Enough Oil Below Ocean Floor To Last 50 000 years, page 2

Posted by Rizien: “I have been thinking about this and I was wondering, even if (1) the article held some truth, who would claim the rights to drill the ocean's oil? I could be wrong but, isn't the ocean (2) free of a government so to speak? If so, it would be a rather interesting situation to watch play out. [Edited by Don W]

Rizen, a great post! An even greater link. I like it because it is calmly responsible, not wildly hypothetical. Several years ago I heard exerts of books by two men whose names now escape me. One was in oil industry financing and the other was into the predicting of how much oil remains to be discovered. The first fellow had worked for the Aramco Oil Co in the 1970s, when the last (maybe the only) competent survey of oil reserves in the Persian Gulf was done, according to him. The other fellow used the exploration of the United States as his basis for predicting how much oil is out there, all around the earth, yet to be found. Hubbert, maybe?

(1) Geologists tell us the ocean floor is barely 70 million years old, whereas oil is found on the continental shelves upwards of 1.5 to 4 billion years old. Most oil is thought to have been produced slowly over several 100s of millions of years. If this is the case, then there is not much oil to be found on the sea bottom. Plate tectonics, subduction and all that.

(2) Well, Rizen, international law is evolving. Recall the arguments over the wreckage of the Titanic. Recall also how almost all nations now claim a 200 miles “economic zone” of influence. Some, like Peru, claim 400 miles. Law schools used to teach that claims incapable of enforcement were best ignored. I’m not sure how that works today. There is a UN treaty on the subject. In the 1920s, during the time of Prohibition, America claimed a 3 mile territorial limit. Today the US claims 12 miles. And most likely, we can enforce it, unless it is the importation of cocaine or mj which seems to defy effective control. Why is that?

Next, recall the 1970s Glomar Challenger? In 1968, a USSR sub sank in 18,000 feet of water about 1,500 miles west of Hawaii. It was believed to have imploded. Too deep. In 1974, the CIA and Howard Huge’s company was more or less successful in the recovery of at least a part of the submarine.

I personally think probably to avoid a confrontation with the USSR, the USA claimed the sub had broke apart during the lift and most of it fell back into the deep. The US did bring up enough of the sub to find the remains of 8 USSR crewmen who were then re-buried at sea, with I suppose, the CIA reading the last rites? Whether we got any of the Russian nukes is still classified. The Glomar Challenger has since been scrapped and replaced.

"What About Biofuels Such as Ethanol and Biodiesel?"
Biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Biofuels are all grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit. There is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering. Relying on corn for our future energy needs would devastate the nation's food production. It takes 11 acres to grow enough corn to fuel one automobile with ethanol for 10,000 miles, or about a year's driving. That's the amount of land needed to feed seven persons for the same period of time. If we decided to power all of our automobiles with ethanol, we would need to cover 97 percent of our land with corn. Biodiesel is considerably better than ethanol, (and probably the best of the biofuels) but with an EROEI of three, it still doesn't compare to oil, which has had an EROEI of about 30.

"What's Going to Happen to the Economy?"
The US economy is particularly vulnerable to the coming oil shocks as we consume a greater proportion of the world's oil than any other nation. The unparalleled prosperity experienced in this country during the last 100 years was built entirely on cheap oil. The mass production of automobiles became a cornerstone of the US economy while allowing people to move out of the cities and into the suburbs. The expansion of the suburbs fueled the real estate and housing booms of the 20th century, which in turn fueled the US steel, copper, construction, etc. industries. A system of finance sprung up that facilitated these booms while becoming dependent on them. The affordability of the individual automobile and petroleum based fuels combined with the growth of the suburbs contributed to the destruction of the US mass transit system.

How Are People Likely to React to This?
As the US economy begins to disintegrate, civil unrest may become increasingly violent and widespread. Each faction of the American body-politic will likely rally around reactionary political demagogues/movements who promise to bring back the good days by eliminating whatever domestic or foreign group(s) they have decided are at fault for the economic and geopolitical unraveling. Liberals will blame "Bush, Big-Oil and the Hard Right Neocons" while conservatives will blame "Bin-Laden, Big-Government, and the Extreme Left Environmentalists." The anticipation of massive unrest may be the real reason why the Department of Homeland Security has contracted with a Halliburton subsidiary to build massive new domestic detenetion camps. In 1985, the authors of Beyond Oil: The Threat to Fuel and Food in the Coming Decades, warned us of such possiblities: From oiltruth.com...

[edit on 4/13/2006 by donwhite]