(This post first ran in May of 2006!)___________________
Are We Running Out of Oil… Or Not???
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If one listens to the MSM one will believe that the world is going to run out of oil next week! Everything will come to a grinding halt. The economy will crash… everything will end! Typical “Chicken Little” stuff.
Well, I don’t believe it.
I haven’t gotten around to researching whether oil is a renewable resource or not. Some say yes… while others say it is not and, that the supply of oil is finite. I simply don’t know… yet. I haven’t researched it.
In the meantime I did find some interesting info over at the National Center for Policy Analysis. You can visit them and take a look at the info they have posted there which seems to bolster the fact that we are no where near depleting our oil supply. Visit them at:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.html#c
I gleaned some interesting tidbits such as:
"Oil shales may hold another 14,000 billion barrels of crude oil -- a 500 year supply."
Did that shock you?
Well check this out from the web site of the National Center for Policy Analysis:
“Scaremongers are fond of reminding us that the total amount of oil in the Earth is finite and cannot be replaced during the span of human life. This is true; yet estimates of the world’s total oil endowment have grown faster than humanity can pump petroleum out of the ground.16The Growing Endowment of Oil.Estimates of the total amount of oil resources in the world grew throughout the 20th century [see Figure III].
In May 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world’s total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels.17
In 1950, geologists estimated the world’s total oil endowment at around 600 billion barrels.
From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between 1,500 and 2,000 billion barrels.
In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400 billion barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a 3,000-billion-barrel endowment.
By the year 2000, a total of 900 billion barrels of oil had been produced.18 Total world oil production in 2000 was 25 billion barrels.19 If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world’s oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056.”
There is much more info on this site. For instance:
Additional Petroleum Resources.The estimates above do not include unconventional oil resources. Conventional oil refers to oil that is pumped out of the ground with minimal processing; unconventional oil resources consist largely of tar sands and oil shales that require processing to extract liquid petroleum. Unconventional oil resources are very large. In the future, new technologies that allow extraction of these unconventional resources likely will increase the world’s reserves.
Oil production from tar sands in Canada and South America would add about 600 billion barrels to the world’s supply.20
Rocks found in the three western states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone contain 1,500 billion barrels of oil.21
Worldwide, the oil-shale resource base could easily be as large as 14,000 billion barrels — more than 500 years of oil supply at year 2000 production rates.22
Unconventional oil resources are more expensive to extract and produce, but we can expect production costs to drop with time as improved technologies increase efficiency.
(From the National Center for policy Analysis)
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg/bg159/index.html#c
There is lots more info the inquiring mind can chew over on that site.
I suppose, if anything, this should give us all pause to re-think our Gas shortage. It is being sold by the MSM as a crude oil shortage when in fact we have plenty of crude. What we don’t have in the US is refineries! We need two or three times as many as we have and soon. But, unless Congress steps in and forces the EPA to back off some of it’s hamstringing rules so the petroleum industry can build new refineries thane we have only begun to feel the pinch at the pumps!
Longstreet
Filed under:
conservative+ethanol+Oil
Even if we aren't running out of oil in the near future, its not a bad thing to try and limit our own consumption and pursue energy alternatives.
ReplyDeleteWatched a good documentary over the weekend, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" About the GM EV-1 vehicles that were out in the 90's and everyone who got one loved them, 5000 were made and GM couldn't build more faste enough.... Anyway long story short, they were only leased and not allowed to be sold and after he leases were up GM crushed them all, they were set up to fail but every one who go one loved them.... You woun't see alternative unti Exxon and Bp, etc can control the alternatives, Corporate political contributions are such a wonderfull thing. We need to ban Coporations from making political donations, it used to be illegal.
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