Lifting the Oil Curse
Oil discoveries provide resources to some low-income countries on a scale that dwarfs aid. Yet their effects have often been adverse.
Oil discoveries provide resources to some low-income countries on a scale that dwarfs aid. Yet their effects have often been adverse.
In Iraq, to find out how the soldiers feel about the war and the Bush administration, you only need to read the walls inside the latrines.
If you think you’re paying too much at the petrol bowser now, brace yourself. An expert from one of the most oil-rich countries in the world says the price per litre could soon more than double, and he says that’s his conservative estimate.
Certainly the leaders of both American political parties know about Peak Oil, including Kerry/Edwards, yet public discussion is off the table.
Is it possible that we are about to run short of the source of a third of the world’s energy?
Asia’s economies have been able to withstand this year’s surge in oil prices but the relentless climb is starting to take its toll and high growth rates are now in jeopardy, analysts said.
Mark Braly reports from the German Government’s Renewables 2004 conference in Bonn, that “something else, not new but more urgently felt, was in the air at the conference. The expert consensus now holds that the peak of world oil production is near – if it has not already happened.”
Surprise! We’re in the midst of an oil shock and its impact could be as nasty as the first three, writes David Potts.
Although the former Soviet Union has pumped crude for years, only recently has Russia emerged as the world’s second-biggest oil exporter and — if the Bush administration has its way — a potentially important new supplier of both oil and gas to the United States. Russia’s crude oil production rivals that of Saudi Arabia, and analysts say its reserves could provide the output answer for the United States, China, South Korea and Japan, which have grown increasingly wary of their dependence on producers in the Middle East.
No oil company wants to be the first to face stock market meltdown by announcing their production is in decline, no government wants to be voted out for such bad news.
One expert has picked an Armageddon date for the peak of oil production: Thanksgiving 2005. The slow decline in world supplies will start then.
As the oil price rose to a new high of more than $44 a barrel this week, amid concerns about supply, OPEC’s president said the cartel was unable to pump more oil and thus bring down the price. He later contradicted these comments, but observers remain sceptical about OPEC’s ability to turn on more taps.