<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/f9dc5fa3-3a3f-4c00-844b-dee69a593ab4/38FB9D4F-F91F-4635-8EA6-5B1CCCA073E4/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4307" href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4307" style="font-size: 11px;">www.theoildrum.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4307">Economists seem to have trouble understanding geological and technical limits to oil production, but they should understand the <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_diminishing_returns">law of diminishing returns (Wikipedia)</A>:</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4307">Until the mid 1980s, discovery of new oil fields exceeded our consumption rate, so there was little need to increase recovery from existing fields. As the discovery rate declined, companies had greater motivation to extract more from their existing fields. While at first they found easy gains, in the last decade especially the amount of effort required has climbed and yet the returns are falling: is it any surprise that oil industry inflation is rampant?</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4307">Discovery of new fields has tapered off to low levels and the easy pickings for increased recovery have already been had. Unconventional oil sources will yield similarly small returns for extraordinary amounts of effort. The numbers simply do not stack up for oil production continuing to expand for another decade against the decline in large mature conventional oil </blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/38FB9D4F-F91F-4635-8EA6-5B1CCCA073E4/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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