What Does Peak Oil Look Like ?  

Heading Out's post at The Oil Drum showing a visualisation of the internal structure of the Abqaiq field in Saudi Arabia has gotten a lot of attention - Energy Bulletin, Green Car Congress and WorldChanging have all picked it up.

By using different colors the authors have shown the different fluid densities, and these can simply be translated into four zones. Over time the field has been injected with water (the blue zone) and this has pushed up the oil (the green zone) into the wells. The red is the overlying gas cap. When the reservoir was untapped it was likely all red and green. After all these years of pumping you can see how little of the green—the oil—remains.

Jamais at WorldChanging makes a point we should probably all remember - adapting to less energy probably isn't impossible - it just needs everyone to make the effort. Anyone who doesn't believe that should probably follow Jay Hanson's example and retire quietly to their location of choice to await the inevitable.

It's worth pointing out that peak production does not mean final production. That is, once we hit the global oil peak, petroleum production does not subsequently collapse. It's a decline, to be sure, but it can be a slow one, and will fluctuate with new (albeit hard to reach) discoveries and improved technologies. And even if we can't do anything about the planet running out of accessible oil, we can do something about our consumption. Lower oil production only matters if demand is greater than supply. As we've demonstrated here time and again, we have the tools and models necessary to shift into a high-efficiency, low-energy-consumption, high-quality lifestyle.

We just need to make the decision to do so.

Heading out also has a post up that notes that Britain may regret closing down all its coal mines. Maybe Jimmy Carter is going to have the last laugh at Ronald Reagan - and maybe Arthur Scargill will get to have the last laugh at Maggie Thatcher as well (now that would be a sight to see).

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