USEIA Oil Report
For the love of the human
race.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Our Thesis
The United States Energy Information Administration (USEIA,
or simply EIA) publishes very useful reports.
There is very little reason for these reports to be falsified. Even if falsified they still contradict much
business and political rhetoric, which consist mostly of hyperbole. EIA data at least give the appearance of
being factual: the existence of the report is a publically available and
undeniable fact.[1]
Because of the public availability of such data reports it
is futile to continue analysis based on Dr. Bartlett’s[2] 1970 data. We now have forty-three years of new data at
our finger tips.
The First Page
At the top of the first EIA report page we are met by a very
convenient and useful graph of U.S. Crude Oil Production. We will be looking more closely at this graph
and the data behind it. The first thing
we notice is that it verifies Dr. Bartlett’s earlier data on oil production. Then we notice that it also follows Dr.
Hubbert’s[3] peak oil theories, which
can be modeled with Gaussian curves.
Finally we notice that it ends with a sudden climb in recent years.
Production
We copied and pasted the production, import, export, and
supplied product data into an Excel spreadsheet. The supplied product data has since been
changed or removed by EIA. This is
perfectly understandable: the EIA report appears to be a work in progress, and
the supplied product data was a confusing category. This does not affect the accuracy of the
other categories.
We calculated the sum and maximum of the production data
using the Excel functions. We discovered
that the Unites States has produced roughly 208,940,000,000 barrels of oil
since the start of production records around 1859, when a mere 2,000 barrels
were produced. This is an enormous
quantity of oil, so perhaps we should try to get our minds around it. 208,940,000,000 barrels is the same as 208,940,000
thousand barrels (k-bbls), 208,940 million barrels (M-bbls), 208.9 billion
barrels (G-bbls): that is a lot of oil folks.
The maximum shows us that a peak of 3,517 million barrels
(M-bbls) occurred in 1970 just as Dr. Hubbert suggested. In 2008 production hit a temporary minimum of
1,830 M-bbls and headed up again, promising to create a bi-modal curve. In 2013 we reached a production of 2,716
M-bbls, which is not far from the 1970 peak.%
What went wrong? Did
Dr. Bartlett and Hubbert lie to us? Was
their “arithmetic” in error? Not
hardly. These changes in the shape of
the curve are caused by business and political decisions, not by mathematicians
and scientists. We have already proved
that the alarming growth in production since 2008 cannot be sustained
indefinitely. When we report on the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) we will be able to grasp a better
understanding of these peak limitations.
In the meantime, we may be sure of these facts: crude oil production
will peak again, and it will return to a downhill path; crude oil is not an
infinite resource.
Exports
Beginning in 1900 we began to report exports of crude oil,
starting at around 3 M-bbls in 1900, hitting peaks in 1938 (77 M-bbls), 1957
(50 M-bbls), and 1980 (105 M-bbls), arriving at a total of 2,800 M-bbls by the
closing report for 2013. This amount is not
significant when contrasted with production and import quantities.
Imports
The United States began to import oil, according to the
report, ten years later in 1910. Peaks
occurred in 1977 (2,414 M-bbls), and 2005 (3,696 M-bbls). In 1994 imports exceeded production for the
first time and have exceeded production ever since. So in spite of what prognosticators have to
say about being oil independent, we are far from achieving that reality.
Consumption
Exact figures for consumption are not reported at this
time. However, we can get a very good
idea of crude oil consumption in the United States by adding production and
imports, then subtracting exports from that total. This net amount must either be consumed or
stored. Since crude oil is difficult to
store, and a perishable commodity, we conclude that this net amount is our
minimum consumption. There may be
undisclosed data which make our consumption larger than this, but it is very
unlikely to be smaller.
These net amounts are very alarming. They show that even though production peaked
in 1970, consumption continued to grow until peaking in 1978 (5,440 M-bbls), 2001
(5,515 M-bbls), and 2004 (5,674 M-bbls).
Consumption did experience a sharp but short lived drop in 1983 (4,326
M-bbls). Worse yet, consumption has held
steadily above 5 G-bbls ever since 1996.
Any report that Americans have learned to conserve gasoline[4] is simply untrue. Since 1859 we have consumed a gross total of
319,992 M-bbls of crude oil, nearly 320 G-bbls.
In a separate location consumption for 2013 was reported as
6,890 M-bbls. We have not yet found the
source of this data.
Supplied Product
Since the report of supplied product seems to have been
moved or removed, we will not dwell on it.
Our fear is that this was the start of a report of true United States
consumption. What is frightening about
this data is that it continues to increase to a peak of 7,593 M-bbls in 2005
and then declines steadily. Let’s hope
that this information is all in error
Production Growth
Our next step of analysis was to calculate the natural
logarithm of production figures for each year from 1859 through 2013. These were broken into periods of growth or
decline for 1880-1970, 1970-2008, and 2008-2013. These “break” points are critical to the
outcome so you may want to rethink these, and if you don’t like them, choose
your own “break” points. Each of the
natural logarithms for these periods was graphed. Next, a linear timeline was added to each logarithm
graph using the built in Excel utility.
The equation option was also chosen.
The resulting equations were: y = 0.0606x - 110.65, y = -0.0173x +
42.203, and y = 0.0741x - 141.38, respectively.
What this means is that there was relatively steady growth of crude oil
production in the Unites States of .0606, or 6.06% between 1880 and 1970. There was a 1.73% decline between 1970 and
2008. After 2008 there has been a growth
period of 7.41%, which represents a doubling time of 9.7[5] years.
Consumption Growth
The same sort of logarithm analysis was performed on
consumption figures for each year from 1859 through 2013. These were broken into periods of growth or
decline for 1880-1978, 1978-1983, and 1983-2013. These analyses show of crude oil consumption
of 5.89% per year up to 1978. This
represents a doubling time of about 12 years.
Between 1978 and 1983 a decline in consumption of 5.35% was
experienced. After 1983 consumption growth
continues at 0.76%, which represents a doubling time of nearly 92 years. It’s nice to observe that our consumption may
have finally slowed. However, it needs
to decline.
Conclusion
We do not yet have all the data
we need for predictive analysis. We need
to know how much crude oil is left in the ground: that is, we need to know the
total size of all crude oil reserves, both discovered and undiscovered.
At least one oil man has
bragged that we have as much oil left as we have ever produced. Since we have produced a total of 208.9
G-bbls, if that brag were repeated today, it would mean that we have 208.9
G-bbls of crude oil left in the ground.
Our current rate of production is 2,716 M-bbls per year. So even if such a vast supply were actually
available. We would still be out of oil
in 77 years if we did not increase production.
If we compensate for 7.41% growth, there are only a fraction over 26
years of oil reserves left.
Our consumption rates are even
higher leaving us with less than 38 years-worth of oil left in reserves.
There is little reason to
believe that our oil reserves are really this vast. We will look for firm oil reserve data in
future reports.
The most important single piece
of information that we can glean immediately from this report is that crude oil
imports for 2013 are still at 2,821 M-bbls.
For the United States to reach true crude oil independency at zero
imports, we would have to increase current annual production from 2,716 M-bbls
per year to 5,538 (2, 716 + 2, 821 + the decimal error of rounding) and
terminate all exports. This is more than
twice the current production. This means
more than twice the present pumping and refinery output. We may well have to drill many new wells and build
several new refineries to accomplish such a goal. Even if we were able to actually accomplish
such giant steps; even if we really had such vast amounts of crude oil beneath
our feet: we would still be completely out of crude oil in 33 to 38 years or
less.
We can balance this deficit by
trying to jump through impossible production hoops. Alternatively, we can cut our consumption drastically
and have a far better outcome. The “Use
Less Stuff” movement[6]
makes much more sense than the “Make and Waste More Stuff” movement makes.
Please continue to study this
EIA report, especially to see if you can find any flaws in the information.
[1] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=A.
At the bottom of this page there is a
link titled, “U.S. Crude Oil Supply & Disposition”. Opening this link we chose the reporting period
as annual. This new page features a
chart, in the header of which is an Excel icon with the words, “Download Series
History”. We picked these words to open
the workbook data contents. Tabs are
located at the bottom of the page. We
found the data for which we were looking under tabs Data 1, and Data 2. We cut and pasted this data into an Excel
spreadsheet and analyzed it with Dr. Bartlett’s “arithmetic” and a variety of
common spreadsheet tools. Unfortunately,
at this time we do not have the capability of embedding our graphs of such
analysis in Blogger.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Allen_Bartlett
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._King_Hubbert
[4]
Gasoline is the principal product made and consumed from crude oil. Other products include asphalt for road
building, aviation gas, diesel fuel, jet fuel, lubricating oils, and plastics;
the list continues.
[5]
Ln(2)/ln(1+.0741) or approximately 70/7.41 (9.7, or roughly 9.5 years)
[6] Robert
Lilienfeld also has a book with this title.
See http://www.use-less-stuff.com/
[7] If you have been blessed or helped by any of these meditations,
please repost, share, or use any of them as you wish. No rights are reserved. They are designed and intended for your free
participation. They were freely
received, and are freely given. No other
permission is required for their use.
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