The Oil Rush
How high-tech prospectors are trying to squeeze fuel--and fat profits--out of the earth while transforming the petroleum market
Energy companies already make use of pure CO2, injecting it into declining wells to stimulate more oil production. That can be pricey, and there's an obvious irony: Unconventional oil would then be used to help produce conventional oil. That leaves some environmentalists scratching their heads. "We're fundamentally scraping the bottom of the oil barrel," says Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, who advocates conservation. "Every dollar we put into recovering more oil weds our economy more and more firmly to oil as an energy resource and actually makes us more dependent on the Middle East."
Without some fundamental changes, of course, the world's 80 million-barrel-a-day oil habit will only get worse. If current trends hold, between now and the time a child born today turns 25, the world will need to match the oil output of the past 150 years. The only way to get there will be producing oil in new ways--ones that are difficult, dirty, and expensive.
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