The Mining of the North: A Review of Andrew Nikiforuk\u27s Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (original) (raw)

In 1956, a petroleum geologist named M. King Hubbert made a controversial prediction: U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. At the time, Hubbert's prediction was widely disputed; in 1970, however, the U.S. production of crude oil started to fall, proving that Hubbert was correct. 2 The concepts that underlie what has become known as "Hubbert's Peak" are relatively straightforward: (1) oil is a finite resource; (2) production starts at zero; (3) production rises to a peak that can never be surpassed; and (4) production declines until the resource is depleted. 3 Put more colorfully by Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, "[A]s every beer drinker knows, the glass that starts full ends empty." ' 4 To most credible observers, we now live in a peak oil world. 5 We are well on the way to depleting the world's oil reserves. 6 The glass is headed towards empty. Professor Hannah Wiseman of the University of Texas Law School notes that "[a] s conventional sources of oil and gas become less productive and energy prices rise, production companies are developing creative extractive methods to tap resources like oil shales and tar sands that were previously not worth drilling." '7 These new methods of energy production, like their predecessors, PAUL ROBERTS, THE END OF OIL: ON THE EDGE OF A PERILOUS NEW WORLD 44-65 (2005) (stating easy access to oil reserves has ended). 6. See Deffeyes, supra note 1, at 133-99. 7. See Hannah Wiseman, Untested Waters: The Rise of Hydraulic Fracturing in Oil and Gas Production and the Need to Revisit Regulation, 20 FoRDHAM ENVTL. L. REv. 115 (2009) (noting that most new extraction techniques are causing disputes as they are occurring close to human populations).