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The US total refining capacity was 17,443,492 barrels of oil/day, which yields on average, 340,148,094 gallons @19.5gallons gas/barrel of oil. The current consumption of gas in the US is 388.6 million gallons/day (as of 2006)

If those numbers are correct, we are at a 48,451,906 gallon/day shortfall of US domestic production capacity. Since no one wants a refinery in their backyard, there hasn't been a new one built since the 1970's (The last refinery built in the US was in Garyville, Louisiana, and it started up in 1976.)

So "we" as in the US, have a serious lack of refinery capacity.

Burma *does* have oil, numbnuts. If you want Western countries to go in and fight for oil, why don't you start asking the Brits, the Canadians and the Australians?

"Myanmar currently has 19 oil deposits onshore and 3 others offshore, with total estimated crude oil reserves of 3.2 bn barrels.
Since Myanmar began allowing foreign investments in 1988, it has permitted foreign companies to conduct onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration. Its major partners include companies form the UK, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and Canada."

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cns43800.htm

You didn't look hard enough. Burma does have oil and natural gas. And the Chinese, Australia, Canada and the UK are involved. http://english.people.com.cn/200701/16/eng20070116_341829.html http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cns43800.htm

Sorry; I must admit a little knowledge of (non-USA) geography is useful here. Add a little history for flavour.

There is the slight issue of natural gas & oil resources in the Caspian Sea, bordering on Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. A pipeline through Afghanistan is the shortest route to get that oil to more civilized, democracy-loving nations.

Efforts to revive the trans-Afghanistan pipeline began soon after the U.S. incursion into that country. The pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan was first discussed in the late-1990s, with a consortium led by Unocal pushing the project.

Hamed Karzai worked as a consultant for the huge US oil group Unocal, which had supported the Taleban movement and sought to construct a pipeline to transport oil and gas from the Islamic republics of Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan. He is now president in Afghanistan.

Vice President Cheney was Chairman and Chief Executive of Dallas based Halliburton Corporation, the world's largest oil field services company with multi-billion dollar contracts with oil corporations including Chevron. Halliburton's global network of investments includes projects in politically volatile areas including the Caspian Sea region. Dick Cheney was instrumental in negotiating a Caspian Sea pipeline for Chevron. The Bush Administration declared war in Afghanistan, not necessarily to combat terrorism, but to make it possible for U.S. oil interests to construct gas and oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to Pakistani harbors on the Indian Ocean

From 1989 to 1992 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was on the board of directors of Chevron, and was its main expert on Kazakhstan.

Even Bush himself is rumoured to have some connections to oil... (though never very succesfully)

China currently gets aproximately 10-12% of their power from hydro-electric, and is aassumably going to increase that once the three gorges damn goes online. Also note in the above link that types of energy production other than hydrocarbons, "thermal" in the link, are increasing at a greater rate.

That theory isn't far-fecthed. We've already done it :)

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntr41080.htm

I have read that one of the largest man made non-nuclear explosions to date was due to bad data like this.

The story goes that we let russia steal sabotaged pump designs for their oil pipeline.

more details here:
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntr41080.htm

"We'd have to wear gas masks when we went outside, because of air pollution."

You can thank American Government pollution laws for that not happening. Go to a major city in China; there, you'll DEFINITELY need gas masks to deal with pollution, especially near those "free enterprize" zones where pollution is not regulated. China has 7 of the world's most polluted cities. Proof: http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nts40287.htm

Oh and recently, Exxon-Mobil Corporation announced that peak oil will happen in 5 years. Proof: http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj0 5cavallo

Also, for a good miniature end-of-the-world scenario that happened, go read up on Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island.

It is a bad idea to use technology you do not understand. You never know what they did to it. When you create something yourself you can be sure you won't end up with the worlds largest non-nuclear explosion and fire.

They reckon on 1.7Trillion to 2.5Trillion barrels of oil total in Canada, of which 300Billion are as easily accesable as Saudi Arabian oil. Thats a lot of oil :) (source)

"There was SOME evidence, of which there has been a partial refutation, that its possible to reduce CO2 emissions to almost nothing with a highly efficient deisgn and a method (using some sort of ceramic device??? can anyone inform?)."

Why yes we can. do that.

No, Mexico's reserves are around 20th internationally; not very much.

I think they may have discovered a barrel or 180 billion of conventional oil in Canada already.

This omits the "frontier" resources such as the oil reserves found off the shore of Newfoundland and the enormous reserves in the Alberta Oil sands which, although the oil is difficult to extract, the quantities of reserves are stunning, at an estimated quantity of 1.6 trillion barrels remaining.

When you're finished being clever, an economic specialist at the American embassy wrote a very informative article on the state of Canada - U.S. energy trade relations. It can be found in .pdf form right here

Oh, they can can they? Or is this how it will be in the near future, you know, just after WMD has been finally found?

They decided to go with a GSM-based cell phone system, for example, even though it would please the US companies to go with the incompatible US standard. What does WMD (or lack thereof, rather) have to do with anything? This is all an argument about the "No War for Oil" BS. This has nothing to do with "No War for Kickbacks, and Phantom WMD" which incidentally I would agree with, though as usual hindsight is 20/20. You keep changing the argument, rather like SCO. What are you going to bring up next, minimum wage?

Yes, and Saddam could influence who the oil was sold to and in what currencies it was paid (euro)

I was talking about the oil companies, not Iraq. Every sale had to be approved by the UN, so ultimately it was they who were in control, not Iraq. Oil companies don't "make" oil, all they want is the cheapest supply of crude, either getting it out of the ground themselves when they can secure mineral rights, or buying crude from nations for as cheap as possible when they can't. I imagine the oil companies involved got sweet deals to reward them for going through the UN, otherwise they wouldn't bother. Half of the oil Iraq sold under the program was to US oil companies (some direct, some through intermediaries). That supplied 8% of US oil imports. So it wasn't a bad deal for them at all.

Iraq post-war with no more UN sanctions will have a lot more choices than they did under the sanctions. Do you actually think Iraqis are so stupid that they will give away long term mineral rights? They are not stupid, so there is no way that will happen, and the US will have little more influence there than it does in several other countries in the area. The fact that Iraqis have already influenced both the timeline and election plans is a good demonstration they know what they are doing.

According to most estimates, Iraq has more oil than Saudia-Arabia. Hard to tell after years of war and mismanagment.

What are you talking about? Go to the OPEC site and see for yourself. Of course it depends who you ask, but I have yet to see anyone say Iraq. Try to provide a link with more credibility than OPEC.

Apparently it's not really even controversial anymore among geologists. (Google for it)

I Googled. If it's not controversial, it's only because most everyone simply says its not true.

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/features/fex12752.htm

Bret Balonick, a tax accountant on loan from PricewaterhouseCoopers to teach the anti-piracy class, was arguing that some downloaders have been affected by malicious activity.

The difference between PWC and Andersen is that Andersen did it in the US. PWC did it in Russia and they got away with it (although they eventually lost their audit arrangement with the RCB. Frankly PWC, should be dismembered like Andersen.

If those thieves ever accuse my kids of stealing from the producers, I will quite happily tell them how much they conived in stealing fom the Russian people and the IMF.

Most processes for making white crude or its cousins involve three major stages.
In the first, steam, oxygen and natural gas react to create a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide called ''syngas.''
In the second stage, the syngas is converted to wax.
In the final stage, the wax is converted to one or more liquids -- diesel, jet fuel or the clear, nearly odourless white crude, which is suitable for movement through an oil pipeline. All of these products are remarkably free of troublesome pollutants like the sulphur, nitrogen and metals found in ordinary crude.

BP Exploration announced it will move forward with a pilot gas-to-liquids
(GTL) plant on the North Slope to get natural gas to market, as well as with
ARCO's gas sponsor group that is working on an in-state gas pipeline and
Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facilities. So-called "white crude" made from
GTL technology has significant environmental drawbacks, as well as
efficiency losses. GTLs produce twice as much carbon dioxide as LNGs per
unit (BTU) of energy burned.

Links:
Gas-to-liquids might be the break-through
Alaska's Legislative Truth Squad

Albright's speech on Iran-U.S. relations (March 17, 2001) Excerpt:

In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.

Moreover, during the next quarter century, the United States and the West gave sustained backing to the Shah's regime. Although it did much to develop the country economically, the Shah's government also brutally repressed political dissent.

As President Clinton has said, the United States must bear its fair share of responsibility for the problems that have arisen in U.S.-Iranian relations. Even in more recent years, aspects of U.S. policy toward Iraq during its conflict with Iran appear now to have been regrettably shortsighted, especially in light of our subsequent experiences with Saddam Hussein.

New York Times special report on the events.

If the above two do not make your blood boil, then you are not an American and you can go back to whatever European country you or your ancestors came from.