"Peak Oil" is Here: Energy Expert
Have you heard of peak oil? Peak oil is "the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline."
It seems obvious, and common sense. Last time I looked there were no carboniferous ferns being crushed under billions of tons of pressure over millions of years to produce more oil. Oil is a finite resource. American geophysicist M. King Hubbert correctly predicted that American oil production would peak in 1965 - 1970, which it did. He made this prediction in 1956.
So, do you think $4 a gallon is high? Robert Hirsch, senior advisor for Science Applications International Corporation, sat down with MSNBC’s Alex Witt to discuss the peak oil scenario, with him raising the possibility of $15 a gallon gasoline.
It's amazing just how dense some "journalists" can be: Witt asked if his scenario about oil production applied to heating oil. Hello, heating oil is made from crude oil. Aaaagh.
And Hirsch brought up what many forget, and I try to tell people: so many things people don't think of come from oil. Plastics, fertilizers (hello, those of you who are ethanol fans, corn requires a ton of fertilzer), you name it.
Hirsch said:
The problem is that there’s not that much oil left in the ground. What we’ve done is been very fortunate to have oil production increase as our economies have developed over the past decades. And now we’re reaching a point where we’re about to get, or we may be, at the maximum world oil production. After that, oil production will then decline and prices, of course, will continue to do what they’ve been doing recently. So what we’ve got today may be the "good old days."In terms of $15 / gallon gasoline:
It could happen within a matter of months. It could happen within a matter of a few years. But it’s essentially certain that we are at the maximum of world oil production. And after that, we’ll go into decline, and when there’s much less oil available, then, of course, the price of oil is going to increase dramatically.Watch the interview, from MSNBC’s News Live, broadcast May 24, 2008.
1 comments:
If accepted at face level then yes everything you say is absolutely correct - However doomsayers behind theories of Peak Oil always quote 'Known reserves' - we have every reason to suspect that as much oil as has ever been consumed still lies in 'unknown' areas. No licences have been sought to explore them because of the technological difficulties they present - but they will be overcome in time. And there's one more little time bomb sitting beneath the entire 'peak oil' scenario - Science has long proclaimed oil to be a finite source, some of the finest brains in science are now (and have been for years) having to review those claims as evidence is mounting that “Hydrocarbons are not biology reworked by geology (as the traditional view would hold) but rather geology reworked by biology.” - No less than five of the largest oil fields ever to be worked, exploited to the full and closed, have been re-visited seven years later and 'lo and behold' they are full again (in one instance with more oil than was previously extracted). Of course politicians and the oil industry don't shout loud about this as it suits the current political and economic structure.
Seriously, if you really want to start getting to grips with the lies behind peak oil - start by looking at the Late Prof Thomas Gold's work and the work of no less a great scientist as the man who created the periodic table - Dmitri Mendeleev. Both believed our understanding of 'fossil fuels' was nonsense - and had the evidence to show why. Evidence which some American companies are now using to find oil almost anywhere they choose to look.
Sorry to post such a lengthy repsonse - but there was no other way of bringing it to your attention...
Thanks
Ben
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