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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (192078)	7/19/2006 3:45:15 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

If I understand the situation, Venezuelan oil profits go to the people. My gosh.. then I guess all of those Venuzuelans are incredibly wealthy now. What with those tremendous oil profit windfalls of $12 Billion per year. abcnews.go.com With 5 million Venezuelans living in poverty, that means they each get $1,900 each. And considering that per capita GDP in Venezuela is about $6,000/year, that about 33% increase. latinbusinesschronicle.com So I wonder why he's trying to build a 2 million man army, and buying all of those nifty aircraft? en.wikipedia.org defencetalk.com What's most disturbing is that Venezuela is embarking upon an arms race in S. America that is likely to pressure its neighboring countries to counter his actions. T. Boone Pickens believes in peak oil. He's a billionaire and a geologist so it's likely he knows something. He's a crafty man.. But it's amazing that you mention him as a source of credibility given that he has established a reputation as a corporate raider and "profiteer" in the oil markets, AS WELL AS BEING A SUPPORTER OF GEORGE BUSH Jr. In 2006, the Financial Times reported that Pickens had personally raked in $1.4 billion as head of BP Capital Management the previous year. en.wikipedia.org And we're a long way away from "horses and buggies". We have TREMENDOUS fossil fuel reserves, as well as other alternatives available to us, SO LONG as there is a market incentive for developing them (and what else can you call such a premium in oil prices but an incentive). The US possesses over 60-70% of all oil shale reserves, totally some 1 Trillion barrels. In 2005, Royal Dutch Shell announced that its in-situ extraction technology could be competitive at prices over $30/bbl [2]. There are other companies that have other patented methods for in-situ retorting, but the Shell method has proven to produce in commercial quantities after a pilot project shown successful. en.wikipedia.org And then there are the tar sands in Canada: Tar sands represent as much as 66% of the world's total reserves of oil, with at least 1.7 trillion barrels (1.7×1012 bbl or 270×109 m3) in the Canadian Athabasca Tar Sands and 1.8 trillion barrels (1.8×1012 bbl or 280×109 m3) in the Venezuelan Orinoco tar sands, compared to 1.75 trillion barrels (1.75×1012 bbl or 278×109 m3) of conventional oil worldwide, most of it in Saudi Arabia and other Middle-Eastern countries. Between them, the Canadian and Venezuelan deposits contain about 3.6 trillion barrels of oil in place. Amazingly, this is only the remnant of vast petroleum deposits which once totaled as much as 18 trillion barrels, most of which has escaped or been destroyed by bacteria over the eons.... ....Originally, the sands were mined with draglines and bucket-wheel excavators and moved to the processing plants by conveyor belts. However, in recent years companies such as Syncrude and Suncor have switched to much cheaper shovel-and-truck operations using the biggest power shovels (100 tons) and dump trucks (400 tons) in the world. This has reduced production costs to around $15 per barrel of synthetic crude oil. en.wikipedia.org So there is PLENTY OF OIL. It just isn't as cheap to get at, or refine, as the light "sweet" crude that is preferred. And then there is always BIO-DIESEL: en.wikipedia.org unh.edu Btw, have I forgotten Synthetic oil production from our vast reserves of coal? en.wikipedia.org You might want to check out Rentech: RTK Hawk