{"id":18665,"date":"2016-03-09T13:02:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T18:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18665"},"modified":"2016-03-09T13:02:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T18:02:18","slug":"energy-wars-of-attrition-the-irony-of-oil-abundance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18665","title":{"rendered":"Energy Wars of Attrition: The Irony of Oil Abundance"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/176112\/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_a_take-no-prisoners_world_of_oil\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Energy Wars of Attrition:\u00a0<\/strong><strong>The Irony of Oil Abundance\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Three and a half years ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA)\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/11\/13\/business\/energy-environment\/report-sees-us-as-top-oil-producer-in-5-years.html\" target=\"_blank\">triggered headlines<\/a>\u00a0around the world by predicting that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world\u2019s leading oil producer by 2020 and, together with Canada, would become a net exporter of oil around 2030. Overnight, a new strain of American energy triumphalism appeared and experts began speaking of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/SB10001424127887323894704578114591174453074\" target=\"_blank\">Saudi America<\/a>,\u201d a reinvigorated U.S.A. animated by copious streams of oil and natural gas, much of it obtained through the then-pioneering technique of hydro-fracking. \u201cThis is a real energy revolution,\u201d the\u00a0<em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0crowed in an editorial heralding the IEA pronouncement.<\/p>\n<p>The most immediate effect of this \u201crevolution,\u201d its boosters proclaimed, would be to banish any likelihood of a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_oil\" target=\"_blank\">peak<\/a>\u201d in world oil production and subsequent petroleum scarcity.\u00a0 The peak oil theorists, who flourished in the early years of the twenty-first century, warned that global output was likely to reach its maximum attainable level in the near future, possibly as early as 2012, and then commence an irreversible decline as the major reserves of energy were tapped dry. The proponents of this outlook did not, however, foresee the coming of hydro-fracking and the exploitation of previously inaccessible reserves of oil and natural gas in underground shale formations.<\/p>\n<p>Understandably enough, the stunning increase in North American oil production in the past few years simply wasn\u2019t on their radar. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the Department of Energy, U.S. crude output\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/dnav\/pet\/hist\/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&amp;s=WCRFPUS2&amp;f=W\" target=\"_blank\">rose<\/a>\u00a0from 5.5 million barrels per day in 2010 to 9.2 million barrels as 2016 began, an increase of 3.7 million barrels per day in what can only be considered the relative blink of an eye. Similarly unexpected was the success of Canadian producers in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/beta\/international\/analysis.cfm?iso=CAN\" target=\"_blank\">extracting oil<\/a>\u00a0(in the form of bitumen, a semi-solid petroleum substance) from the tar sands of Alberta.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Energy Wars of Attrition:\u00a0The Irony of Oil Abundance\u00a0 Three and a half years ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA)\u00a0triggered headlines\u00a0around the world by predicting that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world\u2019s leading oil producer by 2020 and, together with Canada, would become a net exporter of oil around 2030. Overnight, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[103,251,267,2571,3827,416,433,11761,588,12848,595,4523,596,617,701,723,7413,827,861],"class_list":["post-18665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-canada","tag-eia","tag-energy-information-administration","tag-energy-resources","tag-energy-wars","tag-iea","tag-international-energy-agency","tag-michael-t-klare","tag-oil","tag-oil-abundance","tag-oil-production","tag-oil-sands","tag-oil-supply","tag-peak-oil","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-shale-oil","tag-tomdispatch","tag-united-states","tag-wall-street-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18666,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18665\/revisions\/18666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}