@BerriesOnTop
Of course oil production drops when the bottlenecks are at the licensing and refinery stage. We need to increase that capacity so as to increase supply.
You may think with high prices that oil majors would invest money into these projects, but they have sat on money instead because they are threatened by vagaries of political sentiment and prefer to hand it back to their shareholders. It’s safer for them.
You aren’t going to sink billions into new projects just to have the next PM or President yank your license (or not issue future ones) because it’s politically expedient for them. Refineries are getting creaky and some are downright dangerous, but where’s the support for getting new ones or updating the current ones from the government?
Should they just ignore the ‘end fossil fuels’ rhetoric and face the possibility that they will be shut down by the powers that be?
The majority of the oil reserves today are owned by national oil companies.
The reason investment in private is below par is because of volatility. So you’re saying you want the gov’t to step in and subsidise and support Big Oil? Thinking that may go down badly with the current social climate (not to mention the actual climate).
Fossil fuels are going to run out one day. They’re already delivering a fraction of the energy return they did a century ago. Most of the oil and gas and coal will never be produced because it will never be viable energetically. What’s your plan for that? I have already pointed out that the oil industry alone is growing exponentially in terms of catabolism.
I have spent much of my life in China. I know what it’s like to breathe in smog in winter that comes from burning coal. I also know what it is to freeze in the winter, and you’ll absolutely take the smog when it comes down to it.
Besides, China’s solution hasn’t been to ‘stop coal’. They are doubling down on it and raising production and building new plants.
To ease air pollution, however, they were moving old plants farther away from urban areas. They tried to limit cars but that’s not as effective as just moving the coal plants to the countryside.
Does nothing about climate change and so is useless.
It used to be possible. France built 50+ reactors in 15 years just after the oil shocks in the 70s. It was a smart move for them. Now it takes 15
years just to get one built. So it’s not that it can’t be done, but it seems the technical expertise and political will is not there. But it’s the only way to replace fossil fuels in electricity generation.
We have a decent supply of uranium and we haven’t even scratched the surface of fuel reprocessing. Don’t forget it can also be processed from seawater, which would add to the expense but is actually possible with today’s technology.
The US and UK, and given France’s current nuclear woes, have practically zero nuclear expertise or industry outside of military naval applications. China, South Korea and Russia have that monopoly, to say nothing of the uranium reserves in Kazakhstan, say, being politically dicey these days. The simple truth is, even China cannot make anywhere near the needed reactor output today, and no other nation has anywhere near the capacity. You’re talking about two 1 GW plants being brought online every day from now till 2050 to offset all other energy sources today. That’s never happening by sheer cost alone, let alone the energy needed just to do this (it would require sizeable diverting of energy from other sectors to do such a project globally).
The Malthusians have been wrong time and time again. How many more times must they be proven wrong before we just stop listening to them?
Guy jumps out of 100 storey building. Fifty storeys down exclaims “so far, so good”.
They only need to be right once. And given every other civilisation has collapsed, and the only reason Malthus was wrong was because of the green revolution and fossil fuels, you’re not actually disproving anything. If you genuinely think things are peachy and we just need a bit more energy, you may want to check the other parameters that dictate limits. Check out metal ore yields, plastic pollution, biodiversity, water aquifer levels, phosphate stocks and flows and marine pH.
You’re telling me you believe we can keep growing forever. Anyone exposed to exponential growth will
tell you that is impossible, and the indebtedness of our global economy compared to material output is a pretty good indicator as to this being hit now.
If you think Big Oil has many bright years ahead, consider that shale is the geological equivalent of squeezing the sponge. And that requires CAPEX input that has never made anyone any profit in the US, hence the lack of investing in new DUCs or rigs is because they need to be in the black before Wall Street sends any more trucks of cash to burn.