Why Energy Journalism Is So Bad
EDIT
Consider this recent example in the Financial Times. The author elatedly painted a picture of an impending era of energy independence as unconventional oil from gas shales caused a “U-turn in US oil supply,” even suggesting that, “in the coming decade the US will leapfrog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest producer of liquid hydrocarbons.”
The article went on to cite a jumble of relevant and irrelevant data, along with highly speculative forecasts represented as near-certainties. After sorting it all out, I found that the cited numbers didn’t add up: 10 mbpd currently produced by the U.S. and Canada (including about 1.5 mbpd from Canadian tar sands), plus a projected 2 mbpd of new “tight oil” production from U.S. shales, plus another 1.5 mbpd of projected new production from the tar sands gives me 13.5 mbpd, but the author slid directly from that data to a forecast by the National Petroleum Council (NPC), an oil industry group, projecting that the two countries would produce a whopping 22 mbpd by 2035!
Further sleuthing revealed the problem: the author had uncritically reported the best-case “2035 High Potential” scenario offered in the NPC’s latest report, in which production from tar sands rises to 6 mbpd; offshore Gulf of Mexico rises to 3 mbpd; “tight shale” (not to be confused with “tight oil”) rises from zero today to 1 mbpd; enhanced oil recovery technology adds another 0.6 mbpd, and Arctic production rises to over 2 mbpd.
The author did not mention that the NPC report also included an alternative, “2035 Limited” scenario, in which North American production actually falls about 1 mbpd from 2010 levels.
EDIT
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/energy-futurist/why-energy-journalism-is-so-bad/219