adamant:
Keep an open mind, and study the facts. Don’t assume a technological “genie” will fix everything, or a market “magic” will make everything ok , look into the facts.
I am, and a handful of quotes from energy investors and “former” industry insiders is no substitue for the real data from energy institutes and research.
There are a few people on this board who work for the petroleum institutes, they are not concerned.
http://www.energyseer.com/NewPessimism.pdf
Their own source material (IHS) has debunked the core material of this stuff.
“Perhaps the creators of the database understand
One additional thing to consider: We, really, have no good reason to believe that the oil companies are being truthful/correct when they give their supply/reserve estimates. Shell just announced that they overstated reserves worldwide by 20%, in Oman by 40%:
The Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s oil production in Oman has been declining for years, belying the company’s optimistic reports and raising doubts about a vital question in the Middle East: whether new technology can extend the life of huge but mature oil fields.
Internal company documents and technical papers show that the Yibal field, Oman’s largest, began to decline rapidly in 1997. Yet Sir Philip Watts, Shell’s former chairman, said in an upbeat public report in 2000 that “major advances in drilling” were enabling the company “to extract more from such mature fields.” The internal Shell documents suggest that the figure for proven oil reserves in Oman was mistakenly increased in 2000, resulting in a 40 percent overstatement.
The company’s falling production and reduced reserves in Oman are part of a broader problem facing Shell, the British-Dutch oil giant that earlier this year lowered its estimate of worldwide reserves, a crucial financial indicator, by 20 percent, or 3.9 billion barrels.
Documents show that senior executives were told the calculations of reserves were too high in 2002, at least two years before the company downgraded its estimate this January.
While Oman represents a small part of Shell’s reserves, oil industry experts say the company’s experience there highlights broader questions about the future role of Western oil companies and their technology in the Persian Gulf, which has most of the world’s oil reserves.
In the case of the Yibal field, for example, Shell and Omani oil engineers and auditors have expressed concerns that a technique Sir Philip said would recover more oil not only did not do so, but also increased the amount of water in the extracted oil to as much as 90 percent of the total volume, increasing production costs.