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Oil and Gas: Facing the Music Before it Stops
http://www.democrats.us/editorial/wise061704.shtml
By: Robert Wise

I'm glad to see the surge of interest in the coming peak of world oil 
production, even though the prospect is grim. Once again, people are willing 
to think about non-renewable resources and the consequences of an economy 
based on them. After strong and effective conservation measures during the 
Carter years, America lapsed into a don't-worry-be-happy attitude toward 
energy. Now we seem to be waking up again.

Most of the new information stems from the work of two little-known 
scientists, both deceased: petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert and systems 
ecologist Howard Odum.

Hubbert's famous "peak" inspired several new books and a dozen websites about 
the coming production peak, including the excellent "Hubbert's Peak" and "The 
Party's Over." And here and there in these sources you see Odum's pioneering 
work on energy and economic value.

Hubbert was a petroleum geologist who worked for several major oil companies. 
At an industry symposium in the 50's, he analyzed US oil production, 
predicting it would peak in the 1970's and go into irreversable decline. His 
prediction was ridiculed by geologists and oil executives. But in fact the 
peak arrived about 1970, with the trend of production closely following his 
theoretical curve.

Hubbert also predicted, in 1974, that the peak of world production would come 
in the mid-1990s. Petroleum geologist Kenneth Defreyes recomputed Hubbert's 
model using the latest figures on oil reserves, and predicts a peak within a 
few years of 2010.

Once past the peak of world production, there will never again be enough oil 
in the pipeline to satisfy today's level of demand. There will be rising 
prices, periodic shortages, inflation and recession - stagflation, as we used 
to hear in the 1970s. But unlike the oil shocks of the 1970's, these trends 
will go on for decades until oil and natural gas are no longer significant as 
energy resources.

Economists say that higher energy prices will make alternative energy sources 
economical. The next logical step would be "shale oil" or tar sands. But 
funny things have happened on the way to the tar sands. As Deffreys recalls, 
every time it seems that energy prices have risen high enough to make oil 
shale extraction economical, the costs of extraction have climbed in 
proportion! Describing this in "Hubbert's Peak", he seemed a little puzzled.

Howard Odum watched the same events unfold, and was not puzzled. His work on 
energy costs and net yield convinced him that shale oil would never be 
economical, because it would never yield more energy than was used in 
extracting it. He testified against proposals for shale oil development in 
Congress in the early 70's, but his warnings were discounted.

I joined one of Odum's seminars at the University of Florida in 1970. You 
almost had to be in class with him to get the flavor of his thinking; his 
writing had the bland, opaque quality of a polished PhD dissertation. Later 
he worked with his wife to produce a series of textbooks, but never became a 
popular author. His defining work was "Environmental Accounting", published 
in 1996.

The title gives a clue to his basic insights. Throughout his career, Odum 
struggled with concepts of the "quality" of a given fuel, "embedded energy", 
net energy.. Plain "calories" do not tell the real value of a substance. But 
he was criticized by colleagues for trying to contrast one form of energy 
with another, when a calorie was a calorie was a calorie.

Odum's final answer on energy and value was a concept called "emergy": the 
total cost of producing a given substance, measured in calories of sunlight. 
It's an accounting concept, not a physical measure. Sunlight energy is taken 
as the baseline, since it's only source of energy "income" to our planet.

Emergy (spelled with an "m") cost includes both the work done by nature and 
the work done by man. When you start to audit nature's books this way, you 
see clearly that some fuels are net losses and that some "free" goods are 
created at great cost. You see how heavily every activity in our economy is 
subsidized by cheap energy, even when it involves no fuel or electric power.

Emergy analysis, or its 1970's precursor, told Howard Odum that oil shale 
would never work out. It told him that solar energy would not be useful 
except in special situations- space heating or water heating in warm 
climates- where it was worth spending excessive emergy in labor and materials 
to collect some heat at the right place and time.

I believe that in a few years every college graduate will have heard of 
emergy and the Hubbert peak, and everyone will have a better sense of the 
value of nature's gifts. Hubbert and Odum left priceless legacies, and all 
our names are in their wills.

Robert Wise is a software engineer from Merritt Island, Florida. He is also a 
doctoral candidate in Geography.