What seems to be totally missed is "financial cost" and "being there" are completely irrelevant to the critical question:
What is EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested). That question is actually the only thing that matters. If the NET energy extracted isn't a large muliple of the TOTAL ENERGY OF EXTRACTION (I mean, total--including energy for infrastructure, employment, etc.) then the oil is *technically* available but *practically* USELESS.
The Libtards can't figure out that "climate change" is a red herring (and an intelligence test) and "renewables" have a huge energy cost of their own which is generally well above the total energy which can be extracted from the renewable).
Most Repugs can't figure out that paper-dollar cost and existence are NOT a valid test for peak oil.
EROEI ***USED*** to be more than 100:1. Now it averages below 5:1 and rapidly falling. MOST new fields are (1) so small that they barely are worth the drill and (2) so bad on a straight EROEI basis that they ABSOLUTELY will never be worth the drill as a source of energy.
Why is that not understood? It's just basic physics. Are Repugs and Repug media not capable of understanding, or is there an active (subconconcious) fear of looking closely enough at the problem? Or is it something else? Magic thinking isn't thinking.
We are hitting the EROEI barrier. Below 5:1 oil becomes economically ***INCREDIBLY*** expensive. We are there. Below probably 3:1 it becomes likely not worth even attempting, because even solar and batteries do better.
PS. I am not the world's expert on this, so some of my thresholds (e.g., 3:1 not being worth attempting) are guesstimates.
But magical thinking and denial and 'someone will think of something' ARE the problem. This sort of low-wattage thinking is what got humanity to dig and bury itself in this physics hole. And, of course, short-term thinking is what animals do; why isn't humanity doing better than that?
I have come to realize that men are not born to be free. Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men. -Napoleon
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