Non Peak Oil

The concept of Peak Oil indicates we are running out of this precious resource and that the future may be grave if dramatic action is not forthcoming by the powers that be. If you doubt me ask Al Gore or read any of his eco-gibberish. The President has invaded a sovereign country, Iraq, in order to protect and secure the life and liberty of American Citizens while conferring the principles of democracy onto the grateful Iraqi people. It is possible this is not related to Peak Oil at all.

According to oil industry sources, the commonly accepted proven reserves are 1.226 trillion barrels of oil. Just how much is this? Using established standards for volume we can convert barrels of oil into cubic miles. The number that I calculate is about 48 cubic miles of oil. Given that the volume of the earth is much, much larger (many billions of cubic miles), then this is really not that much oil. Is oil really so scarce that the freedom of the Western world depends upon trampling a few small countries who really do not know freedom and have no history of anything other than brutal dictatorship, for which our democracy will be a refreshing and welcomed change?

If we consider that the world is consuming a lot of oil, and that the consumption grows each and every year, the key question becomes how long until we run out? I calculate this to be about 49 years at current consumption rates. These could actually be too low and thus we could be burning it faster than that depending on rates of consumption in growing economies like India and China.

The flaw in this argument is that every year we have more proven reserves at the end of the year than we did at the beginning, thanks to vigorous exploration and improved extraction technologies. This has been the consistent theme for as long as oil reserves have been calculated. There has never been a time that the oil industry has had less proven reserves at the beginning of the year than at the end, even with the intervening 365 days of consumption being factored in. Odd circumstances indeed for a scarce resource!

LewRockwell.com