Rocky Mountain Confederacy New Saudi Arabia?
Loren's Rocky Mountain Confederacy contains over a trillion barrels of bitumen oil equivalent from Alberta and Saskatchewan's oil sands; over a trillion barrels of kerogen oil equivalent from Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah; large deposits of shale oil in North Dakota, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan; huge crude oil deposits in the Arctic; large coal deposits in Wyoming and Utah; and huge deposits of natural gas scattered throughout the region.
The Rocky Mountain Confederacy could easily become the largest energy exporting nation on the planet -- containing far more energy than Saudi Arabi, Iran, and Iraq combined -- except for one thing: it does not exist.
In order for such a nation to exist, something bad would have to happen to Canada and the US. Which means that something very, very bad will have happened to the rest of the world. Which means that the export market for all of that energy will not be very large.
You may consider that to be an extreme example of the "peak demand" theory, which states that demand for fossil fuels will collapse long before supplies are restricted enough to collapse the world economy. When the world economy collapses, it will be for other reasons than because all the affordable fossil fuels have been consumed.
When the fecal matter contacts the rotating blades does it really matter what caused it? Actually, it makes a great deal of difference in terms of re-starting a technological civilisation. If a re-born civilisation has both resources and blueprints available to jump-start technological infrastructure, the resumption of the path to beyond the stars will be that much easier.
Labels: peak oil 2
posted by al fin at 8:04 am
5 Comments:
There is a Canadian company called Ivanhoe (I own a small amount of their stock) that developed tech to convert bitumen / heavy crude to medium to light crude:
It requires no rare earth metals to act as catalysts.
It doesn't require natural gas.
The technology is scalable and is meant to me located right at the drilling site.
No large amount of natural gas is required. The process is powered by burning the waste coke left over from the conversion. This also creates steam used to get the bitumen out of the ground.
They have pilot plants in CA, and TX and an active project in Ecuador.
No active projects in the USA though. Part of this is due to the unfriendly business environment. The company would go broke by the time (if ever) it was allowed to sink a whole into the ground to get the oil out.
AF, if we do enter the global Dark Age you are predicting then it will probably follow what happened when the western half of the Empire collapsed, with the eastern half carrying on the torch of civilization. In our case that means the countries of free Asia, mainly Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, maybe ANZAC, and coastal China. A Rocky Mountain Confederacy would be poised to offer oil and gas to the Eastern countries. In addition the RMC could export grain to the Far East as well.
HILN: Thanks for the tip. I looked it up and posted articles on the company in Al Fin Energy and in abu al-fin.
Ron: I am not predicting a dark age, but rather am pointing out the possibility that a dark age may occur if we do not take precautions.
The long view is highly positive. We just have to get there from here.
Building the North American Water & Power Project of diverting north flowing Canadian rivers along the Rockies & Mid-West would be easily affordable if the oil is developed & would allow the area to support a mass population.
If the 10th Amendment were operative & able to restrict Washington to its basic functions it would probably be possible for the governors of the US & Canadian states to form a purely commercial organisation able to work in concert.
You're right, there is quite a bit of oil there. I'll e-mail you part of the explanation, since it's less relevant to your point here, but there's a couple of things--
Not everyone likes the RMC, and it's true nature as a functional confederacy. There's quite a bit of reluctance to trade, especially in Europe and other such places.
Part of what the RMC is is due to certain innovations in energy production, such as Bussard and DPF fusion(it is a sci-fi story). Thus, these resources would mostly be export potential to places that have not yet/will not make the transition.
The tort environment also changes things. Environmental groups watch operations they don't like like hawks, and if they can prove something to the jury, the damages are generally crippling. It's not hard to keep clean though, and it allows for innovations that aren't allowed for process specific regulations from the EPA. At least, that's the idea.
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