Periodically there are stories saying that we are running out of petroleum and natual gas, that we are near or even have passed "peak" production of these resources because Earth is running low on them.
Not so fast.
While there is, undoubtedly, a finite amount of this stuff on earth because there are a finite number of atoms on earth, the fact that there is a limit-in-principle doesn't in any way mean we're near it.
Folks I know in the industry tell me that there are lots of resources there–even known resources–that they simply can't tap because environmentalists and global warming alarmists have taken over local governments and they are using every trick in the books to keep drilling from happening.
Remember a while back when gas was at $4 a gallon and people were saying, "Let's drill in the Artic National Wildlife Reserve," and people in Congress were saying, "That won't help; it'll take ten years to get that online," and their opponents were responding, "Funny . . . that's exactly what you said ten years ago when we wanted to drill"?
Nuff said.
Well, Investor's Business Daily has an interesting editorial about current attempts to tap a natural gas resource right here in the U.S. that could supply our natural gas needs for 65 years.
Is the proposal meeting opposition?
Oh, and there's an eye-opening word in the editorial. In this context it means something totally different than what the same word means on Battlestar Galactica, but given how often it occurs in the article, I'm guessing that whatever editor wrote the piece for IBD is a BSG fan who experienced enormous secret glee while penning the piece.
Mr. Akin, I hope this doesn’t offend you, but just to refresh my memory I checked the main page, and I was right in what I thought: there is not a single entry on the main page which is both by you and focusing on Catholic theology. Every single one is about Obama, health care, or other political stuff. And also some posts from SDG about movies.
Which I guess is okay, i you want to be a political blog. But when I first started visiting your blog, as a non-Catholic, it was because this was a super awesome apologetics blog.
Whither apologetics? The last time was August 2.
I miss them! It seems like you do apologetics posts so rarely now.
Partly I guess the politics posts bother me because even though I didn’t vote for Obama I am the biggest cheerleader you’ll ever meet for universal health care. In fact the thing that bugs me the most about Obama’s plan is that it isn’t single payer. And also I’m an environmentalist. I’m a squishy bleeding heart.
Anywaaaaaaay. Basically I’m saying that you were my favorite apologist blog and I miss those good days, so hopefully you’ll be flattered. 🙂
Erm, just to be clear, I meant I was a non-Catholic when I first started visiting. I have been a Catholic since 2006. Wow, it has been a long time!
Dear Joye,
I thank you for your comments and your kind words and your interest. No offense at all is taken!
My blog is written in moments here and there, where I can find them. As a result, it tends to focus on what I find most easy to write about at the moment.
It thus tends to go through cycles, depending on what I find easiest to write about.
We may not always agree on every subject, and that’s okay! I’m just trying to do the best I can, and I know that my perspective is limited.
When I write on apologetics, though, I want the quality of the work to be as good as I can make it.
I want to be very precise and cite proper sources and use solid research. This means that how important that subject is to my heart sometimes delays my writing about it, and I may take easier avenues for a time to keep new content appearing.
My heart is always with apologetics, though, and to it I will always return.
At the moment I have quite a number of apologetics-related posts that are rumbling around in my mind, just on the verge of being written an posted.
God willing, they will be appearing very soon.
Once again, thanks for your patience and your interest!
“Periodically there are stories saying that we are running out of petroleum and natural gas, that we are near or even have passed “peak” production of these resources because Earth is running low on them.”
This is a misstatement of the best argument of the “peakers.”
They don’t claim that we are running out of the resources themselves, only that we’re running low on the cheaply accessible sources. While there may be oodles upon oodles of oil twenty miles down, the cost of extraction will only go up.
For instance, the Middle East oil fields never used to need fancy extraction technology because the stuff would practically just shoot out of the ground. No more.
If the past 50-100 years marked a unique time of particularly cheap petroleum energy, and the future will be much different in that respect, so will society. Maybe not apocalypse, but not 1990s boom times either.
On the plus side, areas with large oil supplies cut off by meddlesome environmentalists will have those profitable resources in the future, when other countries have run dry.
I’m sure the author did enjoy using that word, but to anyone familiar with oil and gas it’s old hat. FYI, it’s short for “fracturing,” and refers to breaking up a formation so that the oil and gas can flow to the wellhead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
I would direct you to this wonderfully thought provoking work by Julian Lincoln Simon
“Kennedy and the rest of the fracking opposition say that”
Now see, if the writer weren’t enjoying that, he probably wouldn’t have included the word; leaving the word out would not change the meaning of the sentence. 🙂
It may be just me, but one of the interesting oddities of the Peak Oil theorist is, if you pay careful attention to them, that they’re not so much warning us of Peak Oil, but eagerly hoping for it. The general though is that it’ll cause a major reorientation of society, and that will largely be a good thing. Perhaps the recent text $20.00 A Gallon best defines this line of thought.
I’ll confess, a reorientation of society as these folks imagine might very well be a good thing. But I do think that, at a bare minimum, this aspect of the argument needs to be somewhat acknowledged. In this manner, these folks differ from a lot of other nightmare scenario theorist, who are genuinely very worried about a bad future, and seek to avoid it. The Peak Oil theorist basically figure that oil will peak, that will save us from a bad future, and will make the future brighter than the present.
Jimmy,
I’m a fan of yours for many years now, but today, a bit surprised at your “lots of resources out there” and “Peak Nonsense” stance. I am curious to know who your friends “in the industry” are who are providing you with data?
In the past, I too have been ignorant to the issue of peak oil… but years of internet-based reading have brought me around on the issue. It really needs to be taken seriously, Jimmy. Sending folks off to a one-page article on natural gas is short-sighted… and i was sorry to see it, because it’s a bit irrelevant to the bigger problem.
Instead, if i may, and for starters, here is a very good intro on my point of view, which is, currently opposite to yours. Hope you have the time to look at it: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5672#more
Then, if you get past that, and are still open to getting the real data, read my ‘folk in the industry’, Matt Simmons… please view: http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
I’d be very interested if you seriously get interested in the topic.
In Christ,
-gint
That word was in a headline in the local Binghamton NY paper a few days ago. It made me smile!
A lot of folks in my area have made money off of gas leases. However there is serious concern about what all the wastewater from “fracking” will do to the groundwater around here. Wells are the main source of household water in this area. Even if you have town water, it likely comes out of a well. Wells have been contaminated in the process of obtaining natural gas from shale, and we around here are a bit worried about this. I hope that doesn’t make us meddlesome environmentalists.
Susan Peterson
*gets the giggles* Even better, I use “frack” instead of “darn” or “dang” in my every day life (yes, I’m a geek– I also use “frell” instead of “hell.” Farscape was win.)
I must agree that when we have KNOWN large reserves that are huge and we’re not allowed to touch, talking about “peak oil” is a bit foolish.
When they talk about “peak oil” the same way some evangelical churches talk about the “end times”– sometimes eerily so– then it’s getting a bit silly.
Someone above mentioned that they claim is that all of a resource that’s worth getting is running out; same argument applies (big, known resource, nearly untouched) and there’s the added fact that technology and profit aren’t fixed. The stuff we can safely and profitably get becomes more, and more, and more…. it’s like that old theory that Humans are outgrowing our food supply. If we had only the identical birth rates that they guessed from, and only the identical means of production of food, they’d be right… but we easily get 10 times the food from the same land that we use to, with a tiny tiny fraction of the man-hours. (My folks are ranchers, so I’m rather familiar with that sister argument to Peak Oil.)
“If we had only the identical birth rates that they guessed from, and only the identical means of production of food, they’d be right… but we easily get 10 times the food from the same land that we use to, with a tiny tiny fraction of the man-hours. (My folks are ranchers, so I’m rather familiar with that sister argument to Peak Oil.)”
Exactly.
Heck, I wish peak oil was correct. I’d like to see fewer folks moving out to the sticks, made possible only by cheap fuel, but I don’t think that’s in the immediate future. And by the time it is, the substitute fuel or energy source will be here. Peak oil works mostly on a very fixed set of assumptions. Those assumptions may in fact be correct, and its worth thinking about, but they may very well be, and likely are, wrong, darn it.
Sorry Jimmy, but it seems like you’re giving an opinion on a subject that you know little about.
Peak Oil is all about flow rate, and not really about the number of reserves…big difference. Flow rate concerns the amount of barrels that can be produced PER DAY, while the amount of reserves just gives the total number of barrels in a given location. The oil industry is all about how many millions of barrels of oil we can produce PER DAY. Due to global oil depletion, world crude oil production has been falling since 2005. The IEA (International Energy Agency) says we need to find the equivalent of four new Saudi Arabias just to maintain current oil production given the ~6-7% global depletion rate. Google search Fatih Birol, who is the chief economist of the IEA.
Hi Jimmy,
Check out this website forum. http://pagaslease.com/ It addresses the natural gas issue in a forum style along with tons of resources and information. Although the guy who runs it is from Pennsylvania anyone who is in the five states where the Marcellus shale runs can contribute. My wife and I have about 100 acres in West Virginia and are currently leasing our mineral rights for exploration. Natural gas would go a long way to curb our need for oil however the government would have to make a major commitment to do so.
Anyone else notice that there’s been two “real” definitions offered?
Not to mention the huge range of when “peak oil” will be hit? (Birol says 2020, because exploration and discovery peaked in ’65.)
Peak whatever will happen because the secular society is goose-stepping to the left. Obama was not a political hiccup.
The left will push their environmentalist agenda onto the rest of us, who cares about how people vote? The USA was never a democracy, and now quickly not being a republic.
So after the Watermelon Environmentalists (green on outside, red on inside) destroy the US economy along with reckless Government spending and borrowing, well, maybe it is time to head for the hills.
I’m going to miss this country, it was a nice experiment in freedom.
(an update to my post above)
The “Jimmy Akin” in the matters of oil, Matthew Simmons, just got published in Foreign Policy magazine:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/04/oil_spin?page=0,0
…in it, basically he says: those who spin good times for oil don’t bother with getting the hard facts(data).