by gw » Sat 26 Aug 2006, 01:15:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'S')o was this report written by the DOE and 'endorsed' by it or was it merely written for the DOE?
I don't know how this works in the US, but the EU for example commissions thousands of reports on hundreds of topics each day, but only a few of them get the official stamp of an EU agency, after which they become "important". The other reports are just background noise that is put in the archives after two days.
The latest Hirsch report is just an another analysis prepared for the DOE - it is not an official DOE policy. But the following text is from the DOE/NETL website and is presented as a consensus view of the DOE/NETL on the future supply of oil and gas:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he U.S. is the birthplace of the oil and gas industry. After nearly a century and half, the industry now finds itself at a crossroads. Oil and natural gas prices are at record highs, and although price spikes have occurred in the past, there is a growing consensus among analysts that the current situation is not a transitory feature of the market. Instead, there is a fundamental and potentially worsening gap between our demand for oil and natural gas and our ability to supply it. Despite seemingly large resources, we are becoming increasingly dependent on imports (imports' share of gas supply has tripled since 1985, and imports' share of oil supply has jumped to almost 60% from 27% in 1985). More importantly, the domestic industry has been unable to increase production despite strong price incentives and increased drilling.
The root cause of this difficulty is the progressive change in the remaining resource base. Industry has picked much of the Nation's “low-hanging fruit,” and remaining resources are increasingly found both in deeper, more remote, more complex reservoirs (high cost and high risk), or in shallow, drilling-intensive, low-productivity reservoirs. Policy actions alone cannot change the nature of the resource base – dramatic cost-and risk-reducing technological improvements are needed in order to make the nation's vast oil and gas resources viable to produce. These resources are not being developed by the major oil and gas companies; instead, they are in the hands of thousands of small independent operators who have little capability or incentive to pursue long-term/high-risk R&D.
The problem (according to DOE/NETL) is that the vast domestic resources of gas and oil are not in the hands of
oil and gas companies, who alone have the substantial capital needed to develop technology to exploit these vast resources with a viable EROEI.
Here is a report on the current DOE projections of gas/oil supply & demand out to 2030 - no shortages are reported here: