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

To: energyplay who wrote (50338)	5/24/2004 2:52:58 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

You are right: The Saudis have been clever to right-priced oil to the optimum price maximize income wnad deter the competing alternatives.. Today it seems they can't anymore: my previous posting. You don’t mean taking the oil fields by force to keep prices down, do you? That would mean the Iraqization of Saudi Arabia and we know how it looks.

To: energyplay who wrote (50338)	5/24/2004 4:05:17 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

You say "Cartels have a interest in avoiding the switch to replacements, like nuclear, conservation, public transit, wind power". Let me suggest you replace the word "Cartel" with ExxonMobil. I worked for Chevron 1978-1983 during the previous "oil crisis." Chevron spent over $550 million per year on successful projects in geothermal, shale oil, and tar sands. We began and closed a nuclear program as we concluded the heavily invested players like Westinghouse were substantially under-estimating the long-term costs of waste disposal / storage - their existing investments making them unwilling to accept reality. Other companies had similar programs, Union Oil much further advanced in geothermal, BP deeply involved in solar-electric cells, Shell in solar and wind power. The only alternate energy program Exxon, now ExxonMobil, involved themselves with were efforts to drill for oil in park lands. I don't know why this is the case, but it is. Especially when we would run into employees of other oil companies, a frequent source of amusement would be our mutual impersonations of Exxon employees. The general consensus was a chain-smoking frenetic fast-talker, who sounded similar to the television talk-host Tom Snyder, with the single-minded mission of oil everywhere without any environmental concerns. Although there's a diversity of persons who work for ExxonMobil, the impersonation revealed a certain truth which I'm quite certain reflected the culture of ExxonMobil as radiated down through their company from top executives. Clearly, the precipitous decline in oil prices in 1982 was unexpected and resulted in lower funding levels for these programs - but investment has continued since that time on a lower level. If the price of oil rises over time, an increasing number of alternatives will come into existence without prompting. I'll be shocked, the day any come from ExxonMobil.