quote:

Originally posted by adirondackgardener:
Locke has been gone for about a year and rAstahgurL (I suspect) joined only to resurrect this once-dead thread in order to to post that link and I don't expect to see that person here again. (Who joins a gardening forum to talk about oil?)

Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect you've cut and pasted (yet again) all your oil stuff for no one. Is there anything new you have to say on the subject?

Wayne

I agree with Wayne! (imagine that)

quote:

Originally posted by Major:

quote:

Originally posted by adirondackgardener:
Locke has been gone for about a year and rAstahgurL (I suspect) joined only to resurrect this once-dead thread in order to to post that link and I don't expect to see that person here again. (Who joins a gardening forum to talk about oil?)

Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect you've cut and pasted (yet again) all your oil stuff for no one. Is there anything new you have to say on the subject?

Wayne

I agree with Wayne! (imagine that)

Doesn't matter. You can be grateful for the enlightenment if what they say is true.

Always look at 'what is said and not at who says what' if you wish to be truth based and not ego based. Either what they say is true or not true...that is the bottom line.

If OG magazine was on the ball they would break the PO news instead of hiding their heads in the sand like all other media like to do when the subject turns to PO.

In 2007 I wrote to 15 of the largest newspapers in the US and a half dozen news magazines and the largest TV stations, 60 minutes, etc about PO. Not one publication or TV broadcaster was interested or even replied to my queries.

Life as we know it in America as well as the world will be in for an abrupt change in the not so distant future. And in the big picture, we can't fix the problem, we can only postpone the inevitable. But buying a little more time would make things much more livable than the current path we are headed in.

But when I talk with the powers in charge they say there is 'no upside' in this topic of peak oil worries. The upside is in the preparation and a more manageable and orderly transition...less people will die...that is the upside.

We are in the 'Indian Summer'. Don't wait until the winter sets in to start work on your preparedness efforts.You still have some valuable time left to prepare for what awaits you down the road.

I came to OG forum to learn how to grow food over my PO concerns. I first learned about PO from my RV...specifically my new wheels that got rusty almost immediately. I wont go into details about my enlightenment since it was a long one, but we all have to learn about PO from someone or something.

Peak oil...it is just a theory. That is what my wife's lady friend stockbroker told her.

Dismissing peak oil as 'just a theory' is an easy and quick way to rebut PO.

If the question is when we will peak - yes we can only theorize.

If the question is if we will peak - then it is not a theory and only a question of time.

No one knows the exact peak date for world oil production, but we do know that time will come in the not so distant future. But finding the peak is not hard problem once we can look back on it by a few years...but we need some time to do it...again, only time will settle this debate.

And the possibility may be that we find another big discovery and the peak dates look more like a double top stock market chart than the drop over a cliff.



But all this does not really matter. The bottom line is we are running out of crude no matter how the hard the spin doctors try to masturbate the facts.

The fact that 'we have to estimate' reserves or useful life of anything says that the item in question does not have an infinite supply or life span.

I never argue with persons claiming that we have peaked already or others that claim the peak is 20 years away. To me they are both on the same page, just looking at different paragraphs.

But the person that thinks that the world can go on forever using 31,000,000,000 barrels a year of crude and never have to pay the bill with the eventual depletion of fossil fuels is just plain wrong.

"If the public does think briefly about future oil supplies, the question usually asked is, "How long will oil last?" This is the wrong question. Oil will be extracted in some insignificant quantity perhaps 200 years from now. The critical question is: When does the peak of world oil production occur?" ~ Richard C. Duncan

"passes through" Great Mother! I would think this would be a moot point these days! LOL! The validity of Peak Oil. Heck, even OPEC says it having trouble producing more oil. Give it a rest dude..don't stir people up!

I don't know why everyone is worried about it. Mr. Bush has issued an executive order to open up offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, so the problem is solved and there will now be plenty of oil.

He's a really smart guy...that's why he's our President. I'm really glad I read about it today, because otherwise I would have filled up my gas tank this morning. Now that we are going to drill in the Gulf and ANWR, I'm sure the price of gas will be lower tomorrow.

quote:

Originally posted by Locke:
Give it a rest dude..don't stir people up!

It's had a 2 week rest until your reply?

quote:

Originally posted by ctdahle:
I'm sure the price of gas will be lower tomorrow.

Half a quote but that aside since it's an endless discussion, I'd be interested in knowing how you would lower prices of gas at the pump. Please include future plans if any of further oil exploration/production drilling and exactly when you think that should take place.


Dirt

Seriously? No one is repealing the laws of supply and demand.

Absent substantial global changes in demand, the price of oil is NEVER going to go down by any significant amount. We have proven that we are willing to pay $4+ for a gallon of gasoline with hardly an impact on demand. So $4 is the price floor for the next few years. Retailers will nudge 5, then 6,7,8,9. The price will continue to rise until the increased profit per unit is no longer able to counteract the decrease in total profit decreased by declining unit volume.

I very well understand supply and demand. Do I understand your response to increase supply by reducing demand? I didn't recognize any response to future oil exploration/production. Anything such as a clear, concise answer on more production? How about more nuclear power plants for electricity to help increase the supply? Any idea how to effect a significant change in global demand outside the US?

Dirt

quote:

Originally posted by ctdahle:
I don't know why everyone is worried about it. Mr. Bush has issued an executive order to open up offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, so the problem is solved and there will now be plenty of oil.

He's a really smart guy...that's why he's our President. I'm really glad I read about it today, because otherwise I would have filled up my gas tank this morning. Now that we are going to drill in the Gulf and ANWR, I'm sure the price of gas will be lower tomorrow.

Oh thank you so much for the morning chuckle. I really needed it

quote:

Originally posted by Dirt Pit:
I very well understand supply and demand. Do I understand your response to increase supply by reducing demand? I didn't recognize any response to future oil exploration/production. Anything such as a clear, concise answer on more production? How about more nuclear power plants for electricity to help increase the supply? Any idea how to effect a significant change in global demand outside the US?

Dirt

I was not, in any way, trying to suggest that you or anyone else did not understand the law of supply and demand.

What I am saying is that the equilibrium price point is far higher than anyone had previously imagined and that pricing has previously been constrained by perception rather than price point testing. There is a hard demand floor.

Until now, oil has been treated as an infinite resource, the supply of which has been limited solely by production capacity.

Recent price shocks have demonstrated that demand in the macro-economy, is not significantly downwardly influenced by price. To the contrary, demand continues to increase even as the price rises. Consequently there is no incentive to expand production capacity.

The current price of oil will rise until price significantly impacts demand. Only then will it make economic sense to explore expansion of production. However, expansion of production is unlikely to occur unless, at higher production levels, net revenue is increased.

For US oil production we know this is true because we have domestic reserves already developed and available from which we are not producing. Even at $140/bbl it is more profitable to limit production and thereby maintain net revenue per barrel.

This last point is why the discussion about ANWR and the recent order to expand off shore drilling in the gulf is a joke. The decision simply allows oil companies to stake additional private claims to a public resource, it does nothing to increase production because there is no economic incentive to do so.

To the contrary, the industry has learned that it can increase revenue by limiting production, metering out the remaining oil in limited quantities over many years at a higher price rather than increasing the price of production by constructing additional capacity and selling out the supply at a lower price.

In the future, the oil market will look more like the diamond market did before DeBeers lost it's control.

American oil companies are sitting on millions of acres of land and offshore areas leased for oil drilling without doing a thing with them. Not drilling, not exploring and apparently, not even thinking about them. Congress is working now on telling Big Oil to get off their fat, federally subsidized, price-gouging asses and actually do something with them or lose them.

The simplistic idea, proposed by political oportunists who think all Americans are simple-minded idiots, that opening more areas for oil companies to "drill" is nothing more than political pandering to those who believe they are looking for relief from extortion-level gas prices while actually are simply willing to settle for someone convienent to blame.

If these companies were interested in domestic oil production, they would have been doing something insteasd of letting the millions of acres that they already have available sit idle with no evidence they will ever work them.

That is proof enough to me that the President is again pandering to Americans, exploiting the crisis that he let Big Oil and rich oil speculators create on his watch. He can't blame the Democrats for Big Oil sitting on their asses instead of developing the oil fields they already have available.

(And again, as I've said before, Americans do not deserve reasonable gas prices until they grab oil-speculators where it hurts and make oil-extortion illegal, and until Americans require gas-guzzling vehicles off the road immediately.)

Wayne