As faithful readers can attest, OGJ has been devoting more space of late to the issue of future oil supply.
So far this year, OGJ has featured articles with the following themes:
- How rising expectations of ultimate oil and gas recovery will have a critical impact on energy and environmental policies (OGJ, Jan. 19, 2003, p. 18, and Jan. 26, 2003, p. 18,).
- The outlook for world oil supply to 2010 (OGJ, Feb. 16, 2004, p. 22).
- How investment incentive concerns have been overlooked in the peak-oil debate (OGJ, Mar. 8, 2004, p. 18).
- Saudis refuting claims of oil field production declines (OGJ, Mar. 8, 2004, p. 24).
- How oil sands are proving to be a long-life, low-risk oil resource (OGJ, Mar. 15, 2004, p. 37).
- An exclusive interview with Saudi Oil Minister Ali I. al-Naimi in which he decries the notion of an imminent peak in global oil production and pledges Saudi Arabia to be the world's oil supplier of last resort (OGJ, Apr. 5, 2004, p. 18).
- An analysis of the claims that Saudi and Iraqi oil reserves estimates increases during the 1980s were politically driven and therefore invalid (OGJ, Apr. 12, 2004, p. 18).
- This week's lead article, a real head-turner that seeks to upend notions about the relationship between oil demand and high oil prices and what that bodes for future oil supply (see p. 18).
Setting the stage
A similar spurt of articles preceded the six-part series on Future Energy Supply last summer (OGJ, July 7-Aug. 18, 2003). Setting the stage, as it were.
Some might see the recent spurt of articles as contributing to this editor's self-aggrandizement by their timing just ahead of his participation in the May 6 Offshore Technology Conference panel on Hubbert's Peak: Impending Oil Crisis—Exaggeration or Fact? Whipping up interest, as it were.
Trust me, this ego is sufficiently aggrandized, and there is already reader interest aplenty. As they say in Hollywood, this story has "legs." Check out the tens of thousands of words of reader give-and-take at the General Interest Forum on the peak-oil debate at www.ogjonline.com.
And the explanation for the recent series of articles (plus the many published last year) on future oil and gas supply issues is simple: Readers want them, conferences are bristling with the subject, the authors want to jump into the debate, and we editors recognize that. It's a fun story, but also an important one.
Even editors who can mark their OGJ tenures in decades can still get excited about a good story with legs. The last time this editor felt that kind of excitement about a story with legs was the new wave of environmentalism sweeping the oil and gas industry that OGJ began tracking in the early 1980s and that exploded anew with the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill.
Next Big Thing
The peak-oil debate is getting more polarized and more rancorous—and, especially noteworthy, more politicized.
So here's an immodest prediction: The peak-oil debate will be the Next Big Thing. The story with legs. The overarching theme that will resonate throughout the oil and gas industry for decades to come. It will be propelled forward in the public consciousness not only by serious debate within the industry itself but also on the political hustings and by antioil forces who can't seem to pry Americans out of their sport utility vehicles even as war rages in the Middle East and Chicken Little lies sacrificed on the Kyoto altar.
Iraq and Saudi Arabia will figure largely in that debate. So will Russia and the Caspian. And Orinoco oil and Athabasca tar sands. And reserves accounting and transparency.
And alternate energy viability.
That last one once looked like it had legs too, circa 1979-85. So you'll see more coverage of alternate energy in OGJ in the years ahead.
Some of that coverage belongs only in this space. To wit: A University of Illinois research team, reports Associated Press, is working on a thermochemical conversion process for converting pig manure into refinable crude oil.
Let's stop here. Even the lowest of satirists has his limits.
Even in an election year.