Stuff they don't want you to know

[Roger Baker]

Terry Dyke wrote:
> 
> Recently saw in a piece in Alternet:
> ( http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11692)
> 
> > Geologists estimate that sitting beneath the wind-blown steppes of Kazakhstan are 50 billion barrels of oil -- by far the biggest untapped reserves in the world. (Saudi Arabia, currently the world's largest oil producer, is believed to have about 30 billion barrels remaining.)
> 
> Apparently, to be able to sell it, the only feasible pipeline route is
> through Afghanistan. Yes, it's still about the oil.
> 
> Roger, a question for enquiring minds: Do the Hubbert's Peak predictions
> (Deffeyes et al) already take the Khazakh reserves into account, or is
> this something new?
> 
> Terry
>

The international demands for oil are now so great that 50 billion barrels is a 
drop in the bucket and the huge and slowly depleting reserves of the Persian Gulf 
dominate the picture until world oil peaks in maybe 2005 give or take a few years, 
no matter what!!! This 'give or take a few years' is more dominated by the estimation 
accuracy of Gulf reserves and the state of the world economy than what they find in Khaz.  

Part of the problem is the lead time on the new Kazakhstan oil being produced and 
secondly the fact that oil only comes out of the ground at the speed it wants no
matter what you do over years to a decade or more. You cannot suck on an oil well 
to speed up its natural rate of production whenever you may need it most -- and thus a 
few percent of flow added to the existing picture dominated by the Persian Gulf do not 
make much big difference. Most of the new oil to be discovered in the future will 
likewise be in the Persian Gulf, but yet the megagiant oil deposits in the Persian Gulf
and their slow depletion is all that really counts.
 
An iffen you don't like it this way, you kin jump an scream and kick and tear your hair 
out until the cows come home to roost and little difference will that make. -- Roger