Oil Pumping Innovations: The Whole Story?

There was and interesting article in the New York Times (click on post title to access article) about technologies/techniques which increase the yield from existing oil wells/fields. The article does admit that the costs of recovery using these technologies/techniques cost more than usual pumping, but are still profitable given today's oil market. The article argues that this makes the discussion of "the end of oil" questionable at best.

I am more interested in what the article doesn't say. Not only do these recovery techniques typically cost more, they also often require significant amounts of energy. Thus, the net energy extraction is significantly less than more "normal" techniques.

This means that the net effect on the total amount of energy available is less than one might think, although maybe more oil becomes available if alternative forms of power are used to drive these approaches. However, in most cases, we would probably find that significant amounts of CO2 are generated to increase the extraction of this additional oil, in addition to the CO2 that is generated when the oil is utilized. Thus, the effects on global warming of these "high-tech" extraction techniques is almost certainly adverse.