Squeezing the last bit of oil from Mother Earth

As the debate rages over how much longer the flow will last, valuable time is wasted

It follows as night the day that the unquestionably finite nature of fossil fuels inevitably will cause significant changes in the global economy and our way of life.

But the continued lack of absolute certainty

With the final week of August marking the 150th anniversary of commercial oil development, peak-oil deniers have become even more forceful in their arguments.

They have launched spirited attacks on the “alarmists” in recent weeks, stoutly maintaining that there remains a frontier of undiscovered mammoth oil discoveries, and that extraction technology is advancing at such a rapid pace of increased sophistication that even the most challenging deep-sea deposits and complex geological formations can be tapped.

Michael Lynch is at the forefront of the peak-oil deniers. He is former director for Asian energy and security at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a late August op-ed in The New York Times, Lynch wrote that “Oil remains abundant, and the price will likely come down closer to the historical level of $30 (U.S.) a barrel as new supplies come forward. But that may not keep the Chicken Littles from convincing policy-makers in Washington and elsewhere that oil, being finite, must increase in price.”

Toronto Star