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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (155704)	1/25/2006 10:31:42 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793755

Even if we invent a good alternate fuel technology oil from the middle east will probably be cheaper and will still be used. The extra supply at a higher price will tend to limit how much OPEC can charge but we will probably still import from OPEC for some time. If it is a good fuel and its cheap, other countries will probably find ways around the patents or allow people to ignore/violate the patents, or at least threaten to if we don't license the patents to them on decent terms. It would still be great for the US but we are unlikely to be the oil barons unless the alternate fuel requires some natural resource that we have in much greater quantity than everyone else. If the ME never had the oil profits perhaps nuclear proliferation and terrorism would be less of a concern, but if you could fairly suddenly take them away than proliferation might not go away as a problem and terrorism might be even worse. In the very long run maybe you would see a positive effect but its complex and uncertain. In the short run I think there would be more problems not less. Tim