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How Oil Prices Could Collapse
The price of oil plummeted once before and it can do so again — if we play our cards right.
To be sure readers of this column have argued these are capitalist rules — their oil, their move. But globalization demands leveled playing fields, not monopolies. What is sure is that the time for an alternative to oil is now.
And it can break the bank as it did before. Back in 1973 Arab oil producers led by Saudi Arabia imposed a cutoff of oil to the USA and Europe. Prices shot up to the equivalent of $100 a barrel in today’s dollars and we were familiarized with what is known as the global oil crisis. While some menaced war, oil companies took off looking for new provinces and found them — like the North Sea, which started pumping from zero in 1971 all the way up to its six million barrel a day peak of 1999. So much new oil was found elsewhere that OPEC’s share of world supplies dropped to forty percent from nearly sixty percent.
And prices collapsed as a result, until they resumed their climb two years ago.
Wanda knew it and said it too often. That’s the legendary Wanda Jablonski, whose life as a prescient journalist, business editor, and publisher is being grandly celebrated this week with a new book properly titled Queen of the Oil Club, by Anna Rubino.
Reading the book, it becomes clear that we heard it all before but did not pay attention. Although Wanda had a weakness for those oilmen who run the business, she always posed the alternate question. She was so insistent a voice in raising questions about oilmen and their world that they had a less flattering moniker than “queen of their club,” giggling that she was a “buster” of a delicate part of male anatomy.
As you read Wanda’s story and that of the oil she singlehandedly turned from a simple commodity into “black gold” and the stuff of global crises and wars, you can pick up the message: look for the alternative, now.
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Youssef M. Ibrahim, a freelance writer and risk consultant, is a former New York Times Mideast correspondent and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He can be reached at ymibrahim2004@yahoo.com.
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70 Comments
1. david levavi:Seems petroleum has reached the tipping point. It’s a dirty, smelly product we would have stopped using to fuel our automobiles years ago if it weren’t so damned cheap. Expensive in addition to dirty and smelly forces us to finally do what we should have done when the first American oilfield was nationalized. Find an alternative.
If someone told me that GM had secretly developed and produced electric cars, consumer tested them to rave reviews, then abruptly reclaimed all the vehicles and destroyed them, I would have dismissed the storyteller for an ignorant crank. Just another I-was-held-captive-by-aliens fantasist. But it seems the GM electric car story is true.
I can’t think of a more ringing endorsement for the electric automobile than its suppression by GM. The successful development and marketing of the Tesla proves that GM’s fear of electric cars was well reasoned. GM is being challenged by a Silicon Valley start-up with no automotive track record.
GM looking at the Tesla is IBM looking at Apple’s first personal computer magnified by several orders of power. A team of electrical engineers from the computer world have built an automobile that outperforms a Porche. The times they are achanging and they are achanging fast.
The advantages of battery powered vehicles over vehicles driven by internal combustion are overwhelming. And vastly improved battery performance is on the way with or without John McCain’s proposed incentive. Charging off the grid eliminates the costs and hazards associated with maintaining a nationwide network of gasoline fueling stations. And the grid can be fed from any variety of energy sources.
The shift from internal combustion drive to electrical drive is in keeping with the general shift from mechanical technology to impulse technology. Cars in the very near future won’t rev up. They’ll spin up like CDs. They won’t have transmissions or tailpipes. They will be far simpler with far fewer moving parts. More conservative and less wasteful of energy. No idle or excess fuel burn, and little heat loss.
The internal combustion engine with its transmission and drive-train has been with us for a century and it has seen many refinements But development has about peaked. How much better can it get than a current top-of-the-line BMW?
When all is said and done, GM’s much reduced position in the world market may be a blessing. More competent and competitive automotive giants like Mercedes will be harder hit by the unexpected competition from gifted amateurs from the electronic world. In the not distant future, cars with German brands may be as common as laptops with German brands are today.
Those who imagine that the transition to electric vehicles will take a long time haven’t considered the history of digital technology and the rapidity of automation. The advent of the electric car vastly simplifies automotive manufacture. The noisy, dirty, smelly internal combustion automobile is obsolete. Cars of the future will come from clean technology manufacturers like Tesla and its future competitors.
OPEC is a cartel modeled on the Oppenheimer-de Beers diamond cartel. The price of oil is largely dependent on how much oil the Saudis and their friends are willing to pump and release onto the world market. The greedy Saudis have overreached. Like the impatient and impetuous Osama bin Laden, the Saudis have aroused us. Alerted us to our peril and stirred us to action.
The price of oil will surely come down. And petroleum will continue to have many worthwhile uses for the industrial world for a long time to come. But no longer as a direct fuel for transportation.
Jul 6, 2008 - 8:44 am 2. hdgreene:When politicians start blaming speculators, you can be sure the politicians have screwed up. When you see George Soros blaming speculators, you can be sure he is morphing into a politician while doubling down on the other side of the bet.
If we are switching from oil over the next fifty years, we may as well use what we have now. At $60 bbl the world has plenty of oil (for the next few decades, at least). So $60 bbl is where the price should head.
Right now the most important members of OPEC are the Democrats in Congress. OPEC keeps the price of oil up by limiting supply. Some OPEC politicians do this through deliberate policy. Others through sheer incompetent management of state oil companies. But the Democrats keep more oil off the market than any other group of national politicians.
Whether this is deliberate policy on their part or rank incompetence is hard to tell. They have all heard of “The Law of Supply and Demand” and most want to repeal it. Because, you see, suppliers should not make demands. If they do they should be locked up! Unless, of course, they work for the government. Their confusion has become ours.
Jul 6, 2008 - 8:46 am 3. How Oil Prices Could Collapse-by Youssef M. Ibrahim, Pajamas Media « Shariah Finance Watch:[...] 6, 2008 – by Youssef M. Ibrahim http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-oil-will-collapse/ [...]
Jul 6, 2008 - 9:14 am 4. rotwang:I wish we would just drill the hell out of ANWR, the offshore fields and what little there actually is of Bakken. Once those false hopes are extinguished and everyone realizes they aren’t the answer, we might actually start asking the right questions.
Jul 6, 2008 - 9:28 am 5. Chip:Indeed, marginal economic activity can make a huge difference. Oil speculators do so because it’s obvious we’re not doing anything to shift the supply curve to the right.
However, Federal Reserve policy is partly to blame as well. Bernanke is the anti-Greenspan — Greenspan overkilled inflation. Bernanke seems to be inflating us out of our foreign debt like a Third-World nation.
Jul 6, 2008 - 9:51 am 6. keithacita:electric is great but where will all the electricity come from? if the enviros stop nuclear we’ll have to build more dirty coal and natgas power plants and watch electricity prices go way up. let’s see should i light and heat my home or drive my electric car?
Jul 6, 2008 - 10:05 am 7. wGraves:the only good thing about this go round is everyone is really sick of it. it will be the last time OPEC will be in the drivers seat. they will then have to build economies not totally dependent on a monopoly petrol cartel.
As plugin hybrids like the new versions of the Prius and the Chevy Volt come online, they will couple the price of oil to the prices of coal, nat gas, and nuclear for electrical generation. The consumer will decide whether to charge his Volt from the grid or to purchase gasoline. This should bring the prices into equilibrium. Until a better battery is found, or a means of high-speed charging, pure electrics are limited in range. That’s fine, because most driving is short range commuting and going to Safeway. Personally, I think the Saudis have overplayed their hand and won’t like what happens next. We’ll have to get through the next couple of years, but then it will happen very fast, because our economy can turn on a dime when it’s time for a new invention. Once we’re mainly running off of the grid, then zero-emission operation is merely a matter of switching to predominantly nuclear generation. Currently, we’re at 51% coal, 20% nuclear, 19% nat gas, and the rest hydro, wind, and solar. The trouble with solar is the surface area required for serious power generation. Replacing U S power production with pure solar would require a land area greater than that of California. That won’t happen any time soon. Use it where it pencils out, like on your roof if you happen to live in Phoenix.
Jul 6, 2008 - 10:44 am 8. ron moore:solar panels produce electricity to charge batteries
Jul 6, 2008 - 10:49 am 9. ic:better devoloped solar panels, like making them smaller and better
absorbing of the sun.
Whatever we should do would be blocked by the Dems until after the election. What is paying a couple of bucks more for the common good: putting Obama in the White House and liberals in other two branches?
Jul 6, 2008 - 10:56 am 10. Larry:Just one problem, ron – solar panels produce electricity during the day, and we need to charge the electrics at night. Solar is the one source we can depend on to NOT charge electrics.
Stop dreaming. Nuclear is the only realistic option.
Jul 6, 2008 - 11:53 am 11. seguin:GM is at the forefront. Who else makes a mid-sized SUV that can get 24 mpg? GM and its hybrid Tahoe is the only one I know of. GM is FAR from the worst offender. The worst is probably Mercedes-Benz, or any of the Chinese or second-world car companies. In fact, to call Mercedes “more competent” is a serious laugh for anyone who knows anything about cars…have you read the reports of their reliability and quality? They are WAY below ALL of GM’s brands. The only thing that saved them in the 1990s was the merger with an upsurging Chrysler. Then, when they used all of the Pentastar’s profits to get themselves out of the red, they dumped it.
The EV1 failed because they were being made AT A LOSS, and the costs of disposing of the batteries was horrendous. Even properly disposed of they were more of a health and environmental hazard than gasoline – and at the time there was no rationale for fuel saving (gas was cheap then, remember?)
Seriously david…if you want to make judgements about GM or the American auto industry, please PLEASE actually learn about it instead of relying on “common knowledge”.
Jul 6, 2008 - 12:11 pm 12. hdgreene:David, until quite recently battery packs for cars had two types of problems: 1) They made the car weigh as much as a tank or 2) They blew up. OK, three — the disposal problem seguin points to in his comment. I suspect possible demand letters from tort lawyers also played a role. So don’t eliminate that “ignorant crank” theory from the list of possible explanations.
When American Telephone and Telegraph was a government sponsored monopoly, no one thought it strange (least of all their state regulators) that they would fight “cheap long distance” phone providers. Fortunately, MCI won that battle and the information revolution picked up steam. MCI grew out of the trucking industry, not the communications industry.
Let the Free Markets work.
Jul 6, 2008 - 12:39 pm 13. robotech master:One of the key things overlooked by ppl like david is the fact diesel is 10x more important then gas… even if we were to turn every car and SUV on electric we will still need to make gas because we need diesel.(which then means that gas has to be disposed of). Bio-diesel can be made however the government(mostly the dems) are blocking it in favor of lining the pockets of their supporters. Current bio-diesel production can only be done on the small scale to be efficient… ie drive to the local dinner and getting their used oil. All the current research paths that are being taken are insanely inefficient… even the cheapest front runner is something like $1.20 to make $1 of bio-diesel.
The best system is algae based… it could be done in a factory or a lake or even the ocean. The problem is its so effective combined with the ease of use that ppl will be able to take the system and convert to use at home… which means that the government(ie Dems) will have a insanely hard time taxing the hell out of it. The main reason why gas is here to stay is because the Dems and all big government backers need taxes… and those taxes need to be easy to control and get. That is why in many states it costs 2k to get a license to run a bio-car… tickets for having a non-gas car can costs in the hundreds of dollars.
Even now big government is moving away from the gas tax to what they see as the next big “fuel”… electric. They have already started to push for big taxes on electric power and have started plans for raising the fines on bio-cars/non-easily taxable fuel cars.
Jul 6, 2008 - 1:39 pm 14. Gerald Ball:Larry:
You are presuming that you will have only one battery instead of two or even three. While you are driving with one battery, the other two are in the charger. What you didn’t mention is that the real problem with a solar car battery charger – and solar energy in general – is that especially at certain times of the year, an area can go DAYS without appreciable sunlight. Take for instance a stretch of 3 to 4 days where you get a ton of rain (i.e. Portland) or some of the very dreary days of winter. Sure, there is enough sunlight for you to see (barely) but is it enough to charge a battery or do any other big job? The same is true for windmills during long stretches of time where there isn’t much wind. Solar and wind power both need to have fossil fuel backup in the grid. Which is not to say that every single family home, condo, apartment complex, etc. in America should not have their own personal windmill and solar power array. I agree the cost, $80,000 for both give or take $10,000, is prohibitive. But the same government that A) subsidizes ethanol and the agribusiness industry in general, B) gave away BILLIONS in subsidies and tax breaks to energy companies by way of the Bush – Cheney bills and that was AFTER Democrats and moderate Republicans pared a lot of it back and C) has managed to fritter away BILLIONS MORE in fraud and waste and no – bid contracts in Iraq, New Orleans, etc. and D) bought all of those $800 hammers, $400 toilet seats, and $3000 lug nuts during the 1980s ought to have no problem footing the bill. If small government fiscal conservatives were to do the same amount of averting their eyes and looking away for alternative energy products that they currently do for corporate welfare, defense contracts (a lot of the 80s economic boom was Congress authorizing military spending projects that the Pentagon and secretary of defense admitted that they did not need or want), farm bills, and highway bills we would cut our oil consumption by 25% in 5 years.
Of course, this is not to say that we should not invest in nuclear, clean burning coal, do more drilling, etc. I have no problem with any of that so long as all the plants – and all of its byproducts especially nuclear waste – are built and stored in your backyard instead of mine. Speaking of which, manufacturing solar cells produces nasty environmental products as well …
Jul 6, 2008 - 1:45 pm 15. Michael:hdgreene rings the bell twice. Markets work, and the Democrats have assumed their typical position as obstacles to the market.
Innovation and the opportunity to make a buck will deliver different ways to propel our vehicles. But don’t be surprised if electricity takes longer to get here than the commenters think. Gasoline still provides a great amount of energy per unit volume.
Jul 6, 2008 - 1:54 pm 16. ronnor:Have one Democrat Senator recalled or just start the recall and you will see oil prices drop when there is a sudden turn around in the Senate. The Democrats have caused this problem by saying no to any kind of energy development that is proven and works. Most have been in the Senate just to long, they have forgotten their constituents that have to use a car. Get rid on one Senator who has consistently voted NAY and you’ll see a stampede to ANWR. It can be done in 12 States, lets start in California with Feinstein.
Jul 6, 2008 - 1:55 pm 17. morgan:@hdgreene @david
In addition on the EV1 issue, they would have had to continue providing parts for those vehicles had they gone on and sold them after the leases. Since they never made a profit to begin with, they rightfully wanted the program gone, with no further liabilities or production down the road.
There’s no rational reason GM would want to be linked to oil and take the PR hit as some kind of colluder in it all. They make a ton of CNG and ethanol fleet vehicles, they have the Volt coming– they’ll do what they need to to stay alive and stay profitable– tying themselves to oil woudln’t make any sense.
Jul 6, 2008 - 1:56 pm 18. ZEITGEIST:[...] HOW OIL PRICES could collapse. [...]
Jul 6, 2008 - 2:18 pm 19. Mr. K:In January 2007, oil was about $50/barrel on the spot market. Is simply dwindling of supply and increased demand responsible for the nearly three fold increase? Is it all due to the drop in the dollar? Over the same period of time, stocks have dropped, and money has left the real estate market. It didn’t all go into T-bills.
Curiously, Jan.2007 is about when the surge began in earnest. Would certain Middle East countries try to manipulate the oil markets as a weapon against us? Could they set up dummy corporations and buy their own oil on the spot market, and lie about production numbers? They wouldn’t do that, would they?
Here is some more – Jan. 2007 was when a certain individual announced a run for president. That same individual has received more money from investment bankers, especially Goldman-Sachs, than anyone else in the race. Who stands to benefit from the bad economic conditions caused by the run up in oil since then? Can investment banks create a drop in the price of stocks by announcing a lowering in rating, and create a run up in oil-based securities by predicting a big run up in price?
Jul 6, 2008 - 2:24 pm 20. reliapundit:there is no shortage of crude or distillates.
there is too much investment/pension/speculation money chasing oil investment instruments.
people/funds buying oil with no intention of using it.
this influx of huge capital chasing a fixed (but industrially ample) amount of oil is why the price has shot WAY WAY up.
i have read – at dinocrat – that others with more inside info now speculate that gobs of OPEC money is flowing into the oil futures markets in a deliberate effort to manipulate the price UP UP UP.
Jul 6, 2008 - 2:25 pm 21. Helen:When we stop using petroleum, what will we use to make plastics? Solar? Hydrogen? Fuel cells? What will we use to make our water bottles, garbage bags, sandwich bags, plastic wrap to cover leftovers, vaseline lip balm, and a whole host of other products?
Petroleum, oil, is a very natural product. Nature herself has ways of cleaning up oil spills. Yes, some creatures die, but death is a part of nature.
As for oil running out. Nonsense. There’s much more oil undiscovered; in this earth which God has given us, there is everything we need to sustain our lives.
Jul 6, 2008 - 2:33 pm 22. Tom Klein:We do not have an energy problem. We have a Government meddling and intervention problem. Our Government is vigorously protecting us against any type of monopoly in any insignificant market segment, but does nothing against the most vicious and damaging cartel,the OPEC. In fact it is enabling them by seriously hampering any domestic drilling program. Winston Churchill said that the US will do the right thing after they tried everything else. I hope he was right, because we are still trying to do everything else, other than the right thing.
Jul 6, 2008 - 2:45 pm 23. Don Meaker:Nickel-Cadmium batteries have a memory, and wear out. Lead Acid leak hydrogen gas and sufuric acid can be a hazard. Lithium ion batteries finally come with a circuit that controls the discharge rate and recharge rate, so that they don’t blow up, don’t overheat, and don’t wear out.
The best battery would be a fuel cell, which skims off the hydrogen from hydrocarbons, then uses it with atmospheric oxygen as a battery, emitting water. That would use the hydrogen with 70% efficiency, compared with 25% efficiency for normal combustion engines. The carbon core from the hydrocarbon could be burned (releasing carbon dioxide) to provide energy needed to release the hydrogen.
Jul 6, 2008 - 2:50 pm 24. congresswatch:The only reason that oil is $150 a barrel is because that’s the way our government wants it, so you rubes better get fkin used to being gouged.
Don’t fall for the line being advanced by the trained economists at, what, Pajama’s Fkin Media? Huh? These people are idiots and shouldn’t be dispensing economic advice.
The oil industry is the most heavily regulated industry in America. Congress regulates it. Congress decides whether Exxon makes $40 billion in profit in one quarter, beccause Exxon and their political action committees donate money to finance re-election campaigns.
Have you “donated?”
No, you haven’t. So bend over.
It’s every man for himself out there, and your government has picked its team. You keep re-electing them, by a 98% margin. So, you must like the poking you’re getting.
Enjoy it.
Jul 6, 2008 - 3:01 pm 25. Bruce:Excellent article and comments. Thank you everyone!
Jul 6, 2008 - 3:01 pm 26. M. Simon:Seems petroleum has reached the tipping point. It’s a dirty, smelly product we would have stopped using to fuel our automobiles years ago if it weren’t so damned cheap.
Horse manure.
Oil is the replacement for horse manure.
Jul 6, 2008 - 3:17 pm 27. david levavi:Seguin
Your faith and loyalty in GM is touching. What I know about GM is indeed “common knowledge” as you say.
It is common knowledge that GM slept through a two ocean invasion of its territory and customer base. It is common knowledge that though GM is critically dependent on employee morale and customer loyalty the company does its best to screw both. It is common knowledge that accounting and profits far outweigh engineering and innovation at GM. A technical breakthrough at GM is a weaker bumper and more fragile and expensive replacement parts.
You need to read British economist Emma Rothschild’s, Paradise Lost: The decline of the Auto-industrial Age.
hdgreene
You’re behind the times re advances in battery technology. Roger Simon’s website picks up on some recent articles and videos on electric cars.
Jul 6, 2008 - 3:20 pm 28. Fderfler:David — Heaping adulation on the Tesla is both silly and premature. The price is prohibitive and it has yet to meet the tests of reality.
My reality is that every time I look at a plug-in only car it can only go 50 miles before it needs a charge. Sorry, 50 miles doesn’t cut it for me.
You seem to have blind faith in advancements in battery tech, but the physics and chemistry of batteries doesn’t seem to share your faith! It ain’t happening.
It reminds me of the arguments for solar pool heaters. Oh yeah, I get “payback” in 3-5 years. And then I get to replace the pump, much of the piping, and the glass over the collectors. Similarly, changing a bank if car batteries every 3-5 years is no joy.
Jul 6, 2008 - 3:21 pm 29. Eric:No alternative to oil will be acceptable to the driving public if it fails to match gasoline for performance in terms of horsepower and distance traveled. If the alternative is a battery powered car that must be recharged overnight before it can travel an additional 100 miles it will never succeed.
Jul 6, 2008 - 3:21 pm 30. freetoken:And we have more oil than all of the M.E. in the oil shales of the west where estimates run as high as two Trillion bbls. All we have to do is move the eco-Marxists out of the way and start pumping it. We also have more coal than any nation in the world that can be turned into liquid fuel for cars, trucks, and airplanes.
The only viable alternative to coal for producing electricity is nuclear. Solar and wind will never be more than marginal players.
Natural gas for the production of electricity was foolish but a natural response to eco-Marxist blockading of nuclear power.
There are several problems with Mr. Ibrahim’s essay, but the most obvious of which is simply this: he didn’t give the answer to the question implied in the title.
The essay rightly points out that the North Sea oil bonanza supplied the OECD with oil outside of OPEC control. However, now that the North Sea oil production is well past peak it obviously will not be of help in making sure supplies are sufficient for demand.
However, Mr. Ibrahim doesn’t go on from there and actually lay out how/where/when a successor to the North Sea will come about. He also provides no evidence to the claim that OPEC (KSA) is currently holding back millions of barrels/day of production.
Jul 6, 2008 - 4:03 pm 31. fustian:Yeah, everyone knows lots of ways to make electricity.
But not enough. Most people really underestimate the sheer scale of the problem.
But, not to worry. We have tons of oil right here in North America. It’s in Canadian oil sands and it’s in Colorado oil shale. Most estimates put those reserves in the same ballpark as the whole Middle East. It’s just expensive to get at. And when that runs out there are ridiculously large amounts of gas hydrates along our coastlines. No one knows how to produce them yet, but they’ll figure it out.
So, no one get their panties in a twist. Oil and gas will be part of our energy mix for some time to come.
Jul 6, 2008 - 4:04 pm 32. Al Reasin:As congress continues, as it has for 35 years, working around the edges of our country’s energy predicament, the major media and political leadership continue to ignore the new oil rush in the 50 year old oil field in the Williston Basin of eastern Montana, western North Dakota and Saskatchewan. Recently local newspapers in Pennsylvania have been reporting on a land rush there. Why? For mineral rights since the same technology that has reopened the (http://westhawk.blogspot.com/2008/06/bakken-oil-formation-and-national.html Bakken Formation oil field in the Williston Basin, has reopened the (http://geology.com/articles/marcellus-shale.shtml) Marcellus Shale Formation to exploration for natural gas.
The Marcellus Shale Formation runs from New York into West Virginia along the Appalachian Mountains. This old oil and gas field may contain more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The same new techniques are also being used to recover gas in the previously thought to be exhausted (http://geology.com/research/barnett-shale-gas.shtml) Barnett Shale Formation in Texas; horizontal drilling and pressure cracking of the rock formation to collect the gas.
As American citizens hear nothing but doom and gloom about energy and see over $4.00 per gallon at the pump, there are signs that with this new technology old oil and gas fields are being recognized as offering an immediate energy bridge until offshore fields are ready to produce and we have developed alternative fuels to the point where petroleum and natural gas is reserved for fertilizer production and other basic needs.
These facts from the (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mcrfpus2m.htm) Department of Energy are telling. In April 1971, the USA produced nearly 9.8 million barrels of oil a day. With so many areas with oil potential off limits since 1981, in April 2008 America produced only 5.2 million barrels a day. Thus requiring America to import 60% of our oil and send hundreds of billions of dollars to countries that do not have our best interests at heart.
One thing that American citizens should not allow to happen is for congress to seize on these previously ignored breakthroughs as an excuse to not drill offshore or in ANWR. Members of congress, in particular Democrats, are already (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121391719487790187.html) misrepresenting the government sale of other land oil leases to stall action on permitting drilling offshore.
Our country went through this energy problem, but on a very much smaller scale in the 1850’s, when whale oil used for lighting became less available and the emerging petroleum industry became the primary source for lantern fuel. Fortunately our government and economy at that time was not influenced by radical environmentalists and shortsighted politicians
Jul 6, 2008 - 4:15 pm 33. fred:Liberals/Leftists are against nuclear power, drilling for more oil, and converting coal into synfuels. But they seem to have a problem explaining the calculus of 15 units of conventional energy needed to produce 1 unit of hydrogen power. Now, I’m NOT against the rubric “alternative energy sources” which are trotted out as objections to fossil fuels and nuclear power. By all means, we should be doing more research to see if we can find a way to make it happen in an economically feasible way. Wind and solar certainly can be developed more, but that is still a niche solution. In the near and middle term we still have to use fossil fuels and we need to build more nuclear power plants.
I’m all in favor of conservation too. But, we still need fossil fuels and we should exploit these “DIRTY!!!” resources.
The Jackasses real energy policy is Kyoto. They barely disguise it. They aim to make distillate products far more expensive and to begin the most massive wealth transfer in the history of humanity, in the form of the Kyoto penalties, over to the U.N.
Jul 6, 2008 - 5:06 pm 34. Ben Franklin:Switching to electric cars only moves the energy source upstream. It still has to be generated. We would mainly be switchng from oil to coal but that is fine with me. The other alternatives simply aren’t there yet.
Solar – inefficient, would take 10,000 square miles of land mass to provide the energy the US needs and we would have to increase silicon production 100 fold. It could be done I guess but it is hard to imagine the environmentalists allowing that much terrain to be destroyed in the most sun drenched areas. The last time I checked the pay-off on solar panels was about ninety years once you remove the subsidies and count all costs. They typically last about 20 years.
Wind – finicky and intermittent, I am not sure of the land mass required but it is safe to say that Canada isn’t doing anything important right now anyway
Hydrogen – there simply isn’t a source for this short of nuclear energy being used to crack it. There is no such thing as a hydrogen mine.
Bio-fuels – the government ruined this by going with corn. Other sources may help but ultimately this technology is still in its infancy and the politics of getting the farmers off the tit will be difficult. Invading Cuba, liberating the country and buying their sugar cane would be a win/win for everyone. Brasil also has lots of sugar cane.
Nuclear – This would take a while to get started but would be excellent for the short term. It will kick the can about 100 years or more down the road by which time there may/should be other alternatives. The show stopper here is that the most scientifically illiterate and hysterical members of our society are in charge of energy policy. A bunch of Hollywood actors basically shut down the whole industry in the US.
Nuclear fusion – this is ultimately the nut we have to crack. Everything else is just temporary until we figure out how to make our own tiny suns. This is of course where we are spending the least amount on R&D.
Jul 6, 2008 - 5:47 pm 35. Rob:With prominent Democrats recently blocking the construction of new coal fire generating plants and always opposed to building nukes, where are we supposed to get the watts to power these wonderfully clean electromobiles?
Tell me windmills and solar cells and I’ll fall off the chair laughing.
Jul 6, 2008 - 5:53 pm 36. keithacita:i would recommend the recall of the junior senator from california barbara boxer as well as difi,
Jul 6, 2008 - 6:30 pm 37. Typical Whte Person:who are currently on vacation with the rest of congress. where is the urgency?
I can just picture Senator Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi running into each other and having battery acid all over the place. The windmills in Livermore, Ca need daily cleaning of dead birds.
We will call the Hazmat team like we have to do now when we drop and bust one of the curly light bulbs that spits out mercury like one of algors volcanos.
In the meantime we burn our forests instead of turning them into 2×4’s and putting people to work.
The greenies sure have intimidated the masses. Hopefully, most of them will be retiring from academia soon.
Jul 6, 2008 - 8:05 pm 38. Al Fin:Feinstein, Boxer, and Pelosi are a trio of high paid, low class California ho’s, giving the US a bad case of energy herpes. Otherwise known as political peak oil.
Jul 6, 2008 - 8:17 pm 39. Bozoer Rebbe:David,
Do you believe that the Big 3 suppressed the 150 mpg carburettor too?
GM didn’t “abruptly” reclaim the EV1s. The leases ran out and the company took back the cars, just like any other out-of-lease vehicle. They invested many millions into the project but it was clear that there weren’t enough people willing to either buy them or lease them at their true cost to put the EV1 into volume production. As for them crushing the cars, all the car companies, including the sainted Toyota and Honda put experimental test fleets on the road to get real world data. When the testing is done, the cars are usually crushed, for liability and proprietary information protection reasons. Toyota did the same with the electric RAV-4 and Honda did likewise to the first generation fuel cell vehicles. The rectal orifice who produced Who Killed The Electric Car? could just as easily have done the film about Toyota. When asked why he essentially ignored the fact that Toyota acted virtually the same as GM did with the EV1 program, he answered, “People don’t like GM”.
As for the “successful development and marketing of the Tesla”, at this point the Tesla is pretty much vaporware. They said they were starting production back in March but a grand total of 4 cars have been delivered, one of them to Tesla’s CEO. That doesn’t sound very successful to me. Yes, they’ve gotten a lot of buzz about their battery powered Lotus Elise, but until you see them on the road in significant numbers they haven’t succeeded at anything.
FWIW, I’m a big booster of battery electrics and serial hybrids and think the technology will be practical very soon. I just don’t think that Tesla’s proved anything yet.
If someone told me that GM had secretly developed and produced electric cars, consumer tested them to rave reviews, then abruptly reclaimed all the vehicles and destroyed them, I would have dismissed the storyteller for an ignorant crank. Just another I-was-held-captive-by-aliens fantasist. But it seems the GM electric car story is true.
Jul 6, 2008 - 8:59 pm 40. Bozoer Rebbe:Ignore that last paragraph. I was quoting David.
Jul 6, 2008 - 9:00 pm 41. Paul from Hamburg:Reliapundit:”there is too much investment/pension/speculation money chasing oil investment instruments.” Right on. I think very few people realize that is only in the past few years that non-energy companies were permitted to trade in petroleum futures. Instead of energy companies trying to buy a consumable commodity, you have all sorts of investments funds trying to buy a high-priced asset.
Jul 6, 2008 - 9:19 pm 42. Pat:“Nuclear – This would take a while to get started but would be excellent for the short term. It will kick the can about 100 years or more down the road by which time there may/should be other alternatives.”
100 years? Where did you get that number from? If we build fast breeder reactors that use uranium 238, we won’t run out of fission fuel for billions of years.
Jul 6, 2008 - 9:55 pm 43. Jacque Denise Yap:Obama and the rest of the democrats want an energy policy, but have no ideas as to what the alternatives would be. They aren’t for Nuclear power, against wind power, they think want us to not be dependent on foreign oil, but won’t drill for oil since democrats are in the pockets of environmentalists and other conservation groups. Democrats have no new ideas, just the same old tired ones or introduce windfall profits taxes on big oil. All that’ll do is raise the price of oil to the consumer.
i wouldn’t know the first thing about all this hoopla as i am just a biker chick, and usually get everything for free Innocent but i found this poll thing of sorts at pollclash and it is interesting how they forming an unofficial debate/poll of sorts about this whole oil drilling thing. anywho, this is what it says in the headline:
“Barack Obama and John McCain have made recent statements on US offshore oil drilling while on the US presidential campaign trail. Listen to…” read the whole story here
Jul 7, 2008 - 1:28 am 44. Larry:Gerald and Don, these are Li ion batteries in the current generation, which solves the Ni-Cd problems, but potentially raises another – Li simply isn’t that abundant on earth. It currently sells for around $50/lb, and if we try to make hundreds of millions of automobile-sized batteries, that number is likely to rise. So until we develop a battery technology that uses something cheaper than Li, the multiple battery concept isn’t going to fly.
The multiple replacable battery system would be a godsend to the electric utilities, because they could control the chargers over the internet, and adjust total demand on the grid to match supply (rather than the other way around like now). But that’s at least several decades out.
Jul 7, 2008 - 8:50 am 45. Larry:Pat, I think the idea is that nuclear fission will be a transitional technology until something better comes along, i.e. fusion. We won’t run out of fission fuel, we’ll just move on to something better.
In general, I think the 21st century will see the rise and fall of a number of transitional technologies. Everyone who thinks that there’s a panacea that will satisfy everyone (except the greedy executives) now has been reading too much internet junk. We’ll get off of oil, but it will be a slow gradual process that will move us through several transitional paradigms.
Jul 7, 2008 - 8:55 am 46. B Dubya:It could be that the answer to our energy problems does not exist on earth.
Jul 7, 2008 - 12:43 pm 47. ReCon USMC:Current fusion testing uses hydrogen, just as the sun does. Unfortunately, around 80% of the energy released in hydrogen fusion is in the form of high energy 0n1 (neutron) radiation that literally thermal spikes whatever contains the reaction to rubble (the structure becomes so neutron embrittled that it can no longer carry its own weight, not even thinking about the incredible pressures it must contain to sustain the fusion). So? The alternative is the fusion of Helium 3, which has a much lower neutron yield). And where do we get He3? Why, the moon, sillies! He3 is the solar wind, blocked by our atmosphere, but adsorbed into the moon’s sediments to the tune of 4 billion years worth of solar wind deposit).
In any energy economy of the future, nuclear fission or fusion will play an increasingly leading role, because we are not addicted to gasoline and ptroleum, sillies, we are addicted to ELECTRICITY. Even if we transition to a hydrogen economy, you have to free hydrogen by hydrolysis of water, which always costs more in energy that it frees. To have that kind of electrical supply available and affordable, you will need a vast base load generation system in place.
Peak oil, like famine, is likely a political constuct employed by sociopaths (read leftist politicians and “enviromentalists”) to further their benighted agendas.
America has enough sources of Energy … Period !
Jul 7, 2008 - 12:54 pm 48. Larry:We have enough Shale and Coal converted to Clean Liquids , Natural Gas and Ability to make safe Nuclear energy …. Oil in the ground and off Shore to take care of Our Energy needs for a 160 years .
Hopefully within the next 20-30 years we could turn Sun , Water and Air into ALTERNATIVES Energy .
What the real problem is …….. IS that we have a few very Liberal Bigger Government Tree Hugggggggggers running this AL GORE Zoo is the Media and in Washington .
UNLEASH THESE TREE HUGGGGING CHAINS AND STAND BACK ….. ENERGY TIME , NO PROBLEM !!!!!!!!!
Not exactly. There are a number of schemes being investigated involving lithium and boron, as well as hydrogen isotopes. Fusion is so potent that we can use very rare elements, and still have essentially unlimited energy.
Jul 7, 2008 - 1:12 pm 49. David W. Lincoln:It seems to me that fear is in the driver’s seat
when it comes to the sky-rocketing price of oil:
Namely, how much oil do we have.
As long as the traders and speculators use out of
date figures as to how much oil there is – we will continue to hear the same song again and again.
For the more up to date figures show a greater supply than what was previously concluded.
Jul 7, 2008 - 1:47 pm 50. david levavi:Bozoer Rebbe
Seems you have a different standard of proof than I, Your Holiness. I’m talking engineering and feasibility, you’re fixated on profit. I concede that Tesla is not yet profitable and may never be.
But electric cars with respectable range at reasonable price will be available soon. And not least among the many benefits of such vehicles is that they will bring new blood into automobile manufacture. For the first time since the nineteen-twenties and thirties maverick automakers will have an opportunity to compete with behemoths like GM. The simplicity of electric cars will make it possible.
The big American auto manufacturers will never recapture market share lost to the Germans and Japanese with current technology. Energetic innovators and entrepreneurs pushing a whole new kind of automobile can reclaim the American automobile market for American manufacturers.
‘As GM goes so goes America’ has become a chilling notion. A government bailout for the automotive giant in near future is not unlikely. A host of competitive new manufacturers providing electric vehicles offers a healthy and hopeful alternative.
Jul 7, 2008 - 5:32 pm 51. Augustus:Oil prices are quite possibly being manipulated by the elite secret societies. So may be food shortages around the world. Has anyone ever considered an American deteorating economy, much less a complete economic collapse will give way to a NWO/one world economy as in Globalization. The world a nation made up of ten regions. North America considered one of them. It is the wish of such societies for over two centuries. They secretely control societies. Politicians are simply puppetteer’s doing their service much like treason. http://www.henrymakow.com has some good information combined with links to other sites. Keep an open mind. There usually is more than meets the eye.
Jul 7, 2008 - 8:09 pm 52. Jim Stutts:david levavi:
“A host of competitive new manufacturers providing electric vehicles offers a healthy and hopeful alternative.”
How will all that electricity be generated and how will you handle battery manufacture and disposal on that scale? Be advised that I’m speaking from the engineering perspective.
Jul 8, 2008 - 5:40 am 53. Jim Stutts:david levavi:
“GM looking at the Tesla is IBM looking at Apple’s first personal computer magnified by several orders of power.”
GM has built electric cars before. The Impact was one such back in 1995. Leave engineering to the engineers.
Jul 8, 2008 - 5:41 am 54. Larry:Jim, manufacturing of batteries is an issue (I don’t know if there’s enough lithium in the world), but disposal is a non-issue, as the old batteries obviously will be recycled for their valuable contents.
Generating electricity is another issue. As I said before, anyone who thinks that this power will be generated any way other than primarily nuclear is delusional.
Btw, one downside to electric cars that no one talks about is that without a source of profuse waste heat, heating them in the winter will substantially reduce their range and efficiency in the winter. They will probably catch on in LA, but not in Minneapolis.
Jul 8, 2008 - 7:55 am 55. Brian H:Helen;
Jul 8, 2008 - 10:31 am 56. Brian H:It’s only a small % of total oil use — and biochemists have developed strains of plants which produce little bubbles of polyester in their leaves which can readily be turned into any number of biodegradable plastics. Remember, plastics are just particular sequences of carbon compounds.
Larry;
the Tesla has been tested in very cold climates, and heating is not much of a problem, and has little impact on mileage.
If the nanowire revolution in LiIon batteries works out, the range should go up by 5-10X, to 1-2,000 mi. / charge. That’s a lot of kwh, though, and efficient charging arrangements will have to be in place.
As for p-B11 fusion, you might like to take a look at focusfusion.org and lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com . Their design could be validated and in production in 5-8 years, and would cost ~5¢/W to build and install (in small 5MW generators) and sell power for ~0.25¢/kwh. Distributed emplacement of the generators would ease grid problems.
It would cut the Oil Economy off at the knees. And every other kind of power plant would be economic white elephants. It’s cost advantages of 20-50X are insuperable.
Jul 8, 2008 - 10:45 am 57. Brian H:Corr:
Jul 8, 2008 - 10:48 am 58. Gerald Ball:“And all other kinds of power plant would be economic white elephants. Its cost advantages of 20-50X are insuperable.”
[Yes, I'm a Grammar Nazi even towards myself!]
Shale oil and liquid coal people:
I have a difficult time believing that the reason why we are not exploiting shale oil, sand oil, and the new coal technology is environmental regulation. For the shale and sand oil, who wouldn’t propose a trade: shale and sand oil in return for leaving ANWR and offshore drilling alone? Especially since the reserves of shale and sand oil are supposed to be much bigger than the reserves of ANWR and offshore drilling? (Also, the states of Louisiana, Florida, California, etc. do not want offshore drilling. No one wants to talk about how none other than ultraconservative Jeb Bush went to the mat to fight his own brother’s administration’s proposal for Florida offshore oil exploration. Anyone who actually supports federalism/states rights should respect the wishes of the people of those states not to have the federal government force offshore drilling on them. It’s their backyard, not yours!) And as for coal … you mean to tell me that using the new cleaner technology is illegal but the existing dirty technology is OK?
I am seriously wondering if the true reason why we are not exploiting these avenues is the cost. It would be very costly and risky to put these things into production, and who knows how long it would take to turn a profit. I honestly think, free enterprise zealots, that the government may have to lead the way on this just like the government gave us A) nuclear power, B) all terrain vehicles, C) refrigeration, D) electric power in most of the country, E) the interstate highway system, F) the computer, G) the Internet, H) commercially viable lasers, etc.
Free market conservatives will never acknowledge the dirty little secret that ever since World War II the vast majority of our great bold all – American visionary private sector leadership activity has been taking technology that was developed for the goverment – in particular for the military or the space program – and selling them back to the very citizens that sponsored the research in the first place with their tax dollars. Very few major breakthrough discoveries in the 20th century came solely in the private sector, and for that matter we haven’t had any big time discoveries in the 20 years since the cold war/NASA research machine started to wind down in the late 1980s. George H. W. Bush started the cuts (in response to the weak economy and national debt/deficit), Bill Clinton accelerated them, and George W. Bush has continued the same.
Right now, it costs so much money to get a new product to market – let alone develop one – and a market at that which is controlled by a few big global companies that even if someone did invent something it would go unexploited. And the few global companies that I spoke of … they have no financial incentive to put any real resources in R&D beyond improving existing products, because they are making tons of money anyway, and nowhere is this more true than in our energy and automobile sectors. (Funny how conservatives began to support monopolies after Robert Bork. Well, I will tell you that Microsoft crushing all of those superior software products before the Internet gave companies like Google plus the open source movement – made viable by the Internet and end – around finally ended it set our economy back hundreds of billions in software licenses and productivity.)
Fellas, Mike Huckabee was right. We need another Manhattan style project on energy, just as we needed heavy government involvement to build all of those hydroelectric power plants – which made the entire west truly economically viable – in the first half of the 20th century.
Jul 8, 2008 - 10:54 am 59. Brian H:Gerald;
Jul 8, 2008 - 11:09 am 60. Larry:The Bakken field isn’t truly “shale oil” like the stuff in the Rockies. What has been found is that between the vast shale layers are massive horizontal lakes of sweet, light crude. (Somewhat) proprietary horizontal and other new drilling tech is able to extract it at ~$16/bbl. And it’s already begun to happen.
The best shale is off limits by act of congress. That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. If you have a hard time believing that congress is dumb (or alternately doing the bidding of the Saudis), I don’t know what to say.
Jul 8, 2008 - 12:05 pm 61. R.C.:I may be wrong, but it seems to me that a bunch of folks are missing an obvious issue, here: How best to respond to the “bait ‘n’ switch” pricing schemes of OPEC.
What I mean is: OPEC raises prices. They get so high, we all start thinking about diversifying our energy sources. But the moment we start, OPEC allows production to go up, and prices to drop. The companies who invested too early in diversified energy get nailed. Everyone else thinks, “Gee, next time we’ll wait a little longer, ’cause, y’know, oil can always drop again and leave us in the lurch.”
How many times has OPEC played this game, on the big and small scale?
How do we respond? I’d like to offer a suggestion, which more knowledgeable persons may debunk as they see fit:
(1.) Set a policy which, on any given day, taxes oil imports into the U.S. at an amount-per-barrel which is equal to half the price difference between Pnow (the current price) and Pmax (the highest per-barrel price ever previously seen, in that day’s dollars).
In other words, every time oil hits a new high and then begins to fall back from that high-point, for every $1 it falls, U.S. consumers only experience a $0.50 drop.
(2.) Take the entire proceeds from the taxes collected in item (1.) each month, and split them in half. Divide the first half up among producers of alternative energy sources on a per-produced-unit basis (to nuclear producers, for example, it might be based per Megawatt-Hour). Disburse the second half to U.S. domestic oil producers on a per-barrel-produced basis, or something similar.
The goal (and if there are problems in how I’ve described this, feel free to help me correct them) is to punish the Saudis (et. al.) for jerking us around, and give them incentive to avoid setting new high prices.
Because, every time they set a new high, they’ll either need to STAY there (in which case they’ll cause pure market forces to seek alternatives), or else pull their usual stunt of falling back from an all-time-high, only to find that we’re now subsidizing all their competition, especially domestic producers.
Let me know what you think.
Jul 8, 2008 - 3:53 pm 62. Gerald Ball:Larry:
Well, all right then. Why hasn’t the GOP leadership, including the White House, made shale anywhere near as big an issue as ANWR, or that Cheney corporate welfare “energy bill”? If Congress is indeed this stupid, then the political opposition is even worse. The White House and the GOP leaders – especially back when they, you know, still controlled Congress! – should have been having press conferences on this issue every day. It is just that I am sick of hearing Sean Hannity (and similar) scream every day about how we are sitting on top of more oil than there exists in the entire Middle East in the form of shale and sand when it would have been mighty nice to hear that information 6, 8, or even 4 years ago back when the GOP had control of the agenda and the political capital and leverage to force the Democrats to take a position on it. But instead, all that was ever brought up was ANWR drilling and that stupid Cheney corporate welfare bill. This is not to say that I have anything against drilling in ANWR (I do however have a lot against corporate welfare for very profitable global conglomerates, and so should you) but it would have been nice to see Bush, Cheney, Frist, etc. dump ANWR for a fight that they could win. The fact that they did not makes you wonder if they did in fact want to lose all along. After all, you mentioned the Saudis, not me …
Jul 8, 2008 - 3:57 pm 63. R.C.:Gerald Ball:
You say, “The fact that they did not [bring up our domestic supply potential] makes you wonder if they did in fact want to lose all along.”
Actually, nearly EVERY THING THEY DID IN OFFICE makes me wonder if they did in fact want to lose all along.
How on earth, in the attempt to elect “movement conservatives” with a principled desire for small government, we got saddled with such a bunch of pork-loving tone-deaf weak-tea unprincipled weenies, is beyond me. Admittedly, as a Georgian, I must say my own Congressional Delegation has been one of the least guilty. Perhaps I need to move someplace like Rhode Island; y’know, try to tilt the balance.
Jul 8, 2008 - 4:09 pm 64. Sam T. Mullins:FACTS ABOUT DRILLING…
FACT: The Green River Oil Shale formation of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming has has very recently been determined by studies done by the US Dept. of Energy & the US Geological Survey to have the potential to hold nearly 6 TRILLION barrels of oil with 800BILLION to 2 TRILLION barrels being recoverable, as much as 2-3 times that of Saudi Arabia…
80% of Green River formation is on federal/park lands, not including American-Native tribal lands or state & other publicly owned resticted lands and is BLOKED for exploration by the liberals & moderates in Congress…
SO WE CAN’T DRILL THERE…
FACT: 0.02% of ANWR is to be used for exploration there in an area of possibly 15-30 BILLION barrels of relatively easily acessable & recoverable oil, possibly DOUBLING Alaska’s current recoverable reserves, while 99.98% will be left completely untouched. Currently Congress continues to BLOCK environmentally safe exploration & developement in ANWR…
SO, we can NOT DRILL THERE EITHER…
FACT: Currently 3/4 of ALL offshore lease blocks are OFF LIMITS to environmentally safe drilling.
These are the largest areas of potential large consentrated oil reserves…
Being that liberals & moderates in Congress continue to drasticly resrict offshore exploration, WE CAN NOT DRILL THERE EITHER…
BUT, CUBA/CHINA can drill right off the Florida Keys, possibly even tapping into some of our OFFSHORE reserves there…
FACT: 374,000 high paying AMERICAN jobs were lost in 1980s in the decline of the domestic oil industry, This happened when oil price dropped from $40 per barrel to $12 and Congress passed a drilling ban that further hampered our own domestic drilling & exploration industry…
BUT we now have an opportunity to once again replace those hundreds of thousands of high paying AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL JOBS, with increased exploration, expaneded modern refining capcity, and support industries…
We could become Energy independent and SECURE, possibly even the new “Saudi Arabia” of the world if we went after the 15-30 BILLION barrels of oil in ANWR, the 800 BILLION – 2 TRILLION barrels of oil in the Green River oil shale in the Rockie, and the potential 200-500 BILLION barrels of oil from other on shore oil shale reserves, as well as who even knows how much from expanded offshoer exploration & developement…
Increasing domestic petroleum exploration & drilling industry would help the creation of hundreds of thousands of high paying AMERICAN JOBS, while giving ENERGY SECURITY for AMERICA and possibly STABILITY for the world as a result…
BUT WE CONTINUE TO BE BLOCKED BY A POLITICALLY DRIVEN PARTICAN CONGRESS…
ITS TIME TO UTILIZE THE GOD GIVEN RESOUCRES THAT WE ARE BLESSED WITH AS A NATION…
ITS TIME TO STOP THE POLITICS AND DRILL ! ! !
Sam T. Mullins
Jul 9, 2008 - 4:48 am 65. Amphipolis:25 years as a Petroleum Exploration Geologist,
Life long AMERICAN & PATRIOT
I’m still waiting for prices to fall…
it does seem as though the rise has slowed down
Jul 9, 2008 - 6:23 am 66. Moultrie:Right on Sam T. Mullins ITS TIME TO STOP THE POLITICS AND DRILL ! ! !…the R’s in Congress have almost unanimously voted for Domestic energy.
Jul 9, 2008 - 7:12 am 67. links for 2008-07-11 » The Foundry:[...] How Oil Prices Could Collapse: Pajamas Media Do you think $140 a barrel is insane? Last week the president of OPEC Chakib Khelil predicted… (tags: Oil) [...]
Jul 11, 2008 - 12:30 pm 68. Jeff:Nice Article!
Jul 13, 2008 - 5:00 pm 69. end of the world predictions:Great Comments!
Exactly what I was looking for. Could I link to this page?
[...] the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecast world energy use to grow fifty percent by 2030.http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-oil-will-collapse/December 21 2012.comFeatures info on December 21, 2012, the Mayan’s proposed end of the world date. [...]
Sep 17, 2008 - 10:28 pm 70. Pajamas Media " How Oil Prices Could Collapse | work4real.net:[...] Show original post here [...]
Sep 27, 2009 - 1:04 am