Oil certainly plays an important part in international politics, and your last paragraph certainly points out a couple of the more important examples. I’ll even agree with you on Iraq, if I take a historical perspective (meaning I don’t think oil had anything to do with why we currently invaded, but plenty to do with setting up the conditions for why we invaded). I was just saying that in using a persuasive tone I felt you were ascribing too much importance to oil. If there was no oil in the world I am sure people would still find something to fight over, unfortunately.

When I was discussing the various oil fields that exist in the world I was entirely ignoring the environmental costs. Environmental concerns are certainly something I take into consideration when I look at them as a fuel source. However, the point of my argument was simply that they exist.

As for hybrids, the issue is partially the batteries and the expensive and rare materiels in them, and partially the exotic materiels most hybrids use to stay light. These materiels are enviromentally costly to handle, both in production and in disposal. If you look at the link I pointed out, however, you’ll see what’s really at issue. The most enviromentally damaging vehicles are the luxury vehicles. Hybrids tend to be fairly high end vehicles, so the friendliness they’re saving on fuel and driving is not only offset by the “hybrid-ness” of them, but also by their luxuriousness. If hybridisation came as a single option in the lower end models you’d see hybrids do better on the chart. Especially if they weren’t combining the option with extra features such as composite bodies. As we become more efficient in processing and manufacturing this stuff that will change, of course. The last disclaimer I should point out about this study is that it assumed a lifetime of the car to whatever the specific average lifetime of that vehicle was. So if you’re a responsible driver and also keep your car well maintained and beat that average, for a hybrid you’re offsetting the production and disposal environmental costs.

–Ian

It’s a good point you make about regulations reducing oil production regardless of the environmental viability of a method. Here in Michigan, for instance, slant drilling was examined to produce more oil and gas from beneath the Great Lakes. The danger of a leak or spill was next to nothing, but the very mention of oil drilling near our pristine inland waters scared off most everyone, including politicians.

Your points about oil shale and tar sands are well taken, they do certainly present what will become the most economical source of fuel in the near future. HOwever, they both come at enormous environmental costs. The damage being done in Alberta right now can be locally devastating to areas that until now had been virtually untouched. Oil shales tend to exist in thin layers and can require very damaging extraction procedures as well. When there exists a much better option: political change towards more environmentally and politically sustainable choices, we need to move in that direction. The costs will be somewhat higher to begin with but they will be greatly reduced in the long run.

Also, there is no dispute that Hybrids are better for the environment than non-hybrid cars. Sure, they have batteries that have to be disposed of properly. And yes, you shouldn’y scrap your existing vehicle necessarily to buy one. But I don’t buy the argument that Hybrids are more environmentally damaging to manufacture and dispose of.

Anyway, thanks again for your excellent comments and arguments. The energy debate is something that I am deeply interested in. Oh, one parting shot. Do you think that we would be involved in the Middle East at all if there weren’t oil there? Unless you believe in some conspiracy involving Jews and control of politics, I think most of us would find it about as interesting as we find the battles between Christians and Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa. Also, it is largely oil money that funds the regimes that support terrorism. And you can bet we wouldn’t be in Iraq right now if it didn’t have massive oil fields (not that I’m arguing that oil was the reason we invaded). Why did Japan invade the Phillipenes in WWII? Oil and energy are the very lifeblood of modern civilization, and deep down a whole lot of politics is motivated by it.

Hmm, okay. Looking through the article, I basically agree with what you’re saying most of the way though, although I find you’re couching it in a persuasive tone I’m not sure I agree with, for instance, while oil certainly plays a part in politics, I’m not sure it’s as overwhelming as you seem to ascribe it to be. Certainly humans are inventive enough to discover reasons to fight each other that have nothing to do with oil.

I suppose the only other point I think you have a misconception of (I’m not sure, you don’t directly express this, only indirectly) is that Hybrids are better for the environment than non-hybrid cars. They are in fact worse when you include manufacturing and disposal. I’m merely trying to point out here that sometimes the more efficient technologies aren’t the cleanest for the environment, in that, the simpler technologies often times win. Note that I don’t think we should stop examining these technologies! Eventually they will pay off.

Here’s the link:

http://thewatt.com/article-1070-nested-1-0.html

Finally, here’s another bit of info you might be interested in, this time to do with Ethanol fuel (disclaimer, this is off my own site, but links to a news report):

http://taoist.wordpress.com/2006/08/09/walmart-keeps-getting-cooler/

You’re right, I did mean to say misconceptions.

Anyhow, first let me expand and refine my initial point a bit more. It is true that crude oil is for human intents and purposes a finite resource. However, I would like to point out a few things. Versions of Peak Oil have been coming out every couple years since the 1950s at least. They have all been incredibly wrong in their estimate of the remaining oil in the world. Just a few numbers I can easily cite will show that we have quite a few decades increasing oil production left to extract. I mentioned the rich oil fields of ANWR and the Continental shelf, both of which are huge amounts of oil we haven’t even begun to tap because of environmental opposition (which exists regardless of how environmentally friendly we can get the technology –drilling has similar stigmas as Nuclear).
Other things I can immediatly think of include oil shale, which requires technology to extract that is only just now starting to get cheap enough to be worthwhile. It’s a technology that’s evolving fast though, so it could cheapen pretty quickly. Did you know that if you include oil shale as a source of oil, the U.S. has more oil, just in oil shale, than the Middle East? The oil sands of Canada are similarly coming online and starting to produce copious amounts of oil, and we have barely started to dig into them.

Another place with large amounts of oil that has barely been tapped, and barely even been explored is Russia. Russia has so much land, so much wilderness, that it doesn’t have the infrastructure or the population to effectively exploit it’s oil wealth, which is all in the middle, mostly towards the east where there’s more space. New technologies such as satellite imagery with earth modeling are starting to allow researchers to predict where the fields are however, which should help Russia develop it’s fields for quite a while into the future.

As you mention, demand is increasing faster than supply at this point, causing prices to go up. My point right here, or I suppose my two points is that

1. Regulations have effectively stopped the U.S. from doing any new drilling, despite the fact that we’re the best at it and have huge deposits we haven’t touched. If we were drilling in any of these new locations near us, supply would be exceeding demand.

2. There is enough already discovered deposits not being exploited that the world will not run out of oil anytime soon, or even run into the peak anytime soon, unless that peak is being artificially induced by stopping new drilling.

Also, on the topic of alternate technologies, this is a perfect place to plug my favorite: http://www.changingworldtech.com/

Changing World Technologies is a waste processing company that literally turns any trash into diesel quality oil, water, and the dry, seperated minerals the waste was composed of, and they run on a percentage of the diesel they make.

I’ll address the other issues in my next comment

Regardless of whether or not the high oil prices are artificial, that does not affect the fact that oil is a scarce resource. The subject of whether or not global oil production has peaked is a complicated one and I’m definitely not able to address it in detail (yet, Peak Oil is on my bookshelf). Suffice to say oil production begins or will begin a permanent decline last November, or next November, or perhaps a decade from now.

Gasoline prices may be higher than necessary because of oil refineries, but this does not affect the globally high crude oil price. The recent spike of a few dollars per barrel is due to a temporary glitch, for sure, but that doesn’t change the strong dynamic of demand increasing more quickly than supply is able to produce new oil. As China and India (primarily) continue to develop, that demand will continue to surge and the price of oil will only continue to increase. There is no effective international oil cartel: Russia and Venezuela are pumping as fast as they possibly can. So are Nigeria, Sudan, Libya, Mexico, and whoever else can manage to find some. Supplies won’t increase exponentially, but demand will. And when those two curves cross, we are going to see truly high prices.

ANWR is a complicated issue for many reasons, as you acknowledge. Yet even if it is tapped, and production manages to reach that optimistic figure you mention, it will only delay the inevitable. In fact, tapping ANWR is a small version of my main point: economics will demand that the cheapest option will not necessarily be the best option for the planet and her residents (humans certainly included). If tapping ANWR were done as part of an energy policy that truly acknowledged the difficulties facing us and moved the country towards a fossil-fuel-free future, then I would support it. I’d rather damage a few wildlife habitats if it means freeing us from the grip of dictatorial sultans. But, if that drilling comes without any real reform, then we will just come back to the Arabs begging for the oil that the Chinese, Indians, and who-knows-else, are already pleading for.

There are sunnily optimistic estimates of unknown fuel “reserves” and there are overly-pessimistic ones. Reality will fall somewhere in between, and it will undoubtedly mean actual, real shortages in no more than a few decades.

The currently high oil prices are entirely artificial, and there is no actual upcoming oil shortage (at least in the near future) that isn’t also artificial. I’m saying this for a couple of reasons:

1. Just as we haven’t built any new nuclear plants in 30 years, so we haven’t built any new oil refineries, and for quite similar reasons: overly paranoid environmental concerns and a huge NIMBY mentality. This is a major reason fuel prices are so high, and also why Katrina spiked the prices so badly last year.

2. Just as we haven’t built any new refineries in the recent past, so too we haven’t expanded our drilling into any of the new oil fields we’ve discovered over the past 30 years: ANWR, the Deep Sea Continental Shelf most noticeably. I will point out that ANWR estimates are that it could supply 20% of America’s oil for at least several decades, and also that every single oil field in history has exceeded the expectations of how much oil it would yield. Some reports of the Continental Shelf place it as potentially the biggest oilfield in the world. We don’t know cause we haven’t drilled there.

Do I think we should be drilling in these places? I’ve got a complicated answer to that which isn’t an outright yes: as I mentioned, I am for many of the benefits you are, although I have slightly different approaches on how I think we should obtain them. However, I mantain no illusions about high oil prices or any problems with oil supply being anything other than artificial.