Oil 1 Peak Oil 21
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Tech SolvesTech will drive future oil production – empirically proven. Steven Schafersman, petroleum geologist, “Be Scared; Be Very Scared,”10/10/02, www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/badgeology/energy/commentary.htm The realists point out--correctly I believe--that technology will drive the future discovery and production of oil. These technologies include deep ocean drilling and production, 3-D and 4-D seismic, 3-D stratigraphic workstation modeling of reservoirs, horizontal drilling, advanced reservoir stimulation and tertiary recovery, and stratigraphic reinterpretation of old field reservoirs. These technologies have proven greatly successful in the Unites States, and history has shown that--with time--technology expands the resource base. For example, Fisher points out that in 1950 the remaining oil resource base in the U.S. exceeded cumulative production by 500 billion barrels, but in 2000 it exceeded cumulative production by 2310 billion barrels, a five-fold increase in oil resources attributed almost entirely to better technologies. In the U.S., estimates of ultimate oil recovery historically have outpaced cumulative production, and the difference has increased through time. The U.S. amazingly accounts for 80% of all petroleum wells drilled in the world, and as the rest of the planet is explored at this level of intensity, Fisher expects ultimate world oil recovery to also increase far past cumulative production. Tech SolvesTech advances are already revolutionizing oil recovery and spreading to other countries. Amy Myers Jaffe and Robert A. Manning, director of Energy Research Program at Rice University, Senior Fellow and Director of Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, “The Shock of a World of Cheap Oil,” Jan/Feb 2k, LexisNexis Many analysts expected that non-OPEC oil production would be short-lived. But they missed the technological advances -- including computer-assisted, three-dimensional imaging that lets geologists "see" underground oil pockets -- that slashed the costs of developing hard-to-tap reserves and improved the chances for new discoveries. Moreover, better platform designs and drilling methods have also let companies recover more of the oil they find. These technological gains have dramatically lowered the cost of finding and producing oil and natural gas and given energy consumers ample, inexpensive supplies just at the time that earlier forecasts had predicted a shortage. They have extended the life of existing wells and allowed the oil industry to double the amount of oil recovered -- in many cases from about 20 to 30 percent to between 50 and 60 percent. The average U.S. costs for finding oil fell from about $ 15 per barrel in the 1980s to just $ 5 per barrel in 1998. Drillers are four times as successful at finding natural gas and six times as successful at finding oil as they were before the 1973 oil crisis. Now that finding and producing oil is cheaper and easier, more and more countries are getting into the act. During the last two decades, pundits predicted that oil production from outside OPEC would decline by 3.6 million barrels per day (b/d), or about 13 percent, thereby driving oil prices up. Instead, non-OPEC production rose by more than 4 million b/d, or about 15 percent. Although problems in the Russian and Chinese oil industries and a sudden collapse in oil prices combined to reduce non-OPEC production by 800,000 b/d in 1998, supplies are already rebounding. They will probably continue to do so over the next decade as oil technology advances. Ample, accessible new reserves will soon come on-line in the waters off the Gulf of Mexico, eastern Canada, and western Africa, as well as onshore in central Africa, South America, and frontier areas in the former Soviet Union and the far reaches of the Arctic. Moreover, some of this new production can be shielded from short-term price swings if owners sell their output in new, sophisticated financial markets for oil, using long-range derivatives. Contributing to this trend toward ample supply are the technological improvements that have made more efficient use of energy. Energy use has also been held in check by technological advances in residential and industrial use as well as in power generation. For example, from 1980 to 1995, the amount of energy used in the United States per constant dollar of GNP declined from $ 16.47 to $ 13.44. Europe and Japan made even bigger gains in efficiency. Tech SolvesTech solves peak – it improves efficiency of consumption and opens up new drilling locales. ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH, professor of economics at Drake University, CounterPunch, “Are There Really Oil Wars?” 7/9/08, http://www.counterpunch.org/zadeh07092008.html Peak oil theory is based on a number of assumptions and omissions that make it less than reliable. To begin with, it discounts or disregards the fact that energy-saving technologies have drastically improved (and will continue to further improve) the efficiency of oil consumption. Evidence shows that, for example, “over a period of five years (1994-99), U.S. GDP expanded over 20 percent while oil usage rose by only nine percent. Before the 1973 oil shock, the ratio was about one to one.”[4] Second, Peak Oil theory pays scant attention to the drastically enabling new technologies that have made (and will continue to make) possible discovery and extraction of oil reserves that were inaccessible only a short time ago. One of the results of the more efficient means of research and development has been a far higher success rate in finding new oil fields. The success rate has risen in twenty years from less than 70 percent to over 80 percent. Computers have helped to reduce the number of dry holes. Horizontal drilling has boosted extraction. Another important development has been deep-water offshore drilling, which the new technologies now permit. Good examples are the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and more recently, the promising offshore oil fields of West Africa.[5] Tech Solves – Developing Countries Tech diffusion to developing countries improves oil production efficiency. Peter R. Odell, Proessor Emeritus of International Energy Studies @ Erasmus University, “Why Carbon Fuels Will Dominate the 21st Century’s Global Energy Economy,” 2004, p. 8 
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