Michael Lynch, the former director for Asian energy and security at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an energy consultant.

Peak Oil Ping

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Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

Thanks for the ping!

The sad part is that the peak will come, but it will be a political one.

It will be imposed by tyrants through taxes and regulations upon a population which has proven its superior ability to extract petroleum globally, for the purpose of alleviating a problem decreed by a consensus of grant recipients which is not indicated by the best data, and not the result of the activity which is being blamed. Furthermore, the 'solution' will not address the nonproblem, but will be economically devastating for all.

Sunspots Do Really Affect Weather Patterns, Say Scientists

Drat, that's the one I forgot.

Like many other Malthusian beliefs, they are nothing more than self-serving, if these POS really believed in what they preach (considering they are in the business of profiting from limited resources) they would be running to nuclear. Instead what are they doing, promoting everyone listening to Chicken Little Eco-Freaks. Further, Captain Kenya would not have given George Soros holdings $2B for off-shore oil drilling in Brazil if true. Doing so does not change any global issues, just moves the profit off-shore; plus the concerned seem to be overlooking Venezuela, Brazil or Cuba securing access in those regions... Common thread, China is either assisting or is cut in on the deal…uhm could it be Captain Kenya is also in on the action?

Catalog for later reading

Washington Capitulates: Peak Oil Is Real
Commodity News Center ^ | 8/28/09 | Doug Hornig
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2326688/posts?page=17
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 9:17:30 AM by h20skier66

I thought this documentary was compelling

http://www.netflix.com/Movie/A_Crude_Awakening_The_Oil_Crash/70061528?lnkctr=srchrd-sr&strkid=1558207712_13_1&strackid=27318a624f37a99e_13_srl

Oil is a finite resource.

I used to talk to my dad about oil drilling when he started in the industry right after WWII. Back then, even with the technology in its infancy, oil was much easier to extract than it is today.

Today, we put great expense and technology into an E&P project but at some point the economics of E&P will not be profitable and we will need to turn to another source of energy.

How can we run out of oil if we won't drill for it in the first place?

Petroleum is made from dead plants. The world hasn't run out of dead plants. We can even make petroleum ourselves if we're in a pinch.

I don't think so...

California was shut down decades ago, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas couldn't compete against cheap Mid East, Nigerian and Venezuelan oil and capped their wells. Alaska was stymied by environmentalists saving the wild natural northern parklands, who had to be rescued from the frozen tundra protesting drilling in ANWAR.

Saudi Arabia is running short on production of light sweet crude, Venezuelan crude is heavy and doesn't command premium price on the market as is the case in other third world oil exporting nations. The reason they get as good a price as they do is due to curtailed exploration and drilling in and around the continental US.

Oil companies have the technology develop new fields, ashore and asea, but limited access domestically, banned politically not financially.

Instead we have rising market prices at the whims of speculators, nationalized oil producers and baksheesh to the Arabs. T.Boone preaching wind power and now propane as alternatives. What next.......buffalo chips?

At different times at different locations and from different “expert” sources I have learned peak oil is here now, was here 2 years ago, will be here in ____ yrs (fill in the blank.

...along comes Fatih Birol, the top economist at the International Energy Agency, to insist that we'll reach the peak moment in 10 years, a decade sooner than most previous predictions (although a few ardent pessimists believe the moment of no return has already come and gone). Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material.

s/b "Like ALL Malthusian beliefs", but regardless, the "few ardent pessimists" are not so few, and tell us that peak oil was reached decades ago, and (like their hero Paul Erhlich) is going to run out any second now. Indeed, at current rates, known reserves will only last another 50 years -- but by that time, other sources will be known, and of course, Obama will have all of us riding bikes everywhere like good little Maoist peasants should. Thanks neverdem.

Fatih Birol and James Schlesinger- economists, are experts in geology? T. Boone Pickens, while a geologist hasn’t worked in the field for over 50 years. His main interest lately has been pushing his solar and wind generating enterprises.

Particiularly if despots like the present ones continue to seek to make us do so in violation of our liberties while preventing us from producing the oil that is right in front of us and continue subsidizing boondoggles to help their pals so as to obstruct the market from driving better, cleaner use of the fuel that is right in front of us that we are not allowed to produce and use.

Algae oil will make oil a RENEWABLE item shortly.....then the arabs can use theirs for salad dressing.

Back in the 80's (remember them?) the Saudis predicted they had a 1,000-year supply of oil for the entire world under their bleak landscape. They came up with this WAG based on their known reserves and projected demand.

Demand grew exponentially faster than they figured .... but their known reserves DOUBLED. BTW, so did the "known reserves" of a lot of other producers, including us. Without OPEC, and with a 25% increase in domestic production and refining capacity, crude oil would probably max out at somewhere around $40 per barrel.

Oil is, will, and should be the world's premier energy source for the next 150 years. It's clean, plentiful, the refining infrastructure is in place (even if artificially restricted) and if we competed with increased domestic production and refining, would be very cheap.

IMHO, cheap oil is the way out of our economic difficulty ... and I'll say it until I am green in the face. Our immediate goal should be 50% of electricity from nuclear, combined with vastly increased domestic production. Among other benefits, it might work to bring Islam closer to reality by cutting their terror budget.

As far as factual info about sunspots bringing the Global Warming fantasists back to reality, fuggedaboutit. Our #1 priority is not increasing domestic production. It is sending these green neo-commies to the moon, or China, by converting a mere 10% of their voter base to a rational approach to our problem.

http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersComService4/idUSTRE57335G20090804

They were wrong in 1919 and they will be wrong again.

So much garbage

Thanks for the links.

Maybe Lynch a polisci geek can boost America’s production from 5.2mbd back to its 11mbd peak in 1972. Or do Texas a favor and find that hidden oil to take them from 1mbd today back to the glory days of 3mbd of 1973. Or do Sister Sarah a real big favor and save the pipeline by finding more oil so they can pump it south since Prudhoe America’s largest field of all time 2mbd 1988 to its 750kbd today. Then maybe Mike can shut up oil investment banker Matthew Simmons (author of “Twilight in the Desert”) up once and for all, and we can pump that abiotic oil out of Earth’s creamy center.

Oil is a finite resource.

According to whom, Creationists? Who or what stopped the biological, chemical and physical forces of nature that made and stopped the creation of these hydrocarbons in the meantime. What's E&P?

Petroleum is made from dead plants.

It appears that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Deep-ocean vents are a source of oil and gas (evidence of abiogenic hydrocarbons)

“Oil is a finite resource.”

It’s all about feasibility. When another source becomes more feasible we will go there. I am all for research but to arbitrarily push us there because of a green agenda says someday oil will be too expensive is ludicrous. These people are putting the cart before the horse.

Thanks for the ping!

Then maybe Mike can shut up oil investment banker Matthew Simmons (author of “Twilight in the Desert”) up once and for all, and we can pump that abiotic oil out of Earth’s creamy center.

Check the link in comment# 21. The truest statement in any field of science or human endeavor is that, "We don't know what we don't know."

The quote from your link is worth repeating here:

“Peak oil can trace its intellectual ancestry to Reverend Thomas Malthus, a British cleric who believed that population growth would inevitably lead to global poverty. In a similarly pessimistic vein, the respected U.S. Geological Survey boldly predicted in 1919 world oil production would peak by 1928. In fact, U.S. production did not peak until 1970, and global oil production is still rising 40 years later.”

The old “Peak Oil” ploy again. There is no such thing...the earth is continuously manufacturing more oil for us to use.

At 74mbd flow rate?

*Yawn*

Every time I hear about the world oil supply running low, a new source is discovered. In the 1970s, for example, we discovered it in the North Sea and off the coast of Mexico.

How can President Cap and Trade Obama justify this? Isn't the planet dying? Drill here. Drill Now.

Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling

Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.

The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.

This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html#printMode

:’) wholeheartedly agree.