Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

I’ve never seen the show, but it stars Alec Baldwin, so that’s that. It’s called Thirty Rock, with Tina Fey, whom Sarah Palin has just made famous. B&C implies that Sarah may have indirectly saved the sitcom.

The world’s oil supply is diminishing, and we will soon reach the point when extracting of that oil will begin a rapid decline. The world will be thrown into chaos and the human race will resume living in caves. It is against arguments such as this, “peak oil” dogma, that geologist and economist Robin M. Mills argues persuasively in his new volume: The Myth of the Oil Crisis: Overcoming the Challenges of Depletion, Geopolitics, and Global Warming.

Mills starts us out by explanation that there is not some unanimous agreement concerning the peak oil myth; in fact, he argues, there are five disparate schools of thought regarding the matter: Geologists (Malthusians), Economists, the 3 Ms (Militarists, Media, and Mercantilists), Environmentalists, and the ever-popular Neo-Luddites (in political terms, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, though Mills doesn’t touch those names). Mills deconstructs these arguments with historic oil exploration data for different parts of the world. He introduces us (or me, at least) to the concept of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), which he describes as (pp. 84-85):

The diverse suite of tertiary recovery techniques includes the following: injecting miscible gases such as hydrocarbons, nitrogen, acid gas (a mix of CO₂ and hydrogen sulphide [H₂S], or CO₂, to strip out remaining oil; modifying the properties of water with polymers to increase its viscosity, or surfactants, effectively soap, to scrub out leftovers; heating the oil with hot water or steam, or burning some of it underground; plus other more esoteric techniques, such as using microbes that “eat” the oil and produce natural surfactants.

No, the book is not for the squeamish, but Mills does a fine job of putting a face on the esoteric features of an industry and a problem not fully understandable without the complex notions.

Mills examines, country-by-country, the world’s major oil suppliers to ascertain that there is much oil beyond what has been discovered or developed so far. (He calls this chapter, “Dead Dinosaurs? The Major Oil Nations.”) He concludes that we’ve not touched many frontier and deep water areas, or even fully explored the OPEC countries. In Iraq, there has been little exploration since 1961, for instance. He’s careful not to take sides in the ANWR debate, but notes (p. 139):

[T]he mean estimate [of proven reserves in the ANWR] would increase current proven U.S. reserves by about 35 percent and that, at fairly conservative depletion rates, it could lift American production by about 10 percent.

Mills discusses the myth of “peak gas,” the turns to the geopolitical risks of oil exploration and extraction. No one wants to risk overcapacity, it seems, as it would send the price of oil tumbling. OPEC has a keen eye for that. The question of refineries, and there being too few of them, Mills argues is only of secondary concern. He writes of overtaxation (78% in Norway, 97% in Iran) and schemes, such as the “buyback” in Iran, which deincentivize good performance by operators. And Greed: “In the end, being too greedy means that the host country does not sign any deals at all.”

Naturally, as is fashionable, Mills argues in favor of the notion of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and that our energy consumption must meet the demands of those who promulgate the theory; however, he urges against the wild proscriptions of the Neo-Luddites – against “the elite taking control to solve the problems of the masses” – and instead for “well-informed, democratic solutions.”

So The Myth of the Oil Crisis, by Robin M. Mills, should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the nature of our oil supply and the danger of the doom-and-gloom scenarios now being pushed. It is available from both Barnes and Nobel and from Amazon.com (also paperback).

When writing a post for September 11, I imagine onf considers a tribute, a remembrance — where were you when…? — look at causes, a sigh for prevention, a tribute to victims, a denunciation of attackers, or whatever. I remember what I was doing, how I found out. I remember how I felt. I remember that the morning seemed to occur in slow motion.

It’s still surreal. It did really happen, I remind myself, but it was so unlike any day before or after.

That’s what I remember.

As it stands right now:

- Fidel Castro = probably dead.

- Osama bin Laden = probably dead.

- Adam Gadahn = probably dead.

- Kim Jong Il = probably dead.

- Charles Manson = alive.

- Bill Ayers - alive.

These people are to be considered as individuals and not as a group. Any similarities between them is purely coincidental and not meant to impugn any of these individuals or their political allies. Any comparison of these individuals one with another is… well, above my pay grade. To coin a phrase.

Actually, I’m just sayin’.

Robert Novak has had his surgery and is currently undergoing his radiation-chemo regiment. His doctor suggested that he return to writing, which is something I was fortunate enough never to have to have stopped, and here is his latest.

The experience, the people, have grown his outlook, as they did for me, but he is still the Bob Novak I’ve known from past columns.

After all the things he’s written about Teddy Kennedy over the years, Teddy’s wife Vicki seems to have been a great help to the Prince of Darkness.

He has no time whatsoever, though, for Val Plame and Joe Wilson. That’s Bob Novak.