Yes, we're getting more wells now, and production is increasing overall. But that's a temporary reprieve that will last as long as demand keeps those wells profitable (remember, we need $80 - $100 oil to make new wells work).
A sobering look at oil shale, based on statistics from the North Dakota fields:
The Oil Drum | Is Shale Oil Production from Bakken Headed for a Run with
Again, the reason this stuff now works for us when decades ago it didn't is because current oil prices make it economically viable. But as the productivity of new wells goes down as the easy-to-tap reserves start to run out, it becomes less and less economical to do it. And these wells start losing productivity
a lot faster than traditional oil wells do... meaning higher upfront costs and the need for higher oil prices to support them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mwebb
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It would help your cause more if you didn't cite anti-semitic conspiracy theories based on old rumors and urban legends about fantastic Russian "deep oil".
I've been hearing the exact same tin-foil hat story for years, putting a new date on it doesn't make it any more true. Doesn't help, either, that the Vietnamese oil fields cited weren't actually discovered by the Russians. The first strike was by Mobil, which then had to leave after the Vietnam war. The Russian developers moved in and developed the field after.
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Oil is finite.
But we will not run out of it.
Because there will come a time when we can't afford to drill for it.
It's like arguing that there will always be new planets for us to colonize if we run out of Earth. Yes, there will always be new places to move. We just can't afford to get there.
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