What Happens Once the Oil Runs Out?

What Happens Once the Oil Runs Out?
By KENNETH S. DEFFEYES
NY Times
March 25, 2005

Princeton, N.J.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S hopes for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge came one step closer to reality last week. While Congress must still pass a law to allow drilling in the refuge, the Senate voted to include oil revenues from such drilling in the budget, making eventual approval of the president's plan more likely.

Yet the debate over drilling in the Arctic refuge has been oddly beside the point. In fact, it may be distracting us from a far more important problem: a looming world oil shortage.

The environmental argument over drilling in the refuge has often been portrayed as "tree huggers" versus "dirty drillers" (although, as a matter of fact, the north coastal plain of Alaska happens to have no trees to hug). Even as we concede that this is an oversimplification, we should also ask how a successful drilling operation would affect American oil production.

The United States Geological Survey has estimated that the Arctic oil field is likely to be at least half the size of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, almost 100 miles to the west. Opening that oil field was like hitting a grand slam: Prudhoe Bay, which has already produced more than 13 billion barrels, is the biggest American oil field. (I was once at a party with a bunch of geologists from Mobil Oil when an argument broke out: who discovered Prudhoe Bay? Everybody in the room except me claimed to have done so.)

Snip ....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/opinion/25deffeyes.html
(Registartion Required)

More by DEFFEYES here:



http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=QC7oyeABWV&isbn=0809029561&itm=2

Our way of life is dependent on the unlimited supply of energy. So far it has come almost exclusively from fossil fuel. What bugs me as an Gen. X'er the most is all this dept. Where has all that borrowed money gone? We have no energy industry to speak off, and no money to create alternative ones to sustain supply. There is just nothing worth wile to show for all this dept.

I've had a thought lately. Is it possible that the oil companies has developed an alternative form of energy, but are holding it back until they squeeze every penny they can get out of us for oil?

I think the reality is that Americans are spoiled with cheap energy prices.

As Peak Oil becomes manifest, natural market forces are pushing the price for a constrained resource beyond historical price levels.

This is unsettling for the average consumer used to jaunting blithely out of the house in the car for whatever.

Probably more unsettling will be forthcoming gas rationing. It did not go over well in the 1970s and I suspect it will be just as unpopular this time as well. The difference is it will become permanent in the face of Peak Oil.

Reading between the lines at the IEA workshop on managing transportation fuels, one can only come to the conclusion that rationing is what these folks are talking about.

International Energy Agency
European Conference of Ministers of Transport
WORKSHOP: MANAGING OIL DEMAND IN TRANSPORT
Paris, 7-8 March, 2005

http://www.iea.org/textbase/work/2005/oil_demand/FinalAgenPresentations.htm

Thanks for the link. It will take me some time to read through it, but it is much appreciated.

No more plastic anything for that matter. And a lot less food to go round since most fertilizer is oil based.

Because almost everything we have, use
or consume is based on an economy fueled
by cheap oil....


I just read this new article over at Truthout.com
If he is even half correct, things will get very ugly
in the not-too-distant future.
The Long Emergency
By James Howard Kunstler
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032505I.shtml