Elaine Meinel Supkis
Here is a collection of energy news stories from this week: obviously, the biggest oil pumping nations are all preparing for this to end which is why oil-rich Russia is helping other oil-rich nations to build nuclear power plants and develop better weapons systems. And other writers try to pretend there is endless oil, magic oil that comes from deep inside the earth.
RIYADH - Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that Moscow would consider helping Saudi Arabia with a possible atomic energy programme and that he hoped to build stronger ties with Muslim countries."Russia is willing to look into cooperation opportunities in the area of atomic energy," Putin told Saudi businessmen, speaking through an Arabic interpreter.
Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, said in December they had ordered a study on a possible joint civil atomic programme.
The oil kings and sheiks in the Middle East are edging away from the USA/UK/Israeli Axis. As Israel sneaks in more and more 'outposts' deep inside Palestinian West Bank properties, a de-facto invasion they hope no one will notice, as the USA loses its grip on Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan where the Taliban and al Qaeda are rising in power and reach---just this week, a suicide bomber in Pakistan blew up a courtroom---bombs are going off in Arab sectors of Iran and all over Iraq, of course, as well as Turkey which is freaking out over all this, they used to run all these regions and know well, what is in store for us all as it all spirals out of control.
The Israeli sector of the Axis doesn't want any neighbors even 1,000 miles away, from getting any sort of nuclear power or nuclear arms. To prevent this, they hope to goad the USA/UK sectors of this axis into attacking or refusing to sell equipment to any Muslims at all, anywhere.
This has opened up markets for Russia. Israel doesn't control Russia's government although they heartily wish they could. Saudi Arabia is now seeking a three-way alliance situation whereby they can play Russia off of Europe and the USA. It is their only hope to stay the hands and daggers of revolutionary reactionaries.
Many countries, Saudi Arabia in particular, have discovered oil fields in the past but have never developed them because of their fear of creating excess capacity.No one knows how much oil there is. But all the hints we have—for example surveys made the U.S. Geological Survey—indicate that the world still has really huge oil resources in its soil. The problem is that in order to bring this oil onstream, you need to be sure what the price of oil will be in the future—so you need to know how long [current] consumption levels will remain.
This attempt at fooling people about the real meaning of the Hubbert Oil Peak is pure snake-oil. One of the gravest features of the Hubbert Peak is not that oil will suddenly disappear, the last uses of oil will go very slowly indeed due to its high cost! Namely, instead of many millions of cars happily tooling around, gay as can be, there will only be a small handful of cars owned by the super-powerful while the rest of us walk or pull carts with the lucky ones using horses.
Then, the rate of extraction will plummet. No millions of barrels a day, it will be thousands of barrels a week! At that rate, the oil will last a long, long time. Just none of us will be allowed to use it.
The most effective way to decrease our dependence on oil is to change our habits. We waste a lot of energy because we are so addicted to cheap oil.American people consume 26 barrels of oil per person each year. That's down from the peak of per capita consumption of oil—in 1978 each American consumed 32 or 33 barrels per year.
Yet an American still consumes more than twice what a European consumes (less than 13 barrels per year), and we in Europe also waste a lot of oil.
The Chinese consume about 1.7 barrels per person each year, and only about 8 percent of the global demand. My preoccupation is not how much China will consume but how we can reduce the foolish consumption of the Westerners.
We still debate the issue, 'Is the Hubbert Oil Peak today or is it a few years from now?' But seriously, it is coming rapidly due to rising world populations, rising use of oil by previously non-oil using populations so that the happy days of Americans using endless energy with a lah-de-dah attitude are going to end. Are ending.
Unlike the previous three sudden price hikes of oil caused by either boycotts, wars or both, this one is due to the road rising to the top of the mountain, we will go down the other side after record amounts of oil are pumped.
And the amount of oil being pumped continues to climb even as some of the world's greatest oil fields are showing dangerous signs of exhaustion. Many nay-sayers love to point to this or that find or field and crow, 'There is no Hubbert Oil Peak!' But that is just childish: the peak occurs silently. The statistics won't show up instantly, only one stat will: the price of oil will begin to climb.
The world was not at that peak in 1980 nor 1970. But here in the USA, we hit that peak back then despite the Alaska oil discoveries. For even with that pouring oil into the system, collectively, we outstripped our oil production vis a vis our use, long ago which is why our trade deficit is so terrible now.
If we had tons of oil pouring into the system, why would average use be dropping and still the price is rising? And the Chinese: if they use one tenth of our oil per capita, this means only they are collectively using as much as we are! Which is why the peak is looming in the near future: the geology and history of life on this planet can't support 2 Americas at once!
Someone has to cut back drastically.
Of course, energy rates are now climbing the stairs to heaven.
Utility rates had been capped in Illinois for 10 years, but the state agreed last year to raise them as part of an effort to open up its electricity markets to competition. Maryland, New Jersey and a half dozen other states are also removing caps. But residents in this part of Illinois are seeing some of the biggest rate spikes in the country — in some cases, increases of 100 percent to 200 percent.The higher rates are touching off a fresh round of national debate over unleashing competitive forces on traditionally regulated electricity markets. Opening up the markets was supposed to lead to savings for consumers. But that did not turn out as regulators predicted. The anticipated competition among energy suppliers never fully emerged as natural gas prices more than doubled in the last decade.
Eventually, when most people will be too poor to buy any energy of any sort and sink to third world status here (when China destroys the value of the cheap dollar), there will be plenty of energy available for those lucky few who have money. Our ancetors had to live penny to penny and this will be true again as a grinding depression makes copper coins valuable again. In the Middle Ages, servants working in castles were paid in small change once a year! They could buy a few things but even coats and shoes had to be provided by their lords because they couldn't shop for them!
If the opening paragraph of this report started by claiming that completely unlimited crude oil reserves exist inside planet earth, readers might be tempted to regard the entire text as preposterous ghostwriting for a novelist like Frederick Forsyth. If the report then went on to claim that the Russians have exploited this stunning reality for nearly thirty years, right under the largely unwitting noses of western intelligence, readers could be excused for mistaking the author for a lunatic, or perhaps as a front for spy novelist John le Carré. The problem here is that unlimited oil reserves do exist inside planet earth, and the Russians long ago developed the advanced technology necessary to recover these unlimited oil reserves in an efficient and timely manner.
Anyone who pitches a story that claims 'unlimite oil reserves' in it is an obvious lie. First, the earth isn't limitless on any level at all. It is a finite system just as our sun is finite, our galaxy is finite and the universe itself is finite. Only Lady Luck is infinite.
So why do these snake oil men claim energy is limitless? I suppose, selling this sort of garbage might make them popular with desperate readers who also believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. The need to believe there are these magical creatures who will shower goodies upon us forever and ever is a deep human desire that springs from our Insula which vividly remembers the joys of infancy when milk and honey literally pours out, effortlessly. All one has to do is squall a little bit and mommy comes to the rescue.
The bitter memories of when she was too busy or had no milk to give are erased by the growing mind that doesn't want to clutter up the memory banks with unhappy outcomes. Of course, all this drives us insane which is why Freud liked to talk about our infantile needs so much. But alas, psychiatrists have literally thrown the baby out with the bath water and no one talks about infantile irrationalities anymore.
But we are just that. And this refusal to face the facts is going to end badly. As I often like to point out. There is no magic here. Harsh reality is: no energy system is open-ended. And all will end in open warfare if we are crazy enough.
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