Peak Oil Update - 16 September 2009

The Carnegie Institute's Geophysics Lab demonstrated that hydrocarbons can be created in the Earth's mantle abiotically. Combined with the findings of Russian drilling expeditions around the world this presents a fine case that abiotic oil is at least as good a theory as the alternative and deserves farther scientific investigation.

I know in the video I asked for "congenial debate," but someone already decided to call me a moron for not believing in King Hubbert's conjecture. The now deleted comment raises a few points that will be addressed here.

1. If oil is being generated abiotically it isn't fast enough to replenish our supply.

Well, considering how there's a 100 year supply of oil in the Alberta tar sands alone I don't see how running out of oil will ever be a problem. My big thing on abiotic oil is to eliminate fear of oncoming disaster "when the oil runs out" as one mocumentary states. I don't honestly believe humanity will still be oil dependent in 100 years nor do I want that to be the case. In the video I clearly state that we'll never run out "in our lifetimes," I never said there was an infinite supply. We keep drilling until over the next few decades technology becomes economically viable to replace oil. That's it.

2. Hubbert's equations were "very accurate," especially on the US peaking.

The US did not peak in the 1970s. Arab oil was discovered dirt cheap. Why remove expensive oil from US soil when cheap oil can be bought from the Arabs? A number of oil wells in the US have begun to refill, megafields have been discovered in Alaska, the Gulf coast, and the Dakotas, new technologies allowing us to break up rock in formerly depleted wells to start extracting useable oil from them again all show that there is an abundance of oil within the United States. There was no peak. Aside from that Hubbert created the bell curve first and then moulded his findings to fit his equations afterwards, sort of like the global warming people today making computer models and when reality doesn't match the models they proclaim that the models are correct and the Earth is somehow mistaken.

-Dee