The Price Of Drilling For Oil

You know, people are acting like the price of oil is this big thing that has suddenly hit us all like a hammer, and that none of it was foreseeable. But people have been talking for years about what was going to happen when we reached a peak in oil production. There is only so much oil in the world, and once it runs out, there isn't any more.

The thing is, also, that nobody is really giving us accurate estimates on how much oil they think we have left. All of the oil producing countries are pretty vague about it. Who knows if we will be going down on a slow decline, or if we all of a sudden will run out? And if we were going to run out of oil suddenly, do you really think that any of the oil producing conglomerates would have any motive to let any of us know?

Jimmy Carter tried to tell us that there was a problem with energy back in the 1970's when he was president. But nobody seemed to be in the mood to listen. Even then, it was probably a little on the too late side. M. King Hubbert predicted in 1956, probably quite accurately, that the U. S. peak in oil production would occur around 1970.

I've heard talk for years that when oil gets in short supply, that people in the exurbs will become stranded with houses that they can't get to town from and can't afford to heat. But nobody has really ever been in the mood to listen. Now urban planners are starting to get on the ball, but very few are playing along.

The Oil Age is going to end, folks, just as surely as the Stone Age and the Bronze age did. But neither of those eras ended because we ran out of stone and bronze. This is going to be a forced realignment. So are we going to plan ahead or just let really ugly things happen?

Now some conservatives are starting to push for greater drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the offshore waters. But that will just suck things dry, won't make any difference for a long time, and would only affect the price of gas by a few pennies at most. Why mess up our environment to save three cents a gallon? Of course, the grimy little buddies of those advocating drilling in pristine areas stand to make a mint from the adventure.