Are We Running Out of Oil?

I read "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler over a year ago.  Here's a quote from the book:

"The total planetary endowment of conventional nonrenewable liquid oil was roughly two trillion barrels before humans started using it.  Sinice the mid-nineteenth century, the world has burned through roughly one trillion barrels of oil, half the total there ever was, representing the easiert-to-get, highest quality liquids.  The half that remains includes the hardest oil to get, lowest-quality liquids, semisolids, and solids." 

Here's another:

"The world is now using 27 billion barrels of oil a year.  If every last drop of the remaining 1 trillion barrels could be extracted at current cost ratios and current rates of production -- which is extremely unlikely -- the entire endowment would last only another 37 years." 

The author had a chapter called "Adios Globalism" because its cheap oil that's made globalism possible.  Without it, sending products across the world will no longer be profitable because of the cost of shipping.

Have you thought about what running out of oil will mean to you and your country?  Is the author wrong?  He says the Saudis don't have as much oil as we think they have.  He says running out of oil will dicate where and how we live in the future.

If we don't get innovative and invent a substitute, what will happen to us? 

C'mon guys.  This is important.  I'll be dead in 37 years but those of you in your 40's could be in bad trouble.

Look at our gas prices today.  Whose fault is it:  the OPEC nations, speculators, our oil companies?  Could it be the fault of  the oil companies who are having their last hurrah as they run out of easy-to-get-to product? 

We are all suffering from the gas prices-I especially feel for those who have long distant drives to work & are trying to feed a family.

It surprises me that there is no petition going to our government to demand they let oil companies search for & drill oil that we know is available.  I am all for taking care of our environment & wild life but we need to be sensible.  There are too many people making fortunes by keeping us from getting more oil during this crises.  We also need to move faster & be more dedicated to alternative fuels.  The only way our elected officials will get off their "buns" & solve this problem is when "we the people" ban together & make a lot of noise. 

I would start petition myself but not sure I know enough about the procedure to be beneficial.

Any comments?

mg said:

We are all suffering from the gas prices-I especially feel for those who have long distant drives to work & are trying to feed a family.

It surprises me that there is no petition going to our government to demand they let oil companies search for & drill oil that we know is available.  I am all for taking care of our environment & wild life but we need to be sensible.  There are too many people making fortunes by keeping us from getting more oil during this crises.  We also need to move faster & be more dedicated to alternative fuels.  The only way our elected officials will get off their "buns" & solve this problem is when "we the people" ban together & make a lot of noise. 

I would start petition myself but not sure I know enough about the procedure to be beneficial.

Any comments?

Thanks mg --

Here's another quote from the book:

"Meanwhile, among economists and government figures, globalism developed the sexy glow of an intellectual fad.  Globalism allowed them to believe that burgeoning wealth in the developed countries, and the spread of industiral activity to formerly primitive regions, was based on the potency of their own ideas and policies rather than on cheap oil." 

In "The Edge of the Abyss" NPG Forum Paper by Lindsey Grant, recent, "The U.S.Energy Information Administration (EIA) show world crude oil production peaked in May of 2005." "The Wall Street Journal interviewed a spectrum of oil specialists; they estimated that world crude production from existing fields is declining 4.5 to 8% a year." "There is little hope that new fields can be found and developed to replace that 27 to 41 million barrels/day."

'"in the best case scenario, world coal production will peak around 2025..."' "China's coal consumption doubled in the six years 2000-2006. It now consumes 40% of world production and is on track to consume more than the rest of the world combined within several years."

The EIA and WEC figures for natural gas reserves "works out to be 34 years if growth continues at 3% per year."

It goes on with documented acceleration of climate effects, water and fertilizer losses, and with all of it ending up in food production and distribution losses. "2/3 of the world's population will suffer 'water stress' by 2025" with "'population growth as first among the causes of the problems'".

It is a description of a series of energy crunches upon us and that will be upon the people living in the not too distant future, with the EIA warning "'of a supply crunch by 2015.'"

There is a lot of variability in figures for new oil, gas, and coal unfound reserves, but they are much less than previously hyped. New energy programs using tidal energy, geothermal, and solar are a very small percentage of the increasing demands.

He goes on to repeat much of which he wrote at the end of 2007 in "The Age of Overshoot".

He does state that most of the energy is in the hands, really, of governments, not corporations. Also, about Mexico's main oil field being in "freefall" and Canada using 2 units of energy (clean) to get 3 units of energy (dirty) from its vast oil sands.

What we can count on is a worsening situation, and for a very long duration. We must break the tendency to overbreed and the tendency to not conserve resources for future generations, are his suggestions. These suggestions have fallen on deaf ears for 40 years, in my experience.  The blah, blahs prove it, along with the grasping at straws and imaginary energy sources, and crackpot supposed inventions believed in by dipwads.

Okay.  This is already getting confusing.

All my life I thought oil came from fossils, you know, dinosaurs and huge old forests dying off and that's why they called it fossil fuel.

Now I learn that some people think that oil is not fossilized, liquefied organic matter but rather a naturally occurring mineral substance that exists in endless abundance at the earth's deep interior. 

So which is it?  If it's fossilized organic matter it can be used up.  If it's a naturally occurring mineral substance that exists in an endless supply we'll have it forever. 

In one scenario our oil-based industrialism comes to an end.  In the other scenario we just keep drilling and drilling. 

According to these two sources, we are not running out of oil.

Peak Oil . . . Another Trumped Up Globalist Scare ~ The IMF and YOU!

Chaplain and author Lindsey Williams firmly believes that whoever controls energy controls the economy.  Thus, his popular book:  The Energy Non-Crisis.  "There is NO energy crisis," he says, and he should know, having had executive status with the 9 major oil companies on the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline.  He adds, "As a former Insider, I know Alaska has plenty of oil, enough to supply the United States for the next two hundred (200) years, so why do the people of the United States allow this oil to be shipped and sold to the people of Japan [over 100 million population] when we could have it shipped here to the lower 48 states [300 million population] via pipeline?"  His book states the facts, listing names, dates, and places involved in the FAKE energy crisis including the IMF.

I watched this entire video...to the end.  I believe every word.  Now tell me why it is not headline news.  See below 

http://www.stopthenorthamericanunion.com/videos/LindseyWilliams.html#Title

If we're not running out of oil, somebody sure wants to make us think we are.  What happened to those oil sands?  What happened to all that coal we're supposed to have?  Surely people aren't so stupid that they've forgotten we're supposed to have 300 years of coal resources and many years of oil sand reserves?  Why haven't those sources come onto the market?  It's been years since we've seen $30 per barrel oil and I distinctly remember being told that when oil hit $50 a barrel then it would be economical to exploit those resources.  Exploit already!   WHEN IT COMES ON LINE, KEEP IT IN AMERICA.  NO MORE OF THIS GLOBAL MARKET SH*T.

Suffering in AZ.1 said:

C'mon guys.  This is important.  I'll be dead in 37 years but those of you in your 40's could be in bad trouble.

Look at our gas prices today.  Whose fault is it:  the OPEC nations, speculators, our oil companies?  Could it be the fault of  the oil companies who are having their last hurrah as they run out of easy-to-get-to product? 

All of those.

Suffering in AZ.1 said:

Okay.  This is already getting confusing.

All my life I thought oil came from fossils, you know, dinosaurs and huge old forests dying off and that's why they called it fossil fuel.

Now I learn that some people think that oil is not fossilized, liquefied organic matter but rather a naturally occurring mineral substance that exists in endless abundance at the earth's deep interior. 

So which is it?  If it's fossilized organic matter it can be used up.  If it's a naturally occurring mineral substance that exists in an endless supply we'll have it forever. 

In one scenario our oil-based industrialism comes to an end.  In the other scenario we just keep drilling and drilling. 

 

The truth is, no one knows for sure.  It is a theory that oil is renewable and a naturally occurring function of the earth, like volcanos and calderas.  Who knows?  What we do know is that the stuff that just bubbled up to the surface and ran free has been found and now we need to look for it where we can.  But its much more expensive and for every well that comes in, there may be five that didn't.  Those people still have to get paid for their work.  Looking for oil used to be called "wild catting".  I'm not sure why but for me it conotates how risky it is.  We'd be much better off developing alternatives, than being involved in a global struggle with countries that are industrializing and have insatiable appetites.

Beyondangry -- I haven't gone to the link yet but I will.  I hope it gives me someone to blame for the prices at the pump.

Marjam --  I agree.

By the way -- what do you think.  Is oil from organic matter or is it a mineral substance we will never run out of.  Why have I thought of it as a fossil fuel all my life? 

NASA thinks it's a renewable resource.

BLACK-GOLD BLUES
'Fossil fuel' theory takes hit with NASA finding
New study shows methane on Saturn's moon Titan not biological

Posted: December 01, 2005
11:48 am Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

Saturn's moon Titan (courtesy: NASA)

NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel.

"We have determined that Titan's methane is not of biologic origin," reports Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a principal NASA investigator responsible for the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer aboard the Cassini-Huygens probe that landed on Titan Jan. 14.

 

Niemann concludes the methane "must be replenished by geologic processes on Titan, perhaps venting from a supply in the interior that could have been trapped there as the moon formed."

The studies announced by NASA yesterday will be reported in the Dec. 8 issue of the scientific journal Nature.

"This finding confirms one of the key arguments in 'Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil,'" claims co-author Jerome R. Corsi. "We argue that oil and natural gas are abiotic products, not 'fossil fuels' that are biologically created by the debris of dead dinosaurs and ancient forests."

Methane has been synthetically created in the laboratory, Corsi points out, "and now NASA confirms that abiotic methane is abundantly found on Titan."

The realization that hydrocarbons are produced inorganically throughout our solar system was a key insight that led Cornell University astronomer Thomas Gold to write his 1998 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels." Gold wrote:

It would be surprising indeed if the earth had obtained its hydrocarbons only from a source that biology had taken from another carbon-bearing gas – carbon dioxide – which would have been collected from the atmosphere by photo-synthesizing organisms for manufacture into carbohydrates and then somehow reworked by geology into hydrocarbons. All this, while the planetary bodies bereft of surface life would have received their hydrocarbon gifts by purely abiogenic causes.

Gold wryly noted that he was sure there had not been any "big stagnant swamps on Titan" to produce the biological debris that conventionally trained geologists think was required on Earth to produce oil and natural gas as a "fossil fuel."

"If petroleum and natural gas are abiotic as we maintain in 'Black Gold Stranglehold,'" Corsi commented, "then the 'peak oil' fear that we are going to run out of oil may have been based on a giant misconception."

Paradigms in science change slowly and with great resistance, he noted, "But NASA has given us today incontrovertible evidence that Titan has abundant inorganic methane."

"If the scientists have ruled out that biological processes created methane on Titan, why do petro-geologists still argue that natural gas on Earth is of biological origin?" Corsi asked.

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Related special offer:

"Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil"

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Previous stories:

Huge natural gas field 'discovered' in Texas

Thanks Johannah --

It's still hard to get my head around.  Have the science books changed yet or is more evidence and study required?  Just because methane is non-biologic on Titan does it prove oil is non-biologic here on earth? 

johannah said: Suffering, Some scientists seem to think so. Also I  read  somewhere that certain areas (on earth!) that were seemingly running dry have now replenished themselves. If I can remember where I read that I'll post it for you.

Thanks.  I was just on that other thread about bio-fuels and jColes is a man with expertise.  I'm going to have to go back.  

Suffering in AZ.1 said:

By the way -- what do you think.  Is oil from organic matter or is it a mineral substance we will never run out of.  Why have I thought of it as a fossil fuel all my life? 

Those articles answered my questions.  Lindsey Williams spends most of the tape validating his sources.....and only names names at the end of the tape.

If you have been watching the news lately.....the medias are allowing very small bits and pieces of this hushed oil find to slip through.  

blaze77535 said: Blah Blah Blah who has been down there to check the levels of the pools of black gold.

blaze, I totaly agree with you.  It's estimated that in the USA alone there is over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil still not extracted that's locked up in shale, and billions of barrels of light crude not tapped yet. That is just the USA. I'm sure that Russia sits atop of trillions of barrels of crude too.  Africa is still virgin territory as are many parts of the world.  Personally I'm for developing hydrogen since it's a renewable green power source and is virtually unlimited.

beyondangry said:

Suffering in AZ.1 said:

By the way -- what do you think.  Is oil from organic matter or is it a mineral substance we will never run out of.  Why have I thought of it as a fossil fuel all my life? 

Those articles answered my questions.  Lindsey Williams spends most of the tape validating his sources.....and only names names at the end of the tape.

If you have been watching the news lately.....the medias are allowing very small bits and pieces of this hushed oil find to slip through.  

Very interesting.  Now that you remind me I think I did hear one person speak of it.  In the meantime they're charging some people $4 a gallon. For awhile I was amost wishing we were running out.  Then every country would be in the same boat  and this globalization junk would stop.  I feel like I'm being manipulated.