Sunday, May 25, 2008

Peak Oil Overview -- March 2008 from The Oil Drum

The Oil Drum has a great concise piece on oil production available on its site right now. It's also available in .pdf format or in Power Point for presentations. It covers the US history of oil, world history of oil, as well as the most recent data showing the current (and projected) state of affairs in terms of supply / production. It also addresses some of the current myths being circulated about how the Alberta oil sands (aka tar sands), Alaskan Wildlife National Refuge or biofuels will turn things around. It's a must-read, especially for anyone new to the idea of Peak Oil.

3 comments:

J said...

Great link, The Oil Drum is a great site.

I think many people don't understand the sheer amount of oil we consume as a nation. ANWR is just a drop in the bucket, and the oil sands are such an inefficient way of obtaining oil, all the water, natural gas and detergents it takes and all the pollution.

I fear that as oil gets more and more expensive that these horrible technologies will become more 'economically viable'. We can only hope not.

M said...

I haven't spent very much time on The Oil Drum, but that piece definitely got my attention and I'll be going back to explore it some more.

The oil sands aren't just inefficient. The entire site is turning into an environmental catastrophe. Check out this report (hopefully I can post the entire link -- it was tricky a second ago):

http://www.environmentaldefence.ca/
reports/pdf/TarSands_TheReport.pdf

J said...

Thanks for the link. I've been reading it when I can at work. I'm barely half way through it and am shocked.

I knew that this process HAD to be detrimental to the environment, but had no idea it was this bad. It sounds like these places are akin to some sort of 'fall out' zone.

It's a catastrophe and they are trying to make more, larger catastrophes!

Something has to give at some point though, right?