As we sat around this morning laughing and celebrating Debbie Cook’s impending victory, somebody brought up the fact that certain candidates (with names like McCain and Rohrabacher) keep offering voters more DRILLING – offshore, ANWR, and places unknown – as the main solution to our energy crisis. Immediately Debbie pulled out the following graph – she’s quick that way! Since folks have been discussing this issue here – and some of you seem to think more drilling is the solution – I asked her to e-mail it to me, so here it is! (More at http://web.mac.com/energyinfo)
As you can plainly see, the extra barrels to be obtained from the plundering of environmentally sensitive areas will represent at best a slight short slowing down, two decades hence, in the inexorable decline in supply and the implacable rise in price. I sadly say “will,” because, fight as we environmentalists may, it’s hard to imagine that in the throes and convulsions of petroleum withdrawals, Americans and mankind won’t drill everywhere imaginable to forestall the inevitable.
After all, we’ve seen coke addicts rob their best friends and leave town for good to get another kilo, the gentlest souls hooked on heroin turning to a life of crime and imprisonment, and the alcoholic at 2:15 AM seeing what rubbing alcohol might taste like. But whatever contortions and dislocations we go through in the coming decades, a life without oil awaits our children and grandchildren. Responsible humans will now be laying the foundations for this future. Politicians who offer drilling as a solution are not serious about the issue, and are either uninformed or “yanking your chain.”
Fire away!
Vern,
First off thank you for all the pretty, eye catching colors on the chart, that isn’t sourced, so it can be fact checked, or even understand how it was arrived at or when, nice job! Great original work there, represented as factual information. It may very well be true, but it would be nice to be able to check that information out. So who knows?
Your chart represents declining domestic production, not known reserves or usable reserves, nor does it address the ecology movement that started the national NIMBY’s to close old production facilities, that for reasons of economics weren’t feasible to continue to operate with upgrades when foreign oil was available so cheaply. Lots of wells are capped across the nation that still have oil in the ground, that could and should be utilized.
So we should sit on our hands and do nothing? Should we continue to spend our time, money and energy exporting our money to countries that show no regard for our wellbeing rather than use or own resources, while employing our own people? Are you really that insane, do you think they will take the same care and precautions to protect the environment that domestic companies will have to at least attempt to? This is the forward thinking, considerate logic of the Democratic party? NIMBY’s will rule for only as long as they have someone else’s backyard to shovel their fecal mater into. The Democratic party has become, not only the nanny party but the nimby party as well. They have been joined by a great many Republicans as well. I just have to be fair about that.
Since the science is already settled and all known oil resources have been exploited, (NOT!) with as much damage to the ecosphere as is humanly possible, by those robber barons, the petrochemical companies and you have obviously excelled in your clairvoyance PhD. program, I know that you already have proof that there will never be any alternatives that will come to light or new natural resources will be discovered.
Submitted for your reading pleasure.
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece
LS9 website http://www.ls9.com/
Thanks for the public panic attacks!
As I said before, panic is a political tool, not a scientific one.
You want a debate? Let’s see what you have in your tank…
Was that plain enough for you?
Who owns the oil?
Instead of using our tax money to buy excess farm crops so the Fed’s can sell them cheap to the Arabs we should start jacking up the price of wheat, etc. to cover our oil costs. When the Arabs run out of oil we’ll still have ours and they’ll never be able to grow crops in the desert.
Hi Carl! Not ignoring you, just a couple minor family crises (yes, us leftwing bloggers also have families… and jobs believe it or not.) I will respond to every sentence you write, either hear or in a future post, even if it takes a week. (Still haven’t gone to the links you provided but I will!)
Since you started by thanking me for the pretty eye-catching colors, I have to agree with you! I love to see pretty colors on a post, it brightens up my day, and does help to make sense of a graph and a dreary topic. But I don’t want to be at any kind of advantage to you in that regard, so if you ever have any colorful graphs or charts you want to post in comments to make YOUR points, send them to me and I will help you post it.
About the graph itself: The historic data on US lower 48 production and Alaska production is available on the EIA (energy information agency) website. The projected ANWR production is based on estimates from the US Department of Interior which estimated that ANWR contained 10.4 billion barrels of oil and that maximum production would be 1.4 million barrels per day. The US currently uses about 7.5 billion barrels of oil per year. If ANWR peaks at approximately 1.4 million barrels per day it would equate to roughly 7% of current US usage or 1.4% of world production. For more information on this subject I recommend this link: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2782
I’ll get to the rest of your comments later, but I do want to remind you – who was our favorite Wizard of Oz character again? In your second paragraph you were channeling him when you wrote: “So we should sit on our hands and do nothing? Should we continue to spend our time, money and energy exporting our money to countries that show no regard for our wellbeing rather than use or own resources, while employing our own people? etc. etc. etc.” To borrow a response from the wise Tom Lash to a similarly absurd and loaded series of questions at a Congressional debate in 2002, “No.”
The more I see how newsworthy this issue is, I’m going to be researching and writing more. Especially on offshore drilling, which is a hot-button issue here in beautiful Huntington Beach. There’s a little of what’s “in my tank.” To be continued…
Good Vern! Bring it on.
Glad you’re stepping up to the plate.
Sorry you had family issues as well, and as you said, we all have that in common, the jobs, I understand too. Take your time, do your research, get your links. I want you to prove your case, best you can and we will see what conclusions we come up with together.
Have an open mind, if you truly want to embrace scientific methodology you must question everything and take nothing at face value. Remember that truth invites question and discussion.
Frankly, I am so sick and tired of bad science being pawned off as factual information, just on face value, because this group or that says it’s so. Nobody’s looking behind the curtain, or those who do are ridiculed for questioning the source or the data. That’s not the scientific method, or it certainly isn’t good scientific method.
Offshore is only one of many untapped sources.
Go and fill’er up. We’ll see what ya got there under the hood.
Making the commitment to launch a truly independent energy agenda for this country will drive down oil futures markets or at a minimum help keep them from rolling off into the abyss. Drilling and other extraction will at the very least help to mitigate the problems. It’s the low tech place to start, that will have the most long-term smoothing effect. It will help buy us some time at the least monetary pain.
Oil sands and shale are much more feasible as the price of crude goes up on the world markets. It’s only because of economics that more of it isn’t being done. Sort of like gold mines that are only worked when the price of gold rises above a certain level. It’s not worth it otherwise, pure and simple. It’s all about ROI and cost/benefit ratios. Nukes and solar are all in the same boat too. As the base price for energy goes up, there are suddenly many more alternative ways to produce energy.
I believe we need to diversify our energy sources. As you should have read in prior posts, I like the new flexible solar panels that are starting to be printed on Flexo presses. I also like H2 but it use is further down the road. I have been a proponent of nuclear energy as well since the mid 70’s when I became educated about them. One of my stepfathers friends was an engineer at Bechtel and involved in many projects world wide, so I got the grand tour of San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. I also got to see plans for other projects around the world. All of the alternatives need to be used. The unfortunate reality is the ecology movement and mass hysteria has killed nukes in this country. Solar and wind may suffer a similar fate at some point when projects want to use large tracts of land for there use. Windmills do play hell with raptors too.
Good Lord.
Are the Liberals in Orange County the last ones in the country to still be exhorting the profundity that we’ve hit Peak Oil?
These chicken littles are professing a Mad Max world of the future and all we have left to save is nature.
PFLLBBBBBBBB!
First of all, known world oil reserves continue to go up, every year. Despite what everyone says, year after year, we have more total known world oil supply than the year before.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19826602.800-have-we-underestimated-total-oil-reserves.html
And the known world reserves not only grow higher, but they grow faster as well.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1816313/posts
And I’ll save the debate that oil is abiotic and not from dinosaurs for another day…
Now, I haven’t figured how or why that chart is particularly relevant. But I think its got to be that taken into account is a steady and inexorable environmental tide that will whittle away our options for drilling available oil in this country until all the options have been taken away. Thats the only way that chart could possibly work. So if you start from there, of course we’re going to drop in oil production! DUH!
That, in my opinion, is what these environmentalists and leftists want.
I’m working on an article, based on a dramatic quote I heard from a french tourist – no lie – that what America proposed to do in the world, suprise!, was good for America, and that’s why she would always oppose it. Leftists and environmentalists have the same mentality. If its good for America, it must be stopped.
What is real and true about the future is that the Supply and the Demand of oil is going to change radically in the coming years.
that is why the call for drilling in America and drilling now is so important. so that when that supply and demand really starts to impact the economy, and you are starting to compete with drivers in Beijing and Marakesh for your gasoline, we have ways to keep the engine of freedom running.
For the record: I will buy a hybrid when the battery is efficient enough or I can just plug it in at night and not worry about a 100 mile limit. My father and I are working on converting an old chevy to burn hydrogen and emit just water vapor. but that wont help the greenhouse effect. you do know that, right?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
So please please please don’t preach about how alternatives are so much more responsible. Thats just talk for some people trying to get others to change their behavior. And because you want to continue to be able to drive your car, they’re going to compare you to coke addicts and plunderers.
STOP IT
By the way Carl, loved your stuff!
Terry,
I was saving that one in my back pocket! The Sinclair logo is marketing hype, not reality or at least there is reasonable debate about it.
You might be refering to my post about Art’s new H2 and it’s emmisions of water vapor being 3x more potent as a geen house gas than CO2.
and thank you!
Great, just what we need to propel this discussion forward: a visit from the cheery spewer of Kansas City MO. Of course Crowley quickly skims through my post seeing only what he wants to see. Of course the fact we’ve hit Peak Oil is old news (although he later goes on to deny that)
(Crowley at rest)
I was obviously saying that drilling in ANWR (and offshore) will only add a tiny bit to supply, a decade or more down the road, and is possibly not worth the environmental trade-off, a sensible position with which the sensible St. John disagrees in his latest post http://orangejuiceblog.com/2008/06/everyone-is-lying-about-drilling/ And that’s obviously the point of the graphic, which Crowley stared at cross-eyed until he could figure out a way to twist it into an insult against environmentalists.
He classily cites the august “Free Republic” website in opposition to my US Government citations. Then he shares with us the hugely instructive tale of a nasty French lady he once met who hates America, discerningly extrapolating from that the motivation of environmentalists. Then he begs me to “please, please, please don’t preach how alternatives are so much more responsible,” when I never wrote a word about alternatives—–that was CARL, whom Terry is too busy flattering in his partisan game of divide-and-conquer to actually pay attention to what either Carl or I actually write.
Finally he accuses me of comparing drivers to coke addicts, when I was very careful to compare the behavior of an oil-addicted SOCIETY—–which includes everyone from me to Crowley—–to classic destructive addict behaviors. I didn’t actually offer any solutions, I don’t have any yet; I just simply questioned whether drilling in sensitive areas like ANWR and our beaches is worth the trade-off of a small bump in supplies 10 or 20 years hence. Crowley’s an inept reader, not interested in facts or getting to the bottom of things as much as he is in scoring points—–true or false–—against his chosen enemies, “environmentalists,” “liberals” and Democrats.
You may not see it Carl, but there is a big difference between your writing (on this thread and elsewhere) and Terry’s: It is obvious that you have put a lot of thought and research into solutions to this crisis, some of which may make sense, whereas Terry is primarily a Republican operative only interested in scoring political hits, and can’t even seem to decide if there’s a crisis. I still intend on researching all Carl’s claims, ideas and links. Terry, not so much.
The moderate and somewhat anti-partisan St. John has continued this argument on a new thread; let’s move it all over there. First, though, I have to rip him a new one for (in his zeal to show his Republican bona-fides) tarring Debbie as a “knee-jerk environmentalist who will dream up an argument to oppose every form of development.” I’m pretty sure I can lay that slam to rest…
A lot hasn’t been mentioned yet, such as the fact that oil companies are already sitting on so much resources they’re not doing anything with that it’s really impossible to see why they need any more. But I thought I should end this thread by quoting Debbie’s statement on oil drilling from earlier this week. And no, I’m not interested in being “original” on this subject which is new to me; Debbie Cook has studied these issues intensively for years, speaks on the topic at conventions around the world, and will be an invaluable asset in Congress as we face this growing crisis together (in nearly ludicrous contrast to our current seat-warmer.)
Democratic Congressional Candidate Debbie Cook’s statement on proposals to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling:
“There has been a lot of talk in the last couple of days about lifting the ban on drilling for oil along the coast. Dana Rohrabacher, John McCain and today President Bush have joined in a chorus of ‘drill, drill, drill,’ as if that will solve our energy problems.
“Time is not on our side, and continuing to divert our attention away from the real problem is a disservice to our citizens and a failure of leadership.
“World oil production has been flat for three years. America’s oil refineries are configured to refine light sweet crude and are currently operating at 88% capacity and paying a premium for this short supply. There is no point for the Middle East, the only region that may have spare capacity, to increase production of heavy sour crudes until new refineries are built or existing refineries have been modified.
“Three fourths of the world’s oil and gas wells have already been drilled in North America. Our continent is so heavily explored that it looks like swiss cheese. Eighty percent of the oil available on the Outer Continental Shelf is already open to leasing and drilling. Will opening the remaining 20 percent make any difference when it takes 5-10 years to bring any new oil discoveries to market?
“Perhaps we should just call the President’s bluff, sell off the leases and then get on with the real work ahead of us, leaving fossil fuels before they leave us.
“The world economy depends upon the flow of oil, not the oil that remains in the ground. The fact is, more than 50 nations are now past their peak in oil production: Mexico, Norway, UK, USA, Russia, perhaps even Saudi Arabia to name a few. If you use ExxonMobil’s estimate for the decline rate from these existing wells (-6%), then from now until 2017, we need to find and develop 37 million barrels per day of additional crude production just to stay even with what we consume today. That assumes no growth in demand for oil. That is the equivalent of finding FOUR Saudi Arabias. Does anyone think we have overlooked resources of that size and quality?
“George Bush and Dana Rohrabacher’s failure to understand the fundamental economics and geology of oil and gas production is matched only by their failures as leaders.
“The true solution to our energy problems starts with conservation efforts, and investment in alternative and sustainable energy sources, which will create new American industries and jobs and jumpstart the sluggish economy.”