I’ve come to realize that the Peak Oil analysts must either be liars, fraudsters, idiots or just clueless. For over 150 years they’ve been forecasting a calamity in oil supply, and for 150 years they’ve been wrong. They’re still wrong. They’ll continue to be wrong. We’ve heard them repeat how many years or decades left of oil we have left, and we’ve surpassed those dates and found more to spare.¹

It could be that the pro-union anarchists are even more clueless, as it seen in a recent article at anarkismo.net: Right To Work No Thanks Canada is seeing a boom in the energy market, with new jobs being created every day. In pro-socialist Canada, though, jobs aren’t so easy to come by. With a huge supply of unworking adults, these new jobs being created are seeing a bigger supply of workers than there is a demand for them, which means wages will be low than if there were fewer workers. Anarkismo believes the answer is to stop unions from competiting with one another, and create one huge union for all workers everywhere. Maybe the fraudsters in the Peak Oil analysis market aren’t so bad after all.

Another problem with market analysts who deceive the average consumer is the situation we see where consumers invest incorrectly based on bad information. I’m a free market advocate, so I believe you reap what you sow — if you trust the “experts,” you deserve what you get. We’re now seeing far-left opinions on how to prevent an oil calamity, such as a carbon tax.² Instead of putting faith in the market (which has lowered the price of gas for 150 years), some people want to put faith in government (that has increased the cost of gas for 150 years). These new-lefters are not considering the price increase due to dollar devaluation (money supply inflation) or due to excessive regulation and licensing within the industry. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough government — we have too much!

The Oil industry has been run by politicians and insiders aligned with politicians for decades. One such insider and politician is liar and fraudster Michael Meacher, who offers his “sagely” advice in the Telegraph: “Our only hope lies in forging a new energy world order”³ Here is a politician who used to control the Environmental Ministry in the UK for almost 6 years, and was an MP for years before that. First he had massive control over a small locale, then he had control over a country’s business climate. Now he wants international control. He’s another Peak Oil liar who just wants control — he cares little for his constituents or consumers as a whole.

Exxon believes they’ve found a new way to extract gas from the Earth — a new way that could increase world supplies by almost 2 years of US usage.⁴ Those against Exxon’s new technique include some of their competitors (of course), who say their technique isn’t new and doesn’t work. We’ll have to see if environmental overregulation and overlicensing might be part of any failure, if such happens to Exxon in this trial.

We’re unfortunately still seeing too much overregulation and overlicensing in the energy market. In Colorado we’re seeing preferential tax incentives being given to certain companies for building in distressed areas.⁵ While I am always anti-tax, I don’t believe you ever see the truth in a market when one market is given tax breaks and another still has to pay them. If getting rd of taxes helps some businesses, why not get rid of all taxes to help all businesses?

If Canadians aren’t happy with the pay from energy labor up north, they should consider moving down to Texas. “We’re still short rig hands,” says Morris Burns, executive vice president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. “That’s why the pay has risen; they’re paying $18, $19, $20 an hour to start — that’s the only way they can get people.”⁶ Texas is seeing a huge increase in re-opened oil wells as the price of international oil soars high enough to make local wells profitable again. I haven’t often believed that wars in the Middle East were solely about oil, but the result is enough to see that the local oil companies are excited by the high prices.

We’re also seeing technology increase the opportunities for oil companies to find more crude farther down than ever before. “In the Hamaca field, an area the size of Houston that produces oil for Chevron, ConocoPhillips and the Venezuelan state company, oil now slurps through an octopus-like system of horizontal wells that reach out as far as 8,000 feet. The drill bits are equipped with sensors that emit seismic signals measuring what it is passing through — whether rock, sandstone, fine shale, sand or clay.”⁷

Finally, one of the biggest news reports today being copied by every wire-based paper is the news that the Canadian province of Alberta has kicked off a two week lobbying blitz of Washington, D.C.⁸ The Albertan government and local businesses are likely looking for American investment (government, private and subsidized) into the Albertan tar sands market — a market that still has proven profitable up to this point in time.

Discuss this article at the Oil Report forum.

G.U.N. Summer Vacation Update

The Globe and Mail just released an article dealing with some tar sands/oil sands investments being performed by the Canadian company North American Oil Sands Corp. The article says that NAOSC will be investing CN$7.4 billion in the next 9 years to develop heavy-crude deposits and bring out as much as 160,000 barrels a day. This is about half of what Columbia exports just to the U.S., so it isn’t a huge production quantity, but any start such as this will put some pressure on Middle Eastern and South American crude oil.

Yesterday, Reuters published an article titled “Connacher CEO sees oil sands producing next year” dealing with another Canadian company, Connacher Oil and Gas Ltd, working on oil sands in hopes of bringing a paltry 10,000 barrels a day. Considering the small investment they’re making, though, 10,000 barrels is still a decent profit if the sands can be processed profitably. The article says that production might ramp up to 4 million barrels a day by 2020, which is a significant amount and would put huge downward pressure on the Middle East, especially considering Canada could be a large supplier to China. Shipping oil from Canada to China is also cheaper than bringing it from the Middle East.

Bloomberg News also covered the first article with more of the same. They say that the tar sands output could rise to 70,000 barrels a day by 2011, but only time will tell. With so many companies trying to get capital investments from international funds, I would take some of these numbers with a grain of salt until we see actual production methods being profitable. Canada has a lot less political volatility than the Middle East and South America, so hopes are high that they’ll have lower prices solely based on the lower security costs necessary to distribute the refined oil.

Discuss this article at the oil report forum.