A New Age of Oil?

[doom&gloom]

In the greater scheme, it does not seem like it will be enough to arrest Peak Cheap Oil, but surely it is quite helpful, especially for Israel!

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...den_age_of_oil

Just months after an enormous discovery of natural gas off the coast of Israel, a local company has reported another potentially big strike -- an estimated1.4 billion barrels of oil, in addition to more natural gas. The company, Israel Opportunity Energy Resources, says it will start drilling by the end of the year. All of a sudden, Israel has found itself a focus of the world's hydrocarbon interest.

Energy experts are tittering about a prodigious new golden age of oil and gas in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Israel and Cyprus could become substantial oil and natural gas exporters, in addition to some other surprising places including French Guiana, Kenya, North Dakota, and Somalia. All in all, say increasingly mainstream projections, the world is moving into a period of petroleum abundance, and not the scarcity that most industry hands embraced just months ago. Plus, the United States, or at least North America, may be on the cusp of energy independence while OPEC's days of über-influence are numbered.

[Chris]

Re: A New Age of Oil?

Porter Stansberry make the case that oil supply is a product of capital investment rather than any geological limits. He suggests the recent production numbers out of some of the older US fields suggests peak oil is another Malthusean error. With an endless supply of freshly printed paper, peak cheap oil becomes irrelevant.

Any thoughts?

[bpwoods]

Re: A New Age of Oil?

Crude oil and its chemical derivitaves are a nat resource has to be 'mined', proccessed and delivered. That needs energy; like some liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Lots of electricity is also involved, but that is a secondary (generated) source. Ask the oil miners if they could do their business without any LHF. Ask the same folk if the only energy source was virtual money, and how many barrels would that produce. They would think you were some kind of nutter.

Peak Oil is a much misrepresented and misunderstood concept. I'd be very careful about what I read about PO. I'd double, probably triple-check. Dopey commentaries are commonplace. Especially if they attribute causal realtionships to variables that are merely correlated. Money supply does not cause oil to be produced, but it is correlated.