Oil prices have fallen from $105 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to around $35-50 a barrel today. That's a two-thirds reduction in the price, and the biggest factor is shale oil delivered by fracking. In many areas of the country, gas is less than $2 a gallon and could fall further in the weeks ahead.
The falling price means, of course, an expanded supply.
The energy scenario has been studied by experts. Here are the results of some of their studies and models:
Just over 100 years ago, the U.S. Bureau of Mines estimated total future production at 6 billion barrels, yet we've produced more than 20 times that amount.
In 1939 the Interior Department predicted U.S. oil supplies would last 13 years.
Jimmy Carter, an engineer, in the first Ford-Carter debate of 1976: We're gonna run out of oil. We now import about 44% of our oil. We need to shift from oil to coal. We need to concentrate our on coal burning and extraction, with safer mines, but also clean burning. We need to shift very strongly toward solar energy and have strict conservation measures. And then as a last resort only, use atomic power.
In 1980, hundreds of the top scientists in the U.S. issued a report called "The Global 2000 Report to the President," declaring that in every way life on earth would be worse by 2000 because the world would run out of oil, gas, food and farmland.
In a 2008 Lansing, Mich., speech, presidential candidate Obama said: "We cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing."
In 2010 from the Oval Office Obama solemnly declared: "We're running out of places to drill," and he jeered that the oil and gas industry might want to pump for oil near the Washington Monument.
Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote in 2010 that "the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking" of global oil production and that " world commodity prices ... are telling us that we're living in a finite world."
During a 2011 Weekly Address he referred to oil and gas as "yesterday's" energy sources. Unlike Carter, he did not reveal what today's was.
During a speech at Georgetown University, he pontificated: "The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource (oil) that will eventually run out."
This is not presented to denigrate anyone, only to show that telling the future--as even a gypsy will admit--is hard.
AAAAaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a graph:
The falling price means, of course, an expanded supply.
The energy scenario has been studied by experts. Here are the results of some of their studies and models:
Just over 100 years ago, the U.S. Bureau of Mines estimated total future production at 6 billion barrels, yet we've produced more than 20 times that amount.
In 1939 the Interior Department predicted U.S. oil supplies would last 13 years.
Jimmy Carter, an engineer, in the first Ford-Carter debate of 1976: We're gonna run out of oil. We now import about 44% of our oil. We need to shift from oil to coal. We need to concentrate our on coal burning and extraction, with safer mines, but also clean burning. We need to shift very strongly toward solar energy and have strict conservation measures. And then as a last resort only, use atomic power.
In 1980, hundreds of the top scientists in the U.S. issued a report called "The Global 2000 Report to the President," declaring that in every way life on earth would be worse by 2000 because the world would run out of oil, gas, food and farmland.
In a 2008 Lansing, Mich., speech, presidential candidate Obama said: "We cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing."
In 2010 from the Oval Office Obama solemnly declared: "We're running out of places to drill," and he jeered that the oil and gas industry might want to pump for oil near the Washington Monument.
Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote in 2010 that "the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking" of global oil production and that " world commodity prices ... are telling us that we're living in a finite world."
During a 2011 Weekly Address he referred to oil and gas as "yesterday's" energy sources. Unlike Carter, he did not reveal what today's was.
During a speech at Georgetown University, he pontificated: "The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource (oil) that will eventually run out."
This is not presented to denigrate anyone, only to show that telling the future--as even a gypsy will admit--is hard.
AAAAaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a graph:
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