Re: oil and the world-system

Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:35:06 -1000
Jay Hanson (j@qmail.com)

>There is now, and has always been, serious debate within geological and
>policy circles as to how much ultimately recoverable oil exists in the
>earth. Recent reports by economists at the World Bank, for instance,

Not true. "For many years geologists and oil companies have
published estimates of the total amount of crude oil that will
ultimately be recovered from the earth over all time. Remarkably,
these assessments of Estimated Ultimately Recoverable (EUR) oil
have varied little over the past half century."

[ This is direct quote from a 1996 World Resources
Institute paper by James MacKenzie. Take a look:
http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/eur-oil.html ]

Estimates from economists are irrelevant because the limits on
oil production are thermodynamic -- not economic.

Jay