One of the things I keep hearing about on a regular basis is Peak Oil. Where we start to have difficulty finding new oil fields and have difficulty extracting the oil.
Technology comes to the fore again where every now and again we improve the extraction processes and put it off for a bit longer and of course as the price goes up what was uneconomical to extract now becomes viable. So it’ll be a while before we are forced, via economic means, to reduce our reliance on oil.
On the other hand we find, yet again, a new field found in the US which there seems little or no interest in exploiting. From the sound of it the US is awash with the stuff yet most is kept untapped.
Personally I think it is one of the few areas that the US is thinking long term. They are using oil from the ME, South America etc. at cheap rates as these countries economies don’t actually run on oil. Buying it up while prices are cheap. Then when Peak Oil does hit and prices skyrocket the US economy can be kept going from oil within the US whilst the rest of the world is out of cheap oil and fighting over what is available. It will be very expensive then. Of course it’ll be over the dead bodies of all those whingy whiney environmentalists but I’m sure that will be quickly arranged as prices climb.
Don’t forget even if we do move our transport reliance from oil to wind power or whatever before Peak Oil hits, which appears likely now that so much is being thrown at the problem, we still rely on Oil for the many other things we use in a modern economy such as plastics etc. It’s going to be a critical component in our economies for some time to come.
Seems to me that this is a sensible policy. Pity our government doesn’t look beyond it’s next expenses claim.
The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect. — Sam Ewing
Peak Oil
One of the things I keep hearing about on a regular basis is Peak Oil. Where we start to have difficulty finding new oil fields and have difficulty extracting the oil.
Technology comes to the fore again where every now and again we improve the extraction processes and put it off for a bit longer and of course as the price goes up what was uneconomical to extract now becomes viable. So it’ll be a while before we are forced, via economic means, to reduce our reliance on oil.
On the other hand we find, yet again, a new field found in the US which there seems little or no interest in exploiting. From the sound of it the US is awash with the stuff yet most is kept untapped.
Personally I think it is one of the few areas that the US is thinking long term. They are using oil from the ME, South America etc. at cheap rates as these countries economies don’t actually run on oil. Buying it up while prices are cheap. Then when Peak Oil does hit and prices skyrocket the US economy can be kept going from oil within the US whilst the rest of the world is out of cheap oil and fighting over what is available. It will be very expensive then. Of course it’ll be over the dead bodies of all those whingy whiney environmentalists but I’m sure that will be quickly arranged as prices climb.
Don’t forget even if we do move our transport reliance from oil to wind power or whatever before Peak Oil hits, which appears likely now that so much is being thrown at the problem, we still rely on Oil for the many other things we use in a modern economy such as plastics etc. It’s going to be a critical component in our economies for some time to come.
Seems to me that this is a sensible policy. Pity our government doesn’t look beyond it’s next expenses claim.