Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (34789)	6/7/2003 3:54:33 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

OPEC countries upped their reserves during the "quota wars"--this was done because the higher the reserve number, the higher the allowed production for each member. they probably overstated their reserves significantly, though to be fair the reserves were previously understated by Western oil companies for tax reasons and other reasons (before the Middle East countries nationalized their oil assets starting with Iran in 1953). they remain the same year after year because they all want to keep their quotas. however, in reality they are of course depleting reserves. just look at how reserves have depleted in honest-reporting countries like the US and Norway. so of course it is bogus that the Middle East reserves keep rising. (of course, US and Norway are past their Hubbert peaks whereas the ME will not pass their peak until 2017 or so--nevertheless the globe as a whole is passing its peak right now.) the oil world is very political so it is difficult to get good numbers. nobody with money to lose wants to piss off the OPEC countries. this is why places like BP take the OPEC numbers at face value. it is a political, not a scientific, decision to report numbers this way. intellectually honest petroleum geologists believe the actual reserves are much lower than what is reported. right now oil is really underpriced and it would greatly benefit humanity to have oil priced much, much higher. why? so that people would ration usage and get serious about the development of alternative energies. we might be able to avoid the socioeconomic/geopolitical crisis which is sure to develop if we took a gradual transition approach. alas, we give only token support to alternative energy development (preferring to spend billions on killing Arabs instead of on R&D and conservation programs), so we are going to have a nasty, TEOTWAWKI-like shock within the next decade when oil skyrockets. of course the Saudis don't want us to work on alternatives, so they have kept oil cheap until OPEC gets a 50% market share later this decade, at which point they will be free to ream us big time for a couple decades. our invasion of Iraq is of course the opening act of the coming decades of wars for oil.

To: KyrosL who wrote (34789)	6/7/2003 5:13:51 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Kyros, Re: It is clear to me that we have passed peak oil around the world. That is not clear to me. Could you amplify on this pessimism? :) I'm more in the Colin Campbell and Ken Deffeyes camp. I tend to believe, from everything that I've read that we will be at the inflection point, i.e. "Hubbert's Peak" in worldwide crude oil production sometime in the period from 2005-2010. Things aren't as bad as they sometimes seem. I recall attending very well meaning meetings of concerned generalists on the University of Wisconsin campus in 1972 who absolutely "knew" that world oil production had peaked back then. Of course they were several decades off the mark. Some resources on Hubbert's Peak calculations: hubbertpeak.com financialsense.com pup.princeton.edu If others have more resources, I'd love to get them into my files. TIA :) Ciao!