SpOILed

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
--Big Yellow Taxi, Counting Crows

“A planet doesn’t explode of itself,” said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air--
“That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there.”
--Earth, John Hall Wheelock
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I had to smile ruefully coming across a stack of bookmarks this weekend for a new book of essays by local authors celebrating the Gulf Coast -- "UnspOILed". A day late and a dollar short.

A report issued in April by United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) uses the idea of "peak oil"as a basis for strategic planning (The Joint Operating Environment 2010). The report states that diminishing returns from established oilfields will necessitate of drilling new ones offshore, like the Deepwater Horizon.

Still, that would leave the U.S. behind the power curve in terms of new energy development and in competition for dwindling supply with emerging nations. The vast undersea reserves sound impressive until put into perspective with consumption rates.

From today's Daily Finance (The World Can't Live Without Deepwater Oil) The Tiber reserve [into which the Deepwater Horizon well tapped] "is expected to produce in its lifetime some 3 billion barrels of oil. Sounds impressive, but it's less than six months of current U.S. consumption."

That article also reports that "the majority of new production is assumed to come from the development of existing reserves, such as the offshore and deepwater deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, which currently yield 30% of America's oil production. Deepwater wells like the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon made up 15% of total U.S. production in 2002 and are expected to rise to 30% of total production by 2015."

I have a friend doing post-doctoral work developing alternative materials for solar cells. The work is very promising and could see widespread applications; however, he said he will have to work in Europe as there is no market for this kind of R & D in the states.

Perhaps the next book by the coast advocates will be called, "SpOiled".