[clue-talk] oil...

[Jed S. Baer]

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:12:05 -0400
Angelo Bertolli wrote:

> It's not about profits, it's about limited resources.  It's obvious
> that we have something of great value here.  Why should we just open it
> up and hand it off to them without putting some conditions on it?

Conditions? And who is this "we"? The people who have the money, time,
expertise, and other resources necessary to actually do the work of
exploring, drilling, refining, and all the other things necessary to
actually accomplish something productive, or a bunch of bureaucrats
sitting in offices who risk nothing and face no consequences irrespective
of the success or failure of their rules? Or voters? Are voters financing
the production of energy products?

While a lot of people seem to think that oil is a limited resource, the
truth is that all resources are limited in some way or another. In many
cases, a limiting factor is price (as it should be, in a market-based
economy). Some people think biofuels would be "unlimited", but that's a
pipe dream, because we don't have unlimited ability to process organic
matter and transmute it into whatever sort of wonder-fuel we can dream up.

I hope you aren't thinking of the whole "peak oil" fallacy that's been
debunked time and time again. Because the truth is that our ability to
extract petroleum-based fuel from the earth is nowhere near exhausted. It
is, however, limited by plain economics. For example, oil products from
oil shale are more expensive. As long as we can continue to use crude oil
to produce all the various products which come from it, for less than it
would cost to use oil shale, nobody will want to use oil shale, because
it would be a waste of money.

jed