[lbo-talk] the petro-thusians have their moment

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Tue Sep 21 14:10:17 PDT 2004


Doug wrote:

the greater danger is burning what we have (41 years at current rates of consumption), not running out of it decades from now.

===========

Well yes, but peak oil theorists don't argue that we're going to run dry but rather, as I'm sure every schoolchild who subscribes to "Petroleum Economist" knows (and listen, kids do love that mag - almost as much as watching Spongebob), that the growing demand will outstrip the planet's practically reachable supply.

So, a counter-argument to peak theory which begins with the sentence "we're not running out anytime soon" is an inaccurately targeted arrow - it doesn't address what was actually said.

Also, the usual push back is that a petrotech deus ex machina will deliver us from the peakanistas' scenario. The author of the WSJ article you posted puts it this way:

..

But critics such as Mr. Lynch argue there's every reason to assume that discoveries will revive. They contend that the decline in discoveries since the 1960s isn't an inexorable trend but an artifact of economic forces. Today's supply crunch, by pushing up oil prices, should give the industry an incentive to figure out how to extract more of the oil still in the ground.

..

Well maybe my friend but this is far from certain since there are surely

limits to what can be achieved. As R. Feynman put it, "nature can't be fooled." There are things we simply won't be able to do and maybe this dreamed extraction of ever harder-to-reach oil fits in that category.

It seems to me we have two main petrol future possibilities:

a.) the peakers are right and we're in for some serious economic and lifestyle rudeness as oil - though still available - becomes a comparatively scarce commodity. In the endgame, even cats and dogs are squabbling over petroleum.

or

b.) The peakers are totally wrong and the oil-a-palooza will continue for the 40 years or so folks keep saying it will. Of course, this lack of scarcity for a half century (give or take) only deepens the world's dependency on petrol so when the party finally ends we're even more thoroughly screwed than we might have been if it had (kind of) ended due to the peaker's theorized demand/supply problem.

I suppose we could add a c.) to that list, a spin on the Spiked Online theme of there being essentially nothing to be concerned about at all but that seems just odd to me.

.d.



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