As far as I know Australia only has one working shale gas play (ie horizontally drilled, no caprock) close to conventional gas pipes in the Moomba area. Rather than sending all of that gas to the southern capitals some of it will go to making high priced export LNG at Gladstone. Therefore instead of telling ourselves we have a bonanza we should be thinking about conserving gas in SE Australia. This very point has been made by Dow Chemical and Incitec Pivot but fallen on the deaf ears of our politicians.

While Rex Connor in the Whitlam years could not have known about shale gas with uncanny foresight he predicted the need to send gas from WA to the eastern states. Shale and coal seam gas merely buy time. While we are exporting LNG and burning gas for baseload power other future needs are being compromised. These include heating gas, chemicals feedstock (plastics, urea etc), peaking power and most likely CNG diesel substitute. Delusions about unlimited cheap gas will come back to bite us within a decade I reckon.

Wow, the peak oil guys just do not want to let go of their concept. Basically peak oil as a story died some time back, but those wedded to the idea are still looking for gaps and holes in the current oil and gas story. In his effort to prove that reality in the oil industry must be wrong somehow, Cameron makes a few comemnts, some of which are interesting but mostly he missteps..

Consider this comment:
"neither the knowledge of unconventional energy sources nor the technology required to extract them are new"..

This is technically correct but quite misleading. Sure limited extraction for some shale oil deposits has been possible for deacdes and a major breakthrough in the technology turned Canada into a major oil exporter in the 1990s - a point Cameron neglects to mention. But teh technique known as fracking is a recent development and that has unlocked very large deposits. That is what the fuss has been about.

Cameron may be correct about some of the enthusiasm for fracking being over the top and dying away, that happens with new industries. But oil production in the US has taken a wholly unexpected, new lease of life. In addition, deep sea discoveries have increased by leaps and bounds.. and all of this has confounded the peak oil theorists.

Sorry, Cameron, time to find a new story to push.

Wishful thinking is a dreadful thing.

It can cause you to believe all sorts of fallacies, & make some most inappropriate decisions, that can cost you, or your country if you have authority, a great deal for a long time.

While it was an interesting read, the conclusions reached by the Author were hardly convincing?
It seems all the green advocates must be receiving salaries somewhere north of $150,000.00 per?
Given the common endlessly repeated chant seems to be, make energy more expensive?
And indeed, the whole thrust of the article?
Fine, but what about the 40% living just above or below the poverty line?
I disagree most vehemently with this Author!
Instead of his preferred economy mugging model, I believe we need to take full advantage of our copious energy resources to rebuild our manufacturing economy.
High tech manufacture equates to high energy usage?
Nowhere in the, par for the course, green discourse, do we find the words, nuclear power?
Nowhere do we find the words, biogas or extremely low water use, Algae farming.
Algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2, and under optimised conditions double that bodyweight and absorption capacity every 24 hours.
Some algae are up to 60% oil or easily extracted, ready to use bio-diesel!
Almost every household or residential high rise, produces enough waste/methane, to power the home or apartment building!
The bonus being endless free hot water and or power, just a third the cost of coal fired power!
Moreover, the product of energy produced by methane in a ceramic fuel cell, is mostly water vapour.
However, we will need to create a very strong and very sustainable economy, to make such things affordable for the average consumer.
Oil/gas?
Why not unlock the huge hydrocarbon reserves locked up in the Great Barrier reef?
Transitioning to other more sustainable alternatives will take both time and money!
Something that seems to escape some; but particularly those who seem to think, all we need do, to pay for the transition, is print more money?
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty:

...Interesting is your comment at the end of your post, the printing of money! The alternate energy sub-set is now an industry; a self-serving and vested industry. Very aware it must be too, that the western economy (since the unclipping of gold as its base value), relies on a system of money printing for survival.

…At any expense, including to the 40% you mentioned who are most impacted with escalating cost of power, the poor; present as the most adversely impacted group in our society to be subjected to the “cost-squeeze” green energy is intent on forcing onto us all!

...The “green Nazis” want for a big slice of new printed stimulus money: They care little for social consequences; the opposite to their “parade-ground” mantra!

Mark (Curmedgeon), I do believe that the only place that the peak oil concept has died is between your ears. You have made some bold statements with no supporting evidence. Just because you want something to be so doesn't mean that it is. All of the assertions I made in the article are supported by evidence which I even included hyperlinks for your reading pleasure.

You also have conflated what I have detailed in my article to suit your own purposes. The article had nothing to do with Canadian oil production (why would it when I am talking about the US situation) hence why it was not mentioned. I do believe that you are confusing oil or tar sands production with shale oil (or more correctly tight oil) production - two entirely different processes.

Some questions for you then Mark:

1. Is the Chatham House paper incorrect when it said the first well was fracked in 1947?

2. Is 900,000 barrels a day (current tight oil production) a revolutionary change in a world that consumes approx 85 mb/d?

3. How much tight oil production would there be now if the oil price was say $60/barrel? $50? $40?

4. Will 4mb/d of tight oil production in the mid 2020s make much if any difference when depletion from current conventional oil fields equates to about the same amount of lost production each and every year?

5. How long can shale gas companies, funded mainly by debt, remain solvent with gas prices lower than production costs?

I could continue but unless you can provide actual evidence to support your hope that the peak oil 'concept' is dead, I don't really see the point.

Cameron Leckie