The wide-ranging Al Fin hit upon a graph that will stun the peak oil believers. You’ll want to save this. The flip side is it comes from the International Energy Agency (IEA) – a point that many will use to cast justifiable suspicion. Yet absolute accuracy isn’t needed, the blocks paint a picture of a ratio that even if wrong by 50%, there is a huge amount of petroleum supply yet to be used.

Comparing the yellow block of production to date with the sum of the others is a shock to many doomers – er, peak oil believers. Actually another whole block is missing, the secondary and tertiary recovery from the produced block. Factually, the development of secondary and tertiary recovery and the application is a function of wells operated by the free world majors and not much by the national oil companies. Over time the MENA, Other Conventional Oil, Deepwater and Ultra Deepwater, and Artic blocks will have secondary and tertiary recovery, too. And recovery technology is going to get better.

The price “problem” is based in the driver being supply demand. Most of the list is more costly than drilling and pumping out oil. The “drill, baby drill” call may sound a bit simplistic, but for keeping supply up to demand it remains the only fast answer and will remain so for decades.

For the alternative, new product, biofuel, environmental, and global warming perspectives high oil prices make their future goals real. The barrier for them is the research and development costs plus the incentive to invest in viable economic scale. The whole of the non-petroleum fuel business need look no further than American corn farmers and Brazilian sugar cane farmers for the only existing example of success.

There is also, as Mr. Fin points out, “New sources for transport fuels are likely to come from many directions, including new gas-to-liquids (GTL) technologies. Oxford Catalyst’s microchannel GTL technology is very much in demand, as are other new varieties of GTL technologies. The market for GTL fuels may be more than 20 million barrels per day! Imagine the impact of that huge new supply on the global oil market. (Note that approximately between 5 and 10 million barrels per day could be produced via GTL from currently flared gas alone. Stranded gas could double that number.) More information at this PDF white paper download from Velocys, creator of the Oxford Catalysts microchannel technology.

But short term, something the persons running for U.S. president might keep in mind, is that getting our neighbors in Canada piped up to the U.S. market and getting rid of Venezuela’s Chavez should be one of the economic priorities. Follow that with oil shale research to drive that price down and the future doesn’t look bleak at all.

Thanks Al! Made my day!

Comments