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| Canada has more oil than Saudi Arabia in the oilsands. The NYT article is very wrong about the break even amount for oilsand extraction - it's only about $12 now. |
The extraction of bitumen from the tar sands currently takes massive amounts of natural gas, which is in decline in North America, and it can only be converted at a certain rate. Extracting bitumen from tar sands is a massive, environmentally devastating, energy intensive process. It's nothing like digging a hole in the ground and watching the oil spurt out. The energy returned on the energy that goes into the process is positive with tar sands right now, but not by much.
Peak oil is not a theory any more than turning a pitcher to the side and watching the beer flow out of it is a theory. There's a finite amount of the stuff. Every single field ever discovered in the world shows more or less the same depletion curve with very few exceptions. It's not a matter of if oil will peak, but when. And lots of people in the know say now or soon. People who disagree are rarely geologists, almost always economists who deal with paper not rocks.
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| They told us 30 years ago we were running out. Guess what we were not, but it sure made everyone run out for a tank of gas. I remember the shortage of the mid 70s well, long lines and all, and i was only a teen. I dont buy the story this time. |
I just don't understand the logic here. Because people have been wrong about the resource in the past means that the resource somehow defies nature and will never run out? Does that make any sense at all? People love to bring up the old fable about the boy who cried wolf, saying that people have been predicting the end of the oil age over and over for decades. Well, in my copy of that fable in the end the wolf
really does come and eat all the sheep, leaving the villagers to starve and freeze.
