Prepare for the New World (Energy) Order

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Plot Device

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According to this article, 400 oil fields from around the world will be intensively studied --including the secrecy-enshrouded fields of Saudi Arabia. All outputs for each field will be analyzed, as well as the projected depletion rates for them all. The scientists involved are already warning the rest of the industry that in all likelihood, when the report is completed, the results will probably be a far less optimistic as far as how much is actualy left in the ground than either they or anyone else had previously supposed. (They are essentially saying they will most likely downgrade the numbers they used to publish as far as what's left for drilling.)

Never before has such a planet-wide study ever been undertaken. We already have lots of hard data about Peak Oil, but THIS study will be the one that everyone will take notice of, and even the ANNOUNCEMENT last week of plans for the study caused a psychological reaction in the market.

The completed report is scheduled to be released this November (right in time for Christmas, guys).


http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/22/oil.supplies.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch

Analysts foresee 'new world energy order'

Friday, May 23, 2008

Story Highlights
  • Paris-based IEA fears there may not be enough oil to slake the world's thirst
  • IEA is studying depletion rates at about 400 oil fields through to 2030
  • Oil demand expected to shift more to China, India and the Middle East
  • IEA's forecasts likely to further upset markets, with oil prices already at record high

PARIS, France (AP) -- A leading global energy monitor fears there may not be enough oil out there to slake the world's thirst -- and is preparing a landmark forecast that could reverberate through the global economy even as major companies announce fuel-related cutbacks.

The International Energy Agency is studying depletion rates at about 400 oil fields in a first-of-its-kind study of world oil supply, chief economist Fatih Birol said.

"We are entering a new world energy order, " Birol told The Associated Press.

Market analysts call the Paris-based IEA the world's most reliable independent source of oil information and welcomed its decision to undertake a deep study of oil supplies.

But the IEA's new forecasts are likely to further upset markets. Oil prices hit an all-time high Thursday above $135 a barrel before falling back.

Less oil would mean even higher prices for everything from gasoline to food.

...

Birol said the IEA study, whose results will be released in November, was prompted by concern about the volatility of world oil markets and uncertainty about supply levels.

"The prices are very high, and demand did not respond in the last few years as much as one would have expected," Birol said. "The growth in terms of production was not great. We did not see enough investment."

The spurt in oil prices Thursday came after a report in the Wall Street Journal that the IEA was planning to lower its forecast for long-term world supply.

Birol would not speculate on whether the forecast, which will predict supplies through 2030, could go sharply downward. "We will see," he said.

The IEA's past forecasts put oil supply at about 116 million barrels a day in 2030, up from 87 million barrels a day now.

"Although the agency's official assessment isn't expected until later this year, the market's interpretation is that global supply may be significantly tighter than previously projected by the major oil market monitors," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy trading advisory service Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois.

...

Simon Wardell, oil analyst at Global Insight in London, was skeptical that the IEA would get a complete picture from "countries that are very closely guarded" such as Saudi Arabia, the No. 1 producer.

...

The IEA is part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which brings together 30 rich nations. It has no links to OPEC, and its review may challenge the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries' view that the world is well-supplied with oil.

Birol said the report is looking at onshore and offshore supplies -- including hard-to-reach wells in the deep sea.

He noted that Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said Thursday it has struck more oil in waters near the huge offshore Tupi field -- but remained cautious about how much "good oil" such fields would produce.

...

CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta said the soaring cost of fuel means the [airline] industry is in for a "profound transformation," predicting capacity reductions, the acceleration of mergers and the exit of some players from the market.

Ford Motor said Thursday it is cutting North American production of pickups and SUVs as car buyers eyeing record gas prices turn toward more fuel-efficient models. The automaker says it no longer expects to return to profitability by 2009 and didn't rule out layoffs and plant closures.
 

Pat~

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"We are entering a new world energy order, " Birol told The Associated Press.

Well I for one believe everything Lori says. :Lecture:
 

chartreuse

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Interesting, Plot Device. Thanks for posting.

At least it's an international study, so Bush won't be able to censor it like he did the climate-change reports, although I suppose if their findings are grim enough that it will be suppressed through one means or another.

I'm going to go home and finish reading World Made by Hand. I take issue with a few of Kunstler's scenarios in this book but it is well-written and, for the most part, thought-provoking. Makes me want to figure out some skill that will be of use post-oil so that I have something to barter with...
 

Plot Device

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Interesting, Plot Device. Thanks for posting.

At least it's an international study, so Bush won't be able to censor it like he did the climate-change reports, although I suppose if their findings are grim enough that it will be suppressed through one means or another.

I'm going to go home and finish reading World Made by Hand. I take issue with a few of Kunstler's scenarios in this book but it is well-written and, for the most part, thought-provoking. Makes me want to figure out some skill that will be of use post-oil so that I have something to barter with...


I'm going to be travelling to Brattleboro, Vermont next week to hear Mr. Kunstler speak in person. I can't buy his books right now but I'm on his web site almost daily, reading everything he has to say. I spent last week going in chronological order through two years worth of archives of his DAILY blogging. Fascinating stuff.

As for his current suggested vision for a post-oil future, it has some plausibility, but ... it's only one possibility.

As for disagreeing with him--I think he's short-changing the potential for the USA to exploit nuclear and natural gas. He keeps saying again and again: "There is no combination of nuclear, solar, wind and geo-thermal that can possibly sustain our current society."

However, from what I've been reading about natural gas, at current US consumption rates, the continental US has over 8,000 years of natural gas left within the borders of US territory. And even if we were to increase our current consumption rates by ten times as much, we'd still have over 800 years of natural gas left. And then there's nuclear. If we amped-up our nuclear capacity, we could keep the lights going from coast to coast AND recharge our cars every night as well (although the supplies of uranium and plutonium left in the world are reportedly very scant, and the Former Soviet Union seems to be in current posession of the lion's share of the remaining uranium and plutonium in the world).
 

Plot Device

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The thing about oil, however, is the need for airplane fuel, especially jet fuel. What the whole planet needs to do right now is work toward a complete moratorium on "surface transit oil consumption" (I made that phrase up just now, so don't try Googling it). And by "surface transit oil consumption" I mean any land vehicles that use oil or oil products. So all cars, trucks, and trains need to be switched over (from gasoline and diesel) to non-oil propellents like electricity or natural gas. We MUST save the oil for JUST jet fuel because there is no other fuel that can propel a jet through the air. The amount of weight that one gallon of jet fuel burdens down an aircraft with when balanced out by the amount of thrust that one gallon can provide to the engine is incomparable. No other substance known to man can match jet fuel's perfect formulation. Not natural gas, not coal -- nothing. (Can you imagine an airplane flying through the air with two guys inside shovelling lumps of coal from a coal bin into the airplane's boiler? No? I didn't think you could.) Maybe we can build mini-nuclear engines onboard aircraft like we do onboard submarines ... but ... does ANYONE think that having airborne nuclear power plants flying overhead day and night is a good idea????? We'd be setting ourselves up for 9/11 redux, but this time it'd be on steroids!!!! (And hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end. They suck up more oil in their manufacture and in their recharging than they are worth. So switching to hydrgen cells is taking two steps forward, only to get dragged one-and-a-half steps back.)

So once we start running low on oil, military governments the world over are going to start scrambling to maintain their position in the skies. Does anyone here hontesly think the US military is going to allow their jets to get grounded? Heck no! They will start commandeering civilian oil stocks before they let their jets go without. No military power will ever allow their position in the sky to be compromised. So we truly need to keep the jet fuel a priority as far as transportation goes.
 
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Plot Device

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And then there's medicine! (Dear God! Medicine!) Easily 85% of all materials used in every corner of medicine have a petroleum component. And 95% is probably more like it. From the clear plastic bags that we fill with donated blood, to the clear plastic tubing that leads from an IV drip into your arm, to the manufacture of virtually every last drug and all types of hypodermic needles--if we suddenly could no longer send any oil or oil products to the pharmecuetical manufacturers of this nation, then the whole industry would essentially shut down. No more blood bags. No more hypodermic needles. No more pills. Hospitals wouldn't even be able to get daily supplies of latex gloves anymore.



I have a fantasy for a 90-second mini movie I'd laike to shoot myself and place on YouTube. I start out with a guy (early 20's, hip looking) standing in front of a typical pharmacy (like a Walgreens or a CVS) and he is looking right into the camera and he says "My friends and I have exactly five hours to carry out our mission in this pharmacy: we will remove from the shelves every last product that either contains petroleum or is manufactured with a petroleum component in its processing." And then he turns from the camera and he and his friends go inside ad in fast motion we watch him and his friedns carrying out and dumping onto the parking lot every last petro-relaint item in the store. And then, when they are done, we let the camera go inside, and there's not one item left on the shelves.
 

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I'm going to be travelling to Brattleboro, Vermont next week to hear Mr. Kunstler speak in person. I can't buy his books right now but I'm on his web site almost daily, reading everything he has to say. I spent last week going in chronological order through two years worth of archives of his DAILY blogging. Fascinating stuff.

As for his current suggested vision for a post-oil future, it has some plausibility, but ... it's only one possibility.

As for disagreeing with him--I think he's short-changing the potential for the USA to exploit nuclear and natural gas. He keeps saying again and again: "There is no combination of nuclear, solar, wind and geo-thermal that can possibly sustain our current society."

However, from what I've been reading about natural gas, at current US consumption rates, the continental US has over 8,000 years of natural gas left within the borders of US territory. And even if we were to increase our current consumption rates by ten times as much, we'd still have over 800 years of natural gas left. And then there's nuclear. If we amped-up our nuclear capacity, we could keep the lights going from coast to coast AND recharge our cars every night as well (although the supplies of uranium and plutonium left in the world are reportedly very scant, and the Former Soviet Union seems to be in current posession of the lion's share of the remaining uranium and plutonium in the world).

I come down somewhere between you and Kunstler - I think that powering our homes via alternate means is going to be far easier than maintaining our way of life overall, particularly when it comes to vehicles and air travel, but also when it comes to all of the products that we use that use oil in the manufacturing process (as an "ingredient" if you will - the plants themselves could be powered by the same alternative methods as our homes).

But the whole peak oil debate reminds me a lot of the climate change debate...we're spending so much time arguing about whether or not there's a problem that it's very likely we'll still be arguing even after the serious consequences of peak oil have set in, and we're wasting time we really don't have. The time to address this was a decade or two ago...and in that time all we've done is fall in love with SUV's, drive the family farms out of business and generally organize our communities in the worst possible way considering what is coming down the pike.

I guess what I'm saying is that with each year that goes by, I become less optimistic that we will even be able to agree on solutions, much less actually implement them.
 

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Interesting, Plot Device. Thanks for posting.

At least it's an international study, so Bush won't be able to censor it like he did the climate-change reports, although I suppose if their findings are grim enough that it will be suppressed through one means or another.

...

Censor climate change reports? I'll start with the obvious and ask how you know about the reports that were censored, if they were censored? Despite that, considering the Oscar, Nobel, every major newspaper, every major television show, magazine, etc... is there anyone left in the US who doesn't know the theory of man-made global warming via carbon emissions?
 

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This thread makes me wonder what it would have been like to listen in on a conversation taking place about the period of transition to motor vehicles, and how society would never be the same.

I have faith that mankind will find the solution to whatever problem sits in their path to their chosen life. If and when oil ever actually gets close to running out, and no I don't buy that we are close now, some dropout sitting in a basement will discover a method of vehicle propulsion on accident that will render oil, for vehicles, moot.

I am 100% positive that we will look back at this era and wonder what value the panic over oil had other than to help increase the price.
 

Plot Device

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Censor climate change reports? I'll start with the obvious and ask how you know about the reports that were censored, if they were censored? Despite that, considering the Oscar, Nobel, every major newspaper, every major television show, magazine, etc... is there anyone left in the US who doesn't know the theory of man-made global warming via carbon emissions?

There was a climate change report that someone in the gov't got their hands on before allowing it to get released to the public, and this guy decided to run a big red pen through all the parts that made it look like industrial pollution had anything to do with it.

The guy who did all this editing and censoring eventually left the Bush administration and is working for some energy company now.

I really dont recall his name, but it's a very famous incident. Took place some time during the past 18 months I believe.

This thread makes me wonder what it would have been like to listen in on a conversation taking place about the period of transition to motor vehicles, and how society would never be the same.

Also makes me wonder what it must have been like to listen in on conversations in the board rooms of Big Tobacco back in the 1950's when the very first and tiny little whispers of "lung cancer" began to get floated past doctors and scentists.

I have faith that mankind will find the solution to whatever problem sits in their path to their chosen life. If and when oil ever actually gets close to running out, and no I don't buy that we are close now, some dropout sitting in a basement will discover a method of vehicle propulsion on accident that will render oil, for vehicles, moot.

How inspiring. Not very scientific, but quite inspiring.

I am 100% positive that we will look back at this era and wonder what value the panic over oil had other than to help increase the price.

I am 100% positive that we will look back at this era and take note of the fact that we had not one but TWO big oil crunches, (the first in 1974, then the second in 1979), and then wonder why it's even remotely possible that we could so thoroughly experience two perfectly valid wake-up calls altering us to the fact that the planet was running out of oil, and yet STILL ignore the problem for another thirty years-plus.


But Richard Rainwater said it much better than I ever could as far as his assessment of what we will be saying as we face the difficult post-oil future: "...people are going to be asking, 'Why did God do this to us?'"
 

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Found it.

The White House guy who censored the global warming reports was Philip A. Cooney.

I'm keenly aware of that incident, it is a key smoking gun that so many people point to. Of course, here we are two strangers discussing this on a public message board with no worry of government recourse in our discussion of this censored report.

It would be fair to state that this shows the Bush administration manipulating what they can to supprot their viewpoint, as all administration's do on the issues that they pick and choose. That doesn't make it right, and that would be a fair critique of what Bushies team has done.

As writers I think we have a strong interest in keeping the use of government censor to a strict meaning, and I don't see the Cooney alterations as censorship.
 

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...Also makes me wonder what it must have been like to listen in on conversations in the board rooms of Big Tobacco back in the 1950's when the very first and tiny little whispers of "lung cancer" began to get floated past doctors and scentists.

It would have been intersting to be a fly on the wall to listen to those conversations. I have zero sympathy for cigarette makers - that is one industry that I, even as a Libertarian, would support getting rid of. I don't think that it is a fair analogy however, between a company who makes a product that does nothing other than cause problems, and the oil/energy companies. I would agree that neither saw a reason to change their practices, but that is the end of the comparison (so I guess it depends on how far you wish to extend that analogy).

How inspiring. Not very scientific, but quite inspiring.

Of course it isn't scientific, it was quite obviously not intended to be. This is however, imho, how this will eventually be solved. I myself have a few friends, all of whom are much smarter than I, working on alternative energy solutions. One friend is a great architect in India who only designs and builds off-the-grid homes. All solar, underground thermal, underground rain collection for monsoon season so they have water year round, etc... He is doing great with only current technologies. Others are playing around with gravity, electromagnetics (powered by solar), and so on. The race is on right now, and whomever finds this will be known, again imho, as well as Edison's light bulb.

I do not expect the solution to come from one of the energy companies. They have far too much invested in the current system to want to change. The solution will come from an unknown, from a regular person who stumbled on something new.

I am 100% positive that we will look back at this era and take note of the fact that we had not one but TWO big oil crunches, (the first in 1974, then the second in 1979), and then wonder why it's even remotely possible that we could so thoroughly experience two perfectly valid wake-up calls altering us to the fact that the planet was running out of oil, and yet STILL ignore the problem for another thirty years-plus.

This is where we will differ. I think we'll look back at this era and see that some folks said they had enough and wanted alternatives, and their alternatives were developed. I don't think any history book is going to say look at those folks who ignored a problem for 30 years and then the planet ran out of oil.

But Richard Rainwater said it much better than I ever could as far as his assessment of what we will be saying as we face the difficult post-oil future: "...people are going to be asking, 'Why did God do this to us?'"

OK, this is where we will not only differ, but I think guys like that serve no purpose, with the possible excpetion that they might get some folks all worked up. You have a quote that this is going to be worse that WWI and WWII combined? That type of language does nothing other than allow people to say, "See they are all insane!"

Most estimates I've read would put the combined death toll from WWI and WWII at between 60 and 130 Million. So, let's pick the middle of about 95 Million. If you think 95 Million people will die, and another 100 Million will be otherwise injured (I'm not even going to count any of the deaths of resulting governments after the wars). It must also mean the financial cost of WWI and WWII combined as well? I read a while back that WWII cost the US alone about 5 Trillion (in adjusted dollars), so if we take combined cost of both wars, in adjusted dollars, we would be in the 15 Trillion dollar range.

So we are going to lose 100 Million people, another 100 Million are going to be otherwise injured, and it is going to cost 15 Trillion dollars. Of course, the quote says "worse" so it would have to be more than what I have summarized here, but no matter how you cut it, language like that doesn't help to move a serious discussion forward.
 

icerose

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I personally don't think our current state of life, especially suburbia is sustainable. You take away oil, you take away big trucks, boats, planes and so forth, you take away those, you take away food shipping. Even if it effected nothing else, you take away food shipping and where are we? Now it's always possible they'll find enough alternatives to sustain our current form of life, but it is something to consider.
 

Plot Device

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Warren, the comparisons you are trying to glean here are narrowly focused. Take a step back and get a broader view of this situation.

WWI and WWII caused planetary upheaval, changed the face of the global political map, brought down empires (Sir Richard is British, mind you) and re-shuffled the pecking order of who was #1 and who wasn't. THAT is the amount of whallop that Peak Oil is capable of delivering to our current happy existence. And take stock of exactly who it is I am quoting in my signature: Sir Richard Branson is the CEO of Virgin Records and Virgin Airlines.

Sir Richard Branson in Wikipedia

Virgin home page: "Who is Richard Branson?"

Forbes home page "Forbes' List of the World's Richest People"

He is the British Donald Trump. He's not a crackpot. He's a very smart business man who has been trying to get fuel for his fleet of airplanes for the past fve years and got so frustrated that he decided the best thing he could do was fish $5 billion out of his own pocket and build his own oil refinery. But then he found out about Peak Oil. He sees the writing on the wall. He knows full well that his fleet of airplanes is in jeopardy --the entire industry of commercial air travel is in jeopardy. He's not insane, he's just a realist.

That other guy I quoted is Richard Rainwater. He's a billionaire who specilaizes in sniffing out a crisis 4 or 5 years before the crisis unfolds, and then after diligent study he figures out which way all the money will start rolling as soon as the crisis eventualy unfolds, and then he positions himself accordingly. When HE started to study Peak Oil it scared the daylights out of him!

Your hope that we'll somehow come up with a magic bullet from technology is at best an admirable measure of optimism, but at worst it's sheer denial and reality avoidance. MAYBE we will somehow come up with an alternative. And that'd be just dandy if we did. But for now we have nothing.
 

Plot Device

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I personally don't think our current state of life, especially suburbia is sustainable. You take away oil, you take away big trucks, boats, planes and so forth, you take away those, you take away food shipping. Even if it effected nothing else, you take away food shipping and where are we? Now it's always possible they'll find enough alternatives to sustain our current form of life, but it is something to consider.

Exactly. The gravity of this situation is that our current way of life is threatened.
 

Shadow_Ferret

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"Doom, despair, and agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive misery."

Please. Can we at least wait to write the world's epitaph until AFTER the surveys are done?

Wow, you guys are a barrel of laughs. Remind me not to invite you to any parties where I intend to have a good time.
 

Plot Device

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"Doom, despair, and agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive misery."

HeeHaw.jpg



:D

Please. Can we at least wait to write the world's epitaph until AFTER the surveys are done?

Wow, you guys are a barrel of laughs. Remind me not to invite you to any parties where I intend to have a good time.

Okay, Shadow. I'll lighten up. (For you at least.)

And yeah ... we do need to wait for this report to come out.
 

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Are they just going to survey current oil fields? Or are they going to survey the world and possibly find previously undiscovered and untapped sources of fossil based fuels?

Ford Motor said Thursday it is cutting North American production of pickups and SUVs as car buyers eyeing record gas prices turn toward more fuel-efficient models. The automaker says it no longer expects to return to profitability by 2009 and didn't rule out layoffs and plant closures.

And really, Ford cutting production of SUVs and trucks. I have no sympathy for them. We had a gas crisis in the 70s. If they had been forward thinking they would have been designing and producing alternate fuel and electric vehicles long ago.

Why do American companies have to be hit over the head several times before they get it? They got caught with their pants around their ankles in the 70s. The Japanese moved in and filled the void for econoboxes and Detroit rolled out the Pinto, Monza, and Gremlin. Oy.

Now, while Toyota and Honda have several hybrids, Ford offers one that barely breaks the 30mpg mark. And GM is focusing on E85, hoping to wipe out the world food supplies.
 

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The Peak Oil theory has been belittled and shushed for over 20 years for the usual reason: greed -- there was good money to be made on a global scale.

Sustaining a global population of 6 Billion++ without oil is impossible, particularly since a majority lives in non-food-producing environments: large cities; and most people lack opportunities and skills necessary to grow their own foods.

To make matters worse, arable lands have been either 'colonized' or depleted, and those remaining require vast amounts of fertilizer (must have oil to make and distribute) in order to produce anything.

As much as I would like to believe in a miracle cure, time is too short to save much of our way of life. Shortages, squabbles and wars are inevitable at this stage. Those who survive will see a radically different world.
 

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Natural Gas isn't going to help. Unless we start methane capture. Best not to go there.

The thing about oil, however, is the need for airplane fuel, especially jet fuel. What the whole planet needs to do right now is work toward a complete moratorium on "surface transit oil consumption" (I made that phrase up just now, so don't try Googling it). And by "surface transit oil consumption" I mean any land vehicles that use oil or oil products. So all cars, trucks, and trains need to be switched over (from gasoline and diesel) to non-oil propellents like electricity or natural gas. We MUST save the oil for JUST jet fuel because there is no other fuel that can propel a jet through the air. The amount of weight that one gallon of jet fuel burdens down an aircraft with when balanced out by the amount of thrust that one gallon can provide to the engine is incomparable. No other substance known to man can match jet fuel's perfect formulation. Not natural gas, not coal -- nothing. (Can you imagine an airplane flying through the air with two guys inside shovelling lumps of coal from a coal bin into the airplane's boiler? No? I didn't think you could.) Maybe we can build mini-nuclear engines onboard aircraft like we do onboard submarines ... but ... does ANYONE think that having airborne nuclear power plants flying overhead day and night is a good idea????? We'd be setting ourselves up for 9/11 redux, but this time it'd be on steroids!!!! (And hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end. They suck up more oil in their manufacture and in their recharging than they are worth. So switching to hydrgen cells is taking two steps forward, only to get dragged one-and-a-half steps back.)

So once we start running low on oil, military governments the world over are going to start scrambling to maintain their position in the skies. Does anyone here hontesly think the US military is going to allow their jets to get grounded? Heck no! They will start commandeering civilian oil stocks before they let their jets go without. No military power will ever allow their position in the sky to be compromised. So we truly need to keep the jet fuel a priority as far as transportation goes.
 

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Are they just going to survey current oil fields? Or are they going to survey the world and possibly find previously undiscovered and untapped sources of fossil based fuels?

I honestly don't know those finer details of how this survey will be conducted. (Good questions though.)

But regardless of how they carry out this surveying of the planet's oil, my understanding is that we have pretty much exhausted exploration in every last square inch of the Earth's surface and we've found everything there is to be found.
  • We placed a great big "Don't even THINK about it!" sign on the oil beneath the Alaskan Natural Widlife Reserve.
  • We've tapped out the oil beneath the North Sea.
  • We've all but exhausted Mexico's Cantarell Oil Field.
  • Kuwait is past peak.
  • Indonesia is past peak.
  • The great big Jupiter-sized, King Kong field called the Ghawar Oil Field --which is the all time champeen orgasmic fantasy field of the entire oil industry-- in Saudi Arabia is MOST LIKELY now on the down-slide as well, even though they will not admit it. (I want to point out that American regulations require American oil companies to give full disclosure of the conditions of their fields, but Arabia is all hush-hush about their fields the same way the Cathoic Church is hush-hush about their true net worth. The Arabs SAY the Ghawar field is doing just fine and that they're not in trouble, but thre is ample evidence indicating that those fields ARE at peak and that the Arabs ARE in trouble.)
We turned our noses up at the shale oil and the tar sands that have been discovered over the past 80 years because shale oil and tar sands are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too money-intensive as well as waaaaaaaaaaaaay too energy-intensive to be worth anybody's while. But we are now getting so desperate that we are reconsidering and going after those yucky crappy tar sands and shale oils. We are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel!

This all reminds me of a joke I heard back in 1979 during the last oil crunch:

One day a business man was driving from New York up to Maine. He stopped at a gas station in Maine where the gas at the pump was $1.09. He was absolutely stunned at the price. As the gas attendant stood there pumping gas into the man's car, the businessman said to him: "A dollar-nineteen??? But it was only just a few hours ago when I was passing through Connecticut that I was able to get gas for just seventy-nine cents!" And then the gas station attendent quietly glanced up at the man and nodded by saying: "Ay-yup. That's where to buy it then."

This is to say: we have no choice anymore because of the position we are now in.













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Plot Device

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The Peak Oil theory has been belittled and shushed for over 20 years for the usual reason: greed -- there was good money to be made on a global scale.

Sustaining a global population of 6 Billion++ without oil is impossible, particularly since a majority lives in non-food-producing environments: large cities; and most people lack opportunities and skills necessary to grow their own foods.

To make matters worse, arable lands have been either 'colonized' or depleted, and those remaining require vast amounts of fertilizer (must have oil to make and distribute) in order to produce anything.

As much as I would like to believe in a miracle cure, time is too short to save much of our way of life. Shortages, squabbles and wars are inevitable at this stage. Those who survive will see a radically different world.


Indeed. We will soon be entering into a pivotal time in human history which shall be rememebred as "The Era of the Oil Wars."

It has been repeatedly said by many Peak Oil experts that the soon-coming Peak Oil crisis (which I think will REALLY start to hit the fan in 24 months or less) is a recipe for war.

Now I admit I am not much of a scholar of warfare, but one history student on another message board explained to me that MOST of the wars fought in human history have been triggered by of a struggle for resources. And if anyone here is working on their masters in world history, please tell me that kid from that other message board was wrong and I will sleep better at night.
 
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Shadow_Ferret

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A position we shouldn't be in, but lessons were not learned from 1973. We did not prepare. We were the grasshopper of that tale when we should have been the ant, preparing for winter, or in this case, the real oil crisis that has been looming on the horizon for years.
 
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