ADIÓS, "Peak Oil":

The Kern River oil field, discovered in 1899, was revived when Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels.

In Indonesia, Chevron has applied the same technology to the giant Duri oil field, discovered in 1941, boosting production there to more than 200,000 barrels a day, up from 65,000 barrels in the mid-1980s.

And in Texas, Exxon Mobil expects to double the amount of oil it extracts from its Means field, which dates back to the 1930s. Exxon, like Chevron, will use three-dimensional imaging of the underground field and the injection of a gas — in this case, carbon dioxide — to flush out the oil.

Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the world’s reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before.

In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 3.3 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced. More recently, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultant, estimated that the total base of recoverable oil was 4.8 trillion barrels. That higher estimate — which Cambridge Energy says is likely to grow — reflects how new technology can tap into more resources.

“It’s the fifth time to my count that we’ve gone through a period when it seemed the end of oil was near and people were talking about the exhaustion of resources,” said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, who cited similar concerns in the 1880s, after both world wars and in the 1970s. “Back then we were going to fly off the oil mountain. Instead we had a boom and oil went to $10 instead of $100.”

There is still a minority view, held largely by a small band of retired petroleum geologists and some members of Congress, that oil production has peaked, but the theory has been fading.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Relacionado con el tema, esto.

FAREED ZAKARIA sobre el nuevo boom petrolero en... Estados Unidos:

Over the past decade, America has experienced a technological revolution--not, as expected, in renewable energy but rather in the extraction of oil and gas. As a result, domestic supplies of new sources of energy--shale gas, oil from shale, tight sands and the deepwater, natural-gas liquids--are booming. The impact is larger than anyone expected.

In 2011, for the first time since 1949, the U.S. became a net exporter of refined petroleum products. Several studies this year have projected that by the end of this decade, the U.S. will surpass both Russia and Saudi Arabia and become the world's largest producer of oil and liquid natural gas.

Pues vaya con el peak oil, ¿eh? Leedlo entero.

MIRA QUIÉN SALE por aquí en este artículo de Bloomberg:

When Daniel Lacalle, in his early 20s, took a job with Spanish oil company Repsol YPF SA in 1991, friends chided him for entering a field with no future. "They all said, 'Why do you want to do that? Don't you know only 20 years of oil is left in the whole world?'" he recalls.

Two decades and four energy crises later, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that more than 2 trillion barrels of untouched crude is still locked in the ground, enough to last more than 70 years at current rates of consumption. Technological advances enable companies to image, drill and shatter subterranean rocks with precision never dreamed of in decades past. Trillions of barrels of petroleum previously thought unreachable or nonexistent have been identified, mapped and in many cases bought and sold during the past half decade, from the boggy wastes of northern Alberta, to the arid mountain valleys of Patagonia, to Africa's Rift Valley.

"Betting against human ingenuity has been a mistake," says Lacalle, who today helps oversee $1.3 billion as a portfolio manager at Ecofin Ltd. in London. "The resource base is absolutely enormous, so much so that we will not run out of oil in my lifetime, your lifetime, our children's lifetimes or our grandchildren's lifetimes."

Leedlo entero no sólo por esto, sino porque explica muy bien la filfa del peak oil.

TOMA PEAK OIL: "Demand for oil will reach its own peak and decline before humans deplete the Earth’s supply of oil, experts say."

QUÉ MANERA MÁS RARA de acabarse el petróleo:

U.S. oil production in areas including West Texas' Permian Basin, South Texas' Eagle Ford shale, and North Dakota's Bakken shale will record a rise of a little over 2 million barrels per day from 2010 to 2016, according to data compiled by Bentek Energy, a Colorado firm that tracks energy infrastructure and production projects.

Canadian crude production is expected to grow by 971,000 barrels per day during the same period, with much of the oil headed for the U.S.

Combined, the U.S. and Canadian oil output will top 11.5 million barrels per day, which is even more than their combined peak in 1972.
Goldman Sachs has estimated the U.S. could move from being the No. 3 oil producer behind Saudi Arabia and Russia to the No. 1 spot by 2017.

LOS QUE LEEÍS este blog ya lo sabéis de sobras; ahora hasta George Monbiot (¡hasta él!) se cae del guindo y reconoce que lo del peak oil es filfa.

(via)

POR QUÉ el famoso 'peak oil' es pura filfa.

EL ETANOL como combustible es un timo, escribe Jeff Goodell en Rolling Stone: daña el medio ambiente y supone un verdadero despilfarro.

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.

Sacto.

MÁS sobre el mito del 'peak oil'.

TOMA 'PEAK OIL': hay todavía más petróleo y gas natural de lo que se creía. La EIA (organismo de estadísticas sobre la energía del gobierno de EEUU) ha revisado al alza las reservas mundiales.

POR QUÉ el 'peak oil' —la teoría de que el petróleo se está acabando— es sólo eso, una teoría indemostrada y que, si se confirma, no ocurrirá hasta dentro de muchos años.

MÁS SOBRE el mito del peak oil, en la BBC.

COCHES ELÉCTRICOS, paneles solares, y sofismas:

• Squeaky clean green electrons from solar panels don't care whether they power an EV or a toaster oven. The virtue of green electrons, or the quantum of green if you will, arises from their creation. Once green electrons exist on the supply side of the equation, their use is irrelevant.
• Electrons must be used or stored the instant they're created. So while EV and PV may work for vampires, they're a logistical nightmare for normal people drive their cars during the day and charge them from the grid during off-peak hours when demand and prices are lower.
• While PV sales skyrocketed as status conscious consumers bought cute solar panels for their homes, the 794 GWh of electricity US solar systems generated in July is barely 2/10 of 1% of the 393,753 GWh of electricity the US consumed in July. PV is subsidy-distorted symbolism that contributes nothing to an electric grid where transmission and distribution losses average 7% nationwide.
• On a planet with 7 billion inhabitants, every barrel of avoided oil use and every ton of avoided coal use in wealthy countries will simply increase supplies in poorer countries where another human being who has to choose between freezing in the dark or increasing his carbon footprint will pick his comfort over somebody else's climate concerns.