The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed • Hacker News Board

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#111

Post by Fjolsvith » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #97

chrischen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

52 years is a blip in human civilization. I'd be curious to see how in the grand scheme the depletion of oil looks. Will our tech/development boom grind to a halt all of a sudden? Do we switch to nuclear?

The Canadian & Venezuelan oil sands have about 4 trillion barrels of "Original Oil in Place". At current oil prices and level of technological development, only about 10% of this oil is considered recoverable and as such counted as reserves. But technology marches on, and if we start running out of oil from other sources, so will oil prices. So really, the world has hundreds of years worth of reserves. Much more conc…

> Much more concerning is that we have to keep ~80% of those 52 years worth of oil in the ground to keep climate change under the 2 degree goal...

Says who?

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#112

Post by KorematsuFred » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #40

KorematsuFred wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started studying economics the most baffling thing I learned was that the total amount of Oil we had was increasing and not decreasing. That weird fact kind of made me learn the basic concepts better and I think I have learned not to read too much into these sort of news items. Journalist often lack this outlook. The world is not going to run out of Oil ever. The world is more likely to run out of "need for oi…

> The world is not going to run out of Oil ever This is technically true but not really a great way to look at the issue. We will always have oil; it will just get progressively more difficult to extract it. The point where we “run out” is when it is no longer economical to extract it from whatever deposit it’s in.

> The point where we “run out” is when it is no longer economical to extract it from whatever deposit it’s in.

It is actually getting easier and easier to extract oil an not difficult. Fracking is a great example. Earlier you needed thousands of wells working round the clock these days you only need an area as big as a football field to trap into a large reserve.

Your meta-point however is correct, it is not that Oil is going to run out but better options and cheaper options will come into existence. Also this probably will happen as a step change function and not something that can be extrapolated.

Very likely fusion cells, battery cells etc. would become ridiculously cheaper to the extent that many oil fields will stop being profitable and hence will be closed down. That will be the time where "oil runs out" and in general a great day for humanity.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#113

Post by carlos22 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 6:33 AM UTC

woodandsteel wrote: post #109

carlos22 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rising popularity of electric cars Currently very slow - needs to accelerate a lot to be significant in 2030 (thats only 11 years). > increasing vehicle efficiency in general There is not much to gain, the vehicles are gaining weight in the last 2 decades (SUVs etc.). Thats eating up the small improvements in efficiency. A real big improvement is not in sight. > potential legislation targeting climate change We can…

> Rising popularity of electric cars Currently very slow - needs to accelerate a lot to be significant in 2030 (thats only 11 years). S-curve, man, S-curve. The experts say that around 2023-25 sales prices of EV's will be down to equal ICE's, and EV sales will take off like a rocket.

Well, we will see. As a German I can not believe it will happen, all our big car companies talking about it for like 8 years now. We had the goal of 1 mio. EV cars by 2020 in 2017 we have 54.99 (pure EVs) and about 160k hybrid. Thats 0.1 % EVs. Our gov pays you 4000 € bonus if you buy a EV, they still have budget for this campaign because of the low EV sales. Even the diesel-gate did not had a real effect, now everybody is buying gasoline cars.

VW announced the I.D. and a new e-up! But it is all only announcements, currently the cheapest car, the e-up! isn't even order-able. BMW announced the i2 (cheaper version of the i3) but it will take till 2021 to get one.

I hope you are right, but at least here it does not look like it.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#114

Post by carlos22 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 6:37 AM UTC

de_watcher wrote: post #49

carlos22 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rising popularity of electric cars Currently very slow - needs to accelerate a lot to be significant in 2030 (thats only 11 years). > increasing vehicle efficiency in general There is not much to gain, the vehicles are gaining weight in the last 2 decades (SUVs etc.). Thats eating up the small improvements in efficiency. A real big improvement is not in sight. > potential legislation targeting climate change We can…

> Rising popularity of electric cars Currently very slow Starting from the 2019 the range and price came to the point where they are suddenly viable in EU. Then there will be a used electric car wave because of the low-power charging infrastructure catching up and making older short range models actually useful.

Currently the prices of the used electric cars are crazy. You get a brand new gasoline car for the same price as an 6 year old VW e-up!. The Renault Zoe is still 30k EUR (including battery) for a small car with low to mid range (150 - 300km; depends on the model and year).