Global Population and Energy

I had not heard of Hans Rosling before I saw his 2013 programme Don’t Worry: The Truth about Population which the BBC re-aired after Rosling’s death this month at the age of 68.  It was really impressive: a great communicator and a first-class mind has left us.  My condolences to Rosling’s family and colleagues.

What Rosling has to say though about population growth is vital for all of us to understand if we care about humanity’s future.  The planet will be fine: over geological time it has seen many mass extinctions.  After a few million years there is always a flurry of evolution as descendants of surviving species exploit the available ecological niches and, in their turn, evolve into new species.  If this happens, then the chances are that humanity will not be around to see it.  No, it is what Rosling said about the population growth by 2100 that must concern us.

Before watching his lecture, I was led to believe that global human population would be capped by available resources at nine billion.  Apparently it is not so, as Rosling is predicting a population of eleven billion by 2100 and probably continuing to rise, albeit more slowly, thereafter. Currently the world is at seven billion - an increase of three billion during my own lifetime. Population levels have already stabilised in the northern nations: Europe, North America and Russia.  Latin America and Africa will see a doubling of their populations but Asia will see the bulk of new people.  This growth is not led by large families either.  Rosling points out that even in 2013, the average family in Bangladesh only has 2.5 children.  No, it is through most of us living longer that the the numbers of humanity will continue to growth.  Failing some drastic cataclysm, the momentum is now unstoppable.

Today we are in a world where the first stresses of this population rise are being felt.  The northern nations are the first to be living longer and having fewer children so our populations are stable, if not falling slightly as the old start to outnumber the young.  On the whole, people are defensive when it comes to foreigners and it is that that is leading to the rise of nationalism in all parts of the north: Putin, Trump, May and Le Pen.  This will only be a phase though as the momentum of humanity will ultimately be too great for such barriers to withstand.  The more serious struggle will be that of resources.

In my own field, that of energy, part of the social-conservative backlash has been directed against the new technologies of renewable energy.  I recently put up a comment on Twitter pointing out that while there is nothing wrong with the government investing in a new centre to maximise the exploration of North Sea oil and gas, they have severely cut investment in renewable energy at the same time.  Responses I got back were “Good: anything that requires a subsidy is a waste of time” and, more succinctly, “Green crap.”  Both responses come from the same source: social conservatism.  Or as a Tea Party member once told me: “All we want is simple.  Leave us the hell alone.”  That is not going to happen but it is nothing to do with political ideas.  It would be through weight of numbers.

There is also resistance from developing nations too.  Many see that the North has built wealth on the back of fossil fuels but now a section of us are saying that renewable energy is the only viable future.  The suspicion is that this is just a cover for the North to keep the fossil energy for themselves and slow down the economic development of people in the South.  “Why cannot we use oil and coal to generate wealth has you have done?” they ask.

Although the demise of fossils fuels have been predicted for some time, they will eventually run out.  If Rosling is correct and the population will rise even further than the often-cited nine billion, this will inevitably happen sooner rather than later.  That is an obvious problem for us all.  For instance, there is not one scenario being offered to the UK government that does not involve fossil fuels.  That is including from Friends of the Earth.  Even they cannot see a society model that, by 2050, we have cut our dependency on fossil fuels by more than fifty percent from current levels of consumption.  What happens to human civilisation when we are literally burning up our last scraps of coal?  I do not know but considering out current state, there cannot be a good outcome.

How much do we have left?  According to my current lectures at Heriot Watt University, the planet has about 40 years of oil, 50 years of gas and 90 years of coal left to use.  This is based upon rising demands for energy up to 2035.

Perhaps at this point I should address the basic issue about finite fuels.  After all, we always seem to be able to find more of the stuff.

 
Coal, oil and gas comes from the buried fertility of life on the planet.  Soon after the first plants were able to leave the seas and colonise land, there was an explosion of life. (Remember what I said about ecological niches being occupied?).  The first forests formed about 360 million years ago, during the geological period known as the Carboniferous.  Although there are coal reserves from younger periods (such as the lignites of Poland), it is mostly the remains of these ancient first forests we are burning.  Dry gas is associated with these coal beds.  That is the source of the gas fields of the Netherlands and the Southern North Sea.

In contrast, oil comes the biological productivity of ancient oceans.  The Northern North Sea oil comes from the Kimmeridge Clay, a carbon (fossil) rich layer of mud laid down only over a few million years about 155 million years ago.  Different areas of the world will have different sources but roughly similar mechanics.  The source rocks for the Gulf area (Saudi Arabia, UEA, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran) were laid down over a protracted length of time (about 80 million years!) during the formation and destruction of the an ancient ocean called the Tethys.  That is why about half the world’s oil reserves are to be found in this region.  As these muds, rich in the remains of marine plants and microscopic animals, are buried and heated, the chemical reactions start, over millions of years, to produce crude oil.  If that oil is heated further, wet gas is produced.  Heat it too much though and all the hydrogen is driven off, leaving only inert carbon.

Traditional drilling and oil exploration focuses upon finding the accumulations of this oil and gas as the fluids migrated and are trapped in rocks.  Fracking is only different insofar that the hydrocarbons still trapped in the original source rocks are freed up by mechanically breaking up the mudstones.   The point is about fracking is that after the source rocks have been exploited, there is nowhere else to go.  Fracking is a symptom that the sponge is starting to be squeezed in order to extract the final drops.

What of nuclear though?  Current power stations are based upon the fission of uranium.  This technology is problematic because of the weaponisation of byproducts.  Nuclear weapon technology is jealously guarded, even if that particular genie is out of the bottle.  However, this particular blog is about energy and not nuclear weapons.  Although there is plenty of uranium left in the planet, most of it is beyond the reach of human extraction. Only small quantities are trapped in the Earth’s crust and therefore mineable.  Current reserves are thought to be good for another seventy years.  Thorium is a far more plentiful element but there has been little investment in extracting the power contained within it.  Probably because its byproducts has far more difficult to weaponise.

In short, the world is not expected to have a single finite source of fossil energy expected to last beyond this century.

I haven’t even started to talk about what burning all these ancient reserves are doing to the climate.  The big question is:

Is mad-made climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, real?

Quick answer is yes.  Yes, it is real.

Climate-change deniers use the figure that “only” ninety seven percent of scientists claim that climate change is man-made and that they speak for the brave three percent.  Even this is a lie.

Have a look at this graph from jamespowell.org.  Climate change deniers have had zero impact on the scientific debate on the evidence.  This means that there is either a global conspiracy involving millions of scientists or, more likely, the evidence for man-made global warming is effectively unanimously accepted by those who consider the evidence.
 

Climate change deniers also point to natural climate change variation during geological time.  This indeed happens.  The next graph, from the University of Berne, shows the natural carbon dioxide level (CO2) over the past 60,000 years in terms of parts per million (ppm).  The ramp up from 20,000 to 12,000 years ago covers the period of glacier melting at the end of the last Ice Age.  The spike, right at the end, covers the last two hundred years up to 2004 - the period of the industrial revolution.  In 2016 CO2 have now past the 400 ppm.  As explained previously, the majority of fossil fuel energy which as been locked up in the planet’s crust is now being liberated into the atmosphere.  

CO2 is a vital atmospheric component for preserving solar radiation and keeping the planet warm and habitable.  Never in the course of geological history however has there been such a rapid and concentrated injection of CO2 into the planet’s atmosphere and all scientists expect the result to be rapid increases in global temperatures.  These changes in temperature will not be evenly spread but will see higher rises at the poles and more modest increases over the equator.  The effect upon habitats and ecosystems are also expected to be drastic as most species cannot react quickly enough to such rapid change.  Sea levels will also rise, mostly due to thermal expansion of ocean waters.

These are the challenges.  What is to be done?

If we do not do anything, human society is in for a very rough time that will effect us all, even social conservatives.  It is possible to do nothing to address the energy situation but then one is into a series of short-term military interventions, killing millions without any permanent solutions.  It is possible that in the face of huge population growth, usable energy will give out almost completely, leading to catastrophic problems in food production and supply. 

I tend not to be a doom-monger though.  Even without wilful negligence of current conservative thinking, solutions often still arise.  Again though, these tend to be short term and limited in scope, especially in democratic systems.  Authoritarian systems such as China do have an advantage when performing long-term planning.  The Chinese are indeed one of the highest investors in renewable energy technology.  This is perfectly understandable because their own history shows the negative results that social upheaval can have.  People tend to remember only the Second World War and the Communist revolution but they also remember events like the Taiping Revolution: one of the bloodiest civil wars in global history.  The challenge for Western nations is achieving desirable long-term outcomes without having to resort to dictatorship and the crushing of individual human rights.

Therefore I call upon all governments, but especially nationalist governments in the west, to first of all accept the scientific evidence and give no heed to climate change deniers.  The same can also to be asked of the mass media organisations.  Giving equal weight to the deniers is not upholding their right to free speech, it is simply propagation of a lie.  I am not going to stop people to state there is no such thing as global warming: it is just that they are simply wrong and are continuing to say so in the light of all available evidence.

Secondly, once the evidence is accepted as real, act upon it.  This does not mean leaving it to the market place.  Wise government is able to foresee trouble ahead and act in good time to minimalise the worst outcomes.  If this means having to subsidise prices from renewable energy resources and invest in energy storage research, then do it.

Thirdly, this appeal is to both governments and green activists.  We will need all the resources available to us over the next century.  This includes fossil fuels and nuclear.  Do not arbitrarily block  the exploitation of these reserves.  They will be needed.  Instead we need a long term policy approach to manage these resources, having them last as long as possible while taking measures to minimalise the effects of CO2 release: either through carbon capture or keeping the carbon in situ while releasing the hydrogen for energy usage.  We cannot have a position where hydrocarbons are bad: renewables good.  Yes, we need to maximise our investment and research in renewables but we will also still have to use fossil fuels.

By nature, I am not a pessimist.  These are huge challenges but, if we are smart, we as a species and civilisation, may be able to get through this next century.  We all need to wake up, look to the future and not harken either back to the past or some green nirvana that can never be.  We all need to accept and act upon the evidence.

Preserving Oilfield History

Last week I gave a lecture to a small audience of post-graduate students at Heriot-Watt’s Institute of Petroleum Engineering.  The topic was on an obscure branch of geophysics (known as borehole seismic) and the life of a oilfield service hand.  It is not my intent to write upon the topic here, you will be glad to learn.

While researching what is effectively personal history, I really found the limits of both my own records and that of the Internet.  The workhorse of Western Atlas for borehole seismic work was a tool system called an MRL - Multi-Level Receivers.  It simply does not exist online.  At least Google cannot find it.  As employees and contractors, we were never encouraged to photograph our work places.  Partly a safety issue - unrated electrical items can potentially cause a spark of radio transmissions trigger an explosive, but in the main oil companies simply do to encourage photography of their installations and business practices.  It is only when I was trawling through my old files and albums do I realise how diligent I have been in obeying such corporate edicts.

Since then, I have put out an appeal to colleagues to share their old pictures, especially those of older technology.  It is not that I have any strong sentiment attached to these tools: most are heavy and inferior to today’s offerings and I spent far too much of my life dragging the damn things around in tropical heat, North Sea gales and winter ice.  As a record of industrial history though, the records are already starting to fade.  They are already hardly known and will be lost completely if people like me do not organising and compiling their files.

Some of my friends have already been in contact and are willing to share their records, which is great.  I hope more of you get in contact.  This blog post has a wider appeal though.  If you work with specialised equipment, if might be worth while having a think now about the memory of the tools and the work practices are preserved for posterity.

Add caption

Photo credit: Alex Rennie.

Crisis? What Crisis? The SNP and Oil

Often there is manufactured outrage in politics, usually over some slip of the tongue or a policy U-turn.  Rarely though as a MSP made such a greater fool of himself that today, when SNP's Dennis Robertson stood up in parliament and said:

"The member just mentioned a crisis in the jobs in the North Sea and oil.
"There is no crisis. We have just actually extracted more oil than ever before in the North Sea.
"We have the most skilled workforce in the North Sea and it is booming."

Let's remain calm and see what Robertson was referring to.  It has been announced that North Sea oil production is due to rise for the first time since the late 1990s, as new field production came online in 2015.  Fair enough but this is after falls of about seventy percent in production figures in both oil and gas over the same time period.  So while any rise is welcome, it is hardly a boom as Mr Robertson describes.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/12016129/North-Sea-oil-and-gas-production-to-reverse-15-years-of-decline.html

As the Telegraph article goes to state and everybody in the industry already knows, the price per barrel of oil has crashed.

From a peak of $115.00 in 2014, the price at close yesterday was $36.29.  It will be news to Mr Dennis and perhaps other members of the SNP, but the recent Saudi domestic budget was based upon a projected price of $29.00 a barrel.  That may be pessimistic as the futures market are betting upon higher prices.  Even so, the current market is not expecting to see a return to $50.00 a barrel until December 2018.  http://www.barchart.com/commodityfutures/Crude_Oil_WTI_Futures/CL

Remember, the SNP were saying ahead of the referendum that Scotland would be fine on prices of $110.00.  Before the referendum, oil was the SNP's solution to every economic woe: its 'get-out-of-jail-free' card.  Now, apparently, oil is "just a bonus".   Oil is one card that the SNP can no longer play.

What does this all mean?  The price of oil has direct effect on whether a given field remains viable.  If the cost of further development exceeds the return made on the oil produced, that does not mean that the field will instantly close but rather oil will be continue to be extracted until the break-even point is reached, which includes the cost of decommissioning.  After that, the field will shut down and the infrastructure removed.
In September 2015, it was reported (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11853279/Clock-ticking-for-North-Sea-oil-as-low-prices-threaten-closure-of-140-fields.html) that up to 140 fields in the North Sea are facing decommissioning over then next five years.  The article states that, according to analysts Wood MacKenzie, even if the price was to return to $85.00 a barrel that fifty existing fields would be shut down.  As we have seen already, oil prices are not expected to break $50.00 before 2019.  It must be therefore presumed that the bulk of the threatened oil fields in the North Sea will shut down over the next five years.

There will be jobs in decommissioning for sure.  What of now though?  Since 2014, the figure cited for job losses in the UK's oil and gas sector is 65,000.  I read a Telegraph report from October that gave a figure of 74,000 UK jobs.  More cuts to the industry are expected in 2016.
Traditionally oil people are a flexible bunch.  If there is no jobs at home, the answer is to go abroad.  Not this time.  For example, my speciality is seismic exploration.  In November 2015 I checked out the job sites of the of the world's largest companies in oil-field services: Schlumberger and Halliburton, putting in my speciality as key words and for countries, I put in all.  Between these two huge employers and in my area of expertise, there was one single job being advertised, globally.  This downturn is not about Scotland, it is worldwide but it is affecting us all.  Since 2014 I have been made redundant twice and currently I am not looking to regain employment in the oil sector.  Many tens of thousands of workers in this country are in the same position and goodness knows how many hundreds of thousands are affected globally.

Despite Mr Robertson's claim that the North Sea is "booming", it is clear that the entire industry is cutting back and will continue to do so for some time in the future, certainly over the next two to three years.

When challenged in Holyrood over this state of affairs, Nicola Sturgeon often refers to a government task force set up to tackle the situation.  I have often wondered what form this task force would take and how it would roll back the tsunami that is engulfing the industry.  I found it, finally, and of course in the face of massive challenges facing the industry, it is negligible: some tax breaks and £5000 for employers to take on new apprentices.  Welcome of course, but Sturgeon should be challenged on this in parliament rather than just referring to it as a side-swipe to avoid the question. http://angussnp.org/wp/snp-mps-will-make-support-for-oil-and-gas-sector-an-election-priority/  No practical help is being offered by the SNP government to people in my position.  No fuss is being made either: of course one can feel sorry for the several thousand steel workers who have lost their jobs in 2015 but when tens of thousands of jobs go in the oil industry, not a murmur from either the Tories or the SNP.

That is what makes Dennis Robertson MSP's comments so insulting, so out-of-touch.

We are not waving Nicola.  We're drowning.

Terminated

In the past fifteen months, I have twice been made redundant.

The first one was actually easier to bear because I knew that my direct line manager had it in for me.  I was effectively working alone, not in an office so it was relatively easy for him to direct the flow of information.  Unlike others, I was not asked to reapply for my post but instead transferred across to a new cost centre within the company.  What I did not know is that was one due to be cut once the contract I was working on came to an end.  After what was to become my final job, I was called into the Stavanger office and by conference call my employment ended there and then.  No discussion or chance of appeal.

Working as I was, officially out of Italy, posted in Israel but for the last two years on secondment to Norway, I did not challenge the legality of the decision.  Which national court would I apply to for starters?   It was unpleasant but in a way okay because it was personal animosity on his part.  It was not my job performance: I knew what I did and did it well. I was the first out the door but soon many of my former colleagues were also unemployed and the industry started its decline.

Within seven weeks, I had joined a new company and I really enjoyed my time with them.  It was also convenient: usually one has to live within a major oil town to live close to such a job.  In was remarkable that I found one in Edinburgh less than a couple of  kilometres from the house.

Losing this last job is a lot harder to bear because I actually liked the people I worked with and I liked the work.  So to be judged as lacking compared to others who joined about the same time is a pretty bitter pill.  I guess at my age I am a slower learner on what are very difficult-to-use computer systems (we are not talking Apple or MS Windows here!).   I was partially hired for my previous industry experience but that does not seem to have mattered much when it came down to the crunch.

The worst thing about this time is that the whole industry is down.  As a noted in a previous blog, there are huge redundancies ongoing across oil and gas on a global basis - 65,000 around the North Sea alone.  The problems have been compounded here by the Conservative government's slashing of support for renewable energy.  An area that may have been natural for people in my position to transfer sideways into is also undergoing major jobs losses.

Unless something unexpected turns up, it looks like my time in the energy industry has come to an end.

Having undergone both the US-style same-day chop, and the British one-month staff consultation and selection process, which one is easier to bear?  Actually I think it is the American system.  It may be more brutal but the fact it is unexpected means the shock does not last as long.  Soon over and done.  The UK system of announcing upcoming redundancies, going through consultations and publishing the selection criteria may be fairer but it is unbelievably stressful for all those who even suspect they are in line to be axed.  The worst thing about it is the hope, the selfish hope that it won't be yourself but some other poor bastard.  I tried so hard to kill any hope but just could not.  As a society, we are expected to be positive and negativity is frowned upon.  It is almost impossible to stay positive under such circumstances.  Anybody who manages it simply does not care about the job they hold.

I was told yesterday afternoon that I was one of those who had been selected.  I wish I could have been more decent about it but that was beyond me.  Last night was pretty horrible.  It's the anger that is unable to express itself in some destructive outlet with is difficult to cope with.  Of course, it is this same anger when mixed with guns that leads to the explosive and tragic violence that is seen in the United States.  But it is the impersonal system that is at the root of the matter.  The people who sacked me are lovely - it would be better for my own sanity  if I could resent and hate them.  I have little doubt that their methodology was fair but the outcome is only for the company's benefit:  it does not feel at all fair to the people who have lost their jobs.  The whole process is easier on those who make the decisions and of course feels better for those who stay on.

It is  perhaps word-association that led me to think of James Cameron's movie The Terminator.  I had never thought of it as an allegory before but really it is.  Human beings develop a system that turns against them with an implacable and relentless logic.    Humanity is no longer necessary to the system and thus they are subjected to termination.  It is our creation of systems that have their own logic, without regard for the human impact, that necessitates the need for such a concept as "fairness".  Within the terms of the industry, my former employers are being very fair and above board.  It is the system as a whole that is not easy on people.

One thing that is definitely not fair is the government extending the period where new workers have no employment rights to two years.  I have invested over a year in this job and effectively have no rights whatsoever.  Six months is probably enough to see whether an individual is on the right track for a given job; a year is ample time.

I have to admit I did freak out a Texan friend when on Facebook last night I put up the status: "I finally understand The Terminator".  Her reply was "Wow.  Stay gold Ponyboy.  Stay gold."

I'm trying Shannon.

Oh, and if anybody would like to offer me employment, please get it contact.