Malthus Rides Again
Chris "Malthus" Nelder. What a hoot. One supposes this is inevitably what happens when a software engineer with a chip on his shoulder decides to become an "energy expert."
For the entire history of the petroleum industry to date, we've been drilling for the left overs - the hydrocarbons that are actually expelled from the source rocks, and then trapped by chance in sparse, isolated rock formations that happen to be favorably configured to trap hydrocarbons. As one might imagine, despite the large volumes we've produced historically from these "conventional" reservoirs, these volumes represent only a *TINY* fraction of the hydrocarbons actually present in the source rocks themselves.
We know have the first generation of drilling and fracturing technology in the U.S. capable of targeting the source rocks directly. The potential reserves in these source rocks *DWARF* all the hydrocarbons produced by the industry to date.
There is nothing unique about America's petroleum producing geologic basins; the source rocks in these basins are similar to those found in every petroleum producing basin throughout the world. As the new drilling and fracking technology inexorably disseminates to the rest of the world, shale gas and liquids production will become the norm. The entire world will be swimming in a glut of oil and gas.
Bottom line: We won't hit peak oil in our lifetime, or our children's lifetime. Ain't technology grand?
