Record oil prices have sent gasoline costs skyrocketing, and America’s rickety reliance on oil has claimed the electoral agenda and public attention. Yet, despite increased drilling, burgeoning demand continues to strain supply.
“Domestic gas production in the U.S. has not been proportionally increasing with the dramatic increase in drilling because much of what’s being found with drilling has very high production declines during the first year,” commented Vince Matthews, State Geologist of Colorado and one of many prominent speakers at the 4th annual Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO)-USA Peak Oil Conference in Sacramento, Sept. 21-23.
The picture for domestic oil production is not much better as the U.S. oil infrastructure is severely outdated and in need of serious rehab.
“It takes millions of tons of steel to pull crude oil out of the ground, transport it to refineries, and then move and store finished petroleum products to where consumers can purchase them. The average refinery in the U.S. is more than 80 years old,” Matt Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Company International, warned.
While consensus is building that America indeed faces an energy challenge, a shared sense of how to respond to the energy problem is not.
Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets predicts that, “over the next four years (by 2012) some 10 million vehicles in America will be coming off the road.”
Co-sponsored by the City of Sacramento and the University of California-Davis, ASPO-USA’s 4th annual conference will highlight a year of increased attention to the Peak Oil energy challenge and highlight intelligent responses to meet the future. Conference participants besides Simmons, Rubin and Mathews are Jim Buckee (former CEO, Talisman Energy) and Neil King (Wall Street Journal).
About ASPO-USA
ASPO-USA is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to providing education to the public and decision-makers about peak oil and natural gas
energy challenges.
ASPO-USA hosts an annual conference to explore intelligent responses and mitigation steps to lessen the impact associated with the impending peak of world oil and natural gas supplies. This year the ASPO-USA World Oil Conference will be held Sept. 21-23 at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento. For further conference information and program details: http://www.aspo-usa.org/aspousa4/.
Source:
http://www.aspo-usa.org/aspousa4
