Peak Oil: Meet North Dakota Oil
North Dakota as an oil patch state? Yes, probably in a decade or less. The state’s Three Forks-Sanish formation could rival nearby Bakken Play, a vast oil shale field. Together they could hold 200 billion barrels of oil, about four times Alaska’s entire oil cache. That’s enough black gold to provide the equivalent of 30 years’ worth of U.S. oil needs at current usage levels, without having to import one barrel from abroad. _Kiplinger_via_NewsAlertWe have heard a lot about North Dakota's Bakken Play -- particularly from Brian Wang's NextBigFuture. But larger oil fields wait to be tapped as the technology of oil discovery, exploration, and extraction is improved. Peak oil catastrophe dogma relies upon ignorance of remaining oil reserves, for credibility. As long as the profit motive is allowed to function in free societies, however, energy technologies will improve to exploit the abundant reserves of energy that wait unseen in the world around us.
Universities, the media, and the green political-industrial complex are united in the goal of energy starvation and industrial choke-off, along with population die-off. All of the policies of the Obama / Pelosi reich revolve around that underlying theme. Under the policies of the ruling reich, businesses will die, employment will plummet, home ownership will continue melting away, and power will continue to consolidate to the politically connected.
Peak oil catastrophe and climate catastrophe are two useful facades to facilitate the agenda. North Dakota is an awkward counterpoint to the talking points. There will be more -- many more. This is a time for those persons who have escaped the academic and media camps with their intellectual curiosity intact, to start paying attention. Things are soon to become interesting.
Labels: oil exploration, peak oil
posted by al fin at 9:42 am
5 Comments:
I have often wondered if it might not be such a bad idea to buy foreign oil exclusively and bleed the rest of the world dry while preserving our oil, natural gas, coal etc. So that when theirs is gone we will still have all of ours and they will be at our mercy rather than we being at theirs. It is a longer term strategy, and just a gut reaction. It is also cheaper in the short run.
Fossil fuels are a dying energy form. They will be replaced by advanced bioenergy, enhanced geothermal, orbiting solar energy, advanced nuclear reactors, and eventually nuclear fusion.
We could save them for the future, but by then they will probably be obsolete. Any use they have now will be taken over by cleaner and more economical alternatives.
Check out Al Fin Energy blog for more information
I share silly girl's instinct but I move back and forth on the issue. Nations like Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia are fueling instability, funding terror and brutalizing their people while spreading extremism right now. What's more, their economic and political mismanagement makes them vulnerable to low oil prices now in a way that they might not be by the time their remaining oil becomes too difficult to exploit without advanced techniques and skills.
The obsolescence of fossil fuel is certain though it could be a long period of transition as non-fossils eat into the energy market.
At any rate, it will probably take thirty years to get the political momentum needed to let America's energy reserves be exploited; plus ten or more to get the infrastructure developed. So using up the oily-garchs' supply may be necessary.
Snakeoilbaron, I get the creepiest feeling that some of the dreadful countries barely propped up by oil export revenue that can't even feed themselves will descend to the level of Somalia when the oil runs out. I mean, imagine Nigeria without oil. Wretched hive of scum and villainy is no exaggeration even now. Canada can at least feed herself and export food, but oil is such a major revenue, it would change things a lot without it.
I would love to believe that fossil fuels will be obsolete before exhausted. That is ideal of course.
silly girl,
It certainly won't be a pretty transition and the risk of devolution into tribalized regions of competing warlords is real but they have a couple things going for them that could make them less likely to become like Somalia. Somalia has a very high fertility rate which gives them an average age of their population at about 17. The Saudi fertility rate is much lower and falling and Russia and Iran are below replacement rates. And Somalia's situation is made far worse by outside recruits to jihad and doctrinal and financial support for jihad from places like Saudi Arabia. Without the oil wealth and with a limited supply of young, impressionable recruits to indoctrinate; spread among more potential fields of conflict, the ability of certain interests to push failed states into terror supporting theocracies waging unending civil war would be limited.
Post a Comment
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell
<< Home