cannot meet energy demand which
> precipitates an accumulation crisis where feedback mechanisms cause the
> crisis to get worse and worse.So then what is the main causal mechanism at
> work here? Is it just the plain lack of fossil fuels or the lack of
> capitalism to respond to weaking fossil supply (i.e. develop alternatives
> ennabling a smooth post-fossil transition.) I guess what I'm
> confused about
> is how, ceteris paribus, oil production can peak when there are
> still plenty
> of reserves left. I suspect the problem as it often is, is with
> the ceteris
> paribus.

I don't think there is an "other things being equal" problem at all. What
there is, is a race between technology and a depleting but essential
resource. What we need to do is analyse the energy crisis in value terms,
ie, as an accumulation crisis.

Technological change is not a deus ex machina but an overall product of the
prevailing degree of social complexity. More complex societies have better
technology but are also more entropic, ie, require big transfusions of
energy at an increasing rate. That's the nature of the treadmill capitalism
is on. It is in an entropy trap. In the past it has won out because of
beneficial combinations of (a) hugely important and effective innovations
combining with (b) very easily accessible fossilised energy, in what was (c)
still a half-empty, ie resource-rich, world (in Herman Daly's terminology).
Were these combinations of innovation and easily-available low-entropy
energy, fortuitous, or were they the result of the logic of capitalist
accumulation? In other words, was technical change endogenous or exogenous?
I argue strongly for the former. I do not belioeve in fairytales about Human
Ingenuity or acts of God, I am a Marxist, and I hope we shall be able to
discuss the positive feedbacks between high rates of accumulation and
technical change in these terms.

Today, in terms of both entropy and accumulation, the indicators are all set
the opposite way. The great hoped-for innovations like fusion energy, the
Internet etc, haven't panned out. Meanwhile, accessible, low-entropy
reserves of fossil energy have started to run out and extraction of the
remaining reserve is becoming more costly in both energy and value terms.

There is plenty of fossilised energy but only a very limited quantity of
easily-acessible, so-called conventional, petroleum. Even Mike Lynch, who
btw is said to be a convivial and open-minded fellow, now seems to concede
this (probably if Michael Perelman invites him, Mike Lynch will come here
and prove me wrong).

Conventional oil deposits tend to be produced (ie pumped out) in a
bell-shaped curve. This is down to geology, not economics. Production starts
at zero, rises to a peak and then declines. The production peak normally
coincides with the point when half the reserve has been extracted. This is
one reason why it's important to know how much oil is left compared to the
original reserve. If you know that 50% has been pumped then you also know
that from now on, daily output will inexorably decline. Working out the
midway point is one of the things petrogeologists are paid to do. Taking the
world's entire petroleum reserve as a single oilfield, some geologists argue
that its midway point has been reached. The US Geological Service disagrees,
but their thinking has come in for serious criticism.

There is an argument about whether better technology can change any of this.
Most of the oil in a reservoir can never be extracted; it is trapped in the
fine pores of the rocks. But technology can get some extra out, for example
by pressurising a reservoir with gas or by injecting steam. But this is
itself very energy expensive (ie entropic) and there is evidence to suggest
that all you really do is accelerate depletion, you don't get much
additional energy, so what in the end you get is not a bell curve but a
plateau followed by a cliff. Production simply falls off a cliff. This seems
to be happening right now both in Mexico and the North Sea. Mike Lynch is
more optimistic than I am or Colin Campbell is, about technology, but we
mostly agree that we are talking about quite small degrees of difference,
historically speaking. The basic truth is that petroleum deposits which
accumulated in the earth's crust during hundreds of millions of years have
been pumped out very rapidly, in the blink of an eye in geological time.
Most of the oil will be consumed within a century or so of large-scale oil
extraction, which began in the 1860s. In the process, a huge quantity of
carbon will have been reinjected into the atmosphere. The withdrawal of this
carbon during geological time-periods was the original accomplishment of
primitive life forms, whose deposited carboniferous remains created the
planetary reserve of fossilised energy. Sucking carbon out of the atmosphere
cooled it, and made it possible for large mammals to evolve, ie, us. Putting
this carbon back in the air is obviously a significant evolutionary act.

Once conventional oil peaks, capitalism is on an entropic downhill path
unless it finds an alternative energy supply. There is no evidence that such
a transition is in prospect. There is a theory that the New Economy does
away with material production and that the virtual world does not require so
much energy. However, as Colin Campbell says, you can't eat bytes. Unless
capitalism can transit to a different energy-base, it is in deep shit.

I hope we are not now going to waste time with redundant discussions about
renewables, hydrogen etc. Let us stick to the value analysis of energy, as
one aspect (a determining aspect) of capitalist accumulation crisis. I plan
to post more on this.

Mark Jones