World is running out of oil - again

"The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says the world is running out of oil. We've been told that for the last 150 years. The only thing we're running out of is the will to drill.

Ever since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pa., in 1859, experts have been predicting we would soon run out of oil. The latest is Dr. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency in Paris, whose job it is to assess future energy supplies by OECD countries."

(snip)

"But what we have is not peak oil, but peak government. Ronald Bailey has pointed out at ReasonOnline that "77% of the world's known oil reserves are in the hands of state-owned oil companies" that "do not respond to market signals and so are underinvesting in new production technologies and even in the production facilities they currently have."

There are friendlier places to find more oil, places such as Alaska, our Outer Continental Shelf and the Rocky Mountain West, if we had the political will. Our future should not be dependent on thugs like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in places like Venezuela and Iran, or on the political whims of OPEC.

Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey says the Chukchi Sea off Alaska holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply, and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.

The Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has been called the "Persia of the West." This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.

Then there are the riches beneath ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf. Let us seek, and we shall find. We always have."