“extreme energy = extreme methods = extreme disasters = extreme opposition”

[David MacLeod]

Last night I had the privilege of introducing author Andrew Nikiforuk to the “Literature Live” audience assembled at Village Books in Bellingham, WA.  His latest book is The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude.  It was a great talk, and a good discussion (I hope to get a recording of the talk online soon).  The event was co-sponsored by Transition Whatcom, Sustainable Bellingham, and RE-Sources for Sustainable Communities.

One of the comments made by Mr. Nikiforuk was this:

“We forget that the hydrocarbons we are now exploiting are qualitatively different than the ones we drilled one hundred years ago. They are heavy, they require more refining, they’re more carbon intensive, and they cost a fortune to bring to the surface.  So deep sea oil and bitumen from northern Alberta are extreme hydrocarbons that come with extreme costs.  The United States was built on cheap oil – 2 bucks a barrel. Can it be sustained on oil that costs nearly one hundred bucks a barrel?”

A new post today by Michael Klare expands on this same motif.  This is a great post summarizing the reality of today’s situation, in contrast to a number of articles appearing in the mainstream media over the past year claiming that we need not worry about peak oil, and that energy independence might return someday soon to the U.S. Klare is the author of numerous books, the latest of which is The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources.

His new post at Tom Dispatch is titled “The new ‘Golden Age of Oil’ That Wasn’t”.

Last winter, fossil-fuel enthusiasts began trumpeting the dawn of a new “golden age of oil” that would kick-start the American economy, generate millions of new jobs, and free this country from its dependence on imported petroleum.  Ed Morse, head commodities analyst at Citibank, was typical.  In the Wall Street Journal he crowed, “The United States has become the fastest-growing oil and gas producer in the world, and is likely to remain so for the rest of this decade and into the 2020s.”

Once this surge in U.S. energy production was linked to a predicted boom in energy from Canada’s tar sands reserves, the results seemed obvious and uncontestable.  “North America,” he announced, “is becoming the new Middle East.”  Many other analysts have elaborated similarly on this rosy scenario, which now provides the foundation for Mitt Romney’s plan to achieve “energy independence” by 2020.

By employing impressive new technologies — notably deepwater drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or hydro-fracking) — energy companies were said to be on the verge of unlocking vast new stores of oil in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and shale formations across the United States.  “A ‘Great Revival’ in U.S. oil production is taking shape — a major break from the near 40-year trend of falling output,” James Burkhard of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in January 2012.

Increased output was also predicted elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, especially Canada and Brazil.  “The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere,” Daniel Yergin, chairman of CERA, wrote in the Washington Post.  “The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas… to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil.”

Extreme Oil

It turns out, however, that the future may prove far more recalcitrant than these prophets of an American energy cornucopia imagine.  To reach their ambitious targets, energy firms will have to overcome severe geological and environmental barriers — and recent developments suggest that they are going to have a tough time doing so.

Consider this: while many analysts and pundits joined in the premature celebration of the new “golden age,” few emphasized that it would rest almost entirely on the exploitation of “unconventional” petroleum resources — shale oil, oil shale, Arctic oil, deep offshore oil, and tar sands (bitumen).  As for conventional oil (petroleum substances that emerge from the ground in liquid form and can be extracted using familiar, standardized technology), no one doubts that it will continue its historic decline in North America.

The “unconventional” oil that is to liberate the U.S. and its neighbors from the unreliable producers of the Middle East involves substances too hard or viscous to be extracted using standard technology or embedded in forbidding locations that require highly specialized equipment for extraction.  Think of it as “tough oil.”…

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And so...what are our realistic alternatives?  Hopefully tonight's event at Bellingham High School will inspire some productive action: "Imagine Local Energy Independence" with Dan Kammen.  And yet we must keep Ted Trainer's maxim in mind: "Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain Consumer Society."

[David MacLeod]

Walter,

Yes. And in a short conversation afterward, I found he is big on Joseph Tainter; but not so much on Jared Diamond. From what I've heard, I would probably agree, though I've not personally read either Tainter (The Collapse of Complex Societies) or Diamond (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and Guns, Germs & Steel).