Posted on 03/04/2008 11:53:59 AM PST by shoptalk
Many energy analysts view the ongoing waltz of crude prices with the mystical $100 mark -- notwithstanding the dollar's anemia -- as another sign of the beginning of the end for the oil era. "[A]t the furthest out, it will be a crisis in 2008 to 2012," declares Matthew Simmons, the most vocal voice among the "neo-peak-oil" club. Tempering this pessimism only slightly is the viewpoint gaining ground among many industry leaders, who argue that daily production by 2030 of 100 million barrels will be difficult.
In fact, we are nowhere close to reaching a peak in global oil supplies.
Given a set of assumptions, forecasting the peak-oil-point - defined as the onset of global production decline - is a relatively trivial problem. Four primary factors will pinpoint its exact timing. The trivial becomes far more complex because the four factors - resources in place (how many barrels initially underground), recovery efficiency (what percentage is ultimately recoverable), rate of consumption, and state of depletion at peak (how empty is the global tank when decline kicks in) - are inherently uncertain.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Abiotic Oil does not exist.
Hence, THEORY.
If we have plenty of oil, then why does it cost more than $100 per barrel?
However, once you can produce oil that is devoid of microorganisms and is found in an igneous rock formation you may have a theory.
Until then, abiotic oil is simply a hoax.
It’s also considered a fringe theory.
Anyways, Matthew Simmons is a leader of what can only be described as a doomsday cult — the peak oil movement. You may think I’m exaggerating, but spend some time reading what’s been written on The Oil Drum and peakoil.net. One of the few places you can have hundreds of people writing about how they hope that someone finds a way to kill 95% of the world’s population because it’d be better than the inevitable upcoming global oil collapse, and *nobody seems to notice or care*. Why are we so concerned with the ELF and ALF and their bulldozer-destroying/home burning/lab raiding antics when we have tens of thousands of Peak Oil nuts who talk about how great it’d be if someone genetically engineered a superdisease or triggered a nuclear war?
They’re idiots, too. For example, they’re utterly convinced that the Athabasca tar sands — a huge sticking point for them — can’t be developed because “there’s not enough water” in the Athabasca river. Just ignoring that the production only needs a fraction as much water as is currently being used, the tar sands are less than a thousand miles away from the *ninth largest lake in the world*, plus dozens of other major rivers and lakes. To them, if the price of anything rises or the production of anything falls, it’s *clearly* due to a peak, and anyone who doesn’t agree is in denial. To them, new tech, like CO2 injection (which, for the US alone, is projected to give (three numbers I’ve seen) an additional: ~10B, ~90B, or ~400B barrels of oil, depending on the source) can’t work, all of the world’s major oilfields are found (despite just last year Brazil discovering three supergiants, one of which may be the world’s third largest oil discovery in history), coal liquefaction facilities can’t be built fast enough (as though Appalachia wasn’t covered in shuttered steel mills and with a very high unemployment rate) and that coal is running out (equally idiotic), and so on. It’s idiocy, but they cling to it like a religion.
A religion that wants 95% of the world’s population to die.
Most liekly the market for oil will disappear before the supply declines.
Methane Hydrate on our continental shelves will be a good source of BTUs in the future and there is a lot of it.
This is peak oil. It has been peak oil for several months. Peak oil has nothing to do with the factors mentioned in the article and the article has nothing to do with reality. Otherwise a fine article.
The problem is that Congress won't allow US companies to drill it, and the Chinese are already scarfing it up for themselves by slant drilling from the Cuban side of the straits and refining it in an old Soviet refinery in Cuba.
Read about it HERE
Politics. Period. And all that is implied by that reality.
“Our own governments taxation and regulations.”
It will only get worse if Dems are elected. Calling themselve ‘progressive’ doesn’t make them any less socialist. Climate Change Hysteria is really about taxation and control. DRILL ANWAR, immediately.
They are essentially giving our oil deposits to the Chinese and others.
Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.
The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., are reported in the Jan. 29 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.
“Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material — it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals,” said Lorenz. “This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan.” ....
.... If all the observed liquid on Titan is methane, it would only last a few million years, because as methane escapes into Titan’s atmosphere, it breaks down and escapes into space. If the methane were to run out, Titan could become much colder. Scientists believe that methane might be supplied to the atmosphere by venting from the interior in cryovolcanic eruptions. If so, the amount of methane, and the temperature on Titan, may have fluctuated dramatically in Titan’s past.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html
Look it up on amazon.
Petroleum = Petro ~ Rock
oleum = oil
Petroleum = Rock oil
That’s what I’m thinking too. Already has me wondering who will be running to the government next begging to be bailed out for speculating. See “Speculation adds to oil price surge” just posted: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1980347/posts
So what? The Left will never, ever, ever let us drill for it. They will destroy the economy on their way to their Marxist Paradise of us riding ox carts and bicycles while they keep a high standard of living for themselves.
That's how I see it too. At the same time we are being ripped off by hyper inflation in the supermarkets, which is largely caused by government subsidized ethanol production from corn. Corn prices have doubled in the last year because of the demand for corn to be made into ethanol. Almost every grocery store item that we eat nowadays contains a corn derivative such as corn syrup sweeteners and corn flour, so when corn prices go up our grocery bills go up. The US government helps that inflationary process along by granting huge tax credits to ethanol producers, and by paying auto builders a subsidy for each vehicle they build that will run on the 85% ethanol blended fuel.
All the while we quite possibly have a decade or more worth of oil reserves in AK and the Gulf of Mexico that Congress won't allow us to touch. It's OK for China to slant drill into our reserves from Cuban waters, but not OK for our companies to do it. Sometimes I think that considering the people we elect to rule over us we deserve everything we get.
I drove across country 3 times last year, and the last time I was driving an E-85 SUV.
I saw zero stations on our route that sold that fuel.
None whatsoever.
When I mentioned, someone posted a map to me showing where they were.
There were some on our route, but not accessible enough to take all three vehicles on detours just to fuel with the fuel that you and I are essentially paying for to make it cheaper than other grades.
We ran out of oil at the prices of the time -
then, through the miracle of the free market, when the price rose, it was actually sensible to explore and extract from more expensive locations,
and this is how it will be forever more until some better, cheaper source of energy (that doesn’t have to be subsidized) is developed.
When gas gets too expensive, there will be an alternative that is less expensive available, through the marketplace.
Oranges get too expensive sometimes, and I buy tangerines.
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