First, I feel an introduction is in order. When i was growing up I lived in a household where technology was king, my dad was the first person we knew with a mobile phone and we had all the latest gadgets. There was nothing technology and progress could not overcome and I had never even heard of this "peak oil" nonsense.
Fast forward 15 years and ok we have "Global Warming" and we all have to be "green" at home and work. Nothing to worry about right? Saving energy saves money and I think everyone understands you buy a Toyota Prius if you want the fuel efficiency goodness. Still plenty of oil and fossil fuels left in the ground for Business As Usual.
A few months ago stumbled upon this site: theoildrum and since then I've started hearing alot of worrying things. Now I've always watched the news and read the newspapers - I'd like to think I'm as well informed as the next man on the street but just try typing in "peak oil" into YouTube. Go on, do it. I know what you've found boils down to two main types of video. One the one hand you have slightly boring monologues about how the supply is going to "peak" soon while demand increases and on the other you have crazy people saying theres plenty of oil - burn baby burn!
All well and good, but where are the sensible, boring people saying "peak oil" isn't really here? Those videos take a little more searching.
Still think that its going to be easy for us to increase the supply of cheap oil? Well this blog may try to convince you otherwise. I give you the article that prompted me to record my thoughts online:
using-nuclear-power-to-extract-oil
Yes thats right, Nuclear Power plants used to extract oil. I feel like the emissary saying "This is madness!" As was widely reported the oil price spiked up to what, around $147 a barrel just before the global economy went pop so I don't feel too extremist saying that we need cheap oil not expensive oil. Now I'm not a scientist (I actually failed to graduate from university) but Nuclear plants cost billions of $$$ how exactly is oil from oil sands going to be anything like cheap?
At the moment I think the answer is "its not". The above article also mentions new technology being proposed to improve the efficiency, and therefore reducing the costs of oil from these Canadian oil sands.
Heres the link for reference: making-dirty-oil-a-little-less-so
The important line is in the middle of the article " Production isn’t likely to begin for at least six years". Hmm, not what I would have called rapid progress.
Thanks for reading and please return from time to time for more thought provoking posts.
