Letters to the Editor
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@ bfree4me
You mean the Mayans? They were the ones with calenders.
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Peak Oil Opportunity
Years ago I attended a lecture by a Chevron VP (around the low in oil prices in 1998) in which he answered a peak oil question as follows:
We will run out of $10/barrel oil. We may run out of $100/barrel oil. We will not run out of $1000/barrel oil.
The more expensive oil becomes, the more economic other alternatives. Will the change to more expensive alternate sources be painful? No doubt it will. Can some sort of govt. intervention help the transition? Perhaps. Peak oil is an opportunity to move away from dependence on fossil fuels, and towards more environmentally friendly energy sources.
The danger is that prices will suddenly and dramatically fall because of speculative excess, killing off the latest round of development of alternate sources. It's amazing that the price of one of our basic energy sources is so volatile.
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It's NOT the price of oil that really counts...
It really does not matter what the price charged for oil is; what matters is the relationship between the energy expended and the energy received.
In the early 1900's, for each 100 barrels of oil extracted it only cost one barrel of oil's energy to do it; a ratio of 100:1.
Currently the rate is somewhere around 4 barrels of oil for each barrel of oil energy expended; a ratio of 4:1.
What happens when it takes 1.1 barrels of oil to get out 1 barrel of oil? in other words, a negative return.... aaah, it all grinds to a halt. I find it much more useful to think in real terms like ROI (return on investment) to evaluate what is going on, rather than "the price of gas, etc".
And as previous writer noted; factor in the availabilty of other limited resources needed to produce that return (water, natural gas, etc)... and you see we reach that limit pretty quickly.
Who pays a $1000/barrel when it "costs" more than that to develop it. It really boils down to energy expended vrs energy received... as we get closier to that level.... then oil should be priced out of fuel range, and reserved for things that truely need to be oil based i.e. medicines, chemicals, etc.
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Inflation!
You forgot perhaps the biggest contributing factor over the past 6 months - the dollar is the new peso.
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@ David Larry D
You are just too smart for me. Where is there an ancient central american style emoticon when you need one?
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Become?
They have always been. All of our power comes from being the largest oil producer for much of the 20th century. Since the 70's we have been in decline because we had peaked and our oil production decline.
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oil sands...
My understanding they use more natural gas energy then we get out of the barrel of oil to extract the barrel of oil. So when natural gas prices catch up.....
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One word:
Rationing.
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check CONGRESS FOR HIGHER PUMP PRICES
NOTE: PELOSI & ANTI AMERICANS IN HOUSE JUST VOTED (H.R. 5321) TO JACK UP PRICES AT THE PUMP BY 18 BILLION & AT THE SAME TIME GAVE A RAISE TO CHAVEZ A TAX RAISE BY EXEMPTING HIS OIL CO. YUP. THEY ARE MORE WILLING TO EMPOWER DICTATORS THAN TO ALLOW ANY DRILLING OR UPDATE REFINERIES. SHOWS WHERE THEIR HEART IS. ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!11
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Anyway isnt't the official green-radical zpg activist line that gas prices can never be too high?
I mean that would screw up the modern world, stop people from driving, working, even breeding eventually. A world with 99% fewer people all living like it's 1000BCE, isn't that what you're going for?
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Eight years ago...
everyone was screaming that efforts to lower oil consumption would mean a CO2 tax, adding a full 25% to the price of gas! And no one saw the obvious: higher oil consumption = much higher oil prices.
One way or another, the price hike came, but this way (the Bush way) it's just 10 times bigger than necessary, and it goes to Exxon and Saudi Arabia instead of to the government.
Sounds like the stupidest economic decision ever made, and that's without even taking the (far worse) environmental aspects into account.
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I'm almost ready.
My gardening skills couldn't be better. I can easily expand the garden and produce far more food and even start growing some for the neighbors, but only if they help. Sure, it's very hard work, but the exercise helps keep you healthy. The addition I'm putting on my house is still at a stage where it's easy to add insulation, which I'm doubling up now. My old bicycle works fine, too. (And I'm no spring chicken, either.)
The bottom line is that I'm not expecting nor do I want a government bailout. I'm doing for myself. You should do so too, if you can. The bottom line is that I want to remove myself as much as possible from the oil economy, which is starting to make people crazy and, coincidently, slowly killing off the life of the planet.
Our government sure has let everyone down. They've know these days were coming for the last 30 years, and they didn't do a thing about.
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"black mondey?" This article is a "black eye" for accurate reporting
I do find it odd that Salon chose to post this piece on the day that crude oil plummeted $5 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The alarmist tone of this article, which overstates global energy that is dependent on oil, is just plain wrong.
Sure, oil is currently expensive and some day it will run out. So what? Oil only supplies 3 percent of our electricity and 10 percent of heat for homes and businesses. A lack of oil will not make the heat go out or the lights go dim.
The vast majority of crude oil goes to the transportation sector, and it is hardly an optimal fuel as 85% percent of all gasoline is lost due to friction. People have already altered their driving habits, as evidenced by rising gasoline reserves in the United States, as well as reports that show domestic gasoline consumption increasing at .1 percent annually (as opposed to the normal 3.5 percent annual increase).
Let's face it, the price of gas would have to double before we Americans had to pay the same price for fuel that our counterparts in Western Europe currently pay. And our neighbors across the Atlantic have had no decrease in their standard as a result.