Kuwait's biggest field starts to run out of oil

It was an incredible revelation last week that the second largest oil field in the world is exhausted and past its peak output. Yet that is what the Kuwait Oil Company revealed about its Burgan field.

This should come as no surprise. The reason for the anger between Iraq and Kuwait prior to Desert Storm was that Kuwait (aided by American oil companies) was slant-drilling under the Iraqi border to tap Iraq's oil fields. So, even then Kuwait knew they were starting to run dry.

Okay folks, here is the real deal. Oil is not an infinite resource. It has taken only 100 years for humans to burn up about half of what lies down there. There are reasons to suspect that oil is being produced by deep crust bacteria, but even if true, oil is being used up far faster than it is being replenished.

When it takes the energy of an entire barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, the party is over. There could be zillions of gallons still down there, deep, but if it takes as much energy as there is in a barrel of oil to get a barrel of oil out of the ground, the system stops, because there is no energy advantage. The system uses all the energy it produces, with none left over.

Back during Katrina I wrote that Bush had bet the city of New Orleans on his war by using money and supplies intended for disaster and flood preparedness to pay for his war. When learning that similar funding had been cut across the nation, I expanded that observation to say that Bush had bet the entire country on his wars. Now, to those who see oil as the prime motive for the war, it must be said that Bush has bet the nation on a war to win what may turn out to be an empty prize. By the time the Mideast Oil fields come under US control, the pipelines may be down to a trickle.

The prudent course would have been (and still can be) to take the trillions of dollars spent on the military and the billions spent on Israel and mount a new science endeavor, a new "Manhattan" or "Apollo" project, to create a new and practical energy source. Not energy storage, like better batteries, or flywheels, or other such gadgets, but a real energy source. Something that puts out power and is adaptable to large industrial installations, or small mobile units like car or aircraft engines.

There is a book called "Ringworld" by Larry Niven. I think it would make a great movie. Behind the story of the exploration of the Ringworld Larry writes a cautionary tale of a civilization that finds a key link of its energy system gone. The political leaders, rather than devote what remains of their now limited energy to finding a replacement, use their political power to keep the dwindling energy supplies flowing to their palaces and capitol cities so that they can live their lives as they always have. Then the energy runs out, and civilization falls.

We are headed into the same trap. If a new energy source is to be created, it will take a substantial portion of the oil energy we still have to do it; to mine the necessary ores, refine the necessary new materials, machine the necessary parts, and deliver the necessary components.

If we allow ourselves to run out of oil, worse, if we burn up the majority of what oil remains in decades of conventional warfare merely to plant a flag over the remaining puddles, we will find ourselves without the means to search for and develop an alternative energy supply. If we wait until that moment to think abut a new energy source, we may come up with brilliant ideas, but lack the means to carry them out.

War for oil is a stupid idea, because even if won, may well yield an empty prize.