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To: Logain Ablar who wrote (149971)	11/12/2002 4:27:32 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Tim - Your post illustrates some of the most common misconceptions about oil. ------------------------------------------------- >>The US has plenty of Oil in Alaska And why are they still dependent on OPEC, then? Could it be that the oil in Alaska is not enough, or rather "running out", as BBC puts it? With the oil fields of north Alaska beginning to run dry, the US government is anxious to find new reserves on home territory. bbc.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------- Or could it be that the Alaska oil is expensive to drill? The largest fields are thought to sit in water more than 5,000 feet deep. At that depth, only the largest companies can afford to drill. gasandoil.com --------------------------------------------------------- >>the Soviets also have ample supplies on its east coast For starters, there is no more "Soviets". Each of the countries that have oil in their soil are already developing their sources. I travelled Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan before the Russian crisis of 1995, and the financing, the structure, etc was already there. The problem with oil in that part of the world is transportation. You may have heard of the pipelines being proposed to bring the oil in Asia to the Mediterranean, but there is no such transportation in place now and will not be for a long time to come. >>Both of these areas will end up being eaiser to develop than IRAQ. With all due respect, I urge you to read a little bit on the reserves of Iraq, specifically, how they are the most shallow and hence the lowest-cost oil reserves on this planet. Iraqi oil, like the Saudi oil, is very close to the surface and is hence quite easy to develop. The low-cost production of Iraqi oil is a mouth-watering advantage over, say, the deep water reserves of Alaska or the reserves of Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan in the middle of nowhere with no pipeline. ------------------------------------------ Due to the concentration of low-cost reserves in the Persian Gulf, the Saudis and some of the Gulf producers are likely to play a growing role in regulating oil prices and may be in a position to exercise, or even be politically motivated to exercise, considerable monopoly power on oil prices. The energy security problem is a direct result of the concentration of low cost petroleum resources in the Persian Gulf— a small, distant, and at times unstable region. From the perspective of the major oil importing countries, such a large concentration of low cost reserves presents two kinds of vulnerabilities or risks. ksgnotes1.harvard.edu ---------------------------------------------------- The optimists' scenario is that a new pro-West government in Iraq would pump out enough oil to lower worldwide prices and challenge Saudi Arabia's domination of the world oil market. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey predicts large economic gains, thanks to a steady supply of low-cost oil. usnews.com