Monday, July 16, 2012

A Good Argument Against Peak Oil

Saying peak oil will never occur is crazy.  Even if the oil fields are refilling abiotically, we would have to be extracting it at a lower rate than they are refilling, which from what I've seen is orders of magnitude less.

Saying the peak in oil production hasn't happened yet is arguable.  Unless you're a complete sociopath, though, that should be followed by what you are doing to prepare yourself, your family, and your friends for its eventual occurance.

Saying that a peak in oil production won't matter is reasonable, if you are saying that imploding debt bubbles will drive demand for oil down faster than supply.  Famine, war, and/or plague could also very easily do the same.

2 comments:

  1. Your last point I don't think is the case. If economic activity is insufficient to support fossil fuel extraction at its current cost, you have something of a disaster on your hands. Your point would only be valid if there were still easy-oil to extract. I am not sure that there is.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TheOilDrum.com is an excellent source for this sort of thing. There still is a lot of easy oil to extract, just not as much as there used to be. The main expenses for oil are exploration and drilling (and especially fracking). Old wells that produced $40 a barrel oil are largely still producing $40 a barrel oil. It's the new wells that are so expensive, and fracked ones run out quickly.

    That said, my point is you would still have a disaster on your hands, just not necessarily the one you imagined.

    ReplyDelete