"Four countries will lead the coming oil boom: Iraq, the United States, Canada and Brazil."...What both common sense and expert consensus assure us to be true very often isn't." The 'America is on the decline' rap is also canceled.
8/9/12, "The next oil revolution - and its impact," Reuters, Chrystia Freeland
"Forget America's fiscal cliff, Europe's currency troubles or the emerging-markets slowdown. The most important story in the global economy today may well be some good news that isn't yet making as many headlines - the coming surge in oil production around the world.
Until very recently, our collective assumption was that oil was running out. That was partly a matter of what seemed like geological common sense. It took millions of years for the earth to crush plankton into fossil fuels; it is logical to think that it would take millions of years to create more. The rise of the emerging markets, with their energy-hungry billions, was a further reason it seemed obvious we would have less oil and gas in 2020 than we do today.
Obvious - but wrong. Thanks in part to technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, we are entering a new age of abundant oil. As the energy expert Leonardo Maugeri contends in a recent report published by the Belfer Center at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, "contrary to what most people believe, oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption."
Maugeri, a research fellow at the Belfer Center and a former oil industry executive, bases that assertion on a field-by-field analysis of most of the major oil exploration and development projects in the world. He concludes that "by 2020, the world's oil production capacity could be more than 110 million barrels per day, an increase of almost 20 percent." Four countries will lead the coming oil boom: Iraq, the United States, Canada and Brazil.
Much of the "new" oil is coming onstream thanks to a technology revolution that has put hard-to-extract deposits within reach: Canada's oil sands, the United States' shale oil, Brazil's presalt oil.
"The extraction technologies are not new," Maugeri explains in the report, "but the combination of technologies used to exploit shale and tight oils has evolved. The technology can also be used to reopen and recover more oil from conventional, established oilfields."
Maugeri thinks the tipping point will be 2015. Until then, the oil market will be "highly volatile" and "prone to extreme movements in opposite directions." But after 2015, Maugeri predicts a "glut of oil," which could lead to a fall - or even a "collapse" - in prices.
At a time when the global meme is of America's inevitable economic decline, the surge in oil supply capacity is an important contrarian indicator. Maugeri calculates that the United States "could conceivably produce up to 65 percent of its oil consumption needs domestically." That national energy boom is already providing a powerful economic stimulus in some parts of the country - just look at North Dakota. Crucially, at a time when one of the biggest social and political problems in the United States is the disappearance of well-paid blue-collar work, particularly for men, oil patch jobs fill that void.
What Maugeri dubs the next oil revolution also has tremendous geopolitical implications. One way to understand the battlegrounds of our young century is through the pipelines that flow beneath them. The coming surge in oil production, particularly from North America, will transform that geopolitical equation.
Equally significant is the impact of oil on the most important human problem of our times: protecting the environment. The sources of oil that will fuel the coming boom are harder to reach than the supplies of the 20th century, and the technologies required to extract them are more invasive. That will be one fault line in what is sure to be the escalating battle between environmentalists and the oil industry.
The implications for the climate change debate are even more fraught. Until now, the arithmetic of oil supply and the agenda of environmentalists conveniently dovetailed. Since we were running out of oil anyway, environmentally motivated efforts to limit fossil fuel consumption and increase our use of renewable energy boasted the additional virtue of being inevitable. In an age of abundant oil, those economically utilitarian arguments lose their power.
For environmentalists, and for the liberal political parties with which they are usually aligned, that poses a serious challenge. The temptation will be to oppose new oil production projects indiscriminately. That instinct could be politically dangerous. Political progress in combating climate change has been slow, but the battle for hearts and minds, especially of the younger generation, is being won. That political capital can be lost in an instant if the environmental movement allows itself to be equated with opposition to one of the lone sources of growth - and of good blue-collar jobs - at a time of global economic stagnation.
A final conclusion to draw from the next oil revolution is a little more existential. This is yet another reminder that what both common sense and expert consensus assure us to be true very often isn't. It was obvious that efficient markets worked and financial deregulation would stimulate economic growth, until the financial crisis and the subsequent international economic recession. It was equally apparent that we were running out of oil - until we weren't."
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Obama claimed a big need to divert massive US taxpayer dollars to select green projects was that "we're running out of oil anyway" as he did in this 2011 speech. That argument is officially dead:
3/30/11, "Remarks by the President on America's Energy Security," Georgetown University
Obama: "We consume about 25 percent of the world’s oil....We only have 2 percent of the reserves. What that means is, is that even if we drilled every drop of oil out of every single one of the reserves that we possess -- offshore and onshore -- it still wouldn’t be enough to meet our long-term needs."
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Environmental alarmism is mentioned in the Reuters article but for the US the CO2 issue is moot. US CO2 emissions have dropped steadily since at least 2006 and are going lower. Other countries' CO2 hasn't dropped, despite hundreds of billions spent on cap and trade and extra taxes. On the end of alarmist 'glory days':
7/28/12, "The Energy Revolution 4: Hot Planet?," Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest
"But there is one group (other than the Russians and the Gulf Arabs and the Iranians) that isn’t sharing in the general joy: the greens. For them, the spectacle of a looming world energy crisis was good news. It justified huge subsidies for solar and wind power (and thereby guaranteed huge fortunes for clever green-oriented investors). Greens outdid themselves year after year with gloom and doom forecasts about the coming oil crunch. They hoped that public dislike of the Middle East and the costs of our involvement there could be converted into public support for expensive green energy policies here at home: “energy independence” was one of the few arguments they had that resonated widely among average voters. Back in those salad days of green arrogance, there was plenty of scoffing at the ‘peak oil deniers’ and shortage skeptics who disagreed with what greens told us all was settled, Malthusian science. “Reality based” green thinkers sighed and rolled their eyes at the illusions of those benighted techno-enthusiasts who said that unconventional sources like shale oil and gas and the oil sands of Canada would one day become available....
But those glory days are over now, and the smarter environmentalists are bowing to the inevitable. George Monbiot, whose cries of woe and pain in the Guardian newspaper have served as the Greek chorus at each stage of the precipitous decline of the global green movement, gave voice to green grief at the prospect of a wealthy and prosperous century to come: “We were wrong,” he wrote on July 2,”about peak oil. There’s enough to fry us all.” Monbiot now gets the politics as well....
Capitalism is not, Monbiot is forced to admit, a fragile system that will easily be replaced....
Again, for people who base their claim to world leadership on their superior understanding of the dynamics of complex systems, greens prove over and over again that they are surprisingly naive and crude in their ability to model and to shape the behavior of the political and economic systems they seek to control. If their understanding of the future of the earth’s climate is anything like as wish-driven, fact-averse and intellectually crude as their approach to international affairs, democratic politics and the energy market, the greens are in trouble indeed. And as I’ve written in the past, the contrast between green claims to understand climate and to be able to manage the largest and most complex set of policy changes ever undertaken, and the evident incompetence of greens at managing small (Solyndra) and large (Kyoto, EU cap and trade, global climate treaty) political projects today has more to do with climate skepticism than greens have yet understood. Many people aren’t rejecting science; they are rejecting green claims of policy competence. In doing so, they are entirely justified by the record....
The problem is the original sin of much environmental thought: Malthusianism. If greens weren’t so addicted to Malthusian horror narratives they would be able to see that the new era of abundance is going to make this a cleaner planet faster than if the new gas and oil had never been found.
Let’s be honest. It has long been clear to students of history, and has more recently begun to dawn on many environmentalists, that all that happy-clappy carbon treaty stuff was a pipe dream and that nothing like that is going to happen. A humanity that hasn’t been able to ban the bomb despite the clear and present dangers that nuclear weapons pose isn’t going to ban or even seriously restrict the internal combustion engine and the generator. The political efforts of the green movement to limit greenhouse gasses have had very little effect so far, and it is highly unlikely that they will have more success in the future. The green movement has been more of a group hug than a curve bending exercise, and that is unlikely to change."...--------------------------------------------------
Based on wishes, US taxpayers were forced to become partners with the 'climate' industry. Trillions have been taken from them for climate expenses via outright agency budget allocations, tax subsidies, diversion of US military to climate or green projects, countless federal regulations, vast sums shipped out in foreign aid for 'climate' endeavors, etc. Devoting 13 federal agencies to 'climate' matters is hardly 'lagging' in action! Global Warming 'action' was institutionalized in US government in 1990 by George Bush the 1st in the "U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990." (He mentions CO2 near the end). The US even exports fuel now!
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US CO2 has dropped and is going lower:
6/26/12, "The Incredible Shrinking Carbon Pollution Forecast - Part 2," switchboard.nrdc.org, Dan Lashof
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6/29/12, "US Carbon Output Forecasts Shrink Again," American Interest, Walter Russell Mead
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6/4/12, "Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006," Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage
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6/22/12, "U.S. cuts greenhouse gases despite do-nothing Congress," CNN, Steve Hargreaves
"Even factoring in a stronger economy, forecasters see greenhouse gas emissions continuing to fall."...
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4/21/12, "Why [CO2] Emissions Are Declining in the U.S. But Not in Europe," by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, newgeography.com
"As we note below in a new article for Yale360, a funny thing happened: U.S. emissions started going down in 2005 and are expected to decline further over the next decade."
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11/23/11, "Europe's $287 billion carbon 'waste': UBS report," The Australian, by Sid Maher
"SWISS banking giant UBS says the European Union's emissions trading scheme has cost the continent's consumers $287 billion for "almost zero impact" on cutting carbon emissions."...EU CO2 trading provided "windfall profits" to participants paid for by "electricity customers.""
7/16/10, "Carbon Trading Used as Money-Laundering Front," Jakarta Globe
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10/8/10, "Murder on the Carbon Express: Interpol Takes On Emissions Fraud," Mother Jones, M. Schapiro
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A 2011 report noted EIA results through 2009, US CO2 emissions dropped steadily since 1999. If, hypothetically, US temperatures have been on the increase, they couldn't possibly be related to US carbon dioxide emissions:
4/14/11, "Biggest Drop in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions," World Climate Report
"In 2009, greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. experienced their biggest drop since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began tracking them during the 1990-2009 timeframe."
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1/25/2009, "Global warming industry becomes too big to fail," Timothy Carney, Washington Examiner
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8/23/11, "The Alarming Cost Of Climate Change Hysteria," Forbes, Larry Bell
"The Small Business Administration estimates that compliance with such regulations costs the U.S. economy more than $1.75 trillion per year — about 12%-14% of GDP, and half of the $3.456 trillion Washington is currently spending.------------------------------------------------------
8/10/11, "U.S. Army Creates Renewables Office: Billions to Be Spent," GreenTechMedia.com
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1/21/11, "Analysis: U.S. government a tenuous beachhead for biofuel firms," Reuters
"The U.S. military has emerged as a key ally for fledgling producers of non-food-based biofuels."...
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A few examples of climate cash sought in 2011:
1/11/11, "Big Money in Climate Change: Who Gives, Who Gets," Al Fin
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CRS says congress may want to consider that global warming isn't happening anyway.
3/26/12, "Obama Requests $770 Million to Fight Global Warming Overseas," CNS News, Matt Cover
"The Obama administration has requested $770 million in federal funds to combat the effects of global warming in developing countries, a new congressional report details, continuing its policy of using foreign aid to combat the effects of global warming in the developing world.
The figure, from a recent report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), shows that despite another year of $1 trillion deficits, the Obama administration continues to pursue its policy of using foreign aid funds for anti-global warming measures – known as the Global Climate Change Initiative (GCCI).
According to CRS, the government has spent a total of $2.5 billion on GCCI since 2010 on overseas anti-global warming efforts in Latin America, Asia, and Africa."...
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And, "Only 12% (of net US petroleum imports) came from Saudi Arabia last year, down from nearly 19% in 1993."...
12/16/11, "Oil boomlet sweeps U.S. as exports and production rise," USA Today, Wendy Koch
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1/30/11, "U.S. Nears Milestone: Net Fuel Exporter," Wall St. Journal, by L. Pleven, R. Gold
"U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and other oil-based fuels are soaring, putting the nation on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011
for the first time in 62 years.
A combination of booming demand from emerging markets and faltering domestic activity means the U.S. is exporting more fuel than it imports,
- upending the historical norm."...
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EDF took money from UK to try to "re-educate" Texas hicks about catastrophic man-caused global warming:
4/3/12, "Rick Perry criticises UK initiative to influence US climate sceptics," UK Guardian, Leo Hickman
"In 2009, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) gave £13,673 to the US-based Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to part-fund a project entitled "Influencing climate security policy and legislation in Texas", the Guardian has learned. The money was used to fly two Texan state politicians, including the climate sceptic Republican Troy Fraser, to the UK to receive a briefing with climate scientists and government officials. A conference was also held at the Texas Capitol in Austin in which a video of Prince Charles personally addressing Texan politicians on the subject of climate change was shown."...
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