A group from MIT’s Earth Sciences Laboratory have come up with a way to use ultrasound to search for fossil fuels, rather than the gender of unborn children. This technique will enable drilling to get at ‘tight gas’ and ‘tight oil’, which is inaccessible due to the type of fractured rock it is found in. This may not be really big news technology-wise, but the little I know about economics would seem to suggest that this sort of research wouldn’t be happening if the industry wasn’t starting to realise that supplies are running short.
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“…the little I know about economics would seem to suggest that this sort of research wouldn’t be happening if the industry wasn’t starting to realise that supplies are running short.”
This type of research means that the price is high, not that the supply is running short, if you mean that in a permanent sense. The price could be high because demand has increased faster than industry had expected it to (which it has). This doesn’t necessarily imply that the global supply has dwindled to a frighteningly low level, only that they need to (continue to) find new extraction technologies, rather more diligently than they had expected to before China’s rapid economic expansion began drinking up so much oil.
Good point. It’s the oil price that drives exploration. Oil price is driven by supply and demand, with a good deal of speculation thrown in.
Remember the asian economic downturn during the 90s? Recessions reduce demand on oil and increase supply, driving prices down. The asian (Chinese and Indian) boom does the opposite. Increased demand drives up price. That drives increased exploration.
Peak oil is what happens when somebody wants to sell a book.