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Non Peak Oil Update
George Giles
Lew Rockwell.com
Thursday December 20, 2007
In 2006 I wrote a little op-ed piece for Lew Rockwell about the
fallacies of Peak
Oil. I asserted that proven oil reserves seem to go up every
year in spite of both the warnings that we are running out, and
that we are consuming it at an every increasing rate. Let’s Google
a little and see what the state of the reserves is at the end
of 2007.
In June of 2006 I asserted: "According to oil industry
sources,
the commonly accepted proven reserves are 1.226 trillion barrels
of oil." What do we find today (December of 2007)?
Radford University offers up a nice comparison
of "proven resources and recoverable resources". The
high is 2272.5 billion barrels with a low of 981.4. This gives
us a median of 1060, an average of 1343, a variance of 386, and
standard deviation of 621. Not exactly accurate data, but these
are government statistics and may be prone to some inaccuracy.
I can interpret this data as either proving or disproving my assertion
depending on whether we like the mean, high end of the low end.
A variance of 25% of the average might be considered unsure. This
is an elegant web page that even Edward
Tufte would be proud of.
(Article continues below)
The Department of Energy has web data on oil reserves.
One of them states that total world oil reserves at the end of
2007 is 1.317 trillion barrels of oil. I am a clear winner on
this one, assuming we accept the statistics as factual.
Canada is a major producer of oil. This Canadian web site (not
official) has a nice, albeit hodgepodge, compendium of statistics
that can be found here.
This site represents that Saudi Reserves could be as high as 900
billion barrels of oil which is more than half the currently accepted
figure of 1.2–1.3 trillion barrels of oil. Graphics representing
the difference between proven, probable and contingent resources,
which hint at the fact that market forces will determine capacity
as a function of price and recovery techniques.
The Oil Crisis is a Chicken
Little (the sky is falling,
i.e. wells are drying up) web site that advocates solar energy
as a savior for civilization. This clearly demonstrates that they
have no understanding of the concept of energy density. Energy
density shows that fossil
and nuclear (fission/fusion) are the only feasible techniques
given current technology.
Nature depends completely on fusion from gravitational collapse
for thermodynamic energy input on a planetary scale throughout
the known Universe which is a very broad statistical sample. Solar
is nice for heating your pool, and good for plants with several
hundred million years of technology development via evolution,
but will not cut it for our technological society. We need the
higher-density deposits from planetary collapse (abiogenic
oil source interior to the planet seeping into rock caps that
we drill holes through and suck out). I find the biotic theory
which is based on a single fact (chirality)
to be specious.
This site
asserts that the concept of proven oil reserves is meaningless,
given that many of these statistics are from governmental agencies
and are prone to institutional bias, that is, prevarication. This
is not an unreasonable concept.
The critical reader might comment that I am only using web resources
which run the gamut of credibility from high,
to questionable, to silly.
This is a point well taken, but most reliable sources of information
now post to the Internet, and the Internet has hundreds of millions
to billions of "fact
checkers" that the diligent reader can quickly consult
for guidance.
I am inclined to agree with the proven reserves concept being
meaningless. The statistics of proven oil reserves are largely
from government agencies,
petroleum industry concerns,
and cranks like oildrum,
peakoil, and hubbert.
It is my opinion that history has demonstrated they are wrong,
that proven reserves go up over time, and currency-adjusted prices
go down. However, the sad commentary is that our society is becoming
reactionary: dramatic adjustments occur through crisis which lead
to poorly planned and executed government programs (Iraq and Katrina
come to mind). Oil cartels have little incentive to admit that
their product is a low profit margin commodity item whose supply
is increasing thus forcing prices down.
In closing I offer up two facts: first that oil is denominated
in dollars worldwide, and second that the dollar has lost more
than half of its value against gold during the Bush II Presidency.
This extrapolates that oil is actually getting cheaper. During
the past eight years the price has basically doubled to the American
consumer, yet purchasing power has decreased at a greater rate.
Ron Paul talks here about purchasing power of the dollar with
respect to gold.
At years end of 2007 it looks like my assertion that oil supply
is increasing and not decreasing is more credible than Dr. Hubert’s
peak oil. My facts are unchecked and statistically insignificant
which puts me on an equal footing with government agencies and
cranks. So let your wallet do the talking at the pump and rely
on the dispassionate market to iterate through supply and demand
via the price mechanism (billions of daily fact checkers here).
It sure works better than the Synfuels
Corporation!
P.S. Ecologically conscious drivers of hybrid
cars, they do not cut down CO2 emissions they just change
the location of where it is emitted (tail pipe or electric power
plant) when fossil (oil and coal) fuel fired plants are concerned.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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