Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
During months of often bitter campaigning, the U.S. presidential candidates have focused on many issues, but one that has gotten little if any attention is the problem of oil depletion, often referred to as “peak oil”; the point at which global demand for petroleum exceeds our ability to extract it.
Defying optimistic Bush administration projections, Iraq’s hobbled oil industry might be unable to beat the production capacity of Saddam Hussein’s era until sometime next year — if then, according to industry analysts.
Perhaps not in the near future, but thanks to economic trends in Asia, can $200 per-barrel crude oil really be ruled out? No, says Marc Faber. One of Asia’s best-known contrarians, the Hong Kong-based head of Marc Faber Limited has been managing money in this region for more than 20 years — $300 million at the moment.
To forestall “Operation Locust Feast,” as Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo so ominously dubbed his campaign, he demanded that the country’s leaders agree to self-determination for the aggrieved people of the Niger Delta.
The world’s supply of petroleum is finite. Demand is increasing rapidly. And discoveries of new oil fields are declining. These three trends chart a collision course for the world’s most crucial commodity and its economy. But experts disagree about when the crunch will hit. Get this: Some say seriously the peak of global oil production is close at hand.
Kuwait ‘s three oil refineries, which have an output capacity of 920,000 barrels a day, halted production due to a total power outage that hit the emirate, a Kuwait National Petroleum Co. spokesman told AFP.
China’s oil giant Sinopec Group has signed a $70 billion worth oil and natural gas deal with Iran; China’s biggest energy deal with the No. 2 OPEC producer.
Nobody disagrees that production eventually will peak, because the amount of oil in the Earth is finite. It also is clear that population increases and rapid economic growth, particularly in the United States, the world’s wealthiest nation, and China, the world’s most-populus nation, will continue to drive up demand.
With crude oil prices reaching the $50-plus per barrel mark last week, Louisiana farmers are facing an unsettling outlook for energy and other inputs as they look ahead to the 2005 growing season.
Energy production through oil and gas has already peaked and ‘depletion of resources cannot be solved just by switching over to alternative sources’ said M S Srinivasan, India’s additional secretary of the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
The U.S. “already has” a lock on Canada’s energy in the form of a stupendously dumb NAFTA agreement signed in the early 90s.
China may not have a flamboyant oil tycoon like Russia’s Yukos ex-boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky but Beijing is embroiled in a similar, albeit smaller, court battle over oil and money as the Kremlin.
