Boy have those 2 words gotten mileage over the last many years and we are hit so much with the idea that it is hard to dismiss it much less even question but I love questioning things!
I'm sure like myself we've all noticed the recent spike in price at the gas pumps and as worshippers gathered to "PAY" homage to the "giver of life" elixir by the god we've been forced (we've forced ourselves more like it) to worship on a regular basis. Most worshipers I hear offer not praises but curses and all manner of blasphemy (guilty myself) standing before our god but our god cares not because we have no other god that we can place before us. Talk about the perfect racket! So let's introduce some atheism into this deal and see if we can make the Petro Sinai shake and rumble that we might dare consider the golden calf.
I net searched "myth of peak oil", "peak oil" and "peak oil theory" and found several interesting links. In all cases, they were across the spectrum but one linked to a pdf file of a speech given by Dick Cheney in 1999' when he headed Halliburton at the London Institute of Petroleum.
Quote:
| Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you've got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is as true for companies as well in the broader economic sense it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It's like making one hundred per cent interest; discovering another major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every four months or finding two Hibernias a year. For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer greet oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greeter access there, progress continues to be slow. |
The bold sections were done so by
the pdf author but they are points worth making notes of IMO. Not direct to the topic at hand or it's point but still much in the mix is another point Cheney made in that same speech.
Quote:
| "Oil is unique in that it is so strategic in nature. We are not talking about soapflakes or leisurewear here. Energy is truly fundamental to the world's economy. The Gulf War was a reflection of that reality." |
I'll leave it there and you can draw your own ideas from Cheney's words.
Back to Peak Oil, several articles I found of interest with here just a few examples.
From Counterpunch:
The Recuring Myth of Peak Oil
From Mises:
The Myth of Peak Oil
Those if you will are a sample of the naysayers but I found defenders as well
From AnimalsDinosaursandBugs:
Peak Oil Not A Myth
From LifeAftertheOilCrash:
Are We Running Out?
To be fair, those who hold peak oil as a myth are in a decidedly small minority so I wanted to make that fact known. I love the contarian part in the play!
With oil running out as they say and taking ole Dick (as in Cheney) at his word, would it not seem prudent of the oil companies to vastly diversify their product lines in order to build for the future? Should they not be scrambing into other markets beyond energy? To my knowledge, the bulk of profits and revenue for these energy giants still come from oil and natural gas and would seem to do so going into the future and I've yet to hear of any company announce they are taking those massive quarterly profits and moving them into other business areas to build for the future. UPS back in the 80's and 90's when we were booming here at home and the only ground game to be had spent huge amounts of money at a lost around the globe but knowing the long game understood the sacrifice. Would it not behoove the oil giants to do something similar in diversifying if their core business product is a declining resource?
Peak oil sez that millions of years ago sediments were laid down that gave us our oil today but that those sediment source all died off and there are no others. It's that dinosaur thingy but could this actually be false? Could oil in fact come from another source, a source still with us today that is plentiful across the planet? Ever heards of Diatoms? Forget dinosaurs, it's
diatoms that give us black gold. OK but how do we know these are with us in plentiful supply today! Ever heard of
?
Gasoline from Algae! Remember I asked the question about why isn't the oil companies investing elsewhere? Google
Google: exxon+algae+oil
and notice whose investing!
Put there's a couple of problems. After 1971' we used oil as the means to back our dollar and make it the global reserve currency and with it being challenged has lead to
many problems for us nationally speaking. I still think OPEC looking nearly 40 years hence is as much a western business interest creation as it was the nationstates of oil producers but either way there's no doubt that oil producing states and the US has greatly benefitted. That's JMO for what it's worth.
Like in the movie Dune and the spice melange, to now move away from this market of harvesting from the spice sands would have huge implications and as Ole Dick said, the government is as much in the oil bidness as anyone and you thought ole Dick always lied. Me too!
However, at the same time, what would happen if another player entered the game who discovered in fact peak oil was myth and used other exploration methods to even prove it? Would this player be a threat to anglo-american/western/NATO interests? What if this player began to form it's own alliances with other national interests outside the Anglo/Western/NATO triad? What if this interest even had access to nukes to defend itself from corp. takeover?
I give you
War, Peak Oil and RUSSIA!
Now put your thinking caps on and rethink the cold war, the present saber rattling and even the Middle East itself! If you dare!
Peak Oil 
Diatom
