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http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/

"1) Impose some centralized authority to control our growth and resource consumption."

You just paraphrased the OPEC mission statement:

"OPEC's mission is to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of Member Countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital to those investing in the petroleum industry." http://www.opec.org/home/

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries makes the prices (via altering supply), U.S. oil companies ride the wave.
It's kind of like blaming RC Cola for a rise in soda prices. They'll get increased profits as they raise to match Coke and Pepsi, but they didn't start the rise.

For those of you who do not know what a ration is, you get a given a book containing a limited number of coupons, usually by a government, but the current crop of Western Governments don't know the meaning of the word 'govern', so we have to look elsewhere for the coupon issuing authority. As well as parting with money you have to give the product vendor the number of coupons corresponding to the volume of product purchased.

Coupon book empty? So sorry, no more product!

Works wonderfully for food, gas, energy, and indeed products of all kinds. The result is healthy and self reliant communities, to say nothing of a World in which we can continue to live for many generations. Otherwise we face a Venusian future.

"C in OPEC stands for cartel" - the OPEC has a different opinion: http://www.opec.org/home They think it stands for "Countries". It's still a cartel though.

Quote:
Yes. Forces of the universe called the laws of physics.

Reply:
I can't believe a slashdotter could be this naive.
Imagine this: starting from tommorow, we get a cold fusion reactor. Remember "Chain reaction"? - for you, an explanation, a glass of water could power new york for 2 weeks. Ok, so we got a working cold fusion reactor. Let's make the schematics and all R&D available for free on the Internet. OPEC would not exist within a YEAR. How many jobs would be obsolete? 1 mil? 2? maybe 20-30? Nevertheless, the world is depending on OIL. Politics are DEPENDING on OIL. Just remember that one guy invented a tire that couldn't be torn. How many lives would be saved? How many companies would go bankrupt? How many jobs lost? So please, don't be so naive.

oil as a fuel, won't out last the decade i think

Where in hell did you get this figure from?? Petroleum is a naturally occuring substance (you're not manufacturing it in your parents basement, are you??). http://www.opec.org/library/FAQs/CrudeOil/q1.htm

Do you have any reason to believe that the earth has suddenly stopped producing oil???

you think you have high prices in the USA?

Quit whining about petrol prices! AFAIAC (As far as I am concerned), the states, and a few other countries have sent soldiers to the middle east to ensure they have all the oil they can use. Those soldiers are paying the ultimate price. Besides, its not like they aren't just pumping the oil out of the ground.

mellow out

...hey, there's a car on the tracks! quick, start the breaks...

"It's worse than many industries, because they're all selling essentially the same thing. They'll push particular blends and additives, but it really comes down to the same product, so it's really down to whoever can sell it the cheapest."

i think that you're missing something. it is not in these companies best interest to compete. there are only a few major oil companies (http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/ll/120mkt.html) that control basically all of the market. what is the incentive to compete? you assume that these companies are operating on some kind of free market model, but OIL'S NOT A FREE MARKET!
their entire INDUSTRY is based on price fixing! (http://www.opec.org/home/). why compete when you can price fix? if businesses can price fix, they do. who is going to stop all of them from colluding and artificially raising prices? the market? the market doesn't have a choice. the government? no, they bought it a few decades back.

extortion
n.

See OPEC.

For information's sake on the issue of oil availability from the OPEC faq. "Is the world running out of oil?

Oil is a limited resource, so it may eventually run out, although not for many years to come. OPEC's oil reserves are sufficient to last another 80 years at the current rate of production, while non-OPEC oil producers' reserves might last less than 20 years. The worldwide demand for oil is rising and OPEC is expected to be an increasingly important source of that oil.

If we manage our resources well, use the oil efficiently and develop new fields, then our oil reserves should last for many more generations to come."

1. The Ohio Program Evaluator's Group?
2. Our Program for the Eradication of Graffiti?
3. The Oregon Public Entities Group?
4. Opperman-OPEG?
5. A two-time Olympian sprinter from Ghana?
6. The New Zealand Organic Products Export Group?
7. The Open Performance Evaluation Group?

It's gotta be one of these: surely it's not possible for someone to actually misspell OPEC twice in one posting!

One of the first sources quoted by the reviewer is the International Energy Agency, a forum for 26 industrialized countries. For those wo want to tap deeper there are a lot more - and diverse - statistics out there. For example the IEA's statistics on world consumption vs reserves are different from those of OPEC, and even different from state-run BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, which I consider more moderate than either of the two previous sources. The US Energy Information Agency site is also very comprehensive. Check out their Country Profiles section for comprehensive info on oil operations the world over.

http://www.energyspot.org

you mean these guys?

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.

The price of oil is set by OPEC. Invading Iraq will not change the price of the oil. The oil companies will not "get it at cost".

The oppression in the countries you mentioned is the result of ethnic hatreds that run much deeper than removing the ruler. They are a different situation than Iraq. There is no distinct small group of people who could be removed to improve the situation.

Of course the Iraqis are not free today, the job is not done. If the U.S. were to leave today we would then be blamed for leaving too early and not ensuring we leave a stable government. A few weeks ago, when people thought the main war was going to take much longer, the talk was that the U.S. would not stay long enough to finish the job. The fact is the U.S. will be blamed no matter what we do.

Finally, I suppose next you will tell me the U.S. went to Afghanistan for the oil? No, it was a similar situation where a small group of people who could be removed were oppressing the majority.

3.14159

OPEC is considering trading oil in Euros rather than Dollars. This would reduce the need for many firms and countries to hold dollars, and instead increase their need to hold euros. Combine that with the rapidly dropping value of the dollar and you'll realize that the dollar isn't keeping its value, and very well might plummet in value in the near future. There are even rumors and signs that the current American administration is willing to accept a lower valued dollar compared to other currencies.

The US already attempted a "regime change" in Venezuela this year. This "regime change" was an effort to install a leader that would privatize Venezuela's oil industry. Privatization would allow foreign investors to manipulate the price of oil. Venezuela is an OPEC country so this would have a world-wide effect (imagine Enron on a global scale). If I remember correctly Venezuela broke the oil embargo in the 70's.

To bring us back on topic... The US government does a lot of awful things like this that the people of the US would not approve of. There is no reason a democratic government should be overthrowing other governments. This war, like the war on drugs, is a racket and a sham.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about 9/11. All we can do is continue to search for answers to the questions of who stood down that day and who is making money off this.

Speaking of lists....

So many people talk about "I'm never buying another CD until this crap stops", but I have yet to see the internet being used for a higher-purpose:

Making lists of both record publishers who pay into RIAA, and record publishers who do not. I probably wouldn't stop purchasing CDs from Sony Discos or BMG, but I would certainly give more weight to Joe's Record Maker records if I knew that Joe's record sales didn't buy protection from the RIAA. After all, RIAA is nothing really different from OPEC -- a seller's syndicate, not a government demanded tax, like some states have for insurance.