Peak Gov't, Not Oil

IBD Editorials ^ | August 3, 2009 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Energy Policy: The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil. We've been told that for the last 150 years. The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.

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Ever since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pa., in 1859, experts have been predicting we would soon run out of oil. The latest is Dr. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency in Paris, whose job it is to assess future energy supplies by OECD countries.

In an interview with the Independent, Dr. Birol says that based on a survey of 600 existing oil fields covering three quarters of global reserves, oil is running out faster than previously predicted, and global production is about to peak in 19 years.

"One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before it leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Dr. Birol said. Gather ye switch grass while ye may.

In 1914, the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted American oil reserves would last merely a decade. In both 1939 and 1951, the Interior Department estimated oil supply at only 13 years. And in 1977, President Carter gloomily predicted that we "could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."

Consider that in 1970, experts believed the world had 612 billion barrels of proved reserves.

Over the next three decades the world pumped more than 767 billion barrels. By 2006, instead of running out of oil, world reserves had actually risen to 1.2 trillion barrels.

[pointsal]

bttt

[glorgau]

There’s been a 15 year supply of oil for the last hundred years.

[SaxxonWoods]

Hmmmm....all those offshore areas, just sitting there.

I know, maybe the federal government should own and drill those areas! They would be super-careful of course, unlike those evil oil companies that just want to make a dirty profit. All proceeds to the government would be allocated to fight global warming and pay for hellcare, of course.

[Kaslin]

Apologies for the late ping. We lost power

[thackney]

BTTT