Happy Days are Here Again?
- Lindsey Grant
- May 1, 2012
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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Notes
- This paper extends my November 2011 NPG FORUM paper “Is Fracking the Answer? To What?” To rebut the widespread current misapprehension that shale oil and gas provide a permanent answer to the fossil energy transition.
- The Potential Gas Committee, http://potentialgas.org. Critiqued in Slate: Future Tense, “What the Frack? Is there really 100 years’ worth of natural gas beneath the United States?” By Chris Nelder. Posted Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011, at 6:37 AM ET. The 2170 tcf estimate is the highest I have seen. The White House staff should have checked the source and the prediction, but perhaps they were not asked.
- See Grant, The Collapsing Bubble: Growth and Fossil Energy (Santa Ana, CA: Seven Locks Press, 2005), p.25 for a table of the USGS 1995 U.S. and 2000 world projections of oil and gas resources. Or go to the original source: “Executive Summary by USGS World Energy Assessment Team. In USGS Digital Series 60. Table 1. World level summary of petroleum estimates for undiscovered conventional petroleum and reserve growth for oil, gas, and natural gas liquids (NGL).” at http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-060/ESpt4.html.
- USGS Science Feature, 4-18-2012, 2:42pm EDT: “World’s Oil and Gas Endowment”, by Jessica Robertson. Note the shift in coverage. The 191 b/b included known reserves and anticipated technological reserve growth, plus undiscovered recoverable resources of 83 b/b. The new study covers only undiscovered recoverable resources, estimated now at 108 b/b. Revised data on known reserves are not yet published.
- USGS NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF OIL AND GAS RESOURCES UPDATE (August 2011): TOTAL OIL AND GAS RESOURCES (Sum of conventional and continuous resources.)
- DOE/EIA, AEO2012 Early Release Overview. Release Date: January 23, 2012. Report Number: DOE/ EIA-0383ER.
- See Note 1. The individual skeptics quoted are Arthur Berman and Lynn Pittinger.
- James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies: New York Times OpEd p.29, May 10, 2012, titled “Game Over for the Climate.”
- Grant, The Collapsing Bubble: Growth and Fossil Energy (Note 3), p.30.
