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Oil supplies? Don’t worry!
Randy Park, YouTube
There are three principle arguments against Peak Oil:
1. It has never happened before
2. The market will take care of it
3. Technology will save us
In this satirical video Bill the stock broker presents these arguments, which “Einstein” comments on…
(29 Oct 2006)
ImPOssible Mission
Aerobarfilms, Youtube
Brief (< 1 minute) satirical take on the peak oil challenge; make a cute intro sequence for your next presentation.
(22 July 2006)
Naked Imperialism:
An Interview with John Bellamy Foster
MRzine
Q: The antiwar movement’s most famous slogan in the war was “No Blood for Oil,” and this view of the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been widely accepted around the world. U.S. establishment media have been at pains to deny that this is so, and even some progressive U.S. commentators have ridiculed this view as “simplistic” or worse. This is a question you address is in Naked Imperialism. “War for oil” seems to have really touched a nerve, but is this really so central an explanation? Why do you think it has been so widely accepted, and so bitterly attacked?
A: It is clear that the geopolitics of oil have changed, and this is a point made in Naked Imperialism. In the chapter “U.S. Imperial Ambitions and Iraq” there is a bar graph superimposed on a map of the world showing very visibly the extent to which the oil reserves of the world are concentrated in the Middle East. There is a lot of discussion today about whether the world has reached or even passed “peak oil” production. No one really knows the answer; there are still too many unknowns, though the peak oil hypothesis is a plausible one. What we do know for certain is what the oil industry calls reserve/production ratios (or simply r/p ratios), which give you the number of years before reserves are likely to be exhausted for various oil-producing countries in the world, based on current production levels. This tells us that with each passing year a larger percentage of the world reserves will be located in the Middle East, since the reserves to production ratios there are far higher. It is obvious then that control of the Middle East reserves becomes more critical each year if world oil supplies are to be secured.
The United States has long designated the security of world oil reserves as a vital strategic interest, which translates ultimately into U.S. leverage over the production and sale of these reserves, not to mention the profits to be derived from this. A whole series of foreign policy doctrines — the Eisenhower doctrine of 50 years ago, the Carter doctrine, the Bush doctrine — have been principally aimed at the Middle East, and amount to the extension of the Monroe doctrine (which asserted U.S. hegemony in the Americas) to the Middle East. One of the reasons given by the administration for the Iraq war was to prevent Saddam Hussein from having a “stranglehold” on world oil. Perhaps this was the closest to an honest reason they gave.
Beyond the larger geopolitical issue of securing the Middle East and its oil for the empire of capital there is the question of who actually exploits the oil and who profits from it. U.S. and British corporations are now positioned to gain control over the production of, and to reap huge profits from, the Iraqi oil reserves through so-called “production sharing agreements,” which will give them rights to the exploitation and sale of the bulk of Iraq oil reserves for decades to come — even allowing them to book this oil as “assets” in their accounts. In other words they will have the material equivalent of the old imperial concessions system for oil. This is apparently the main thrust of a new proposed oil law in Iraq that was written by Washington and London with the help of leading oil corporations, and that, in accordance with an IMF deadline, is supposed to be approved by the Iraqi government by the end of this year.
Defenders of U.S. imperialism in Iraq naturally contend that “It is not all about oil” and try to present the “NO BLOOD FOR OIL” slogan of the antiwar movement as unpatriotic and the voice of irrationalism. They act righteously indignant regarding any suggestion that the United States is planning to loot Iraq’s oil wealth. But it is impossible to deny that much of this conflict is about oil directly. And indirectly all questions regarding Iraq return in the end to oil, which from a geostrategic standpoint is what makes Iraq so important. In a recent poll of Iraqis less than 2 percent thought that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to promote democracy in Iraq. More than three quarters of Iraqis believed that the single most important reason for the invasion was control of Iraqi oil.
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John Bellamy Foster is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, author of Marx’s Ecology and Ecology Against Capitalism, and co-editor of Monthly Review
(17 Nov 2006)
Foster is one of the most articulate of current Marxist thinkers, integrating ecological concepts with traditional Marxism. This interview is significant in that Foster buys into the peak oil theory. In contrast, many other leftists do not.
This Marxist analysis of oil and U.S. Mideast policy sounds rather ho-hum after one has spent time in the peak oil blogosphere. -BA
IHS Data Suggest Kuwaiti and Global Proved Oil Reserves Significantly Lower Than BP Estimates
Euan Mearns, The Oil Drum: Europe
At the Oil Depletion conference (hosted by the Energy Institute) held in London on 7th November, Dr Kenneth Chew, a Vice President of IHS Energy reported proved and probable reserves (2P) for Kuwait of around 52 billion barrels (read from chart). This is approximately 51% of the proved reserves reported in the BP statistical review that stand at 101.5 billion barrels. This tends to support recent reports of Kuwaiti reserves being substantially overstated.
Ken Chew also presented data indicating global remaining discovered proved plus probable (2P) liquid resources of some 1,250 billion barrels. This implies global proved liquid reserves (1P) of around 950 billion barrels (based on an assumption that 1P is approximately 75% of 2P). This is substantially lower than estimates provided by BP, Oil & Gas Journal and World Oil.
This report is built around a presentation (link live until 28th Nov. 2006) made by Ken Chew, at the Oil Depletion conference held in London on 7th November and subsequent correspondence I have had with him. I would like to acknowledge that Ken has been very helpful in clarifying background information to his talk. IHS Energy own Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) who are also leading commentators on global energy issues.
Why are Kuwaiti and Middle East (ME) oil reserve estimates important? The simple answer is that one point of view is that all ME OPEC reserves are incorrectly booked and are in fact grossly “inflated”. The IHS energy data presented by Ken Chew suggests Kuwaiti and world oil reserves are significantly lower than otherwise reported in the public domain. The IHS database is one of the more widely used sources of world oil information therefore the whole world should take note. Let’s start with a look at how reserves are booked and evidence for anomalous reserves booking by ME OPEC countries.
(17 Nov 2006)
