

Responses from The Oil Drum to Michael Lynch's NYT essay on Peak Oil - RyanMcGreal
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5711

======
cwan
To see energy in context solely as Peak Oil is myopic. There is more energy in
the Marcellus Shale Gas (<http://geology.com/articles/marcellus-shale.shtml>)
than oil in Saudi Arabia - and this is energy that no one thought economical
to extract or even knew was there until the last 2-3 years when new extraction
technologies matured. But that's not the extent of it, there are massive
deposits being discovered across the US and Canada and there are believed to
be significant deposits in China, India, Europe and Africa.

Check out this presentation out that Paul Kedrosky linked to:
[http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/08/the_grand_energ.ht...](http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/08/the_grand_energ.html).
But just look at the prices of oil and natural gas and see how they've
dramatically separated. Heck, even with oil, they only recently discovered the
massive Tupi field off the coast of Brazil - with an estimated 5-8 billion
barrels of oil ([http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Alternative-energy-
powerhouse-...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Alternative-energy-powerhouse-
apf-112344329.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=))

~~~
RyanMcGreal
You're ignoring rate of extraction. There could be a trillion barrels of oil
in some new non-conventional field, but it doesn't do a lot of good if you
can't get more than 2 or 3 mbpd out of it.

~~~
eserorg
You need to lookup the hyperbolic decline curves for United States shale gas
plays.

With these 'unconventional' plays, the production is front-loaded. For
instance, many Haynesville shale natural gas wells will produce as much gas in
their first 6 months of life as they will over the next 20 years.

The same goes for the Bakken tight-oil play in Montana.

The 'rate of extraction' in unconventional oil and gas plays is extremely
front-loaded. Which is why you see such large location basis price
differential around these plays.

In other words, the United States is producing so much natural gas that we're
running out of pipelines, storage facilities, and power plants to consume it
all.

There is so much natural gas in the United States that the US should be a net
energy exporter.

However, the federal government has not approved a single permit for a natgas
export terminals in over 40 years.

Import terminals get approval on a regular basis, however.

Meanwhile, we're complaining about our dependence on foreign oil and
subsidizing windmills.

Genius.

------
Retric
I can't help but applauded how the third chart is manipulated to show trends
that don't really exist by hiding the post 92 oil numbers in the US. Not only
does it make the trend look worse, but it also let's them use fishy numbers
for reaming oil in the US without raising alarm bells. Failing to adjust for
inflation and starting at 1930 is also well played.

<http://zfacts.com/p/318.html>

