Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 12:08 am Post subject: Peak Oil Disinformation
Everything that's happening now in the topline of "News" is dependent on two things - carbon-driven climate change and Peak Oil
Everything thats pissing people off and deliberately bringing down the appalling Brown governance, as was expected, is predicated on those two threads. Brown is a numpty controlled one-eyed puppet who expected power but has none except his utter defeat. Shame.
The world is floating on an ocean of oil. It keeps appearing all over. there is no rational explanation for the soaring cost of all essentials because oil is abundant and anthropogenic global warming is a lie
Sorry, this is a bit simplistic and refers to our own forum, which has some irrelevancies,cos I'm lazy, but this is a start
http://westyorkshiretruth.aceboard.com/225988-6441-6794-0-World-Order- sitting-ocean.htm#vb
Exposing this nonsense propaganda gladly accepted by the Greens and the left unfortunately, alongside the 9/11 and 7/7 stuff, ought perhaps to be priority. It's really to the fore and affecting everyone now! and it's nonsense _________________ http://www.exopolitics-leeds.co.uk/introduction
You misunderstand the reason why the nominal price of oil is going up. In real money(gold) the price of oil has hardly changed over the years. If the dollar hadn't left the gold standard in 1971 oil would still be less than $4 a barrel. It's inflation(worldwide fiat money creation/printing) that's driving the oil price... http://goldprice.org/james-turk/uploaded_images/Oil-Price-778911.GIF
With the Fed and other central banks monetizing the housing bubble debt they are increasing the rate of money creation. The commodity market recognises that this inflation of the money supply will outstrip the rate of increase in the supply of oil leading to an inevitable increase in the nominal price of a barrel of oil.
Alexander - that doesn't explain why oil was $40 a barrel a few years ago and is now more than three times that. There is a giant scam going on as well as the crashing of the dollar. _________________ "The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell.
Yes it does - there's increasing inflation of the money supply that is unreflected by the media as they misreport what inflation actually is. The media always reports inflation as the CPI or PPI - the rate of increase of prices(these are manipulated in such a way to keep them artificially low).
So why didn't it happen gradually in the seventies, eighties and nineties.?Why the sudden massive price-hike in oil this last few years? Also why should the USA mis-management cause the inflation we are seeing here, with petrol and food prices soaring lately? The pound has gone down as well but nothing like as bad as the dollar. I know that the Federal Reserve is busy tanking the USA economy and that has a lot to do with it but there is something else going on other than inflation. _________________ "The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell.
So why didn't it happen gradually in the seventies, eighties and nineties
It did.
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Why the sudden massive price-hike in oil this last few years?
Money printing is accelerating and as the housing bubble bursts that inflationary money(as the housing debt gets monetized) is now showing up more in commodity prices.
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Also why should the USA mis-management cause the inflation we are seeing here, with petrol and food prices soaring lately?
Money-printing is a worldwide phenomenon.
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The pound has gone down as well but nothing like as bad as the dollar.
The phrase ‘Peak Oil’ has been coined to bring attention to the belief that the world is at, or very close to, the point where reserves of global hydro-carbon resources commence the downward path, which will ultimately lead to the complete exhaustion of global oil & gas resources.
Whilst the theory of ‘Peak Oil’ is popularized by a sympathetic media, the oil industry, continues to produce in excess of 90 million barrels each day whilst enjoying record levels of profitability, yet remains remarkably silent on the issue.
The mainstream media is also strangely silent on the existence of alternative theories to ‘Peak Oil’. Why is this? Does everyone in the Oil & Gas industry agree with the forecasts that the world is entering the last days of an oil-based economy? If not, what is the alternative viewpoint and why is it not given coverage by the mainstream media?
In addition, the proponents of ‘Peak Oil’ conveniently ignore rapidly advancing well construction, reservoir management and stimulation techniques, which enable more than twice as much oil to be extracted than when oil was first discovered in the late 19th Century. Not to mention the development of production from unconventional sources, such as the massive Shale Oil deposits beneath Colorado, Utah & Wyoming.
Harvard PhD graduate Jerome Corsi wrote, “Oil companies are making record $100 billion annual profits not because oil is scarce … but because we believe it is.”
Ian R. Crane, a veteran of a twenty-year career in international oilfield services, which provided him with the opportunity to live & work in the UK, Mainland Europe, Middle East and the USA, believes that counter theories to Peak Oil should be given equal consideration and people should be given the opportunity to see the truth behind ‘Peak Oil’. Is it real decline in availability of resources or ‘perceived shortage’, which has resulted in the price of oil escalating from $9.81 per barrel in 1999, to in excess of $130 per barrel today? What cannot be denied is that over the past five years, the major oil companies have achieved the greatest levels of profitability in corporate history. Over the same period, oilfield related stocks have increased in value by as much as a 500%, reaping enormous rewards for oilfield executives and industry investors.
Ian does not suggest that we should continue to burn in excess of 90million barrels of hydro-carbons each day but he is concerned that the proponents of ‘Peak Oil’ are inadvertently playing into the hands of Big Oil. With the price of petrol now firmly set above the £1 per litre mark in the UK, it’s time to hear the other side of the story.
Alexander - you say it did gradually happen in the 70s 80s and 90s but the price of oil shot up to over 30$ a barrel in the early 80s then fell to less than $10 a barrel in the early 90s. It stayed cheap for over a decade and was in fact as cheap as it had been before any of the oil crises during those decades. The present price can't possibly just be because of dollar inflation/money printing, although that has a significant impact.
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Money-printing is a worldwide phenomenon.
Well if everyone is doing it then the overall effect should be that the dollar doesn't fall against other currencies. _________________ "The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell.
In the late nineties the oil price plummeted as the US dollar irrationally gained strength against gold and oil - the "dollar bubble" coincided with that other great suicidal movement of capital into the dotcoms. But the long-term trend for the dollar is down as its value gets stolen by money-printing.
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Well if everyone is doing it then the overall effect should be that the dollar doesn't fall against other currencies.
It's a matter of degree. We will see a dramatic increase in the value of the currencies of the world's producing economies against the currencies of the consuming economies. That will make oil cheaper for them and much dearer for us.
In Euro terms the price of crude oil has not gone up very much.
It is US Dollar inflation rather than anything else that is going on here.
There is no shortage of oil with new oilfields being found regularly.
Brazil has just discovered a massive field, Iraqi oil reserves have now been upgraded to being the world's largest. And exploration all over the place from the Caspian Sea to the Indian ocean is yielding promising findings.
There are many untapped known reserves such as in Somaliland formerly Northern Somalia.
Add to this the known facts such as South Africa which produces oil byproducts from Coal. Dont forget although JD Rockefeller's Standard Oil supplied much of Nazi Germany's oil requirements he did not supply oil. About 50% of Germany's oil was actually made from denatured Coal. Part of the deal was that Standard Oil aquired the rights to this oil from coal process.
I'm open to the idea that Peak Oil is a scam but have never seen a truly convincing argument that it is.
The world is not "floating on an ocean of oil" - you can verify this by digging a hole in your garden. Ian Crane introduced me to the idea that oil is not a fossil fuel but generated by another process (which I didn't entirely follow but I'm happy to defer to his superior knowledge on the subject) but what I didn't get was an indication of how long this process takes.
I mean imagine if we have a bathtub of drinking water on a dessert island where it never rains. The tap of the bathtub is dripping so we know it will never completly run out, but still, we need to make some calculations right? If we go crazy and drink it with abandon and the bathtub empties it will fill up again, but so slowly we'll be dead from thirst before it does.
If oil is regenerating, that's interesting, but unless it is regenerating to the extent that it replenishes at the same speed we are using it, for all intents and purposes the basic tennets of peak oil still apply.
Personally I think the whole thing is a smoke screen as there is plenty of evidence to suggest ZP energy has been tapped and is being withheld. _________________
Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare
By SAMANTHA GROSS, Associated Press Writer Posted Sat May 24, 2008 11:12am PDT
BUSKIRK, N.Y. - A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.
That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.
Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.
"I was panic-stricken," the 50-year-old recalled, her voice shaking. "Devastated. Depressed. Afraid. Vulnerable. Weak. Alone. Just terrible."
Convinced the planet's oil supply is dwindling and the world's economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn't prepare.
The exact number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining momentum in the last few years.
These energy survivalists are not leading some sort of green revolution meant to save the planet. Many of them believe it is too late for that, seeing signs in soaring fuel and food prices and a faltering U.S. economy, and are largely focused on saving themselves.
Some are doing it quietly, giving few details of their preparations — afraid that revealing such information as the location of their supplies will endanger themselves and their loved ones. They envision a future in which the nation's cities will be filled with hungry, desperate refugees forced to go looking for food, shelter and water.
"There's going to be things that happen when people can't get things that they need for themselves and their families," said Lynn-Marie, who believes cities could see a rise in violence as early as 2012.
Lynn-Marie asked to be identified by her first name to protect her homestead in rural western Idaho. Many of these survivalists declined to speak to The Associated Press for similar reasons.
These survivalists believe in "peak oil," the idea that world oil production is set to hit a high point and then decline. Scientists who support idea say the amount of oil produced in the world each year has already or will soon begin a downward slide, even amid increased demand. But many scientists say such a scenario will be avoided as other sources of energy come in to fill the void.
On the PeakOil.com Web site, where upward of 800 people gathered on recent evenings, believers engage in a debate about what kind of world awaits.
Some members argue there will be no financial crash, but a slow slide into harder times. Some believe the federal government will respond to the loss of energy security with a clampdown on personal freedoms. Others simply don't trust that the government can maintain basic services in the face of an energy crisis.
The powers that be, they've determined, will be largely powerless to stop what is to come.
Determined to guard themselves from potentially harsh times ahead, Lynn-Marie and her husband have already planted an orchard of about 40 trees and built a greenhouse on their 7 1/2 acres. They have built their own irrigation system. They've begun to raise chickens and pigs, and they've learned to slaughter them.
The couple have gotten rid of their TV and instead have been reading dusty old books published in their grandparents' era, books that explain the simpler lifestyle they are trying to revive. Lynn-Marie has been teaching herself how to make soap. Her husband, concerned about one day being unable to get medications, has been training to become an herbalist.
By 2012, they expect to power their property with solar panels, and produce their own meat, milk and vegetables. When things start to fall apart, they expect their children and grandchildren will come back home and help them work the land. She envisions a day when the family may have to decide whether to turn needy people away from their door.
"People will be unprepared," she said. "And we can imagine marauding hordes."
So can Peter Laskowski. Living in a woodsy area outside of Montpelier, Vt., the 57-year-old retiree has become the local constable and a deputy sheriff for his county, as well as an emergency medical technician.
"I decided there was nothing like getting the training myself to deal with insurrections, if that's a possibility," said the former executive recruiter.
Laskowski is taking steps similar to environmentalists: conserving fuel, consuming less, studying global warming, and relying on local produce and craftsmen. Laskowski is powering his home with solar panels and is raising fish, geese, ducks and sheep. He has planted apple and pear trees and is growing lettuce, spinach and corn.
Whenever possible, he uses his bicycle to get into town.
"I remember the oil crisis in '73; I remember waiting in line for gas," Laskowski said. "If there is a disruption in the oil supply it will be very quickly elevated into a disaster."
Breault said she hopes to someday band together with her neighbors to form a self-sufficient community. Women will always be having babies, she notes, and she imagines her skills as a midwife will always be in demand.
For now, she is readying for the more immediate work ahead: There's a root cellar to dig, fruit trees and vegetable plots to plant. She has put a bicycle on layaway, and soon she'll be able to bike to visit her grandkids even if there is no oil at the pump.
Whatever the shape of things yet to come, she said, she's done what she can to prepare.
http://www.peakoil.com/ _________________ "The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell.
Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 9:46 pm Post subject: Arggh
paul wright wrote:
The world is floating on an ocean of oil. It keeps appearing all over. there is no rational explanation for the soaring cost of all essentials because oil is abundant and anthropogenic global warming is a lie
I think you are totally wrong, as do some others in the truth movement, for example:
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 12:21 am Post subject: Re: Arggh
chrisc wrote:
I think you are totally wrong, as do some others in the truth movement
Hi Chris. Glad you don't want to get into a debate about this, because I know I'm totally right and the leftists anarchists and greens are floating for the most part on an ocean of lies and bs
Let's hope they can nurture that until they are rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and killed
Let's hope that's their prize for not being able to get out of their ideological stranglehold
At least the dumbwits from the general public are totally avoiding what they're faced with _________________ http://www.exopolitics-leeds.co.uk/introduction
Oil is as is often said - a fossil fuel. Which means that yes eventually it will replenish itself. But that will take maybe millions of years if it happens naturally.
However, it can already happen artificially using bacteria which break down vegetation into a crude oil like substance.
Ofcourse at the present time this is more expensive than extracting crude. But if the price keeps rising this will become more viable.
But the fact is that peak oil as a campaign is flawed. My point is we have only scratched the surface and barely explored 4% of the Earth and and even smaller percentage of the oceans. There are vast pools of undiscovered oil and much of what is discovered is still laying dormant so as not to supress the price.
Add to this the even larger deposits of coal, peat, shale, gas, all of which can be used in similar ways to crude oil. All can be used to make petrol and diesel for example.
Dont forget the vast amounts of methane being given off by our landfills.
Even if oil did run out we have alternatives such as oil from coal and ethanol which countries like South Africa and Brazil have demonstrated are economic.
The whole peak oil and climate control agenda is about keeping control of the populations by taxing and protecting vested interests. Oil companies and their major shareholding families want us to use oil. They dont want to allow us to use Peanut Oil or Compressed Air or Sugar or Coal or anything else. Why do you think Britain does not have loads of dams and hydroelectric plants.
By keeping the oil under the ground and forcing the price up oil investors make alot more money for alot longer. In dollar terms the price has doubled within a year meaning the Rockefellers etc fortunes have also doubled.
Climate control policy has nothing whatsoever to do with the climate. Now our councils want us to pile food waste into seperate bins. Which goes into landfills and gives off methane which polutes the air much more than CO2. Dont forget co2 is a clean and natural gas which all plants need in order to survive. More co2 in the air acts as a natural fertilizer. An increase of co2 from 0.03% to 0.04% will increase vegetation and crop yields etc all over the world and can actually be very beneifical. More plants mean more oxygen.
So what i am saying is carbon is good.
Methane is bad. _________________
Joined: 27 May 2008 Posts: 25 Location: Bartertown
Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 2:07 pm Post subject:
There ought to be limits
to freedom..."
— George W. Bush,
commenting on the website
www.gwbush.com
When a lone gunman started shooting outside the White House on a weekday morning , Secret Service agents rushed to secure the leaders of the free world. They found Dick Cheney in his office talking on a speakerphone, reviewing material on a computer screen, and directing aides who were gathered around his desk. President Bush? He was in the gym. Dick Cheney, ran the country. He set energy policy. He guided the nation into war with Iraq, and, working closely with Karl Rove, he oversaw the political infrastructure that allowed corporate interests and the religious right to control lawmaking.
In 1962, Halliburton Company purchased Brown & Root. At the time, Halliburton was a booming oil-well construction and services firm. By the late-1960s, Brown & Root, along with four other companies, built 85 per cent of the infrastructure needed by the Army during the Vietnam War. During the war, protesters and soldiers in Vietnam referred to the company as "Burn & Loot."
Dick Cheney appeared in a 1996 promotional video in which he praised the Arthur Andersen accounting firm for giving "good advice." A few years later, Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents in the federal government's Enron investigation. A former accountant with Andersen, David Lesar, is now CEO of Halliburton (notice Mr. Lesar's biography on Halliburton's website does not reveal his former employment with Arthur Andersen). Mr. Lesar was Halliburton's second-ranking officer when Cheney was CEO. In the promotional video for Arthur Andersen, Cheney said, "I get good advice, if you will, from their [Andersen's] people, based upon how we are doing business and how we are operating, over and above the normal, by-the-books auditing arrangement.
The arrival of Dick Cheney as CEO in 1995 was, by far, the best decision Halliburton ever made. Under Cheney's tenure as CEO, Halliburton's revenue from federal government contracts nearly doubled. Government-backed loans from the Export-Import bank increased from $100 million to $1.5 billion. The company became the 18th-largest defense contractor, in terms of revenue, whereas before Cheney's arrival the company was the 73rd largest contractor.
Halliburton saw its revenue increase 30 percent to $16 billion in 2003, largely because of its military contracts in the middle east. Halliburton was the number one U.S. Army contractor in 2003 with the total value of its Army contracts valued at $3,731,725,648. Dan Briody, in his book The Halliburton Agenda, described Halliburton's relationship with Cheney as "the embodiment of the Iron Triangle, the nexus of the government, military, and big business that President Eisenhower warned America about in his farewell speech."
Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources.
Karzai's ties with UNOCAL and the Bush administration are the main reason why the CIA pushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujaheddin leader from Jalalabad, and the leadership of the Northern Alliance, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern Alliance. Those credentials likely sealed his fate.
While Haq was not part of the Bush administration's GOP (Grand Oil Plan) for South Asia, Karzai was a key player on the Bush Oil team. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice.
Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project.
Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation's history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney's non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, served as the Secretary of the Army.
A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney.
The following video is a prime example of hysterical “Peak Oil” scaremongering. In fact, there is no shortage of oil — the reserves are increasing, not decreasing. Consider the following examples: In 2006, Chevron announced a huge oil discovery in the the Lower Tertiary zone of the Gulf of Mexico, described as “one of the nation’s biggest oil discoveries in decades,” and Brazil discovered giant new offshore oil fields in 2005 (expected to produce 773 million barrels of oil by 2025). Add to this BP’s discovery of new oil fields near the Shetland Islands, recent discoveries in the Timor Sea, Yemen, Tunisia, Libya, offshore Trinidad, in Pakistan, Angola, in the Ordovician Red River Strata of southeastern Saskatchewan, and elsewhere. Earlier this month, the Kurds of northern Iraq announced a major oil find, estimated at about 2 billion barrels. In the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil alone
Joined: 27 May 2008 Posts: 25 Location: Bartertown
Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 1:41 am Post subject:
I have never subscribed to the Peak Oil school but I do beleive that we have increasing demand for hydrocarbon energy. Given the long lead time to bring new fields on line, some of the existing fields dropping and the dramatic rise of the BRIC economies we do have normal supply demand pressures at play.
I dont know how much of the rise is due to the weak dollar or speculation but demand is increasing. The IEA forecast for a daily increase in global oil production of 31 million barrels by 2030—a 37% jump this sounds like pure fantasy. If this is true we need another OPEC as that is what their current output is.
It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court, in its ruling this week that U.S. currency is unfair to the blind, did not make the next logical step and declare it unfair to everyone who buys gasoline.
In their search for explanations as to why oil has surged past $130 per barrel, Washington, Wall Street, and the financial media are as clueless as cavemen after a freak summer snow storm. Despite the head scratching, the blame game is nevertheless in full force. Speculators and big oil companies are being trotted out as scapegoats, and increased margin requirements and taxes on windfall profits and futures trading have been mentioned as appropriate sanctions. In fact, this week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill to sue OPEC for violating U.S. anti trust laws. It should be clear that all of this is pure farce, and that no one understands what is actually happening.
The reality is that after years of reckless consumption and dollar debasement, Americans are now being priced out of markets over which they formerly held unchallenged title. As more affluent foreigners consume more of the resources and products they previously supplied to us, Americans are being forced to cut back. The rising dollar-based price of gasoline is simply an illustration of this global trend.
Poorly concealed behind contrived government statistics, the signs of America’s falling standard of living are everywhere; all one has to do is look. We are unloading SUVs for less desirable compacts, and are paying more to fly on crowded planes (where we pay to check luggage and dine only on what we bring onboard). We drink our lattes at McDonalds or not at all, and we increasingly forego dining out, trips to the mall, and vacations, just so we can scrape together enough to fill our gas tanks and kitchen pantries, pay taxes and insurance, or make credit card, mortgage or car payments.
The collective belt tightening is simply the down payment on the Government’s massive bailout of Wall Street investment banks and mortgage lenders. As the Fed creates money to buy bad mortgages and other shaky securities held by banks and brokerage firms, the value of the savings and wages of everyone on Main Street will continue to fall. As a result, the costs of products previously taken for granted have begun to bite.
The various housing bills and stimulus packages now passing through Congress will add significantly to the staggering final price tag. In the end, the “free lunch” currently being dished out by Washington will be the most expensive meal ever served. The cost will be borne by ordinary Americans citizens every time they open their wallets. Four dollar gasoline is just the beginning.
For all the talk of increased global demand, few seem to understand from where it actually comes. The surge in global demand is both a function of the increased purchasing power of foreign currencies and the fact that foreigners are choosing to spend more of their incomes themselves. In other words Greenspan’s famous “global savings glut” is turning into a global consumption binge, with Americans unable to crash the party. This trend will only get worse as the dollar-denominated price of just about everything that is either imported, or capable of being exported, goes through the roof.
We can look for scapegoats all we want but the simple fact is Americans are going to have to get used to a much lower standard of living. Those who have been putting all the food on our tables are finally pulling up chairs themselves.
So the American economy crashes, resulting in the biggest consumer of oil in the world dropping oil imports massively as industry grinds to a halt. Then, since demand for oil plummets, the price plummets as a consequence?? No? _________________ "The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell.
Demand for oil doesn't plummet. America constitutes 4% of the world's population. China and India make up 30% of the people of the world..they're going to be more than taking up the slack from a relatively tiny drop in US demand.
This idea of the world's economy being dependent on the American consumer is completely crazy. Anyone can consume. When the Asians allow their currencies to appreciate against the West's, we will see a huge transfer of purchasing power eastwards.
The USA might have only 4% of the world's population but consumes over 25% of the oil consumed, which is more than the next five nations, China, Japan, Germany,Russia and India combined. That's a lot of slack to be taken up. _________________ "The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell.
Anyone can consume....but not everyone can afford.
At the moment, Americans can afford(though the pips are beginning to squeak) because their currency retains some vestige of attractiveness to the rest of the world - to the extent that China, Saudi Arabia etc maintain a de facto peg to it.
That will change - it makes no sense for a strong currency to peg to a weak one, especially so when that peg is causing huge domestic inflationary pressures.
When Asia and the Middle East de-peg from the dollar, the dollar will collapse. It could happen overnight and Americans will wake up to find 25% of their purchasing power has gone - it has transferred to the people of China, India, Saudi, Australia, Canada, Malaysia et al.
A US gallon of fuel costs about $4 at the moment
which is $1.05 a European Litre
A UK gallon of fuel costs about £5.68 at the moment
which is $2.47 a European Litre.
There is no logical reason why the US consumer is being subsidised to this extent. Or conversely why the UK consumer is being punished to this extent.
Yes Karlos - it was soooo much cheaper when the other Tories were in power. Doubtless when Cameron is elected he will cut the price of petrol by half, bring the troops home and solve all our other problems. _________________ "The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell.
maybe, or maybe not
but it surely isnt going to be worse than whats going on today
The world's single-largest oil deposit sits in North America. Time magazine calls it "Canada's biggest buried treasure." It's an area with up to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil, locked in Alberta sand. That's eight times the total reserves of Saudi Arabia, enough to satisfy the world's demand for petroleum for the next century.
Basically this is heavy crude.
There’s an oil boom going on right now. Not in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or any of those places, but 600 miles north of Montana.
In Alberta, Canada, in a town called Fort McMurray where, in the dead of winter, the temperature sometimes zooms up to zero.
The oilmen up there aren’t digging holes in the sand and hoping for a spout. They’re digging up dirt — dirt that is saturated with oil. They’re called oil sands, and if you’ve never heard of them then you’re in for a big surprise because the reserves are so vast in the province of Alberta that they will help solve America’s energy needs for the next century.
Within a few years, the oil sands are likely to become more important to the United States than all the oil that comes to us from Saudi Arabia.
Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, vehicles that look like prehistoric beasts move across an arctic wasteland, extracting the oil sands. There is so much to scoop, so much money to be made.
There are 175 billion barrels of proven oil reserves here. That’s second to Saudi Arabia’s 260 billion but it’s only what companies can get with today’s technology. The estimate of how many more barrels of oil are buried deeper underground is staggering.
"We know there’s much, much more there. The total estimates could be two trillion or even higher," says Clive Mather, Shell's Canada chief. "This is a very, very big resource."
Very big? That’s eight times the amount of reserves in Saudi Arabia. The oil sands are buried under forests in Alberta that are the size of Florida. The oil here doesn’t come gushing out of the sand the way it does in the Middle East. The oil is in the sand. It has to be dug up and processed.
Rick George, the Colorado-born CEO of Suncor Energy, took 60 Minutes into his strip mine for a tour. He says the mine will be in operation for about 25 years.
The oil sands look like a very rich, pliable kind of topsoil. Why doesn’t oil come out when squeezed?
"Well, because it’s not warm enough. If you add this to hot water you’ll start the separation process and you’ll see the oil come to the top of the water and you’ll see sand drop to the bottom," George says.
It may look like topsoil but all it grows is money.
It didn’t always. The oil sands have been in the ground for millions of years, but for decades, prospectors lost millions of dollars trying to squeeze the oil out of the sand. It simply cost too much.
T. Boone Pickens, a legendary Texas oil tycoon, was working Alberta’s traditional oil rigs back in the '60s and remembers how he and his colleagues thought mining for oil sands was a joke.
"Here we are sitting there having a drink after work and somebody said this isn’t going to, it isn’t possible. It’ll all have to be subsidized to a level, said, before they’d make money you’d have to have $5 oil," Pickens says laughing. "We never thought it would happen."
But then $40 a barrel happened and the oil sands not only made sense, they made billions for the people digging them. But it wasn’t just the price of oil that changed the landscape, it was the toys. That’s what they call the giant trucks and shovels that roam the mines.
Everything about the oil industry has always been big. It’s characterized by bigness, from the pumps to the personalities. But up here in Alberta, it’s frankly ridiculous. The mine operates the world's biggest truck. It’s three stories high and costs $5 million. It carries a load of 400 tons of oil sands, which means, at today’s oil prices, each load is worth $10,000 dollars.
What it’s like to drive one of these monsters? At the foot of a tire, we asked the driver, Jim Locke.
"You have 14 steps going up, and at my house you have 14 steps to the bedroom. So it’s like going upstairs in my house, sitting on my bed and driving the house downtown," says Locke.
But getting downtown is just the beginning. The oil sands then go into a plant. They’re heated in a cell, which separates the oil from the sand. The result looks like something out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. This oil froth is then sent to an upgrader and eventually to a refinery.
Asked if the processed oil is as good as that pumped in Saudi Arabia, Mather says, "Absolutely as good as. In fact, it even trades as a, at a premium because it’s high quality crude oil."
The capital of the oil sands frenzy is a frontier town called Fort McMurray, which isn’t in the middle of nowhere. It’s north of nowhere and colder than the Klondike, but a boomtown just the same. The local hockey team is called the "Oil Barons." They’re on a winning streak.
Is this comparable to a gold rush?
"I think it’s bigger than a gold rush. We’re expecting $100 billion over the next 10 years to be invested in this area — $100 billion in a population that, currently, is 70,000 people," says Brian Jean, who represents the region in Canada’s parliament.
Pickens, who once scoffed at the oil sands, is one of those investors. He runs a hedge fund in Dallas and is now a true believer.
"We’re managing $5 billion here. And, about 10 percent of it is in the oil sands. So, it’s the largest single investment we have," Pickens says.
And if oil sands are the answer for investors, does Pickens think the oil sands are the answer for the United States?
"Oh, I think so," he says.
Most of those lumbering trucks are on their way to the gas tanks of America. A million barrels a day are now coming out of the oil sands and oil production is expected to triple within a decade. It won’t replace Middle Eastern oil but at that point it will be the single largest source of foreign oil for the United States, even bigger than Saudi Arabia, which sends a million and a half barrels a day to America.
Greg Stringham, who works for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says surprisingly, that Washington has only been paying attention for the "last couple of years."
Stringham often lobbies for the oil sands in Washington. He says that in Alberta you don’t have to look for the oil sands — the earth moves.
"When it comes to exploration in the oil sands, you can’t drill a dry hole. It’s there," he says. "We know where it is. They’ve outlined it. You don’t have any risk. But other conventional sectors around the world, there’s a huge exploration risk."
The exploration risks are the least of it. Much of the world’s crude is in the Middle East where the instability is deeper than the oil. When Alberta’s blue-eyed sheiks took to Wall Street last summer in their Stetsons to drum up support for the oil sands, their message seemed to be, "If you can’t trust Alberta, who can you trust?"
"Alberta is a very good place to do business. It’s a very stable environment," says Mather.
The bonus for Canadians, aside from the treasure, is the notion that Americans might have to start treating them with a little less condescension.
"With their oil, I think we’re going to need them a lot more than they need us," says Pickens.
"We may appear in Canada to be a mouse compared to the elephant down south in terms of diplomacy or politics. But in terms of resources, we are mighty equals," says Mather.
There have been grumblings out of Ottawa that Canada should consider using the oil sands as leverage in its serious trade disputes with the United States.
Does Brian Jean think America is taking Canada for granted on the oil sands?
"Absolutely. And I think most people, most Canadians believe that," he says.
And the Canadians have alternatives. The Chinese, for example, are just dying to get a piece of the sandbox.
"I’ve been contacted personally by Chinese delegates that want to get into the plant sites here and want to see and want to invest," says Jean.
Asked what he thinks about the Chinese interest in the oil sands up in Alberta, Pickens says, "At first I thought they were tire kickers. But I think they’re serious buyers."
And the millions of Chinese who have moved from their bicycles to traffic jams are driving up the demand for oil. It’s virtually insatiable and the Canadians want to step up production quickly. What’s holding them back is labor — the shortage of it.
Brian Jean says another 100,000 people are needed in Fort McMurray.
That’s why one oil company has built a runway to fly workers daily from civilization to Fort McMurray. But why would anyone want to come work in a place where temperatures plummet to 40 below and the sun sets shortly after it rises in the long winter? Well, perhaps because the oil companies pay some of the highest salaries in North America.
Take Josh Lichti, who says he could be making $120,000 by the time he is 22.
"It’s amazing," he says.
But even if workers come flocking, the oil companies still have other problems. Creating energy from oil sands requires so much energy that the oil companies wind up spiking greenhouse gas emissions.
"And they do it in volumes that exceed any other production of oil crude anywhere on the planet," says Elizabeth May, the director of the Sierra Club of Canada.
She takes issue not only with what the oil sands are doing to the atmosphere, but to the land. The oil companies, environmentalists say, are digging up an entire province. Take a helicopter ride over the mines and you’ll think you’re flying over the moon after a moonquake.
"One of the reasons they can be mined the way they’ve been mined is the out of sight, out of mind aspect of it. And your film crew is one of the few that’s gone in there to look at how devastating this is," May says.
Even money men, like Pickens, have noticed. "Can’t argue with it. I mean, there’s no question that, that they’ve got a mess up there. But I do think they’ll take care of it over time," he says.
The oil companies say they will reduce greenhouse gasses and they point out they are required by Canadian law to refill old mines and plant new trees, and that is happening — slowly. One company, Syncrude, has even introduced bison to land that once was a barren pit.
Rick George of Suncor Energy insists in the future people won’t recognize the mines. "So what you see today is a mine. What you’ll see 10 years from now is a replanted forest," he says.
"You’re telling me that if I come here, it’s gonna be pretty?" Simon asks.
"Absolutely," George says. "These sites will all be going back. Now we’ll be minin’ at a different location at that point.
"This will look forested when we get done with it in 20 years time."
But there is a larger question that not only environmentalists are asking: will the availability of an enormous supply of secure oil right next door mean America will have little incentive to reduce its dependence on oil?
"What Canada’s doing," says May, "is continuing to feed the U.S. addiction to fossil fuels, instead of being the kinda friend who says, 'Let’s make a helpful intervention here.' We're acting as the supplier of a drug fix to the U.S., while all the time saying, 'Just say no.' But we keep selling it."
But unless the Chinese go back to bicycles and Americans trash their SUVs, there will be buyers — for oil anywhere, no matter how it’s found or mined. Right now, Canada has become the land of opportunity for oilmen. They will tell you there is little else on the horizon.
"Bob, if you take a tablet and put on it where is supply gonna come from that we don’t know about today. And you put down all the optimistic points, that tablet will basically be blank," says Pickens.
As blank as the landscape around Fort McMurray, where the world of oil exploration ends.
Does Pickens think the days of cheap oil are gone?
"They’re gone," he says. "From what we knew as cheap oil, when I pumped gasoline in Ray Smith’s Sinclair station on Hinkley Street in Holdenvale, Oklahoma, 11 cents a gallon, that’s gone."
Will we ever again see $1.50 a gallon? "We won’t ever see $1.50 a gallon. No, that’s gone," says Pickens.
Right around the corner from Fort McMurray you can still see oil being produced the traditional way. It’s picturesque now. The wells are still pumping but they belong to the past, like the iron horse that once rode across these prairies.
The future? Up here in Alberta they’re convinced it’s in the dirt. _________________
Joined: 27 May 2008 Posts: 25 Location: Bartertown
Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 11:45 am Post subject:
karlos wrote:
A US gallon of fuel costs about $4 at the moment
which is $1.05 a European Litre
A UK gallon of fuel costs about £5.68 at the moment
which is $2.47 a European Litre.
There is no logical reason why the US consumer is being subsidised to this extent. Or conversely why the UK consumer is being punished to this extent.
Labour are robbing us blind.
The US consumer is not being subsidised but merely taxed less.
The USA might have only 4% of the world's population but consumes over 25% of the oil consumed, which is more than the next five nations, China, Japan, Germany,Russia and India combined. That's a lot of slack to be taken up.
Yes blackcat quite a dominant consumer and I dont think OPEC want them to stop consuming (see below) but dont forget that BRIC have a large number of future car drivers about to appear
1700 new cars on road in China per day
In India there are only 4 cars for every 1000 adults, the govt want to quadruple the number of cars in next four years with the Tato Nanno I think they will beat this.
Uranium demand is about to increase big time for the long term.
Saudi Arabia Responds to Oil Shock
Saudi Arabia still has a bit of grunt left apparently. It announced a production increase yesterday. Arabia will pump an extra 350,000 barrels a day. That makes 9.45 million barrels.
Putting oil in a barrel used to be like shooting fish in a barrel. You could do both with the one barrel. Yep. The olden days were good times for everyone.
Now it’s more difficult to raise new production. Apart from the Saudis, few other nations have shown themselves willing or capable to pull it off. This latest move is important. We’re about to find out how many countries have the oil to pump.
We said a couple of days ago that Saudi Arabia makes a lot more money at a higher oil price. What we should’ve also mentioned is that the higher oil price eventually destroys demand. America uses more oil than anyone, so Saudi Arabia has a vested interest in keeping America alive.
There have been signs recently that America is starting to struggle as a direct result of the oil shock. The US Federal Highway Administration reports that US drivers drove 11 billion 17.6 billion kilometers less in March. They’re recoiling from the sting of exorbitant petrol prices.
The Saudis didn’t like the sound of America using less oil. So they added new oil to the market. It’s no coincidence. And it’s now a matter of keeping the balance right. Drill enough energy to keep America on life-support…but not so much that it eats into cash-flow.
You’ll find that other OPEC nations have the same vested interest. If they’re going to add new production, now is the time. And as Gabriel Andre outlines in this month’s Diggers and Drillers, the oil price might finally be ready for a break.
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