Peak oil or Peak stupidity? Concluded

In the last commentary, we discussed how various people are claiming that we are at or past “Peak Oil” – when the world can no longer produce more oil and meet energy needs because oil is more and more scarce and more and more expensive to produce and use. Read that commentary here. Let us continue that discussion today.

The claim has been made for more than a century that this would happen. As with new ice ages, global warning, destruction of the environment, overpopulation and starvation, and the return of Jesus Christ, these predicted dates have come and gone. And the horrible (or great) things have just not happened. The first prediction of Peak Oil was to have happened in 1919! The latest? 2020 – or even looking back a few years.

But those failed predictions accomplished at least some of the reasons they were touted. They gave government and certain organizations (businesses and “not-for-profit” alike) more wealth, more power, more control. As do today’s claims – promoting services, products, and poor decisions based on errors, poor assumptions, and a refusal to let people run their own lives.

Here are some examples of how assumptions about the origins and existence of petroleum, and technology and its limits, have been proven wrong by events. Which actually weaken both the concept of “peak oil” and demonstrate why we are nowhere close to such a thing.

Over the years, I read more and more about how West Texas oil was almost all
gone. But… today, many of those same wells are still pumping out black gold.
It isn’t all just the new technology: the water flood and CO2 flood and the
fracking. Somehow, from somewhere deep under the pay formations, oil and gas is
still rising. From somewhere. Somehow – and NOT done by technology. It isn’t
just the Permian: there are similar things happening in some of the world’s
oldest plays: in places like Pennsylvania and the Colorado Rockies and Romania.

Maybe somebody is taking care of us. Maybe we don’t have all the answers.
Maybe the geologists of today are STILL as wrong as their predecessors were a
half-century and century and two centuries ago.

Example #2

In 1859 and then in 1906, what pitiful amount of oil was produced in places
like Pennsylvania and East Texas was transported from the wellhead to the
refinery and then the users in wagons. Horse-drawn wagons. Carrying a
half-dozen open-topped barrels. As I’ve been told, 55-gallon drums (wood,
initially, steel later) which could only carry 42 gallons of crude oil without
a lot sloshing out! (Which is why an oil barrel is defined as 42 gallons even
now.) It was expensive because it was hard to find, hard to drill for and
produce, and hard – costly – to transport.

But technology changed: rail cars that could carry 500 and then 5000
gallons. Trucks and semi-trucks that could carry 600 and then 6000 gallons.
Unit trains of 110 railcars, each carrying 10,000 gallons/car. And pipelines.
And more and bigger pipelines. All with better and better safety, protection,
handling, and efficiency.

Despite increasing suppression by government backed by environmental movements and political opportunists who want us all to be back in V Dynasty Egypt. Despite more and more theft by government, more and more emotionalism, and worse.  Why?

Technology – not as neat to most people as the latest gaming computer or
phone, but technology that makes and will continue to make modern, advancing
living and other technology available, at less and less cost (ignoring
inflation). And despite the constant efforts of governments and their shills and
supporters and controls to keep this from happening.

Because we had freedom to innovate, and encouragement (the free market) to
innovate!

And it doesn’t have to end here. If we can just get government and the weird
promotions and ideas of the social justice warriors and the Gaea-worshippers
under control. And use what we have been given on this planet and this solar system and this universe.  Especially what is between our ears.