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Jim: jdipeso@rep.org
(253) 740-2066 / 2009
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How Much Oil Is Left Is Not the Right
Question
September 29, 2009
Peak oil? Not so fast, say oilmen and other critics of the idea that
the world is approaching a global peak in oil production, after which
output will decline inexorably.
Oil producers are able to drill farther and deeper into formations that
previously could not be produced but have been pulled from behind a
geological veil by advanced exploration technology. Look, they say, at
the recent big discoveries in very deep water in the Gulf of Mexico and
off the coast of Brazil.
Not only that, once those far-flung fields are opened, new techniques
are coming on that will enable oilmen to pull out half the petroleum in
place, rather than the one-third or so that is common today.
A recent Scientific
American article contributed by an executive of Eni, an
Italian oil company, sums up the optimists' case by predicting that
improved technology and a not-too-high, not-too-low Goldilocks oil
price of $60 to $70 per barrel could boost oil reserves to 4 trillion
to 5 trillion barrels by 2030, once you count oil sands, shale, and
heavy oils like the gunky stuff in Venezuela's Orinoco belt.
It's a dazzlingly optimistic argument. We've used up a bit over a
trillion barrels since Edwin Drake's primitive drill inaugurated the
age of oil in 1859. The peak oil community believes that we have only a
trillion or so barrels left to produce, give or take a hundred billion
here and there.
Let's say the optimists are correct, however, and agree that technology
and prices high enough to encourage its improvement and use could
extend the oil age deep into the 21st century and perhaps into the
22nd.
A critical issue is whether it would be safe to load the atmosphere
with the carbon dioxide that burning oil at prodigious rates for
another century would send skyward.
The question cannot be brushed aside. A compendium of the latest
research, compiled for climate treaty negotiators who will meet in
Denmark later this year, shows that the impacts of carbon pollution are
gathering force faster than even pessimistic scientists had projected a
few years ago.
Those facts about climate change bear on whether there can be a
long-term future for carbon-rich fuels.
One factor in the equation is the difference between burning coal and
burning oil. That difference is the feasibility of capturing their
carbon emissions and sequestering it away from the atmosphere. It might
be feasible to capture carbon emissions from burning coal. Coal is used
in a manageable set of large, chunky facilities that could be regulated
and retrofitted to capture and store carbon.
Not so with oil, two-thirds of which goes to fuel transportation. Some
oil is used in large facilities, but most is not. Capturing carbon
emissions from petrochemical plants and refineries might be doable.
Capturing carbon emissions from millions of exhaust pipes almost
certainly would not.
The critical question, then, is not how much oil is left but how much
oil we can safely use and still head off dangerous climate change.
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