From National Geographic:
Is the era of cheap oil really at an end? Or could a glut send prices into a freefall? Should Western countries fear energy blackmail from oil- rich powers?
There’s no crystal ball to predict oil’s future, but Leonardo Maugeri believes that much can be learned by looking at the industry’s past.
Maugeri is the author of The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World’s Most Controversial Resource. As a senior vice president at the Italian oil corporation Eni SpA, he’s also an oil-industry insider.
In his book Maugeri explains how prices affect the cycle of oil production and why he believes oil “doomsday theorists” are tapping an empty well.
Maugeri’s theories often challenge conventional wisdom but are likely to become an essential part of the debate on oil’s future.
On the oft-cited warning that an increasingly industrialized world will create a global energy shortage, Maugeri notes:
It’s so seductive, in a way, to speak of a coming catastropheâ€â€but we’re not on the brink of a catastrophe.
People usually assume that the planet is thoroughly explored [for oil], but this is not true. The United States and Canada are the most thoroughly explored, and the latest discovery by Chevron in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrates that they are not really so [thoroughly] explored.
Other parts of the world are really not explored at all. Even today more than 70 percent of the world’s oil exploration wells are concentrated in the U.S. and Canadaâ€â€countries that hold only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. Conversely, only 3 percent of the world’s exploration wells are drilled in the Middle East.
Many countries, Saudi Arabia in particular, have discovered oil fields in the past but have never developed them because of their fear of creating excess capacity.
No one knows how much oil there is. But all the hints we haveâ€â€for example surveys made the U.S. Geological Surveyâ€â€indicate that the world still has really huge oil resources in its soil.
Of course, the prospect of a world that, if Maugeri is correct, can sustain itself indefinitely on fossil fuels—even as it pursues new forms of cleaner burning energy—is enough to drive many environmentalists, who have spent their lives combatting smog, absolutely batty.
Which makes the cynic in me wonder if this latest push to establish global warming as anthropogenic isn’t less about the potential for rising temperatures and sea levels as it is about forcing the world away from an energy source that is in ample supply, but that environmentalists simply find too dirty.
*****
(h/t Gray)
It isn’t the availability of oil that is in peril, it is the cost that will go up, as annual usage increases and less accessible oil is required to meet demand.
So for now, I’m buying Premium, baby, cuz the pickup is worth it!
Frank Hill would of course object to using premium in a pickup, as well as scoffing at anthropogenesis of climate change.
You mean Hank Hill?
TW: action69. Bow chicka bow wow!
My favorite quote in there is the one that says:
Ya hear that, lefties:
I wouldn’t mind us moving away from fossil fuels gradually (who wouldn’t?), which without question are the main sources of smog and bad air in our environment. But forcing me to do so in order to save the polar bear is not going to happen. Let’s let the market figure this one out.
It’s funny – pretty much every one I know thinks we ought to be using something other than oil. Whether it’s because of the pollution thing, or because it would take money out of the Saudis pockets, or whatever. Pretty much nobody thinks oil is a good idea.
But it’s only the leftards who think we can use the government to wish it away.
When the stuff is squeezing up from between your spatulate bedu toes, you don’t need to sink many exploration wells.
Conversely, when you know that you are close to exhausting your known supplies, the imperative is on more exploration.
I think we need to note the use of the word “exploration” in Maugeri’s essay and be careful not to draw an incorrect conclusion.
Most also fail to recognize that oil allows us to make plastics, man made fibers, etc. We are a petroleum based planet & by shunning gas, we will still be using tons of crude to make almost everything that is in your house from the pimentos in your olives to the water bottles carried while protesting our need for oil. It seems to me that mostly it is purely a second front to promote the anti-corporate/capitalism mentality while donning the disguise of concern for the environment. They won’t be happy until we are living in mud huts – remember, can’t cut a tree – & oppressing horses for transportation. They’re real world view is an agrarian feudalistic state, w/ themselves cast as out overlords.
Personally, I think oil is a great idea. I love being able to jump in my car and drive ten miles to a mall where I can stock up with food raised, (directly or indirectly), with oil based fertilizers and pesticides, and where all foods are in season all the time thanks to the wonders of modern air transport, and where I can indulge my appetite for (oil-based) platic gim-crackery, then drive home to my well lit, climate controlled house and get news and entertainment from around the world thanks to cheap access to all the energy that I need.
So leave me out of your all. Yeah, sure they’ll eventually find other ways to generate energy and new materials and new ways of powering personal transport, and maybe even new ways of making food, but never lose sight of the fact that oil age has also been an age of plenty for me and you and a whole lot of other humans.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, I did get a cheap gas deal with my groceries this week so I am a paid shill of big oil.
And another thing. Turns out that the polar bear problem ain’t global warming. It’s a shortage of journalists.
KevinB,
Do you agree with emmission standards for automobiles?
Tman
Depends on the emissions. If they can clean up the Hydrocarbons we burn for energy so that it’s almost all Carbon and Hydrogen, and increase the efficiency of engines so that all the Carbon gets burned into CO2 then fine, bring it on.
If they start taxing me for the amount of carbon I use, (and they’re going to do that very soon), then I am going to get seriously pissed.
Jeff,
I think your last paragraph is spot-on, but it is more than just “too dirty.” It depends entirely on the environmentalism-as-religion thing (I know that’s been said before, but bear with me). If it was just a problem of dirtiness, then science could bail us out, but with the religious aspect of it, that brings it to a whole new level of imminent justice. Hence the refusal to contemplate nuclear power – sure, it’s cheap and clean, but you can’t piss off Gaia like that, right?
(Of course, there’s also the endless fountain of grant money that the global warming hypothesis has enabled, but that’s another discussion.)
We should listen to the oil industry insider when he warns us to stick with oil.
emmadine,
As opposed to the voices in your head?
Because what the hell do oil industry insiders know about… oil?
We should also beware registered Democrats who tell us to vote Democrat, by that same logic, c’rect?
Premium fuel can be a waste of money. It isn’t a “better” fuel. It was designed to prevent detonation (a situation where the fuel combustion occurs too early) in performance engines. The higher octane prevents fuel from igniting early. Thus, if you use premium fuel in engines that don’t NEED it you can reduce economy and performance. The loss is subtle. But, you feel good for feeding you engine the “best” fuel you can buy right? Suckers!
I want to forgo fossil fuels, but to do so I’d have to live in a cave. I could get photovoltaic cells on my roof, but how much oil-based labor and material and electricity did it take to create them? I could get an electric car, which again is made with many oil-derived materials and powered off either photovoltaic cells or the local coal-fired grid. Damnit, I’ll have to live in a cave, eat fruits and berries, and ride a horse to work.
And the horse will have to eat weeds, since all the hay comes from farms with fertilizer and tractors.
Shucks, I’ll just have to rape the earth gently, BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!
(please don’t tell Pandagon)
Premium fuel can be a waste of money. It isn’t a “better†fuel. It was designed to prevent detonation (a situation where the fuel combustion occurs too early) in performance engines. The higher octane prevents fuel from igniting early. Thus, if you use premium fuel in engines that don’t NEED it you can reduce economy and performance. The loss is subtle. But, you feel good for feeding you engine the “best†fuel you can buy right? Suckers!
Posted by DWB
Yes. But my 318 Dodge PU gets better milage on premium than 87 octane.
Gonna have to drill a drain hole in this keyboard to get the Diet Pepsi out now, thanks MScott.
If they can clean up the Hydrocarbons we burn for energy so that it’s almost all Carbon and Hydrogen, and increase the efficiency of engines so that all the Carbon gets burned into CO2 then fine, bring it on.
The difficult part is that you need to have some sort of standards for emissions, and I think the US has done a good job in working towards making the air cleaner, and reducing smog. The current crop of cars coming out of detroit all have emission controls built in that make them pretty damn clean, and one helluva lot cleaner than they were in the seventies. There is no denying that the air is better in most cities than it was in the 70’s. Plus, look at Mexico city for an example of how bad things can get without any standards.
I think that if a fuel SOURCE (remember-electricity is not a SOURCE) is made capable of competing economically with gas to fuel our cars, we will naturally move towards it. I think we both agree that we don’t need to pushed in that direction.
Don’t forget …there is increasing evidence that oil is not a non-renewable resource. Oil fields previously thought to be tapped out are refilling.
If our supply of oil is virtually limitless, why has America’s oil production been declining for the past 37 years?
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mcrfpus2a.htm
Libruls?
Man, alphie is so stupid that even when he’s wrong he’s right.
Yes alphie, it’s the environmentalists that prevent the US from using our own resources instead of relying on foreign sources. The US used to be the largest net exporter of oil in the world. Go read some history. When you reach the ANWAR part, you’ll see why.
On the off chance there isn’t a magic oil fairy refilling the holes in the ground, do you feel any obligation to leave any oil for future generations of Americans, Tman?
Yes, we shouldn’t rush to any conclusions. There are many plausible explanations for the differences in oil exploration and exploitation.
Not the least of which would be the Middle East’s proven inability to manage it’s own reources, much less finance new developments. Or the likelihood that thirty plus years of simmering instability in the region has substantially limited foreign investment in oil exploration.
Likewise I’d also avoid rushing to any conclusions about just how exhausted our own supplies are. There are equally numerous explanations for the higher rate and extent of exploration that has occured on and and around the North American continent. Greater entrepeneurial spirit and lower political risks being among the top of the heap.
None of which speak to the actual extent of petroleum deposits remaining anywhere on the planet.
To be fair, Tman, I’m not sure it’s entirely the enviros’ fault.
The fact of the matter is that, as furriskey notes, when the oil is oozing to the surface w/ no need to drill exploratory wells, there’s an economy of scale at work here. Saudi oil is so cheap (b/c it’s readily accessible in huge quantities) that it beats out most competitors.
Whether the enviros are at work preventing drilling in ANWR, US oil production would probably decline anyway—simply b/c it’s cheaper/easier to access Saudi/Mid-East oil. Of course, the enviros fail to take that into account as well when they argue for replacing oil w/ some other source of energy.
But that doesn’t obviate your initial point, which is that alphie’s wrong. But then, doesn’t that go without saying?
alfie, I have every faith in future generations to deal with whatever situation they find themselves in. What makes you think that future generations will even need a much oil as we use now?
“do you feel any obligation to leave any oil for future generations of Americans, Tman?
Typical straw man argument alphie. No, I don’t beat my wife.
And had you bothered to read any of the links listed above, you would find that there is no danger of me “taking all the oil” from future generations. But then you would have to read, and it’s no fun being wrong AND having to do homework too, is it?
Alphie has gotten to the point where he no longer reads the posts. He just jumps in and reacts to what he thinks is the general trajectory of the comments, always choosing the opposite position and offering it with a sneering disregard for what anyone is really saying.
Still, one day Alphie might find himself a singing cricket and a generous fairy, and if he prays really hard, maybe he’ll wake up one morning as a real commenter—instead of the wooden puppet he is now.
In the meantime, though, try not to get tangled up in his strings.
I laugh at doomsday fears, until they come true; then I cry and cry.
The problem with this particular doomsday , is we’ll all be broke long before we get to the doom phase .
I want a nuclear powered car—just to annoy the environmentalists when I mention I’m “radioactive isotope neutral”.
Another factor in the domestic vs. imported equation, is that the oil reserves in the United States are privately owned. You have to negotiate a lease with private citizens to do business here, and some of them aren’t real keen on selling cheap oil. I guess you could blame the Beverly Hillbillies.
I just like to say, “I’m radioactive”, Steve.
Then again, we all are–a little. That’ll freak out the little sandal-wearing dorks.
At times like this I grow wistful for the only moment that I supported anything French: Blowing up the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland.
I don’t. If they don’t have any oil, they’ll have to come up with an alternative energy source.
And by God, they’ll thank me for it!
”…do you feel any obligation to leave any oil for future generations of Americans”
Unencumbered with a worldview, or a functioning intellect for that matter, alphie demonstrates the reasons for his contrarian viewpoint on the matter of oil, very similar to Mama Pelosi’s concern for “the children.” Funny, but alphie seems to express little similar concern for future generations of Iraqis if we get his desired pull out of US troops. Oh wait, that’s right…there won’t be any!! Future generations, that is…but there’ll be plenty of oil for us!
“On the off chance there isn’t a magic oil fairy refilling the holes in the ground” Ha Ha! Get it? Take that, you worldview-possessing, enslaved Chimpbots!
I used to get National Geographic, great photography, big maps for my wall, and interesting stories about distant lands. Around 2000 the focus became more and more and more “we’re destroying the planet, here how bad we all are, here’s a creature we killed blah blah blah.”
The thing is, even if these woeful tales were accurate, I don’t get the magazine to read activist crap and I told them as much with the letter in which I killed my subscription. They’ve just gotten worse and worse over the years.
Squid is right I think. Global Warming really does seem to have expanded into a neo-paganism in which nature reflects and validates an anti-capitalist ideology. It’s not the oil environmentalists and all the others on the climate change wagon find dirty – it’s all of us, Western civilization, and most importantly, themselves. They seek absolution through sacrifice – a tacit appeasement of angry spirits, and it’s creeping me out.
If you’re curious about the counter-arguments against the “refillable oil fields,” check out this article from EnergyBulletin.net.
Another discussion of Gold can be found at The Straight Dope.
And the really funny thing is: alphie’s “oil fairy” may very well exist. Except that they’d be more like gnomes or kobolds, probably the latter, living far underground.
To review: hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe. Carbon is at a “sweet spot” in the curve of binding energy, so there’s a lot of it around as a result of nuclear fusion in stars. Carbonaceous chondrites make up a little less than half of all small bodies in the solar system. The earth was formed by collecting small bodies and whacking them together; the metallic ones melted and became the core, the rocky ones (carbonaceous chondrites) floated to the top and turned into crust. (Nice to know we live on a slag heap, ain’t it?)
Hydrogen+carbon+pressure+heat = hydrocarbons. Oil isn’t compressed dinosaurs at all; it’s exactly what the name says: petroleum. Rock oil, bubbling up from the center of the Earth and collecting in caverns and crevices in the crust. The system is complicated by the fact that recent investigations have found microorganisms at every depth, including thermosynthetic ones easily capable of stitching methane molecules together into more complex substances.
This is called the “Gold Hypothesis” after Horace Gold, an astronomer who suggested it half a century or so ago. It is not currently an accepted explanation, but if old oil fields keep filling up again—which they are, and do—the geologists may end up revisiting some ideas.
Regards,
Ric
Maybe. But then Olympia Snowe will demand they revert to their old thesis and stop rocking the boat!
My local paper (the Sacramento Bee) decided to publish “notable Presidential remarks” in honor of President’s Day. Like Washington’s 1796 farewell address, the Gettysburg address, FDR’s inaugural, Reagan’s farewell address, and… Jimmy Carter’s “Energy crisis will test America’s character.” I guess to show how prescient he was. Or maybe how wrong-after all, he predicted that “… in the early 80s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.” Off by thirty years, at least.
A. The planet is nowhere near or even int eh neighborhood of running out of oil. This point is especially true if the Israelis really have succeeded in making oil shale an economically viable option; Colorado is the new Saudi Arabia if that is the case.
B. I still do not like giving money to Hugo Chavez and the aforementioned Kingdom.
C. The enviro-kooks are thinly disguised America haters, because I sure don’t hear them banging the drum on China and India. Fly over China some time–there is a layer of coal soot at 25,000 feet–over the entire country.
D. Oil or no oil, I still think the global warming debate is one-sided because of the university tenure game. That big yellow thing in the sky that Ra drives around does much more to our little blue speck that we do. Only arrogance prevents those-who-would-be-tenured from recognizing the weather has changed on this planet countless times when we were not even around.
It’s kind of frustrating that being pro-environment became such a politico-religious phenomenon. Prince Phillip and Teddy Roosevelt, to name two, both advocated protection of the environment.
It’s the terrifically Luddite influence that has come to inform debate that is pernicious and could quite easily result in more damage to the environment than would have resulted if such a significant portion of the debate hadn’t become dominated by this quasi-religious dogma.
BRD
Ric,
The link above your post to EnergyBulletin.net seems to have a fairly level-headed critique of the Gold Hypothesis. I suspect the jury still may be out on the whole issue, but I have a notion which way at least 10 of those jurors are going to vote.
BRD
Look, guys, the fact is, we’re gonna run out of oil.
As stated in the link Bill Peschel posted above (for which many thanks, Bill—far and away the best discussion of the subject I’ve ever seen) oil is found, or is believed to originate, between 7500 and 15,000 feet below the surface. If you assume that that entire layer is composed solely of oil, multiply by the surface area of the continents, and divide by a realistic (i.e., exponentially growing) estimate of usage, you will get a number in the few centuries range. Whereupon all the dry land falls straight down a mile and a half and the seas roll in…
No. The question is not “are we gonna run out?” The answer to that one is “yes, certainly.” It isn’t even “how soon will we run out?” Doomsayers will cling to the pessimists and cry, optimists will buy Hummers, as usual. The question is, “what shall we do about it?”
The problem with the drastic-solutions crowd is that it’s the natural feeding ground of opportunists. Show me a crowd of doomcriers, and I’ll show you a Rev. Moon ready, willing, and able to explain, in dulcet and ultimately convincing tones, that giving him power will Fix Everything—for which he will take only his due, i.e. wealth, power, and nubile sex-objects in abundance. For example, Bonny Prince Al, by the Grace of God the only true heir of Bill the God-King, Rightful Sovereign of America und Ãœberführer die die Hochwelt. The hincty bastards didn’t acknowledge him when they had the chance, and by God’s wounds they’ll rue the day when he comes into his own…
If we really are running out of oil, it will get more expensive. The resulting “windfall profits” will be a pool of capital, which will be used to create new sources of energy; that’s why things like that happen. The only thing creating an overarching bureaucracy to supervise the process will do is turn the capital into fat on the bureaucrats’ asses instead of useful energy sources. Well-meaning ignoramuses like alphie—yes, he’s well-meaning; there is nothing more dangerous than an idiot determined to Do Good—contribute to the problem by grabbing onto the facile solutions offered by the proto-prophets, diverting effort from solving the problem to aggrandizing the Great Man.
Give it a f*ing rest. It’s a given that we’ll run out of oil, but despite white lab coats and plagues of initials after people’s names nobody knows exactly when. The only thing other than eventual exhaustion of the resource that’s absolutely certain is that handing the problem over to the Prophet will make matters worse, not better.
Regards,
Ric
Environmentalism is a byproduct of repressed white middle class guilt:
“I’m so guilty and dirty….”
“Everything I touch is just dirty now too”
“I feel like I’m just spewing filth.”
“Everything is dirty! And filthy!”
“We are so dirty we are destroying the earth!”
“We have to get clean!”
Again, it is a personal problem masquerading as a political view….
“Too dirty?”
How about “Too subject to the whims of people who want to kill us?”
Fuck the smog, man. It’s the exploding airplanes and the falling buildings that should be motivating our First World asses to find something other than oil to run our HD plasmas.
A bit of not too distant history: back in the early seventies, oil prices passed $30 a barrel. At that price, Exxon thought it worthwhile to begin investing in an extraction technique to get oil from shale deposits. Out if Jeff’s neighborhood, near Denver, almost $4Bn was spent on shale oil extraction: the technology, the physical plant, the modifications to drilling and exploring. It was supposed to double the then current amount of available oil (worldwide.)
Cutting all the details out, oil prices came down, the project abandoned (not because it wasn’t solid, but because the economics only worked at prices above $40), and $4Bn written off.
I’d have to pull out a calculator, but $40 in the early seventies would be about 90 or 100 at present day dollars. Gas prices at that price per barrel would be somewhere in the ballpark of $5-6 per gallon, assuming similar tax structures.
I think I might bitch about the prices, but I wouldn’t retreat to a cave at that price. The CILDREN would be OK as well. I’m also pretty sure alternative energies would become economically viable below those prices.
Global Warming ™ is a “social justice” initiative masquerading as a science project.
BRD,
I don’t believe the Gold Hypothesis, at least not what might be called the “strong form” of it. It’s a useful red herring when arguing with the ignorant. Most of the people opining couldn’t tell Jurassic from a hole in the ground, and it’s fun to watch their jaws go slack at something just as pseudoscientifically plausible as what their Prophets have spoon-fed them but different.
Regards,
Ric
Ric sez:
“The resulting “windfall profits†will be a pool of capital, which will be used to create new sources of energy; that’s why things like that happen. The only thing creating an overarching bureaucracy to supervise the process will do is turn the capital into fat on the bureaucrats’ asses instead of useful energy sources.”
That reminds me of the old management anecdote about the two companies who made ice way back when. One viewed their mission as being one of making ice, the other decided their job was to keep things cold. As I seem to recall, the second company became known as Frigidare.
I am heartened to see that the oil companies seem to be pretty receptive to the idea of being energy companies. As long as they keep that in mind, the rest of this should be imminently survivable.
BRD
I guess that proves we aren’t ‘fighting for oil’.
Hell, I’ll fight for oil! We’ve been fighting for resources since before we could walk upright–It is a Good and Right thing.
I wish we really would get serious about fighting for oil….
I don’t know if being registered as a democrat makes you an insider in the same way as this dude. So i don’t think that’s quite the same, but i suspect you’re getting there.
Anybody have info on the current status of thermal depolymerization research?
…thermal depolymerization
They do it here – I think they’re getting sued cause it makes a bad smell or something.
shasta,
The theory of thermal depolymerization is sound. The plant built to realize it has problems, partly from failure to completely understand all the factors and partly from shoddy construction, and the yields have been lower than expected because the provider of feedstock found a more profitable use for turkey guts and is only delivering lower-quality waste. The result is that the technology is in the doldrums at the moment. There is some interest in running the plant(s) as sources of ultrapure, high-quality lubricants, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a hugely profitable or widespread business.
Regards,
Ric
Don’t forget about Oil Sands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands
Bravo Romeo Delta—the ecological movement in the US died as a viable philosophy when the upscale urban ‘enviromentalists’ decided the people who lived on and from the land and knew how it worked were part of the problem, and then hecame the exclusive province of grizzly bear huggers and people who can’t understand why folks who live in the Texas panhandle won’t buy electric cars with a hundred-mile range…
emmadine:
A friend of mine told me this story. He was at a dinner party, when one of the other guests started railing about the dangers of nuclear energy. He proceeded to point out the various safety mechanisms built into nuclear power plants, the difficulty of actually causing a nuclear explosion at a plant, etc.
The other guest looked at him and scoffed, “What are you, a nuclear scientist?”
Whereupon my friend replied, “Why, yes.” He had gotten a doctorate in nuclear physics.
The other guest then bluntly declared: People like you are naturally going to be for nuclear energy, and dismissed his arguments out of hand.
The idea that folks in the energy biz should not be relied upon for information about energy seems to be a parallel to those who propound the chickenhawk argument:
If you are for it and are versed in it, you’re a shill. If you’re for it and aren’t versed in it, you’re ignorant.
Only those who are versed in it AND opposed to it have credibility.
Lurking Observer,
I think you’ve pretty much captured the essence of the thing. I will have to think about whether there is a general-purpose proof of the concept.
BRD
The biggest problem with abiogenic oil theories is that pesky oxygen: it oxidizes anything it touches, especially if heat and pressure are applied. Hydrocarbons and coal are thermodynamically unstable towards oxydation, so much that they are used as reductants in metallurgical processes.
I think you misunderstand me. We should listen to insiders. They know. They also have a lot to lose, so they care too. We should listen to the insiders in the energy companies we invest in, and in the government that protects us. Like you said, because we’re ignorant.
Hell, I just want nukes supplying electricity. While watching California struggle, I remained quite comfortable not too far from about three ComEd nuclear stations…
Save the carbon for chemical feedstock, vehicle fuel and the like.
Hank Hill? No wonder he nevers answers my emailed requests for a signed photo!
These equations do change with time, but North Sea oil, for example, being hard and dangerous to get at, is only profitable to produce when the global oil price is above USD18 per barrel.
So currently, it is a steal, and when oil was bouncing around 10 dollars it was a sink.
Same is true of shale extraction, but at higher cost levels.
We have been lazy and greedy, which is why we have allowed ourselves to become so reliant on Middle east oil- however, I would like to make it clear that if the Iraq war had been ‘all about the oil’, as such socialist luminaries as Tony Benn persist in claiming, we would in fact have turned left out of Kuwait and rolled up the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Trust me, we could have done it with one Division and there would have been no trouble holding down 3 disparate clans afterwards.
Iraq was all aboout the terror. And it still is.
furriskey
The US is not that dependent on oil from the middle east. I think only 12% of our oil comes from there. In the 30 years since the Arab states used economic blackmail with the 1973 oil embargo and oil started getting expensive, we’ve gone from importing 30% of our oil to 60%, so it’s true that we are more dependent on oil imports. The thing is that most of our oil imports come from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.
Petroleum is too valuable as a feedstock chemical to use as fuel.
We currently generate enough surplus electricity at night, electricity that is completely wasted, to run all of our cars. There are at least two companies (Altair and A123) who have nanotech based lithium ion batteries now in production that meet the basic practical needs of plug in electric vehicles. Altair just delivered their first production batch of 10 battery packs to Phoenix Motorcars, an EV startup company, at a price of $75K each. I think it’s safe to assume that when they are selling a half million batteries to GM or Toyota, they will be a bit cheaper.
Assuming that the battery technology works (high/low temp performance, fast charging, recharge life, capacity/range), the main issue is cost. When the combination of batteries, motors and motor control units approaches the cost of an internal combustion engine, transmission and fuel system, we’ll see lots of electric cars.
It is unending supply. Oil did not come from the dinosaurs and is continuing to be replenished at a sustainable rate…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiotic_oil
It usually is dismissed as “Creationist BS”, but ironically the theory was developed by the scientists working under Stalin….
It seems to me if the biotic origin of petroleum is true, it should be possible to create petroleum in a laboratory to prove it, and the result should be distillable into usable fuel. Anyone know whether that’s happened?
Why would that be ironic? For both stalin and creationists, its the ideology and result that matters, not the s cience.