by tedbohne » Sat 06 Sep 2008, 13:10:58
Having lived in Odessa Texas in the eighties, I can say that there was no peak oil there. It was an example of the proverbial "BOOM TOWN." People coming from all over the states and elsewhere were living in tents whilst the home building industry there broke their backs to build housing for them. In '84, or 85, from one day to the next, the price of gasoline plummeted some twenty or so cents. This would indicate a sudden glut of petroleum. Suspiciously, though, producing wells were CAPPED. They remain that way today. Odessa died a painful death as rigs were stacked and people laid off from jobs associated with oil.
Further, in the early seventies, the Major Oil Companies had oil tankers turning doughnuts in the Atlantic to create an artificial shortage, because there hasn't been and isn't now a NATURAL shortage.
Every price hike in the US and world wide is the result of The Petroleum industry shutting and removing the "spigots" to the oil. During the nineties, 50 refineries were shut down and destroyed with the exception to the one Barbara Boxer saved. Each takes two to four years to build and bring into operation. None have been built since that time.
M. King Hubbard's "bell curve" guesswork was done for the American Petroleum Institute in 1956. This organization sees petroleum as the republicans do. They have no interest in the people of this nation, only the amount of money to made by controlling the supply. This a perverted mutation of the "Law of supply and demand," where the supply is controlling demand rather than the reverse. Furthermore, Hubbard's guess of the world's supply of petroleum was MUCH less that that which lies under Venezuela alone which is some one point three thousand BILLION barrels. Yes, it's hard crude, and will take the tortures of the damned to wash it up.
Finally, I am submitting this post to demonstrate that no one actually knows when "peak" oil will be. Consider that it took the earth four point five thousand million years to produce however much is there. Further, this is not to suggest that we don't need to dramatically reduce our dependence on oil, especially as a motor fuel, and the some 6000 other uses (check it out) for it. It is unbelievable in the extreme what products are made from petroleum.
My hope is that instead of oil, science will find a way, and I suspect they already have, to use hydrogen as a motor fuel. Someone once said, "the two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." I think we as humans have demonstrated both to be true.
tedbohne