Oodles of Oil in the Earth?
 

According to this NewsWeek article (late 2006) we have little to worry about, in regard to oil being there in the distant future, through the end of the century, so it says.

I tend to be a bit pessimestic, but give it a read and do report your views.

https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16288769...wsweek/page/0/

That being said, we've got plenty of oil left. And now that we've managed to push demand to stratospheric levels, it'll be very lucrative selling each and every last drop. Provided we can keep viable alternatives out of the mainstream market and stay on the supply side.

MorningGaser -

More oil may be out there, but I think the prevailing rule is that it will be harder to find and more expensive to extract. The law of diminishing returns. I disagree with this quote :

The reason being that Carter had "flatlined" US oil consumption in the late 1970's, which helped to break OPEC later on. I would say that the supply boom resulted from successful conservation.

I've heard about the Russian theory independent of this article, but I don't have enough expertise to comment. Theory vs theory. Dinosaur guts vs tectonic earth forces. Who knows?

If oil runs out, the USA will still have coal, so we'll still have to solve the same (worse with coal) pollution problems.

PS - My own conspiracy theory on this is that all the fuss over ANWR is because it has oodles of oil that nobody wants to talk about because someone wants to make a killing on it first.

CarloSW2

This is the grandest of all conspiracy theories, even better than "who shot JFK". Submitted for your approval:

1. In the 1970s, CIA says that middle east is running out of oil. Allow that to happen and what happens to that regions influence? Who was the head of the CIA at the time?

2. Draw down of refinery capacity to create artificial shortage, drive prices up. Primes the economy for unprecedented problems. Who owns the major refineries?

3. Plenty of oil under our region of the world, yet it remains untapped. We're saving it for what/when? See item #1.

4. We know how 9/11 effected this country. Ask yourself what would happen if we lost our refining capabilities due to 50% of refineries being destroyed? See item #2.

Simple and elegant as all conspiracy theories are on the surface.

Your theory nails it IMO. The primary goal of the US government at this point is to hoarde domestic resources in the hopes of making a killing later on when the rest of the planet has been pumped dry.

Unfortunately this only works if they can successfully control the energy monopoly, but I think they are in a losing fight on that. Alternative energy sources are everywhere and the patents on storage technology (batteries) are limited. It's only a matter of time before electrics become far more common, however one should not discount the possibility that the oil companies will attempt to monopolize the copper mining industry as well given the relatively large amounts required for electric motors.

Interesting, but not surprising. I never did see how it could all come from dinosaurs. There's just too much oil for it to be dead dinos and their dinners. How much have we burned since the late 1800s when production first started ramping up? This doesn't count the stuff that's oozed to the surface for the last who knows how long. And, some oil fields that were played out and abandoned have been found to be full again.

I think that the planet does indeed make crude as it goes along, and we keep being told it is a finite resource because that makes it more valuable. If it was well known that the planet makes X number of barrels every year, then it wouldn't be worth nearly as much. Assumptions were made back before technology was able to show otherwise, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a decision wasn't made to let those assumptions continue for money's sake.

Even though I think oil is a renewable resource, I still think it needs to be conserved for no other reason than to keep the air clean. My own preference would be to see crude used only for mobile power generation, and require all stationary power needs to be supplied by electricity. I'd like to see that electricity be generated by hydro, solar, wind, wave, geothermal, nuclear, ect. None of these methods of power generation cause pollution (not counting what it takes to make the stuff) except nuclear, and with the new breeder reactors spent fuel is reprocessed into new fuel. I'm certain that we could develop a means to deal with the spent fuel in the next 500 years, and we could probably even come up with a way to reprocess existing nuclear waste into new breeder fuel. I'd like to see all electrical lines buried at least 6ft deep, and the elimination of the oil heater in the Northeast. I think that just this step alone would cut the carbon emissions of the US by 30 percent, some of those oil heaters have been in use for over 30 years or longer, and once a unit is installed it does not have to meed emissions standards passed afterwards. Those old oil heaters are like this VW bus I saw at a bank drivethrough back when I had my Tahoe, the whole back of it was railing against the SUV as a planet destroyer, calling them gas sucking pollution machines. When the bus owner started up, he pumped out more pollution in the first 5 seconds of operation than my Tahoe put out for a year. Then he gave it the gas and the smoke started pumping out like a stack! Nasty!

If we only used "fossil" fuels to power mobile sources (and the other non-fuel uses) then the cost of a barrel would drop to about 20 dollars, and gasoline would be below a dollar a gallon. Bad thing is this would encourage 5MPG monsters, but with laws requiring high MPG regardless of oil prices with drastic gas guzzler taxes assessed on a yearly basis, it wouldn't matter. Transportation would be cheap and accessible to everyone and pollution would be reduced to boot.

Me, I'm just a cheap bast@rd...

Frankly, I don't give a ****.
Where it comes from and whether it's slowly replacing itself, that is.

If it is indeed replacing itself it's doing so very slowly and we're not seeing the "new" stuff. According to Big Oil it's becoming more and more difficult to find additional underground supplies.

So my answer is to conserve.
If enough people hypermile their vehicles we could actually break Big Oil. Remember, they only make money because we buy their product.

Amen to that! Getting better mileage from a stock vehicle really isn't that hard. I used to do it just to save money and now......well now I'm really saving money. The people that used to laugh at me are scratching their heads. "You really get that much better mileage just from hanging plastic on your truck?" Yep.

For the life of me I still can't find a reason for the feds to not lower the national speed limit back down to 55 or even 65. Imagine the daily savings nationwide if everyone slowed down just 10 miles an hour.

We're going the other way in Texas.

Granted that's some long straight highways but does anyone drives the speed limit now a days.

I don't know about anywhere else, but in California they sure don't. I think the philosophy here is for the CHP to stay off of the freeways during rush hours and only show up when their is an accident. Anything else, they just get off the road and let the drivers dictate the speed. I don't drive slow, but when I am doing 80 and I'm being herded down the freeway, their are a lot of folks driving in a hurry and most of them don't seem to care about the cost of gas. Pretty Strange!

I kind of wish that they would pick a reasonable number, and then enforce it tightly. Don't put 45 mph in the interstate construction zone just because you are hoping for people to slow down to 60. Put 60 mph, and write a $200 ticket to anyone over that... But that's just me.

Hey as far as oil running out, etc, something that I keep thinking is that a lot of our domestic oil was shut in when it became uneconomical to produce it for, say, $17 per barrel. It seems like if oil can hold at a steady $100 per barrel, we could see a new drilling boom on all the old fields where the wells have been plugged...

DingDing!! We have a winner !

Bill -

I was raised in the Jimmy Carter days, so I really really wish 55 MPH would come back. It should definitely be applied in urban areas where the oil usage is the greatest, as in LA.

Egg-zactly. Higher oil prices make all those capped fields valuable again. Hrrmmmmm, but it also makes alternative energy more viable, so there's the rub.

I agree with Bruce in the sense that it is becoming harder to get the oil out. Like everyone is saying, if the rate of use exceeds the rate of production, shortages will abound. We all know that China is the next big industrial giant (and pollution accident) coming online, so I don't see any way for oil production to keep up.

The analogy I would use is logging and fishing. There is nothing wrong with logging and fishing if it does not outstrip the capacity of the environment to replenish itself, aka sustainable. If it is "strip mining" the resource, then eventually the resource is gone and nobody has a job.

When the price goes high enough, we still have the Tar Sands in Canada :

Tar sands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands
CarloSW2

Yeah, all those factors keep me optimistic that there will be a "soft landing" as we develop new technologies.

Me -

Here come the tar sands :

Alberta oilsands frenzy slows to a more sustainable pace
https://www.ft.com/cms/s/69e55760-fd0...b5df10621.html

Iraq's oil boom isn't delayed, it's relocated to Canada
https://environment.guardian.co.uk/cl...092931,00.html

CarloSW2

Most oil was from decayng plant matter, not animals (Dino the dinosaur).

It doesn't matter whether there's lots of oil on Earth. What does matter is the Islamic fascists who control most of it. They use oil profits to spread the most brutal (kill gays, Christians, Jews, and even atheists), misogynistic (women must wear the veil and submit to her husband in all things, else be beaten) way of life.

We gotta stop using oil.

The oil is there, at a price

Even at a price it won't be enough IF consumption keeps growing, if you believe in Hubberts Peak Theory (I do) whats left at a high price in 50 years won't go far.

$200 a barrel oil is part of the solution, I don't think these dummies will get smart about conserving or switching over to other forms of energy until we see $200 (in todays dollars)

How long before we see $200? my guess is 5-10 years



Hubberts Peak Article https://www.financialsense.com/series3/part1.html

So many factors come into play. Refinery capacity is the current scapegoat. I have heard so many different stories, all from interested parties, that I don't know who to believe.

M

The bottom line is an effort by the oil suppliers to maintain supply side control of thier commodity. They always refer to "proven reserves" in an attempt to mislead people about what is truly available to pump. Proven reserves are nothing more than what they have actually drilled down to confirm what is believed to be there. The reality is that there are massive oil stores within the earth - the majority of which is 'unproven' for no other reason than they have not drilled there yet.

'Peak oil' in reality only refers to what has been proven. Likely, it also more or less coincides with what is easy pickens for the most part. Hubbert however was wildly off the mark.

I strongly recommend reading Greg Palast's book 'Armed Madhouse' for a clearer picture of what I am contending.