By Dave McGowan
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/mcgowanpeakoilandclubofrome14mar05.shtml
March 14, 2005

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/313305.shtml

MICHAEL RUPPERT: TAKE FOOT, INSERT IN MOUTH: "...curiously enough [Michael Ruppert even recommends for great information...] the Center for an Informed America [McGowans own website]. Huh? Who knew that this site provided reliable information? I guess Ruppert's been too busy with other things to update his links page, since we all know that this website stopped being a "source for reason and reliable information" the minute that I opted not to toe the 'Peak' line. But here I digress.

[One of Ruppert's heros: Prouty] "The point here is that Prouty was, as near as I can tell, something of a hero to Mr. Ruppert. And the funny thing about that is that Prouty was, as it turns out, a vocal supporter of the notion that oil is abiotic in origin. According to the late Colonel, "petroleum is not a 'Fossil' fuel with a surface or near surface origin. It was made to be thought a 'Fossil' fuel by the Nineteenth [sic] oil producers to create the concept that it was of limited supply and therefore extremely valuable. This fits with the 'Depletion' allowance philosophical scam." Prouty also wrote that the notion that petroleum is a 'fossil fuel' came "Right out of the Rockefeller bible."
( http://www.prouty.org/oil.html) RUPPERT CITES 'ROCKFELLER BIBLE' PHRASES ACCORDING TO OWN HEROES.

"Who would have ever guessed that if the guy that Ruppert claims as a mentor were alive today, his would be the loudest voice raised to denounce what Ruppert is selling as a Rockefeller-scripted scam?"

"...we have been deliberately lied to for decades about the source and availability of the substance that is the very life-force of modern industrial society."
FIVE BACKGROUND COMMENTS/SUMMARY POINTS BEFORE THE ARTICLE STARTS:

1. For those young enough to have to catch up with the villany of your ancestors, if you want to understand it, the Club of Rome connection shows that ideological "peak oil lie" talk and material "kill everybody off" talk were blended together from the very start--like strands of DNA inseparable and required for each other to replicate the lie meme. This has been an interlinked helix of ideological/material ideas espoused from the same high level group for at least 30 years--despite of course knowing that their own foundational meme about "depleting oil" was a lie. A propaganda campaign. If they knew that, and still propagaged the lie, then the connected policy recommendation they had--mass depopulationism--was the real goal looking for some means to cast the blame for their actions elsewhere and leave the very active guilty looking blameless. Team "Peak Oil" is the selling tool. The following information shows that depopulatist agenda setters--read that as eugenicists and biowarfare people--have decided upon selling the lie of "peak oil" from the very beginning of their strategy of depopulationism/eugenics/biowarfare vectors in the 1970s.

2. McGowan and others make the interesting point that the whole framework of "gas depletion allowances" which give the oil companies millions of dollars in tax write-offs, are thus a lie as well. These should be revoked since oil is abiotic and renewable. These 'depletion allowances' (sic) should disappear in a puff of legal logic. Of course the oil corporation elites of Bush/Cheney are going to keep selling you their "peak oil" scam: its built into the U.S. tax perk structure for several generations of amassed profits. Make that amassed stolen profits, because they have been based on lies.]

3. McGowan writes: "Oh yes, before I forget, I need to, regrettably, hand out a couple of Hall of Shame Awards. The first goes to the Centre for Research on Globalisation, for posting, among other things, a repellent piece by F. William Engdahl entitled "Iraq and the Problem of Peak Oil." The second goes to Online Journal, for posting too many 'Peak Oil'-themed pieces to list here (including a number of articles penned by Larry Chin, who doesn't seem to be able to write on any subject without tying it in to 'Peak Oil'). Both of these websites were, at one time, among the best at providing alternative news and commentary. Both are now pitching 'Peak Oil' without offering any hint that there is another side to the debate. And that, I'm afraid, is absolutely shameful."

4. While the BBC has been busily pitching the 'Peak Oil' scare, The Scotsman has been rather skeptical of the scam. On May 21, correspondent James Reynolds focused on a new report by Dr. Leonard Magueri in the journal Science. In the report [in peer-reviewed Science magazine, instead of unreviewed corporate propaganda preferred by Michael Ruppert], Magueri argued "the world is not running out of oil, and the reality is that there are abundant supplies for years to come." Magueri pointed out that estimates of proven reserves have been increasing since the 1940s, and, "thanks to new exploration, drilling and recovery technology, the worldwide finding and development cost per barrel of oil equivalent has dramatically declined over the last 20 years, from an average of about $21 in 1979-81 to under $6 in 1997-99. At the same time, the recovery rate from world oilfields has increased from about 22 percent in 1980 to 35 percent today."
( http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=578462004)

On June 16, The Scotsman openly ridiculed the 'Peak Oil' concept (and various other end-of-the-world scenarios that have been pitched over the years). After recounting numerous predictions of imminent demise that never came to pass, the authors conclude with this tongue-in-cheek assessment of 'Peak Oil': "But perhaps the most often repeated catastrophe predicted is the exhaustion of the world's oil reserves. As early as 1919 the head of the US geological survey forecast that the end would come in nine years....[gotta keep up the agit-prop agenda, because only lies and mass psychology support a monopoly price structure for the world's most plentiful resource to be sold artificially as the world's most finite resource.]"
( http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=683192004)

5. WAS DR. GOLD MURDERED TO KILL OFF A MAJOR ABIOTIC OIL MEDIA SPOKESMAN? "Bardi associates the abiotic petroleum theory specifically with Dr. Thomas Gold, noting only in a footnote that the theory actually "had its origin in the work of a group of Ukrainian and Russian scientists." Also interesting is that Bardi repeatedly refers to Gold in the present tense, implying that the doctor is still alive and able to defend his work, although Bardi is certainly aware of Dr. Gold's untimely demise just a few short months ago (just as 'Peak Oil' stories were popping up all over the mainstream media)." ... "My own feelings about the late Dr. Gold are decidedly mixed. On the one hand, he was almost certainly the plagiarist that he was accused of being. And the possibility exists, I suppose, that he may have deliberately misrepresented the science, thereby making abiotic petroleum theory infinitely easier to discredit and marginalize. On the other hand, however, Gold undeniably did more than anyone else to bring the notion of abiotic petroleum origins to the Western world. And the timing of his death was certainly suspicious, to say the least -- especially now that it is being followed by appalling post-mortem attacks..."

THE ROCKEFELLER CORPORATE OIL MAJORS SHOULD BE THROWN INTO JAIL FOR SELLING FRAUDULENTLY PRICED ITEMS AS WELL AS CHEATING ON GENERATIONS OF THEIR CORPORATE TAXES (DUE TO TAX WRITE OFF 'DEPLETION ALLOWANCES', WHICH THEY KNEW WERE LIES). THIS ABIOTIC OIL STORY IS PERHAPS THE LARGEST UNDERGROUND (NO PUN INTENTED) SCAM STORY OF THE PAST 200 YEARS: AN ONGOING CORPORATE SUCCESS OF PRICING ABIOTIC RENEWABLE OIL TO ACT OUT AN ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY, COMBINED WITH ALL THE RELATED IDEOLOGIES REQUIRED TO SELL THAT MOTIF OF ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY, AND ALL THE MILLIONS THEY HAVE MADE AND STILL MAKE ON THE FRAUD, AND ALL THE TAX DOLLARS THEY HAVE STOLEN, ETC."

5. "...we have been deliberately lied to for decades about the source and availability of the substance that is the very life-force of modern industrial society."

full texts, two articles:

NEWSLETTER #64
August 17, 2004
Whoa, Dude! Are We Peaking Yet?

"The Club of Rome, a non-profit global think tank, said in the 1970s that we'd hit peak oil in 2003. It didn't happen." So said Kevin Kelleher, writing for Popular Science magazine in August of this year. But it did indeed happen, according to Michael Ruppert and his band of resident 'experts,' who collectively insist that the planet is now at the point of 'peak' oil production. (Kevin Kelleher "How Long Will the Oil Age Last?" Popular Science, August 2004)

It appears then that today's 'Peak Oil' crowd has some pages in their propaganda playbook that were lifted directly from the Club of Rome, which raises the obvious question: what exactly is the Club of Rome?

Who is it that has handed Michael Ruppert and company the baton?

The initial membership list of the Club of Rome, as it turns out, contains some interesting [American Nazi] names:

DAVID ROCKEFELLER: Bilderberger, cofounder of the Trilateral Commission, former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, scion of the world's most prominent oil dynasty, and all-around bad guy.

JOHN J. McCLOY: Former advisor to the Mussolini regime who had the honor of sitting in Adolf Hitler's private box at the Berlin Olympic games; later served as High Commissioner of Germany, during which time he signed an order freeing the majority of the Nazi war criminals that had been convicted at Nuremberg; still later, served on the infamous Warren Committee.

AVERELL HARRIMAN: Skull and Bonesman and high-level political operative through several presidential administrations; together with members of the Dulles family and the Bush/Walker family, established various business entities engaged in providing funding to Nazi Germany, even after the United States had entered the war.

Katherine Graham: Longtime publisher of the Washington Post and longtime CIA asset who once famously said, while speaking at the CIA's Langley, Virginia headquarters: "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

Quite a distinguished cast of characters, I have to admit -- although not necessarily the type of people whose lies and spin most dissidents/progressives would accept as good coin.

But guess what?

If you are buying (or selling) the 'Peak Oil' bullshit, then you already have.

* * * * * * * * * *

On June 21, the Los Angeles Times ran a story that the ever-growing 'Peak Oil' crowd seems to have missed. The article concerned the Shell oil refinery in Bakersfield, California that is scheduled to be shut down on October 1 -- despite the fact that the state of California (and the nation as a whole) is already woefully lacking in refinery capacity.

Now why do you suppose that Shell would want to close a perfectly good oil refinery? It can't be because there is no market for the goods produced there, since that obviously isn't the case. And it isn't due to a lack of raw materials, since the refinery sits, as the Times noted, atop "prolific oil fields."

The Scotsman recently explained just how prolific those fields are:

The best estimates in 1942 indicated that the Kern River field in California had just 54 million barrels of remaining oil. By 1986, the field had produced 736 million barrels, and estimates put the remaining reserves at 970 million barrels. ( http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=578462004)

Of course, just because there is a strong demand for a product, and a ready source of raw materials with which to produce that product, does not mean that any corporate entity is obligated to bring that product to market.

In the corporate world, the only thing that ever matters is the "bottom line," because corporations exist for one purpose only: to generate profits.

So the only question, I suppose, that really matters, is: can the refining of gasoline and diesel fuel at this particular facility generate profits for the corporation?

One would naturally assume, given Shell's decision to close the refinery, that the answer to that question is "no." But that would be an entirely wrong assumption, since the truth is, as L.A. Times reporters discovered when they got their hands on internal company documents, that the refinery is wildly profitable.

How wildly profitable?

The Bakersfield plant's "profit of $11 million in May [2004] was 57 times what the company projected and more than double what it made in all of 2003." (Elizabeth Douglas "Shell to Cut Summer Output at Bakersfield Refinery, Papers Say," Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2004)

Go ahead and read that again: "more than double what it made in all of 2003." In a single month! And 2003 wasn't exactly what you would call a slow year at the Bakersfield refinery. According to Shell documents obtained by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, "Bakersfield's refining margin at $23.01 per barrel, or about 55 cents profit per gallon, topped all of Shell's refineries in the nation."
( http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=114-04062004)

Let's pause briefly here to review the situation, shall we?

There is a product (gasoline) that is in great demand, and that will always be in great demand, since the product has what economists like to call an "inelastic" demand curve; for many months now, that product has been selling for record-breaking prices, especially in the state of California, and there is no indication that that situation will change anytime soon; there are abundant local resources with which to produce that coveted product; and, finally, there is a ridiculously profitable facility that is ideally located to manufacture and market that product.

Given that situation, what response would we normally expect from that facility's parent corporation? Sit back and let the good times roll? Attempt to increase production at the facility and rake in even greater profits? Sell the facility and make a windfall profit? Or, tossing logic and rationality to the wind, shut the facility down and walk away?

That last one, of course, is what Shell has chosen to do.

And this story, believe it or not, gets even better:

The internal documents obtained by the Times, including a refinery output forecast, indicate that Bakersfield will soon be producing far less than its capacity. After relatively high output rates in May and early June, Shell plans to cut crude oil processing about 6% in July and another 6% in August, according to the forecast. Those two months are when California's fuel demand reaches annual peak levels.

Aamir Farid, the general manager of the Bakersfield refinery, was asked the reason for the plan to reduce output at the time of peak demand. [Ask Enron, they do the same thing.]

Farid claimed that he was not aware of any such plan, but he added that if there was such a plan, "there is a good reason for it." However, he also added that, "off the top of my head, I don't know what that good reason is."

And why would he? Certainly the manager of the refinery can't be expected to know why his facility is planning to dramatically reduce output, can he? The best explanation that Farid could come up with was to speculate that there "could be maintenance planned or projections for a shortfall of crude." Neither of those scenarios are very plausible, however.

Bakersfield, whose suburbs include Oildale and Oil Junction, won't likely be facing a shortfall of crude anytime soon. And as for the notion of planned maintenance, I doubt that anyone actually believes that Shell plans to perform two months worth of maintenance work on a facility that will be permanently shuttered just one month after that work is completed.

To be fair, I suppose it could be the case that Shell, being the benevolent giant that it is, wants to get the place in tip-top shape for the new owners -- except that there are no new owners, primarily because "Shell didn't search out potential buyers for the refinery once it decided to shutter it."

Indeed, Shell actively avoided finding a buyer for the plant (which became a fully-owned Shell asset just three short years ago), [THE 'BUY IT UP SHUT IT DOWN/DESTROY IT THEME,' PLAYING OUT IN IRAQ PRESENTLY] since any new owner would probably object to the bulldozers and wrecking balls that Shell plans to bring in just as soon as the refinery's doors have closed. ("FTCR uncovered a timetable showing decommissioning and demolition are set to begin immediately after the refinery's shut down date." http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=114-04062004)

Can any of you 'Peak Oil' boosters out there think of any legitimate reason why a purely profit-driven corporation would acquire an outrageously profitable asset and then proceed to deliberately destroy that asset? ... because I have to tell you, I have been struggling to come up with an explanation on my own and the only one that I've got so far is that the corporation might be involved in some kind of conspiracy to manufacture an artificial shortage of a crucial commodity. [It's larger than that, putting the depopulation agenda setters above into play, who simultaneously are oil executive monopoly families for 150 years or more. Do you follow this yet?] I know that 'Peak Oil' theory holds that we don't need the refinery capacity because, you know, we're running out of oil and all, but that doesn't explain why a tremendously profitable refinery isn't being kept in operation at least until all the local wells have run dry, does it?

Shell will, by the way, continue to operate its Martinez, California refinery -- for now at least. The Martinez facility is also wildly profitable, showing a "net profit of $34 million in May." That tidy profit was, as it turns out, "just shy of Shell's profit expectations at Martinez for all of 2004."

Strangely enough, the Martinez facility, like the one in Bakersfield, "cut crude processing in July, by nearly 10%, a reduction attributed to [the lie of] planned heavy maintenance."

It's always a good idea, I suppose, to schedule heavy maintenance work during times of peak energy demand. That's the kind of intelligent business decision we would expect from a corporate giant with decades of experience in the energy business.

On July 8, the LA Times, armed with yet more internal company documents and an unnamed company whistleblower, revisited the story of the Bakersfield refinery. As of July 1, it was discovered, Shell had "reduced crude oil processing at the refinery to levels 19% below capacity" -- more than triple the unexplained reduction that had been planned for the facility.
(Elizabeth Douglas "FTC Probing Shell's Plan to Shut Refinery," Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2004)

According to both company documents and the unnamed employee, "there were no problems with the plant's equipment," and no other explanation was offered for the radical reduction in processing -- undoubtedly because there is no legitimate reason for the decreased output. So obvious is the company's intent to artificially tighten gasoline and diesel supplies that the FTC was obliged, for the sake of appearances, to step in and pretend to launch an investigation. Shell's response to the investigation has been to delay the closing of the refinery for a few months while it goes through the motions of pretending to find a buyer.

In completely unrelated news, a July 31 LA Times report announced that "profit at ChevronTexaco Corp. more than doubled during the second quarter ... echo[ing] the strong quarterly results reported by other major U.S. oil refiners this week." ChevronTexaco's profit jumped from $1.6 billion to $4.1 billion. Not too shabby. Three days later, the Times reported that Unocal's earnings for that same quarter had nearly doubled, from $177 million to $341 million.
(Debora Vrana "Chevron Profit Soars," Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2004, and Julie Tamaki "Unocal's Earnings Nearly Double," Los Angeles Times, August 3, 2004)

Nobody should conclude from any of this, of course, that inflated fuel prices are attributable to rampant greed and the quest for obscene profits. No, clearly rising fuel prices are a sign of 'Peak Oil.' Just ask Mike Ruppert and Mark Robinowitz. Or better yet, bypass the flunkies and go directly to the scriptwriters at Halliburton and the Club of Rome.

* * * * * * * * * *

Speaking of Ruppert, I thought that I should, as a favor to you, big Mike, point out what appears to be a slight inconsistency in your research methodology. I do this to provide you with an opportunity to correct the problem, so that people don't get the impression that you are the kind of guy who doesn't let the truth get in the way of advancing an agenda.

While attempting to justify your unwavering refusal to focus any attention whatsoever on the so-called 'physical evidence' portion of the 9-11 skeptics' case, you have loudly proclaimed that pursuing that approach "will never penetrate the consciousness of the American people in a way that will bring about change. What will penetrate, from my experience, is taking non-scientific reports that most people instantly accept as credible, whether news reports or government statements or documents, and merely showing that they are lies. That opens the wedge, and removes any reliance upon expert or scientific testimony which is typically used to confuse simple facts."

I trust that you remember penning those words. And I trust that you also remember penning these words, which you felt compelled to send on their merry way to my mailbox: "I challenge you to an open, public debate on the subject of Peak Oil ... I challenge you to bring scientific material, production data and academic references and citations for your conclusions like I have .. I will throw more than 500 footnoted citations at you from unimpeachable sources. Be prepared to eat them or rebut them with something more than you have offered."

Do you see the problem here? It almost sounds like you are saying that there are completely different rules for conducting 9-11 research than there are for conducting 'Peak Oil' research. By my reading, what you seem to be saying is that sometimes you want to avoid the scientific stuff at all costs and instead focus solely on demonstrating that "news reports or government statements or documents ... are lies," because that will "penetrate the consciousness of the American people." But at other times, you want to rely exclusively on all that expert scientific testimony - the kind that is "typically used to confuse simple facts" - and you want to pretend that the media reports and government statements that you are citing are "unimpeachable sources."

I have to admit that it is all very confusing to me, but luckily we have a seasoned, world-class investigator out there who knows, intuitively perhaps, which of the two completely contradictory techniques to employ in a given situation. The rest of us, I suppose, lacking invaluable LAPD training, can only aspire to such greatness.

* * * * * * * * * *

So ... I was taking care of some important business the other day, and being a multi-tasking kind of guy, I was also idly leafing through a copy of one of Uncle John's Bathroom Readers. Now, Uncle John is not normally one of my primary sources of information, but I happened to stumble across a subject that immediately caught my attention: underground coal fires (I later conducted a Google search on "underground coal fires" to verify the information provided by Uncle John).

I learned that, although underground coal fires are a common phenomenon, most people are completely unaware that they occur. How common are they? At any given time, thousands of coal veins are ablaze around the world. In China's northwestern province of Xinjiang alone, there are currently about 2,000 underground coal fires burning. Indonesia currently hosts as many as 1,000.

Some of these fires have been burning for thousands of years; Burning Mountain Nature Reserve, for example, in New South Wales, Australia, has been aflame for an estimated 5,500 years. Other coal fires are of more recent vintage, often started through the actions of the notoriously destructive human species. But underground coal fires long predate mankind's proclivity for starting them, and many of the fires burning today are due to entirely natural causes.

New Scientist noted, in February 2003, that "coal seam fires have occurred spontaneously far back into geological history." ("Wild Coal Fires are a 'Global Catastrophe'," New Scientist, February 14, 2003) Radio Nederland added that "Geological evidence from China suggests that underground coal fires have been occurring naturally for at least one million years." (Anne Blair Gould "Underground Fires Stoke Global Warming," Radio Nederland, March 10, 2003)

And how much coal, you may be wondering, do these fires consume annually? No one can say with any certainty, but it is estimated that in China alone, some 200 million tons of coal go up in smoke every year. That's a hell of a lot of coal. More coal than China exports, in fact. In other words, the world's leading coal exporter loses more coal to underground fires than it produces for export.

"Very interesting," you say, "but what does any of this have to do with 'Peak Oil'?" Glad you asked. Coal is, you see, a member of the same hydrocarbon family as oil and natural gas, and it is, like gas and oil, claimed to be a 'fossil fuel' created in finite, non-renewable quantities at a specific time in the earth's history (when the stars were, I'm guessing, in the proper alignment). And yet this allegedly precious and limited resource has been burning off at the rate of millions of tons per year, year in and year out, for at least a million years, and probably much longer.

This raises, in my mind at least, one very obvious question: how is it possible that nature has been taking an extremely heavy toll on the globe's 'fossil fuels' for hundreds of thousands of years (at the very least), without depleting the reserves that were supposedly created long, long ago; and yet man, who has been extracting and burning 'fossil fuels' for the mere blink of an eye, geologically speaking, has managed to nearly strip the planet clean?

Is it not perfectly clear that that is a proposition that is absurd on its face -- so much so that it is remarkable that the 'fossil fuel' myth has passed muster for as long as it has? Nevertheless, that entirely illogical myth is the cornerstone on which an even bigger lie - the myth of 'Peak Oil' - is built. Go figure.

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr65.html

... I have seen 'Peak Oil' referenced in several election post-mortems. I guess then that it must be time to once again take an alternative look at what the 'Peak' team is selling. And I have a lot of stuff here that I want to get through, and not much time to get through it all, so let's get started.

* * * * * * * * * *

I happened upon an interesting post the other day entitled "The End of Fossil Fuels," written by Thomas J. Brown in 1998. It seems that Mr. Brown was ahead of the curve in catching on to the 'fossil fuel' myth, because, as it turns out, the title of his article refers not to the purported end of the oil era, but rather to his "attempt to describe the inadequacy of the term 'fossil fuel' and to prevent its further usage in the English language through education in the mysteries of the hydrocarbon structures in the earth."
( http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/endfos.html)

There is much of interest in Brown's must-read missive, but what I would like to focus on here is the graphic to the left -- a composite map of Indonesia. What can be seen quite clearly in Brown's graphic is that oil and gas fields, as well as oil and gas seeps, follow a well defined arc that is also, strangely enough, marked by persistent earthquake and volcanic activity.

Being the naturally curious sort of guy that I am, and being also a native Californian, I thought it might be interesting to see if this same correlation holds true on my own home turf, so I did a little searching on the Internet and came up with two maps of the state of California -- one depicting the state's oil and gas fields and seeps, and the other depicting the location of the notorious San Andreas Fault. And - lo and behold - it turns out that pretty much the entire length of the San Andreas Fault, site of countless earthquakes, is marked by oil and gas seeps. And along both sides of the fault lie enormous oil and gas fields.

Weird, isn't it? I mean, you wouldn't expect 'fossil fuel' deposits to have any correlation with tectonic plate activity, would you?

What are we to make of this? You don't need an advanced degree in geology to draw the conclusion that earthquakes and volcanic activity both appear to be manifestations of the pressures created by the buildup of abiotic hydrocarbons generated in, and rising from, the earth's mantle. In other words, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are natural relief valves that operate when oil and gas seeps alone are not enough to ease the constantly building pressure. You could say, I suppose, that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are just planet Earth's way of passing gas.

Speaking of oil and gas seeps, I was admiring the new, and very cool, National Geographic "Earth at Night" composite satellite photo the other day, and I couldn't help but notice that in addition to the bright white lights of sprawling urban centers, there are also a number of bright red lights visible. According to the photo legend, the red lights represent natural gas burn-off: "A lot of valuable fuel is going up in smoke. More than 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas (a by-product of petroleum extraction) are burned off annually, enough to power both France and Germany for a year. Why the waste? Some countries find the gas too challenging and expensive to transport long distances to population centers. Nigeria alone emits up to 20 percent of the world's flares, which add to atmospheric pollution."

So it seems that in addition to the tens of millions of tons of coal that are burned off every year in underground coal fires (as discussed in Newsletter #64), and the massive amounts of oil and gas that seep out every year into the planets land, air and water, more than 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas are burned off every year. As previously discussed, much of this activity has been occurring for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of years. If you do the math on that you will probably find that the numbers don't jibe with a theory that postulates that oil, gas and coal are all 'fossil fuels' deposited in finite quantities at a specific time in the earth's history.

Notice, by the way, that the natural gas flares in Nigeria are overshadowed by the natural gas flares around the Persian Gulf, which in turn pale in comparison to the natural gas flares up in a place called Russia. Apparently, there is a lot of petroleum extraction going on up there. Maybe they're on to something with that nutty abiotic oil theory.

Returning to the oil and gas field map of California, notice that about 2/3 of the way down the state, at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, lies a large concentration of oil fields. That happens to be, as it turns out, the area around Bakersfield, California -- site of the notorious Shell refinery discussed in a previous newsletter. The Bakersfield area's vast oil fields can be seen in more detail on the oil field map below (which you can click on for an even more detailed version).

The Shell refinery was back in the news in September, when the company was working diligently to sabotage any potential sale of the facility: "Several buyers are interested in Shell Oil Co.'s Bakersfield refinery, but an acquisition could be thwarted by the company's refusal to sell on-site storage tanks, pipelines and other key parts of the facility, according to people familiar with the situation ... Shell first decided to shutter the refinery without trying to sell it and then, under pressure from state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and others, earlier this year began to entertain offers. The company warned at the time that it intended to keep the refinery's crude oil contracts, reducing the pool of possible buyers to those that could secure a new source of oil for the landlocked facility. Now, according to the people close to the negotiations with potential purchasers, Shell has put up the additional roadblocks. It has offered to lease the storage tanks and pipelines to a buyer but 'at extraordinarily high rates,' one source said. This source called the situation 'pretty much unprecedented in a refinery transaction.'"
(Elizabeth Douglas "New Obstacles to Refinery Deal," Los Angeles Times, September 15, 2004)

Included in the Times article was a litany of excuses offered by Shell for the closure of the refinery: "Shell, the U.S. unit of Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch/Shell Group [a huge block of stock of which is owned by Bilderberg connected European royalty], said it decided to close the Bakersfield refinery because of dwindling supplies of crude oil in the San Joaquin Valley. In addition, the company said, the refinery is old, inefficient and not profitable enough."

The excuses were, of course, patently false, as the Times and Ms. Douglas were well aware.

Douglas is, after all, [hypocritically] the very same journalist who previously reported that the Bakersfield refinery's "profit of $11 million in May [2004] was 57 times what the company projected and more than double what it made in all of 2003." Nevertheless, Shell's claims went unchallenged in the September report. (Elizabeth Douglas "Shell to Cut Summer Output at Bakersfield Refinery, Papers Say," Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2004)

Judging by the latest oil field maps, there doesn't appear to be any shortage of crude at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, the company's own actions refute that claim, for if the local crude oil contracts are soon to be worthless, then why would Shell insist on keeping them?

On September 23, the Times revisited the Bakersfield story once again, revealing that, contrary to Shell's patently bogus claims, dozens of companies are interested in purchasing the wildly profitable facility:

"Shell initially made no effort to sell the facility, and repeatedly told lawmakers and others that no one would want it, especially because the company intended to keep the refinery's crude oil contracts. On Wednesday, Shell said more than 70 parties had expressed interest in the Bakersfield refinery, and that 20 signed confidentiality agreements so they could dig deeper into the plant's books."
(Elizabeth Douglas "Shell Studying Offers for Its Bakersfield Site," Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2004)

There has been no further word from the Times on the progress of any possible negotiations. The last word from Shell was that the refinery would be closed either at the end of the year or on March 31, 2005, "if no deal is reached."

Despite the intense interest in the facility, I wouldn't bet the family farm on a deal being reached.

I am still waiting, by the way, for someone - anyone - from the 'Peak Oil' crowd to explain the pending closure and demolition of a wildly profitable refinery sitting atop vast reserves of oil, at a time when refinery capacity in the nation as a whole, and in California in particular, is already woefully inadequate. Despite the fact that the 'Peakers' have carefully avoided any mention of the controversial refinery closure, I know that they are aware of it, because the newspaper that has been providing commentary on the story is the local paper of the Grand Poobah of the 'Peak' spokesmen.

Elsewhere in the news, Astrobiology Magazine says that, on the planet Mars, there is an "intriguing connection between methane and water vapor found in three broad geographic regions, a result that may suggest looking further for past or dormant microbial life." I guess then we should start looking for signs of past or present life on Saturn's moon Titan as well, since it contains, according to NASA, "lots of hydrocarbons." Those dinosaurs really racked up the frequent flyer miles, apparently.
( http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1207&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia6988.html and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia06980.html)

Something else I recently stumbled across was a post by Mike Ward, on Alternet, in which he lists what he claims are the "Top 10 Conspiracy Theories of 2003-2004." ( http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18735) Number 9 on that list was "Peak Oil and the End of the World."

"One would hope peak oil is a hand-wringing fantasy on a par with the survivalist craze that accompanied Y2K," writes Ward, "But there are some facts in favor of the peak oil agitators." One of those "facts," according to Ward, is "the otherwise inexplicable war in Iraq - which, though a political liability in the short run, is likely in the long haul to yield the U.S. virtually unending supplies of oil just when the peak oil theorists claim it's going to start getting quite scarce."

Ahh, yes ... providing an explanation (and a backhanded justification) for what is claimed to be an "otherwise inexplicable war." That, as I recall, is almost exactly what I initially posited about the 'Peak Oil' theory, thereby thoroughly pissing off any number of 'Peakers.' Of course, I left out the fable about the war being otherwise inexplicable.

"If the peak oil theory is right," added Ward, "the Iraq war, terrible though it is, will be remembered - like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand or the Nazi invasion of Poland - as a mere prelude to a much bloodier affair ... Many oil-peakers speak of a coming 'die-off,' as the world population adjusts to the resources available to it - by perishing in the billions from war, famine, exposure, and civil unrest."

But wait! As it turns out, it doesn't have to be an apocalyptic future after all, at least according to the BBC. On April 19, correspondent Alex Kirby concluded that, "there is every reason to plan for the post-oil age. Does it have to be devastating? Different, yes - but our forebears lived without oil and thought themselves none the worse. We shall have to do the same, so we might as well make the best of it. And the best might even be an improvement on today."
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3623549.stm)

So there is nothing to fear, you see ... well, other than that whole "die-off" thing ... but if you happen to be among the survivors, then things will be looking pretty rosy, apparently. And that is certainly nice to know.

While the BBC has been busily pitching the 'Peak Oil' scare, The Scotsman has been rather skeptical of the scam. On May 21, correspondent James Reynolds focused on a new report by Dr. Leonard Magueri in the journal Science.

In the report [in peer-reviewed Science magazine, instead of unreviewed corporate propaganda mass psychology rags preferred by Michael Ruppert], Magueri argued "the world is not running out of oil, and the reality is that there are abundant supplies for years to come." Magueri pointed out that estimates of proven reserves have been increasing since the 1940s, and, "thanks to new exploration, drilling and recovery technology, the worldwide finding and development cost per barrel of oil equivalent has dramatically declined over the last 20 years, from an average of about $21 in 1979-81 to under $6 in 1997-99. At the same time, the recovery rate from world oilfields has increased from about 22 percent in 1980 to 35 percent today."
( http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=578462004)

On June 16, The Scotsman openly ridiculed the 'Peak Oil' concept (and various other end-of-the-world scenarios that have been pitched over the years). After recounting numerous predictions of imminent demise that never came to pass, the authors conclude with this tongue-in-cheek assessment of 'Peak Oil': "But perhaps the most often repeated catastrophe predicted is the exhaustion of the world's oil reserves. As early as 1919 the head of the US geological survey forecast that the end would come in nine years. Since then things have improved and the latest estimate is 2043."
( http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=683192004)

Meanwhile, Lyndon LaRouche (Lyndon LaRouche? How did he get into this discussion? Oh yeah, I remember now -- I decided to include him after I read a recent interview in which the great Mike Ruppert said, and I quote, "I share a near universal respect of the LaRouche organization's detailed and precise research." So, like I was saying, Lyndon LaRouche) "called on May 28 for the price of oil to be set at a target price of $25-26 per barrel, by nation-to-nation contracts, in order to bankrupt and take away the power of the speculators, and restore order to the oil market." According to the LaRouchians (who, let's face it, make a hell of a lot more sense on this issue than their admirers, the Ruppertians), "Some fools will insist on buying the Brooklyn Bridge, no matter how many times you tell them it's already been sold. The same is true with the story that there is an oil shortage. The truth: No oil shortage exists. Figures from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the central collection point for world oil information, show that for the first quarter of 2004, world oil supplies were in the range of 82.3 million barrels a day (mbd), with consumption lower, in the range of 80.5 mbd to as high as 81.5 mbd. Thus, the world was in surplus during the first 90 days of the year, during the very period that world oil prices leapt by $7 per barrel." Furthermore, say the LaRouchians, "there is no relationship between the price of oil and the amount of oil being produced. Over the past several decades, oil production has increased slowly and predictably." True enough.
( http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3123oil_speculation.html)

In September, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an interesting study by a distinguished group of academics (as opposed to the oil industry spokesmen that the Peakers routinely cite): "We present in situ observations of hydrocarbon formation via carbonate reduction at upper mantle pressures and temperatures. Methane was formed from FeO, CaCO3-calcite, and water at pressures between 5 and 11 GPa and temperatures ranging from 500°C to 1,500°C. The results are shown to be consistent with multiphase thermodynamic calculations based on the statistical mechanics of soft particle mixtures. The study demonstrates the existence of abiogenic pathways for the formation of hydrocarbons in the Earth's interior and suggests that the hydrocarbon budget of the bulk Earth may be larger than conventionally assumed."
( http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0405930101v1?view=abstract)

What?!?! Hydrocarbons can be produced without biological matter? Right here on Earth? Just like on Mars? But New Scientist just said a couple weeks ago that "Methane is of great interest because on Earth, almost all of it (sic) comes from living things - everything from rotting plants to bovine flatulence. But there are other possible sources of methane on Mars."

And they have, [supposedly] like, real scientists working there at the offices of New Scientist. But I guess they somehow missed the PNAS study -- and the decades of Soviet research that preceded it.
( http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996669)

The study even found its way into the mainstream media, by way of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Oceans of fossil fuel-like gases and fluids, enough to support a high-tech society for many millennia to come, might exist far deeper inside the Earth than we've ever drilled before, researchers speculate. Since the mid-19th century, a small but enthusiastic minority of [non-Rockefeller] scientists have argued that petroleum and other fuels are formed by purely chemical, or abiogenic, processes hundreds of miles inside Earth. An early champion was the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, pioneer of the periodic table that hangs on the wall of virtually every high school chemistry classroom."
( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/14/MNG048ODH01.DTL)

Who knew that the distinguished Dr. Mendeleyev was, in reality, a "Flat-Earther"?

Physics Web picked up the story as well: "Scientists in the US have witnessed the production of methane under the conditions that exist in the Earth's upper mantle for the first time. The experiments demonstrate that hydrocarbons could be formed inside the Earth via simple inorganic reactions -- and not just from the decomposition of living organisms as conventionally assumed -- and might therefore be more plentiful than previously thought."
( http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/9/9/1)

The Peakers, predictably enough, got their panties in quite a collective wad over this scientific debunking of their scam. By October 4, the Portal of Peak Propaganda had up a post that attempted, rather pathetically, to 'debunk' abiotic oil 'theory.' The piece was penned by a Ugo Bardi, a member of ASPO, shockingly enough, and the author of an Italian language "The Sky is Falling" book.
( http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml)

Bardi makes one remarkable admission in his rant -- quite likely the truest statement to ever appear in a 'Peak Oil' post on Ruppert's website: "The concept of 'oil peak' is strictly limited to a view that sees oil as a finite resource." So here we have, from the portal of all things 'Peak,' an admission that if oil is not a finite resource, then 'Peak Oil' is an inherently fraudulent theory. That, of course, has been my position all along. It is precisely why the Peakers must necessarily begin their arguments by first establishing that oil is, in fact, a nonrenewable 'fossil fuel.'

Thus far, they have studiously avoided doing so, probably because their arguments are not founded in any known body of scientific research.

Here is how Bardi approaches the idea of abiotic oil: "Here, I will try to discuss the origin of oil without going into ... details. I will do this by taking a more general approach. Supposing that the abiogenic theory is right, then what are the consequences for us and for the whole biosphere? If we find that the consequences do not correspond to what we see, then we can safely drop the abiotic theory without the need of worrying about having to take a course in advanced geology. We may also find that the consequences are so small as to be irrelevant; in this case also we needn't worry about arcane geological details."

What Bardi is saying here, amazingly enough, is that we shouldn't be concerned whether we have been deliberately lied to for decades about the source and availability of the substance that is the very life-force of modern industrial society, because that is, in reality nothing more than an "arcane geological detail." I mean, honestly now, who has time to bother with such trivialities?

Bardi then proceeds to 'debunk' the abiotic 'theory' (which was actually proven, once again, by the PNAS study) by claiming that if oil was abiotic in origin, then the planet would be drowning in oil, and the planet is not drowning in oil, so therefore oil cannot be abiotic. After devoting exactly two paragraphs to that amazingly specious argument, Bardi then states authoritatively: "At this point, we can arrive at a conclusion. What is the relevance of the abiotic theory in practice? The answer is 'none.'"

Wow! That was easy, wasn't it?

Interestingly, Bardi associates the abiotic petroleum theory specifically with Dr. Thomas Gold, noting only in a footnote that the theory actually "had its origin in the work of a group of Ukrainian and Russian scientists." Also interesting is that Bardi repeatedly refers to Gold in the present tense, implying that the doctor is still alive and able to defend his work, although Bardi is certainly aware of Dr. Gold's untimely demise just a few short months ago (just as 'Peak Oil' stories were popping up all over the mainstream media).

Bardi ends his post on this particularly repellent note: "So, the abiotic theory is irrelevant to the debate about peak oil and it would not be worth discussing were it not for its political aspects. If people start with the intention of demonstrating that the concept of 'peak oil' was created by a 'Zionist conspiracy' or something like that, anything goes. In this case, however, the debate is no longer a scientific one."

It has never been the position of this website that 'Peak Oil' is a "Zionist conspiracy" or a "Zionist Scam." And, contrary to what some people seem to believe, the fact that an easily-discredited disinformation-peddler like Joe Vialls has suddenly inserted himself into the 'Peak Oil' debate, on the anti-'Peak' side, is not a welcome development ( http://joevialls.altermedia.info/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html). Rather, it is an indication that with the 'Peak Oil' scam under fire, a new line of defense has kicked in: linking the abiotic, anti-'Peak' position to virulent anti-Semitism. That is precisely why, close on the heels of the Vialls' piece, we now find Bardi completing the one-two punch. Nice tag-team work, guys. You should be very proud of yourselves.

Bardi's post was followed a couple weeks later by another 'debunking' post, this time by Jean Laherrere, one of the High Priests of the Cult of Peak. The Laherrere post, however, is only for the eyes of those very special people who pay good money every year to be lied to by Ruppert and Co. (and for certain critics who may or may not be supplied user names and passwords by disgruntled subscribers). As it turns out though, all you really need to know about the piece can be found in the first two paragraphs of the introduction by Dale Allen Pfeiffer:

The following paper is a critique of the writings of Thomas Gold, written by Jean Laherrere. It is a scientific dialogue and contains many technical terms and references which may be nearly unfathomable to the layperson. However, it is a very important discussion because it lays bare many of the errors in Gold's arguments. Unfortunately, Thomas Gold is no longer with us to respond to these criticisms. However, this critique has been floating around in one form or another for a few years now, and it is not unreasonable to assume that Thomas Gold was aware of it.

Jean Laherrere has told me that he sent a copy of this critique (along with materials critical of abiotic theory) to V.A. Krayushkin, the main Russian proponent of abiotic oil, in 2001, shortly before a conference where both men were to present papers. Dr. Krayushkin canceled his appearances and has since gone out of his way to avoid addressing Jean Laherrere's criticism. Jean's comments on the Dneiper-Donets Basin will be presented in the second part of this series. If a scientist cannot or will not defend his theory against fair scientific scrutiny, then his argument is immediately caste into doubt.

Incredibly enough, Pfeiffer has, in just two brief paragraphs, established himself as the single most reprehensible player on the entire 'Peak' team (an impressive feat, considering the competition). After avoiding any mention of Gold's work for, oh, the last three years or so, even while feverishly pitching the 'Peak Oil' line, Pfeiffer actually has the fucking nerve to post a critique of Gold's work now, just a few months after the doctor conveniently dropped dead.

Pfeiffer's claim that Laherrere's post, specifically entitled "A Critique of Thomas Gold's Claims for Abiotic Oil," circulated for three years without a response from Gold, is undoubtedly a gross misrepresentation, as is evident from Pfeiffer's careful choice of words: "floating around in one form or another," and "not unreasonable to assume that Thomas Gold was aware of it."

Pfeiffer follows that claim with another that is an obvious lie -- so much so that it could only be passed off as good coin to an audience that is woefully ignorant of the other side of the debate. The truth of the matter is that Dr. Krayushkin has been, for quite some time, one of the late Dr. Gold's harshest critics. Krayushkin, along with the rest of the Soviet and Ukrainian scientists who developed modern abiotic petroleum theory, consider Dr. Gold to have been a plagiarist -- and not a particularly good plagiarist, but rather one who got the basic theory right, but the actual science wrong. ( http://www.gasresources.net/Plagiarism(Overview).htm)

Krayushkin's opinion of Gold is quite evident in a letter sent by the doctor to a Professor John Briggs, which can be found here: http://www.gasresources.net/VAKreplytBriggs.htm. It is pretty clear that Krayushkin would not be at the head of the line to defend Dr. Gold's work, which he considers to be a stolen and bastardized version of his own work. Why then would Laherrere send Krayushkin a paper entitled "A Critique of Thomas Gold's Claims for Abiotic Oil"? Perhaps Laherrere's time would be better served sending Ricky Martin a critique of William Hung's performance of "She Bangs."

My own feelings about the late Dr. Gold are decidedly mixed. On the one hand, he was almost certainly the plagiarist that he was accused of being. And the possibility exists, I suppose, that he may have deliberately misrepresented the science, thereby making abiotic petroleum theory infinitely easier to discredit and marginalize. On the other hand, however, Gold undeniably did more than anyone else to bring the notion of abiotic petroleum origins to the Western world. And the timing of his death was certainly suspicious, to say the least -- especially now that it is being followed by appalling post-mortem attacks by the likes of Bardi and Laherrere.

Strangely enough, even as they are busily savaging one dead guy who can't defend himself, Team 'Peak' is simultaneously claiming to be following in the footsteps of another dead guy, who also can't defend himself.

In Ruppert's recent "We Did It!" post, he wrote the following: "We have studied and learned from the lessons given us by great authors like L. Fletcher Prouty ..."
( http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/100404_we_did_it.shtml)

On the From the Wilderness website (on the "Recommended Reading" page), Ruppert lists what he describes as "seven of the most important books that I would recommend as teaching books about 'How things really work.'" At the very top of that list is The Secret Team, Third Edition by L. Fletcher Prouty. ( http://www.copvcia.com/book_list.shtml) Elsewhere on the site, Ruppert provides links to other sites that he has found to be "sources for reason and reliable information." ( http://www.copvcia.com/links.shtml) Here is a portion of that list of links:

* Gulf War Veterans
* Col. Fletcher Prouty's Site
* The Center for an Informed America [David McGowan's website]
* Brian Willson's Site

Again we see Col. Prouty being touted as a voice of reason, along with, curiously enough, some website known as the Center for an Informed America. Huh? Who knew that this site provided reliable information? I guess Ruppert's been too busy with other things to update his links page, since we all know that this website stopped being a "source for reason and reliable information" the minute that I opted not to toe the 'Peak' line. But here I digress.

The point here is that Prouty was, as near as I can tell, something of a hero to Mr. Ruppert. And the funny thing about that is that Prouty was, as it turns out, a vocal supporter of the notion that oil is abiotic in origin. According to the late Colonel, "petroleum is not a 'Fossil' fuel with a surface or near surface origin. It was made to be thought a 'Fossil' fuel by the Nineteenth [sic] oil producers to create the concept that it was of limited supply and therefore extremely valuable. This fits with the 'Depletion' allowance philosophical scam." Prouty also wrote that the notion that petroleum is a 'fossil fuel' came "Right out of the Rockefeller bible."
( http://www.prouty.org/oil.html)

Who would have ever guessed that if the guy that Ruppert claims as a mentor were alive today, his would be the loudest voice raised to denounce what Ruppert is selling as a Rockefeller-scripted scam?

Moving on then, let's see what else is happening in the world of 'Peak Oil.' Oh yes, before I forget, I need to, regrettably, hand out a couple of Hall of Shame Awards. The first goes to the Centre for Research on Globalisation, for posting, among other things, a repellent piece by F. William Engdahl entitled "Iraq and the Problem of Peak Oil." The second goes to Online Journal, for posting too many 'Peak Oil'-themed pieces to list here (including a number of articles penned by Larry Chin, who doesn't seem to be able to write on any subject without tying it in to 'Peak Oil'). Both of these websites were, at one time, among the best at providing alternative news and commentary. Both are now pitching 'Peak Oil' without offering any hint that there is another side to the debate. And that, I'm afraid, is absolutely shameful.

I can read 'Peak Oil' stories in my morning newspaper. I read one just the other day in the November edition of Playboy. And there is something seriously wrong when you can't even flip through a friggin' Playboy without being assaulted with 'Peak Oil' propaganda. So my question to webmasters Chossudovsky and Conover is this: If you are running websites that purport to be 'alternative' sources of news and information, and yet you are selling the very same story as the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, and scores of other widely read, mainstream media sources, while at the same time denying your readers a truly alternative point of view, and one that happens to be actually backed by science, are you really still doing your jobs?

Just a few more links and we're all done for this outing.

[the links for these are internal to the main link, below:] First up is a must-read post by Rod Allison, entitled "Reply to Certain Biogenic/Peak Oil Lobbyists." You'll never guess which lobbyists Allison is referring to. Next up is a post that we'll refer to as "Confessions of a Reformed True Believer." For the scientifically minded, we have an offering entitled "Hydrocarbon Production From Fractured Basement Reservoirs." From Chris Bennett comes a piece entitled "Sustainable Oil?," which is a decent overview of modern abiotic oil theory, except that it leaves out the fact that the theory was forged in the former Soviet Union. I guess that's to be expected though for a post that originally appeared on WorldNetDaily. Lastly - and this one is truly shocking - oil company profits continue to soar, as do oil producer profits: "Exxon Mobil Profit Soars" and "The $300 billion bonanza."

For those hungry for yet more anti-'Peak' news and commentary, Kelly Cooke has tackled the subject on several occasions on her blog at reSearched. Scroll through and you will find commentary and a number of interesting links. Also check the Peak Oil page on Brian Salter's website. Many of the links there are to my newsletters, but there are a number of other good links as well.

Next up will be additions to the 9-11 Revisited series, and maybe more 'Peak Oil' stuff.

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr71.html
.
[BIG ROCKEFELLER SAY: GOTTA TAKE OUT IRANIAN OIL PRODUCTION, MESSING UP THE WHOLE 'PEAK OIL' SCAM WITH NEWS LIKE THIS, SAME AS SAUDI'S WERE PUBLICLY ANNOUNCING--UNTIL THEY AS WELL WERE IMMEDIATELY HIT BY 'TERRORISM', AND THEY GOT THE MESSAGE.]

TEHRAN, March 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh announced here Tuesday that Iran has discovered two new oil and gas fields in the south of the country.

The new oil field, with an estimated capacity of 5.7 billion barrels, was located in the southern province of Khuzestan, 40 km northeast of the provincial capital of Ahvaz, Zanganeh told reporters.

"The field also holds 242 billion cubic meters of gas, of which 36 billion cubic meters are recoverable," he said.

Zanganeh said that the gas field is situated east of the great South Pars gas field in another southern province of Bushehr and the capacity is estimated at 168 billion cubic meters of gas and 183 million barrels of gas condensate.

The minister added that the oil field belonged solely to Iran while the gas field was shared with another country.

Iran previously boasted that it has 132 billion barrels of oil and 26,800 billion cubic meters of gas in proven reserves, both at the second in the global list. Enditem '

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/08/content_2669150.htm

Reader Comments

add a comment on this article
Idiocy! 14.Mar.2005 09:42
Mike Novack stepbystpefarm <a> mtdata.com link

Whether pertoleum is produced over geologic time from biotic compounds or petroleum is produced over geologic time from non-biotic compounds is irrelevant to the the fact (in both cases) that it is produced over geologic time.

Get it? What petroleum there is took many millions of years to come into being and we are using all that up in a couple hundred. The source compounds are irrelevant to the reality that it wuill soon be gone. This is not the time to quibble of usage of the term "fossil". If I call the water stored in the aquifers of the planet "fossil water" I do NOT mean by that usage to imply that the bodies of living organisms was invoved! << just that it was stored over geologic time >>

The "biotic" theory of oil production does NOT say that all the olil that exists was produced a 100 million years ago and isn't being produced at a steady rate by those same geologic processes while oyu read this. That's not the problem. The problem is the RATE of petroleum production compared with the rate of extraction and the same situation exists with respect to the "abiotic" theory of where petroleum came form.

Try this thought experiment. Imagine the bathtub in your house. Imagine that the bottom drain is closed and the tap dripping. Wait long enough and the tub gets filled to the upper drain level (your tub SHOULD have an upper drain to prevent overflow). OK, now imagine that you are going to use that water. You have a bucket in your hand, and every couple minutes you scoop up a bucketful of water and dump it into the toilet. What happens? The tub ends up empty with only a tiny bit of water left in the bottom you can't effectively scoop with the bucket. Yes of course, water is coming in all the time from the tap, but only dripping. Water not coming in anywhere near as fast as you were taking it out.

Do you understand "peak oil" NOW?

Fossil fuel 14.Mar.2005 10:16
Watson link

It seems to me that oil is created by fossils. If you look at all the major oil deposits, they have been formed in ancient shallow sea areas.

1)The Texas/Gulf region,
2)the Persian Gulf region which was the ancient Tethys sea area,
3)the sea between western Africa (Nigeria) and Venezueala which have since drifted far apart, and
4) the ancient sea area between what is now Pennsyvania and Scotland (North Sea oil), the Cambrian Sea also drifted far apart.

The fact that they have maintained their oil deposits even after continental drifting is stronger evedence yet for fossil origins.

Still holding off on that new SUV purchase 14.Mar.2005 10:18
peak oil supporter link

Sorry, but the peak oil Rockefeller conspiracy isn't going to change my decision not 2 buy that new SUV, even if there is unlimited oil 4ever amen..

It is entertaining to believe that an infinite supply of oil exists, but 4 now i'll continue riding bicycle and public trans, hitchiking, etc..

Oil in the delta of the Niger River is best left underground. The damage done to the Ogoni people by Shell and ChevronTexaco by polluting the delta ecosystem is enough reason 4 me 2 boycott the petroleum corporations 4ever!!

****

"What petroleum there is took many millions of years to come into being and we are using all that up in a couple hundred."

Nope on the "using it up in a couple of hundred." You obviously failed to read the above. Or expected that no one else did....?

"What petroleum there is took many millions of years to come into being and we are using all that up in a couple hundred."

Nope on "took millions of years" as well--because of the refilling gas reserves that have been noted as well in other articles on this point.

So you are left standing on nothing in the way of any argument.

Besides, to the others, the point is hardly the oil: the point is the people connected to consolidating the technology around oil extraction. These people are intentionally ("they"= corporate elites) shutting down production as a political goal and a depopulation goal. A political goal. A depopulation goal.

This is hardly an argument for "pro-oil". This is a discussion of their nazi policy designs that include, basically, killing you. When of course it is the corporations that are destroyign the planet not the people. Even with mass death there will still be the degradating corporations. They are simply wanting to kill off people to consolidate their control.

'PEAK OIL' THEORY BITES THE DUST 14.Mar.2005 22:15

*****

Report March 7, 2005

Stalin & Abiotic Oil versus international corporate oil's PLANNED GLOBAL HOLOCAUST

'PEAK OIL' THEORY BITES THE DUST: By 1951, what has been called the Modern Russian-Ukrainian Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins was born. A healthy amount of scientific debate followed for the next couple of decades, during which time the theory, initially formulated by geologists, based on observational data, was validated through the rigorous quantitative work of chemists, physicists and thermodynamicists. For the last couple of decades, the theory has been accepted as established fact by virtually the entire scientific community of the (former) Soviet Union. It is backed up by literally thousands of published studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Only the world is being led like sheep to believe that the oncoming PLANNED HUMAN HOLOCAUST is going to be strictly accidental instead of WHAT IS REALLY IS: THE LARGEST INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE-NAZI OPERATION EVER SEEN ON THE PLANET, INTENTIONALLY MURDERING BILLIONS OF PEOPLE UNDER THE RUBRIC OF A CONVENIENT LIE. The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not controversial nor presently a matter of academic debate--UNLESS YOU ARE REALLY LOOKING FOR A FLIMSY ALIBI CALLED 'PEAK BIOLOGICAL OIL' TO FRAME A COVER OPERATION TO KILL BILLIONS OF PEOPLE AND TO JUSTIFY HIGH PRIVATE MONOPOLY OIL PRICES OFF FALSE IDEAS OF SCARCITY.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/312864.shtml

In September, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an interesting study by a distinguished group of academics (as opposed to the oil industry spokesmen that the Peakers routinely cite): "We present in situ observations of hydrocarbon formation via carbonate reduction at upper mantle pressures and temperatures. Methane was formed [ABIOTICALLY] from FeO, CaCO3-calcite, and water at pressures between 5 and 11 GPa and temperatures ranging from 500°C to 1,500°C. The results are shown to be consistent with multiphase thermodynamic calculations based on the statistical mechanics of soft particle mixtures. The study demonstrates THE EXISTENCE OF ABIOGENIC PATHWAYS for the formation of hydrocarbons in the Earth's interior and suggests that the hydrocarbon budget of the bulk Earth may be larger than conventionally assumed."
( http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0405930101v1?view=abstract). . .

The study even found its way into the mainstream media, by way of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Oceans of fossil fuel-like gases and fluids, enough to support a high-tech society for many millennia to come, might exist far deeper inside the Earth than we've ever drilled before, researchers speculate. Since the mid-19th century, a small but enthusiastic minority of [non-Rockefeller] scientists have argued that petroleum and other fuels are formed by purely chemical, or abiogenic, processes hundreds of miles inside Earth. An early champion was the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, pioneer of the periodic table that hangs on the wall of virtually every high school chemistry classroom."
( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/14/MNG048ODH01.DTL)

Who knew that the distinguished Dr. Mendeleyev was, in reality, a "Flat-Earther"?

Physics Web picked up the story as well: "Scientists in the US have witnessed the production of methane under the conditions that exist in the Earth's upper mantle for the first time. The experiments demonstrate that hydrocarbons could be formed inside the Earth via simple inorganic reactions -- and not just from the decomposition of living organisms as conventionally assumed -- and might therefore be more plentiful than previously thought."
( http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/9/9/1)

The Peakers, predictably enough, got their panties in quite a collective wad over this scientific debunking of their scam.

Peak Oil is a Scam
15.Mar.2005 04:25

Peak Oil Supporter writes, "It is entertaining to believe that an infinite supply of oil exists." The abiotic theory of the origin of petrochemicals neither implies nor endorses this conclusion. Yours is a specious argument on this point.

Mike Novack presumes that the rate petrochemical production over geologic time is a constant, irrespective of whether it occurs via biotic or abiotic processes. He, then, relates this assumption to the increase of demand and the falling off of refining production and concludes there is no difference. "We're running out of oil. Case closed." This conclusion is precisely what the purveyors of the Peak Oil scam want you to believe. Tyhey don't really care how you have come to embrace the lie. They only care that you do embrace the lie. Having a little more knowledge than the average man, you have merely unwittingly lumped into this subtergfuge, through false reasoning and unproven assumptions, another theory of petrochemical production into your belief in Peak Oil. The abiotc theory makes no such comparison and draws no such conclusion.

In some respects, the "Peak Oil," biotic mantra of the decline of the earth's petrochemical resources is no different than the once popular belief (probably still held by many) that diamonds are "rare," which explains why they are expensive. The truth of the matter is that the diamond cartel controls the distribution of these really-not-so-rare-afterall, precious stones, and thereby keeps the price for them artificially high.

... 15.Mar.2005 17:20
this thing here link

let's say that there is a constant supply of oil. i don't give a fuck about how it is created. that is completely irrelevant to the argument, an obfuscatory tactic if there ever was one.

so, let's say that there is a constant supply of oil, DESPITE a rapidly rising demand. in fact, the supply of oil is so constant, that there is enough supply of it for ANY DEMAND.

therefore, with demand issues completely removed from the economic equation, oil prices would neccessarily plummet to unbelievable lows.

except for one thing. the cost of recovering the oil, and refining it, and distributing it. those costs are never going to go away. ever.

now, according to the theory presented here that there is no scarcity of oil at all on planet earth, and in fact, the scarcity itself is a massive conspiracy on the part of the oil corporarions to drive up prices, and is >THE LARGEST INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE-NAZI OPERATION EVER SEEN ON THE PLANET, INTENTIONALLY MURDERING BILLIONS OF PEOPLE UNDER THE RUBRIC OF A CONVENIENT LIE<, the plentiful oil lies where inside the earth? that's right, it lies >far deeper inside the Earth than we've ever drilled before<. so how far down? >hundreds of miles inside Earth<.

wow. sounds expensive to drill down that far. better make sure that you drill in the right place. so exploration drilling will be yet another expense. and then there's this other issue of what form are the hydrocarbons? solid, liquid, gas, plasma, coal, shale, oil, natural gas? hmm, i bet it will be expensive to get them pumped (if they can be) hundreds of miles up, and then refined into usable form.

so, who's going to pay the cost of this massive technological undertaking? yep, that's right, the costs are passed on to the consumers.

so, DESPITE the fact that oil is plentiful, so plentiful that demand is no longer a pricing issue, and therefore prices should plummet, they won't. WE'LL STILL BE PAYING A FUCKING FORTUNE.

ahh, but the theory presented in the original article never goes in to that problem, does it. all i get from the article is that oil corporarions are deliberately NOT selling their product, so as to drive up prices sky high. upon this tactic gets foisted the term "Peak Oil". but wait, it get's better! in one of the comments, someone writes it is a plan >INTENTIONALLY MURDERING BILLIONS OF PEOPLE UNDER THE RUBRIC OF A CONVENIENT LIE.<, >A COVER OPERATION TO KILL BILLIONS OF PEOPLE AND TO JUSTIFY HIGH PRIVATE MONOPOLY OIL PRICES OFF FALSE IDEAS OF SCARCITY.<

interesting. so, instead of selling a product and continuing making a massive profit, because of monopoly prices, the oil corporations want to go even farther and kill billions of people (their customers), even though there's a plentiful, unlimited amount of oil hundreds of miles underneath the earth.

given that kind of environment, with mass death and crumbling societies all around, how could the oil corporations justify the expense of designing technology which can recover hydrocarbons hundreds of miles beneath the surface of earth? and if they can't recover THAT oil, how are they going to sell ANY product. and if they can't sell ANY product, how else are they going to make any money? and if they can't make any money, how will they be powerful, and murder billions of people?

so, no matter what, prices are going to go up. whether you believe in Peak Oil, or you beleive that oil corporations are holding out on billions of customers (despite having an unlimited supply on their hands), or because the cost of recovering "unlimited" oil from hundreds of miles down is going to be more than steep, prices for oil are going to go up and up and up.

so, no matter what, consumers of oil will find ways to cut down on their oil buying. most likely, by demanding more fuel efficient cars, and by demanding more energy efficient homes and products and technology. but wait, that doesn't make any sense. there's an unlimited supply of hydrocarbons, right? why use it drop by drop when there's a gushing torrent? oh, i get it. the oil corporations will refuse to sell their product. so that way they can take all the credit for changing our society from a disgusting, wasteful, inefficient, environmentally damaging one into one that is efficient, and smart and respectful of planet earth. the oil corporations will tell us that they did it for "our benefit, because we love you." but wait, i thought they wanted to kill billions of us?

what is plainly obvious to me is how despite all the words pumped out by the original article and some of the comments, all of them fail to realize that just because there's supposed to be "unlimited" oil "hundreds of miles" down in the earth, doesn't mean that it can be recovered in our lifetimes, and secondly even if it was recovered, that it would be cheap.

but as is typical of the obfuscatory bullshit that this anti-peak oil theory is, it tries to cover it's bullshit with an out: "the corporations will just refuse to sell their unlimited, easily recoverable product".

no sooner than i post this, i will be called an "employee of an oil corporation", a fascist, an idiot, all the typical comments that someone who doesn't know who the fuck i am or how i stand on issues, or what i think about oil and war and iraq and corporations and the creeping fascism in this country would say, because this is first time they've used indymedia, and because their being paid to drive wedges, to be very very clever, but not quite enough...

let's make this very clear: people who support the idea of Peak Oil DON'T support corporate fascism in america, DON'T want some kind of bullshit out where american society doesn't have to change it's dirty, inefficient, environmentally damaging way of going about things because there's some magical "unlimited" supply of "cheap" oil 200 fucking miles down, and DO want to get our asses in gear NOW and come up with better, cleaner ways of producing energy.

this other thing here. ;-) 16.Mar.2005 03:12
grouping link

connected post linked here, where poster answers 'this thing here'. The comment is way way down the list. tth has posted his comment verbatim I think on both threads, right?

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/313421.shtml