Says George Will – [1]
For many years, most oil was used for lighting and lubrication, and the amounts extracted were modest. Then in 1901, a new well named for an East Texas hillock, Spindletop, began gushing [2] more per day than all other U.S. wells combined.
[3]
George Will
Since then, America has exhausted its hydrocarbon supplies. Repeatedly.
In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said that U.S. oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. In 1939, the Interior Department said that the world had 13 years’ worth of petroleum reserves. Then a global war was fought, and the postwar boom was fueled. In 1951 Interior reported that the world had . . . 13 years of reserves. In 1970, the world’s proven oil reserves were an estimated 612 billion barrels. By 2006, more than 767 billion barrels had been pumped, and proven reserves were 1.2 trillion barrels. In 1977, scold in chief Jimmy Carter predicted that mankind “could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.” Since then the world has consumed three times more oil than was then in the world’s proven reserves.
It gets better:
Edward L. Morse, an energy official in Carter’s State Department, writes in [4] Foreign Affairs [5] that the world’s deep-water oil and gas reserves are significantly larger than was thought a decade ago, and high prices have spurred development of technologies — a drilling vessel can cost $1 billion — for extracting them. The costs of developing oil sands — Canada may contain more oil than Saudi Arabia — are declining, so projects that last year were not economic with the price of oil under $90 a barrel are now viable with oil at $79 a barrel.
Morse says new technologies are also speeding development of natural gas trapped in U.S. shale rock. The Marcellus Shale, which stretches from West Virginia through Pennsylvania and into New York, “may contain as much natural gas as the North Field in Qatar, the largest field ever discovered.”
So, can someone please explain to me why we’re still listening to the Chicken Little crowd?
I mean, far be it from me the two take at face value anything that George Will comes up with any more. But a careful examination of what he’s saying here, makes a great deal of sense, and the implications of that are far broader, I think, than he intends.
It seems to me that the entire basis of overt governmental control on energy usage rests on two prongs; the first being oil shortages. The second being complaints about “pollution” , and “global warming”. Certainly, the global warming thing was dealt a fatal blow over the last weekend, being exposed a fraud. But why would they be pushing such a fraud?
In answer, let me suggest that it doesn’t take a great genius to observe that these issues are key to the Democrat Party, and their agenda. All of them have one thing in common; the demanded solution to each supposed crisis is more governmental power inside the beltway.
Their handling of those issues are of a piece with their handling on other issues which we are dealing with today. The economy, health care, and so on. Each is sold to the American public in “emergency mode” always by Democrats , and each invariably gathers more power within the DC Beltway.
When examined, though, in each case, the crisis never existed in the first place, and was simply being offered as a gambit for more power for Washington politicians…. mostly Democrats.
As I described to you yesterday, the American public is beginning to notice the pattern, and is responding to the pollsters accordingly. The twelve months between now and midterm elections are going to be a very interesting time, me thinks.