In the US resides a guy who’s academic and professional credentials are as impressive and impeccable as one can assemble in a career. His Wikipedia professional/academic bio shows top-level roles at a who’s who of globally significant institutions.
Larry Summers has been: student at MIT, PhD from Harvard, US Secretary of the Treasury, director of the National Economic Council, president of Harvard University, Chief Economist of the World Bank, US federal Under Secretary for International Affairs in the Department of Treasury, a managing partner at a hedge fund, and is now on the board of OpenAI.
And yet…just a few weeks ago, Larry Summers made a comment about a bedrock of the economy seems so fundamentally bad that it is enough to shake one’s faith in every one of those institutions. He was talking about whether the US should create a Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is kind of like a national savings account that governments squirrel money into in order to fund future projects or spending requirements. They are very great things indeed, reflecting the wisdom of having savings for a rainy day, but given how politicians love to spend not just the money that they have but everything they can borrow, the idea seems kind of quaintly hopeless in the first place, even though some countries have accomplished it.
But the shocking part of this story is why Summers was against the idea; here’s his quote: “It’s one thing if you’re Norway or the Emirates — that has this huge natural resource that’s going to run out that you’re exporting— to accumulate a big wealth fund. But we’ve got a big trade deficit. We’ve got a big, budget deficit…”
He’s absolutely right about the US’ financial woes; our dear southern neighbour is currently the equivalent of a 28-year-old guy twice divorced with 8 kids between 4 women who is working at the lumber yard and juggles 14 credit cards simultaneously (definitely not implying Canada is much better…).
No, he’s right that those are the biggest fiscal issues to deal with, but what’s crazy is the other part of his statement. He says that Norway and the Emirates should create sovereign wealth funds because they ‘have this huge resource that’s going to run out that you’re exporting’ and thus can/should accumulate a big wealth fund.
Mr. Summers apparently does not understand either depleting natural resources, or the US’ economic powerhouse status due to these resources, or both. Either fact is shocking, given his stature; but his analysis of the situation gives a clue about why major western powers are in such shambles with respect to energy policy.
What Mr. Summers presumably meant is that the US does not have an economy that is dominated by export of a natural resource, such as how oil or natural gas exports are not a fundamental pillar of the economy as with Norway or the Emirates. And yes, the US does have other desperately needed uses for the money derived from exports.
But he seems to think the US is immune from its resources ‘running out’. He doesn’t seem to understand that while the US economy may not be dominated by oil/gas exports, the problem of resource depletion will not matter to the US because it does not dominate the economy. That is the charitable interpretation; the less kind one is that he may well believe that the US will never run out of affordable hydrocarbons.
It’s easy to see where he and other policy makers get the idea. If they think about petroleum reserves at all, they would find coverage in the general mainstream financial press, in publications such as Forbes, a standard of US economic communications that claims over 5 million readers through 43 global editions. The publication is aimed at the who’s who of the financial world: “Forbes is #1 within the business & finance competitive set for reaching influential decision-makers.” It is exactly what a guy like Summers would turn to to understand the US’ resource capability (I doubt he spends much time understanding rock quality).
Here is what Forbes had to say about the US’ hydrocarbon reserves. In an article entitled U.S. Shale Oil and Natural Gas, Underestimated Its Whole Life, the author chronicles how forecasts of US shale potential have been continually underestimating productive capability. Fair enough, that is definitely true. But the extrapolations/conclusions are pretty wild, and, dangerous: “…the reality is that shale production [for both oil and natural gas] has surpassed all expectations namely through the constant advance of technologies and improvement of operations…In fact, the Shale Revolution has shown us that the amount of oil and gas we can produce is essentially unlimited.”
It’s not a bad article on the whole, when it describes how we’ve underestimated shale growth, but these silly concluding assumptions are not good at all. They’re soundbites that reach far more ears because of the source than true expertise from industry journals (including, ahem, this excellent one). Those soundbites are what lodge in the minds of people like Larry Summers when he huddles with his global cohort to discuss energy policy.
Consider as an alternative analysis something far more thoughtful and thus less dead-certain, such as the work of Novi Labs, who put out incredibly detailed reports that analyze production trends, with a key difference from Forbes: Novi bases their projections on actual well data, well spacing, well productivity, well length, gas/oil ratios, rock quality, and many other parameters. For example, Novi recently published a paper entitled “Analyzing Midland Basin Well Performance and Future Outlook with Machine Learning” in which they conclude that, based on the above parameters and more, that the Midland Basin has about 25,000 future locations remaining, and breaks them out into prices required to develop them, and has the wisdom to conclude: “Due to the Permian Basin’s role as the marginal growth barrel, overestimating the remaining resources will have consequences spanning from price spikes to energy security and geopolitics.” 29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
Based on such incredibly detailed analyses, Novi is comfortable making, for example, Permian oil/gas production out to the year 2030.
Forbes is comfortable making oil/gas production forecasts to infinity, based on nothing more than a string of failed projections.
And people head off into the highest levels of government having read Forbes but not Novi. And we get Germany. And Canada. And etc.
This isn’t a question about whether we will “run out of oil”. The surest way to rile an audience it seems – just behind challenging EV superiority – is to question the ultimate productive capability of hydrocarbon resources. “Peak oil” is now a term of derision, in some ways rightly so because many smart people have, over time, warned that resources are about to run out.
It does seem erroneous to think that way, because as prices for something rise, more exploration will occur, and by definition we don’t know what those discoveries will encounter. Could be a little, could be a lot.
The point here is best explained by way of a real life example. A long time ago, late last century, natural gas was dirt cheap across western Canada. (Bizarrely, it’s even cheaper now, but not consistently so.) In Saskatchewan where (and when) I grew up, an alfalfa processing industry had developed that was a godsend to many small communities. Farmers would grow alfalfa and dedicate the output to a local (often community owned) alfalfa-processing facility that would convert green alfalfa into nutrient-rich pellets for which Japan (primarily) had a seemingly insatiable appetite.
The whole business existed because of the availability of cheap natural gas, which allowed for the rapid and economical dehydration of the green alfalfa; huge drying drums ran around the clock, all summer long, turning huge piles of fresh chopped-alfalfa salad into dried out pellets within 12 hours.
But then natural gas prices soared to unprecedented levels, over $10/GJ, and found a new average that was probably about twice the average in the 1980s and 1990s. This spike in natural gas prices wiped out the entire industry. Every little town lost a pillar of the community, investors lost investments, municipalities lost tax revenue, and hundreds or maybe even thousands of punks like me lost summer job opportunities.
THAT is what people like Larry Summers should be thinking about when they talk of, or heaven forbid ask questions about, the longevity of our hydrocarbon resources. Yes, there will be oil and natural gas reserves forever – but at what price? And what will the consequences of higher prices be?
In the spring of 2022, some large US trade associations issued warnings about the consequences of higher natural gas prices. “Last winter’s heating bills were unsustainable,” said the CEO of the Western Equipment Dealers Association. The winter to which he was referring, 2021-22, had average Henry Hub prices of $4.56/mmbtu – far higher than today, but a number that will probably be required over the long term to enable continued US reservoir development and feed LNG export demand.
That price level of which the CEO was frightened of, it is well worth noting, is a fraction of the global price of LNG. In other words, US industry will freak out if it has to pay even half of what the rest of the world does.
At a time when the US is desperate to ‘onshore’ a lot of manufacturing capacity, policy makers should be very careful about ‘what they know for sure’ about the future of US and Canadian energy productive capability.
Energy ignorance, at these levels of government, are getting deadly. I mean, we can all see Germany, right? It’s turning slapstick, what they’re doing to energy policy, and so many western leaders seem intent on following them. Force the closure of baseload power, force the adoption of intermittent power, watch AI buy up all the power from nuclear sources, claim to support new nuclear power which everyone knows won’t get here for a few decades, then trot off to an annual fall climate conference to tell the world what to do next.
As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
What the world desperately needs – energy clarity. And a few laughs. Pick up The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity, available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.
It’s ignorant to think that it’s ignorance. It’s all on purpose.
It’s both. Many of the ruling-class really aren’t that bright- like John Kerry.
Many of those Kerry-type folks are smart regarding the wrong things, because those things are easier to be smart about.
They are not smart regarding energy, because that is too complicated, the main reason I like it so much.
The US needs to practice energy efficiency, as engineer Carter advocated.
We should not export our fossil fuels and wood chips.
We should build efficient factories, with lots of AI and robots, like the Tesla plants, and then EXPORT the goods we make to countries with high energy prices.
That would employ tens of millions of jobs which support millions of families, and thousands of communities.
NO MORE RUST BELTS IN THE US
Trump has to wind by a landslide to make it happen.
There is no reason to NOT export wood chips if anyone wants to buy them. The fact that maybe Drax should be burning coal or whatever is a UK problem. The wood chips are a waste product- despite me trying to inform you of this and you not listening, it’s a fact. Good wood is not chipped because it’s worth several orders of magnitude more. Here in the American Northeast, the woods are filled with “junk wood” due to past high grading. Do you know that? A forest loaded with damaged trees (butt damage from skidders) and slow growing, early dying, low value species is stupid – when they could be loaded with high value, long lasting pine, maple, oak, etc. The only way to get most of that junk wood off the property is from chipping- most of it. Of course there is a limited market for firewood and pulp, but there is far too much junk wood for those limited markets. Not exporting chips has no benefit for the forest or the owner or the local economy. I manage timber sales in Berkshire County for 35 years with no chip market. Even the best loggers left the woods looking crappy with all that slash. I then moved to north central MA where there is or was a chip market. The jobs came out much nicer- far nicer- so that I’d leave only the very best trees. These forests now look like well managed parks. There still is some slash on the ground as its required by law (they call it large and small woody debris) supposedly needed by wildlife, blah, blah, blah. And, the loggers simply don’t get it all because some breaks off as they drag the full tree out- and they don’t care for large forks, and hollow logs. I have some examples of this kind of work in several videos I made and had on YouTube. Then I took them down. Maybe I’ll put them back up again.
If you like really nice looking forests- and if you’d like to see more high quality lumber available and better prices, then you’d support chipping. Of course this doesn’t mean all loggers do a great job. There are crooked foresters and loggers out there- that’s the real problem and that’s what I’ve been fighting against for half a century. The stupid enviros however think the solution to bad logging is to end logging rather than “make logging great again”. 🙂
You say all the things we should do- as if it’s really easy- just snap your finger or vote for the right politician. It’s not that easy. Trump will do far more in this regard compared to that 3fer. But it’s going to take half a century.
I was in Germany during 1945 to 1959
It took Germany, the losers, less than 15 years to come out of a very deep pit to become the premier producer of goods in Europe.
That took everyone by surprise, especially France, the UK and the US, the winners
But Germany was not wasting $900 BILLION on defense/intelligence, and other BS, such as Ukraine $100 BILLION/y, illegals $150 BILLION/y.
The millions of metric tonnes of wood pellets we send to the EU is from pine forests in the south
Large areas are clear cut on MANAGED forests, turned into pellets, and shipped to the UK, Denmark, Germany, because the EU has declared burning biomass is CO2 free, which is total BS.
“Large areas are clear cut on MANAGED forests, turned into pellets”
FALSE- I’VE TRIED EXPLAINING IT TO YOU BUT YOU’RE DENSE AS A BRICK- BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT, I DON’T CARE
Now Germany is building up its military, like Poland. Germany had a free ride thanks to the American military umbrella- same for Japan. Now they both realize it’s time to man up.
Sorry Joseph, but no cigar
My neighbor in Vermont, a transplant from Georgia, is a retired VP of Weyerhaeuser.
He was directly involved in lumber production from managed pine forests in Georgia. He has a degree in forestry from Yale
It takes 25 years to grow a pine that would take 40 years in New England.
The clearcut areas are replanted with new pines several years old, grown in Weyerhaeuser greenhouses.
The pines are turned to sawdust and then to pellets by pellet plants
From there by train to Savannah and then by boat to Europe.
Millions of metric ton of pellets are shipped to coal plants for co-firing in Europe, each year
I don’t care who your idiot friend is. They do UNEVEN AGE SILVICULTURE DOWN THERE. That means they ALWAYS CLEARCUT- all their forests- or most of them. I’M NOT SAYING THEY DON’T CLEARCUT. Then they segregate the wood into piles- by grades- what’s not graded goes to firewood or pulp and what’s left goes to chips. About 3% of all the wood cut in the American south goes to chips. Tell your friend I said to f*ck off. He’s a moron.
If some wood goes to Europe, so the f*ck what? Enough. No more conversation with you.
You might begin to learn something if you look at the Drax site explaining their sourcing of the chips. Of course you’ll say it’s all lies and propaganda. I will find other sources of information. You essentially repeat the BS from forestry haters who say “biomass is worse than coal”. I know all about those lying forestry haters as I’ve been fighting them for many years. I know their lies and propaganda.
https://www.drax.com/sustainable-bioenergy/the-us-souths-biomass-sourcing-areas-analysed/#chapter-5
Again, I’m not saying they don’t clearcut- that’s the most common kind of forestry in the American south- called “even age silviculture”. There are tens of millions of acres of managed forest in Dixie- they don’t need to take all the wood from a clearcut and chip it- which would be extraordinarily ignorant. There is SO MUCH wood down there, they do just fine using only the wood that doesn’t have a higher value.
Personally, I don’t like clear-cutting. I did in once in 50 years- a stand of white pine in which every single tree was damaged by the white pine weevil. But forestry in the north is different than forestry in the south- which is more like agriculture. After clear-cutting, the usually clear he site completely- then replant, mostly with mono-culture species- often genetically engineered. Then they thin the stands a few times, then clearcut again. It’s THEIR LAND so they can do whatever they like. If tree huggers and bird watchers don’t like it, TOO BAD. It’s big business, no like forestry in the northeast, which is mostly small family run mills, small logging firms, small forester companies.
Have your friend provide proof that all or most of the chips that get sent to Drax come from clearcuts- and that all of the wood on those clearcuts was chipped with none being sent to better markets, like sawtimber, plywood, firewood, pulp.
Over many decades I have been fortunate to observe the skill of decision making in some countries. The quality has dropped remarkably since year 2000.
Belief in ideologies has grown. The IQ of decision makers has dropped to the level where most are as thick as two short planks. I suggest these are 2 dominant causes of catastrophe in the category of cost of living now and ahead of us.
The solutions ae not easy. Candidates for future offices have to be found, people who are of higher intelligence and experience. Also, this green ideology, which is basically stupid because it places far too much weight on “preservation of the environment” has to be recognized for the special pleading that it is. The main objective to replace it needs to recognize individual happiness which is closely tied to personal income, which is affected by cost of living, which is affected by stupid decisions.
(The mass media is a big part of the problem, especially middle aged women with soft degrees, no experience working productively with and opinions shared by few except each other.)
Geoff S
Geoff, unfortunately now, the ranks of global governance are populated / dominated by self-identifying narcissist “leaders” who surround themselves with psychophants who aspire to rising to the level of acknowledged “expert” accolades their heroes attract from the MSM.
I know people who take seriously the drivel that escapes from the mouth of “leaders” like Justin Trudeau who by any rational assessment is dumb as a bag of spanners.
I don’t see an early end to this demise of rationality in public discourse, and it makes me sad and frustrated that this will be the state of the world as I depart it.
Many of us knew that about Trudeau from the get go, he was elected on the basis of name and good hair by women with soft degrees and cats
Re your last sentence (the middle bit), you left out the cats.
Talk of ‘peak oil’ is baseless.
Just as whale oils for lighting and lubrication were superseded by mineral oils doubtless they will in turn be superseded by new technologies such as electrofuels powered by nuclear when economically viable.
We moved from peak oil supply to peak oil demand forecasts.
Thanks to the stupid policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
Jim, I agree. Their stupidity, ineptness is off-the-charts.
They have done enormous damage to the US and made the world less safe.
The Biden fiasco regarding withdrawal from Afghanistan killed a number Americans and many Afghanistan people, and left $80 BILLION of US equipment there, per the Pentagon.
The Biden/Harris 2022 calamity, costing $100 BILLION/y (plus $60 BILLION/y from the EU), in sorrowful, proxy Ukraine, is unfolding.
The Biden/Harris fiasco regarding the just walk-in open border, to purposely alter/make worse the US demographics, is costing $150 BILLION/y, a hell of a lot more than a proper wall.
The FEMA fiasco regarding delayed, insufficient help for people in Georgia and North Carolina, because FEMA spend emergency funds on illegals, such as for building apartment buildings in Maine, which provide illegals free rent for 2 years, plus other goodies.
Georgia has about 100 counties and parishes. FEMA gave $$$ to 15 urban countiies with Democrat votes, and nothing to 85 rural entities with Republican votes.
No wonder Governor Kemp is pissed and is now supporting Trump.
The Biden/Harris out-of-control federal budget deficits and trade deficits.
INTEREST on the national debt, $36 TRILLION is over $1 TRILLION/y
Just print more money, as in Germany/Italy during the Depression, which, due to chaos, gave rise to REAL dictators, such a Hitler and tin-horn/big-mouth Mussolini?
The Biden/Harris high inflation
The Biden/Harris high prices of food, energy, housing, etc.
The Biden/Harris lowered standard of living
The Biden/Harris East Coast offshore wind power fiasco, of which nearly nothing has been built
The attacks by Democrats on the first and second amendments.
Democratic public discourse, even of speech you do not like and upsets your apple cart, cannot exist without the first amendment
The second amendment exists to support the first amendment, according to the Founding Fathers.
Example of why Democrats hate Trump
For several decades the federal government, plus an infrastructure of support groups, pretended there was a federal law regarding a woman’s RIGHT to an abortion, whereas such RIGHT was NEVER ceded by the Sovereign States to the federal government, per US Constitution.
The Supreme Court merely corrected a legal wrong, but it cause the Democrat-controlled federal Roe/Wade infrastructure to collapse.
Roe vs Wade was a legally wrongful decision, which should have been corrected by prior Supreme Courts, decades ago.
I think Trump will win, due to the Biden/Harris dismal record
No amount of joyfulness, assisted by Hollywood folks, by grossly incompetent/deer-in-the-headlights Harris, and stolen valor Walz, who is grossly unpopular in Minnesota, will stop the Trump bandwagon.
As oil continues to be produced in ever increasing amounts.
It will be used in ever increasing amounts.
Many African countries have barely started yet. !
Peak oil demand forecasts are as meaningless as a “luser” comment.
China is targeting africa as market for its cheap renewables and EVs. Don’t get your hopes up, I guess most will follow Ethiopias lead.
WRONG as always. Africa is looking to massively enhance its gas, oil and coal production.
Wind and solar are a pittance of what is needed, and have very little future because development CANNOT happen with intermittent energy supplies.
Not only that, but Africa will be using GAS as their reliable supply.
They have plenty of it, and NEED reliable , not unreliable supplies
Africa’s share of global gas supply will double by 2050 | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
Ethiopia has about 100,000 EVs and plans to quadruple that by 2032. Most of those EVs can be found in in Addis Ababa the capital.
The population of Ethiopia is around 115m. The vast majority of those people will not be transitioning to EVs any time in the near future.
Do you actually know anything about the world outside your bedroom?
I’ve never read anything quite so confusing. We finally stopped the idiocy of peak oil and most leaders agree. Are you trying to bring it back???
It’s about oil becoming too expensive. Look at the fracking industry, they can’t compete with conventional oil and have to hope opec never starts a price war. Tar sands are even worse off.
Oilsands are fine, always will be
Under your just stop oil agenda, will roads and bicycle tracks be made of hemp fronds?
Or worn-out solar panels?
(gawd those things get hot in full sun. Worse than bitumen.)
I’m pro renewable, but I guess you had no arguments as all you did was moving goalposts?
What goalposts? You ignorant renewable advocates move the goalposts to wherever they do the most damage.
And what is your position on nuclear power generation MUN?
Too expensive, the market killed it in the west in the seventies. Nowadays only countries that have the industry and dictatorships show interest in it. Which leads to the next point – only “good guy” countries are allowed to have it, and better not think about wars.
SMRs are a scam, similar to most what we see with hydrogen, but this will be at least a niche technology.
Theoretically it could have been, but even with massive government funding it never really was. Renewables kill the idea of baseload on supplier side, and make nuclear even more uneconomical. The microsoft deal is a nice unicorn people can fawn over, but in reality it will be just that – a unicorn.
Nuclear expert Mycle Schneider on the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear energy production: ‘Trumpism enters energy policy’
https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/nuclear-expert-mycle-schneider-on-the-cop28-pledge-to-triple-nuclear-energy-production-trumpism-enters-energy-policy/
Nuclear Continues To Lag Far Behind Renewables In China Deployments
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/
Your position is absurd. You are against both fossil fuels and nuclear. This means that there is no way we can have a reliable electricity grid. Welcome back to the Dark Ages.
China Will Generate More Nuclear Power Than Both France and the United States by 2030 – The Diplomat
They will still build solar panels and wind turbines for the gullible idiots in EU and the UK, though
You better tell Justin Trudeau this.
(even though he only fantasises about being a dictator)
Canada is currently extending its nuclear power plants bigly.
And they’ve committed SMRs for all the NORAD bases in their Northern border areas, and Inuit communities.
“Too expensive, the market killed it in the west in the seventies.”
I guess France, that has a major nuclear system, is no longer a western country? What kills nuclear are stupid and costly regulations. The NRC regulates bolt lengths, but allows the controlling cables of backup systems to run through a single conduit. It’s complete stupidity and very unsafe.
“I’m pro renewable”
So you are pro heavily-polluting environmentally-destructive expensive intermittent supplies that need renewing every few years….
Yet you STILL rely totally on fossil fuels for everything in your pitiful existence.
Total hypocrite, aren’t you.
Renewables cannot ever take the place of the fossil fuels in society.
You are living in a brain-dead la-la-land.
AND you are still totally dependent of fossil fuels for everything in your miserable life.
Do you have a wind or solar “farm” next to your home? Have you stopped all use of ff? Of course not- so you’re not REALLY pro renewable, only in theory.
He uses the internet. He uses hydrocarbon fuel created electricity to use the internet. The trail goes on right down to the chair he sits on and the shoes he some days wears.
Your comment is complete nonsense. The Biden-Harris administration is causing all the problems with oil and fracking.
Indeed, we are not running out.
“Do you care about what you can pump out and sell today? That would be “Economically Recoverable Reserves”. Do you care about what could be pumped over a longer period of time as prices rise, but using present technology? That would be “Recoverable Reserves”. How about all you think you can get out with reaonably likely future technologies? “Ultimately Recoverable Reserves”. But that still leaves oil in the ground…”
What is Oil?All we have talked about so far is what is named “conventional oil”. There are at least 2 major “unconventional oil” sources that are vastly larger than all of conventional oil. These are the “Tar Sands” (much of which are in Canada) and the “Oil Shale” which covers hugh areas of the United States (along with other parts of the world). The shale is presently not considered an oil reserve of any sort, since nobody can make money off it at present oil prices. Trillions of barrels of oil that exist, but are not counted.
What is a ‘resource’ changes with price and technology.
A resource is something of economic value; it becomes a reserve once folks start using it. Canadian tar sands were not a ‘resource’ 50 years ago, now they are. U.S. oil shale holds a Trillion+ bbl of oil minimum, but is not counted as a resource when prices are below about $100/bbl.
This page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale
puts the recoverable shale oil estimate at about 3 trillion barrels. That is about 100 years at present oil consumption rates if all oil consumption was supplied from shale oil. Somehow I don’t feel like I’m running out…
With oil over $100 / bbl the “oil” reserves of the world double or triple…
How much is “ultimately recoverable”? Nobody knows, but it is immense.”
Synthetic Oil & “Oil” Products; CTL – Coal To LiquidsCoal can be easily turned to gasoline and Diesel (as done by SASOL in Africa, or Rentech, Syntroleum, and Synthesis Energy Company in the U.S.A.) or into “petro” chemicals as is done by Eastman Chemical company (ticker EMN) today.
See: The SASOL site for more.
And they are not the only ones doing this. The process was invented in Germany prior to the Nazi era by FIscher and Tropsch so it is commonly called FT technology. During WWII, the Nazi war machine ran on FT fuels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch
During the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970’s, South Africa was threatened with a cut off of fuel from the west. They dug out their history books and SASOL was born. They have been running a modern economy on synthetic oil ever since.
Their economy has benefited from the stable energy costs and foreign exchange retention (i.e. not sending gold to OPEC). They are the most industrially advanced economy in Africa. They are an existence proof that this technology is all that is needed to provide all the “petroleum” fuel products we need, even if we don’t have enough “petroleum”.
All you need to do to make synthetic crude oil is take any material that contains a hydrocarbon component (plastic, paper, biowaste, coal, tree chips, garbage, slaughter house waste) put it in a pressure vessel and cook at high temperature with a little water, and pressure (500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressurized to 600 pounds per square inch, for about 20 minutes). Out comes a synthetic crude comparable to a high quality crude oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/agricultural_waste.pdf
This is just a very very short selection from a long and detailed article by EM Smith. He has posted here, and written articles here.
“Basically, we run out of “Oil Products” long after we run out of oil, since we can use coal or any other carbon source.” (read again)
This is a very short selection from a long and detailed article offering many other solutions and explanations. As EM says, we will run out of resources, when we run out of planet.
EM is very responsive to any objections or questions. I highly recommend a visit there.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
For a detailed series on the subject… https://chiefio.wordpress.com/nro/
We really are (nro) not running out.
The argument is in two parts.
The first is to do with a US National Wealth Fund, and the comparison to Norway that Summers made, and the argument is that this is misleading and the idea, for the US, is a bad one.
The second argument hits at the Forbes claim that the amount of oil and gas we can produce is essentially unlimited.
The argument is that it is not. There are limited reserves, we don’t know exactly where the limits are, but they are not unlimited, and the likely course of events is not that we run out, but that prices rises as depletion happens.
He then goes on to consider some implications of rising prices, and cautions readers not to buy into the expectation of endless low priced energy.
There are two aspects to the Peak Oil argument. One is whether the original timeline forecast was correct. It was not. The second was whether at some point prices will rise because of scarcity. They may, and the longer the time scale, the more likely. There is not an infinite amount of it, it will not last forever.
The most obvious use of a sovereign wealth fund, when looked at globally, is to ensure that all generations, not a particular one, benefit from a happy discovery that leads to exorbitant wealth creation at a particular time.
If you compare the UK and Norway in their exploitation of North Sea Oil (both started serious extraction in the 1970s), you see one bunch of self-serving shysters in London pissing it all away on unemployment benefits for millions deliberately made unemployed by subservience to inappropriate US economic mantras; and you see a much smaller nation of seven million people saying: ‘This oil and gas is a gift from heaven: we shall manage its exploitation in such a way that all generations benefit’.
So what they did was to make a sovereign wealth fund from the profits and use it to ensure that it funded the costs of government administration in perpetuity.
Just imagine all the tax-hating US citizens being able to say: ‘We don’t have to pay any taxes to fund government, because all the oil and gas revenues have done that in perpetuity.’
Instead, ‘free market economics’ sees economic exploitation of most in the current generations and absolutely everyone in future generations, just so that a few hundred people can become billionairesand their descendants can live lives of unproductive hedonism thereafter.
I’ll let others decide on what is more enlightened politics.
I just hope that all US citizens understand that they can’t whinge about paying taxes if they hate perpetual sovereign wealth funds created on the back of exploitation of oil and gas reserves.
“Just imagine all the tax-hating US citizens being able to say: ‘We don’t have to pay any taxes to fund government, because all the oil and gas revenues have done that in perpetuity.’”
Norway’s oil was already owned by the government, out at sea- so the government got the profits and created the sovereign wealth fund. Most American oil is privately owned. What oil is on public lands- if the government took the profits and made a sovereign wealth fund, fine- but with the huge national debt- and the ability to print money like no other nation since the dollar is the international currency, the sovereign wealth fund wasn’t chosen as an investment- and if it was, it would hardly cover more than a tiny part of the federal budget. So why bother? Besides, much more oil could be pumped from federal land, but it’s greatly restricted by the Democrats.
Sumners is hated here in Wokeachusetts because when he was the honcho at Hah-vid, he once said that the thought maybe women aren’t quite as capable as men in the hard sciences. He got canceled for that. Otherwise, he was doing a decent job running Hah-vid.
Article says:”Here is what Forbes had to say about the US’ hydrocarbon reserves.”
Years ago when I subscribed to Forbes they had an article on methane hydrates. They put forth the notion that when we figure out how to mine them we could have 3-4 thousand years of energy at early 90’s usage.
Hundreds of years of coal and thousands of years of gas seems almost unlimited.
The first line of the article:
“In the US resides a guy who’s academic and professional credentials are as impressive”
“In the US resides a guy WHO IS academic and professional credentials are as impressive”
How very American. What an illiterate country.
That, and no one bothers with proofreading any more.
And no one knows the difference between a lectern and a podium… I could go on and on and on…
Summed up in 90 sec as a precisely defined prediction by Carl Sagan… he saw it coming.
The charlatans have control……
I think you misunderstood or misrepresented Larry Summers’ comments. Larry was simply stating that sovereign wealth funds are appropriate for countries rich in natural resources that produce more revenue than they can currently absorb. Chile (copper), Saudi Arabia (oil), UAE (oil and natural gas), Norway (oil and gas) are good examples. A large, diverse economy that prints its own money does not need one. On the other hand, some countries (Nigeria, South Africa, Venezuela, Russia) would be much better off if they had put money aside in a wealth fund instead of financing the lavish life styles of their friends and family.