The Export Land Model (Or, why do we really need to start fucking up our offshore areas for oil?)

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The Export Land Model, or Export-Land Model, refers to work done by Dallas geologist Jeffrey Brown, building on the work of others, and discussed widely on The Oil Drum. It models the decline in oil exports that result when an exporting nation experiences both a peak in oil production and an increase in domestic oil consumption. In such cases, exports decline at a far faster rate than the decline in oil production alone.

The Export Land Model is important to petroleum importing nations because when the rate of global petroleum production peaks and begins to decline, the petroleum available on the world market will decline much more steeply than the decline in total production.

...snip...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_Model

And guess what...the U.S. is an oil importer. And, even if oil is discovered off our coastal areas, it will take up to 10 years to bring it to market. By then, imports will be so low and so expensive as to be prohibitive for producing offshore U.S. oil. In other words, YOU CANNOT PRODUCE OFFSHORE U.S. OIL WITHOUT PLENTIFUL CHEAP OIL TO FUEL THE PROCESS! And "cheap" oil is already GONE!

Edited to add:



More:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ed9jsKAOHU

http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2007/09/declining-net-oil-exports-temporary.html

[kentuck]

1. Democrats are not going to agree with the President on this issue...

Purely political maneuver to disarm the only issue of Sarah Palin and to force the hand of the Republicans to agree on some issue.

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2. Un-recced without comment. Nice rebuttal. If you have something to say, SAY IT! n/t