Saturday, October 29, 2011

Yergin on the future of oil in the West

The "Go oil!" guy has an article in the Washington Post this morning about how deep sea oil in Brazil, oil in shale formations in the US, and the Canadian oil sands are increasing in prominence as providers for US oil. While increased dependence on more stable producers is a good thing for us, the less dependable sources produced in unstable and/ or highly autocratic regimes in the Middle East are still going to have plenty of customers as Asian demand picks up.

While his cavalier attitude toward CO2 emissions seems misplaced, he's pointing to a lot of very real recent developments. The market is indeed moving this way, and effective planning needs to accept these realities.