The main reason why Peak Oil theorists always turn out to be wrong is that they by and large appear to be unable to grasp the huge role advancing technology plays in allowing the industry to discover new oil resources previously unknown, to access known resources that were previously thought to be unexploitable, and to extract an ever-increasing percentage of oil long known to be in place via secondary and tertiary recovery techniques.
I agree and it is caused by one world: technology.
I attended oil conferences where I heard the hustler Matthew Simmons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Simmonsdeliver this crock for years, arguing doom and gloom.
See his idiotic comments on the Deepwater Horizon.
All done to line his pocketbook, just like an Algore greenie.
Our world is blessed with an incredible source of energy in the form of hydrocarbons which occur naturally and are ours for the taking.
It will be many, many generations before we even have to think of these being exhausted.
Thank you, God.
The EPA in their corruption has decided to increase the amount of Alcohol in gas to reduce oil consumption.
I enjoy participating in Freeper Homer_J_Simpson’s daily thread “Real Time Plus 70 Years.” Here’s a link to his post of the New York Times from June 26, 1943:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3035794/posts
You have to scroll down some to get to it, but yes, there is a “Peak Oil” article. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox testifies to Congress that our oil reserves will run out in 14-20 years, and that it is unlikely to discover new reserves.
It was interesting that he noted that there were known reserves of shale oil, so we knew there that source of oil as early as 1943. But I’m guessing he had no idea how much, and of course the technology to extract it was not yet developed.
“Peak Oil” is fraudulent silliness born of ignorance. The issue is not the quantity of oil left to extract, but the price of the finished fuel products that people want to purchase.
We do not burn crude oil in our cars, trucks and airplanes. We burn very carefully refined fuel products made of molecules that are assembled, atom by atom, by a process that breaks down the molecules from some raw, hydrocarbon rich, feedstock.
Crude oil is the primary feedstock for the only reason that, for the time being, it is the least costly source of those atoms. But when crude oil was in short supply during World War II, the Germans used coal as the source of molecules. Based on today’s prices, it becomes less expensive to convert coal to diesel fuel when crude oil costs more than $80/bbl. But we can use other sources of hydrocarbons. A company in Carthage, Missouri was selling a form of diesel fuel that was made by rendering the waste products of slaughtering turkeys. It went bankrupt not because the process didn’t work, but because the resulting product was more expensive than customers wanted to pay. The company had previously run successful tests to convert municipal solid waste and sewage sludge into diesel fuel. They computed that there was enough sewage sludge in the US to supply around half of national diesel fuel needs if properly converted.
The end issue is cost. Presently, fuels made by refining crude oil cost less than fuels made by refining coal, sewage sludge, or turkey carcasses. But the instant those later sources are less expensive, the market will start to use them. We don’t fret about ‘peak whale’ because when over hunting caused the price of whale oil to rise, other sources of oil for lamps was found from coal and crude oil. Then electricity came into use for lighting of homes and streets. Today, even the use of Coleman lamps (that burn a form of gasoline) for illuminating camp sites is giving way to lights that use efficient LEDs and batteries. We can no longer buy whale oil, and who would light their home with it anyway? Neither would they use an open gas flame, as was done for decades.
An exciting frontier of research is to use genetically engineered algaes to produce usable fuel molecules. A recent article stated that at the present time, the break even costs were in the ballpark of $200/bbl. If it is really less, then all the better. The carbon atoms for algae-produced fuels would come from the CO2-rich gasses from coal-fired power plants.
The plain truth is that we are awash in hydrocarbons that can be converted to usable fuel products. The only issue is cost, that is if government will not intrude and distort economic decisions like it presently does with corn-based ethanol.
“Peak Oil” is propaganda that is used in an attempt to stampede policymakers and the public into choices that cannot be productive in the long run, and certainly ones will raise costs and destroy liberty in the process.
I like to tell liberals that peak oil was a lie started by big oil so that they could charge a lot more for the oil and make billions more in profits.
It appears that Peak Oil is not really about oil at all, but about economics.
http://peakoilpetroleumandpreciousmetals.yuku.com/topic/21205/Peak-Oil#.UebIysu9KSM