RE: What is Peak Oil ?
Doesn't matter how much oil you're talking about. The easy cheap stuff is GONE. Otherwise there would be no fracking.
Unlike conventional drilling, fracking uses new technologies to extract "tight oil," which does not freely flow through porous ground or rock.
Fracking requires special horizontal drilling and uses substantially more energy to extract smaller reserves, thus the profit (or EROEI / Energy Return on Energy Invested) is much less.
A fracked well also depletes much faster, and instead of a bell curve, it starts at the top (like a water slide at the water park), with the most oil being extracted in the first year, and declines very rapidly after about two or three years. This, in turn, requires more and more fracking wells to be drilled just to keep production at a certain level.
When oil was $140+ per barrel, fracking may have been profitable, but now that much financing went into those operations, the debts are killing the oil companies as the oil price collapsed to $29 to $45 per barrel oil.
I worked in the Oil Industry for a few years.
the cost of new tech ALWAYS comes down.
i used to drive a truck..diesel was $5 a gallon once.
it's $2.00 (give or take) now.
guess why?
you can't have it both ways...if oil is cheap...good
if it's not..
frack.
no peak.
I agree with you... the cost of tech has come down, as newer methods have been deployed to maximize oil extraction.
What most people don't understand is EROI (Energy Return on Investment) or, by another name, EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested).
As Wikipedia explains, "In physics, energy economics, and ecological energetics, energy returned on energy invested (EROEI or ERoEI); or energy return on investment (EROI), is the ratio of the amount of usable energy delivered from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy used to obtain that energy resource."
As an oil reserve depletes, more energy must be used to extract the remaining oil. So, the EROEI (or profit) can drop until you've gotta pack up your bags and go home. (or go searching for another reserve to exploit / and discoveries are not keeping up with current consumption - but that's a discussion for another time) - BUT, if you really want to understand the dilemma we're facing, I suggest that you read the following article from the Steve St. Angelo's SRS Rocco Report on this subject:
https://srsroccoreport.com/eroi-factor/
According to this article, "By 1970, production fell to a ratio of 30 to 1, and by 2000 it stood at just 11 to 1."
BTW - I have cross-checked many stats from SRS Rocco Report, and I have found them to be accurate and well sourced.
I've seen stats that fracking EROEI is as low as 6 to 1, and Canada's Oil Sands to be a low as 3 to 1.
If cheap, abundant oil was still available anywhere on this planet, there would be no need for fracking, or extracting "Oil Sands" by digging up and polluting miles of Canada's once-pristine boreal forest lands.
consider this.
in 1913 a twenty dollar double eagle was equivalent to an ounce of gold.
today a double eagle is worth over $3,000
the reality is that oil has not got more expensive rather that our money has become less valuable.
take that into account and oil is cheaper than it's ever been.
Yes, a double-eagle is about 1 ounce of gold. If it's an MS-61 then it's maybe $200 above gold (about $1500), one ounce of gold is about $1265 today (likely over $5,000 in the not-too-distant future).
I AGREE! - the US dollar has become less valuable, and is being inflated away until it's a big fat zero, on purpose, by "our leaders." (Got Gold? Got Silver? Got Crypto? Got Guns? Got Bullets? Got Gardens? Got Jack Daniels?)
COULDN'T AGREE MORE! That oil (and gasoline at the pump) is cheap, cheap cheap!
If people understood the value that one gallon of gasoline... One gallon, for two dollars, moves a car or truck, full of people, pets, and other stuff, up hills and over bridges for 15 to 25 miles. How much would you have to pay two or more people to push that car or truck for the same distance?
good...glad to be of service.
If you have any more questions I'll be glad to help.