Transition Culture

27 Sep 2006

Three Great Articles by Other People #3. The Oil Drum on the Gulf of Mexico ‘Discoveries’.

Over the last few weeks the newspapers have been full of stories about the supposed huge find of new oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, “between 3 and 15 billion barrels” (that’s quite a range…), most of them informing us that peak oil is now officially nonsense, and that we can all roll over and go back to sleep. The story is taken to show that there are still vast untapped reserves out there, that the peak oil ‘doomsters’ are wrong, and look, here in the Gulf of Mexico is the proof of that. At times like these I usually head over to TheOilDrum.com who can be relied on for detailed analysis of such things. A few days after the story broke, Dave Cohen and ‘Bubba’ posted an excellent article which painstakingly deconstructed the story.

It was called Jack-2 and the Lower Tertiary of the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico and it is a thorough, sober and very useful clarification of the position. The Oil Drum folks are academics and people with experience within the oil industry, and their insights are very will informed. I found this a very useful article in clearing up just to what degree it is realistic to get excited about this new find. The answer is a resounding *not very*.