I read this screed on CNN.com this morning and just shook my head. Frum has the entire peak oil theory wrong - it's not that we are running out of oil, we are running out of CHEAP oil. The key to remember is this equation: EROEI - Energy Returned over Energy Invested. In other words, how much energy does it take to get that barrel of oil out of the ground. The reason oil companies are drilling over a mile underwater and fracking every shale formation in sight is that the easy oil is almost gone. People are foolish to think that something like the Keystone XL pipeline can lower gas prices since oil is priced on a global market, and unless they want to nationalize the oil companies (SOSHULUZM!) oil prices here will reflect the global market. We are on the plateau now, if oil prices were to drop below about $ 70/bbl then the shale oil plays will no longer be profitable. Even if the optimists are right and we can find enough production in this hemisphere to become independent of middle eastern oil it will still not be cheap.
ETA: To read some much smarter people than me on the subject go here: http://www.theoildrum.com/
1 comment:
With Peak Oil as with AGW, there's just no easy bucks to be made by presenting them accurately.
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