Brian Pursley

Analysts' Oil Forecasts Wildly Off Base

Oil is infinite.

"Hydrocarbons can be re-defined as a 'renewable resource, rather than a finite one' (Gurney 1997)" -- Peter R. Odell, economist/geologist, 2004

"Enormous implications follow from oil and gas being renewable resources." -- Peter R. Odell, economist/geologist, 2004

"I do not know of any idea more likely to keep people impoverished than the idea that resources are natural, fixed, and finite. " -- Thomas R. DeGregori, economist, 2002

"The problem with the finite-resource theory is nicely illustrated by recent trends in oil production. There are 6,784 trillion fewer barrels of oil in the ground today than there were in 1981, the year in which relative oil scarcity was greatest. At first glance, then, one might think that the natural resource base has deteriorated. Yet oil is relatively more abundant today than it was 17 years ago." -- Jerry Taylor, political scientist, 1998

"The industry will never run out of oil, not in 10,000 years. Some day, it may run out of customers. Every mineral industry is a perpetual tug-of-war, between diminishing returns and increasing knowledge." -- Morris A. Adelman, economist, 1997

"Neither we, nor our grandchildren, nor their grandchildren will live to see the end of the oil era." -- Karl-Heinz Schult-Bornemann, geologist, 1997

"We now have in our hands—really, in our libraries—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years." -- Julian L. Simon, economist, 1995

"It is obvious that the total amount of petroleum in the rocks underlying the surface ... is large beyond computation." -- Edward Orton, geologist, 1888

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