Not all oil fields are created equal. It’s my ‘layperson’ understanding that some are not even really oil in the beginning of the 20th century sense.
1. Some only produce ‘light’ products of the kind one gets from the top half of a conventional oil distillation column. Some produce gas and liquids that have to be ‘reformed’ into heavier products (expensive).
https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111126609525069718
2. And some come from fields with productivity that declines really sharply…
…The trouble is that the innovations of this century, tight oil and shale gas, have very high rates at which the productivity of their fields decline.
That said, there is a lot to be found and it’s my understanding that AI is helping to offset the declines by improving the hit rate of new wells and how much can be squeezed out of them. (In case you were wondering what the military industrial complex regards as AI’s most important utility!)
…The US is at the nexus of all of this. It’s probably the world’s most oil-addicted economy (in scale). And one which has burned most of its own ‘good’ stuff and is increasingly left with the stuff that falls into camps 1 and 2 above.
#climateDiary
It has a population that largely has no idea and when things get rough is predisposed to do whatever it takes to get it from somewhere else.
Oh look where the world’s largest proven reserves are: Venezuela