505 replies to this topic

[advancedatheist]

http://www.reuters.c...storyID=8854988

Exxon says N. America gas production has peaked

Tue Jun 21, 2005 04:52 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After weak prices in the 1990s due to oversupply, natural gas production in North America will probably continue to decline unless there is another big discovery, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) chief executive said on Tuesday.

"Gas production has peaked in North America," Chief Executive Lee Raymond told reporters at the Reuters Energy Summit.

Asked whether production would continue to decline even if two huge arctic gas pipeline projects were built, Raymond said, "I think that's a fair statement, unless there's some huge find that nobody has any idea where it would be."

....

"The facts are that gas production continues to decline, and will start to decline even more rapidly. By the time we get to that period (2010-2012), we'll need it badly."

[jaydfox]

I don't know if this article has already been posted, but I didn't see it in a quick glance through this thread:

http://www.thebullet...ofn=mj05cavallo

Oil: Caveat empty



By Alfred J. Cavallo
May/June 2005  pp. 16-18 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Without any press conferences, grand announcements, or hyperbolic advertising campaigns, the Exxon Mobil Corporation, one of the world's largest publicly owned petroleum companies, has quietly joined the ranks of those who are predicting an impending plateau in non-OPEC oil production. Their report, The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, forecasts a peak in just five years.

In the past, many who expressed such concerns were dismissed as eager catastrophists, peddling the latest Malthusian prophecy of the impending collapse of fossil-fueled civilization. Their reliance on private oil-reserve data that is unverifiable by other analysts, and their use of models that ignore political and economic factors, have led to frequent erroneous pronouncements. They were countered by the extreme optimists, who believed that we would never need to think about such problems and that the markets would take care of everything. Up to now, those who worried about limited petroleum supplies have been at best ignored, and at worst openly ridiculed.

Meanwhile, average consumers have taken their cue from the market, where rising prices have always been followed by falling prices, leading to the assumption that this pattern will continue forever. In truth, the market price of crude oil is completely decoupled from and independent of production costs, which average about $6 per barrel for non-OPEC producers and $1.50 per barrel for OPEC producers. This situation has nothing to do with a free market, and everything to do with what OPEC believes will be accepted or tolerated by the United States. The completely affordable market price--what consumers pay at the gasoline pump--provides magisterial profits to the owners of the resource and gives no warning of impending shortages. 

All the more reason that the public should heed the silent alarm sounded by the ExxonMobil report, which is more credible than other predictions for several reasons. First and foremost is that the source is ExxonMobil. No oil company, much less one with so much managerial, scientific, and engineering talent, has ever discussed peak oil production before. Given the profound implications of this forecast, it must have been published only after a thorough review.

Second, the majority of non-OPEC producers such as the United States, Britain, Norway, and Mexico, who satisfy 60 percent of world oil demand, are already in a production plateau or decline. (All of ExxonMobil's crude oil production comes from non-OPEC fields.) Third, the production peak cited by the report is quite close at hand. If it were twenty-five years instead of five years in the future, one might be more skeptical, since new technologies or new discoveries could change the outlook during that longer period. But five years is too short a time frame for any new developments to have an impact on this result. 

Also noteworthy is the manner in which the Outlook addresses so-called frontier resources, such as extra-heavy oil, "oil sands," and "oil shale." The report cites the existence of more than 4 trillion barrels of extra heavy oil and "oil sands"--producing potentially 800 billion barrels of oil, assuming a 20-25 percent extraction efficiency. The Outlook also cites an estimate of 3 trillion barrels of "oil shale." These numbers have figured prominently in advertisements that ExxonMobil and other petroleum companies have placed in newspapers and magazines, clearly in an attempt to reassure consumers (and perhaps stockholders) that there is no need to worry about resource constraints for many decades.

However, as with all advertisements, it's best to read the fine print. ExxonMobil's world oil production forecast shows no contribution from "oil shale" even by 2030. Only about 4 million barrels of oil per day from Canadian "oil sands" are projected by 2030, accounting for a mere 3.3 percent of the predicted total world demand of 120 million barrels per day. What explains this striking disconnection between the magnitude of the frontier resources and the minimal amount of projected oil production from them? Canadian "oil sands" are actually deposits of bitumen (tar), which are the result of conventional oil degradation by water and air. Tar sands are of a completely different character than conventional oil deposits; making tar sands usable is a capital-intensive venture that requires special procedures such as heating to separate the tar from the sand, mixing the tar with a diluting agent for pipeline transport, and constructing specially equipped refineries for processing.

The most serious constraint, though, is natural gas supplies. Production of oil from tar sands requires between 400 and 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas per barrel of oil produced, depending on the extraction method used. Natural gas production, despite a near doubling of drilling activity, is flat or decreasing both in Canada and in the United States--which has prompted prices to triple over the past few years. Given these high gas prices, it almost makes more sense just to sell the natural gas directly rather than use it to produce oil from tar sands.

Extracting oil from the 3 trillion barrels of oil shale cited in the Outlook presents its own challenges. The term "oil shale" is also quite misleading, since there is no oil in this mineral, but rather an organic material called kerogen, which is a precursor of petroleum. To extract oil, the shale (typically between 5 and 25 percent kerogen) must first be mined, then transported to a plant where it is crushed, then heated to 500 degrees Celsius, which pyrolyzes, or decomposes, the kerogen to form oil. After processing, most of the shale remains on the surface in the form of coarse sand, so large-scale mining operations will produce immense amounts of waste material. An estimated 1-4 barrels of water are required for each barrel of oil produced, both for cooling the products and stabilizing the sand waste. To satisfy these water requirements, petroleum companies once contemplated diverting the Columbia River--a feat that can be excluded today on political and environmental grounds.

With non-OPEC oil production reaching a plateau and frontier resources not viable, ExxonMobil proposes that increased demand be met in two ways. The first is greater fuel efficiency. (That alone should convey the seriousness of this report: When have you ever heard a petroleum company make a plea for vehicles that use less gas?) New cars in the United States are expected to go 38 miles on a gallon of gas in 2030, instead of the current value of 21 miles per gallon. This goal is actually quite modest, as new cars sold in Europe since 2003 already achieve 35 miles per gallon.

The other way ExxonMobil believes demand will be satisfied is from vastly and rapidly increased OPEC production: "After 2010, the call on OPEC increases quickly, requiring OPEC to add more than 1 MBD [million barrels per day] of capacity every year," notes the Outlook. "OPEC's resources are large enough to achieve this rate of expansion, and we expect that investments will be made in a timely manner."

This assessment is somewhat ominous. OPEC has not expanded production capacity much at all recently. Moreover, such production increases are only possible from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. For these countries, and indeed for most OPEC members, petroleum and petroleum products are their only significant export. As such, they have a vested interest in obtaining the best possible price for their non-renewable resources. OPEC nations would be quite unlikely to increase production as rapidly as needed unless compelled to do so. To put this shortfall in perspective, in 2003 Algeria produced 1.1 million barrels per day; a new Algeria would need to be brought on line in the Persian Gulf each and every year beyond 2010 just to keep up with the projected increase in demand. Consequently, once non-OPEC production reaches a peak, conventional world oil production could peak shortly thereafter, and prices (never explicitly mentioned in the Outlook) would rise in accordance with the laws of supply and demand.

What all this means is that the petroleum industry is approaching a turning point. Conventional petroleum production will soon--perhaps in five years, ten at best--no longer be able to satisfy demand. For their part, American consumers would do well to take a cue from their Western European counterparts, who enjoy a comfortable lifestyle despite a per capita use of petroleum that is half of that in the United States. The sooner the United States begins this transition away from oil, the easier it will be. That's a far more attractive option than trying to squeeze oil from stone.

[advancedatheist]

Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons discusses Saudi Arabia's precarious ability to pump out arbitrarily large amounts of oil. The interview comes in a variety of formats:

http://www.netcastda...2005-0806-2.ram

http://www.netcastda...2005-0806-2.m3u

http://www.netcastda...2005-0806-2.asx

http://www.netcastda...2005-0806-2.mp3

[advancedatheist]

Refer to Chevron's new ad campaign:

http://www.chevron.c...es_print_02.pdf

It took us 125 years to use
the first trillion barrels of oil.
We'll use the next trillion in 30.

Notice that the ad doesn't specify whether we even have a third trillion barrels to draw upon after 2035 or so. Even if we did, with the total consumption doubling every 30 years, it sounds as if we'd consume the next trillion barrels by 2053, or 18 years after 2035.

[Lazarus Long]

Here is another intersting article from today's NY Times Sunday Magazine section

http://www.nytimes.c...article_popular

The Breaking Point

By PETER MAASS
Published: August 21, 2005
The largest oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura, is located on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf. From Ras Tanura's control tower, you can see the classic totems of oil's dominion -- supertankers coming and going, row upon row of storage tanks and miles and miles of pipes. Ras Tanura, which I visited in June, is the funnel through which nearly 10 percent of the world's daily supply of petroleum flows. Standing in the control tower, you are surrounded by more than 50 million barrels of oil, yet not a drop can be seen.

****

As Aref al-Ali, my escort from Saudi Aramco, the giant state-owned oil company, pointed out, ''One mistake at Ras Tanura today, and the price of oil will go up.'' This has turned the port into a fortress; its entrances have an array of gates and bomb barriers to prevent terrorists from cutting off the black oxygen that the modern world depends on. Yet the problem is far greater than the brief havoc that could be wrought by a speeding zealot with 50 pounds of TNT in the trunk of his car. Concerns are being voiced by some oil experts that Saudi Arabia and other producers may, in the near future, be unable to meet rising world demand. The producers are not running out of oil, not yet, but their decades-old reservoirs are not as full and geologically spry as they used to be, and they may be incapable of producing, on a daily basis, the increasing volumes of oil that the world requires. ''One thing is clear,'' warns Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, in a series of new advertisements, ''the era of easy oil is over.''

In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible. The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals -- which is to say, almost every product on the market. The impact on the American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar -- assuming, of course, that climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.

But will such a situation really come to pass? That depends on Saudi Arabia. To know the answer, you need to know whether the Saudis, who possess 22 percent of the world's oil reserves, can increase their country's output beyond its current limit of 10.5 million barrels a day, and even beyond the 12.5-million-barrel target it has set for 2009. (World consumption is about 84 million barrels a day.) Saudi Arabia is the sole oil superpower. No other producer possesses reserves close to its 263 billion barrels, which is almost twice as much as the runner-up, Iran, with 133 billion barrels. New fields in other countries are discovered now and then, but they tend to offer only small increments. For example, the much-contested and as-yet-unexploited reserves in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge are believed to amount to about 10 billion barrels, or just a fraction of what the Saudis possess.

****

{excerpts}

[advancedatheist]

Here is another intersting article from today's NY Times Sunday Magazine section

http://www.nytimes.c...article_popular

The Breaking Point

By PETER MAASS
Published: August 21, 2005

The blog wars about this article sound interesting:

Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics:
http://www.freakonom...ew-version.html

Comments about Levitt's post at The Oil Drum:

http://www.theoildru...8/21/13643/8236

[advancedatheist]

I detect evolutonary psychology at work here: Blame other tribes (in this case, the Chinese and Indians) for the resource depletion problem your tribe helped to cause:

http://business.time...1735134,00.html

August 15, 2005

Uranium shortage poses threat

By Angela Jameson, Industrial Correspondent
A GLOBAL shortage of uranium could jeopardise plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in Britain.

The dearth of uranium will be discussed at the World Nuclear Association’s symposium in London next month and could prove to be a major stumbling block in the nuclear industry’s attempt to have old nuclear power stations replaced with modern reactors.

While Britain has no plans to begin building a new generation of nuclear reactors, pressure has been growing to take a decision to restart a nuclear programme as a way of cutting carbon dioxide emissions that lead to climate change and reducing Britain’s reliance on imported gas.

However, a recent report by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada said that there was likely to be a 45,000-tonne shortage of uranium in the next decade, largely because of growing Chinese demand for the metal. Prices for uranium have almost tripled, to about $26/lb between March 2003 and May 2005, after being stable for years.

and,

http://www.businessw..._4692_db016.htm

AUGUST 25, 2005

NEWS ANALYSIS

China and India: A Rage for Oil

With their growing economies thirsty for fuel, the two rising powers are tussling with each other over energy resources all over the world

American attention has lately been focused on China's emergence as a competitor for dwindling oil supplies -- witness the uproar over CNOOC's failed bid for California's Unocal. But a different, yet equally intense, energy rivalry sure to have a dramatic effect on geopolitics has been playing out on the far side of the globe.

Asia's other emerging powerhouse, India, is just as hungry for supplies as China. The two are battling each other in oil patches from Sudan to Siberia as they try to secure the resources to fuel their growing economies. So far, the Chinese have the upper hand in the competition.

[advancedatheist]

Not a good time for cryonicists who live outside of North America. And I did predict that the weakening oil supply made the world's civilian air transportation system especially vulnerable to disruptions.

http://news.independ...ticle310065.ece

September 2005 17:29

Air fares to rise after Katrina creates a jet-fuel shortage

By Jason Nisse and Ben Schneiders
Published: 04 September 2005

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are set to increase the fuel surcharges on their flights as a jet fuel shortage in the US is threatening to ground flights.

The situation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is so bad that some airlines - such as Continental - have taken to carrying extra fuel on board because of fears that they will not be able to refuel. Analysts are also predicting the crisis will force more airlines into bankruptcy, including Delta, America's third-largest carrier.

Both BA and Virgin say they have enough jet fuel to keep their transatlantic operations flying but are monitoring the situation closely. They are also reviewing their fuel surcharges - £24 a flight each on long-haul and £8 on short-haul for BA. It is expected that they will increase them this week.

[johngdonnelly]

oil production will never peak - it will continue upwards forever.

[Mind]

oil production will never peak - it will continue upwards forever

I can't agree with you on that one, but I could agree with a slightly different wording. "Energy production will never peak", or "Energy production per capita will never peak"

[eternaltraveler]

I can't agree with you on that one, but I could agree with a slightly different wording. "Energy production will never peak", or "Energy production per capita will never peak"

at least not till the heat death of the universe.

[scottl]

From Benson at avant;

Well it appears to have happened faster than even I thought it would.

This German company is bringing to market a commercial "reactor" capable of producing a synthetic diesel fuel from just about any hydrocarbon feedstock including crude oil, old tires, wood chips, ag waste, used motor oil, etc. for about $1 a gallon. In addition to allowing the economical production of diesel fuel from a whole host of "waste" products, this refining process appears to be much more emissions friendly permitting the siting of new refineries without as much local resistance.

[Mind]

One lynchpin of the peak oil theory is that people around the world are too stupid to react to declining oil supplies....that the demand for oil will never decline....it will continue upwards forever. Well, it appears there is some room for demand to decline.

The EIA said demand for gasoline and distillate fuels fell from the same time last year.

Over the last four weeks, gasoline demand has averaged nearly 8.8 million barrels per day, 2.6 percent below the same time last year.

Demand for distillate fuel has averaged 3.9 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, 3.8 percent below last year.

If the price goes up far enough, people just won't buy it anymore.

Gasoline demand declines

People are also reacting to high oil prices by switching to other energy sources and other methods of travel

Record bicycle sales in the US

Solar panel and wind turbine sales also continue on a torrid pace. I'll continue to entertain the argument that renewable implementation will not come fast enough to replace declining oil, but to say that no one in the world knows how to apadt to a changing energy situation is false.

[advancedatheist]

http://ogj.pennnet.c...SION_NUM=2&p=82

Industry facing critical shortage of engineers, other professionals
Mikaila Adams

Mikaila Adams
Associate Editor, OGFJ

Today the energy industry is facing one of its greatest challenges - an aging workforce and not enough qualified people to step in and learn their jobs. Although the inability to hire and retain skilled and educated employees afflicts other industries as well, the problem is particularly acute in the oil and gas business, especially among geologists, geophysicists, petroleum engineers, and landmen - professionals who traditionally have formed the backbone of petroleum exploration and production.

The problem is so pervasive that many companies are luring qualified professionals out of retirement as contract employees or part-time help in order to meet business demands. In some cases, these geologists, landmen, and others are earning more today on a part-time basis than they did previously as full-time employees. Farther down the food chain, some drilling companies have resorted to hiring people with criminal records to work as roughnecks and in other roles in order to satisfy the energy cravings of an energy-hungry nation.

So, maybe Bryan Appleyard got it right when he recently wrote,

The greatest getting-and-spending spree in the history of the world is about to end. The 200-year boom that gave citizens of the industrial world levels of wealth, health and longevity beyond anything previously known to humanity is threatened on every side. Oil is running out; the climate is changing at a potentially catastrophic rate; wars over scarce resources are brewing; finally, most shocking of all, we don't seem to be having enough ideas about how to fix any of these things.

[Mind]

This is a topic I have mentioned before in this forum and here is another example.

Using biotech to grow food more efficiently

This particular example is from Arizona. They have been using BT cotton for eight years now. It is a form of cotton that produces a toxin that is lethal to the pink bollworm (a major pest in cotton). One ingenious part of the strategy was to plant regular cotton in some places to make sure that a BT resistant pink bollworm strain does not appear and take over the population. It has worked thus far.

You will be happy to hear this Mark:

Since widespread adoption of Bt cotton in 1997, insecticide use on Arizona's cotton crops is down 60 percent, said Tabashnik. The reduction in chemical pesticide use saves growers about $80 per acre. According to the Arizona Agricultural Statistics Bulletin, the value of Arizona's cotton crops for 2004 was estimated at $207 million.

Now I am not saying that we will instantly be able to slash fertilizer and pesticide use to near zero, just that it is a sign that there are solutions that require less oil....and farmers are using them. If the price of oil keeps going up, we will see more "smart" farming and less "brute force oil intensive" farming.

[advancedatheist]

British oil production now declines at a double-digit rate, despite the recent escalation in oil prices:

http://www.og.dti.go...roduction/0.htm



Figuring from the table accompanying that page, it fell by over 20% from July 2004 to July 2005.

[advancedatheist]

Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons explains our oil supply situation as follows:

I've spent years poring over hundreds of papers from the Society of Petroleum Engineers that have revealed fascinating clues. First I took an inventory of the top oil fields in the world, field by field. I was aghast to find that nobody had ever listed even the top 20 oil fields by name. I found that there are only about 120 oil fields in the world that produce half of the world's oil supply. The top 14 fields, which make up 20 percent of global supply, are, on average, over 53 years old.

For example,

http://www.ameinfo.com/71519.html

Kuwait's biggest field starts to run out of oil

It was an incredible revelation last week that the second largest oil field in the world is exhausted and past its peak output. Yet that is what the Kuwait Oil Company revealed about its Burgan field.

The peak output of the Burgan oil field will now be around 1.7 million barrels per day, and not the two million barrels per day forecast for the rest of the field's 30 to 40 years of life, Chairman Farouk Al Zanki told Bloomberg.

He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but that 1.7 million is the optimum rate. Kuwait will now spend some $3 million a year for the next year to boost output and exports from other fields.

However, it is surely a landmark moment when the world's second largest oil field begins to run dry. For Burgan has been pumping oil for almost 60 years and accounts for more than half of Kuwait's proven oil reserves. This is also not what forecasters are currently assuming.

[biknut]

The Mysterious Origin and Supply of Oil
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 11 October 2005
10:29 am ET



It runs modern society and fuels serious political tension. But where does oil really come from, and how much is left? The far-out possibilities might surprise you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nature has been transmuting dead life into black gold for millions of years using little more than heat, pressure and time, scientists tell us.

But with gas prices spiking more than $1 per gallon in the United States this year and some experts predicting that the end of oil is near, scientists still don't know for sure where oil comes from, how long it took to make, or how much there is.

A so-called fossil fuel, petroleum is believed by most scientists to be the transformed remains of long dead organisms. The majority of petroleum is thought to come from the fossils of plants and tiny marine organisms. Larger animals might contribute to the mix as well.

"Even some of the dinosaurs may have gotten involved in some of this," says William Thomas, a geologists at the University of Kentucky. "[Although] I think it would be quite rare and a very small and insignificant contribution."

But another theory holds that more oil was in Earth from the beginning than what's been produced by dead animals, but that we've yet to tap it.

How it works

In the leading theory, dead organic material accumulates on the bottom of oceans, riverbeds or swamps, mixing with mud and sand. Over time, more sediment piles on top and the resulting heat and pressure transforms the organic layer into a dark and waxy substance known as kerogen.

Left alone, the kerogen molecules eventually crack, breaking up into shorter and lighter molecules composed almost solely of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Depending on how liquid or gaseous this mixture is, it will turn into either petroleum or natural gas.

So how long does this process take?

Scientists aren't really sure, but they figure it's probably on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.

"It's certainly not an instantaneous process," Thomas told LiveScience. "The rate at which petroleum is forming is not going to be the solution to our petroleum supplies."

The United States' latest reminder of its petroleum dependency occurred when hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf of Mexico, where the majority of the country's oil platforms and refineries are located. Many analysts predicted gas prices would surge to $4 and $5 per gallon, but the fears turned out to be overblown. Many of the structures suffered only glancing blows and were operating again soon afterwards.


POWERING THE FUTURE
10 Ways to Run
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SPECIAL REPORT
Thinking Beyond Oil

Still, the average price of regular gas nationwide is about $2.94 a gallon now, according to the American Automobile Association. It was $1.77 at the beginning of the year.

Alternative source

The idea that petroleum is formed from dead organic matter is known as the "biogenic theory" of petroleum formation and was first proposed by a Russian scientist almost 250 years ago.

In the 1950's, however, a few Russian scientists began questioning this traditional view and proposed instead that petroleum could form naturally deep inside the Earth.

This so-called "abiogenic" petroleum might seep upward through cracks formed by asteroid impacts to form underground pools, according to one hypothesis. Some geologists have suggested probing ancient impact craters in the search for oil.

Abiogenic sources of oil have been found, but never in commercially profitable amounts. The controversy isn't over whether naturally forming oil reserves exist, said Larry Nation of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. It's over how much they contribute to Earth's overall reserves and how much time and effort geologists should devote to seeking them out.

If abiogenic petroleum sources are indeed found to be abundant, it would mean Earth contains vast reserves of untapped petroleum and, since other rocky objects formed from the same raw material as Earth, that crude oil might exist on other planets or moons in the solar system, scientists say.

Both processes for making petroleum likely require thousands of years. Even if Earth does contain far more oil than currently thought, it's inevitable that reserves will one day run out. Scientists disagree sharply, however, on when that will occur. And, some say, a global crisis could begin as soon as increasing demand is greater than supply, a possibility that might be measured in years rather than decades, some analysts argue.


http://www.livescien...il_origins.html

[biknut]

The Myth Of Peak Oil

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | October 12 2005

Peak oil is a scam designed to create artificial scarcity and jack up prices while giving the state an excuse to invade our lives and order us to sacrifice our hard-earned living standards.

Publicly available CFR and Club of Rome strategy manuals from 30 years ago say that a global government needs to control the world population through neo-feudalism by creating artificial scarcity. Now that the social architects have de-industrialized the United States, they are going to blame our economic disintegration on lack of energy supplies.

Globalization is all about consolidation. Now that the world economy has become so centralized through the Globalists operations, they are going to continue to consolidate and blame it on the West's "evil" overconsumption of fossil fuels, while at the same time blocking the development and integration of renewable clean technologies.

In other words, Peak oil is a scam to create artificial scarcity and drive prices up. Meanwhile, alternative fuel technologies which have been around for decades are intentionally suppressed.

Peak oil is a theory advanced by the elite, by the oil industry, by the very people that you would think peak oil would harm, unless it was a cover for another agenda. Which from the evidence of artificial scarcity being deliberately created, the reasons for doing so and who benefits, it’s clear that peak oil is a myth and it should be exposed for what it is. Another excuse for the Globalists to seize more control over our lives and sacrifice more American sovereignty in the meantime.

The lies of artificial scarcity

The crux of the issue is that if oil was plentiful in areas in which we are being told by the government and the oil companies that it is not, then we have clear evidence that artificial scarcity is being simulated in order to drive forward a myriad of other agendas. And we have concrete examples of where this has happened.



Three separate internal confidential memos from Mobil, Chevron and Texaco have been obtained by The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

These memos outline a deliberate agenda to gouge prices and create artificial scarcity by limiting capacities of and outright closing oil refineries. This was a nationwide lobbying effort led by the American Petroleum Institute to encourage refineries to do this.

An internal Chevron memo states; "A senior energy analyst at the recent API convention warned that if the US petroleum industry doesn't reduce its refining capacity it will never see any substantial increase in refinery margins."

The Memos make clear that blockages in refining capacity and opening new refineries did not come from environmental organizations, as the oil industry claimed, but via a deliberate policy of limitation and price gouging at the behest of the oil industry itself.

The mystery of Eugene Island 330 and self-renewing oil supplies

Eugene Island is an oil field in the gulf of Mexico, 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana. It was discovered in 1973 and began producing 15,000 barrels of oil a day which then slowed to about 4,000 barrels in 1989.

But then for no logical reason whatsoever, production spiked back up to 13,000 barrels a day.



What the researchers found when they analyzed the oil field with time lapse 3-D seismic imaging is that there was an unexplained deep fault in the bottom corner of the computer scan, which showed oil gushing in from a previously unknown deep source and migrating up through the rock to replenish the existing supply.

Furthermore, the analysis of the oil now being produced at Eugene Island shows that its age is geologically different from the oil produced there after the refinery first opened. Suggesting strongly that it is now emerging from a different, unexplained source.

The last estimates of probable reserves shot up from 60 million barrels to 400 million barrels.

Both the scientists and geologists from the big oil companies have seen the evidence and admitted that the Eugene Island oil field is refilling itself.

This completely contradicts peak oil theory and with technology improving at an accelerating pace it seems obvious that there are more Eugene Islands out there waiting to be discovered. So the scientific community needs to embrace these possibilities and lobby for funding into finding more of these deep source replenishing oilfields.

The existence of self-renewing oil fields shatters the peak oil myth. If oil is a naturally replenishing inorganic substance then how can it possibly run out?

The future of oil

This year in particular we have seen a strong hike in oil prices and are being told to simply get used to it because this is the way it is going to be. In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita gas prices have shot up amid claims of vast energy shortages. Americans are being asked to turn off lights, change thermostat settings, drive slower, insulate homes and take other steps. Meanwhile the oil companies continue to make record profits.

Flying in the face of the so called peak oil crisis are the facts. If we are running out of oil so quickly then why are reserves being continually increased and production skyrocketing?

In the 1980s OPEC decided to switch to a quota production system based on the size of reserves. The larger the reserves a country said it had the more it could pump.

Earlier this year Saudi Arabia reportedly increased its crude reserves by around 200 billion barrels. Saudi oil Is secure and plentiful, say officials.

“These huge reserves enable the Kingdom to remain a major oil producer for between 70 and 100 years, even if it raises its production capacity to 15 million barrels per day, which may well happen during the next 15 years,”

Is this the normal course of behavior if we are currently at the peak for oil production? The answer is no, it's the normal course of action for increasing production.

There have also been reports that Russia has vastly increased its reserves even beyond those of Saudi Arabia. Why would they do this if they believed there would be no more oil to get hold of? It seems clear that Russia is ready for unlimited future production of oil.

There is a clear contradiction between the peak oil theory and the continual increase in oil reserves and production.

New untapped oil sources are being discovered everywhere on earth. The notion that there are somehow only a few sources that the West is trying to monopolize is a complete myth, promulgated by those raking in the massive profits. After all how do you make huge profits from something available in abundance?

A Wall Street Journal article by Peter Huber and Mark Mills describes how the price of oil remains high because the cost of oil remains so low. We are not dependent on the middle east for oil because the world's supplies are diminishing, it is because it is more profitable to tap middle east supplies. Thus the myth of peak oil is needed in order to silence the call for tapping the planet's other plentiful reserves.

Richard Branson has even stated his intention to set up his own refinery because the price of oil is artificially being kept high whilst new sources are not being explored and new refineries not being built.

"Opec is effectively an illegal cartel that can meet happily, nobody takes them to court," Branson has said. "They collude to keep prices high."

So if more refineries were built and different resources tapped, the oil prices would come down and the illegal cartel OPEC would see profits diminish. It is no wonder then that the argument for peak oil is so appealing to OPEC. If no one invests to build refineries because they don't believe there is enough oil, then who benefits? OPEC and the oil elites of course.

It seems that every time there is some kind of energy crisis, OPEC INCREASES production. The remarkable thing about this is that they always state that they are doing it to ease prices, yet prices always shoot up because they promulgate the myth that they are putting some of their last reserves into the market. Analysts seem confused and always state that they don't believe upping production will cut prices.



In a recent report the International Monetary Fund projected that global demand for oil by 2030 would reach 139 million barrels a day, a 65 percent increase.

"We should expect to live with high and volatile oil prices," said Raghuram Rajan, the IMF's chief economist. "In short, it's going to be a rocky road going forward."

Yet independent analysts and even some within OPEC seem to believe that the demand for oil is diminishing. Why the contradiction?

The peak oil and demand myth is peddled by the establishment-run fake left activist groups, OPEC and globalist arms such as the IMF.

Rolling Stone magazine even carried an article in its April issue heavily biased towards making people believe the peak oil lie.

The Scientific evidence also flies in the face of the peak oil theory. Scientific research dating back over a hundred years, more recently updated in a Scientific Paper Published In 'Energia' suggests that oil is abiotic, not the product of long decayed biological matter. Oil, for better or for worse, is not a non-renewable resource. It, like coal, and natural gas, replenishes from sources within the mantle of earth.

No coincidence then that the Russians, who pioneered this research have pumped expenditure into deep underground oil excavation.

We have previously scientifically exposed the scam behind peak oil. Here is a 1 hour+ audio clip featuring Alex Jones' comments on peak oil and then the analysis of respected scientific commentator Dr. Nick Begich who presents evidence to suggest the idea of Peak oil is artificial.

A dangerous fallout precedent being set is that people on both the left and right believe wars are being fought in order to tap the last reserves of oil on the planet. The "coalition of the willing", whoever they may be for any given war, will not pay particular attention to refuting this claim because it allows them a reason to start and continue said war.

Even though many will see it as immoral, many will subconsciously attach it as a reason for the war. In reality the war is purely for profit, power and control, oil can be a part of that, but only if the peak oil claim is upheld.

If we continue to let the corrupt elite tell us we are wholly dependent on oil, we may reach a twisted situation whereby they can justify starvation and mass global poverty, perhaps even depopulation, even within the western world due to the fact that our energy supplies are finished.

Peak oil is just another weapon the globalists have in their arsenal to move towards a new world order where the elite get richer and everyone else falls into line.

--------------------------------------------

http://www.prisonpla...k_oil/index.htm

[advancedatheist]

The Myth Of Peak Oil

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | October 12 2005

Peak oil is a scam designed to create artificial scarcity and jack up prices while giving the state an excuse to invade our lives and order us to sacrifice our hard-earned living standards.

I grew up in a state (Oklahoma) that used to gush with oil in all kinds of unlikely places. For several decades the front lawn of the State Capitol building even had a working well. Now Oklahoma just has a few thousand stripper wells that manage to squeeze out a barrel or two a day per well on average. We don't need to postulate a "scam" to account for this development. We live on the surface of a finite planet, and we have a finite supply of thermodynamically accessible oil, much of which comes from a few dozen rapidly aging fields.

[advancedatheist]

Technological modernity in the UK could verge on collapse:

http://www.bloomberg...94&refer=europe

U.K. Natural Gas May Soar, Raising Consumer Costs, BP Profit

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Gas prices in Britain, a benchmark for Europe, have almost doubled this year. Andy Waring, who buys energy for 20 plants of Ineos Group Holdings, the world's fourth-largest petrochemical company, says the big jump may yet come.

Traders are preparing for shortages by storing gas to use during the winter as North Sea output declines and demand rises. Waring said a squeeze may cause British natural gas to surge fivefold to 4 pounds ($7) a therm, or $69 for a million British thermal units. That's five times more than New York prices and equal to oil at $400 a barrel.

[rahein]

I don't see how anyone can think that peak oil is a myth. If we have peaked yet is debatable. The fact the amount of carbon on the earth is constant and we keep pumping more and more into the air means we will run out of other forms of carbon (oil). Barring the existence of deep undiscovered oil this will happen sooner rather then latter. Either way we need to migrate off of oil before we kill the planet.

advancdatheist:
I live in Oklahoma now. There is even a small oil boom right now. They just built a few wells by my father-in-law's house. I am seeing commercials to hire rough necks on TV. Even small oil companies are buying up huge swaths of prime city real-estate because their profits are so high. Right by my work, close to downtown, an oil company bought 3 restaurants and bull dozed them and are sitting empty. They also bought a strip mall, but have to let all the leases run out before they can bull doze it.

[rahein]

advancdatheist:

I just noticed you changed your Stargate sig :(
That was the best sig on the whole board, mind if I steal it. Stargate rules!

[advancedatheist]

http://news.bbc.co.u...ess/4449698.stm

Last Updated: Friday, 18 November 2005, 14:01 GMT 

Supply fears amid gas price surge 

Prices of wholesale gas have almost doubled during the past week, prompting fears about winter supplies to the UK.

Prices hit an eight month high of 80p a therm, sharply higher than last week's price of 43p, before dipping slightly.

Experts said fears the UK is about to face its coldest winter in 10 years and tight supplies had triggered the rise.

UK supplies are low as a pipeline from Europe is running at half capacity and shiploads of gas are being diverted to Spain and the US where prices are high.

Wood Mackenzie gas analyst Frank Harris told the Financial Times that operators could have made up to $14m more per cargo by selling to the US rather than the UK.

The UK is also facing the prospect of becoming a net importer of gas as supplies from the North Sea dwindle.

Such developments have prompted gas operators to draw down supplies from the country's biggest storage facility - the Rough offshore facility - that is normally filled now for use in January and February.

Whistling past the graveyard....

However, while the wallets of UK consumers may feel the squeeze experts do not believe the lights will go out.

"That's almost inconceivable, I think that worst that can happen if we have a very prolonged cold snap is that producers will reduce the voltage a bit so the lights will be a bit dimmer," the BBC's Russel Hayes added.

[biknut]

the lowest gas price i've seen in dallas in the last two days is 1.97 per gl.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

By Mark Cotton, MarketWatch
Last Update: 4:34 PM ET Nov. 18, 2005
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NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - U.S. stocks ended higher Friday, with the S&P 500 Index reaching a 4 1/2 year high in a week of gains fueled by a rally in the technology sector, a drop in crude-oil prices and a decline in long-term interest rates.

Oil prices ended at a five-month low, amid easing supply concerns. Crude for December delivery was down 20 cents at $56.14 a barrel in New York trading. On the week, the benchmark contract fell 2.4%.

"The supply picture is robust, and prices should continue to move lower," said John Kilduff, an analyst at Fimat USA. "Rising winter-fuel inventories, as expressed in this past week's reports, trumps the demand worries, at least in the short term."

translation, we'll raise the prices later when we want to make more money.

[Mind]

Oil prices to drop soon?

Here is an interesting article about oil executives fearing a drop in the price of oil. What goes unmentioned is the supply side of the equation and where the new oil will come from. What the execs are worried about is a drop in the demand for oil, and thus a significant drop in the price.

Their projections for more production is quite rosy. They expect another 16 million barrels a day to be pumped by the year 2010 (the current level is 83 million per day). This is almost as optimistic as the global warming crowd...they expect fossil fuel usage to double by 2025 (could you imagine 166 million barrels a day?) And of course that is why they claim global warming will destroy the earth.

Mark, what is the maximum level that Hubbert predicted? Something like 80 million barrels a day? If he is correct, then we should be pretty much at the max right now, and we should find out very soon whether production will fall, maybe within a matter of months. What do you think?

[advancedatheist]

http://www.nytimes.c...7interview.html

Natural Gas, the Stealth Energy Crisis

By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
Published: December 17, 2005
Andrew N. Liveris, the chief executive of Dow Chemical, insists that Americans are facing the worst energy crisis in their history. They just don't know it yet.

"American consumers worry about oil and the price of gasoline," he said. "They should worry that there may not be enough natural gas to heat and cool their homes."

Chemical companies, which use gas as an ingredient as well as fuel, are not as oblivious. And Mr. Liveris, who is in line to be next year's chairman of the American Chemistry Council, has set himself up as his industry's public face on the issue. He has already appeared before both the House and the Senate, decrying American policies that encourage the use of gas even as they restrict the search for new gas sources.

Mr. Liveris says that restoring balance to the gas supply is crucial for the American economy. Following are excerpts from a conversation in which he explained why....

Q. So what, exactly, do you want Congress to do?

A. I want Congress to declare a national emergency, educate the American public about the crisis and unshackle industry. It should allow drilling in the outer continental shelf and elsewhere, and speed up the permitting process for building terminals that accept liquefied natural gas. There are only four terminals in the country. We need 20 or 30 times as many.

[Mind]

Here is some good news regarding the development of alternative energy.

Solar hot in venture capital circles

Venture Capitalists are usually privvy to new technology before the rest of us. They get to see the experimental products before they lay down the big cash. It seems to me they are either seeing new solar stuff that will be cheaper and more efficient, or they are betting that oil will remain expensive (or get more expensive) in the near future. Anyway, even if it is not enough investment to stave off an energy crisis, it is a step in a "good" direction.

[Mind]

People continue to react to the possibility of oil shortages. They aren't just going to sit around and twidle their thumbs and burn candles like Mark's graph implies.

California bets on solar

SMIC to make solar panels

Polysilicon shortage because of solar development So much polysilicon is being used in solar panel production that there are shortages. More silicon is going into solar than into computer chips.