Oil: Caveat empty

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ^ | May 25, 2005 | Alfred J. Cavallo

[liberallarry]

I have read enough doom and gloom to know that it not valid, whatever the source...Peaks have been predicted, wrongly, before.

The Old Testament is full of doom and gloom. Depression, devaluations, bankruptcies, wars, famines, pestilences, are all real and have occured many times in the past, are occuring today and will occur in the future.

Predictions are often wrong but sometimes right.

The author of the piece is *not* Exxon-Mobil, but a scarcity advocate who is latches onto a conservative estimate and makes it his only data point

I linked to the report and pointed out your error previously. Do you have a learning disability?

It's Bunk ... 3 words: Alberta tar sands.

You must think you're dealing with idiots. Do you really believe that the authors who wrote the reports for ExxonMobil, the Administration, and the Wall St. investment house were unaware of tar sands and their economics?

Peaks will happen because of economics, not geology. The stone age didnt end for lack of stones; the oil age will end, not for lack of oil, but because the economic alternatives are better.

Physical shortages are never independent of technology and economics. Any informed person who attempts to predict the future understands this...and it greatly complicates his task. But it's crazy to think that advances in technology will always overcome any challange...and you're flat out wrong when you claim that shortages never had adverse consequences.

[liberallarry]

When they run out of the oil in place A, they start looking in other places. I'd bet there is a lot of oil in antartica. NO sense in looking yet; maybe wait for $100/barrel oil.

When it goes to a trillion dollars a barrel they can start looking on Mars so no need to worry, right?

[liberallarry]

If the politics was fixed production would rise.

If pigs could fly it would be a different world.

Uh, if demand is "booming" then the price will be paid to support the needed investment to sell the product.

Demand is booming at current prices. Raise prices and you cut demand. Raise prices enought and boom turns to bust.

Basic economics. And it mean Basic.

[WOSG]

"The author of the piece is *not* Exxon-Mobil, but a scarcity advocate who is latches onto a conservative estimate and makes it his only data point"

"I linked to the report and pointed out your error previously. Do you have a learning disability?"

Uh, no, you and the author of the article have a problem - selective reading. You linked to an article, not the Exxon mobil report. The article selectively took the pessimism from Exxon mobil, discounted the optimism, and came to their desired biased conclusion. Quoting from the article:

"The other way ExxonMobil believes demand will be satisfied is from vastly and rapidly increased OPEC production: "After 2010, the call on OPEC increases quickly, requiring OPEC to add more than 1 MBD [million barrels per day] of capacity every year," notes the Outlook. "OPEC's resources are large enough to achieve this rate of expansion, and we expect that investments will be made in a timely manner." "

So Exxon-Mobil *actually* is saying that production *can* increase, but the article author doesnt believe it.

Pity. He mentioned Iraq, but *didnt* mention that Iraq is one country that is producing at low rates (for obvious reasons) but has reserves that at current production levels could last almost 100 years!!

Yes, they definitely *could* and will increase oil production in Iraq at some point.

"Do you really believe that the authors who wrote the reports for ExxonMobil, the Administration, and the Wall St. investment house were unaware of tar sands and their economics?"

As noted in the article, their production contribution was understated, and there is a *reason* for this: Conventional oil production is CHEAP. Exxon-mobil is *actually* saying that between now and 2030, we will continue to be extracting cheap mideast oil as our main oil source.

Tar sands based oil production is more expensive ... and yet, thanks to OPEC, we spending more on oil than it costs to produce the cheap oil, and Saudi sheiks get the difference. Exxon-mobil knows that once oil goes back down to $20 (and it will), the tar sands are not economical.

Really, you cant have it both ways - you cannot say 'we are running out of oil' and assume the price will rise based on the scarcity of cheap sources of oil, while ignoring these other sources. Exxon mobil is *not* saying we are
running out of oil... on of their charts says: "Large oil resources exist" ... and shows where.

Our economy will do just *fine* having to spend $40 per barrel on oil. We've been there, done that.

[Kozak]

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Are We Running Out of Oil?

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Policy Backgrounder No. 159 January 29, 2003 by David Deming

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• History of Oil Prognostication
• Reserves versus Resources
• How Much Oil is Left?
• The Role of Technology
• Hubbert's Prediction of Declining Production
• Is an Oil Economy Sustainable?
• Notes

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"Estimates of the world's oil reserves have risen faster than production."

Oil is a nonrenewable resource. Every gallon of petroleum burned today is unavailable for use by future generations. Over the past 150 years, geologists and other scientists often have predicted that our oil reserves would run dry within a few years. When oil prices rise for an extended period, the news media fill with dire warnings that a crisis is upon us. Environmentalists argue that governments must develop new energy technologies that do not rely on fossil fuels. The facts contradict these harbingers of doom:

• World oil production continued to increase through the end of the 20th century.
• Prices of gasoline and other petroleum products, adjusted for inflation, are lower than they have been for most of the last 150 years.
• Estimates of the world’s total endowment of oil have increased faster than oil has been taken from the ground.

How is this possible? We have not run out of oil because new technologies increase the amount of recoverable oil, and market prices — which signal scarcity — encourage new exploration and development. Rather than ending, the Oil Age has barely begun.

History of Oil Prognostications

The history of the petroleum industry is punctuated by periodic claims that the supply will be exhausted, followed by the discovery of new oil fields and the development of technologies for recovering additional supplies. For instance:

• Before the first U.S. oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, petroleum supplies were limited to crude oil that oozed to the surface. In 1855, an advertisement for Kier’s Rock Oil advised consumers to “hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature’s laboratory.”1
• In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, the nation’s leading oil-producing state, estimated that only enough U.S. oil remained to keep the nation’s kerosene lamps burning for four years.2

"Warnings of U.S. oil shortages were made before the first well was drilled in 1859."

Seven such oil shortage scares occurred before 1950.3 As a writer in the Oil Trade Journal noted in 1918: At regularly recurring intervals in the quarter of a century that I have been following the ins and outs of the oil business[,] there has always arisen the bugaboo of an approaching oil famine, with plenty of individuals ready to prove that the commercial supply of crude oil would become exhausted within a given time — usually only a few years distant.4

1973 Oil Embargo.

"After the revolution in Iran, oil prices returned to the long-term average of $10 to $20 a barrel, in real terms."

The 1973 Arab oil embargo gave rise to renewed claims that the world’s oil supply would be exhausted shortly. “The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf Is Here,” warned an article in the influential journal Foreign Affairs.5 Geologists had cried wolf many times, acknowledged the authors of a respected and widely used textbook on economic geology in 1981; “finally, however, the wolves are with us.” The authors predicted that the United States was entering an incipient 125-year-long “energy gap,” projected to be at its worst shortly after the year 2000.6

The predictions of the 1970s were followed in a few years by a glut of cheap oil:

• The long-term inflation-adjusted price of oil from 1880 through 1970 averaged $10 to $20 a barrel.7
• The price of oil soared to over $50 a barrel in inflation-adjusted 1996 U.S. dollars following the 1979 political revolution in Iran.8 [See .]
• But by 1986, inflation-adjusted oil prices had collapsed to one-third their 1980 peak.9

"When projected shortages failed to appear, doomsayers made new predictions."

When projected crises failed to occur, doomsayers moved their predictions forward by a few years and published again in more visible and prestigious journals:

• In 1989, one expert forecast that world oil production would peak that very year and oil prices would reach $50 a barrel by 1994.10
• In 1995, a respected geologist predicted in World Oil that petroleum production would peak in 1996, and after 1999 major increases in crude oil prices would have dire consequences. He warned that “[m]any of the world’s developed societies may look more like today’s Russia than the U.S.”11
• A 1998 Scientific American article entitled “The End of Cheap Oil” predicted that world oil production would peak in 2002 and warned that “what our society does face, and soon, is the end of the abundant and cheap oil on which all industrial nations depend.”12

Similar admonitions were published in the two most influential scientific journals in the world, Nature and Science. A 1998 article in Science was titled “The Next Oil Crisis Looms Large — and Perhaps Close.”13 A 1999 Nature article was subtitled “[A] permanent decline in global oil production rate is virtually certain to begin within 20 years.”14

1990s Oil Glut.

However, rather than falling, world oil production continued to increase throughout the 1990s. Prices have not skyrocketed, suggesting that oil is not becoming more scarce:

• Oil prices were generally stable at $20 to $30 a barrel throughout the 1990s. [See .]
• In 2001, oil prices fell to a 30-year low after adjusting for inflation.
• Furthermore, the inflation-adjusted retail price of gasoline, one of the most important derivatives of oil, fell to historic lows in the past few years. [See .]

Reserves versus Resources

Nonexperts, including some in the media, persistently predict oil shortage because they misunderstand petroleum terminology. Oil geologists speak of both reserves and resources.

• Reserves are the portion of identified resources that can be economically extracted and exploited using current technology.
• Resources include all fuels, both identified and unknown, and constitute the world’s endowment of fossil fuels.

Oil reserves are analogous to food stocks in a pantry. If a household divides its pantry stores by the daily food consumption rate, the same conclusion is always reached: the family will starve to death in a few weeks. Famine never occurs because the family periodically restocks the pantry.

Similarly, if oil reserves are divided by current production rates, exhaustion appears imminent. However, petroleum reserves are continually increased by ongoing exploration and development of resources. For 80 years, oil reserves in the United States have been equal to a 10- to 14-year supply at current rates of development.15 If they had not been continually replenished, we would have run out of oil by 1930.

How Much Oil Is Left?

Scaremongers are fond of reminding us that the total amount of oil in the Earth is finite and cannot be replaced during the span of human life. This is true; yet estimates of the world’s total oil endowment have grown faster than humanity can pump petroleum out of the ground.16

The Growing Endowment of Oil.

Estimates of the total amount of oil resources in the world grew throughout the 20th century [see ].

• In May 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world’s total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels.17
• In 1950, geologists estimated the world’s total oil endowment at around 600 billion barrels.
• From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between 1,500 and 2,000 billion barrels.
• In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400 billion barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a 3,000-billion-barrel endowment.

By the year 2000, a total of 900 billion barrels of oil had been produced.18 Total world oil production in 2000 was 25 billion barrels.19 If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world’s oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056.

"Oil shales may hold another 14,000 billion barrels -- a 500 year supply."

Additional Petroleum Resources.

The estimates above do not include unconventional oil resources. Conventional oil refers to oil that is pumped out of the ground with minimal processing; unconventional oil resources consist largely of tar sands and oil shales that require processing to extract liquid petroleum. Unconventional oil resources are very large. In the future, new technologies that allow extraction of these unconventional resources likely will increase the world’s reserves.

• Oil production from tar sands in Canada and South America would add about 600 billion barrels to the world’s supply.20
• Rocks found in the three western states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone contain 1,500 billion barrels of oil.21
• Worldwide, the oil-shale resource base could easily be as large as 14,000 billion barrels — more than 500 years of oil supply at year 2000 production rates.22

Unconventional oil resources are more expensive to extract and produce, but we can expect production costs to drop with time as improved technologies increase efficiency.

The Role of Technology

With every passing year it becomes possible to exploit oil resources that could not have been recovered with old technologies. The first American oil well drilled in 1859 by Colonel Edwin Drake in Titusville, Pa. — which was actually drilled by a local blacksmith known as Uncle Billy Smith — reached a total depth of 69 feet (21 meters).

• Today’s drilling technology allows the completion of wells up to 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) deep.
• The vast petroleum resources of the world’s submerged continental margins are accessible from offshore platforms that allow drilling in water depths to 9,000 feet (2,743 meters).
• The amount of oil recoverable from a single well has greatly increased because new technologies allow the boring of multiple horizontal shafts from a single vertical shaft.
• Four-dimensional seismic imaging enables engineers and geologists to see a subsurface petroleum reservoir drain over months to years, allowing them to increase the efficiency of its recovery.

New techniques and new technology have increased the efficiency of oil exploration. The success rate for exploratory petroleum wells has increased 50 percent over the past decade, according to energy economist Michael C. Lynch.23

Hubbert’s Prediction of Declining Production

Despite these facts, some environmentalists claim that declining oil production is inevitable, based on the so-called Hubbert model of energy production. They ignore the inaccuracy of Hubbert’s projections.



Problems with Hubbert’s Model.

In March 1956, M. King Hubbert, a research scientist for Shell Oil, predicted that oil production from the 48 contiguous United States would peak between 1965 and 1970.24 Hubbert’s prediction was initially called “utterly ridiculous.”25 But when U.S. oil production peaked in 1970, he became an instant celebrity and living legend.

"Environmentalists now tie their predictions of declining energy supplies to M. King Hubbert's model of energy production -- which has been consistently inaccurate."

Hubbert based his estimate on a mathematical model that assumes the production of a resource follows a bell-shaped curve — one that rises rapidly to a peak and declines just as quickly. In the case of petroleum, the model requires an accurate estimate of the size of the total oil endowment.26 His best estimate of the size of petroleum resources in the lower 48 states was 150 billion barrels. His high estimate, which he considered an exaggeration, was 200 billion barrels.

Based on these numbers, Hubbert produced two curves showing a “best” estimate of U.S. oil production and a “high” estimate. The claimed accuracy of Hubbert’s predictions are largely based on the upper curve — his absolute upper limit [see ].

• Hubbert set the absolute upper limit for peak U.S. oil production at roughly 3 billion barrels a year, and his best or lower estimate of peak future U.S. crude oil production was closer to 2.5 billion barrels.
• As early as 1970, actual U.S. crude oil production exceeded Hubbert’s upper limit by 13 percent.
• By the year 2000, actual U.S. oil production from the lower 48 states was 2.5 times higher than Hubbert’s 1956 “best” prediction.

Production in the 48 contiguous states peaked, but at much higher levels than Hubbert predicted. From about 1975 through 1995, Hubbert’s upper curve was a fairly good match to actual U.S. production data. But in recent years, U.S. crude oil production has been consistently higher than Hubbert considered possible.

"U.S. oil production has been higher than Hubbert thought possile."

Hubbert’s 1980 prediction of U.S. oil production, his last, was substantially less accurate than his 1956 “high” estimate.27 In the year 2000, actual U.S. oil production from the lower 48 states was 1.7 times higher than his 1980 revised prediction [see ].

In light of this, it is strange that Hubbert’s predictions have been characterized as remarkably successful. While production in the United States is declining, as Hubbert predicted, it is doing so at a much slower rate. Furthermore, lower production does not necessarily indicate the looming exhaustion of U.S. oil resources. It shows instead that at current prices and with current technology, less of the remaining petroleum is economically recoverable.

Hubbert’s Prediction for Natural Gas.

In 1998, Peter McCabe of the U.S. Geological Survey showed that energy resources do not necessarily follow Hubbert-type curves, and even if they do a decline in production may not be due to exhaustion of the resource.28

For example, Hubbert also predicted future U.S. natural gas production. This prediction turned out to be grossly wrong. As of 2000, U.S. natural gas production was 2.4 times higher than Hubbert had predicted in 1956.29

The Production Curve for Coal.

Production of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania through the 19th and 20th centuries followed a Hubbert-type curve more closely than any other known energy resource. Production started around 1830, peaked around 1920, and by 1995 had fallen to about 5 percent of its peak value. However, the supply of Pennsylvania anthracite coal is far from exhausted. If production were to resume at the all-time high rate of 100 million short tons per year, the resource base would support 190 years of production. Production declined not because the resource was depleted but because people stopped heating their homes with coal and switched to cleaner-burning oil and gas.30

"U.S. production in 2000 was 1.7 times higher than Hubbert projected in 1980."

The primary problem with a Hubbert-type analysis is that it requires an accurate estimate of the total resource endowment. Yet estimates of the total endowment have grown systematically larger for at least 50 years as technology has made it possible to exploit petroleum resources previously not considered economical. Hubbert-type analyses of oil production have systematically underestimated future oil production. This will continue to be the case until geologists can produce an accurate and stable estimate of the size of the total oil endowment.

Is an Oil Economy Sustainable?

In the long run, an economy that utilizes petroleum as a primary energy source is not sustainable, because the amount of oil in the Earth’s crust is finite. However, sustainability is a misleading concept, a chimera. No technology since the birth of civilization has been sustainable. All have been replaced as people devised better and more efficient technologies. The history of energy use is largely one of substitution. In the 19th century, the world’s primary energy source was wood. Around 1890, wood was replaced by coal. Coal remained the world’s largest source of energy until the 1960s when it was replaced by oil. We have only just entered the petroleum age.31

"Without innovation, no technology is sustainable."

How long will it last? No one can predict the future, but the world contains enough petroleum resources to last at least until the year 2100. This is so far in the future that it would be ludicrous for us to try to anticipate what energy sources our descendants will utilize. Over the next several decades the world likely will continue to see short-term spikes in the price of oil, but these will be caused by political instability and market interference — not by an irreversible decline in supply.

David Deming of the University of Oklahoma’s School of Geology and Geophysics is an Adjunct Scholar with the NCPA.

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Copyright © 2003 National Center for Policy Analysis

The sky is falling. Again.

[WOSG]

If you read the *actual* Exxon mobil report, you would find that it refutes the doom-and-gloom and supports my comments that reserves exist to satisfy demand at current prices:

http://www.exxonmobil.co.uk/UK-English/Newsroom/UK_NR_Speech_EO_150904.asp

"Having discussed our assumptions on conventional oil, let’s discuss the prospects for unconventional oil development. For comparison, on the left is an estimate of conventional oil-in-place compared with our estimates of Extra Heavy Oil and Oil Sands in red and Oil Shale in blue.

In yellow, the absolute level of conventional oil in-place is not knowable, but is estimated to be between six and eight trillion barrels. Of this, the current estimated recoverable amount is in the three trillion barrel range. The industry is now able to recover a little more than double what it could back in the early 1920s. The biggest step change came with the development of secondary and tertiary recovery technologies.

In comparison, estimates of unconventional resources are also very large.

Current estimates of Extra Heavy Oil and Oil sands are over four trillion barrels in-place. This is expected to go up as interest in these particular resources increases. Resources are more highly concentrated than conventional oil, with large deposits in Canada, Venezuela, Russia and the Caspian. While resources of this type have been in production since the 1960s, the amount of cumulative production to date is so small relative to the size of the resource base it does not show up on the red bar. With recovery factors in the 20-25 per cent range, 800 billion to 1 trillion barrels may be produced over time - an amount equivalent to the total of all conventional oil produced to date.

Shale oil, another very large type of unconventional resource, has not received much attention since the 1970s and '80s. In-place oil shale deposits are estimated to be in excess of three trillion barrels. Like EHO and Oil sands, high quality oil shale tends to be somewhat highly concentrated. The largest known deposit is the Green River formation in Western USA with over 1.5 trillion barrels of equivalent oil in place. Recovery factors will be dependent on emerging technology but very large volumes of oil from shale are likely to be produced some day. Recent technology efforts are focused on in-situ recovery which involves heating the oil shale in place and recovering it with conventional production technology. If successful it would be lower cost than past mining-like recovery approaches."

In case you dont yet get it - plenty of oil, ie trillions of barrels, is out there, recoverable at prices of under $30 a barrel or so.

[liberallarry]

In Post #29 I posted two links to ExxonMobil's site where the report is explained. I also posted a third link - a google search for the report. In Post #30 ordinary guy posted an excerpt from the report which appeared on Exxon's site. Just exactly what are you referring to?

I'll address the rest of your stuff when I get an answer.

[WOSG]

Kozak, well stated.

This is the most important point:


"In the long run, an economy that utilizes petroleum as a primary energy source is not sustainable, because the amount of oil in the Earth’s crust is finite. However, sustainability is a misleading concept, a chimera. No technology since the birth of civilization has been sustainable. All have been replaced as people devised better and more efficient technologies. The history of energy use is largely one of substitution. In the 19th century, the world’s primary energy source was wood. Around 1890, wood was replaced by coal. Coal remained the world’s largest source of energy until the 1960s when it was replaced by oil. We have only just entered the petroleum age.31"

We already have the technology to vastly replace oil, it is just a matter of the economics changing based on technology and addressing political errors based on misunderstanding of technology.

That technology that will replace oil for transport use is nuclear-power-generated electricity.
If and when we get battery technology improved, and/or deliver electricity on roadways via induction methods, we could have practical electric vehicles. Or we could simply get hybrids to have plug-capability and get 80% of the way there.

Either way, we will be replacing oil as our energy source in a few decades, well before oil actually runs out.

The only thing stopping us is the fear of nukes.

[WOSG]

A) Your original link is to an article from Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. That is what I am critiquing as being overly doom-n-gloom.
B) I didnt know what you did in post #29.
C) What I am referring to in making direct comments about what Exxon-mobil guy was actually saying directly is the exxon-mobil presentation, as given here:

http://www.exxonmobil.co.uk/UK-English/Newsroom/UK_NR_Speech_EO_150904.asp

When you have charts like:
"Oil and gas remain as primary energy sources" you are NOT predicting the end of oil soon.

[liberallarry]

There's a lot of information here to be reread and compared so my posts will be slow in coming. But lets start with Deming;

He - rightly - points out that there've been a lot of estimates done in the past, by the most highly qualified experts, which have turned out to be wrong. This is because it's extraordinily difficult to estimate the size of a resource which not only cannot be accurately measured but hasn't yet been discovered and whose size depends not only on its physical existance but also on the technology and economics of its recovery.

His arguments and examples imply that estimates of supply have been consistantly low because the impact of new technology has not been factored in correctly...and he deals with Huppart in great detail, pointing out that, although Huppart correctly estimated the date of peak oil in the U.S. he was wrong by a factor of 2 or 2.5 about the size of peak production. From this he concludes that oil will last much longer than the "pessimists" think. But this is bad reasoning. Huppart could only be right about the date if demand was as badly underestimated as supply. And Demming does cite one counter-example; Huppart was "ridiculed" for suggesting that supply would peak so early.

Since it is not the absolute size of the resource we are interested in but rather how well supply matches demand at an acceptable price I am not conviced that Deming has much to say.

[porkchops 4 mahound]

This is hogwash.

Lack of production capacity is not the same thing as lack of production.

Petroleum is in the ground, money and political will are "all" anyone needs to find oil.

Of course "conventional" recovery methods will be suplanted.

The progression of recovery technologies is normal and historical in the oil patch.

Nor is it correct to say that all the easy oil is gone, most of such reserves are tied up in Politics and Law.

This is a case of a BIG DOG of a mature industry trying to maximize it's profits and position in that industry, while trying to stop other sources of petroleum from taking parts of their business.

However energy is fungible, oil is oil pretty much. It's the bottom line that counts and once other technologies are price competitive the traditional oil patch will never be the same BIG DOG ever again.

But it's plain BS that there is no oil.

In this case the saying, "speed costs, how fast do you want to go?", applies in an almost poetic way.

[liberallarry]

This is not about the end of oil. It's about the end of cheap oil. All the major players are well aware of the complex relationship between recoverable oil, geology, technology, and economics. Your assertion that "all" we need is money and political will and that the only thing holding us back is big oil's desire for profits is both too obvious and insulting. Big oil is obviously trying to maximize profits but its insulting for you to think you're the only one aware of it or that everyone is stupid or on the take.

[porkchops 4 mahound]

I sure don't remember claiming I had sole knowledge of these rather obvious facts.

You did note the quotes around the word, "all" (sic)?

My point is exactly about "cheap oil". Maybe you find the laws of supply and demand insulting also?

I've been directly involved in the oil patch and I speak from personal experience.

Sorry if that pi$$e$ you off.

[liberallarry]

You didn't pi$$ me off. It's sometimes hard to find someone beginning at 1 when the thread is at 140. I'll go back and see whether I misundertood.

[porkchops 4 mahound]

No worries.

[hripka]

This article can't be correct. I thought that there was:

Oil, Oil Everywhere
The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | Sunday, January 30, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST | PETER HUBER AND MARK MILLS
Posted on 01/30/2005 10:24:37 AM CST by Woodworker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1331914/posts

Also, another solution:
Anything into Oil(solution to dependence on foregn oil?)
DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5 ^ | May 2003 | Brad Lemley
Posted on 04/21/2003 7:57:41 AM CDT by honway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/897232/posts

[dalereed]

the 2 reasons we are dependant on foreign oil are totally excessive taxes on oil from ground to pump of which most are hidden and environmentalists that have locked up hundreds of years worth of oil as untouchable in California.

[WOSG]

Read through your links - the key point is:

"The market price of oil is indeed hovering up around $50 a barrel on the spot market. But getting oil to the surface currently costs under $5 a barrel in Saudi Arabia, with the global average cost certainly under $15. And with technology already well in hand, the cost of sucking oil out of the planet we occupy simply will not rise above roughly $30 a barrel for the next 100 years at least."

"Messrs. Huber and Mills are co-authors of "The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy," just out from Basic Books."

We can well afford the $30-50 / barrel range, our economy grew despite the oil price spike, fearmongering is uncalled for -

Energy is abundant is a more valid message IMHO.