Peak oil is BS!

The one overiding thing thst lends support to peak oil is why are we jumping on the ethanol bandwagon so fast. We now are robbing Peter(Food) to pay Paul(Fuel), and why didn't we do so during the shortages of the 70's. I can not see letting people face a shortages of food world wide just so we can reduce our dependancy on Ahab's oil.
Belive me when I say that this is one theory that I truly hope that I am wrong about. Because if this planet has "Peaked" then we are truly headed for a major SHTF situation world wide, but if Peak Oil is truly a hoax, it still will not alter my own long term preps for whatever happens. Peak Oil is just one of the numerous situations that long term prepping can cover. Try to cover as many bases as you can, and in the the long run if you don't have to use them, then what have you lost?

 

O I dunno Colt maybe because it is BS plain and simple and far too many on this board are shills for the oil companies .

Lets look at a few facts .

Gas here in St. Louis prior to electing Bush was under $1.10 and many people said electing that POS was going to cause a huge increase because his family invested heavily in oil .

4 years later sure enough the price was up to $1.59 , Then Katrina hit and they had an ready made excuse to screw us , the oil rigs in the Gulf were shutdown and gas jumped suddenly to over $3.00 , $3.29 if I remember correctly but then after several months people began asking why the prices hadn't dropped back down . Slowly but surely they did begin to drop all the way to $2.29 at one point .

Then their next big excuse was a fire at a refinery and prices sored back $2.99 and then slid back to about $2.49 then we had something happen in the middle east "other than the usual day to day war", and up they go .

We went for too long of a period without anything substantial in the news so they make up a story of Peak Oil .

Like I have said we are teetering on the brink of a world wide recession due to their greed pure and simple .

I can't speak for the rest of you but when It hits and the violence starts and IF I live through it I plan on patrolling with my shotgun and asking people what they did for a living and every SOB that says he was as oil exec gets a load of #6's in the gut , a slow death and a laughing spectator while he dies !!!

I greatly hope there's a special place in hell for them and all of their shills .

 

Maybe so but here's Legendary Texas oilman and chair of BP Capital, T. Boone Pickens tooting a different horn.

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Great Thread!

Peak Oil really is BS.

Here's a couple of things to ponder:

1. US has enough in OIL SHALE reserves (We have the largest in the world!) to run the economy with NO imports for about 4 CENTURIES at current rates. The technology to do this has been in place for about 5-6 decades. The big lie told to everyone during the seventies was that it would not be feasible until oil hit $65-70 per barrel. Well.........

2. Geologists do not know where oil comes from - the old theories about fossilized plants, etc. have been pretty much discredited as oil keeps being discovered in stranger and deeper locations, in strata that never supported life. The Russkis are miles down and finding oil.

Peak Oil is all politics, not reality. It is about as real as man-made global warming.

Of course, that's just MHO.

 

I'm not ignoring this thread, finally went back to work and haven't had much time to get on computer the last couple days.

Till this evening

 

MM sorry but that is pure BS.if it was like you said then why so high a profit margin???? its not because wea re using so much more gas this month than last month.record profits of any company int he history of the world......please.the oil wells exxon owns now they dont pay for the oil per barrel.this gives the margin for huge profit.i know they buy alot of oil from other places..But not all of it.also a oil rig that has been on line for anytime has already paid for itself....this means pure profit for exxon.


if it was water each individaul could set up a roof gathering system and catch some water.....i dont own driller so i cant drill for my own oil.

i am still on the fence as far as peak oil goes....but...if it is getting hard to get or costing me more then peak oil is a reality for me.my tank is empty and i have no money to buy more...so....it doesnt matter if the exxon down the road is setting on full.....i am on empty along with more and more americans.

the middle east oil guys can eat their sand and wash it down with oil. we americans should stop all exports of any type of grain.we can live without oil...but they cant live without food and if we stop buying oil...then eventually they will need to sell oil to buy more food from some country.but we will still planting gardens and living a more self reliant lifestyle...hopefully.


maybe....just maybe if the spigot got turned off tomorrow we could return to a more civilized lifestyle....a agraian(sp) culture...but for some it would be the end.



i am working on a stash of money to get solar system for my home.this will put me at less mercy over all for the rest of my life for my daily needs.i want my homestead to be a great place and i am working on it to make it that way...because if it all goes bloowey...then home is where we all will be....mostly.

 

pruned from another thread:

 

another:

 

This article probably explains my stance better than I could:

Running Out of Oil
by Walter Williams (July 19, 2006)

"Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels. That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for the Italian energy company ENI. Mr. Maugeri provides a wealth of information about energy in "Two Cheers for Expensive Oil," published by Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006) and reprinted on the same date in Current.

There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves. Mr. Maugeri says these oil reserves will probably meet the "proven" standard in a few years as technological improvement and increased sub-soil knowledge come online. Estimates of recoverable oil don't include the huge deposits of "unconventional" oil such as Canadian tar sands and U.S. shale oil, plus there are vast areas of our planet yet to be fully explored. For decades, alarmists have claimed we're running out of oil. In 1919, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that world oil production would peak in nine years. During the 1970s, the Club of Rome report, "The Limits to Growth," said that, assuming no rise in consumption, all known oil reserves would be entirely consumed in just 31 years.

There are several factors that explain today's high prices. There has been a huge surge in demand for oil as a result of rapid economic growth in China and India, as well as in the United States. Another factor is the under-exploration. Mr. Maugeri says Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels of proven reserves, accounting for 25 percent of the world's total, but only one-third of the oil known to lie below its surface. Russia's reserves are three times its proven reserves of 50 billion barrels. While high prices are beginning to stimulate investments in oil exploration, they've lagged for several decades out of fear of oil gluts and low prices. It's going to be 2010 before today's investments yield fruit.

A substantial increase in oil production alone cannot ease today's high prices because of weak refining capacity. Not a single refinery has been built in the United States for 30 years. Improvements to existing refineries failed to keep up with growing demand and tougher environmental regulations. We're the world's only industrialized country with a net deficit in refining capacity that comes to 20 percent of domestic demand. That makes us highly vulnerable to disasters like last year's hurricanes. Exacerbating weak refining capacity are regulations whereby gasoline produced for one state may not be sold in another. There are 18 mandated different types of gasoline sold in the United States.

The long-term outlook for oil is good. There's an increase in oil-drilling technology and exploration. Oil as a source of energy has been in decline. In 1980, oil was 45 percent of energy consumption; today, it's 34 percent, yielding ground to natural gas, coal and nuclear energy. Recently, the House of Representatives passed "The Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006," which now awaits a Senate vote. Offshore oil exploration has been banned since 1982, despite Department of the Interior estimates that suggest the presence of 19 billion barrels of oil and 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The House of Representatives also passed the "Refinery Permit Process Schedule Act of 2006." Should these measures become law, our energy capacity will be enhanced significantly.

America stands alone in the world as the only nation that has placed a substantial amount of its domestic oil and natural gas potential off-limits. That reflects the awesome control that radical environmentalists have over Congress. With high fuel prices, Americans might be ready to put an end to that control.

 

High Gas Prices Courtesy of Environmental Rhetoric
by Alan Caruba (June 16, 2006)

As the price of gasoline and the myriad products that utilize petroleum in their manufacture rises, Americans are going to ask why the Congress has resisted accessing the billions of barrels' worth of oil and natural gas in our offshore continental shelf.

As the realization of how dependent we are on the importation of Middle Eastern oil, plus the fact that U.S. dollars fund avowed enemies such as Iran and, in South America, Venezuela, Americans are going to ask why we do not tap our own Alaskan and offshore resources.

As a matter of national security and as a significant boost to the American economy, it makes no sense to not assure and achieve a higher level of energy independence.

So why, in mid-May, did the House of Representatives reject an end to the quarter-century ban on oil and natural gas drilling in 85 percent of America’s coastal waters?

At the time, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, issued a statement that both defied logic and flatout lied, saying the vote against offshore drilling was great victory for consumers who have seen prices rise prodigiously. “In the meantime, working families are turning their wallets inside out to fill their gas tanks. It is outrageous to ask families to dig even deeper to subsidize oil drilling on undersea lands that belong to the American people.”

Americans are paying more because the global price of a barrel of oil has been increased by fears of military conflict in the Middle East, probably initiated by Iran.

Americans are paying more because, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes destroyed 115 oil platforms and damaged another 50, along with 183 pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and refineries in Louisiana. Despite this, the U.S. Mineral Management Service (MMS) reported that there were no significant oil spills from offshore platforms and no oil reached the coastline.

And, no, Americans do not “subsidize” oil drilling. Pelosi’s boogeyman of “Big Oil.” Indeed, as a report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration noted in 2005, the MMS “collects and disperses billions of dollars in revenue from the sale of mineral leases. Offshore leases brought in revenues of $5.2 billion in 2000. This represents 73.1 percent of the $7.1 billion in revenues collected from all Federal and American Indian mineral leases that year.”

As for those big profits enjoyed by “Big Oil”, it’s worth noting that a single offshore drilling platform costs about $100 million dollars to build and that comes after the equally enormous costs of exploring for oil and natural gas resources. And “Big Oil” not only pays big taxes on its profits, but also employs thousands of Americans in the process.

According to the Consumer Alliance for Energy Security, the Offshore Continental Shelf (OCS)—85 percent of which is off-limits to exploration—is estimated to have enough natural gas to heat 100 million homes for the next 60 years and enough oil to drive 85 million cars for 35 years. Thanks to the vote in the House, it remains off-limits.

When the House of Representatives voted to open the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling in late May, Rep. Pelosi again issued a statement decrying “the same, tired ideas on energy such as opening the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. We should not sacrifice the Arctic coastal plain, one of America’s last truly wild places, for the sake of a small amount of oil.”

Small? Well, if anyone considers an estimated 10.4 billion barrels to the nation’s oil supply “small”, then one wonders what they consider large? The vote was 225 to 201. In truth, only 2,000 of the nearly 20 million acres of ANWR would be needed for oil and gas production, contributing billions in tax revenue, and creating or sustaining thousands of American jobs.

Opening ANWR and the Offshore Continental Shelf would bring many benefits. Put simply, more oil and natural gas means lower prices. With it come greater national security and more independence from the vagaries of Middle Eastern politics.

Speaking for the Democrats and echoing the cries of environmental organizations opposed to energy independence, Rep. Pelosi called for “home-grown renewable energy, innovative technologies, and efficient use of energy in our homes, vehicles, workplaces, and factories.” Blah, blah, blah!

This is the kind of empty environmental rhetoric that has left Americans paying higher prices for oil and natural gas than ever before. It posits the use of wind and solar energy on a scale that is neither viable, nor realistic because neither will ever produce enough energy to replace conventional sources.

Rep. Pelosi said that, “America’s farmers will fuel our energy independence”, apparently by “rapidly expand[ing] the production and distribution of biofuels, encourage[ing] the deployment of new engine technologies for flex fuel, hybrid and biodiesel vehicles; and encourage[ing] cutting-edge research to develop the next revolution in renewable energy.”

The notion that America or any of the other industrialized nations of the world will be able to depend on energy sources from corn and other agricultural products in the near future is absurd. Moreover, it ignores the vast reserves of known and yet to be discovered of oil and natural gas that exist.

The problem, of course, is getting Congress to permit America to actually access its own resources! The effort to open a relatively small portion of ANWR has been stalled for three decades. The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act was passed in 1953! It authorized the Department of the Interior to lease defined areas for development. According to the Energy Information Administration, “The offshore has accounted for about one-quarter of total U.S. natural gas production over the past two decades and almost 30 percent of total U.S. oil production in recent years.”

“In 2003, MMS estimated that there was 406.1 trillion cubic feet of remaining undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas and 76 billion barrels of oil in U.S. offshore regions.”

So why, in 1990, did former President George Walker Bush enact a blanket moratorium on all unleased areas offshore of North and Central California, Southern California except for 87 tracts, Washington, Oregon, the North Atlantic coast, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico coast? The moratorium was extended in 1998 by former President Clinton through 2012.

Why has the Congress of the United States refused to permit the exploration and extraction of our nation’s own natural gas and oil resources? Why does a coalition of 27 of the nation’s leading environmental organizations continue to campaign against access? And why do ordinary Americans have to remain at the mercy of Middle Eastern nations and major suppliers like Venezuela?

There are literally trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and billions of oil barrels extant in the offshore continental coast of the United States. Every day on 4,000 offshore platforms natural gas and oil is extracted from Federal waters in an "environmentally sensitive" manner.

There is an extremely dangerous game being played by the White House, Congress, and environmental organizations that is placing the economy and the security of America at great risk. If energy independence is what this nation needs—and it does—it is ours for the taking.

 

Bush and Congress Should Lift Environmental Restrictions on Energy Production
by Andrew Bernstein (May 29, 2006)

With American consumers currently paying the highest gasoline prices in recent history, and after another winter of high heating costs, many Americans are properly concerned about America's energy future. Predictably, many politicians and commentators blame the "greed" of U.S. energy companies for the soaring prices. The truth, however, is that prices rise when demand increases relative to supply, and that the American supply of energy is being strangled by the policies of U.S. federal and state governments.

A prime example of such strangulation is the moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas imposed on 85 percent of America's coastal waters for the past quarter century. Last week, when the House rejected an attempt to lift the moratorium, it sent a powerful message that the strangulation will continue.

Let us examine some of the other policies that have brought America--a country blessed with abundant natural resources and possessing the technology to produce energy more efficiently than ever--to a state of energy poverty.

In addition to the moratorium on offshore drilling, the federal government repeatedly refuses to permit oil drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Geologists claim that ANWR holds seven billion barrels of oil, enabling it to add significantly to American energy production. Further, in large measure due to environmental restrictions, America has not built a new oil refinery for more than 25 years, meaning a diminished ability to refine crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, and other petroleum products. Our refineries run at capacity constantly, making repairs difficult, leaving them more susceptible to breakdowns and fires, and--with most centered in the Gulf of Mexico--leaving the country's supply of refined oil vulnerable to such natural disasters as Katrina.

Additionally, regulations have made building new nuclear power plants economically uninviting--despite the fact that nuclear plants, operated in free countries, where top minds are liberated to create advanced technology, have proven their reliability and safety. In France, for example, nuclear power provides roughly two-thirds of the nation's electricity. American nuclear plants have had, and continue to show, a superb safety record--and this includes Three Mile Island, whose 1979 partial meltdown led to no deaths or injuries.

Finally, environmental restrictions also limit production of natural gas, which currently supplies 25 percent of the energy Americans consume, a figure that will rise in the future. Huge natural gas reserves in places such as the Rocky Mountain basins, Alaska, and the Outer Continental Shelf are either "off limits" or have their development severely restricted. These unnecessary restrictions endure despite the fact that the wholesale price of natural gas has quadrupled since the 1990s. As an example of the hurdles placed in front of natural gas companies, producers in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, which holds 39 trillion cubic feet of gas, several years ago saw the federal government suspend the issuing of drilling permits pending the outcome of a second "environmental impact" study. Is this kind of treatment going to encourage more companies to get into the energy business?

The United States is a country rich in both energy sources and the technology necessary to develop them. But the policies of our own government are preventing such development from occurring. America needs to learn from the bitter experience of England. Last century, a popular expression "taking coals to Newcastle" (a center of English coal production) was coined to indicate the absurdity of taking a product to a place that was plentiful in it. But in the late 1940s, when the British government nationalized the coal industry, shortages and rationing resulted, and taking coal to Newcastle became a grim reality. Similarly, the United States today, with its enormous supplies of oil, natural gas, and other energy sources, is suffering high prices because of restrictions imposed by our government.

If the U.S. government established freedom in the energy industry by removing environmental restrictions, we would witness a significant increase in domestic production of oil, natural gas, and electricity. This would do more than increase supply and lower prices for American customers. It would herald a new commitment by the U.S. government to economic freedom and capitalism. The relative freedom of the computer industry has led to an explosion of innovativeness and productivity. The same freedom in the energy industry will lead to the same result.

 

Yeah, and MM don't miss the shill meeting thursdaythe17th, there's a new handout and a new coversheet for the TPS ("The phoney stuff")reports...

Iknow my credibility sux because i tend to look for doomer stuff,but:Guys there's something like 10(?) calories of oil in every single calorie of food today, fertilizers, fuels. its not just fuel for SUV's,we need oil for plastics,Al Gores hair"product" and manufacturing processes.

Personnally, I agree its an economic issue,demand is up and rising every day, the source and infrastructure can't keep up.Ido not believe the russians found an inexhaustible supply simply by drilling deeper, if not dinosaurs, I thought they "proved" oil supplies came from ancient plankton deposits on sea beds.Meaning oil (energy) came from sun light like everything else here( it follows); not magical processes deep within the molten core..

 

Environmental restrictions put forth by the environmentalist on oil looks awfully familiar in some ways like the spotted owl ordeal here in the NW. The spotted owl issue put a lot of people out of work, closed a lot of lumber mills and turned once booming small logging towns into ghost towns. Not just a few towns quite a few. It seems environmentalist don't care who, what or how many people's lives are affected by their agenda.

Congress needs to look in the mirror when it comes to whom is helping the rising gas prices. I'm sure supply and demand plays a part, especially when there is a supply that isn't being utilized. Doesn't surprise me one bit that they don't know how to accept responsibility for their own actions, blame somebody else.