If nothing else drives the development of alternative fuels and alternative power sources, this will. Hurray for the military industrial complex!
-FrL-
That article seems to assume that “reserve” does mean “total amount of oil left in the world,” but makes a distinction between proven reserves and unconventional reserves.
Nothing in that article or in your post explains this:
If economics has something to say about this, I would think that it would say that when oil prices spike, we have passed between 50% and 66% of proven reserves, not “total” preserves.
-FrL-
Total reserves don’t go up when we discover new oil fields. Estimates of total reserves may go up.
In any case- particularly from a strategic standpoint- planning for a day when oil is more scarce, or much more expensive, which may amount to the same thing, is wise.
Ah yes, good catch. I get lost in all this Rumsfeldtian epistemology
As if. Nowadays Strategic Planning barely extends into the year after next (unless you’re based in the US, in which case it seems to mean the quarter after next). The oil price is down this month, consumption has levelled off this month, back to business as usual. Expect gasoline subsidies to be announced soon to get the economy moving. :smack:
You don’t often see the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applied to geology.
As Really already pointed out, total oil reserves do not increase as new oil fields are discovered. The oil was already part of the total reserve, discovered or not.
The problem is that people don’t get past it. They think of known reserves as the important factor and they see that known reserves can increase. So they stop thinking about the implications of total reserves.
Except when it isn’t. Some things are beyond economics. If you want a pet dog, you’ll spend about ten bucks at the pound. If you want a pet panda, you’re probably going to spend several million dollars getting one but it’s possible. So this is an economic issue. But if you want a pet unicorn, it doesn’t matter how much money you have and how much you’re willing to pay. So it’s not an economic issue.
Oil, obviously, is not a unicorn. It’s not even a panda yet. But perpetual cheap oil is a unicorn - all the money in the world will not buy you an unlimited supply of readily accessible oil because it doesn’t exist. So people need to stop thinking that oil and perpetual cheap oil are the same thing. Everytime somebody tries to point out the evidence of the decline of perpetual cheap oil, somebody else will try to refute the evidence by talking about oil.
I was referring specifically to the military, since we’re talking about what to run tanks on and such. They still plan ahead. Ridiculously far ahead, at times.
Sorry if I was a bit unclear.
The OP made no mention of cheap oil, nor did Blake. It is just economics. We can make oil from coal, at a price. We can extract oil from shales, at a price. We can extract oil from drillable reservoirs, at a price. It just so happens that the last is much more profitable than the first two, at the moment. If the price of oil goes back up, the first two will become more profitable.