That's true and something to be very wary of because it's a sure thing: <One good thing about high oil prices is it accelerate's progress but the big boys can pull the rug out at anytime and bankrupt the new innovators before they get to scale. > But the "big boys" are not who you are suggesting [BP, Shell, Exxon]. The big boys are Saudi Arabia and other swing producers, owned by governments, who can increase production enormously at very low cost, some of it by just opening taps.
The Seven Sisters are now a small part of total oil production and trivial if you include gas, coal and nuclear as other energy options.
Venezuela, Russia, the middle east oil producers, and others, are governments dictating what should be produced. BP, Shell, Exxon etc are simple businesses who maximize their profitability without shutting down economic activity simply to increase prices [which they can't do because if BP shut a refinery, or oil field, which was making money, to boost prices, they would find Exxon or somebody else would boost their production and be very glad of BP's stupidity]. It's a serious battle out there among oil field producers, another battle among refiners, another among wholesalers, more among retailers. There is no conspiracy. OPEC tries to run a conspiracy but even just the Arabs are not able to keep their conspirators honest - they sneak out more production than they agree to if it suits them. Saudi Arabia says "Don't produce more than you agreed or we will seriously open the taps and smash your marketing efforts".
The bankrupting of innovators happens simply because of economic activity with everyone competing to be profitable. My and other innovative efforts 30 years ago within BP Oil were stopped [at my suggestion] because crude oil prices fell so much and there was not going to be profit. It had nothing at all to do with a military industrial complex or conspiracy in OPEC or anything except hordes of people trying to make a dollar in the oil industry and others trying to get a piece of the action, while motorists, and others worked hard to minimize their buying of such expensive stuff.
BP is not forgoing profits to stop Obama [though they no doubt think he is not good for BP, or anyone else either, other than his self-dealing co-conspirators].
Hybrid cars can never be as efficient as all-electric because thermodynamics favours large power plants to generate electricity. Big power plants can get to 50% efficiency, but a car can never get to 30%. Even with line losses deducted from the big power stations, that's a lot of efficiency to lose. Qualcomm has bought Halo inductive coupling electric car recharging technology. That and battery swap is the way to go for cars, but oil is still very competitive and likely to undercut battery efforts as you say, to defend Saudi and other oil producer sales.
Mqurice
PS: High oil prices do drive innovation to avoid such costs, but that doesn't make high oil prices a good thing. There's nothing wrong with $10 a barrel oil. If you believe CO2 is a problem, then running out of oil and high oil prices would be a good thing. I think CO2 is a good thing and am very grateful we have almost unlimited carbon and hydrogen to burn from fossil fuel stored around the world. |
