Reply To: Peak Oil and the Iraq War


Latest News Forums Discussion Forum Peak Oil and the Iraq War Reply To: Peak Oil and the Iraq War

#42892
Clark
Guest

Courtenay, the mainstream view is that oil is indeed a fossil fuel, and not being replenished. This apparently fits with many branches of science. Peak production and the Huppert production curve has been well established empirically; lower 48 US states’ production peaked in the mid 1970s, and North Sea production peaked around 1999, as predicted geologically.

The abiogenic theory was pursued in by scientists in the USSR when they were cut off from the wider world, and its recent popularisation has been almost exclusively by Thomas Gold. A summary can be found here; as always with Wikipedia, follow the citations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

But for a couple of reasons it might not make much difference:

* We must not burn even known oil reserves because of global warming.

* Liquid fuel is still essential to industrial economies, and in particular to military operations, therefore powerful nations will fight over it no matter what its origins.

It may be worth noting that the countries the US alliance attacks are invariably countries that propose selling oil in currencies other than US dollars. Iraq and Iran both proposed an ‘oil bourse’, Libya was proposing a new currency, the Gold Dinar, and Venezuela was proposing dealing in euro and yen. Try a search on the following term: petrodollar