Posted on 08/24/2005 6:06:17 AM PDT by minerboy
hink high gas prices are bad?
Get a load of what ex-oilman and ex-Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes believes are following closely behind:
"War, famine, pestilence and death," he said. "We've got to get the warning out."
The threat? Peak oil.
The term refers to the time when the worldwide production of oil peaks and begins a rapid decline. From then on, this incredibly efficient fuel source, which still costs less than most bottled water, will be ever more scarce and ever more costly.
Highly respected sources, including the U.S. government, think that day is distant, and most mainstream economists think it won't cause much of a ruckus.
But Deffeyes thinks peak oil is coming in November, and could bring humankind to the brink.
"It's been like pulling teeth to get public awareness," he said.
So who is this well-credentialed Chicken Little?
Deffeyes grew up next to gushing oil wells. He is a former petroleum geologist himself, having worked for Shell Oil for six years after earning a doctorate from Princeton.
He is a devotee of former Shell geologist M. King Hubbert, who correctly predicted U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Deffeyes is also the author of "Hubbert's Peak" and "Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak," which was published last spring.
He is among a cadre of peak-oil proponents who sketch out a frightening near-term future in which the American way of life is upended as the United States, China and great nations scramble after oil fields like desperate players in a game of musical chairs.
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
Probably because it's B.S.
LOL.... You shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. There is no mystery to refilling oil fields. Oil and Gas exist in underground sand where once there was a river or lake or something. When the well is drilled it finds the sand.... and then the pirosity of the sand determines how fast oil or gas can move from distant parts of the sand bar, to the well, which is esscentially a hole in a pressured area. Eventually enough oil and gas is removed so that there is less pressure in the sand bar (pressure caused by chemical nature of gas). As the pressure is reduced the oil or gas doesn't have the ability to flow through the sand grains at a very high rate... and not enough pressure to flow up 10,000 or whatever feet of casing. So they'll throw a pump down in the bottom and run it to pump the oil up the casing because there isn't enough pressure downhole to force it out.
That's how reserves work. And to maintain this pressure to begin with... the sand bar has to be surrounded by shale or stone capapable of holding the pressure.
I very much doubt that the "peak" day will arrive in November or even in the next 10 or 20 years, but most Freepers who opine on this topic don't seem to give a damn when it comes. The attitude seems to be "I'll guzzle as much gas as possible, and to hell with anyone who advocates conservation." Say it comes in 40 years; that's as close to now as 1965, and for some of us 1965 doesn't seem all that long ago.
I recently read an article saying 50 was break-even. Is that 100 that you quoted recent or twenty years ago? Not challenging you, I'm just interested in hearing more, as it is a subject I don't have a deep knowledge of. Thanks.
I hope if there are foodstuffs, you have been rotating your stocks!
I still have duct tape and plastic sheets.
Ex-Princeton professor?
This guy must be a real big time loony. ward churchill is a real loony and he is still, "practicing".
What do you think about what Nathan Zachary says in reply 36?
I am curious, I have heard off and on over the years that there is some regenerative source for oil and gas.
And it has always seemed impossible to me that oil should come from coral reefs; as it is depicted in the museum in Midland.
I'm not an economist so could someone please help me with this question. When oil prices rise, as they are now, who's making the money, the oil producing/exporting countries?
I believe Putin is desperate to return his motherland to the glory days of being s feared "super power", and achieve the success that the USSR once deluded itself was within its grasp.
Well, update your knowledge, go check out the VW TDI's
They've been making 50+ MPG diesel cars since the early/mid 90s.. >>>>>>>>
More like the seventies, the VW Rabbit diesel was reported to do about fifty one miles to the gallon in highway driving.
John McPhee has a series of great books on Geology, where he traveled I-80 across the country with a series of prominent geologists; the first published was "Basin and Range" which dealt with Nevada, and he traveled with Deffeyes.
Deffeyes didn't strike me as a loony from reading the book. There's not a single mention of petroleum anywhere in the book, though. Actually, in the book, Deffeyes spends much of his time looking for old abandoned Silver mines so he can set up a portable refining facility to extract silver from the tailings...apparently, he made quite a bit of $$$$.
Sorry but that article is useless. Saying that because the anti-war crowd talks about peak oil, therefore its a myth doesn't help advance anything on this debate except to cheapen and degrade the thought process. Talk like this doesn't belong in any discussion on peak oil.
Oil fields aren't replenished. There is fixed amount of oil that is trapped in sand, trapped by stone or shale that will hold the pressure. The trick to getting it all out is knowing the perosity of the sand (size of the grains) and determining how far from the bottom of the casing this perosity will allow oil and gas to flow to your well. Then you figure out where the sand (ancient river) runs... and you drill in the same zone far enough away from your first well to get more of the trapped gas. (the second well is called developmental drilling). And if you miss on the 2nd well.... you just threw away a million dollars or so. But the geologists and resevoire engineers are pretty good at figuring out where the sand runs.
They call the sand "pay zones". And the know exactly how many feet of sand there is ... size of the grains of sand, amount of pressure on the well etc.... and this tells them how many reserves they can book to that well.
That's the way it works in reality.
Oil sure seems the most likely tool, would not take much to regain that stature "IF" he could cripple US.
(1) Over-heated U.S. demand caused by consumer attitudes and gas guzzling vehicles,
(2) Increased and competing oil usage of China and India,
(3) The monopoly power of gigantantic Standard Oil-Chevron-Texaco-BP-Unocal *,
(4) Lack of modern U.S. refineries,
(5) Russia and China playing games with oil supply, and
(6) Greed and speculation by individual commodities traders driving up the price of oil.
* Teddy Roosevelt broke up Standard Oil. Now it is more powerful than ever. The same families that controlled Standard when Roosevelt was president now control The Federal Reserve Bank
Wasn't it one of those 'rags' that broke the Clinton/Lewinski story?
Alledgedly Clinton is close friends with the owner of the rag.
Clinton's goal was to diffuse the rumors by having it reported in a 'rag.' "It can't be true I read it in the tabloid, next to the batboy story."
If the oil story is true, a good way to diffuse panic would be to report it in a tabloid.
Just a thought.
Just because you haven't worked them, doesn't mean that it's not happening. There are plenty of them. Eugene Island is just one example. It does refill itself.
Not every oil field shares this phenomenon, it could be that the fissures, cracks or whatever closed up and those fields are no longer being formed/filled by the Abiotic process. It's not as you described, but rather a continuous process which happens deep within the earth.
The fossil fuel theory is just plain rediculous, it defies logic, and has NO proof to back it up. How did these dinosaurs end up 5 miles below the earth under bedrock anyways? It makes much more sense that oil is formed, or the process begins much further down, and makes it's way to these cavities through fissures. There are many wells that have continued producing far beyond what their estimated capacity was. Why?
There's more tech info here if you are so inclined.
http://www.gasresources.net/index.htm
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