On Thu, 01 Apr 2004 05:23:13 +0200, you wrote: > >MM, > >Personally I have some thought about the total scenario. I find the OPEC >cuts being against their own adopted policies and it might be some other >underlaying reasons also. > >- It has been said many times that we now are at the Hubbert peak of world >oil production. > >- It has also been said that the Saudis and the other swing producers have >over reported their reserves for a while now. > >- The Iraq war took out a considerable oil production for US, I think they >were the third supplier in size. > >- The Venezuelan coup attempt by CIA and the following unrest are hurting >deliveries. > >- China is buying up a larger part of oil production. > >- The OPEC cartel was not supporting the Iraq invasion and cannot or do not >want to compensate for deficiencies. > >- Increasing anti Saudi propaganda, that must worry them. > >- US one sided support of Israel. > >- The miscalculation and problems in Iraq, that inhibit a restoring and >rise of Iraqi oil production. > >- The miscalculation and problems with NG supplies. > >- US policies that have isolated them somewhat from the world community. > >- and a few other minor problems. > >Maybe it is not possible to increase the oil production, even if they >wanted. It must be difficult to motivate larger sacrifices or extra >ordinary measures by OPEC, to bail out US in their thirst for oil. Any >further aggressions by US, would only result in further disturbances in oil >supply. It is looking like a catch 22 situation and with little time to >implement alternatives like coal and oil. > >What do you think? > >Hakan
Even if I agree with your assessment on some of these things, and disagree with some of the weighting you give other factors, want to choose one main point where my main response is: "I think a lot about this question, but I just don't know with absolute certainty". And the question is: whether there is really a shortage of petroleum. I heard a speaker for a major auto manufacturer give a speech on the economics of alternative fuel vehicles. Each of the speakers had different opinions. It was this speaker's opinion that "The World Is Awash In Oil". This phrase keeps going through my mind. And he proceeded to give some charts which demonstrated such massive amounts of oil that we are to find and use in this century that it made it seem ludicrous that we would be using scarcity as a concept when applied to oil. I do not have access to his data. He then proceeded to justify production of Hydrogen and other alt-fuel vehicles on environmental-global-warming grounds, because he saw no grounds for it based on petroleum scarcity. I try to keep an open mind, and anyone living in America or outside of it can see that *some* scarcity in Oil is not due to geological scarcity but human-behaviour-induced scarcity, such as military conflict and trade conflict and oil-field-non-optimal-mining. With our present attitudes, even if there were plenty of oil in the world, we (in various nations) would find ways to increase our use of it so that we could somehow make it scarce again. And on the balance, I'm inclined to believe that a century of growing use has led to some scarcity of the easiest-to-get oil. I think a good example is the way that the U.S. had a pretty good supply of oil in the Texas area, but when we grew our consumption to 20 mBPD, there was no way we could be begin to cover our use. If we can get oil and gasoline price levels to stay at their present levels or increase somewhat ($2.60 or so per gallon for 87 Octane, national average?) and then stay steady, maybe we'll see a gradual change rather than a catastrophe. I have other thoughts on these matters, but I guess they can wait. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
