SEveral people have asked me about a recent article which suggests that oil
is not running out. I will post this so that no one will raise this article
again. The article is:
Potential oil supply refill?
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020529-43772260.htm
Only 1 field I know of is showing signs of being refilled--Eugene Island
330. But EI330 lies on top of about 75,000 feet of sediment. This
refilling could simply be the leakage of an older oil field beneath. The
oil itself shows excellent evidence of being sourced by Cretaceous age
rocks, not be something coming out of the earth's mantle per Gold's
hypothesis. This idea will never die because people want to believe that
there is an ocean of oil down there. I saw nothing surprising in the
article.
For some specific points. The article says:
" Mr. Kennicutt is not the first to suggest that vast hydrocarbon
deposits may lie well below those currently known. In 1995, the New York
Times reported that geochemist Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution in Massachusetts had also found evidence that oil was moving
upward into reservoirs from somewhere far deeper."
There are always hydrocarbon traps deeper than the presently known traps. No
big deal. And of course oil is 'moving upward into reservoirs from somewhere
deeper. The highly carbonaceous source rocks in the Gulf of Mexico are
anywhere from 30-75,000 feet deep. When the oil is formed it moves upward.
Big deal. This has been known for 30 years and is nothing new. And even if
oil is coming out of the earth's mantle, if it doesn't come out at rates
equivalent to 25 billion barrels per year, we are running out of oil. We
pump out 25-28 billion a year. In order not to run out, we must replenish at
the same rate.
The article says:
"The new scientific evidence that energy supplies may be vastly greater than
previously imagined is only the latest blow to the doomsayers. Such people
have been around for 200 years, preaching that mankind has reached the limit
to growth because we have found all the oil there is to be found. For at
least a century, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey has consistently
reported that America had only about 10 years worth of oil left."
Pure bunk. The USGS has never in the last 50 years said we only had a 10
year supply. What they reported was R/P which is reserves divided by
production. That value is always around 10 years. But only silly outsiders
who think they know something would believe that this is a measure of how
much oil we have left. R/P simply tells you how long your supply would last
if you find no more oil and production remains the same. Anyone in the field
knows that neither assumption is true.
The article says:
"Economist Julian Simon long made the point that the size of proven reserves
cannot be divorced from the price of oil. At current price levels, only
about 40 percent of oil can be extracted from existing fields. The remaining
60 percent, which is known to exist, cannot be produced economically and is
therefore not included in proven reserve estimates. However, higher prices
and advanced technology can easily make it profitable to expand production
in existing fields."
So why, when the price of oil went from $2 in 1973 to $40 in 1982 did the US
production continue to DECLINE? Twenty-fold higher prices didn't bring new
supplies onto the market from within the US. The reason is that the US was
running out of oil. Higher prices can't make new oil.
The article says:
"Bjorn Lomberg points out in his new book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist"
(Cambridge University Press), $40 per barrel oil will immediately increase
world reserves from a 40 years supply to 250 years because vast known oil
shale deposits will become economically viable."
Not necessarily so. It takes more energy to get the shale out than it
delivers. That is the fundamental problem with oil shale. One must move tons
and tons of rock (spend lots of energy) to get to the shale. Then one must
heat the shale (spend more energy) to get the bitumen to drop out. Then one
must move all that rock back and reclaim the land (spend lots of energy).
Higher prices won't solve the laws of physics.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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