U.K. Conservatives Encourage Fuel Price Protests
U.K. Conservative Party Leader Michael Howard encouraged motorists to protest rising fuel prices and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plan to boost taxes on gasoline.
U.K. Conservative Party Leader Michael Howard encouraged motorists to protest rising fuel prices and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plan to boost taxes on gasoline.
Even those who believe that this is the decade that oil will peak and decline had thought that the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia in particular, would be immune for at least another ten to fifteen years. Now it seems even that shard of confidence might be misplaced.
Oil prices are back in the headlines and likely to stay there, as the world’s global energy crosses new thresholds of increased demand, clashing politics and threats of terrorism.
Demand for unconventional oil is expected to reach 10.31 million bbl in 2008, up from 8.59 million barrels in 2003 at an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 3.7%, said Business Communications Co. Inc., Norwalk, Conn.
Off the West African coast, the sharks are circling the sleepy “chocolate islands” of Sao Tome and Principe, eager to bite off slices of billions of dollars of hoped-for oil revenues.
Matt Savinar of lifeaftertheoilcrash.net answers some questions about the theory of abiotic oil.
Henry Kissinger once quipped, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” While Kissinger has achieved a level of amorality not conceivable to most of us mere mortals, to my knowledge he has never been accused of being stupid. The recent debate over Peak Oil has certainly been laced with plenty of bitterness, but in this case the stakes are incredibly high. The reality, or lack thereof, of imminent Peak Oil directly affects nearly every person currently drawing breath on this planet.
Oil fuels 95 percent of all transportation and a significant portion of global food production. Industrial societies are dependent on a vast, steady flow of inexpensive petroleum for just about everything we make and do. Disrupt this flow, and modern society as we know it is inconceivable.
Crude oil prices set a record high Tuesday on fears that top exporter Saudi Arabia was vulnerable to terror attacks while soaring grain prices also pushed commodity price indexes back toward multiyear highs.
Today, much of the world is convinced the Bush Administration did not wage war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein because of threat from weapons of mass destruction, nor from terror dangers. Still a puzzle, however, is why Washington would risk so much in terms of relations with its allies and the entire world, to occupy Iraq. There is compelling evidence that oil and geopolitics lie at the heart of the still-hidden reasons for the military action in Iraq.
Sharp increases in the price of oil preceded four of the last five recessions.
Defense officials have recently spoken of the need for security and stability in the Gulf of Guinea, in part because of the growing number of offshore oil operations there.