The Dumb Get Dumber

OK, folks. I'll just put the story out there today. It's your turn to pick it apart. If you've been reading DOTE for a while, you already know what I'm going to say about it. One of the reasons I write this blog is to give my readers the skills to evaluate on their own the stuff they come across. I've thrown you a real softball today. I didn't even mark the transcribed text for emphasis.

Today's story comes from NPR Weekend Edition's New Boom Reshapes Oil World, Rocks North Dakota (September 25, 2011). Here's the audio. For background information, follow the few links I've provided to older posts. You will not a get a true feel for this story unless you listen to the full audio (11:15).

At the 1:39 mark (narration by Guy Raz, audio) —

Our cover story today: The new American oil boom. In 2008, we imported almost 2/3^rds of our oil. This year, less than half of it came from abroad. And what happened? Well, scientists figured out how to extract oil from rocks and sand, and it means that within a decade, the U.S. will be close to producing as much oil as Saudi Arabia. And within five years? America could pass Russia as the world's largest energy supplier.

[upbeat background music gets a little louder, a little happier...]

Now, the change in Williston, North Dakota is so dramatic in just the last three or four years because of something called the Bakken rock formation, and it's estimated that trapped in that rock is anywhere from 11 to 20 billion barrels of oil, enough oil to power the United States for four years...

At the 4:08 mark (audio) —

... and all that American oil [in North Dakota, Colorado, Texas] could add up to two trillion barrels in reserves, which is twice as much as the Middle East. And all of this oil is now being extracted due to a relatively new technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking"...

At the 7:29 mark, shaded text is Amy Myers Jaffe (audio) —

Now, since the 1960s the center of gravity of the world's oil supply has been the Middle East. But many oil experts, including Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University, now believe that power center will soon shift to North and South America, and fast.

... in five or ten years time, we're a major oil producing region where our production is going up, you know, dramatically, not by, you know, 10%, but by considerable volumes...

Let's talk about the geopolitics of all this for a moment, because if the center of gravity is shifting to North America and South America, what does that mean for the Middle East in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years?

So, it's going to be a turbulent time in the Middle East...

In the story text, but not included in the audio —

The United States, Jaffe says, could have 2 trillion barrels of oil waiting to be drilled. South America could hold another 2 trillion. And Canada? 2.4 trillion. That's compared to just 1.2 trillion in the Middle East and north Africa.

Jaffe says those new oil reserves, combined with growing turmoil in the Middle East, will "absolutely propel more and more investment into the energy resources in the Americas."

OK, that's enough. Insightful reader Huey made a comment yesterday.

Love your commentary, Dave, read you every day, but Greg Hunter found something that sums up everything you've ever said in one neat little graphic. It renders you obsolete:

I am forced to agree, although I'll continue to write the blog

My Favorite Line: "scientists figured out how to extract oil from rocks and sand"

Question: is this NPR reporter's name really GUY RAZ?

Here's a picture of a chimpanzee.

And here's a picture of Daniel Yergin.

Source

And here's a picture of Amy Myers Jaffe.

And here's a picture of Guy Raz.

And here's a picture of Thomas Friedman.

And here's a picture of Ben Bernanke.

And here's a picture of Lloyd Blankfein.

And here's a picture of the President.

And here's a picture of Disneyland.

Comments

[Mr. Roboto]

Thanks for making it a softball. I'm having one of my foggy, bleary diabetes-days, so if you hadn't gone easy on us, I might have actually had think about this one. ;-)

The first thing that comes to mind is the same problem with the tar-sands, that is, Energy Returned On Energy Invested. The net-energy we will get out of tar-sands and oil-shale is rather less impressive than the cheerleaders would have you think. Not only that, what energy we do get out of it will flow at the rate of a slow trickle, so meeting the rising demands of a bloated growth-for-growth's-sake economy with these silly schemes, simply won't happen.

There's also the little detail that the processes used for extracting energy from tar-sands and oil-shale are horrendously polluting. It really is an example of the short-sightedness inherent in human nature, that we would make the planet less conducive to supporting human life in the long-term for such fleeting, ultimately useless energy-gain.