Roughneck wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote:


No more dimly than the classic view: "The original creation of oil or
petroleum is not well understood. There are several theories, but
the matter is still one of scientific controversy."
http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/...il_create.html

One of the big "gotchas" is how did hydrocarbons pop up on Jupiter
and Saturn if hydrocarbon creation depended solely on decomposed
plant material?

Then there's this book: "The deep, hot, biosphere"
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Hot-Biosp...3340325&sr=8-1

You're certainly correct that more study and research is needed. But,
the consensus today is that the vast majority of oil and coal
formation requires millions of years of heat and pressure.

Consensus? Sure. There is still a substantial group that doesn't buy it.


So, is oil being "created" today? Certainly. Is it being created fast
enough to help us? I wouldn't hold my breath.

Thus far, no evidence of old oil fields "sponanteously recharging"
themselves has presented itself.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.


I agree that no amount of discoveries or technology will change
production rates. Changes in the political world will. But it
doesn't matter.

Political changes will have some effect, but oil production is more a
matter of economics and geology.

In most parts of the world, true. In the continental U.S., politics plays a
substantial role in oil production.



If all regulations were eliminated tomorrow, and we could drill and
produce anywhere, it still wouldn't move the production peak by more
than a couple of years. And, it would make the decline that much more
painful.

Even if you're right that we'd get only two years, that's stll two years
more research, two years cheaper energy, and a two years greater chance that
India and China will engage in a nuclear war - with two billion dead -
thereby diminishing world demand for oil by 40%.