“Forget Occupy Wall Street: This is a real revolution.”
Steve Maley writes in the Washington Examiner:
Energy security in the United States may be an achievable goal for the first time in nearly 40 years. Credit largely goes to the shale boom; its epicenters are in places like Texas, Pennsylvania and North Dakota, not Washington, D.C.
The economic benefits — jobs, royalty and tax revenues and lower natural gas prices — reverberate nationwide. Forget Occupy Wall Street: This is a real revolution…
Peak Oil guru M. King Hubbert did not foresee horizontal wells, so his famous prognostication of the near-term demise of fossil fuels understandably did not take shale drilling into account.
Hubbert made passing reference to the so-called “oil shale” of the western states, but he did not consider it to be the ultimate answer to our energy needs. (This oil shale contains a waxy immature form of oil, quite a different technical challenge.)
Ironically, Hubbert predicted in the same paper (“Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels”, 1956) that as the hydrocarbon age wanes, the nation would tap its virtually inexhaustible supply of fissionable material. And where will we find all that uranium and thorium? Why, in shales, naturally.
The world will never run out of oil. Eventually something will come along due to improvements in technology that will replace hydrocarbons. The marketplace will decide what that winner will be and at that time there will a shift over a period of time away from hydrocarbons in the direction of that energy supply. The stone age did not end because the world ran out of rocks.
In the mean time maybe we should be thankful that a resourceful oil and gas industry keeps pushing the envelope to deliver reliable and relatively cheap energy to fuel our economy.