Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>I know that many on this list subscribe to "Peak Oil" and other apocalyptic 
theories concerning
fossil fuels. 

"Peak Oil" isn't a theory in the usual sense of the world.  Peakists, most of 
whom are petrologists and geologists, take all the data concerning known oil 
reserves, extraction methods, etc. and say that at some point (a very many 
are 
saying it's right now) the rate at which oil can be extracted and delivered 
will reach a peak and can't be had any faster.

To the skeptic, they ask, if you think oil can be produced at higher rates, 
here is all the current data .... where will it come from and how are you 
going 
to extract it?  No answers are forthcoming.

Reporting world oil production is a .... well .... oily proposition.  
Recently some of the optimistic bent have reported an increase in liquid fuel 
production, but this is deceptive.  They include ethanol AND the diesel that 
was used 
to produce it as BOTH being part of the world fuel supply.  In reality the 
world production of crude oil peaked in December of 2005 and has not rising 
above that level in any meaningful way since then.

In the past few years the North Sea oil fields have gone into a decline and 
Great Britain has gone from being a net oil exporter to an oil importer.  
Saudi 
Arabia's great Ghawar field is in decline, as is the Mexico's Cantarell 
field, the third largest in the world.   The world's oil production depends 
on 
those giant fields and despite the rather meaningless sound bites of  
discoveries 
of new vast fields, the truth is that no large oil fields have been 
discovered 
since 1964.

So, you see, Peak Oil isn't a theory of the "You know I just betcha ..." 
type.  It is a proposition that here is the current oil production and oil 
reserves, we do not have the capacity to extract oil at a higher rate than 
this, 
where do you think more oil is going to come from??

As a 'theory' it's a fair question.

By the bye, Obama got one right when he said that the realistic potential of 
off shore oil is less than would be realized if everyone in the US just 
inflated their tires to the proper pressure.   </HTML>