Colorado state geologist: Oil world in decline
Q&A with State Geologist Vincent Matthews
Allen Best, ColoradoBiz Magazine
Despite ever-ingenious ways of extracting oil, world production might be past its peak. Will Colorado’s economy benefit from a decline, or suffer?
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Vincent Matthews was among the 275 people who attended a conference held in Denver last winter on the topic of the world reaching its peak in oil production. For Matthews, a former petroleum geologist who now directs the Colorado Geological Survey, the topic was not new, as his own research in the late 1990s led him to a similar conclusion...
...Matthews, who is officially Colorado’s state geologist, also has credentials. First coming to Colorado in the 1960s to teach at the University of Northern Colorado, he jumped ship to Amoco in the 1970s to improve his salary - and was immediately put in charge of exploration in the Overthrust Belt of Wyoming and Utah, the nation’s most exciting energy frontier at the time. But, like Hickenlooper, who he met in the mid-1980s, Matthews was soon out of work in the up-and-down world of oil extraction.
...CB: Why do you believe that the same revolution in computing power that you describe will not lead to the extraction of more oil?
M: Because so many things, major things, have been done - and we’re still declining. We still haven’t turned it around. So what on earth is it that we haven’t thought of? We have been coming up with incredible leaps in technologies all along, and still production in the U.S. has gone down.
CB: What about some of the proven reserves, such as Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
M: It will be the same thing as Prudhoe Bay. It will be a blessing if you want more domestic production, but it will only be a blip. An important blip, but only a blip. It will turn things around for a little bit, but it will never take us back to the peak where we were in 1970. We didn’t get back to peak U.S. production with Prudhoe Bay, nor can we do so with ANWR.
You can’t turn oil shale on fast. Oil shale and most other forms of energy are 10-year projects, or more. You can’t ramp up wind power. You can’t ramp up solar. But we’re going to need them all, every single thing we can do. That’s why I have a task force on geothermal energy in Colorado. I think there’s a lot of potential there. But that’s way down the road. Really the only thing we can turn on quickly is by turning off: conservation. That’s the only thing we can do immediately.
...CB: What should be our response to peak oil?
M: Petroleum is too valuable to be burned in motor cars. We need to cut back on our use in transportation in order to have oil for use in other things for which there are not necessarily substitutes.
CB: How will this decline in world oil supplies affect Colorado?
M: Declining oil supplies are likely to result in more nuclear power plants. But we have declining supplies right now of uranium, about 80 million pounds per year. The result we saw was 8,500 new mining permits for uranium filed in Eastern Utah and Western Colorado. The pressure will mount to develop those resources.
(April 2006)
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