Re: Mark Jones Was Right

[dmschanoes]

Louis Proyect is wrong.  The article he reproduces in no way proves Mark Jones was right.  Mark Jones argued that the world had reached the end of its finite hydrocarbon reserves, particularly petroleum.   The limit for Mr. Jones was natural, geological-- not economic.  The NYT article concerns exactly economic limitations-- that horizontal drilling may not be the best, most efficient, cost reducing, output increasing technique in all circumstances.    The difference between "natural" supply and proven reserves is economic not geological.  Most of the scarcity theorists argue that a specific geological formation, defined chronological provided the origin and limits to petroleum formation.  This pre-historic specificity is disputed by other geologists as the locations of petroleum reserves, the depths at which they are found, correspond to several different geological periods.   There is another thing everyone should keep in mind before genuflecting before the altar of geology-- the two great US onshore fields, Spindletop and Texas East, where discovered and developed after geologists had stated unequivocally that no petroleum of significance would be found there.  You can look it up.   As the petroleum engineers at the M King Hubbert Institute at the Colorado School of Mines will tell you, potential recoverable reserves from Canadian shale and sands, and heavy oil from Venezuela exceed current proven, accessible, reserves by a factor of 10-- at least 10.  There are significant obstacles to that recovery, but in the world of the market, the obstacles are financial-- not geological, not ecological (an economy that burns rain forests to graze cattle hardly gives a shit about ecological costs). You can look it up.   Horizontal drilling itself has been used, in combination with other technologies, to extend the life of the North Sea fields, and the oil ultimately recoverd, and still recoverable, by some 10 years.  Half the recoverable reserves still exist in the North  Sea, despite the slowed decline in production, a decline that has actually been reversed in several North Sea fields.  Petroleum majors are selling their platforms and rigs to smaller companies because the economics, the profits-- the mass of profits-- available from this production does not meet margin requirements.    You can look it up.   dms