From the BBC’s David Shukman [quoting independent oil producer Fred Holmes]:
‘There's still plenty of oil - we just haven't got all of it out of the ground yet. There's not a real danger of there being no fossil fuel… the oil is still valuable and it's not easy to get,’ he [Holmes] told BBC News.
‘There's enough oil in this country for another 100 years with our present technology and there's more around the world to be found yet.’
Mr Holmes said that the average yield of the San Joaquin valley area was declining by about 8% a year but that new wells and new methods kept production viable.
The Monterey shale beneath California is estimated to contain a vast 15 billion barrels of oil - potentially worth $500bn (£330bn) - though there are uncertainties about whether the complex geology will allow easy extraction.
New extraction efforts are happening across a country once thought to be in oil-production decline.
It’s not unusual to read these kinds of quotes from fossil fuel industry cheerleaders. If it weren’t for the facts, I’d love listening to and reading more!
As I and others have reported endlessly, peak oil is not about “a real danger of there being no fossil fuel.” No one knowledgeable about reserve and the less-definite resource totals kicked around disputes the large numbers. It remains instead mostly an idiotic straw man proposition, given that no legitimate proponent of peak oil ever makes that stupid argument. But true to form, the Right continues to trot out its playbook list of nonsense (including the obligatory but context- and information-free “vast” supply.)
A comment like this is usually part of the program: "There's enough oil in this country for another 100 years with our present technology and there's more around the world to be found yet" , although the logical follow-ups [how soon can we expect access? how much will it cost? etc., etc] are nowhere to be found.
It’s one thing to announce a large number indicative of what mankind has left to play with. It’s another story entirely to explain how—or even if—we can get it from “there” to here in timely and affordable fashion. That’s actually a very important story which won’t get told very often if one relies on the fossil fuel industry or its spokespeople for a full dose of information.
And how does one know there’s oil if it hasn’t been found? Given all our technology, shouldn’t we have found the good and easy stuff by now?
And what does this mean? “The average yield of the San Joaquin valley area was declining by about 8% a year but that new wells and new methods kept production viable.” Viable? How should we define “viable?” An 8% decline is not insignificant! And no great surprise, not one word about the challenges of extracting the tight oil from the Monterey formation—which is unlike most other reserves.
Geology has imposed its own set of factors on the Monterey:
The earth under the Monterey Shale has undergone constant seismic reshaping that has folded, stacked and fractured the substrate, trapping the oil in accordion pleats of hard rock at depths of up to 12,000 feet. To reach the crude using conventional methods requires oil companies to drill far-deeper wells, and more of them — a prohibitively expensive undertaking….
The shallow, 1,000-foot wells in the established Bakersfield oil patch might cost a hundred thousand dollars to sink. In the Monterey formation, that expense might run to $5 million, and with every chance of yielding a dry hole
But hey! It’s “potentially worth $500bn” possibly; perhaps; maybe. So what if “there are uncertainties about whether the complex geology will allow easy extraction. New extraction efforts are happening across a country once thought to be in oil-production decline.”
Who needs facts or context when we have “new extraction efforts.” And we shouldn’t trouble ourselves over the fact that for all of our abundant vast massive possible potentials, the U.S. reached peak oil production more than 40 years ago and we’re still not getting close.
Facts! Who needs ‘em [besides the public, that is]?
Adapted from a blog post of mine
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