The Myth of Depletion 2

Depletion is not entirely a myth but it usually is. There are huge supply overhangs in terms of earthly oil endowments that are not included in reserves. Reserves are economically extractible oil deposits based on current technology. For instance, within the last year or so, Canada's reserves have grown by tremendous leaps and bounds because Shell Oil has figured out how to reduce the extraction costs on their massive tar sands deposits from the Carter era impracticality of $40 a barrel to the economically viable price of $12 a barrel. The oil sands have been mapped out for decades and no new deposit discovery was required. We didn't have to find a drop of oil, we just had to technologically progress in our extraction methods.

Today, Canada's reserves are bigger than Iraq and they are officially the number two (behind Saudi Arabia) oil nation in the world in terms of available reserves. It happened so quickly and without headlines that nobody much realizes it.

That being said, there is an engineering limit to petroleum available and it is possible to functionally 'run out' of the stuff much as we got off whale oil. Supplies were too small for demand so we got an infrastructure switch to other lighting sources. Today, it's possible to buy whale oil but it is no longer a major component in energy use.

The major "known unknown" is the US WoT and rolling back the Non-Integrated Gap, plugging more and more people into the energy use intensive lifestyle of the Functioning Core. If we do this too quickly, we're going to bid up energy prices something fierce. Right now, calculating out how much energy would be needed, at first world efficiency (Gap nations are much less efficient so the real problem is worse) to fuel a world where US foreign policy is successful in integrating the Gap requires more energy supplies than are known to exist on the planet.

This massive increase in future energy demand is a major impediment to our security policy so it's important to address this constraint. We're in a race against time and if the other side wins, we're going to start losing cities.

I looked at your original link. It was an interesting exchange. I will agree with you that government restrictions on how far we can drive our cars etc. won't do anything that the market itself won't do. When the price of oil goes up, people will drive less.

But this seems like a big problem to me. Maybe an inevitable one, without a government solution, but a problem nevertheless. Like at least one of your critics said, we just have to have cheap fuel to keep functioning the way we do. Without it, alot of people are simply going to have to do with alot less.

Also, I don't agree with your faith -- which, at least to me, is what it seems to be -- that technology and discovery will make up for the decreasing production at the sites that are currently producing. Is there any technology over a century old that hasn't reached some kind of fundamental limit? In microelectronics, for instance, pretty much all researchers and other professionals are saying that it's only a couple of decades away when we hit the wall of the exponential progress we have seen in speed and miniaturization of computers.

Hey, I hope that somewhere there's enough oil, or enough ingenuity, to allow us all to drive Chevy Suburbans and classic Vettes for the next twenty generations. But I don't know that there is, and wishing doesn't make it so.

TML: Good point about increasing energy usage as a result of a successful US foreign policy. I'd heard about Canada, and it's a pretty fascinating development. There must be unimaginable quantities of oil in the deep ocean, and costs for developing that oil will drop over time as well.

BS: And yeah, cheap oil is important, but... there are other sources of cheap, nearly inexhaustible power. Fission reactors would be cheap if they weren't terribly overregulated, for instance, and the energy from fission could be used as the foundation for the "hydrogen economy".

I was limiting my discussion to oil alone, since that seemed to be what everyone was talking about, and there just isn't enough space in these e-discussions to get too far away from the point.

But two things about fission: 1) It was generally agreed not too long ago that there was enough fissionable material out there to keep us going for about another century, and then we would be right back where we started. And now we start discussing market forces and ingenuity and exploration again, except we're talking "uranium" instead of "oil." Maybe your info in this is more recent than mine, but my point would still stand: I hope we can find enough uranium or enough ingenuity to keep us going they way we are, but wishing don't make it so. 2) Fission reactors are always going to require alot of regulation, whether they are currently overregulated or not, for the simple reason that being able to glow in the dark is small recompense for sterility.

Forget fission. Poor money into fusion. We'll be mining the asteroids for water long before we make a dent in the oceans. Most people don't seem to realize that breakeven *has* been obtained, and alot of scientists who were studying basic theoretical fusion concepts a decade or two ago are now working on solving engineering problems in making a commerical reactor.

Bob, my own knowledge on this subject is fairly superficial, but it's my understanding that fuel reprocessing and breeder reactors would extend the supply of fissile materials for a very long time. Nothing lasts forever, but if we built the infrastructure then I'd expect we'd be comfortable until fusion was commercially practical.

But I agree that fusion is where we should concentrate our efforts right now, for a lot of reasons, so it's probably a moot point.

"Also, I don't agree with your faith -- which, at least to me, is what it seems to be -- that technology and discovery will make up for the decreasing production at the sites that are currently producing. Is there any technology over a century old that hasn't reached some kind of fundamental limit?"

Yeah, the fundamental limits imposed by the regulators catching up to the runaway train of progress and firmly applying the brakes. There's no law of physics that says aircraft have to be expensive and difficult to control; we can thank the FAA for the fact that we're all still using groundcars 100 years after the Wright Brothers' first (unregulated) flight.

"Hey, I hope that somewhere there's enough oil, or enough ingenuity, to allow us all to drive Chevy Suburbans and classic Vettes for the next twenty generations. But I don't know that there is, and wishing doesn't make it so."

Ingeniuity has been improving matters for us pretty consistently since the Dark Ages.

"2) Fission reactors are always going to require alot of regulation, whether they are currently overregulated or not, for the simple reason that being able to glow in the dark is small recompense for sterility."

Unless you stick them out in the boonies and set them to work making conventional fuels which are then shipped to civilization. Or come up with economically feasible superconductors. Or make really tiny ones and let people have really tiny amounts of nuclear fuel. Or (most likely) something else no one's thought of yet because there won't be any payoff for thinking of it until oil gets much more expensive.