[Vision2020] Ga$oline Price$

Thu May 3 19:38:27 PDT 2007

All-

First, though this will be a very unpopular view, I think gas is too cheap,
even at $3.20 a gallon.  It should be over 5 dollars a gallon, in my
opinion, to force conservation and changes in technology to address both
global warming and the eventual depletion of fossil fuels, both massive
problems that are not being addressed substantively.

But back to why the USA needs to control Middle East oil supplies, my post
forwarded below does not really make the case...

If all oil currently used by the USA was sourced from Canada, the USA would
still have overwhelming reasons to use force to secure Middle East oil:

The world market for oil sets the price, and Canadian oil would become much
more expensive if turmoil in the Middle East created doubt about or a
reduction in that oil supply, which is to some extent happening now given
the mess in Iraq.

US allies that are integrated into the global economy, and thus the economy
of the USA, rely on Middle East oil supplies, so a disruption in these
supplies can damage the US economy, even if the US does not directly rely on
this source for oil.

The vast oil resources of the Middle East might come under the control of
unfriendly regimes, as has already happened with Iran.  The first Gulf War
against Iraq was fought in part to protect US ally Saudi Arabia's vast oil
resources from being threatened by Iraq.  The fact that the Saudi royal
family rules as a human rights denying dictatorship appears to receive scant
focus in US media political propaganda, as long as the cozy economic
relationship between the US and the Saudi royal family continues,
exemplified by Saudi Prince Bandar "Bush" and the close to a trillion
dollars that Saudis have invested in the US economy

I wonder, given that the barbarity of the beheadings carried out in Iraq
during the Iraq war have received a lot of media attention, why do we almost
never hear in the US media of the beheadings in Saudi Arabia carried out
under the brutal reign of the Saudi royal family, with their well known use
of torture and denial of basic rights, their treatment of women as second
class citizens?

Anyway, if Middle East oil supplies were controlled mostly by Islamic
regimes unfriendly to the West, this could create massive problems if this
resource were used as an economic weapon against Western economies.  This
alone is a sufficient reason for the policeman of the world, the USA, to use
its military force to ensure that the oil supplies in the Middle East flow
to the West, and also Japan, China and India, nations now becoming more and
more integrated into the global economy with US dependence on this
multinational system.

Who now holds most of the US government debt?  Japan and China.

Of course it goes without saying that part of the reason gas prices are
overall so much higher now than just a few years ago is pressure on the
global oil markets from increasing consumption of oil in the developing
world, especially China and India.  Not to forget, despite the claims from
Exxon/Mobil's CEO that they are not gouging the public at the pump, I just
can't buy that when Exxon/Mobil has a quarterly profit greater than any
corporation in the history of the world, as recently happened, that this
occurred with no connection to "gouging" at the pump.

A free market lassie faire advocate might reply: If the public quit buying
so much gas, the price would go down...Basic market economics 100, yes?

Though I think the Bush Presidency is a disaster, President Bush made one
statement that I give him credit for getting right:  We are addicted to
oil.  And like an addict, it appears the public will pay through the nose to
keep their addiction going, even when they think they are being "gouged."

If everyone dramatically reduced their consumption of gas, the price
probably would go down...At least for a short time.

Ted Moffett

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>
Date: May 3, 2007 1:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Ga$oline Price$
To: Mark Solomon <msolomon at moscow.com>
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com

Mark et. al.

Assuming those doing long term planning for securing world oil resources
have done their homework, which they have, and they are arrogant enough to
believe that the USA and it allies, especially Great Britain, should control
these resources, via military force if necessary, it does not matter what
are the current dominant sources of oil.  Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran,
and other states in this region, remain the most oil rich area of the world,
given current cheaply recoverable oil.  For long term planning to control
this oil rich region, meaning fifty to one hundred years out, the fact that
oil is now coming from other oil rich states is not critical.  The big oil
prize remains the Middle East.  I will not list the billions of barrels of
oil resources that indicate the Middle East remains the long term dominant
source of easily recoverable oil, because everyone knows this.  Canada is a
huge oil resource, now second to Saudi Arabia in listed recoverable oil, but
still does not equal the oil resources of the Middle East, even when
combined with Mexico and Venezuela, and Canada's oil sands are not as cheap
to develop as many Middle East oil sources.  Iraq's reserves are huge and of
high quality.  Cost is king.  That is why coal sourced electricity,
to switch to the specter of another fossil fuel energy source, of which the
USA has the largest reserves of any nation, will remain dominant over all
other Green sources, till mitigating factors stop coal's cheap energy
expansion, whether it be via mandated CO2 sequestration, CO2 penalties
or stringent controls over other atmospheric or environmental damages from
coal.  Have you seen the demolished mountains in the Appalachians do to coal
mining?  Looks like they were nuked!

We can eventually look forward, however, to the raping of Wyoming, Utah and
Colorado, to develop the oil shale deposits in the USA, though this
currently is a more expensive and environmentally controversial process,
assuming we do not find other technologies or sources of energy to fuel our
economy and lifestyle, given the huge amount of oil to be extracted, and the
obvious blindness of the human race to the foolishness of our out of control
domination of the world of nature.  The chart below shows the USA has a huge
oil shale potential (can you say "Global Warming?"  I knew you could!):

Read on, fearless reader, in our Brave New World, at United States "Proved
Recoverable Reserves" for oil shale.  Do I read this chart wrong when it
seems to indicate 60,000 to 80,000 million tons of recoverable oil from oil
shale in the USA?  I must be misinterpreting this data!  Or it must be
wrong!

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/ser/shale/shale.asp

  *

Table 3.1 Oil shale: resources, reserves and production at end-1999
*

*Excel File *<http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/ser/shale/excel_files/shale_3_1.xls>
*

Recovery method
* *

Proved amount in place
* *

Proved recoverable reserves
* *

Average yield of oil
* *

Estimated additional reserves
* *

Production in 1999
* *

* *

* *

million tonnes (shale)
* *

million tonnes (oil)
* *

kg oil/ tonne
* *

million tonnes (oil)
* *

thousand tonnes (oil)
* *

Africa
* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

*

Morocco

surface

12 300

500

50 - 64

5 400

South Africa

in-situ

73

10

 *

North America
* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

*

United States of America

surface

3 340 000

60 000 - 80 000

57

62 000

 *

South America
* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

*

Brazil

surface

70

9 646

195
 *

Asia
* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

*

Thailand

in-situ

18 668

810

50

Turkey

surface

1 640

269

56

 *

Europe
* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

*

Albania

surface

6

5

Estonia

surface

590

167

151

in-situ

910

Ukraine

in-situ

2 674

300

126

6 200

 *

Middle East
* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

*

Israel

surface

15 360

600

62

Jordan

surface

40 000

4 000

100

20 000

 *

Oceania
* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

*

Australia

in-situ

32 400

1 725

53

35 260

5
 *

Notes:
*

1. Generally the data shown above are those reported by WEC Member
Committees in 2000/2001
 2. The data for Albania, Brazil, Israel, South Africa and Ukraine are those
reported by WEC Member Committees for SER 1998  3. The data thus constitute
a sample, reflecting the information available in particular countries: they
should not be considered as complete, or necessarily representative of the
situation in each region. For this reason, regional and global aggregates
have not been computed

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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