Additional Iranian Oil Sanctions May Be Counterproductive

Posted on June 17, 2013 by

A June 6, 2013, article from Reuters is titled, “Lawmakers in new drive to slash Iran’s oil sales to a trickle.” According to it,

U.S. lawmakers are embarking this summer on a campaign to deal a deeper blow to Iran’s diminishing oil exports, and while they are still working out the details, analysts say the ultimate goal could be a near total cut-off.

My concern is that the new sanctions, if they work, will put the United States and Europe in a worse financial position than they were before the sanctions, mostly because of a spike in oil prices.

How much reduction in oil exports are we talking about? According to both the EIA and BP,  Iranian oil exports were in the 2.5 million barrels a day range, for most years in the 1992 to 2011 period. In 2012, Iran’s oil exports dropped to 1.7 or 1.8 million barrels a day. Recent data from OPEC suggests Iranian oil exports (crude + products) have recently dropped to about 1.5 million barrels a day in May 2013.

Figure 1. Iranian oil exports, based on BP and on EIA data.

Figure 1. Iranian oil exports, based on BP and on EIA data.

If the ultimate goal is “close to total cut-off,” an obvious question we should be asking ourselves is whether it makes sense to handicap world oil production by close to 2.5 million barrels relative to 2011, or close to 1.5 million barrels relative to May 2013. Oil prices have spiked in the past when there has been an interruption in world oil supply. Why wouldn’t they this time? Furthermore, who are really handicapping: Ourselves or Iran? Continue reading →

Posted in News Related Post, Oil Policy | Tagged , , , | 110 Comments

High Oil Prices are Starting to Affect China and India

Posted on June 7, 2013 by

Update: Not long after I wrote this post, the EIA revised the oil consumption amounts by country that they had published a few days earlier. The numbers changed substantially for quite a few of the countries outside the US and Europe. While the trend is still to lower growth in oil usage in 2011 and 2012 in China and India than in 2010, the trend is less pronounced.

Furthermore, we now have another set of numbers to check against EIA’s oil consumption amounts. BP released Statistical Review of World Energy 2013 yesterday, June 12. A comparison of annual increases in oil consumption (on a barrels of oil per day basis, not adjusted for population growth) from the three sources is as follows:

Comparison of growth in oil consumption, based on EIA original 2012 numbers, EIA revised 2012 numbers, and BP new Statistical Review of World Energy data. (All amounts based on "barrels per day" consumption.)

Comparison of growth in oil consumption, based on EIA original 2012 numbers, EIA revised 2012 numbers, and BP new Statistical Review of World Energy data. (All amounts based on “barrels per day” consumption.)

There seems to be fairly consistent reporting of oil consumption for major OECD countries, but this is  less the case for non-OECD countries. The lack of stability in reported oil consumption, both between reporting organizations and between reports, suggests that oil consumption numbers have “large error bands” around them. Below is a revised version of my original post.

Revised post. Based on revised EIA data, it appears that at current high oil prices, oil  demand the United States and Europe is being reduced. There are some indications that oil demand in China and India are flattening, but these are preliminary. For those who are wondering how high oil prices need to be, to be “too high,” the answer is, “We are already there, for the United States and Europe. We are getting there for China and India. In fact, continued high oil prices are a big reason behind the recessionary forces we are now seeing around the world.”

China and India, like the United States and most of Europe, are oil importers. Over time, we should expect high oil prices to have an impact on all importers. While the original EIA data suggested that China and India were affected in  2011 and 2012, the impact is much more muted using revised data.

In this post, I also explain why a person might expect a difference in the impact of high oil prices on oil importing countries compared to oil exporting countries.
Continue reading →

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Energy limits: Is there anything we can do?

Posted on May 30, 2013 by

The energy limit we are running into is a cost limit. I would argue that neither the Republican or Democrat approach to solving the problem will really work.

The Republicans favor “Drill Baby Drill”. If the issue is that the price of oil extraction is too high, additional drilling doesn’t really fix the problem. At best, it gives us a little more expensive oil to add to the world’s supply. The Wall Street research firm Sanford Bernstein recently estimated that the non-Opec marginal cost of production rose to $104.50 a barrel in 2012, up more than 13 per cent from $92.30 a barrel in 2011.

US consumers still cannot afford to buy high-priced oil, even if we extract the oil ourselves. The countries that see rising oil consumption tend to be ones that can leverage its use better with cheaper fuels, particularly coal (Figure 1). See Why coal consumption keeps rising; what economists missed. The recent reduction in US oil usage is more related to young people not being able to afford to drive than it is to improved automobile efficiency. See my post, Why is gasoline mileage lower? Better gasoline mileage?

Figure 1. Oil consumption by part of the world, based on EIA data. 2012 world consumption data estimated based on world "all liquids" production amounts.

Figure 1. Oil consumption by part of the world, based on EIA data. 2012 world consumption data estimated based on world “all liquids” production amounts.

The Democrats favor subsidizing high-priced energy approaches that wouldn’t be competitive without such subsidies. Government debt is at 103% of GDP. It is hard to see that the government can afford such subsidies. Also, it is doubtful that the supposed carbon-saving benefit is really there, when all of the follow-on effects are included. Buying wind turbine parts, solar panels, and goods that use rare earth minerals (used in many high-tech goods, including electric cars and  wind turbines) helps to stimulate the Chinese economy, adding to their coal use. Furthermore, the higher taxes needed to pay for these subsidies reduces the spendable income of the common worker, pushing the country in the direction of recession.

So what do we do as an alternative, if neither the Republican or Democrat approach works? I would argue that we are dealing with a situation that is essentially unfixable. It can be expected to morph into a financial crash, for reasons I explained in How Resource Limits Lead to Financial Collapse. Thus, the issue we will need to mitigate will be debt defaults, loss of jobs, and possibly major changes to governments. If we are dealing with a financial crash, oil prices may in fact be lower, but people will still be unable to afford the oil because of other issues, such as lack of jobs or lack of access to money in their bank accounts. Continue reading →

Posted in Planning for the Future | Tagged , , , | 444 Comments

Oil Limits and Climate Change

Posted on May 23, 2013 by

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. If future energy consumption (which is mostly fossil fuel) drops because of a financial collapse brought on by high oil prices and other limits, then, at least in theory, climate change should be less of a problem.  One of the important variables in climate change models is the amount of  carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels that enters the atmosphere. In a recent post (Peak Oil Demand is Already a Huge Problem), I showed the following estimate of future energy consumption.

Figure 1. One view of future energy consumption for the world as a whole. History is based on BP's 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy.

Figure 1. One view of future energy consumption for the world as a whole. History is based on BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy.

I explained in that post that oil limits are different from what most people expect. Oil limits are price limits. Indirectly because of these price limits, fuel consumption of all sorts (not just oil) will decline in the near future. The problem will be greater job loss and an inability to afford products of many kinds, including those made with fossil fuels. Financial collapse, particularly of governments, and a long-term decline in population are also part of this scenario.

My estimate of CO2 generation by fossil fuels in the 21st century is only about one-quarter of the amount (range midpoint) assumed in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report. When differences in estimates of an important variable are this far apart, one starts reaching the “Garbage in, garbage out” problem. This is a persistent problem for all modelers. Even if the climate model is perfect apart from its estimate of future CO2 fossil fuel use, and even if anthropogenic issues are implicated as a cause of recent climate changes, the model with its incorrect estimate of future fossil fuel energy consumption can still be unhelpful for determining needed future actions.

A comparison of energy consumption estimates is shown in Figure 2. My estimate of energy consumption (similar to that in Figure 1) is shown as the Collapse scenario.

Figure 2. Comparison of Energy Consumption Estimates. Climate high and Climate low are based on Figure 1 of this Oil Drum post by DeSousa and Mearns. "Peak oil" is based on a 2013 estimate by Energy Watch Group. Collapse is my estimate, associated with Figure 1 of this post. In all of the estimates, there is an implicit assumption that the fuel mix stays relatively constant.

Figure 2. Comparison of Energy Consumption Estimates. Climate high and Climate low are based on Figure 1 of this Oil Drum post by DeSousa and Mearns. “Peak oil” is based on a 2013 estimate by Energy Watch Group. Collapse is my estimate, associated with Figure 1 of this post. In all of the estimates, there is an implicit assumption that the fuel mix stays relatively constant.

Continue reading →

Posted in Energy policy | Tagged , , , , | 159 Comments

What Would it Take to Get to a Steady State Economy?

Posted on May 15, 2013 by

Humans live in equilibrium with other species in a finite world. In such a world, there is never really a Steady State. Instead, there is a constant ebb and flow.  For a while, one species may be dominant in an area, and then another. If populations are closely matched in “ability,” then the ups and downs aren’t too severe. If a predator depends on a particular type of prey for its dinner, it can’t eat all of the prey, or it will go hungry.

When the populations of various species are graphed, they rise and fall.  We usually think of a close match, such as depicted in this graph:

Figure 1. Volterra_Lotka equations used to illustrate situation where population of predators and prey do not vary over too wide a range.

Figure 1. Volterra_Lotka equations used to illustrate situation where population of predators and prey do not vary over too wide a range.Source: Wikipedia.

In fact, the variability of the many species over time tends to be greater than this, as illustrated by the following model that started with 80 baboons and 40 cheetahs:

Figure 2. Lotka-Volterra equations used to illustrate situation that begins with 80 baboons and 40 cheetahs. Source: Wikipedia

Figure 2. Lotka-Volterra equations used to illustrate situation that begins with 80 baboons and 40 cheetahs. Source: Wikipedia

If species evolve together, a natural balance tends to remain in place. Continue reading →

Posted in Financial Implications | Tagged , , , , | 441 Comments