Those of us old enough to remember the oil embargo and long lines at gas stations were reminded again by the recent doomsayers claiming that the world is running out of oil. Time to switch to bicycles and electric cars. Now, avoiding the environmental arguments, two recent stories this week emphasized just how much oil is out there.
The first involved the mining of oil shale in Colorado and Canada where deposits of energy far outstrip what has and was available in the middle east. Now, with new super heating technology, oil companies can provide billions of gallons of high quality crude for the next several decades.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=...001&sc=1000
The second development occured in the Gulf of Mexico where Chevron and other companies just discovered another huge pool of high quality crude sitting more than 20,000 feet beneath the ocean floor.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060905/...y_chevron_dc_5
All this new capacity is in addition to the Saudi Arabian size deposits north of Japan and east of Siberia, near the Kamchatkan Peninsula, that the Russians, Americans, and others are beginning to drill for the first time.
Now this doesn't mean that we'll be able to buy gas for a buck a gallon in the near or even distant future, but it does mean that our kids won't have to push our LS-6's and Hemi's to the next car show.