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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (124275)	9/19/2000 8:56:36 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1580148

OT Why is it so hard to understand that the supply of oil is finite. You can speculate all you want but there is no alternative fuel source on the horizon. That we as a nation consume more then our pro rata share of oil. The supply of oil on the earth is finite, but the known and usable supply increases as new discoveries are made and as the price gets higher (makeing marginal fields more attractive and exploration more rewarding). Eventually the marginal fields and new sources will run out too but that is not the reason for the current price increases and will not cause an criss any time soon. AS far as concumeing more that our "pro rata share" I couldn't care less. Long term alterative energy sources will make sense as technology imprves and the price of oil goes up. Tim

To: tejek who wrote (124275)	9/19/2000 9:17:19 PM
From: Joe NYC	Respond to of 1580148

Ted, OT Why is it so hard to understand that the supply of oil is finite.... The USA and the other developed nations are using more oil than is being produced. The price is going up. The developed countries need to be put on an oil diet. I think there may be a misunderstanding of terminology. The absolute supply, the sum of all the oil deposits if finite. Known, or discovered deposits part of this absolute, finite amount. Companies keep discovering more and more of these supplies, but the rate must at some point be slowing, because there is only so much of the stock out there. "production" could be described the rate at which the oil is pumped. There is some flexibility here, and Saudi Arabia holds the key here. They can pump less if they want short term prices to go up, or more if they want the price to go down. In the longer term, the absolute price holds the key to the direction of future movement of price. Absolute price controls consumption, and the rate of investment to bring new production online. We went through a period when the price was probably too low. The consumption increased, the production slowed. Now we may be entering a correction phase. If the price stays high or goes even higher, consumers will consume less, producers will produce more. This is more or less medium term picture. In the long term, the trend of the oil prices has is up, as the deposits are used up. There will be less and less of the easily accessible deposits, there will be fewer discoveries of new deposits. There will be time when oil is really expensive, and what are today only expensive, exotic alternatives will become real alternatives. Or new cheaper alternatives may be developed. All the conservation can do is to maybe shift the long term up sloping curve forward couple of years or back. There is no fundamental change. The alternatives will have to be found one way or another. There will be a serious mobilization of efforts to find alternatives when the price of oil reaches some threshold, but I don't think we are anywhere near it with the current price. Actually, it might even be beneficial long term if we got a spike in oil prices to say $100. This way, the serious search for alternatives would start sooner rather than later. Joe

To: tejek who wrote (124275)	9/19/2000 10:07:25 PM
From: hmaly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580148

Ted,,, Re..<<<Why is it so hard to understand that the supply of oil is finite. You can speculate all you want but there is no alternative fuel source on the horizon. That we as a nation consume more then our pro rata share of oil.<<<<< Ted, it is not that we don't understand oil is finite. Of course it is, just as water is finite, or food is or the amount of lies a politician can say in a yr. So what? The problem isn't that oil is finite, but rather that cheap oil is far smaller than the total of oil or hydrocarbons. We have enough coal in this country to last 200 yrs; the tar sands reputedly will last over 100 and shale oil is over 100 yrs. The Germans in WWII produced gas from coal in synfuel, and South Africa has a large synfuel program. Reportedly gas can be produced from coal in the 30 - 35 dollars a barrel.Tar sands reportedly is in the mid twenties and shale oil I believe the mid 40. The point is that we are very likely to have another energy supply within 100 yrs, much less 500 yrs. Getting the alternate sources ramped up is another subject, but it can be done.