Fracking in the Marcellus Shale is now profitable at $3.50/mmbtu... the equivalent of $20/barrel oil... so much was made that gas prices are now $2.12/mmbtu... and the majors are in the proccess of trying to consolidate the industry again after the "pesky" independent competition screwed things up increased production so much over the last 3 years. the majors knew about fracking for 60 years... and intentionally ignored it and discouraged this recent boom in production... now that the costs have been lowered and techniques proven by the independents the majors are focusing on the best way to react(HBO specials on the evils of fracking, or banning coal burning are two leading "solutions".)

Ya wanna learn about this?

Google "The deep, hot biosphere" by Thomas Gold.

Great video! Kudos to your staff.

Prouty may wonder why "fossill fuel" is still applied to oil but that is no mystery to anyone who knows the history of Hollywood. One of that area's great tourist attractions, when Hollywood was being formed, was an area called the LaBrea Tar Pits. These were California pools of petroleum that bubbled up just like they did in Pennsylvania when the oil industry began but they had an added curiosity feature. Supposedly, large dinosaur and raptor skeletons had been found in the Tar Pits and Harry Sinclair grabbed on to the first newsreels of this penomena and adopted the dino as Sinclair Oil's symbol! Oil and Fossils! It wasn't just a Rockefeller promotion when Sinclair made it a national symbol!

Sinclair's dino also made that strange fossil a most sought after toy, stuffed and machined and even today toy collectors want them back in the early 20th Century! This may have had more effect on future geologists than we care to pursue here given what Star Wars has done in the last thirty years with science in general!

"... but it is only logical that these energy sources are part of a larger geological process. Make up your own mind."

Any decent physicist would have made up his mind about "fossil fuel" long ago. That oil and gas is abiotic is not hard to determine. The energy of the sun plays a considerable part. However, I won't go into it any deeper, except to refer you to the Irish physicist Maurice Cotterell, who deals with the subject authoritatively.

It seemed a lot "easier" relative to the energy and technology available at the time. A couple cases come to immediately to mind:
The early oil fields in and around the Los Angeles basin (have you ever heard of the La Brea tar pits).

Also, at the beginning of the 20th century, William Engdahl writes that there were pools of oil that were lit as a system of geographic markers. When the extraction rights were unwittingly sold to British interests, costly exploration was largely unnecessary as the easiest sites were already identified.

Granted, it's not falling off a log, but it's not sending a man to the moon either.

"... is that exploration companies use the plankton theory and end up finding oil."

I'd have to look up the Plankton Theory myself as I'm not familiar with it, Dilence Sogwood. I would imagine that this has to do with what between 70-80% of the composition of the ocean floor and pulled under the Continental Crust at Convergent plate boundaries via Subduction, which I recall correctly is believed to confirm Subduction through the release via volcanic regions via the melt and melt's rise via magma. If I recall correctly, this is the very process; Abiotic Adcovates use to assert oil is abiotic. Bare in mind, subduction not only pulls down Oceanic Crust but water as well. If I recall correctly, heat acellerates decomposition, and we're talking about tremendous pressure here, which also produces heat and even at least partial melt inheret in the process of Metamorphic Rock via heat, pressure (essentially the heat's catalyst), and partial-melt.

The video vaguely discussed how it moves; this sounds like a vague reference to either a byproduct to pressure or Isostatic Adjustment then there's the Continental Rebound to consider, which I am compelled to point out would explain the adjusting sea levels with the absence of firm oceanic temperature rises, but it also diminishes the memes of people can control the planet and effectively play worshipping Gods to 'Gaia'.

Think of it like an Aquaifer, there's confined and unconfined aquaifers if the well is feeding out of a confined well. Off top of my head, I don't recall which replenishes better than the other much like some rocks have better porosity/permeability that effects 'saturation'. Personally, my hunch is that the 'Green Movement' and environmental regulations are geared towards limiting competition until the better replenished well can be attained. If you want to reference profits, the best profits is limiting competition that is more likely to sell below your margin through regulation, this enables the 'competitor' to go bankrupt and then expand, consolidate, and by needing the resource would be forced to take on an effectively a monoply of the commodity. The third piller is by controlling coal and oil, which were respective components of early Industrial Revolutions enabling population increases would render the present population unsustainable aka 'cull'.

Very interesting video. However the fact that oil was misleadingly named to imply scarcity at the time when it was abundant does not mean it is still abundant. Oil may well have a non-biological origin and instead be formed by a geological process but that doesn't mean its stocks get replenished on any timescale meaningful to our civilisation. It may take billions of years to form. I have the opinion that there really is a scarcity, the wars over the last remaining resources may be all to real.

Haha, next you are going to ask if the whole industry could be thousands of little Potemkins. The get the oil out of a big bucket they keep hidden and pretend to be drilling in Montana.

DB asks: Do I believe them [geologists]?

Response: yes, the ones that go get the oil. I sure do. ... Not the ones that write white papers for Duke or Cornell.

you mean like wheat, or fish, or water?

and when exactly was extraction "easy" -- sure prior to having specialized tools and technology there were reserves that were easily exploitable by today's standards, but it wasn't "easy" back then.

Acutally the problem with this:

"Common sense, however, tells us that given the depths to which people now drill for oil, the chances that that oil and gas are generally created from old bones, plankton, etc. are minimal at best"

... is that exploration companies use the plankton theory and end up finding oil.

But it's sure not from dead dinosaurs, which is actually what I was taught in 4th grade.

Reply from The Daily Bell

So ... They TELL YOU what they using - the "Plankton theory." Whatever that is.

Do you believe them?

I imagine that most DB readers understand the major issues involving scarcity of resources is a consequence of manufactured crises whether the cause is classic fiat misallocation, suppression of new technologies, or outright deception.

To flat out imply that oil is likely very abundant ignores the reality of what thousands of professionals are telling us about a rapidly decreasing ERoEI ratio (energy returned over energy invested). Are ALL of them lying and have they found a way to hide vast reserves? Aren't the Saudi super giant "elephant" oil fields reaching the point where trillions of gallons of water must be pumped in to extract ever deeper and sequestered pockets of oil?

Another way to look at all of this is to consider that the power elite require a certain minimum per capita of energy to control their serfs. Thus they understand that as cheap energy declines in abundance, their economic and political top-down control paradigm will falter. Hence, the rush to technocracy, energy rationing, constant surveillance, and all other facets of totalitarianism. This also explains the focus on depopulation.

Furthermore, following this line of reasoning, we can understand the motives of TPTB to suppress decentralizing energy technologies such as those described by the documentary Thrive. (They do this in other industries as well. Just look at how successful TPTB were at suppressing Dr. Burzynski's remarkably effective antinucleoplastin cancer treatment. The results of the FDA clinical trials were astounding, yet the sheeple remain largely oblivious to a once-in-a-century type of medical breakthrough resulting in the early death and suffering of hundreds of millions.)

One thing is certain, the DB staff has hit the nail on the head with their insightful explanations of how fear based memes represent the core strategy of elite domination.

It seems obvious the "fossil Fuel" hypothesis or theory is highly questionable. Man's ability to extract this oil is "costly and energy intense".
Why have we not been able to document any cases of easy extraction from a new massive oil field? Oil does not exist like a lake underground. The next question is given the intricate structure of nature, what purpose might this oil serve in preserving the health of this planet as a whole? No, I do not want to hear God placed it there for man to exploit.

Should have had a better geologist.

Prouty seems to ignore one gigantic fact about petroleum: it is HARD to find. I have many friends in the oil and gas business, and it is patently obvious that the stuff is extremely expensive to extract on a reliable basis, not to mention refine and then transport over typically long distances. The so-called conspiratorial labeling of it as "fossil fuel" is mildly interesting, if true, but I believe that this ploy has long since been rendered irrelevant by the enormous costs of exploration in deeper and deeper POTENTIAL deposits, as well as the very costly and messy new processes such as "fraccing" (shale oil). If it were as easy to go get this "2nd most abundant liquid" (after water), my father would not have left the oil business after drilling 8 dry holes ... And I would have long since joined him on Easy Street, stacking our gold in the Counting Room!

Just amazing!