The more I hear this the more I wonder. Even if true, when you add the oil shale and other recoverable deposits and coal that can be converted we have a 500+ year supply.
Oil costs, but at the moment those costs are artificially inflated by producers suppressing supply and taxation of use by world governments.
Were this truely the 'crisis' they claim we would have alternatives being offered daily. Not the government subsidy supported media-hyped but never get to market BS we hear about now, but real on the shelf buy it now stuff.
The market will sort out what will and will not work, IF we ever allow it to happen.
I’m beginning to wonder about the limits of fossil fuels. I read the other day that by 2020, China will have 350 million middle-class people with automobiles, more than the U.S. This demand for oil from China did not exist at all 30 years ago. Combine that growth with the middle-class growth in India and I have no doubt we are definitely straining the world’s oil production capability.
I also believe that the 500 year supply of coal was for a fixed U.S. population that existed around 1970 and that per-capita energy consumption would not increase.
Lastly, “net energy” from oil shale and oil sands is considerably below “net energy” from petroleum extraction. In other words, it takes a lot more energy to extract and process a BTU of liquid fuel from oil sands and oil shale than it does to pump oil out of the ground. That doesn’t bode well for liquid energy prices.
Yes, I agree, the supplies are there. Can they get it out of the ground at multiple millions of barrels a day?
Don’t think so! So in the larger picture it’s a dead donkey.