Spinal Fire Scientia Est Potentia

Peak Oil and WWIV
By John Kedrowski

In the 1950s a famous geophysicist, M. King Hubbert, made a startling prediction. Based on the amassed drilling data compiled from oil industry sources from the biggest oil in the nation and based on the geologic behavior of oil wells, Hubbert predicted that a peak in US oil production would occur sometime in the early 70s. After the peak, production of US oil would fall no matter what kind of technology was developed and no matter how much we searched.

The reasoning behind this is simple. An oil field is not an empty space under the earth filled with oil. An oil field is made of porous rock where oil is trapped between the granular spaces. Thus, when one drills into these traps, the amassed oil is not totally recoverable. In fact, only 50% of the oil comes out easily. The rest takes more and more work, becoming more and more expensive.

The process is somewhat analogous to buying a crushed ice drink at DQ. The spaces between the ice grains hold the sugar water and when one sucks through a straw, there is a localized removal of solution. Between sucks, solution moves in the granular spaces, via the capillary effect, negating the negative pressure. When one sucks again, the same process happens, but eventually one gets to the point in the drink where no amount of sucking will extract anymore sugar solution. And even though you know there is still a buttload in there, you just cannot suck anymore out. The capillary effect exerts so much pressure on the remaining solution, that no amount of sucking can remove it.

Needless to say, this conclusion was highly controversial and, not to mention "unamerican". Oil was cheaper then water in Texas and people literally believed that one could pump oil in response to economic demand forever. In fact, Russian oil scientists had formed a theory that stated just that. The abiotic oil theory stated that oil was formed deep in the mantle of the earth and that it continually drifted up to traps in the crust where oil was found. The fact that the abiotic oil theory ignored nearly all available evidence regarding the biotic origins of oil is very reminscent of Lysenkoism...aka science = politics.

Production of US oil peaked in 1971 and has fallen ever since. This factor alone contributed more to the oil shocks of the 70s and early 80s more then anything else. The United States needed a new source of oil in order to keep up with an economy that was artificially shaped around oil twenty years earlier. Thus, the Carter Doctrine was formed..."the United States reserves the right to use its military to retain access to oil in the middle east." And it has been our policy ever since.

Hubbert did not stop with the United States in his conclusion though. He predicted the entire world would reach a peak. Hubbert's work predicted a world peak in oil production would occur in the 1990s based on a steadily increasing demand. This assumption was the only flaw in Hubbert's work. Demand for oil dropped after the oil shocks and America became somewhat more efficient for a time. The 1990's passed and production ramped ever upward.

However, future generations of petroleum geologists, one of them Dr. Ken Deffeyes, have recalculated Hubbert's work. They took into account the dip in demand and recalculated the peak in world oil production. The new timetable for the peak is sometime between 2005-2010. This prediction has far reaching implications for the future.

When we stand on Hubbert's Peak, 50% of the oil in the world will be gone. No amount of technology will extract oil faster to meet an increasing demand. The overall supply oil in the world will fall and competition will increase. Right now, the United States is taking steps to secure our future access to the world's oil supply.

60% of the world's oil remains in the middle east. It is predicted by the US Department of Energy that in 10 years our demand for middle eastern oil will quadrupal. In twenty years, we will be getting the vast majority of oil from that region. In 1997, a group of oil executives and politicians that included Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, etc formed. They called themselves the Project for the New American Century and they lobbied President Bill Clinton to "reform Islam by force if neccesary" so that we could protect our national interests. Clinton denied them and made (marginal) efforts at conservation instead.

In 2000, when George Bush was elected, PNACs policy suddenly had its impetus. The US immediately began negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan about a pipeline through the country that would help extract oil from Caspian Fields. The Taliban refused to work with the infidels and negotiations ended in August of 2001 when a US diplomat is reported to have told Taliban officials to "accept our carpet of gold (the pipeline) or accept our carpet of bombs." In late August of 2001, the Indian government was informed that, "we would have troops on the ground before the snow flew."

This clandestine group and its closed door activities was suddenly given a jolt of political conscience by the tragedy of 9/11. Muslim extremists had made a counter stroke in a largely ignored 40 year war on the middle east. The people who comprised PNAC now had a scapegoat and the "War on Terror" was launched. This war is described by Norman Podhoretz, a cheif advisor to the president and a founding member of PNAC, as WWIV and it is described as a five act play that will last for 40 or more years. Act one was Afghanistan. Act Two is Iraq. Act Three is Iran. Act Four is Syria. Act Five is the reformation of Islam, all 1.8 billion.

The Bush Administration recently renamed the "War on Terror". It is now "the war on violent extremism". This broader target makes the PNACs macabre five act play politically possible. In democritizing the middle east and reforming Islam, we protect and preserve the one thing that allows us to live as we do...Oil.

Peak Oil is the real impetus behind all of this. Hubbert's peak in world oil production is bad news for people who depend on oil. Like us. Americans burn their own body weight in oil everyday. For every calorie of food we eat, it takes ten calories of oil to produce. If one was to take the amount of energy the average american uses in a day and convert it to the amount of energy a person can do in one day, every American has the equivolent of 150 oil slaves working for them. In America, our entire way of life depends on oil.

Norman Podhoretz's WWIV, the macrbre five act play, is the only thing that maintain our way of life and eventually, even that will be a waste. The more oil we pump, the faster production falls and the fighting will suddenly become worthless. Americans will be forced to change. Into what, I dare not say. We could spend trillions of dollars and millions of lives on an investment that has no future or we could take charge of our future and change now.

I was driving back home the other day and I happened to see a yellow hummer driving down the road. On the right of the back window a Bush/Cheney 2004 sticker was emblazoned. On the left was a bumper sticker that read "My SUV loves Iraqi Oil!" I wonder if the driver understands the irony of that statement. I wonder if Iraqi Oil has suddenly become Precious…