Given all the craziness with oil, peak oil theories, etc, i thought this would spark an interesting debate.
I have no way to verify this; perhaps a fly on the wall could confirm or deny such a claim.
You only need to listen to the first 3 minutes.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbakN7SLdbk 450 300] If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on Twitter
whats to debunk,you can dance around the myth,but you’ll never dance around the truth. the myth being,that there is “only so much oil left to be had”. because if it were the truth,nat gas would be pulling 18 wheelers a long long time ago. these high prices at the pump just pay for the governments bills that they cant reel in,or wont reel in. take your choice. shit is so cheaply made,but you still get charged as if it were made by american union hands……
Simply more evidence that instead of “for the people by the people”, it is “for the Corporation by the Corporation”. The only people that could really prove this are the people involved with the exploration of those oil fields. I’m sure they don’t want to talk.
One of those bits of Internet flotsam that keeps going around and around. Here’s my stock response (dating back to 2007):
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You owe me 80 minutes. God that was painful.
As GreyZone on TheOilDrum said, “To believe this you’d have to believe that all the IOCs of the entire world would willingly walk away from an oil field that sounds like it’s about 3-4 times the size of Ghawar, or that the US government is part of some secret shadowy cabal that can control the IOCs and that they showed foresight in saving the largest deposit for after the time when they’ve drained everyone else dry. Given today’s prices and demand, do you think that this would be true?”
I even took a few minutes (despite my better instincts) to Google this guy. There is very little out there…and nothing about Gull Island.
He offers basically zero data, and no references that can be checked. He offers no information on the reservoir, its characteristics, the quality of the oil, the the flow rates, nothing. Just a pile of anecdotes and second-hand anecdotes. After awhile I could even predict what his next statement would be! (“because I lived with them for three years”…)
Now, it’s possible that what he’s saying is true, in the sense that “anything is possible.” And I love to discover that I’m wrong too.
But this is just shite. There’s no “there” there! Nada! Nor would I bother with his book, because I can guarantee you that it’s 95% folksy tales and 5% allegorical information that there’s no way to verify.
So, I’ve got the say-so of one chaplain, who clearly still doesn’t know a damn thing about petroleum geology even after he lived with them for three years, versus the evidence, charts, data, and expert opinion of the hundreds of geologists and oil men that I read and talk to every day, from every continent (in other words, far too large and diverse a group to be party to any such conspiracy). Hmm, let me see…
Tell you what, I’ve got this story about how some Bilderbergers at the World Bank have coerced the Fed into intentionally bankrupting the mortgage market and hornswoggled all the major banks…would you ignore everything you know, all your data and charts and peer reviewed data, in order to believe my story? I didn’t think so.
All we can do is gather the best data we can get and do our best to understand it.
As for Lindsey Williams, I can’t account for him. He seems like a garden variety itinerant preacher to me. The kind of guy who tells a real corker in order to sell some books. Or maybe he’s totally sincere, for all I know, and simply a tool for somebody else’s designs, and an easily exploited one at that, because I can tell you from his own words that he clearly doesn’t understand the first thing about petroleum geology. What the hell was he doing for those legendary three years, knitting?
Anyway. Ecch, feh. I mentally tore every one of his statements to shreds as he spoke. He had dozens of plain factual errors in his talk. Take it from me, there’s nothing there. Moving on…
But: you do not “now know that there is an abundance of resources and energy [and that] the illusion of a shortage is created to keep us imprisoned.” You may believe that, based on the sole testimony of this one non-geologist, but you don’t know it. And I’ll bet that the more you looked into this guy and what he bases he info on (I found one reference in my googling that he subscribes to the abiotic oil theory–red flag! It has been thoroughly discounted by the geological community and discarded!) the less interested you would be in his beliefs.
Again, as far as energy goes, I have to stick to the data and the opinions of the scientific community. Not the conspiracy theorists, not the politicians, not Wall Street and not the economists, but the scientists. I just study as much of it as I can and draw my conclusions accordingly. What you’ve heard from me about peak energy is based on hard science and (hopefully) nothing else.
there are a lot of small drilling companies. and anyone can get a lease on land for drilling oil and gas. also, if we are getting close to “peak” oil, then answer me this. how can the opec countries just say,” we will increase output” to make up for the loss from libyan fields being offline. and because they became offline then why the huge run up of brent and wti. so what is it? there is so much, or there is’nt enough. the price of gas at the pump, reflects what our government needs to pay its bills. plain and simple, 43 million on food stamps,15% unemployment. thats why gas is high. or otherwise the government would have enough incoming revenue if just those 2 reasons were not true. and that bearded clam,come this august you will not see an increase in interest rates,i’ll almost guarantee that. if 7 million people go back to work within the next 6 mos, that will be the only way interest rates go up. bank on it
drummerboy, If it were so abundant, why couldn’t more people start oil companies? And drastically lower prices? Even so, it doesn’t matter, there is either a oligopoly on oil OR they are telling the truth and there is scarcity. If they want perpetually higher prices they will get it, or if there is REAL supply scarcity, prices will go higher. The effect will be as if there is scarcity.
How difficult is it to start an oil company? That would be the place I would look at. Success of new start up oil companies, percentages of these companies getting approval, percentages of these companies entering perpetually bogus lawsuits until they go broke, profitability of new oil companies and things of this nature.
I understand there is a suppression of new innovative research on anything that would drastically reduce the use of oil. Tesla’s multiple energy patents whether it be wireless technology or ionosphere free energy or even his idea to use solar.
There is a need for society to function and the major players in the oil field are investing in alternative energy. Are they seeking to have a monopoly on solar? How will that work? Are they going to regulate the sun?
Cronkite – to debunk everything that worries you would be an endless task, especially since you give just about anything, from just about any huckster, enough credence to let it worry you.
What you need instead of debunking after debunking is to learn some skepticism, backed by logic and research.
Skepticism should tell you to stop giving the storyteller the benefit of the doubt if the story is also a sales pitch for a book, seminar, or other product, or if it serves to keep the huckster in the public eye.
A good logic exercise is to assume that the story worrying you is true, work out what such truth implies, and then ask yourself if the implications make good sense.
The important step in the logic exercise is figuring out the implications if the story is true. The hucksters, like the book peddler in the video, will focus on the consequences and the conspiracy aspects. What you need to focus on is the means and motivation of the actors that would be involved if the story is true. Are they capable of such a conspiracy? Would everybody with access to the knowledge go along with the conspiracy? Does it make sense for everyone involved to behave in the manner necessary to maintain the conspiracy?
Sometimes you can skip the thought exercise by doing a little research to confirm that the huckster is full of B.S.
I’ll give you a freebie nugget for this video.
Reverend Huckster makes a big deal about the one BILLION cubic feet of natural gas pumped back into the ground in Alaska every day. I don’t know if that is true, but I know that his emphasis on that number shows that he is a huckster.
His implication is that one BILLION cubic feet is a lot of energy and that pumping it back into the ground is evidence of a great conspiracy to keep energy supplies off the market.
It is not a lot of energy on a national scale. The most recent US figures for nat gas consumption, March 2011, show that the US used 71 billion cubic feet of nat gas every day that month. The one BILLION cubic feet is 20 minutes of consumption. A respectable amount, but not market-changing (see below for more on that).
Pumping the gas back into the ground is not evidence of an effort to hide energy resources. The truth is quite the opposite. Pumping the gas back into the ground maintains pressure in the reservoir, to help maintain oil production rates.
So why don’t they sell the gas and pump air into the ground? Because the cost of cleaning up the gas up on the North Slope, and then transporting it to end users is not competitive. That gas is held off the market by economics, not conspiracy.