Posted on 03/25/2005 6:50:44 PM PST by neverdem
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Princeton, N.J.
PRESIDENT BUSH'S hopes for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge came one step closer to reality last week. While Congress must still pass a law to allow drilling in the refuge, the Senate voted to include oil revenues from such drilling in the budget, making eventual approval of the president's plan more likely.
Yet the debate over drilling in the Arctic refuge has been oddly beside the point. In fact, it may be distracting us from a far more important problem: a looming world oil shortage.
The environmental argument over drilling in the refuge has often been portrayed as "tree huggers" versus "dirty drillers" (although, as a matter of fact, the north coastal plain of Alaska happens to have no trees to hug). Even as we concede that this is an oversimplification, we should also ask how a successful drilling operation would affect American oil production.
The United States Geological Survey has estimated that the Arctic oil field is likely to be at least half the size of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, almost 100 miles to the west. Opening that oil field was like hitting a grand slam: Prudhoe Bay, which has already produced more than 13 billion barrels, is the biggest American oil field. (I was once at a party with a bunch of geologists from Mobil Oil when an argument broke out: who discovered Prudhoe Bay? Everybody in the room except me claimed to have done so.)
Unfortunately, you don't hit a grand slam in every at-bat. The geological survey estimates that the Arctic refuge could produce at least half as much oil as Prudhoe Bay. It is also possible, however, that the refuge could produce no oil at all - it often happens in the oil industry. At the other extreme, the upper range of the geological survey's estimate soars to 16 billion barrels. Although the geologists at the survey are widely respected, the upper ranges of their petroleum estimates for the refuge have drawn criticism, sometimes expressed as giggles, from other petroleum geologists.
Despite its size, Prudhoe Bay was not big enough to reverse the decline of American oil production. The greatest year of United States production was 1970. Prudhoe Bay started producing oil in 1977, but never enough to raise American production above the level of 1970. The Arctic refuge will probably have an even smaller effect. Every little bit helps, but even the most successful drilling project at the Arctic refuge would be only a little bit.
But if the question of whether to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the wrong one, what's the right one? In 1997 and 1998, a few petroleum geologists began examining world oil production using the methods that M. King Hubbert used in predicting in 1956 that United States oil production would peak during the early 1970's. These geologists indicated that world oil output would reach its apex in this decade - some 30 to 40 years after the peak in American oil production. Almost no one paid attention.
I used to work with Mr. Hubbert at Shell Oil, and my own independent research places the peak of world oil production late this year or early in 2006. Even a prompt and successful drilling operation in the Arctic refuge would not start pumping oil into the pipeline before 2008 or 2009.
A permanent drop in world oil production will have serious consequences. In addition to the economic blow, there will be the psychological effect of accepting that there are limits to an important energy resource. What can we do? More efficient diesel automobiles, and greater reliance on wind and nuclear power, are well-engineered solutions that are available right now. Conservation, although costly in most cases, will have the largest impact. The United States also has a 300-year supply of coal, and methods for using coal without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere are being developed.
After world oil production starts to decline, a small group of geologists could gather in my living room and all claim to have discovered the peak. "We told you so," we could say. But that isn't the point. The controversy over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a side issue. The problem we need to face is the impending world oil shortage.
Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a professor emeritus of geology at Princeton, is the author of "Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak."
It could be cheaper than that. Powder River Basin coal goes for < $10, fob the mine.
"Although the geologists at the survey are widely respected, the upper ranges of their petroleum estimates for the refuge have drawn criticism, sometimes expressed as giggles, from other petroleum geologists."
This is a pretty good article. The author clearly advocates for clean coal energy as well as nuclear.
Coming from Princeton, he's probably been exposed to the lefts' tact of "giggling" down an argument instead of presenting opposing facts?
Personally, I'm tired of this petrol thing already. Time to get serious about an alternative.
We have been "running out of oil" since I was in college in the late 1950's. The bs nevers stops about oil.
There are 1.5 TRILLION barrels of oil in shale form in the U.S. That's 200 to 400 years of supply at today's use rate. It's a technological and logistical nightmare getting to it, but it can be done.
I just happened to be an expert on oil & energy. The idiot is you, and the fat a$$ Rush who has been telling lies for years. If we did not get seduced into bigger and bigger SUVs, and if we did not help china and India to be big oil consuming nations, and if we did not disturb the oil production in Iraq, and Venezuela; we would not have suffered doubling of our energy bills. Wake up, and smell the coffee.
Well, I just happen to be an expert on coffee. And there are some coffees that don't smell.
Speaking of coffee, I think I need to make a fresh pot. Thanks for reminding me. Have a good day.
Haha.. no, technically I suppose it's always "organic" if it has many carbons. I don't know what chemical processes have been theorized that could make such oil, but they're out there if you search.
To be sure, market forces will determine what the next source of energy will be. In any event, proven oil reserves seem to increase through the years despite predictions of gloom and doom.
The committed activist greens are more ideological than that, and are against modern technological civilization root and branch. They want a "die back" to hunter gatherer existence, a tenth the present population at most. It is "our" responsibility to other species. "We" are being selfish. Yada yada. 9/10ths of mankind dies, technology and science disappears, superstitious nature worship replaces it. (Just disinventing industry isn't enough; if science stays, it will come back. So science is an enemy too). That is their idea of utopia. (The unabomber was this nutty, if you want an example of the mindset. It is not rare).
The radical fringe thinks that isn't enough. They call mankind a cancer on the planet. Disinventing industry and science aren't enough, because they remain possible. Some future mankind might do it again and wreck the planet. Since the whole point of everything is to achieve a steady state in which nothing dynamic happens or has a history, to avoid this horrible possibility, a die back is insufficient. Mankind must be eradicated. They call themselves the "human extinction movement." Their fantasies center on mega plagues that wipe out mankind and let the birds and the fishes and the cute little bunny rabits have the place. (And the sharks - who are more principled and upbeat than this lot).
Green ideology is a layer cake of madness, with known mistakes based on economic errors on top, descending through simplistic superstitions and blather, arbitrarily far, into the bottomless pits of hatred, insanty and evil. It deserves frontal assault, not the coddling most pols treat it with.
Seduced into bigger and bigger SUVs? You mean giving the consumer what he wants. If SUVs prove to be uneconomical or undesireable for the consumer, there will a growing market for the alternatives. That's the way capitalism works. People make individual choices based on their individual circumstances.
"If we did not help China and India to be big oil consuming nations" How do we prevent them (representing one-third of the globe's population) from becoming more prosperous and bigger consumers of the world's resources? It is like holding back the tide. I guess it would be better also that Africa be thwarted in its economic development so its oil consumption is kept low. Such hubris, such folly.
Disturb the oil production in Iraq and Venezeula? This observation destroyed any pretense of your expertise on oil and energy. Iraq's oil infrastructure was a shambles and deteriorating under Saddam. Many real oil experts believe that Iraq's production can be raised significantly to almost twice it was producing before the war. With the second largest proven oil reserves and very low production costs for high grade oil, our intervention will eventually improve the world's supply of oil.
Venezuela's internal political problems are affecting oil production and sales by Venezuela, not the US. Venezuela supplies up to 15% of US oil imports and the US purchases up to 60% of Venezuela's oil output. Chavez announced that his government would begin to enforce the law passed in 2001 that calls for a dramatic increase in the royalties foreign corporations pay to the Venezuelan government for the extraction of oil inside Venezuela. ExxonMobil has denounced the increase and is considering mounting a legal challenge.
If it wasn't for the oil and gas technology, expertise, and investment of the West and the US, world oil production would be far lower and countries like Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq would not have benefitted from the wealth it has created. Stop blaming the US for everything that goes wrong in the world.
Thanks for the info! I will definitely consider this for my next vehicle.
And just to throw a Molotov cocktail onto the debate fire: there is a growing amount of evidence that oil is not derived from fossil decay, rather, it is welling up from deep in the Earth and is a byproduct of bacteria deep in the earth, that feed on the Earth's primordial hydrocarbons flowing up from the mantle and convert it to oil, natural gas. The processes by which petroleum, natural gas are formed is still a matter of controversy among geologists. One should do a search for the papers of one Dr. Thomas Gold of Cornell University (http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/usgs.html; http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/origins.html; his vita: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/vita.html#T.%20Gold%20Vita, and a book, The Deep Hot Biosphere, published in 1999)
He died last year.
Remember that the notion that petroleum is derived from fossils originated in the 19th century, yet some scientists are now convinced that it was formed with the planet.
Sure it is contrary to predominant beliefs, but there are some bothersome points regarding how oil is formed and where it is found.
For example,
1) The refilling of supposedly depleted oil wells. There have been numerous reports in recent times, of oil and gas fields not running out at the expected time, but instead showing a higher content of hydrocarbons after they had already produced more than the initially estimated amount. This has been seen in the Middle East, in the deep gas wells of Oklahoma, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, and in other places. It is this apparent refilling during production that has been responsible for the series of gross underestimate of reserves that have been published time and again, the most memorable being the one in the early seventies that firmly predicted the end of oil and gas globally by 1987, a prediction which produced an energy crisis and with that a huge shift in the wealth of nations. See http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf124/sf124p10.htm.
2) oil and natural gas are being obtained from deep, non sedimentary rock, completely contrary to the theory of a biotic origin.
3) hydrocarbons similar to that of petroleum are found on other planets, comets, and elsewhere in the galaxy. Aliens or not, comets are not hospitable to carbon based life as we know it.
4) the presence of helium in oil deposits which cannot be accounted for by a biotic origin.
Naturally, there are contrary opinions, such as http://www.energybulletin.net/2741.html, but the theories are being investigated.
As a scientist though, I can vouch for the closeminded, herd mentality of scientists when they should be the most open minded of us all (for a prime and recent example, see the story of bacterial infections as a source of peptic ulcers. In 1984, physicians Warren and Marshall from Australia claimed that peptic ulcer disease was not caused merely by overproduction of gastric acid, but rather by a specific bacterium: Helicobacter pylori. They recommended antibiotic therapy. They were ridiculed by the medical establishment, which scoffed at the idea of peptic ulcers being an infectious disease. For the next thirteen years, most of the “medical mainstream” refused to let go of their calcified notion that the only treatment for ulcers was to combat gastric acid secretion. After all, that was what they all learned in medical school, so it had to be the truth! It wasn’t until 1997 that the CDC finally put out the word to the nation’s doctors: Drs. Warren and Marshall had been correct all along. Helicobacter pylori was, indeed, the cause of most cases of peptic ulcer disease. The treatment, at long last accepted by mainstream medicine, is now antibiotics).
It should be noted that magicians find scientists very easy to deceive!
It would be nice if Gold's theories were true though, wouldn't it?
Actually, the oil will never run out. As supply declines and oil prices rise, other energy sources will become economically viable. We will have moved on to something else long before the last drop of oil is used.
Just happened? Freepmail me with a cogent answer, if possible, drooling moron.
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