The Americas, Not the Middle East, Will Be the World Capital of Energy

The Americas, Not the Middle East, Will Be the World Capital of Energy

www.foreignpolicy.com

For half a century, the global energy supply's center of gravity has been the Middle East. This fact has had self-evidently enormous implications for the world we live in -- and it's about to change.

By the 2020s, the capital of energy will likely have shifted back to the Western Hemisphere, where it was prior to the ascendancy of Middle Eastern megasuppliers such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the 1960s. The reasons for this shift are partly technological and partly political. Geologists have long known that the Americas are home to plentiful hydrocarbons trapped in hard-to-reach offshore

(visit the link for the full news article)

I don't know.

I'm sure many here will consider it BS or MSM propaganda etc.
The world is changing. There is no doubt that there is a lot more oil than what is being let on about. The problem here for me is should we continue to use it?

I personally would love to see the world get off it's Petroleum addiction and move onto to something more eco friendly. If this article is true then we will continue to fight over it while potentially polluting ourselves to a point worse than we already have.

www.foreignpolicy.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

More from the article...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/11b811ae98d0.jpg[/atsimg]

But since the early 2000s, the energy industry has largely solved that problem. With the help of horizontal drilling and other innovations, shale gas production in the United States has skyrocketed from virtually nothing to 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply in less than a decade. By 2040, it could account for more than half of it. This tremendous change in volume has turned the conversation in the U.S. natural gas industry on its head; where Americans once fretted about meeting the country's natural gas needs, they now worry about finding potential buyers for the country's surplus.

Meanwhile, onshore oil production in the United States, condemned to predictions of inexorable decline by analysts for two decades, is about to stage an unexpected comeback. Oil production from shale rock, a technically complex process of squeezing hydrocarbons from sedimentary deposits, is just beginning. But analysts are predicting production of as much as 1.5 million barrels a day in the next few years from resources beneath the Great Plains and Texas alone -- the equivalent of 8 percent of current U.S. oil consumption. The development raises the question of what else the U.S. energy industry might accomplish if prices remain high and technology continues to advance. Rising recovery rates from old wells, for example, could also stem previous declines. On top of all this, analysts expect an additional 1 to 2 million barrels a day from the Gulf of Mexico now that drilling is resuming. Peak oil? Not anytime soon.

Actually it will be China with Thorium reactors, you know the reactors, that cannot make bombs.

It looks promising, but like the article says, there is a lot of work to be done before this can happen. Most importantly, the people in power need to get their heads out of the sand and start investing in alternative forms of energy or at the very least start producing oil from their own nations.

I'm no expert but China has been a big intrest to me for a lot of years...so much so I get all the real news for the real experts...

Mack in March 2011 I got to watch a web cast by Jonathan Holslag author of the book 'Trapped Giant: China's Military Rise' Hosted by the International Institute for strategic Studies ... Holslag is the leading authority on Chinese issues and he touched on some of this back then...
you can watch a bit of that conference here IISS web site

Emboldened by economic strength and growing military power, China is emerging as a challenger to US dominance in the Pacific. But its promised peaceful rise has done little to convince regional powers that it will not use force to press longstanding territorial claims or attempt sea-denial operations in Asia’s lucrative trade routes. Uncertainty about Beijing’s intentions could thus beget a new, unpredictable arms race as states scramble to protect their interests. For the short term, however, they are weighing up how far their interests may be served by cooperating with China and ushering it into the role of a responsible superpower, while hedging their bets with traditional alliances and military modernisation.



Jonathan Holslag, Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary China Studies (BICCS), launched his new Adelphi Book on the topic, 'Trapped Giant: China's Military Rise', on Friday 11 March.

reply to post by DaddyBare


Thanks for the interesting perspective.
I havent seen that one yet. I'm checking it out. Will comment a bit later.

reply to post by SLAYER69


I don't believe in "peak oil", or that it's dino-juice either. The Earth is constantly producing it deep, it's like a natural lube for the tectonic plates.

Having said that, can you imagine how expensive a gallon of gas will be when we drill the oil here, refine it here, and deal with all the green regulations put on us by the corporations, and pay Americans to do all of this instead of some 16 year old kid from Kuwait?

Ironic, don't you think?

reply to post by SLAYER69

But since the early 2000s, the energy industry has largely solved that problem. With the help of horizontal drilling and other innovations, shale gas production in the United States has skyrocketed from virtually nothing to 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply in less than a decade.

I don't know if you've seen the film "Gasland" yet. I am wondering how this weighs in with what that film presents.

My second question; Is Foreign Policy not the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations?

I must agree though, we need to get off this dependency on oil. There is so much technology waiting to be put into use - or nearly there - balanced against the monopolistic stranglehold of Big Oil. They even use petrochemicals to make most of ur synthetic drugs. I think it is high time we moved onward and upward.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
I don't know.

I'm sure many here will consider it BS or MSM propaganda etc.
The world is changing. There is no doubt that there is a lot more oil than what is being let on about.

My dad (in his 70's now) was a supplier of oil & gas pipeline and pump station parts during his working career and spent a lot of time traveling and working with experts in the field. He's told me for decades that there's a ton of oil sitting under us, but that it's too expensive to get to and is why we went to the Middle East for oil supplies. I've been watching the development of new drilling & extraction technologies for years and wondering when there was going to be a "newsflash" that we don't need foreign oil after all. Looks like it's finally going to happen. This isn't propaganda, and it's not a conspiracy either, the info has always been available.

Forgive me if this goes a wee bit off-topic, but isn't there a difference between organic petroleum and inorganic petroleum? And don't we have plenty of of both?

Just asking, hoping someone smarter than I can answer. . . .

Originally posted by JennaDarling
Actually it will be China with Thorium reactors, you know the reactors, that cannot make bombs.

The U.S. also has access to plentiful supplies of Thorium. If only we (and the world) hadn't chosen the Uranium/Plutonium path - because we needed the weapons material, we might already be using Thorium reactors since the technology has been available for decades.

Maybe it's not too late ...

Originally posted by JennaDarling
Actually it will be China with Thorium reactors, you know the reactors, that cannot make bombs.

Yes it is possible that china will build these reactors in the future. But there's another kind of nuclear reactor, it's called travelling wave reactor. Since it is financed by Bill Gates, guess which country is going to build it.

Advanced Reactor Gets Closer to Reality

Terrapower is pushing ahead with a reactor design that uses a nearly inexhaustible fuel source.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
I don't know.


I personally would love to see the world get off it's Petroleum addiction and move onto to something more eco friendly. If this article is true then we will continue to fight over it while potentially polluting ourselves to a point worse than we already have.

www.foreignpolicy.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

edit on 15-8-2011 by SLAYER69 because: (no reason given)

Hemp would be the perfect plan to supply oil. The only reason why they aren't using hemp is because the big oil companies want to keep their business. Another reason why its illegalized. It's a monopoly they have and want to keep for themselves.

OH and hemp is but one alternative, I am sure there has been other alternatives that has been shot down and brushed under the carpet.

In terms of natural gas production (and the use of CNG--compressed natural gas for vehicle fuel) we HAVE Saudi Arabia--in the Rust Belt.

The Marcellus Shale formation (NY upstate; most of PA, WVA; eastern OH) has hundred year supplies of natural gas (in shale). Fracking in the bedrockish mid Atlantic is NOT problematic. The Soros/Shandler funded 'Gasland' is the new 'Inconvenient Truth' scare emotional scare movie.

A while back I uploaded this interesting series to our ATS media section. I'll post the first below. The rest are available for viewing in our ATS Media section.

I think it's very relevant to the topic.

S&F

I believe the US and Canada hold tremendous untapped petroleum and natural gas reserves. If I were in charge, I'd be doing exactly what I believe those who are in charge are doing: Use their oil first, and when it's gone or too expensive, tap into our own reserves.

While it is more expensive to extract the oil from Canadian oil sands, their reserves are HUGE, and account for 20% of the oil currently imported into the US:

Most of the oil sands of Canada are located in three major deposits in northern Alberta. These are the Athabasca-Wabiskaw oil sands of north northeastern Alberta, the Cold Lake deposits of east northeastern Alberta, and the Peace River deposits of northwestern Alberta. Between them they cover over 140,000 square kilometres (54,000 sq mi)—an area larger than England—and hold proven reserves of 1.75 trillion barrels (280×109 m3) of bitumen in place. Wiki

That's an insane amount of oil; enough to power the northern hemisphere for at least a hundred years. The US also has oil sands in Utah, but they account for a paltry 32 Billion barrels. In addition to oil sands, the US has monstrous, untapped, oil fields offshore, in Alaska, and even in the Midwest.

My mother owns a share of an oil well that sits in the middle of some farmer's cornfield in Illinois. It doesn't produce a lot of oil, but it does produce. Small, privately owned oil wells dot the landscape across the entire Midwest.



BTW, the oil well shown above is for sale if anyone is interested. It pumps out between 10-20 barrels a day of light sweet crude oil. Apparently, there are tens of thousands of these privately owned wells, and many of them are for sale. You can buy the well outright (actually, you're buying the farmer's mineral rights) or join an investor's group and own just a part of it. natural-gas-oil.com...

In 50 years, when the oil fields in the M.E. are dry, it's completely conceivable that they will become importers of OUR oil; we can finally stick it back to OPEC nations the way they've been doing to us for the last hundred years. And when I say "we" I mean somebody in the US. I can't include myself in that category because I'll be long dead by the time M.E. oil wells are dry; but my grandchildren may benefit.

the resources may be here the technologies may come but one thing that i see that most people are not counting

is the political aspect here id love for the middle east to be marginalized and china but the thing people are not counting on is politics.

politics and the global warming crowd have destroyed and pushed for more foreign enegry consumption.

get a potus and the right polilitics and this may happen.

the current poltical climate is going after big oil and banned offshore drilling etc that has to change there maybe alot there but politics and the percetions of the way things should be.

i wouldnt count on it.

something major would have to happen to make a paradigm shift for domestic production no matter how much i want this i just dont see it happening.

reply to post by SLAYER69


You only have to go onto google Earth and see the untapped vast resources of South America.

But there's a "problem" not seen in any other place in the world, except perhaps the US, that exists in South America.

Resistance.

Countless kings and queens of Europe tried, and failed, to capture the Americas.

It's simply unconquerable.

You've heard of Russian Winter. Well, they've got Amazonian fever.

Our cars gonna run on water once THEY control the water.
Its way more profitable for them and it already cost more.
My guess is its gonna take a decade or so and Nestle's gonna hold most of the water on earth.
I hope i'm wrong tho.