Do you think after reading this, stock investing is futile? http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
Answers
412 points
MajorPayne answered one year ago …
We're discovering new oil reserves each day - we have one of the largest untapped sources of oil directly to our North in the Canadian oil sands. This type of stuff is meant to garner media attention or drive a 'green' agenda.
But, if you are worried, then invest in alternative energy stocks. Those will certainly have some profit potential if we start to run out of oil :)
380 points
SirCrashton answered one year ago …
I agree with the points MajorPayne mentions: there are still large untapped sources that have not yet been developed and the tone of the article makes it read like "the sky is falling!" That's not to suggest that peak oil is an issue that can be ignored but the author of the article is only looking at the situation from the perspective of where we are NOW.
In addition to alternative energy sources which are not yet in widespread use (which will ease demand on fossil fuels), no consideration is given to the possibility of creating synthetic oil or manufacturing products using some kind of oil substitute. For example, during WWII latex was in very short supply and the U.S faced a critical shortage of rubber for the war effort. This led to the development of synthetic rubber.
2709 points
Oldman answered one year ago …
Let's just imagine that all the "easy" oil fields have been found, and are depleting (which even here in the U.S., isn't true: vast tracts off the SE seaboard have drilling restrictions & in the eastern Gulf, from south of the Pensacola Region, all along the shallow shelf to the Keys)...but even so, that wouldn't necessarily restore what has already been wasted or consumed, or provide a small percentage of the world's demands, exactly as MajorPayne has alluded to...but these deposits of oil sands, shale oil, and tar sand development are costly, and may be only partially able to help supply diesel and petrochemical feedstocks...somewhat locally. But to ship it overseas, it COSTS BIG to ship..
SirCrashton, above, has described one alternative: substitution (neoprene for latex, but neoprene is a petrochemical, so that's not a teriffic example in the present argument) but let's look at how the Axis in WWII and SoAfrica under the last stages of being shunned for continuing apartheid, managed to produce petroleum: they used a cooking process on coal to produce a C(oal)T(o)L(iquid) system...it was costly and not terribly efficient, but that CTL process can be improved, and has been and is.
The problem: you need vastly more energy to liquefy and "Crack" the distillate into useful petrochemicals (benzene+octane+....diesel and methane and "coal gas") than the thermal efficiency of the coal itself. The modern answer is to use geothermal or solar or nuclear energy. Many of the major Oil companies, and a lot of "fringe" energy companies are now at work on this, here, in France, and ...even in Iran, which claims to want nuclear, because its oil reserves will not permit export after 2014.
In one of my responses to a query concerning geothermal energy, I wrote a slightly hyperbolic answer ...about siting a geothermal plant in the Yellowstone region to help crack oil shale...but it could easily be used to provide power for a CTL for Montana's vast coal deposits.
Well all this won't happen overnight, nor will plug-in or fuelcell vehicles for transport. But they're coming, because the transport costs are increasing (the shippers and tanker rates are increasing) and it's leading to inflation of food and plastics and fertilizer prices, because the petrochemical industry was dependent on cheap feed stocks for these purposes. So, in one sense, we are currently in the first stages of the scenario of "Peak Oil", and the crash will be a slow process.
142 points
RobertW answered one year ago …
Our oil problem is primarily a result of our own country's refusal to pass an energy policy over the past years and currently. I guess congress just thinks this has not been an issue in the past and will not be in the future. The Senate Appropriations Committee just Friday refused to end its moratorium of oil shale development in Colorado. 13 Republicans in favor, 15 Democrats opposed. Someone above mentioned that developing shale would be expensive. It will be on a comparison basis, but if private industry spends the money, and it will, you can bet it would be profitable for them to do do and at a pump price way below what it is today. Further, we should be drilling in ANWR, the gulf, and other places in the US to increase our supply, make us independent of Far East countries, and reduce prices. Congress needs to take some action quickly.
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