On 5/12/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
it's interesting that the article misses the fact that even if these countries don't invest in exploration for and exploitation of possible new oil reserves, those reserves will still exist.
That is not a political issue. Oil companies know that reserves exist out in the world, unexplored and untapped. What they are concerned about is whether they are made available to them and on what terms. The same goes for the ruling classes and power elites of the empire in general: they know that unexplored and untapped reserves exist, but how much of them will be consumed by the peoples of the oil-producer nations, and how much of them will get exported, and on what terms, is a concern for them.
There's a fundamental problem with the view that these countries are failing to subsidize the oil-consuming countries, at least in the short run. It assumes that high oil prices are resulting from the behavior of those nasty nationalizers. It's more likely, I think, that the high prices are instead the result of high demand for oil (Chinese, Indian growth, etc.) and a lot of temporary falls in supply (Iraq, Nigeria, etc.) and the normally inelastic nature of both supply and demand [*].
While the rates of growth in China, India, etc. will eventually slow down, the secular trends in most nations, even the Gulf states, are rising fossil fuel consumption everywhere. As many parts of the South have hardly begun to provide electricity for all, and their better-off consumers are just now beginning to acquire automobiles and the like en masse, the trends are likely to continue, provided capitalism keeps running. -- Yoshie
