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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (22755)	8/18/2010 9:25:28 AM
From: Eric	Respond to of 86356

The Ascent of Middle East Food and Energy Demand Posted by Gail the Actuary on August 17, 2010 - 10:35am Topic: Demand/Consumption Tags: gregor macdonald [list all tags] This is a guest post by Gregor MacDonald. Gregor is an oil analyst and energy sector investor, who, in his words, "also focuses on the coming transition to alternatives". This post was previously published on Gregor.us. At the EIA’s International Energy Outlook (IEO) presentation this May the issue of future oil exports from OPEC nations came up, and in an interesting way. Readers may be familiar with the phenomenon of declining net exports, from major oil producing nations, as a result of internal demand from growing, domestic populations. The phenomenon was modelled last decade by Jeffrey Brown and Samuel Foucher. Their Export-Land Model showed that the rate of decline from oil exporters can become quite accelerated. While that may seem obvious, it was a point worth making last decade when it was widely presumed that gross production from large oil producing nations was largely available for export. The tipping, of both the UK and Indonesia, from net oil exporters to net oil importers should have put an end to such a presumption. More importantly, the rise of domestic oil consumption in Saudi Arabia was also a warning. Saudi oil exports have declined now for five years. The story continues here: theoildrum.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (22755)	8/18/2010 11:23:28 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

No there isn't in any market I've known. Ask a cab driver. I wouldn't say they are wrong just because they are self interested on the question, but there isn't any good reason to accept them as an authority we would defer to either. To them as long as competition exists and still cuts in to their profits at all there is no shortage. Ask someone trying to get a cab at night in a bad area of New York. Or just look at the price for New York medallions. Without an under-supply they would be worth almost nothing. Government is often used to create such competitive advantage for special interests. This form of doing it is mostly a state and local thing not federal, but the feds have their own methods. For example entrenched large businesses often support expanding regulation, figuring they are better able to handle it than their smaller existing competitors and much better than start-ups. To be fair the feds pushing the regulation and eager to get the large business support for it, probably often are not pushing the regulation for that reason. They may really believe in it for its own sake. They play the "Baptist" part of the "Bootlegger and Baptist" coalition. (For those who don't recognize the reference, Baptists and other religious groups pushed prohibition because they disliked drinking, the prohibition benefited the bootleggers because it enabled high profits for those who where willing to take high risks.) Or if they don't really believe in it, then its just some political favor as part of the ordinary political game, not some sinister plot. But an important effect of it is to reduce competition. BTW... what would we do without the EPA! Your tax dollars at work. I don't like everything it does, and even when it does something important it often does so in a rather inefficient way, but at the same time I don't support the idea that people should just be able to dump anything it wants anywhere they want. Dumping toxic chemicals in an unsafe way could reasonably be seen as an attack against people and their interests. Even starting with the idea that government should be minimized, supporting a "minarchist" government, there would still be a legitimate role for government stopping such activity.