These people are not for real.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 1427Hot off the press at the BBC we have our dear CotE Calling for Oil Producing Nations to Reduce Prices. Is he for real? Surely to be where he is now he must have studied, ohh, I don’t know, perhaps economics? Even basic accounting? Maybe even just General Studies?
The fact that oil supply is almost beaten by demand is now all over the popular press, meaning that it’s already sensationalist which means it has to be at disasterous limits. Lets face it, the press never report on anything unless it’s reached a newsworth level of “disastery-ness”. How, then, does Mr Brown expect the oil producing nations to help reduce prices? Make more oil? Emphasis on the *make* there, not pump…
People will soon realise that complaining about petrol prices is pointless. They’re not going to go down, people have to start re-evaluating how they conduct their lives and largely forget about “how they used to live”. The western way of life is totally unsustainable and no pant-pissing, foot-stamping lobbying is going to help keep things the way they are at present. I’d hope that people could see the ridiculousness of their arguements regarding for example the cost of transport, complaining “It now costs me too much to drive to work, I’ll lose my job.” without realising that it’s not the cost of petrol, but their (And the country’s) short sightedness that’s cost them. People have turned over their lives to a finite resource over which they have no control and will shortly have to come to terms with that sacrifice. When it comes to transport costs, prices will meet demand and our demand is so great that, as with this time-tested economic model, only the super rich will end up driving anywhere.
On top of this, though, is the fact a lot of people consider oil prices to affect only the cost of their daily commute. Here in the UK the entire agricultural system is also oil dependant. Costs for everything will rise and suppliers have to meet risings costs not just in fuel, but in fertiliser, feed and medications. People have to change their way of life but, with the current one being so cushy and it being so easy to drive one’s head into the sand, I don’t see it happening until it’s absolutely too late.
(And no I don’t drive a car, I don’t wear shoes, my clothes are cotton, I buy locally produced food *but*… I do own a PC. Everyone has something they don’t want to give up on…)
Well .. you see .. I actually did study Economics .. he is referring to OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries).
This is an organisation of Middle Eastern Nations who seek to control the supply and price of oil. They produce the majority of crude oil in the world .. the VAST majority.
Now, what they do (and this is the nasty bit) .. they limit the amount of oil that they will pump (and note I said pump, not make) to way beyond their actual production limits .. this causes a shortage in supply, driving up oil prices. This of course keeps them nice and rich .. because if the price drops too low, then they won’t make as much money.
At the same time, they don’t want prices TOO high .. and, the more people who actually want to buy their oil, again the more they sell and more money they make ..
(the point being it’s all a very fine line)
As far as OPEC is concerned, a massive drop in non-OPEC oil production is fantastic .. because it puts them back in the powerful driving seat position. They have the capacity to simply “pump more oil” and increase production by millions of barrels per day .. they don’t usually want to though, because prices will drop and they’ll lose their initiative.
So .. it’s not as rediculous as it sounds. Asking OPEC to produce an extra 500,000 barrels per day is well within their limits, and given the current state of oil prices (which are almost double what they were 10 years ago?) I don’t think they’ll disagree.
Oh .. a further point to note. Saudi Arabia, the highest producer of oil in the world at over 9,000,000 barrels per day also has immense reserves, estimated at over 250,000,000,000 (billion) barrels of oil.
Compare that to other OPEC nations …
Oil Reserves (barrels) [approximates]:
Saudi Arabia: 250 billion
Iran: 120 billion
Iraq: 110 billion
Kuwait: 100 billion
United Arab Emirates: 100 billion
Venezuela: 80 billion
TOTAL OPEC Reserve: over 800 billion barrels.
Now .. to sustain 10 times! Gordon Brown’s request, an increase of 5,000,000 barrels per day .. OPEC could provide that from RESERVES ALONE for .. quick calc .. approximately 438 years!
(ok .. by then their production will have dried up .. but you get the point)
Oh .. and they still have spare “production” capacity of over 1,500,000 barrels per day if they ever feel the need to catch up.
Where, exactly, did you pull that reserve figure from ? http://www.myass.com doesn’t count.
Gharwar is under scrutiny for its water injection practice, usually used on aging oilfields to increase pressure. If the largest oilfield in S.A. is actually “faking it”, things are already worse than they seem. Of course a true picture of what’s going on is hard to paint without co-operation from the S.A. oil barons which is something so far the analysts don’t have.
Also, we drive pissy little cars in the UK. We’re a pissy little country. Gordon’s demands are UK oriented, so you’d have to factor in the demands from the US and China, as well as India and the rest of Europe.
Check this out, along with google.
Again, check who’s behind the reports, because some people don’t want to give you an unbiased view.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08B97BCF-7BE6-4F1D-A846-7ACB9B0F8894.htm
( Given our rapacious (Love that word!) abuse of the planet at large, oil expiring could only be a good thing for mother earth. If J.Lawler is correct in his theory, and improved reclaimation techniques could recover twice what’s left in the ground, we’ll choke ourselves to death long before we have to get out of our cars… )
The “Energy Information Administration” http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/nonopec.html
and official statistical body of the US Government .. and it’s not like THEY are going to lie about it ..
Not to mention that it’s been pretty much “common” knowledge for anyone who has studied the middle east, Oil, and the major contributing factor for the Persion Gulf war in the first place (where Iraq invaded Iran in order to gain access to their massive oil fields and reserves)
As for S.A. it’s been documented both officially and in fiction that the middle east are at the centre of power for fuel production going forward .. we could get to the point 50 years from now where the middle east is the ONLY region on the planet with easy access to oil reserves .. we’re talking about military / agriculture / commerce … everything being in a nice indirect control of the very states that the Western World currently demonises .. not exactly the most pleasant picture for the governments which have been pushing those states more and more heavily in recent years.
Personally I see Hydrogen Fuel as the “next big thing” and the breaker of the Oil monopoly, it’s not like this kind of a resource can be easily monopolised.
Already several bus routes in London use Fuel Cell buses (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/fuel-cell-buses.asp) and I have seen them around .. the new Fuel Cell cars from Ford and Toyota(I think) have a range of over 200 miles and a top speed of 80mph .. the only fuel emmission being water.
And it’s not like pressurised Hydrogen gas is hard to find now is it?
hm.
High prices are good. That means Norway will get a substansial rise in BNP.
Oh, btw, it’s about time those americans started driving cars like the rest of the world instead of lorrys… maybe they wouldn’t whine that much about high prices then?
It would help if they paid the same over there for petrol that we do ..
they complain when it goes above 45p per litre … try 95p like it is over here!
Fella at work just came back from a holiday in the US.
His opinion was that it may be cheap but the cars are so inefficient that he reckoned it worked out the same in running cost.
The only difference being you’re driving something the size of my flat rather than the size of my fiesta
End of the day, even if the US does clean up their act, there will always be more people in the world wanting cars so the only way forward is sorting out alternative fuel (although not the “diesel made from soya beans” as Gee Dubya suggested some time ago)
We use too much and we waste too much, generally because the people who make the decisions that matter don’t make them on behalf of our welfare, they make them on behalf of our bank account (and then tax us)
They make them on behalf of their OWN bank balance, classic human greed.
What we need is someone with a shitload of cash, to actually make a stand out of his or her own pocket to fund the development of alternative-fuel transportation.
MR GATES, SORT IT OUT!