Peak Oil? What Peak Oil? Okay, It's LNG -- But The Big Picture -- And, Notes To My Granddaughters

Updates

February 16, 2012:  Incredible. Just after posting the story below, Motley Fool chimes in wtih "The End of Peak Oil Theory."

Last week I got caught up in a show from a few years ago called "Mega Disasters: Oil Apocalypse" on The History Channel, spelling out the doom our economy was facing as oil production declined over the next 100 years. Domestic production was already declining, and we had no plan B. Stock up on canned soup and ammo while you still can!

If you haven't noticed, the oil apocalypse has been delayed -- again -- and the doomsday predictors are undoubtedly eating crow while they concoct another mega disaster. "Peak oil,"...

It's amazing how fast perceptions of our energy future can change. One day prevailing wisdom tells us that energy costs are going to rise uncontrollably as oil production declines and new energy sources fail to live up to their promise...

The oil scare that never goes away

We've been hearing about peak oil for years, and even some of the brightest minds in energy think the theory has some validity. But, like any other apocalypse, it never quite seems to unfold as the predictions assert. There are just too many factors that peak oil prognosticators can't account for in their bold predictions, so they always get them wrong.

Original Post

"World Could See LNG Glut in 2018"

Link to PennEnergy.

Oversupply in the domestic natural gas market has led many producers to push for the expansion of liquid natural gas processing capacity.

[One analyst] estimates that roughly 250 million metric tons of new gas processing capacity should be available by 2018. Already LNG plants with a production capacity of 68 million metric tons of gas are in the planning phase.

By comparison, estimates suggests that global demand for LNG could rise to 408 million metric tons by the end of the decade. 

With the right American leadership, this could be America's decade. We have a 10-year head start and manufacturers are starting to come back to the states.

This has huge implications for companies like XOM and COP.

[Note: see first comment -- "Union Pacific Railroad says it will spend $200 million to expand its operations in South Louisiana to meet expected higher customer demand from petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River." -- just one example of increased US manufacturing on the back of "LNG glut." Something tells me American entrepreneurs will be able to figure out how to turn this "glut" into a non-problem.]

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But have you ever noticed that when a manufacturing company wants to re-locate in the US, the faux-environmentalists do what they can to stop growth? The folks protesting the fracking sand sites in Winona, Minnesota are but just the most recent example.

Don Nelson of Winona, who stood among the group blocking the trucks, said he recognized several of the drivers from high school.

"It's a mixed feeling," he said. "These truckers are trying to make a living."

"We do want (the truck drivers) to know this is a bad industry," said Daniel Wilson of Winona.

"This isn't personal, but we don't want this happening in our community."

Yup, these truckers are simply trying to make a living and support their families. I wonder what Daniel Wilson and Don Nelson do for a living?

"...we don't want this happening in our community..." says it all.

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Notes to My Granddaughters

I'm not exactly sure where you should start with Shakespeare when it comes to studying his works. I think I would read simultaneously, and more than several times, three of his four great tragedies (King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth); histories of England from the War of Roses through Queen Elizabeth I; and, Brenda James' The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare, c. 2006.

I assume the histories by Shakespeare would be as important, but I do not know them as well yet. 

Some data points regarding William Shakespeare:

• his parents were illiterate; unlikely any book in the household when Wm growing up
• he grew up in a small provincial town with but a handful of educated men
• his schooling ended when he was about 12 years old
• there is no evidence that he ever owned a book
• not one piece of written work attributed to him survives; not one piece
• the only writing that can be ascribed to Wm Shakespeare are six signatures; three of them on his will
• of 75 contemporary documents, not one concerns a career as an author
• when "the" folio was published 7 years after his death, it does not acknowledge his Stratford family
• the Stratford household had no documents relating to the First Folio
• the Stratford family, nor anyone, was known to have been given a copy of the First Folio
• his two surviving daughters were illiterate

From Thomas Penns' Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, c. 2012:

• The Woodvilles, Beauforts, and the Nevilles were the families behind the throne following the War of Roses and through the reign of Henry VIII

The Shakespeare author, who of course, was not William, but rather Sir Henry Neville:

• the largest vocabulary of any author who ever lived
• his works employ more than 18,000 different words
• his works employ about twice as many as Milton, one of the most accomplished graduates of his time from Cambridge University
• his works used perhaps as many as five times used by the average educated person today
• Shakespeare coined more words than any other writer in history; coined about 1,500 words; many of those words are still in general use today [one of my personal favorites, because it relates to my older granddaughter who wants to be a marine biologist, is "alligator"]

But this is just the beginning:

• he read voraciously
• he cited or rephrased more than 200 classical and later writers
• many of the books he used had not been translated into English in his time
• read in Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian