Crude Awakening

How do we know that all the oil that will be discovered has been discovered?

We don't know that all the oil that will be discovered has been discovered, and this is a somewhat controversial subject. But we do know that the peak in oil discovery occurred decades ago. The rate at which we've been discovering new oil has been declining for decades. That's one of the arguments that the peak in oil supply must be coming soon because the supply curve follows the discovery curve by a few decades. The United States Geological Survey conducted an exhaustive study between 1995 and 2000 and gave out a statistical output in which they said that the amount of oil that we started with, we could be 95 percent certain, was at least 2 trillion barrels. But they also thought there was a 50 percent chance that there was 2.7 trillion barrels. The difference between those two is 700 billion barrels of oil-that's the entire reserves of the Middle East. They were predicting discovering the Middle East all over again. That's pretty implausible. But if you really did add 700 billion barrels to the world's oil supply, it would delay the peak by about a decade. So we're not talking about really something that does away with the problem.

And opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska?

It makes no dent at all. It isn't even worth talking about.

Is there a silver lining here?

I really don't think so. If the peak comes and we can't get our act together fast enough to make up for it, you will end up with people all over the world burning coal as fast as they can just for the space heating and primitive industry. And if you do that the effect on the climate is completely unpredictable.