Looks like we have a new SHTF Date to wait for: 2031.  :-\   Not quite 2 decades after the feared Mayan prognosticaltion of 12/21/2012 for TEOTWAWKI.  This is when this article predicts North Sea oil to be net energy negative.  It predicts also that globally all oil will be net energy negative by the end of the 2030s.

However, why this is not quite as bad as it sound comes early in the article with the current state of Alaska oil: "Alaska's oil production became net-energy negative in 2021."  If it's negative, why pump it?

Because the energy to pump it up comes from NG, which is extracted along with oil and can't be sold itself because there's no NG pipeline or LNG production facility to get the NG from the slope to markets where it might be burned directly to produce electricity.  So it's essentially free energy to use for pumping up the oil remaining there.  In fact there's so much extra NG they have to flare it off because they have nowhere to store it either.

Similarly, a deep sea oil extraction platform could get power to pump up oil from the depths of the ocean utilizing a Wind Turbine at the surface to power the rig.  No way to get the electricity itself to shore, but you can use it right there to pump up the oil.  Essentially free energy also except for the cost of the turbine.

So this really doesn't tell us when the lights will go out here in the FSoA, just that things are going to get a lot dicier moving forward.  We already knew that though.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-04-15/the-oil-crash-is-coming-sooner-than-we-think/

RE