[Graeme]

Insider: Peak oil

Followers of the peak oil theory argue the world has already or soon will have used up more than half the non-renewable resource. They say current crude prices are just the beginning. Skeptics insist there is no reason to believe that carbon-based capitalism has started to run out of gas. Today’s record prices, they argue, are driven by massive market speculation. Canadian Business writers Thomas Watson (anti-peak) and Jeff Sanford (pro-peak) debate the issue below.

10 Reasons not to buy Peak Oil
1. High prices do not prove the world is running out of oil. After the dot-com market implosion, housing prices soared. After real estate crashed, the cost of oil spiked. People still have homes and Internet access.

2. Higher prices do mean that a lot more money will be invested in finding more oil and better recovery technologies.


10 Reasons to buy Peak Oil

1. Oil is a finite resource, and we’ve ramped up production from basically zero in 1859 to our current production of 85 million barrels a day. There are 800 million cars on the road and 70 million more built each year.

2. Discoveries of easily accessible super “elephant” fields peaked around 1965 and have been in consistent decline since. U.S. domestic production peaked in 1970; conventional production in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin peaked in the early ’80s.

canadianbusiness

[sparky]

.

A good summary of both positions ,
the tenth point of both are weak and rather irrelevant ,

the one about Peak Oil being a cultist phenomena is good
it should make us laugh at ourselves

Gawar exhaustion is conjectural , there is no evidence only serious doubts

Brazilian Tupis is big but not that big and had to be drilled in conditions deemed incredible a few years ago , oil is getting hard to find

the price and supply versus demand is the core of the problem ,
demand destruction would not need a big rise in price only an end to the age of growth , the start of the age of recession ,
pauperisation of large sector of the population would see a moderate oil price

.

[mcgowanjm]

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman mentioned this possibility in his piece titled Drilling, Disaster, Denial , in which he frames the loss of environmentalism's hold on the public as stemming from the difficulty of getting the "...public focused on a form of pollution that's invisible, and whose effects unfold over decades rather than days." and on pushback from the radical right. The latter effect is my focus in this post.

Here's Krugmans' crucial point.

The above is what used to be relevant pre 052010.

Now it's arcane.

America's Chernobyl. You haven't seen anything.
By the Day we go into the Olduvai.

I can't keep up with the info stream.
US Media can't fit it in.

[mcgowanjm]

Sierra Club Mississippi as quoted by
WLOX, Biloxi TV South Mississippi America's Chernobyl:

The LADY SAID IT -America's Chernobyl
WLOX Carried the Statement.

And you can't GOOGLE it.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Sierra+C ... =firefox-a

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman mentioned this possibility in his piece titled Drilling, Disaster, Denial , in which he frames the loss of environmentalism's hold on the public as stemming from the difficulty of getting the "...public focused on a form of pollution that's invisible, and whose effects unfold over decades rather than days." and on pushback from the radical right. The latter effect is my focus in this post.

Here's Krugmans' crucial point.

TOTAL DENIAL

[Pops]

GOM stuff

There is a rule against posting the same stuff in multiple threads, you need to start following it.

[mcgowanjm]

^
^
I__And the POTUS needs to seize BP's
assets.

052010 Olduvai Gorge.

America's Chernobyl



I knew the quote and the General from Katrina and I still had to hunt to find the source:

HONORE: Yes, sir. It is personal as how we live and what we do every day. It's a part of the economy that drives New Orleans, which is the fun driver for the state.

The state of Louisiana, primary income other than oil right there, is tourism. And the food in New Orleans drive a lot of visitors there.

Look, we've got to go Draconian, Don. The president's going to have to appoint and take charge of this thing. He may have to seize their assets and charge them a billion dollars a day until that thing gets close.

LEMON: That's what I wanted to ask you. That's a good answer, and I'm glad you -- because I know that you get fired up about these things. But what about long-term compensation for fishermen? It's not their fault, really that this is happening, and they're going to be shut down.

So, what about long-term compensation?

HONORE: Well, I think that leads to the president declaring a national disaster just like he does for floods and tornadoes, so the fishermen and the industries, including tourism, as well as fishing and wildlife, will have a long-term plan to recover, and to either retrain or be involved in the cleanup of this mess that will happen for years to come. And right now we need a national presidential declaration of a national disaster.

[Graeme]

Well, you got it.

Obama to name oil leak commission

U.S. President Barack Obama planned to appoint a White House commission to look into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, an administration official said Monday.

In addition, eight Democratic members of the U.S. Senate asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to initiative a criminal investigation into the spill, which began with an explosion April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig owned and operated by British oil producer BP, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported.

In a letter to Holder, eight Democratic members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee urged the attorney general to "review this matter with respect to civil and criminal laws related to false statements to the federal government," as well as "any federal law or regulation that may have been violated."

The Washington Post reports at least 88 suits have been filed, and more can be expected. Not only BP, but Transocean, oil services firm Halliburton and Cameron, the maker of the operation's failed blowout preventer, are liable, lawyers allege. The federal government could also face suits for alleged lack of oversight of offshore drilling.

UPI

[varadarajan]

At some point we will reach a point of "peak oil".
In the seventies we were at the peak of oil production and would exhaust the oil supply by the new century.
Just recently reserves have been discover of the coast of Brazil that are estimated to be as large as those in the Middle East.
Problem is they are in deep water and stretches current technology to tap those reserves. New technologies have allowed for the extraction of oil from areas and geologic structure that were previously inaccessible.

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[Pops]

New technologies have allowed for the extraction of oil from areas and geologic structure that were previously inaccessible.

At a sustained price 600% of a decade ago.