There was an interesting news item out of Moscow in late September to which most people probably paid little heed. "Russian is one of several countries that have rushed to lay claims to the area where a U.S. Study suggests as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden."
Earlier the Russians sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole. In response, Canada vowed to increase its icebreaker fleet and build two new military facilities in the Artic and Denmark sent a team of scientists to seek evidence that the ridge in question was attached to its territory of Greenland.
When it comes to oil and natural gas, nations have no sense of humor, even if in the case of the United States they often display an astonishing lack of good sense. You are no doubt familiar with the long fight over permitting drilling in Alaska's Natural Wildlife Reserve where it's estimated there are billions of barrels of untapped oil, but you are surely going to be surprised to learn that the oil industry is excluded from exploring 85 percent of all American territorial waters.
President Bush is fond of saying that America is "addicted" to oil, but he might as well say that Americans are addicted to water or food. It's not an addiction. It is a perfectly rational requirement of not only our own, but every other nation's need for energy to power its industry, its homes, and its transportation needs. Before Bush, former President Jimmy Carter became convinced in the 1970s that all the proven reserves of oil would shortly be used up.
As Duncan Clark, Chairman and CEO of Global Pacific & Partners, the author of a new book, The Battle for Barrels (Profile Books, UK) points out regarding America's continental shelf, "The undiscovered oil potential in the areas demarcated for possible offshore in the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico could allow the tapping of up to 85 billion barrels of oil that technically could be recoverable awaits the political passage of bills through the legislature", i.e., Congress.
With the price of oil hitting more than $80 per barrel, one would think that Congress would be inclined to opening access to those billions of barrels, but the current Democrat-controlled Congress is more concerned about a bogus global warming than it is about insuring Americans can drive their cars and trucks, heat their homes, and process oil for the countless products it produces. And this doesn't even include the vast reserves of natural gas that are estimated to exist.
The fact is that there are billions more barrels to be found in the world, whether it's in the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Venezuela, and much of the yet to be geologically researched map of the world.
That bit of knowledge, however, rarely makes it into the mainstream media that can be depended upon to give lots of coverage to the "Peak Oil" crowd that has been predicting we will run out of oil any day now. A former chairman of Shell made news in late September when he warned the price of oil could hit $150 a barrel "with oil production peaking within the next 20 years." You had to read further on in the article, published in London's The Independent on September 16 to learn that he also said "I don't know whether there is going to be a peak in world production