Abiotic oil, whether true or not, still doesn't solve the problem due to the fact that the ONE documented case of A well "re-filling" itself shows that the rate of replenishment cannot keep up with the rate of depletion worldwide.
Gold uses obscure data on one well in the Gulf of Mexico to justify his conclusions. He extrapolates that well to the whole world. Mexico announced yesterday that its largest field, Cantarell, is in decline. Where's the abiotic oil there? Hmmm.
Here's a quote from privates Cheney, taken in 1999 from a speech given to the London Insbreastute of Petroleum Autumn lunch in 1999 when he was the CEO of Halliburton.:
"From the standpoint of the oil industry obvoiusly - and I'll talk a little later about gas - for over a hundred years we as an industry have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you've got to turn around and find more or go out of business. Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you've got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is true for companies as well as in the broader economic sense of the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It's like making 100 percent interest; discovering anohter field of some five hundred million barrels every four months or finding two Hibernias a year. For the world as a whole, oil companies are expectecd to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion (today that number is 84 mbpd), but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two percent of annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. This means that by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety percent of the buttets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Harry J. Longwell, director and executive Vice-President of Exxon-Mobil, later confirmed this number (World Energy, Vol5, No.3 2002): "The catch is that while demand increases, existing production declines. To put a number on it, we expect that by 2010 about half the daily volume needed to meet projected demand is not on production today - and that's the challenge facing producers."
In short, a global energy crisis is coming, abiotic oil or not.
Try getting some news inputs from something other than the mainstream, corporate owned, American Media. Then, being an intelligent guy, you can start to form a coherent picture of geopolitical events that are pointing toward said energy shortage. Or, you can continue watching the crap on American TV and you'll know everything there is to know about Terry Schiavo, Lacey Petersen, Michael Jackson, Pope Benedict, et al.
Cheers,
Roy
