Enormous reserves will never be extracted through simple, basic economics. We're already at a breaking point.
Enormous reserves will never be extracted through simple, basic economics. We're already at a breaking point.
True, but the most desirable wells to oilmen once drilled do actually produce oil at such a high rate naturally without further energy input that they need to have their flow rate restricted in order to become manageable. Processing, maintenance and further drilling can then be accomplished from revenue itself without further capital investment.
Relative to other things on Wall Street, it might as well extract and process itself.
Yeah people need to get real: any and all hydrocarbons will be dug out at some point. Unless you want to make a pact to nuke the countries that do it beyond a certain level (which can double as a nice way to mitigate global warming at least for a while). For some nations such as Saudi Arabia, digging and selling hydrocarbons is the core and essence of their existence and is what separating them from bedouins/forest people living in the wild in total savagery. There is absolutely no way they could do something else for a living.
Developed nations could stop doing it. Europe for example, almost did (it has even more shale oil and gas than U.S. does and made a conscious decision to ban it's extraction), U.S. could do too if it wanted, but many poor countries just can't.