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The World Has More Oil, Not Less

By Alan Caruba

If you do an Internet search for "oil reserves", you get a ton of information, much of it announcements by various nations saying they have discovered vast potential new fields of crude oil and are, not surprisingly, eager to tap them.

Then why are being told that we have to cut back consumption? The answer is political, not geological. The most casual look at the UN Kyoto Climate Control Treaty reveals the economic devastation that would occur if this and other industrialized nations were forced to cut back to 1990 levels of energy use.

Economists warn that, given the provisions of the treaty, gasoline prices would rise significantly. Electricity costs would increase anywhere between 20 percent and 86 percent. The cost of natural gas would rise between 20 percent and 148 percent.

This is what Al Gore advocated. In 1997, he flew to Japan during the treaty’s creation to express his support for it. The Drudge Report estimates his trip burned 439,500 gallons of fuel. Even if one were to ignore the questions about his truthfulness, his environmental dementia is such that, if he were elected, he would initiate a worldwide economic Depression.

Globally, we need more energy, not less. The good news is, if you factor in coal as the primary source of the generation of electricity, you’re actually looking at not just hundreds, but thousands of years of electrical power. Coal is so abundant it is measured in the thousands of years of use. Abundant electrical power will free Third World nations from their poverty. It will benefit the lives of millions who are denuding the forests of their nations for fuel to cook dinner!

But we’re told we’re running out of oil. Not true! In 1973, an oil field was discovered off the coast of Louisiana in a deep area of the Gulf of Mexico. By 1989, oil production had trickled down to a daily output of only 4,000 barrels. Then, to the surprise and delight of the PennzEnergy Company, the Eugene Island field began to pump 13,000 barrels a day. Geologists tested the new crude and discovered it was a completely different geological age than the original oil of ten years earlier!

Now petroleum scientists are beginning to believe there is a whole new oil supply streaming from a vast source many miles below the surface of the Earth. The ramifications of this are obvious. There is a lot of oil as yet undiscovered and untapped.

This phenomenon explains why Middle East oil reserves doubled since the 1980’s, currently estimated to be about two thirds of a trillion barrels. In his book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere", Cornell University professor emeritus, Thomas Gold, documents his theory that oil is manufactured deep in the earth under extreme pressure and heat. As it interacts with bacteria, it oozes up to the surface, appearing to be prehistoric, but actually "new" in geological terms. This challenges the theory that we are dependent on the decomposition of dinosaurs (fossil fuels) that has been the accepted wisdom. Oil may well come from another source than buried biomass.

The latest figures I could secure sets the "proven crude oil reserves" of the Middle East at about 686.4 thousand million barrels. Saudi Arabia sits on top of 26l.5 thousand million. Kuwait has 112.5 thousand million. The estimates of the untapped crude in Alaska are set at about 16 billion barrels. The area involved is one tenth of one percent of the entire area of the State! Are you really so worried about some caribou, grizzly bears, and rabbits that you aren’t willing to tap into a tiny part of that State?

On a Royal Dutch/Shell Group floating platform a hundred miles off the coast of Louisiana where oil production wasn’t even feasible a few years ago, there are estimates of 100 billion barrels of untapped crude oil. At this point, 40 billion barrels have already been discovered in deep waters worldwide from West Africa to Brazil to the Gulf of Mexico. In the Gulf of Mexico alone, production could rise at as much as 1.8 million barrels a day by 2001. This is double the 1995 level and roughly equal to the daily output of Kuwait.

So, do you still think we’re running out of oil? The simple arithmetic of oil production is that we keep finding more and more of it. The late economist, Julian Simon, predicted this in his book, The Resourceful Earth, written with Herman Kahn as a response to the lies of the Greens who have foisted the global warming hoax on us. Their objective is to reverse the advances of technology and life enhancing innovations that have marked the end of the last century and will continue into this new century IF we don’t fall victim to their lies.

The driving force behind these lies are the many environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and others who specialize in selling you calendars of cuddly animals and beautiful mountains. They are afforded an umbrella by the United Nations whose bogus environmental program exists to attack capitalist nations that are currently destroying the biggest economic lie of all, that socialism works. It doesn’t.

Proof of this exists in the headlines of the past decade. The citizens of formerly socialist/communist nations are bringing down these governments. They are rebelling against Big Brother. It just happened in Yugoslavia. It began when the people of Poland threw off the grip of the Soviet communists. That led to the Soviet meltdown. Now in socialist England and other European nations, truckers and drivers literally bring their nations to a stop as they protest the high taxes imposed on gasoline and oil. What are they saying? Let the marketplace determine price, not governments. Let’s begin, right now, to begin extracting the vast, know reserves the United States has in Alaska and offshore. Let’s reduce our insane dependency on Middle East oil.

My friend, Robert L. Bradley, Jr. is a great exponent of Julian Simon’s views, having picked up the torch when the economist passed on in 1998. His new book, "Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability" ($15, Institute for Energy Research, 6219 Olympia, Houston, TX 77057) puts the skids to all the crisis talk and lies the Greens have told you about "sustainability." That is a Green code word for shutting down any progress toward providing even more abundant (and needed) energy for a world that is being brought together by the Internet and other means of communication and transportation.

"All environmental indicators concerning the use of hydrocarbons—whether they involve land use, spillage, wastage or combustion—are demonstrating positive trends and in many cases exceeding expectations," says Bradley. "Consumers are embracing multiple new uses of energy in transportation and stationary markets. Risk management opportunities and mass customization of energy products are multiplying. Safety and productivity are improving throughout these industries. All these trends appear to be open-ended."

That’s how the prospects for more oil stand now, open-ended. We are going to find even more oil in this decade and beyond. We are likely to confirm the theory that billions of barrels exist, waiting to ooze up to the surface where it can be accessed for future generations.