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To: CowboyJay

The recoverable reserves from a typical field rises with the price as well.”

I think I know where we’re missing each other here. That doesn’t represent a movement along the existing supply curve. That represents a leftward shift of the supply curve, itself. That typically results in a new equilibrium point of a higher price, but the same quantity still being supplied.

- - - - - - - - - - -

It also means the predicted decline from the old fields, and the necessary new sources needed to make that difference up, declines.


47 posted on 12/05/2011 12:39:16 PM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: thackney
"It also means the predicted decline from the old fields, and the necessary new sources needed to make that difference up, declines."

It's not a technical issue, so much as an economic problem. One of Saturn's moons might be made of hydrocarbons, and we could technically send a spaceship there to bring some back, but it's not of any value to us, because the cost would be such that it wouldn't produce a net economic surplus. The fact that the oil exists, and that we can technically get at it if we expend enough resources =/= "economically recoverable".

Even with the oil sands production, growth in world supply has flattened considerably in the last decade. It has nothing to do with a physical lack of oil, or because the technology does not exist to get it out of the ground. It's because marginal production costs are going up. And the proportion of world supply available to fuel the US economy is declining - because our economic output in relation to the cost of oil is in decline. I'm not alone in thinking this either. Production costs are already 4X what they were in 2000, and they're predicted to increase by 20%/yr for the forseeable future.

Whether or not we're actually at Peak Oil doesn't matter. The economic effects hit when the supply curve starts to flatten, and that happens ahead of the actual peak. IMO, we're already into the phase where US and world economic growth are starting to stagnate because of increasing inelasticity in energy supply.
49 posted on 12/05/2011 2:03:08 PM PST by CowboyJay (Generic Republican - 2012. He's the only 'electable' candidate.)
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