[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>There can be no logical doubt that a finite resource will ultimately run
>out, the quicker the exponential increase in use occurs. (Doug seems to
>be somewhat illogical on this issue.) I.e. oil/petroleum will ultimately run
>out. So are we merely debating when, not if?
Of course, which is why I went to the trouble of seeing how long it
would take to run down existing reserves as present rates of
consumption growth. (It amazes me sometimes how left discourse so
frequently requires one to rehearse, even pay ritual homage to, the
obvious.) I've also said several times that it's more likely we'll
choke before we burn all the oil that's in the ground. But the point
I was making about reserves is that it's highly likely that new
discoveries will continue expand our inventory of known reserves.
On the other hand, maybe oil isn't the nonrenewable resource we
always think of it as. To avoid giving Don Roper intellectual
property fits, I'm just posting the beginning of this article.
Doug
----
>Wall Street Journal - April 16, 1999
>
>Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods
>Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning
>
>By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
>HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.
>Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of
>Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it
>behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island
>330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had
>slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.
>
>Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes
>reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000
>barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million
>barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say
>the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different
>from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.
>
>
>Fill 'er Up
>
>All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island is
>rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles below
>the Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility
>that oil may not be the limited resource it is assumed to be.
>
>"It kind of blew me away," says Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior
>researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
>Connected to Woods Hole since 1973, Dr. Whelan says she considered herself
>a traditional thinker until she encountered the phenomenon in the Gulf of
>Mexico. Now, she says, "I believe there is a huge system of oil just
>migrating" deep underground.
>
>Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and that it
>was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process that
>took millions of years. Since the economies of entire countries ride on the
>fundamental notion that oil reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence
>"would change the way people see the game, turn the world view upside
>down," says Daniel Yergin, a petroleum futurist and industry consultant in
>Cambridge, Mass. "Oil and renewable resource are not words that often
>appear in the same sentence."
