Manpower Shortage Acute in Skilled Industries: Help Wanted!

"There's a tremendous shortage of skilled workers," said Craig Giffi, a vice chairman of the consulting firm Deloitte. A recent survey it did found that 83% of manufacturers reported a moderate or severe shortage of skilled production workers to hire.

Pay levels provide evidence. While hourly wages in the broad category of maintenance and repair workers rose 6.4% from 2007 to 2010, increases were 10% in the subcategory of heavy-vehicle mechanics and 15% for specialists in electrical repairs on commercial and industrial equipment. The implication is that employers were competing for a limited pool of qualified workers.
The Deloitte study found that 74% of manufacturers said a shortage of skilled production workers had a "significant negative impact" on either their productivity or expansion plans. _WSJ_FoxNews

The shortage of skilled workers extends virtually around the globe.

More than half of U.S. employers report having a hard time finding people to fill some of their most critical positions. Quite a few countries around the world are experiencing the same problem, according to a global survey by international employment agency, ManpowerGroup.

... According to this year’s ManpowerGroup survey of 39 countries, 34 percent of employers worldwide say they have trouble finding qualified workers. While 52% percent of U.S. employers have the same problem filling critical positions, Japan, India and Brazil have the most difficult time.

...The hardest jobs to fill are technicians, skilled trades, sales representatives that require highly technical knowledge.

Jatan Shah, Chief Technology Office of QSC Audio says his company has been expanding and hiring. But he says finding the right worker for positions from engineers to plant workers has been a challenge. “It takes anywhere from three months to a year to fill certain positions.
_VOANews

New Zealand is hiring -- and has to travel overseas to find qualified workers in many areas.

University graduates in a wide range of subjects, simply lack practical skills for the modern workplace. Industries must invest a great deal of money in training new hires, and it is not clear that the aggravation of training and the risk of lawsuits by female and minority employees will ever be compensated by productivity -- particularly from graduates of women's studies, ethnic studies, or third world underwater matriarchal basketweaving cultural studies.

The "feminisation" -- or dumbing down -- of many formerly rigorous university studies programs has left employers doubtful of the quality of new college graduates.

Even India finds that its industries must spend a great deal of money training fresh hires driectly out of school:

Most Indian IT firms also have to invest significant amount in training freshers to get them job ready.

At Infosys for one, freshers go through an average of 3-6 months of training before becoming billable....Companies invest heavily on training and upgrading talent. _TOI

So, the problem is seen in both the high paying skilled blue collar sectors, and in the technical college educated sectors. And employers are feeling the pain, and having to cut back on established lines as well as cancelling other projects which they could have embarked upon -- if only they had the skilled workers.

This shortage of skills -- a human capital shortage, really -- is adding a negative impact to the already dire situations of western nations coming from unwise policies of debt, demography, bureaucratic overreach, and energy starvation. Trickle down revolutions are already ongoing in some nations of the middle east, but expect trickle down insurrections to work their way toward Europe's periphery.

Of course you can only take care of you and yours, in the end. Focus on that goal first and foremost. Maximise your own human capital, and that of those closest to you.

This article has been expanded to focus on peak manpower skills in the energy sector at Al Fin Energy blog.

Peak Ingenuity and Peak Manpower Skills: Human Capital Needed

When confronted with a problem such as the rapid growth in demand for fuels and energy, humans need to use their ingenuity to develop new technologies. They also need to train a manpower force in the skills needed to develop, operate, and maintain the new energy technologies. Let's look at the Canadian oilsands as a case in point:

It was not until the late 1990s that the oilsands finally began to prove themselves as a large-scale commercial resource, facilitated by a crucial tax reform and lessrigid government intervention, and by major advances in technology.

The mining process was modernized, expanded in scale, and made more flexible. Fixed conveyer belts were replaced with huge trucks with the biggest tires in the world, and with giant shovels that gather up oilsands and carry them to upgraders that separate out the bitumen. Refining processes then upgrade the bitumen into higher-quality synthetic crude oil, akin to light, sweet crude oil, which can be processed in a conventional refinery into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and all the other normal products. _CalgaryHerald

There has always been a shortage of human ingenuity. In situations where human societies are short on inventiveness and competent tech and trade skills, the fate of that society is usually quite dire. When people talk about "peak oil" or "peak resources," they do not usually understand that what they are talking about is peak ingenuity along with peak manpower skills. Many times in history, the difference between the total collapse of a society and the prospering of the same society, is a simple innovation combined with sufficient manpower skills to take advantage of the innovation.

Consider this question in the light of Canadian oil sands:

...a breakthrough introduced an alternative way of producing oilsands - not with mining but rather in situ (Latin for "in place"); that is, with the crucial link in the production chain done in place - underground. This was very significant for many reasons, including the fact that 80 per cent of the oilsands resource is too deep for surface mining.

The in situ process uses natural gas to create superhot steam that is injected to heat the bitumen underground. The resulting liquid - a combination of bitumen and hot water - is fluid enough to flow into a well and to the surface. The best-known process is SAGD - for steam-assisted gravity drainage, and pronounced as "sag-dee." It has been described by oilsands historian Paul Chastko as "the single most important development in oilsands technology" in a half century.

Altogether, since 1997, over $120 billion of investment has flowed into Alberta's oilsands, now defined as a "mega-resource."

Oilsands production more than doubled from 600,000 barrels per day in 2000 to almost 1.5 million barrels per day in 2010. By 2020 it could double again to 3 mbd - an output that would be higher than the current oil production of either Venezuela or Kuwait. Adding in its conventional output, Canada could reach almost 4 mbd by 2020. _CalgaryHerald

Canadian oilsands do not solve the world's problems of energy scarcity. But they do temporarily abate the problem for certain parts of the world. And the impact of Canadian oilsands on global oil prices -- once high-throughput pipelines to the coast are built -- will grow significantly.

The technologies for producing oilsands continue to evolve, and increasing ingenuity is being applied to shrinking the environmental footprint and reducing the CO2 emissions in the production process. As the industry grows in scale, it will require wider collaboration on the R& D challenges not only among companies and the province of Alberta but also with Canada's federal government.

Yet the very scale of the resource, and its reliability, puts a premium on its continued evolution of this particular industry. Oilsands are, after all, an enormous resource. For the 175 billion barrels of recoverable oilsands is only 10 percent of the estimated 1.8 trillion barrels of oilsands "in place." The development of the other 90 per cent requires further technological progress. _CalgaryHerald

It usually seems as if human innovators are "running in place," running as fast as they can just to keep from falling behind. Thomas Malthus put his finger on one key issue -- human societies without appreciable ingenuity or manpower skills will out-reproduce the ability of the land to support them. But Julian Simon presents the flip side of the coin -- for societies that possess innovators and skilled manpower.

Miracle of Oil from Sand by Ronald Bailey, in Reason Magazine -- an on the scenes look at Alberta oilsands.

There is never an end to scarcity, because there is never an end to human desire and ambition -- which are essentially limitless.

Lefty-Luddites of the green dieoff.orgy persuasion, want to do away with humans -- or 90% of them at least -- in order to do away with "scarcity." By eliminating most human beings, you are eliminating most human desire and ambition, or so they think. But that is not really how it works. Perhaps they will find out the hard way.

Or perhaps pockets of civilisation will learn how to instill innovativeness and competencies into their offspring, so that the dieoff dreams of the greens will never come to reality. Competent innovating societies that were wise, would look to the possibilities that exist in the universe at large.

Earth is a fine birthplace and cradle. It should be preserved in good condition over the indefinite future. In the meantime, the ultimate future for creatures that are resourceful and competent, is the larger universe.

We might start by taking off the straitjackets of political correctness and faux environmentalism, so that we can see our problems for what they are.

The above was adapted from material previously published on Al Fin Energy blog.

Most People are too Stupid to Understand Where this Leads, But . . .

....Just in case you are not too stupid, you may wish to take some things into account in planning for your future.

Stanford
Populations of Europe, North America, Oceania, and East Asia are aging rapidly. Such aging brings about certain unavoidable costs to societies.

Stanford

One of the most significant financial problems that countries will face in the coming decades is the amount they will spend to support the elderly. This will be exacerbated by increased debt-to-GDP ratios in most of the 49 countries where old age costs will be the highest percentage of GDP, according to the Standard & Poor’s Global Aging Report PDF. Of the 49 countries, 32 are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and 17 are large, emerging market nations.

The Standard & Poor’s Global Aging report emphasizes: “No other force is likely to shape the future of national economic health, public finances, and policy making as the irreversible rate at which the world’s population is aging. The problem has been long observed and is well understood.” The analysis adds, “U.N. figures show the proportion of the world’s population aged over 65 is set to more than double by 2050, to 16.2% from 7.6% currently.” _Source

The higher the educational levels and IQs of a given society, the faster it is tending to age. And within advanced societies, it is the higher IQ segments -- the smart fractions -- which are aging and disappearing most quickly. In terms of national and global skills resources -- human capital -- these trends are quite ominous. Not only will the costs of pensions, elderly medical care, long term elderly care, and unemployment increase exponentially with aging, but the remaining human capital -- people who keep the wheels of commerce and industry rolling -- is likely to shrink at an increasing rate as well. Put another way, the people who keep food on the table and keep the lights on, are going away at the same time that the need for them will grow greater.

In Korea, farmers over age 60 accounted for fully 55.4 percent of the country's total farming population. Rising costs of aging and impending skills shortages in Germany threaten the nation's shaky prosperity. Australia continues to experience critical shortages in skilled trades relating to its most important industries.

People with important skills in energy, industry, construction, the infrastructure of IT, and other central skills in a high-tech society, are nearing retirement age, without sufficient replacements having been trained.

The irreversibility of these trends is what is so hard for many to grasp, despite the danger they represent to the future. Governments which are incapable of making difficult decisions will allow these trends to shape a dead-end future, without ever having explained to an increasingly dumbed-down constituency what is happening to them.

The skyrocketing costs of pensions, health care benefits, unemployment, disability, and a host of other entitlements, is very real and important. But not nearly so important as the loss of the human capital which underlies the engines of industrial and agricultural production, and the market mechanisms of distribution.

The "singularity" is not the answer, except as a sort of escapist fantasy preventing more imaginative humans from working out solutions to real problems. Clinging to the security of government unions, academic tenure, or other group-thinking organisations will likewise only get you so far. In fact, the early retirement ages found among government union workers etc. only accelerates the descent into irreversible debt and demographic decline.

Most people are far too stupid to even suspect that a problem exists. But instead of a single problem, multiple interlocking problems are tied into the ongoing demographic transition. The consequences of some of them are extremely dire.

What to do?

Population Bomb: Earth is Bleeding Human Capital

"I've got colleagues running around Florida trying to find people to take their knowledge before they die," says Peter Waggitt, a uranium production consultant to the IAEA. "Most of the senior experts in uranium mining are pushing 50 and some of the best are over 70." _SwissInfo

It is not too surprising when third world countries such as South Africa dismally fail to meet their electric power demands. Even though South Africa is the wealthiest and most advanced nation in SubSaharan Africa, it must still struggle with an average population IQ of only 72. More and more high IQ market dominant minorities in business, technology, and the professions are being driven from South Africa by sky-rocketing crime rates and other forms of rapid descent into third worldism.

It may come as a surprise to find that some of the same problems of human capital shortages are beginning to crop up in the advanced world.

The average university technician is aged over 40 and almost a third are over 50 years old, according to their trade union, Amicus Unite. It also warns that the training schemes that drew that generation of technicians into the sector have largely withered.

A report for the Higher Education Funding Council for England by consultancy Evidence Ltd found a 22 per cent drop in the number of technicians in engineering between the 1996 and 2001 research assessment exercises, almost a 23 per cent decline in biological sciences technicians and 16 and 17 per cent decreases in technicians for physical sciences and pre-clinical technicians.

"People are not coming into the sector as there is no development for them, and we are losing people because of the demographic time bomb," said Matt Levi, manager of the Leadership Foundation's Heated project, which was set up to research the problem. _TimesHE

Such problems are appearing in technology sectors all over the developed world. Europeans, S. Koreans, Japanese, Russians, and residents of the Anglosphere are failing to have children to replace themselves. Of the few children they have, not enough are going into technical professions that will be badly needed in the near future. One of the technology sectors which needs to grow the fastest, is the nuclear power sector. And that -- along with the power and energy industry in general -- is where some of the worst losses of human capital are occurring.

French utility EDF says around 50 percent of employees in its nuclear branch will retire by 2015 and that its workers are on average 43-44 years old.

In the United States, the peak age of workers in the nuclear sector is 48-52 while Britain estimates that up to two-thirds of its top-tier nuclear managers will retire by 2025. Worldwide, the nuclear industry employs around 250,000 people. Many first-generation nuclear staff have just retired or will do so in the next few years, taking with them skills and knowledge of complex, costly projects -- just as the nuclear renaissance gets underway.

Sometimes referred to as a "silver tsunami", the departure of the first generation of nuclear workers is a big concern for the IAEA, which promotes civilian nuclear technology alongside its role as atomic watchdog. Many countries and private firms have new units planned or under construction, the agency said in a September report for a conference of its 151 member states. "(They) are facing shortages of experienced personnel and loss of knowledge as they look to replace retiring staff for their existing fleet while at the same time staffing new projects."

Finnish nuclear regulator Stuk says the lack of skilled workers is at least partly to blame for the delays at Olkiluoto. So many experienced nuclear manufacturers have left the business that project managers have been forced to look for subcontractors who then need nuclear training, the regulator said in a presentation in August. Building the next generation of power plants will be demanding, "because much of the earlier experience and resources have been lost from the nuclear industry." _SwissInfo

As European populations fall from Europe to North America to Oceania, few members of many replacement populations possess the native talent to be trained in highly technical occupations which are crucial for an advancing future. Mexican immigrants to the US have an average IQ no higher than 90, shifting the occupational bell curve significantly to the left -- with many technical and scientific professions out of reach for most of the newcomers. Immigrants to Europe from North Africa and the Middle East have average IQs of around 85, a full standard deviation below native European populations. Fewer than 5% of these will be qualified for highly technical areas of study. The manpower shortages will only get worse.

Leaders and policy makers in the US, the EU, and elsewhere need to learn that low-IQ immigrants will quickly become a drag on their economies, and provide very few in the way of qualified high tech professionals. Affirmative action can attempt to force these unqualified immigrants into the technical professions, but a lowering of standards will be the result. There lies the Idiocracy and collapse.

It is not for advanced nations to tell third world nations how large their populations can grow. But it is the job of advanced nations to take care of their own societies, and to make sure that they maintain the technological skills and standards which keep their citizens safe, warm, and healthy.

The only shortage humans are facing that is of any significance is the shortage of human ingenuity. If we allow human ingenuity to die out due to postmodern groupthink and political correctness, then certainly everything else that we need will come in short supply. It is up to those who are still awake to make sure that that does not happen.

Manpower Skills Shortages: Ongoing Loss of Human Capital

Worldwide, skilled trades positions are the hardest to fill, according to Manpower global 2010 Talent Shortage Survey of 35,000 employers across 36 countries and territories (PDF); in 31 countries they are among top 10 jobs that companies are having difficulty filling. Shortages of skilled workers are acute in many of the world’s biggest economies. In 15 countries, including the United States, Germany, France, Italy and Canada employers ranked skilled trades as their number one hiring challenge. In Poland employers are also struggling to find skilled trades workers, admitting since three years that they represent the 1st most difficult position to fill, as show the results of three consecutive editions of Manpower’s Talent Shortage Survey. _Source

Even if economic demand improved so as to require the building of significant new infrastructure, most nations lack the necessary manpower skills to rapidly ramp up construction, development, and production.

Australia is one of the countries feeling the strongest pinch, with a healthy mining sector and unemployment near 5%. But Germany is also coming to grips with a manpower shortage, exacerbated by a rapid demographic aging.

The US -- with it's perpetual ongoing Obama recession -- has far less current demand for skilled labour. Real US unemployment is well into the teens, with underemployment into the twenties. In Obama's US, the demand simply isn't there. But what if the economy were to revive itself by some miracle -- even under the Obama regime? Where would the skilled workers come from?

The US educational system has been a disastrous failure from the standpoint of training skilled workers in the crucial trades -- the foundations of an advanced high-tech infrastructure. By attempting to channel all students into a 4 year college track -- and neglecting the trades -- US schools have wasted the potential talent of generations of students. As the US educational establishment becomes further ossified under the control of a massive incestuous political machine involving public sector unions and ideologues at both the federal level and the university school of education level, any hope for salvaging the newer generations of prospective skilled work is slipping through the US' fingers.

As baby boomers retire, massive numbers of skilled workers will be lost to an infrastructure that is already suffering for lack of skills.

The problem is that the requirements for skilled jobs tend to change as the underlying technology changes. One cannot train for a skilled job and expect for the job to stay the same. In addition, the economics of domestic production or construction vs. outsourcing work is apt to change from year to year -- making it tougher for managers to plan their infrastructure into the future.

Under the Obama administration's distinctly anti-business regime, this planning task is made 10 X more difficult for managers than it needed to be. As a result, new projects are put on indefinite hold, and the economy goes into a long-term stasis.

Since industry training and industry-sponsored training provide a significant proportion of skilled workers, as industries down-size and postpone their new projects, the training of skilled workers also suffers.

All of these problems add up, so that when a more rational governmental regime finally falls into place, the nation at large has far fewer skills in place to take advantage of a new building phase, should it occur. The skills must be imported at a higher cost -- financially and socially.

In terms of peak oil or peak energy, it is actually peak manpower which should be feared the most. For as soon as the energy starvation regime of the Obamas, the Boxers, the Pelosis, the Salazars, and that ugly ilk is eliminated, the energy resources that have been there all along will still be there -- but will be less obtainable for the loss of skilled manpower that has occurred in the interim.

All-around skilled craftsmen and craftswomen are becoming more rare in the US -- although Canada, Australia, and some European nations are taking active steps to ameliorate the problem. As the world emerges from its carbon hysteria and peak energy fogs, it will be the nations that can solve the peak skills problem which will prosper.

As for all of those PhD's in queer ethnic studies and semiotic basket-weaving -- what are they doing now?

Peak Manpower: Geothermal

Although there is enough potential geothermal power under the US to provide 3,000 times US yearly energy needs, geothermal only supplies a small percentage of US energy. Why? Manpower shortage. A shortage of skilled geothermal engineers--trained to locate promising fields of "hot rocks" that are likely to pay out in energy generation.

The drilling for oil has sucked up every qualified drilling person worldwide.....The oil guys have it pretty well down with the best explorers getting results form nearly half of their attempts (Chevron). However, the best tools to determine where to drill for heat are not worked out yet. It will be a wildcat, risky kind of thing for a while. The seismic geology that the petroleum business uses so adroitly isn’t being applied to heat and may not in fact be convertible in recognizable sense. This leads to the second issue about the people: the innovation, creativity and education hasn’t gotten started yet to find, train and educate the people who can cut the risks from trying for a geothermal play.

...Engineering might well play a big role to determine what a good hole is compared to a loser. The directional drilling expertise offers the potential to get more locations productive for geothermal than would otherwise be possible. A pair of parallel bores allowing one fluid down and one fluid back might well change the risk picture dramatically.....

It will take people....those [technology] people can’t come in until another group of people gets in first. Those are the visionaries, leaders and risk takers. That’s the first thing kind of people we need. The payoff could be a reserve that never depletes....

Read More at New Energy and Fuel
A lot of things that sound good on paper will never happen, until the right people are working on the problem, hands-on. People who are resourceful and capable of innovating in the middle of a job. Those people are retiring every year, and not being suitably replaced. Why?

Because the innovative, resourceful, creative people who would have been able to solve problems on the worksite, are being mishandled in schools. A vital human capital resource is being squandered by an ideology-heavy educational system that is blind to the real-world needs of the present and the future. I am referring, of course, to boys. Boys who need male teachers, boys who need all-male classrooms, boys who need a completely different teaching style than the one created by post-modern university schools of education.

Montessori schools, and perhaps Waldorf schools, know better, and allow boys the type of "hands-on" learning they need from the earliest years. These Montessori boys (and other non-conventionally educated boys) will grow up able to choose the area of work best for them. But they are only a few percentages of all the school-aged boys. They are not enough to provide the skilled manpower in technology and industry that is sifting away, year by year.

Energy Peak Manpower: Wind Energy

Across the energy sectors, from oil to biofuels to solar to wind, the true peak is peak manpower. The shortage of trained engineers, technologists, technicians, tradesmen, craftsmen, and skilled labourers, is hamstringing the energy industry's attempt to grow.

"Finding experienced techs is impossible with wind growing as fast as it is," Martinson said. "You get one year's worth of experience and it's like dog years."...Last year, wind farms installed almost 3,200 turbines, boosting the nation's wind energy capacity by 45 percent and cranking out an additional 5,200 megawatts, or enough electricity to power 1.5 million homes for a year. The industry, which now accounts for a little more than 1 percent of the U.S. electric supply, expects to repeat that surge in 2008.

Critics of wind power have called the mammoth turbines eyesores and environmentalists have fought against them, warning the giant rotors could pose a hazard to migratory birds and other wildlife.

But wind power officials see a much larger obstacle coming in the form of its own work force, a highly specialized group of technicians that combine working knowledge of mechanics, hydraulics, computers and meteorology with the willingness to climb 200 feet in the air in all kinds of weather.

That work force isn't keeping up with the future demand, partly because the industry is so new that the oldest independent training programs are less than five years old.

Physorg

Wind energy is only a tiny part of the energy industry. But the problem wind energy shares with all the approaches to providing energy to North America, is the dire shortage of skilled and trained workers. Peak manpower, not peak oil, not peak energy.

Canadian Oil Boom--A Difference in Values

It is possible to take oil wealth and do something good with it. Take Alberta's ongoing oil boom, which is beginning to rival China's business boom. Alberta is actually accomplishing long-lasting sustainable good from its temporary (probably decades-long) oil boom.

Brian Wang looks at a recent scientific creation from the University of Alberta:

Canadian scientists have succeeded in building the least expensive portable device for rapid genetic testing ever made. The cost of carrying out a single genetic test currently varies from hundreds to thousands of pounds, and the wait for results can take weeks. Now a group led by Christopher Backhouse, University of Alberta, Edmonton, have developed a reusable microchip-based system that costs just 500 (pounds) to build, is small enough to be portable, and can be used for point-of-care medical testing.

To keep costs down, 'instead of using the very expensive confocal optics systems currently used in these types of devices we used a consumer-grade digital camera', Backhouse explained.

The device can be adapted for used in many different genetic tests. 'By making small changes to the system you could test for a person's predisposition to cancer, carry out pharmacogenetic tests for adverse drug reactions or even test for pathogens in a water supply,' said Backhouse.(source)

The device is now much smaller than size of a shoe-box (USB stick size) with the optics and supporting electronics filling the space around the microchip.____NextBigFuture

One must ask oneself the question: which oil-rich countries are putting their newfound wealth into advancing knowledge for the future, and which are spending it on Las Vegas style glitz, and stashing it away in the Swiss bank accounts of royalty and dictators? It is a question of values.

Canada has different values than the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf. So far, Alberta has taken a different approach to the use of oil wealth than the royalty-saturated kingdoms and emirates of the middle east. Alberta's approach is even different from that of socialist leaning Norway, whose scientific output is only somewhat above that of the Arab world.

So far, Canada has managed to avoid most of the "oil curse" of windfall wealth. The oil curse is the natural laziness of a culture that does not have to work for a living. The decadence of unearned wealth.

For the Canadian provinces of Alberta--and now Saskatchewan--the oil boom is just beginning. For now, the main limiting factor is the significant manpower shortage, which is being felt in the oil and gas industry worldwide. Peak manpower, not peak oil.

Peak Oil: Meet Bakken Formation

The Bakken geologic formation straddling the border of the US with Canada, contains a lot of oil shale, and sweet crude. Brian Wang at NextBigFuture looks at the possibility that there may be another "Saudi Arabia's worth" of oil under the plains of Saskatchewan and North Dakota.

Estimates are anywhere from a conservative 25 billion barrels of oil in place, to a high estimate by the United States Geological Survey of 400 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken formation. Not only is the oil plentiful, but it's high quality too, 41 degree light sweet crude. The Bakken formation is a formation of black shale, siltstone, and sandstone. The formation lies beneath the Mississippian formation, Saskatchewan's current source of light sweet crude. The Bakken formation is situated beneath southeastern Saskatchewan, southwestern Manitoba, and North Dakota.

In 2007, EOG Resources out of Houston, Texas reported that a single well it had drilled into an oil-rich layer of shale below Parshall, North Dakota is anticipated to produce 700,000 barrels of oil.____>Brian Wang (much more with links)

No one expects such regional oil deposits to give North America independence from the "dictator's oil" of Russia, the Persian Gulf, Africa, or Venezuela any time soon. Industrial economies necessarily draw their energy from a wide variety of sources--particularly in the age of a booming India and China, with their huge, growing energy demands.

It is interesting to note that Saskatchewan has huge deposits of tar sands farther north, in addition to the potentially enormous deposits of oil shale and sweet crude within Bakken. Will Regina and Saskatoon begin taking on some of the more affluent aspects of Dubai?

Here is a pdf document looking at the estimate of oil within Bakken

It is important for those who truly wish to understand the current energy situation, to know that there is a tremendous shortage of skilled and trained manpower to develop all of the reserves known to exist--and a much greater shortage of trained and skilled manpower needed to explore and discover the huge oil fields likely to exist, but remaining undiscovered. Peak oil is actually a euphemism for the shortage of trained and skilled workers.