More Newspeak

In an MSNBC piece, John Schoen has all the answers, including the following:

an oil company is no different than, say, a gold mining company. The price of gold has little to do with how much it costs to find and produce it — it's set by supply and demand.

it takes years from the time you invest in looking for oil to the time you can pump it out of the ground. So even in places where there are still plenty of reserves (oil underground) like the Middle East, oil production (how much you get out of the ground per day) didn't grow fast enough to cover the growth in demand.

most domestic U.S. oil costs more, not less, to produce than Saudi oil. Our oilfields are much more “mature” — which is another way of saying the easy (i.e. cheap) oil has all been pumped

I'd say there is an inconsistency here: why remark about oil costs, if costs don't have much to do with price. There is a lot of evidence that the Saudi oil fields are mature. Mr. Schoen posits that growth will, in time, keep up with demand, given enough monetary incentive. Where, oh where, is the recognition that the earth is round and that oil is a finite expendable resource?

and again, remarkably,

By the early 2000s, just as investment in new oil production had slowed, demand for oil began taking off — especially in developing countries like China and India that have presided over booming economies. (Which is a good thing, by the way. If the Chinese weren't able to afford to buy billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury debt to make up for our budget deficit, we'd likely be looking at much higher U.S. interest rates — or worse. But that’s another answer for another day.)

Sounds Orwellian to me.

If that's not enough, try following Mr. Schoen's glib answers to the following serious question:

If, in fact, world oil production has peaked and there are (at best) twenty years worth of oil and gas reserves remaining we are facing cataclysmic change. We're not talking about the "inconvenience" of higher gasoline prices or the need to curtail emissions to arrest global climate change. We're talking about the end of life as we know it. There is no single aspect of our economy, our very lives that is not dependent on products and processes derived from oil and gas …
While "alternative" energy sources are available, they, too, are dependent on fossil fuels: photovoltaic cells and hydrogen fuel cell membranes are derived from petroleum based plastics. The sooner we acknowledge that our fossil fuel sources are finite and the day of reckoning is not that far away, the better our chances that some semblance of what we call human civilization will exist fifty years from now.
-- Ray S., Los Angeles

I don't fully agree with Ray's assumptions. For example, one might conclude from Ray's question that we have twenty years before the 'guage hits empty' (to use Mr. Schoen's words). The evidence shows that there will be reduced production each year after the peak. And there is plenty of evidence that the peak is upon us. Our society worships growth. Can we possibly handle contraction? The cataclysm could come sooner rather than later.

To counter gloom-and-doom, Mr. Schoen offers pie-in-the-sky:

Many, like Ray in Los Angeles, fear that coming oil shortages could bring “the end of life as we know it.” We agree. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
post-oil life could end up being a much better one.

and

If the era of “cheap oil” is indeed over, we all have a lot of work to do. But here at the Answer Desk, we don’t believe that the game is over. There are a lot of very smart people out there working on solutions. As oil consumers, we all created this problem. The good news is that that means we all have the power to solve it.

It's not a game, Mr. Schoen, and aren't you the one with the answers? Why does our creating the problem imply that we have the power to solve it? Isn't there anyone at MSNBC who can see through such drivel?


Here's a Newsweek piece that purports to show how market forces are kicking in to advance alternate fuels. In it, the author states:

Add to that the fierce ongoing debate about "peak oil" and the declining viability of the Earth's oil supply.