OPEC "can’t bring down prices"
So the leader of OPEC has basically thrown his hands up and said ‘it’s not our fault’. This is a load of garbage. For one, he follows this by saying that there ‘is no shortage in world oil supply’. I agree. There is not one shred of evidence suggesting that we are on the brink of exhausting earth’s crude oil reserves. So the question I have is: Why the high prices?
If there is no shortage of oil supply, then that means supply and demand can be balanced to keep the price steady and static. UNLESS, that supply is artificially manipulated to keep things in a constant state of imbalance, thus driving the price higher. That’s precisely what OPEC is doing.
OPEC has the means to supply more oil. Even they wouldn’t argue that. But they simply choose not to. Iran has said they are ‘happy’ with the current price of oil, and who wouldn’t be? They are turning a 4600% profit on each barrel sold and no one has done a thing to stop it. Of course they are happy.
Our dependence on foreign oil is one of the top three problems we face as a nation, and it must stop. Drill more in the Gulf, in the arctic, who cares? Spend more for nuclear power and alternative fuel sources. Do what it takes to keep our enemies (and OPEC members DO fund terrorists) from holding this power over us. The sooner the better.
7 comments:
A lot of the blame for high prices can (and shold) be layed at the feet of enviro-nazis and their Liberal enablers.
There hasn't been a new refinery built in over 30 years- Liberal hoops to jump through. If a refinery wanted to expand or modernize part of the plant, they'd be required to bring the entire plant up to 2006 OSHA and EPA standards.
So why bother?
Same goes for pipelines.
" There is not one shred of evidence suggesting that we are on the brink of exhausting earth’s crude oil reserves."
????
This is a stunning statement. Do you think that crude oil is a renewable resource?
Just to be sure that we're clear: Those who point out the problems with peak oil are not talking about exhausting the earth's oil reserves. They're talking about exhausting the earth's oil that we can easily (affordably) access. Imagine a hole in the ground that is five miles deep filled with water. At first you can bail the water out with a bucket. But real soon, that's no longer possible. So you get a hose and siphon it out and that works for a while. But soon you have to purchase more equipment - a pump and longer hoses - to pump it out.
Eventually, you've gone down two miles and it is too costly to keep getting larger pumps and more hose. The world's accessible oil is without a doubt peaking in the next 1-50 years. According to EVERYONE (except, apparently, this fella you're referring to) with any credibility. According to the scientists who study this. According to the oil companies themselves. According to the White House's own scientists. We've used up the first two miles of our oil hole and, even with some increases in technology, that resource is going away. If not in my lifetime, then certainly my grandchildren's.
Who's evidence will you accept? National Geographic? Time? The White House?
Evidence:
The Whitehouse:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/20050525.html
Nat'l Geographic:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/
The Energy Bulletin:
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
Former Bush Energy Secretary Schlessinger:
http://www.energybulletin.net/11014.html
Bush quoted in Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050500974.html
The Cato Institute ("Fortunately, it looks like humanity is at least a generation away from peak oil production."):
http://www.reason.com/0605/fe.rb.peak.shtml
I could obviously go on and on. Do you suspect a vast leftwing conspiracy is making up science for some unknown reason? And that this conspiracy has the president in its grasp?!
Dan,
There are 2 TRILLION barrels of oil in the sand shales of the western US and Canada. This doesn't include to 600 BILLION barrels in the arctic of Alaska and many more billion in the Gulf.
But going back to the sand shales. This is enough oil to fuel our nation for 22 years. The problem is that it costs twice as much to retrieve this (and we DO have the technology) as it does for the Saudis to pump. So, it's too risky for any corporation to attempt it when the Saudis can respond by increasing production, driving down the price, and increasing the risk of tapping this oil reserve. So OPEC is most definitely controlling the price artificially. It's not supply and demand.
One other thing. Your sources, while impressive, are inaccurate. Your estimate that we have about 50 years of oil remaining is inaccurate. Why?
Because the world's 2 top oil producers: Saudi Arabia and Russia have REFUSED to release data on their estimated oil reserves. They could be sitting on hundreds of trillions of barrels. We DON'T KNOW! We can speculate, but that's all it is.
My guess is this: If we were on the verge of running out of oil, these two nations would happily show proof of this by releasing their reserve data. Yet, they choose not to and take advantage of the mystery but pushing the price higher. My argument is that there is no evidence that we are on the verge of running out of oil, and there isn't...not until we know what these two nations have underneath them.
OPEC (and Russia) are deliberately sticking it to the world. We need to stop it somehow.
John, if we have 10 years remaining of accessible fossil fuels or if we have 100 years remaining (and despite you not believing it, most knowledgable scientists are saying sooner rather than later), we ARE running out.
Fossil fuels are NOT a renewable resource and to depend upon them/build a society upon the notion of cheap, affordable oil right til the bitter last drop is insanity.
Dan,
You won't get any argument from me if you want to convert our economy to an alternative source. I'm all for grain-based and biofuels, and I'm certainly for more nuclear power plants. What I DON'T but is this panicky atmosphere of "we're running out of oil...now!"
All that does is give OPEC more clout to drive prices higher when they shouldn't be that high.
No one is advocating panic. But good sense would indicate that urgency is needed on the matter. Do you realize the extent to which we're dependent upon petroleum?
It's not just the gas in our cars, it's the fertilizer that allows us to grow food at rates that let us feed over 6 billion people. It's the fuel that gets us our food to the stores from all over the world. It's the plastic that we wrap everything in.
Gas prices doubling again relatively quickly will not mean, "Oh, well. I'll just drive less..." It means, "Uh oh. My food prices are increasing...", which is a bit more serious.
Here's an excellent article giving important info on this topic:
http://www.energybulletin.net/17036.html
And a quote from the article:
"Currently about 10 to 15 calories of fossil fuel energy are used to create 1 calorie of food and although it only uses about 17% of the U.S. annual energy budget it is the single largest consumer of petroleum products when compared to any other industry. This means that it requires about 1,500 liters of oil equivalents to feed each American per year (Hendrickson 1996). As long as the energy resources are cheap and abundant the inefficiencies are unimportant, however dependence on finite resources is quite a vulnerability when those resources become scarce (Gever et al 1991)."
We won't be able to merely take the driving less option as oil is running increasingly expensive (and as it is now, oil's costs are artificially LOW in the US, subsidized by the gov't, the environment and our grandchildren), we'll have to figure out how to feed 7+ billion people and that will take some time.
I think urgency on this issue is the smart option.
One final comment. You said:
"All that does is give OPEC more clout to drive prices higher when they shouldn't be that high."
Suppose you worked at a company that was making profits like nobody's business. You were glad, of course, because the wealth was shared with the employees. Your company could make widgets and sell them at half the cost of other companies!
But come to find out that the profits were so high because the bosses were cutting corners. They were supposed to treat toxic waste in a responsible way, but instead they just dumped it down the drains in the employees bathroom.
As a result of the dumping, you and your fellow employees got sick. Some even died.
Was that company REALLY making widgets at half the price, thereby leading to all those profits?
No. They were passing the costs off to the employees and to the environment and others affected by the waste. The costs were paid somewhere. But instead of the company being responsible and paying for the actual costs, they pushed them off on the environment, their employees and other people affected by their waste.
Our gas prices are artificially low because instead of being personally responsible, we've decided it will be okay to push the costs of irresponsible gas uses off on the elderly, the sick, the asthmatics, children, the environment, future generations.
To me, in addition to just the economic reality of needing to move away from fossil fuel dependency, this is a matter of personal responsibility. I want to pay actual costs and not defer them on to others.
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