pstarr wrote: I am just a concerned citizen who happens to have the time and interest to track the most important story of this or any historical decade.
You meant to add, "story of this or any historical decade as long as it has nothing to do with the difference between oil shale and shale oil."?
pstarr wrote: You don't need a PhD to understand that we are scraping the bottom of the geologic barrel. That much is obvious to school kids today. You might need to get out more often.
Might not need a PhD, but a little history goes a long way.
"While we do not know exactly how much oil remains
undiscovered, we do know that it is a limited
supply…Furthermore, the easy discoveries have already
been made and only the difficult ones remain."
M. King Hubbert. 1938
We've been running out of easy oil, scraping the bottom of the barrel for a long, LONG time apparently. Apparently, most of us have grown up in this period of difficult to extract oil, and to be honest, I can't say it has stunted my growth much, having never known was "easy" oil was like.