Michael Lynch opines in the New York Times today on so-called “peak oil”:
A careful examination of the facts shows that most arguments about peak oil are based on anecdotal information, vague references and ignorance of how the oil industry goes about finding fields and extracting petroleum.
thanks for beating me to it antigreennuke, if you add the 50 Trillion cubic feet of gas in the Appalachian area and the equivalent value in coal (overall) we have hundreds of years of production even at increasing demand levels…. Duh!!
Of course, then there’s the Green River shales, etc., etc., etc.
This is just a red herring to get us to panic into ‘alternative fuels’ and energy because “We’re running out..!!!!” I suspect dilithium crystals will be in vogue long before ‘alternate energy’ does anything useful.
As far as US oil production is concerned, Alaska has more oil than is in all of Saudi Arabia (locked up in the Arctic ocean under the ruse of environmentalism), and even without Alaska, the US has enough shale oil (2 trillion barrels worth) it could supply itself and the rest of the world for 500 years, but the US government wants to be “INTERdependent” so it can justify globalism and its adventures in the middle east.
A statistical peak of world oil production can happen, but it will be when the collective decisions in the economy want it that way, not because it’s impossible to avoid it.
Antigreennuke, you really need to improve your knowlege of energy. Dr. King’s predicitions for US oil production – which were opposed by his employer Shell Oil – were spot on. Others have taken his work and applied it countries outside the US, plus world oil production as a whole, and again, those results have been spot on.
I am not going to give you the links, all easy to find, because the only education worth a damn, is one you are willing to work for.
The whole idea of a predictable “peak” of production that is going to happen “no matter how hard we try” is idiodic. It assumes we have a central planned economy in which production is dictated independently of actual demand, and then the dictators can cut off supply despite growing demand, causing prices to rise.
In a system of free market capitalism, supply is a response to demand, so supply will always continue to rise until it meets the demand, since prices go up, making it more profitable to produce. Even if the world had only one small oil field left, in a capitalist system they could put so many oil rigs there until the oil production from that field is larger than at any previous time in history, and it could continue to rise until the very last drop of oil.
“Peak oil” is simply a lie to scare people with an alleged “shortage” that cannot materialize in our system. In a free market supply and demand system, that allows prices to be set freely, there cannot EVER be a shortage of ANYTHING, only prices may rise.