So Much For Peak Oil

Back when Mel Gibson was cool

Despite all the Malthusian doom prophesies, human beings keep disproving (disappointing?) the prophets and innovating new ways to adapt to their changing circumstances.  The latest and most popular Cassandras (with apologies to Cassandra of Troy, whose prophesies were true) are "environmentalists", and among their many dooms day predictions is "Peak Oil".  The idea is that if we continue to rely on petroleum and other fossil fuels, we'll soon exhaust those raw materials and end up in a real life version of Mad Max.

Unfortunately for Gaia's worshipers, but fortunately for us, there's more ptroleum in Colorado alone, than we've ever used.

Drillers in Utah and Colorado are poking into a massive shale deposit trying to find a way to unlock oil reserves that are so vast they would swamp OPEC.

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."

Both the GAO and private industry estimate the amount of oil recoverable to be 3 trillion barrels.
"In the past 100 years — in all of human history -- we have consumed 1 trillion barrels of oil. There are several times that much here," said Roger Day, vice president for operations for American Shale Oil (AMSO).

Why haven't we tapped into this incredible resource?  Cost.

Exploration well 40 miles northwest of Rifle, CO

This tantalizing bonanza, however, remains just out of reach, at least for now. The cost of extracting the Green River oil at the moment would be higher than what it could be sold for.

The reason for the cost is a technical problem.

The hydrocarbons in Green River shale are more intimately bound up with the rock, so that fracking cannot release them. The shale has to be heated to 5,000 degrees Farenheit before it will give up its oil.

Producers have been trying to accomplish that in one of two ways: Either they bring the shale to the surface and then cook it , or they sink a deep shaft and place an electric heater at the base, a process called in-situ. AMSO has been testing in-situ with mixed success.

And that's why Thomas Robert Malthus and his philosophycal descendants constantly prove to be wrong.  They underestimate human ingenuity and the effects of economics (which is ironic, since Malthus was an economist).  High prices provide an incentive for people to devise solutions to a problem.  That's what engineers do.  They apply scientific principles to solving practical problems.  Once the problems is solved, engineers refine the methods used to solve the problem, and the solution becomes less expensive.

What drives all this problem solving?  The profit motive.

And that explains why "environmentalists" constantly underestimate this process. 

"Environmentalists" are almost universaly Socialist.  They don't understand the profit motive, or how it makes people's lives better.  If they did, they'd be Capitalists.