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Old 08-17-2012, 01:52 AM   #47 (permalink)
jamesqf
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sid View Post
The truth is we have discovered and used up almost all of the cheap and easily extracted oil. All future oil will be harder to find, harder to extract, and probably have a greater risk of a more significant environmental impact. And, as a consequence, it will cost more, a lot more.
Even beyond that, a lot of those "discoveries", like the Bakken formation in North Dakota abd the Marcellus Shale* in the northeast, have in fact been known for decades. It just wasn't profitable to extract the oil & gas when it cost maybe $80/bbl to get it out of the ground, and oil from the Middle East was selling at $25/bbl.

*I grew up there, and most everybody had stories of people whose water wells put out a little gas.
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