Leaked Cables Reveal US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

Mr.Intel writes with this excerpt from a UPI report which may interest those of you with cars, electricity, items made of plastic, etc: "Estimates of oil reserves in Saudi Arabia are overstated, meaning crude output could peak within the next decade, leaked US diplomatic cables reveal. Washington fears Saudi Arabia overestimated its oil reserves by as much as 40 percent and the kingdom can't keep enough oil flowing to control prices, US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and published by The Guardian newspaper in London reveal."

Comments

Thank goodness for Canada

[thomasdz]

Canada, the 51st state, has all the oil the US needs.... all you need to do is invade^H^H^H^H^H^H ask

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[jpmorgan]

To quote Dogbert, your comment more or less says "Hey everyone, I don't understand what fungible means."

It's unlikely that much Saudi Arabian crude ends up in your gas tank. Your car is filled mostly from Gulf, Venezuelan and yes, Canadian crude. But it's still an international market, and a shortage of Saudi Arabian crude will drive up prices everywhere around the world, as European oil companies start looking to buy from elsewhere to make up for the shortfall.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Back off, get your own oilsands!

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[zAPPzAPP]

Hence the "invade" part, to get it cheaper...

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Monkeedude1212]

But the idea was that the US would no longer need to purchase it's oil... (assuming the states is invading and taking control or Canadians are just that nice) Hence prices no longer matter to the US. Essentially if the Demand for oil by the US is met by the supply the US has, the prices only really go up for everyone else who loses out.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[plopez]

As long as you don't count the "externalized" costs. Besides, the oil revenue the US was counting on from Iraq to pay for the invasion never materialized.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[plopez]

Don't forget Mexico. Which is troublesome due to the growing unrest there.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[MightyMartian]

But that would only really work if the above-mentioned oil producing states basically agreed not to sell to anyone else, thus removing themselves from the global oil market. I can't imagine the oil companies in those countries wanting to do that, nor can I imagine the governments, who profit from it as well, cutting themselves off at the knees just so you can get cheap prices at the pump.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[spun]

You do not get cheaper oil by invading unless you are a well-connected oil company executive. Do you really think a nation invades another nation so the average guy on the street can have cheaper resources?

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[zAPPzAPP]

Well, that's the whole "blood for oil" discussion all over again.

But if you read the grossly huge number, that tells us the cost of that war, you need to remember, that a big chunk of this money went right into the US economy.
This makes a huge difference to straight out paying another country for resources. That money is gone for good (unless you make them buy your weapons and other goods with it, then you get a bit of it back).

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Yes, we have all seen plenty of evidence for that.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

According to Pickens, the US only consumes 10% of the middle east's oil.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[future assassin]

Not if we poison the water ways up here. By the time you get here they'll have died from death.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[jdpars]

Hadn't thought about where the cost of the war was going. Does anyone have hard data on that? I'd be interested to see.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

Hence the "I have no clue how expensive warfare actually is."

People who say the US invaded Iraq for cheaper oil are completely out of touch with the most basic facts of the cost of war. Not to mention the volume of oil consumed and corresponding economic pressures, not to mention the price at the pump as a result of the increased demand. The US military, at peace time, is one of the world's largest consumers of oil. The gap grows tremendously when they are at war.

Even if the war has been over and all troops came on GW' carrier flag day, it would have taken decades to make back a return on the "war investment." And even at that time, bringing the troops home was literally impossible. Such statements have NEVER made sense. Not one bit. But I guess its fun to say if you just want meaningless ammunition to throw at politicians. After all, most other people don't know any better either.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[afidel]

Crude isn't completely fungible, light sweet crude is but that's not the majority of current crude production. For instance all the saber rattling Venezuela was making a couple years about cutting off the US was pure bluff, no other consumer has enough refining capacity for their particular kind of sour crude and so the only thing cutting off the US would have accomplished was a complete collapse of their economy.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[nelsonal]

Most of the cost is to US servicepeople (pay for reserve/guard units called up, extra duty pay for actives, hazard pay etc). The rest is the cost of materials, the US is still the largest arms dealer in the world, and most of our military equipment is US made, the main imported product used would be oil/gas.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[h4rr4r]

Those who paid for the invasion, are not the same as those who stand to benefit. See this is a nice way to get the public to pay for something you want. This works quite well if you are selling guns, airplanes or if you own an oil company. No ROI is needed since this is far more about getting someone else to pay your bills then any investment.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Hadn't thought about where the cost of the war was going. Does anyone have hard data on that? I'd be interested to see.

You know the handful of defense contractors and consultancies that had close ties to top Bush administration officials? Yeah, the ones who had the most to gain from an invasion of Iraq? A large chunk of it went to them in one way or another.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[spun]

Not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing here. Do you think we have plenty of evidence that wars have resulted in cheaper resources for the average guy? I've sure never seen it happen. War profits never go to the man on Main Street, they go to the man on Wall Street.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[hedwards]

That's because we get the a majority of our oil from Canada. Top 7 suppliers of oil to the US

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the world, US consumes 25+% of the world production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Oil_consumption
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Sooooo, does it matter if oil comes from middle east or elsewhere? Total world consumption has to come from somewhere, and a large part of that is middle east. And US eats 25+% of world consumption - one nation. Now, I'm not certain where China will get it's 12+mbpd that it needs when more chineese will drive cars. Hell, if China consumed as much oil per capita as US, it would need at least another 40 mbpd - that's 50-60% of total world consumption, just to reach on par with US!!!! What magic place will that come from??

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[MarkvW]

We invaded Iraq for stability in Earth's largest oil-producing region. I can understand and respect the point of view that we didn't invade Iraq for "CHEAPER oil," but it cannot be fairly disputed that we invaded Iraq for oil. Either that, or we engaged in war for altruistic purposes (which I am not prepared to believe).

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[MarkvW]

You hit the nail on the head. The military gets a cash infusion, multinational oil companies get protected, and the price of oil is stabilized. And the US taxpayer foots the bill.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[rolfwind]

The question, of course, is not how much oil Canada has, but how easy it is to extract and process.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[ColdWetDog]

they'll have died from death

Keep going. How else would this happen?

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

Ya I know - bad for to reply to yourself...but I wanted to add some more detail.

Guided artillery - $35,000 per shell
JDAM - $10,000 each, plus the actual bomb .50 cal round - roughly $1.50 each
556 round - roughly $0.50 each
762 round - roughly $0.70 each
hand grenade - roughly $30 each
Apache helicopter - roughly $16-17 million each (lost several)
M1A1 tank - roughly $4.5 million each (we've lost several)
plus lots of other vehicles and aircraft
cruise missile - $0.5 million each
hellfire missile - roughly $72,000 each
other various missile - $5,000 - $200,000 each
artillery shell - roughly $1500 each

And those numbers completely ignore per troop cost, transport, refits on equipment, general maintenance, fuel consumption, food and general supplies.

An Apache, for example, costs roughly $5000/hr to operate and then requires 3.5 hours of maintenance for every hour flown. The maintenance, excluding parts, is several thousand per hour.

You can imagine the numbers get astronomical extremely quickly. Simply put, unless you plan on an imperialistic expansion, like what England used to do, whereby you completely oppress the people and rape the land for several decades, it is all but impossible for war to ever become cost effective.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

I personally believe we invaded for long term regional stability and in altruistic hope of bringing democracy. Democracy in of itself brings stability, better human rights and economic expansion. All of which are good for the economy (consumers at some point), long term oil price stability, and best of all, it can keep terrorism and extremists suppressed - or at worst, contained. Furthermore, it gives countries like Iran and Syria pause.

Completely ignoring oil, there is a literal laundry list of reasons to be there which directly and/or indirectly benefit the US (and other countries) for decades and potentially centuries to come.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[C_amiga_fan]

No need to invade. We'll just send an open invitation to the Western Provinces - "How would you like to become out 51st through 55th States?"

I know many Canadians in the west who think they are largely ignored by Ottawa (which favors the east), and would be better off in the US. For one thing: They'd gain more power (a voice in the Senate equal to more-populous states).

Please note - I'm not saying I agree with those Western canadians; just repeating what I've heard them say.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[elrous0]

Saying Canada has all the oil we need is kind of like saying that the ocean has all the drinking water we need. Oil sands have to be processed so much that it's unlikely that they'll ever be a substitute for the pure thing.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got that backwards. Canada invaded the US ages ago. Their invasion force consisted of hot actresses, comedians and maple syrup, so nobody really noticed.
I'm sure the US will help clean up Canada's oily sand.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Fujisawa Sensei]

But Bush II, said that would cover the cost of the war!

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

Sooooo, does it matter if oil comes from middle east or elsewhere? Total world consumption has to come from somewhere

Does it matter than 10% is funding a disproportionate amount of tyranny and terrorists alike? Last I heard, Canada isn't working overtime to brainwash their masses to murder US citizens.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[arivanov]

You are missing the major expense.

Airframes, engines, etc all have liimited resource. A fighter jet flight hour costs several hundred thousands of dollars in maintenance and depreciation. An average tank needs a partial overhaul after less than 1000 km (which it can easily clock in no time) and a major overhaul after a few more thousands. And so on...

It is not the munitions shot or the equipment lost which is the major expense. It is just having it out there which is clocking the crazy money.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Arguably, there was a period where that experiment was tried: Much of the early European colonial activity took place under the auspices of some combination of the Mercantilist theory that the "national wealth" had to be enhanced by generating trade surpluses and the age-old 'conquest theory of acquisition' that you could, in fact, conquer cheaply enough to usefully shift the costs of your consumption onto other people.

However, the nations that undertook it proved(with varying degrees of tenacity) that the theory was false. Even by the time the US was founded, the less jingoistic Brits were getting tired of paying very high taxes for the privilege of having an empire upon which the sun never set. Unless you can conquer on the very, very, cheap, plunder turns out to be a false economy(obviously so for the plundered, less obviously; but still so, for the people of the plundering nation. A few well-placed individual plunderers make out like bandits; but everybody else is effectively subsidizing them).

The economic success or failure of interventions to secure favorable trade positions are somewhat less clear, and thus have continued to the present day; but straight (pulled verbatim from a bumper sticker actually seen in the wild) "Kick their ass, take their gas" economics just don't work out.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[h4rr4r]

Unless Hugo was smart enough to build his own refinery. Then he could convert that sour crude to a far more salable product.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[rfc1394]

The question, of course, is not how much oil Canada has, but how easy it is to extract and process.

I said this here in an AC posting because I didn't check that I was logged on, but it fits:

I read this years ago from some website that talked about "peak oil" and they didn't need Wikileaks to mention it; in fact it was interesting in that it might even have said basically the same thing, that Saudi Arabia is overstating its reserves by 40%. I'm not even an expert on oil, and in my own blog from more than three years ago, I wrote:

the amount of predicted reserves for some of the OPEC countries might simply be total fiction, accounting hocus-pocus where they count proven reserves as well as the net amount of oil that supposedly could be removed if all possible oil were obtainable. And as anyone who has ever tried to get the last drops of a milkshake by a straw out of a glass would realize, even I know that 100% recovery of all reserves isn't possible.

Maybe the question instead is, how soon does the U.S. decide Canada's oil is too valuable to let the Canucks keep it and propose some sort of arrangement where Canada becomes the next state or five states or something similar? If Quebec ever gets what it wants - what South Sudan just got, independence - I wouldn't be surprised to see something like a U.S./Canada merger.

The original Articles of Confederation, the founding document that was defacto replaced by the Constitution of the United States, gave Canada the automatic right to become a state if it wanted to.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

You are missing the major expense.

Airframes, engines, etc all have liimited resource.

I thought I covered that with:

And those numbers completely ignore per troop cost, transport, refits on equipment, general maintenance, fuel consumption, food and general supplies.

But fair enough...

It is not the munitions shot or the equipment lost which is the major expense. It is just having it out there which is clocking the crazy money.

I thought I was illustrating that with the Apache example where I said,

An Apache, for example, costs roughly $5000/hr to operate and then requires 3.5 hours of maintenance for every hour flown. The maintenance, excluding parts, is several thousand per hour.

But again, fair enough. Modern war is extremely expensive. Just deploying a force as large as the US currently does is enough to bankrupt many smaller nations. The numbers get huge quickly. And massive increases in oil consumption always follows any wartime deployment - especially given the US is one of the largest consumers of oil even during peace time.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying at market prices is probably cheaper than an invasion. Do you have any idea how costly it would be to invade a country simply to secure its oil supplies?

Oh, right.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[h4rr4r]

I suggest we trade them the mid-west or the south east. We get to take the good provinces, I mean eastern ones, excepting of course those frenchies.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Monkeedude1212]

But that would only really work if the above-mentioned oil producing states basically agreed not to sell to anyone else

Which is the whole idea of the States invading and taking control...

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Death. Complications may include reduced heart rate, trouble breathing, and irritable bowel. If you have trouble affording this treatment, Astro Zenica can help.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[peragrin]

The problem is the USA has a long history of propping up fake democracies in order to keep a region stable.

Murbak has kept egypt stable However he is about as democratically elected as Kim Jun Il.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[rfc1394]

Saying Canada has all the oil we need is kind of like saying that the ocean has all the drinking water we need.

Well, it does, it just costs three times as much to desalinate seawater as to use freshwater to begin with. But I've never really understood the issue. We're talking $3 per 1,000 gallons instead of $1; if we tripled the price of water in the west, the only people who would notice are large users. But then again, I suspect that's the whole point, in that most of the cost of processing water is to handle industrial and agricultural uses; residential and urban commercial use of water is probably not that significant and usually not that price sensitive. When your water bill runs $20 every three months, if it's now $60, you groan and pay it, but it's usually not a huge hardship. When your water bill goes from $2000 a month to $6000, you might just notice. I had a running gag with a dear friend, our next door neighbor mentioning how the water company had to raise prices and now water was costing us $0.0016 per gallon instead of $0.0012. That means for a household using, say, 100 gallons of water a day, the bill was going up by $4 a month.

Oil sands have to be processed so much that it's unlikely that they'll ever be a substitute for the pure thing.

When the real thing costs twice or three times as much as oil sands, then they will. Cost can be a big impetus for change. A number of places have gone to Open Source because of the upgrade treadmill, the excessive costs for licensing of proprietary software, and the lack of BSA audits if you aren't infested by the Microsoft disease. (This is the obligatory Microsoft bashing quote that by law has to appear somewhere in a Slashdot thread.)

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[lgw]

This was well researched during the Reagan years. Money spent on defense does less to stimulate the economy than other government spending, which in turn does less than private spending, but it's not a huge difference. And defense spending tends to be better for long-term technology growth than spending in most other sectors.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[afidel]

There's no international capacity to ship refined gasoline.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[melikamp]

This is certainly true if you are concerned with the well-being of all main-street guys, in all the countries involved, but probably has exceptions if you disregard all but the winners.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[sourcerror]

In ancient times it was so. Not sure about today.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[PingPongBoy]

But that would only really work if the above-mentioned oil producing states basically agreed not to sell to anyone else, thus removing themselves from the global oil market. I can't imagine the oil companies in those countries wanting to do that, nor can I imagine the governments, who profit from it as well, cutting themselves off at the knees just so you can get cheap prices at the pump.

Irrefutable? Consider the scenario that the rest of the world is running low on oil the way China believes the rest of the world is being depleted of rare earth metals, it would become a geographical matter. Consumption within sovereign borders takes priority over worldwide sales. If anything is exported, it would be value-added products rather than the raw stuff, in short, PROFIT!.

Far be it from me to say whether Wikileaks is a great fount of truth. Smoke and fire typically exist in close proximity, but for decades we have been exhorted to read the writing on the wall. A day is fast approaching that the well will run dry. Do lemmings fall off a cliff because the ones at the back don't have anyone telling them "The precipice is nigh" or "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it ... Oh it's not built"?

In the light of planning to switch to alternative fuels it's shocking to see how pervasive oil is in society. A prolonged uptick in gasoline prices would overturn the vast majority of lifestyles, such is the complacency. And it's that very complacency that has allowed Wikileaks to cause such a cafuffle. In spite of the informedness that we feel with the Internet, the changes in many of our lives has hardly been extraordinary.

Despite lurches in prices of housing, food, and fuel, most people have allowed the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay to rise into the stratosphere. Now Wikileaks is continually alerting the masses to brace themselves for troublesome times, and my suggestion to these masses is to go to your bosses and demand pay hikes, but in the long run also become business owners or at the very least more qualified to be worthy of higher responsibilities as that would be the safe bet to maintaining income levels that purchase the lifestyle.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[spun]

No, I specifically mean the average citizen of the winning country does not see any price reduction in anything due to war. Why would the elites pass the savings on to you? Wars are almost never fought in the interest of the common man, they are a game of kings and cronies. Only the wealthy, politically connected elite profit from war.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[sourcerror]

It is prettty cost effective for military contractors and oil companies. The cost of war is on the tax-paying public.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[h4rr4r]

Too much refining. You only need to make it lighter, not bust it down into gasoline.

Heck you could probably refine it all the way out, then mix the light weight stuff with bunker oil and asphalt to get something you could ship, if you had no other way.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

I agree with you. I certainly don't wish to revise history, but your comment leaves me pondering. All previous presidential sins are bore by the standing president?

  I asked because the way I interpret your post is that every president only ever suffers from a single fate in available decisions. Perhaps GW did have longer vision than people give him credit; to wit his has always asserted. Of course, having long vision doesn't validate him either, but isn't there room for possibilities that not all presidents are doomed to make the same decision regardless of circumstance?

One thing I've learned from watching politics is you can never make everyone happy. Even if Egypt hadn't been propped up with the US' annual 1.3 billion dollar bribe, someone would be whining about something or another. The region has been stable. The people paid for it. But to what deficit? Meaning, what would have been the alternative and its cost to humanity? Iraq-esq rapes and murders? A panacea of Sharia law just doesn't seem all that likely. Perhaps the lessor of evils still grows fangs when looking through the window of time?

I really not trolling. I hope it doesn't come across that way. I guess I'm saying, I don't know enough about the decisions which created the US' current bribe and policy toward Egypt. Nor do I know or understand the implications of what the world would look like without it. As such, its hard to say if stone throwing is appropriate.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[spun]

In ancient times it was which? In ancient times, wars weren't even fought primarily by the common man, but by warrior elites. The "common man" was a slave or non-land-owning serf. You don't give a guy like that a weapon. Armies made up of conscript soldiers rather than warrior elites didn't become common (in Europe anyhow) until the renaissance. Peasants didn't fight wars, they sure as hell didn't profit from them.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[exomondo]

I personally believe we invaded for long term regional stability and in altruistic hope of bringing democracy. Democracy in of itself brings stability, better human rights and economic expansion. All of which are good for the economy (consumers at some point)

Well it's either selfless or it isn't...if the result is a good US economy then it's extremely highly unlikely to be altruistic.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[mhotchin]

Umm, thanks, but no thanks. The social priorities in Canada are sufficiently different that the propect of being a US state is at best disquieting.

Gay marriage, health care, attitudes towards guns,.... I can't even imagine how such things could be 'harmonized' without just whacking what we Canadians already take for granted.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Scorch.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Maxo-Texas]

Makes me wonder...
What if we had spent the THREE TRILLION (and counting) dollars on renewable power? Would it have reduced demand enough that it would have driving down the price of oil?

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

You do understand that the US can't even do that with its own states, right? I mean, Texas and Alaska aren't exactly oil-free...

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[iammani]

Died from death.

Offtopic, but this is the first time I hear this phrase!

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely ignoring oil, there is a literal laundry list of reasons to be there which directly and/or indirectly benefit the US (and other countries) for decades and potentially centuries to come.

So what are they?

sorry about the AC but I was moderating when I saw your post.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[sourcerror]

"Peasants didn't fight wars, they sure as hell didn't profit from them."

They did in Rome. At least in the beginning.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[HeckRuler]

How exactly would that work?
The USA government would invade, take control of the oil sources, and open up their own gas stations across the nation?
Or would they take control, give the supply source to Exxon and Mobile, who would be trusted to sell it to US citizens at a lower rate then they could sell it to Europe?
Or would they take control, sell the oil on the free market, and use the cash to subsidies the price at the pump? I think at that point, people would fill up their cars, ship them to Europe, and sell the gas out of them.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[circletimessquare]

died from death? this death as cause of death you speak of, is it always fatal? or can you live with sort of a low grade controllable form of death? because i'll tell you, if i die, i don't want to die from death!

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[HangingChad]

>all you need to do is invade^H^H^H^H^H^H ask

Watch out, they'll station this guy at the border: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEcj8KpuJw

None shall pass!

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[spun]

Ah, okay. Got me there I guess. China too, but it still wasn't that common.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[peragrin]

George bush senior and Reagon sold Iraq and Saddam the chemical and biological weapons he used against the kurds and iranians.

You can't make everyone happy. At the time Saddam was the lesser of the evils in the middle east.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Man On Pink Corner]

To quote Dogbert, your comment more or less says "Hey everyone, I don't understand what fungible means."

Oil isn't really fungible, if you're thinking long term. The oil under our own (US) territory may have the same nominal value, but it's a lot more valuable to us than the oil underneath Saudi territory.

What is often derided as America's "dependency" on foreign oil is actually a rare example of smart politics: in a world where supplies are declining, it's best to burn the bad guys' oil first.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[smithmc]

To quote Dogbert, your comment more or less says "Hey everyone, I don't understand what fungible means."

It's unlikely that much Saudi Arabian crude ends up in your gas tank. Your car is filled mostly from Gulf, Venezuelan and yes, Canadian crude. But it's still an international market, and a shortage of Saudi Arabian crude will drive up prices everywhere around the world, as European oil companies start looking to buy from elsewhere to make up for the shortfall.

Actually, IIRC, Saudi Arabia is the #3 supplier of oil to the US.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Mr. Slippery]

Wars are almost never fought in the interest of the common man, they are a game of kings and cronies. Only the wealthy, politically connected elite profit from war.

In other words, war is a racket.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[jpmorgan]

So you buy the refined product from the refineries in the US.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[petermgreen]

IIRC even if the US does invade canda and the south amercan oil produces or otherwise forces them to sell all their oil at below market prices they would still have to either import oil from the world market or dramatically reduce consumption.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[similar_name]

Hence the "invade" part, to get it cheaper...

You're probably just kidding, but..

Because oil is fungible that still wouldn't make any difference. Even now It's not like a gallon of gas made from oil from the U.S. is any cheaper than when it's made from oil elsewhere. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the U.S. imported 51% of the oil consumed in the U.S. in 2009 It follows that the U.S. already produces half it's own oil.Even if we invaded Canada and 'took' their oil, the consumer would still have a price based on the world market. I suppose the government could try to dictate the price of oil. But I don't think that's even possible (never mind constitutional) with our insatiable demand. In all reality supply has some debatable limit and is beyond our control.

Also according to the E.I.A. we get our oil from all over the world. In other words, it takes the world to feed our demand. You have a big field, we want some. You're close, we want some.

Gas goes up, the economy goes down. Gas goes down, the economy goes up. There are more factors, but gas is fundamental to modern life. Cheap energy means lots of cheap stuff and cheap distribution.

I found many of these reports full of information
.
Perhaps you might argue that I should not be inebriated when I reply, as I do not think my post is directed towards you but I'm going to hit post anyway because I've already typed all of this out.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[spun]

Absolutely. A game played by kings where we are the pawns.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[iluvcapra]

However, the nations that undertook it proved(with varying degrees of tenacity) that the theory was false. Even by the time the US was founded, the less jingoistic Brits were getting tired of paying very high taxes for the privilege of having an empire upon which the sun never set.

Shorter: Britain's 400-year international preeminence, wealth, world leadership in finance, academics and culture "didn't work."

It's easy to say that something abstract like "mercantilism" doesn't work or isn't practical given certain constraints, and particularly if they economic situation in the third world today precludes it, but it made at least 8 generations of Britons literally the masters of the world -- if you were in the bourgeois class in England in 1600, mercantilism and empire would pay off for you and your great-great-great-great grandchildren just fine. Most of Britain's great achievements and contributions to world history, it's military, it's scientific discoveries, its inventions, its economic power, can be directly attributed to its imperial project. Imperialism is of course bad by the rules we use to judge it today, but by the same token I shudder to think of what people 300 years from now will think of "neoliberal capitalism." And I wonder what horrors they will be employing to create their wealth...

History never renders final verdicts on economic theories, and mercantilism worked just great for lifetimes of individuals. You should never try to evaluate such things on the basis of eternal sustainability, because nothing is eternally sustainable. Most of the modern condemnation mercantilism gets is in the service of nervous libertarians, who are anxious to damn the state cartels and public-private corporations were at the vanguard of wealth creation in Europe for centuries.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

One could imagine a merger between canada and usa by admitting 13 more states into the Union: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Yukon, Nunavut, PEI, NWT. The low canadian population would not destabilise the power equilibrium by too much but it is clear that the politic center would be moved a bit to the left. The landmass of the new country would be 104% larger of what it is now and the population 11% higher. than actual usa. Furthermore, Alaska would become a contiguous state. Then the next step will be to make Puerto Rico a state and the flag will now comprise 64 stars.

 

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[tsm_sf]

You might be interested in this book by Ernest Callenbach, which posits secession of the western states from the US and Canada. If I remember correctly (It's been a while) this secession was primarily a reaction to the right-wing culture of violence and control emanating from the East.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[quenda]

This makes a huge difference to straight out paying another country for resources. That money is gone for good (unless you make them buy your weapons and other goods with it, then you get a bit of it back).

Economics is more complex. If the money, which is US dollars, never came back, you would not have a problem. You would have got the oil "for free", see?
Its when the money comes back to buy US products and services that you have to give up resources, but thats the same as buying or extracting domestically, and stimulates the economy the same way. OK, the Arabs could just buy bonds and want interest instead of buying goods, but you have the same problem with domestic spending.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[currently_awake]

No need for an invasion, our current gov is right wing and totally willing to sell (everything) for good ole greenbacks.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[currently_awake]

Or you could get a long term fixed rate contract for all the tar sands oil in alberta. I really don't know why the USA never tries that, it would save you a fortune (since you usually know when the next price shock is going to happen). PS, the USA also has tar sands oil, but they never bothered to develop them (ouch!).

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[HornWumpus]

Good thing he is not. He can't even keep his wells producing.

And he is about to lose the refinery he owns in Texas. He is being sued in US courts for the wells he stole in Venezuela. Bet the previous owners of the wells become the current owners of the refinery.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[ArcherB]

Makes me wonder...
What if we had spent the THREE TRILLION (and counting) dollars on renewable power? Would it have reduced demand enough that it would have driving down the price of oil?

Where are you getting three trillion? Cost of War has it listed at a less that a forth of that, and I'm certain that number is inflated.

Which makes me wonder...
If you can't get your facts straight about the cost of the Iraq war, why should we listen to anything else you have to say?

Also, most of our current sources of renewable power produce electricity. We don't get our electricity from the Saudis. We have plenty of nuclear, natural gas, wind, tides, and yes, even coal. The problem is, very few cars run on electricity and no commercial airliners do. This is where our oil goes. The only replacement we have for our imported oil involves vegetable oils and ethanol, neither of which is efficient enough to make a difference. Ethanol, for example takes over a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon of ethanol. That's going the wrong way. It literally costs more to make that it's worth.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Kyusaku Natsume]

I will be really surprised if an US Court doesn't come to a verdict favorable to US interests, independently of the letter of law.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Buelldozer]

Saudia is #3 but it's a far smaller supplier than #1 Canada.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/100726/top-7-us-oil-importers

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Jeremi]

The problem is, very few cars run on electricity and no commercial airliners do.

There are two possible long-term solutions to that problem: either replace the cars and airliners with new ones that run on electricity, or find a way to manufacturer gasoline and jet fuel from electricity.

Neither of those is cheap or easy, but at least they are solutions. Hoping that a miracle will occur before fossil fuels become too scarce is not a solution.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

But the idea was that the US would no longer need to purchase it's oil... (assuming the states is invading and taking control or Canadians are just that nice) Hence prices no longer matter to the US.

I wasn't aware that the US was a communist country. So the whole crusade against communism and for maintaining "our way of life" can be made meaningless by oil prices? As soon as oil gets a bit 'spensive, state-owned oil sounds pretty good to me! Just make sure to keep giving it to me cheaply. We no longer want the US to follow market capitalism if it means I can't get me my cheaps oil!

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[dudpixel]

By the time you get here they'll have died from death.

yes, i've often heard that death can be fatal.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Rei]

Part of the problem is newspapers like this one hyping the leaks to be more sensational than they are. For example, adding context to their quote about al-Husseini, you get:

"Al-Husseini was clear to add that he does not view himself as part of the “peak oil camp,” and does not agree with analysts such as Matthew Simmons. He considers himself optimistic about the future of energy, but pragmatic with regards to what resources are available and what level of production is possible. While he fundamentally contradicts the Aramco company line, al-Husseini is no doomsday theorist."

As for "the kingdom can't keep enough oil flowing to control prices" line? This was 2007-2008; we already *know* they couldn't keep enough oil flowing to control prices back then -- which is why prices weren't controlled. The problem then wasn't an oil flow issue, but an issue of speculation; prices were decoupled from the actual oil supply available. Then they collapsed to way-to-low levels. This volatility has happened with many commodities after the huge surge in commodities speculation in the past 5-10 years.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[timeOday]

I can't imagine the oil companies in those countries wanting to do that, nor can I imagine the governments, who profit from it as well, cutting themselves off at the knees just so you can get cheap prices at the pump.

Actually, "Many oil-producing countries keep domestic prices below free market levels."

You can either see that as equalizing citizens' access to the naturally-occurring resources of their own nations, or as government subsidies that distort markets (thus thwarting the rights of the rich to disproportionate use of those resources). In relatively wealthy oil-importing nations such as the US, we tend to take the latter interpretation :)

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure who's paying $7/month for water; in California, the average water bill is probably around $50/month, and can easily go much, much higher. In Las Vegas, the total water bill in a nice subdivision runs more than $300/month.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Tar Sands return only 2 barrels of oil per barrel burned in extraction.

And that doesn't count the astronomical amount of freshwater poisoned in the process.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Xyrus]

In other news, top scientists have determined water is wet and bears not held in captivity do indeed shit in the woods.

And we STILL don't have a sustainable energy policy.

I wonder what it's going to take before we, as a nation, realize we're burning the candle at both ends. I know necessity is the mother of invention, and a crisis is a powerful motivator but do we always need to wait until the shit hits the fan? Why can't we just NOT throw shit at the fan in the first place?

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

How is this post possibly overrated? Is citing Pickens a dirty word now? Holy shit that moderator is stupid. Its factually accurate and to the point. WTF is wrong with moderators these days that they can't even do such a simple job. Talk about both an idiot of a moderator and a waste of a moderation point.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, but thanks to the Great and Terrible Cthulu, even death may die. Poisoned waterways are just an interesting diversionary tactic.

I, for one, look forward to the time when I may die from death, only to have that death die at the many hands of our tentacled overlord, yet again.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you are going to mess in Venezuela's internal affairs directly you can bet that the Venezuelan government will surely cut out supplies. They have reason enough to do it after an embargo by the US that has Venezuela spending a lot to replace US military equipment. Plus when it comes to oil, even if it has to be processed to take out sulfur, which the Russians are very good at I might add, clients are the least of concerns since most of the refineries, even the ones in the US are Venezuelan property. Even if the US cuts out Venezuela with a Cuba-style embargo, they would only be shooting themselves in the foot because you would have seized refineries that can process a particular kind of crude. Check out this piece of news regarding new clients: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126152693744102097.html

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[GooberToo]

That's my point.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[georgesdev]

agreed it's a smart move for the US to be buying petrol from abroad while it lasts and is not too expensive. Then in the years 2020 maybe use more US oil plus sell some at extreme prices! But maybe Saudi Arabia is starting to have the same strategy

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[rrohbeck]

O rly?
And here I was thinking that the main reason for buying oil from the bad guys is that it's cheaper than locally produced oil.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[georgesdev]

they'll have died from death

believe me, we all will! :)

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[DeathElk]

Thank you. Hammer, meet head of nail. Man, this is what I've been blabbering for years now.

Look at humanities achievements. We've conquered the atom, conquered the skies and beyond... If only... we had a brain...

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

there's money to be made letting people throw shit in the fan, more money to be made letting people shit on top of the fan, and EVEN MORE MONEY to be made cleaning the fan later, you know, when IT'S AN EMERGENCY.

all 'free' nations have long ago abandoned true democracy in favour of corporate pageantry. that's why the US is a republic. not even a representative democracy.

when the shock starts to kick in, people like david cameron (thirty-forty years too late mind you) come out and say things like "multiculturalism has failed"
or little johnny howard says "i will not compromise the economy for the sake of the environment", while dubyah couldn't even pronounce environment.

if you pay me enough i will gladly sell you my entire garden, because i'm not hungry now, and i'll be dead (and rich) before then. plus, my kids can get fucked, they should be able too feed themselves..... well i suppose they should.... if i hadn't sold all the soil as well.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[amck]

How exactly would that work?

Or would they take control, give the supply source to Exxon and Mobile, who would be trusted to sell it to US citizens at a lower rate then they could sell it to Europe?

Yes, thats precisely how it would work.

What matters to the oil companies (Exxon, Mobile) is the profit they make, not the price they sell at.
If the US govt cuts their costs by giving them Canadian oil free, then they would be willing to sell it cheaply to USanians as quid pro quo.

Notice how those companies already sell oil cheaper in the US than in Europe...

Of couse, this is all hypothetical, isn't it?

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry to correct you but us oil production peeked in the 70's,

maybe you had your head to far up your own ass to notice

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Crude isn't completely fungible,

I don't understand what fungible means!

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[ultranova]

Its when the money comes back to buy US products and services that you have to give up resources, but thats the same as buying or extracting domestically, and stimulates the economy the same way.

No, because the products and services end up leaving the country rather than staying in and increasing the wealth of Americans. Yes, it stimulates the economy and provides people with jobs; but it would be even better if the wealth generated by these jobs stayed in the country.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[DarkOx]

Nice revisionist history there. If that is what we had done, it would be clever on our parts. We did not do that though. Our infalible president Kenedy in fact encourged the use of our domestic supply first. The poilicy persisted for the most part unil our production peaked early 70's. That's when we really started depending on middle eastern oil and we know how well that worked in the mid and late 70s.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[slackbheep]

Uhh sorry to burst your bubble buddy but maybe you should do a little reading. For a decent overview try War by Gwynne Dyer. For the vast majority of human history wars were fought by the common peasant with little to no training.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[tehcyder]

I personally believe we invaded for long term regional stability and in altruistic hope of bringing democracy.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

you made my day

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[w_dragon]

Due to NAFTA the US has pretty much unlimited access to Canada's oil. Also saying Quebec wants independence is pushing it, Quebec has had 2 referendums on separating and both times chose to stay. Given the amount of power Quebec is given in the Canadian Constitution and the money they receive from the rest of Canada via equalization payments I don't think they're going anywhere any time soon.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the "I have no clue how expensive warfare actually is."

People who say the US invaded Iraq for cheaper oil are completely out of touch with the most basic facts of the cost of war.

Except the war is paid for by the taxpayer. The cheap oil is handled by private companies (who get awarded the "rebuilding contracts" in Iraq) and is sold, again, to the taxpayer.

The war budget bucket is not connected to the oil company profit bucket.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[fifedrum]

I suspect the differences in social priorities between the various states of the US and Canada are less radical than you think. Certainly, even in one US state, the differences in social priorities between counties and towns are at least as large as the perceived differences between the Provinces and the States, let alone the opinions between the various states.

I submit New York as an example. Downstate vs upstate or Albany vs Buffalo.

And the issues you suggest as deal breakers are all issues that are firmly in the control of the states, and each Province could decide for itself without fear of more federal intervention than they experience today. On top of that, Canadian opinions on things like guns varies significantly, there are many many gun owners in Canada, just as there are many many non gun owners in Canada.

So while it might be personally disquieting to you as a Canadian to consider losing provinces to the US, the reality of it is that those citizens would likely suffer no ill effects.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Maxo-Texas]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq, or $6,300 per U.S. citizen.[9][10]

Perhaps you are thinking of the current cost.. ignoring all future costs.
The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq, or $6,300 per U.S. citizen.[9][10]

http://articles.cnn.com/2007-11-13/politics/hidden.war.costs_1_war-costs-iraq-oil-prices?_s=PM:POLITICS

The total war costs could grow to $3.5 trillion by 2017, the committee estimated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Trillion_Dollar_War
The total cost of $3 trillion is consistent with numerous government studies. These include the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which estimated that the war will cost $3.5 trillion,[2] and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which has projected that the total cost will reach between $1.4 and $2.2 trillion.[

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece

Larry Lindsey, President Bush's economic adviser and head of the National Economic Council, suggested that they might reach $200 billion. But this estimate was dismissed as âoebaloneyâ by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, suggested that postwar reconstruction could pay for itself through increased oil revenues. Mitch Daniels, the Office of Management and Budget director, and Secretary Rumsfeld estimated the costs in the range of $50 to $60 billion, a portion of which they believed would be financed by other countries. ...
From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple sets of books, and chronic underestimates of the resources required to prosecute the war, we have attempted to identify how much we have been spending - and how much we will, in the end, likely have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions.

Hell, even FOX NEWS says it's going to be at least 1.5 trillion.

Different sources give different numbers. I get that. 3 trillion is a widely used figure. Over 3 trillion isn't uncommon. The figures blow away the figures which Rumsfield used to justify the war by a factor of 15 (using your numbers) to a factor of over 60 (using the highest end 3.5 Trillion dollar costs).

A lot of this is also "off books"- who knows what's happening in the black ops budget.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[ArhcAngel]

Interesting since the research (WWII) started in the late 1930's concluded the opposite.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[sourcerror]

IIRC the Greek also did this around 1000-2000 BC, not mentioning the Huns, Mongols, Scythians, Hungarians and other nomadic tribes.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Maxo-Texas]

Oil still provides a lot of residential, commercial, and industrial electricity.

Ignoring electric cars, if we could cut out residential and industrial electricity from oil, that would reduce our total oil consumption by 10%. That's a lot of oil.

I'm not sure electric cars are going to scale well unless we get a new form of battery technology.

I like the bacteria to produce oil idea. Even if that particular one doesn't work, the basic concept is sound.

However, home power systems are down to about $15k with subsidies. A $10k system will "pay" off about $1k a year in reduced electricity bills without using batteries in most "A/C" states (producing about 1kilowatt during the day so all your daytime electricity needs are "free".)

So using the Fox News figure of 1.4 trillion (ignoring future costs that will total to 2.5 trillion to 3.5 trillion dollars)

1,400,000,000,000
140,000,000 "$10k systems".

Of course there are only
130,000,000 stand alone houses in america.

And prices would drop as we installed that many systems.

So for the *conservative* cost of the war, we could have eliminated huge portions of our electrical needs, improved our resiliency in times of war and natural disaster, driven down the cost of solar technology, and denied a bunch of money to the oil states and military industrial complex.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[HeckRuler]

BWAahahahahaha, OH WOW!
If you don't see the problem with that, let me point it out for you.
"... Exxon and Mobile, who would be trusted..."

Ah, but no, you missed an important step: They would take control,
give the supply source to Exxon and Mobile,
subsidise them to
sell it to US citizens at a lower rate then they could sell it to Europe.

We'd give it to them, then pay them to sell it right back to us. Brilliant.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[men0s]

You are correct.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[tabrnaker]

That would be funny... if the US gov't didn't already have a commissioned study to do exactly that when the shit starts to hit the fan. Well, BC/Alberta anyways. Seems for resources like gold and silver Mexico is much easier to annex.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[tabrnaker]

We don't have unrest here. You might be referring to all the poor people fighting over a chance to provide drug addicted US'ians with their fix. That's a bit of a different story.

Then we have a president who's learning from the states about the profiitability of running a war on drugs, even though it's currently reaping in less money than the cartels were offering the gov't every year to just let them provide drugs to the US who so desperately want them.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[calzones]

Broken window fallacy shows how this is true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

The effect from WWII was less related to the war itself and more related to the a sudden groupthink that gave the population a sense of purpose, strength, and will. Yes, this was because the war created propaganda/groupthink. But the war itself dealt lots of damage that was counter-productive to the world economy and we suffered a huge loss of productivity that could have theoretically been achieved if we had performed the same research and manufacturing push without a war, but on a greater global scale that didn't involve people dying or spending all their time fighting instead of being productive.

But, we had been attacked and great injustices were going down oversees, we were instilled with the rah rah sense of purpose to make everything right again and the steadfast belief in our own ability to achieve this and our own greatness. Lots of investment flowed, and lots of people were happy to get working on anything to help our efforts out.

So in that unique moment, we needed the war to light a fire under our butts. But don't think for a minute the war was as economically efficient as having done it all in a non-descrutive way.

If nothing else, war seems to be the only thing that inspires a certain half of this country to spend tax dollars on science, research, and manufacturing. Were that half willing to make the same efforts in peacetime, think of how much better off everyone would be. But since we're stuck with half the population thinking like that, maybe it's true that war is the only way to stimulate our economy. And then that certain half comes out and actually uses that fact as "evidence" that defense spending is good for the economy.

How sad and backward it all is.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[HornWumpus]

Of course the Venezuelan courts were fair to the US company when Hugo stole their investments.

I agree with you. But that is the just and correct outcome so I'm basically happy about it.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[HornWumpus]

You don't understand that there is not one 'crude' oil?

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[HornWumpus]

$50/month? S. Cal perhaps. I pay $50/6 months but then again I'm not living in a desert.

Our sewage discharge is upriver of the California aqueducts intakes. Flushing the toilet is occasionally referred to as fixing a drink for LA.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[eriqk]

they'll have died from death

Keep going. How else would this happen?

Well, instead of dieing from it, you could be killed by it.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[quenda]

Try applying that logic to each state. Think how much better off everyone would be if you banned interstate trade!
It is nonsense of course.

Re:Thank goodness for Canada

[Man On Pink Corner]

The poilicy persisted for the most part unil our production peaked early 70's

Not directly comparable -- we're a lot better at finding and extracting oil than we were back then. Don't kid yourself -- we have one hell of a lot of crude oil at our disposal, and it's right where it needs to be.

What else?

[EvilBudMan]

What else is new? We knew they lied about this for years.

Re:What else?

[lul_wat]

Wish I could find the chart.. but yes, they have been. When OPEC put limits on the amount a country could pump out, based on its stated oil reserves, guess what happened? Everyones STATED oil reserves havn't changed since that limit was put in .. hence no need to decline pumping.

Re:What else?

[arivanov]

Exactly. They have restated what they have more than once without a single exploration, find or any other justification to support the restatement.

Re:What else?

[TastyCakes]

While quite possibly true, the guy who provided the information to the US diplomat (Sadad al-Husseini) has since said he was misquoted or misunderstood, according to this article He says that he was talking about an unofficial oil in place estimate, not the official reserves (ie recoverable oil), which is the one that really matters. He says he has no problem with that number, and says that while other countries in the middle east have likely inflated their reserves, Saudi Aramco's numbers are reliable. Not sure if I would believe everything he says, but it certainly takes the wind out of this story; an Aramco insider has not confirmed outsiders suspicions.

/. News Network

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Today's top story is that Saudi Oil reserves are actually critically lo, and we will need to transition to use more renewable energy sources to replace it.

In related news, NIMBY groups are opposing the construction of everything other than oil and coal plants on the basis that everything else is ugly and might even let the poor have enough electricity to survive the weather conditions of the coming years.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Republicans are trying to unfund any research into renewable energy. Penny-wise, pound-foolish ... we'll all be paying the price in 10 years or so for that.

Re:/. News Network

[mbkennel]

Are you kidding?

For them, it's Penny-Wise, Billion-Dollar-Wise assuming they own oil wells and Wealthy Friends who own oil companies.

Re:/. News Network

[MightyMartian]

Well of course we will, but the politicians will enjoy great success in the meantime, and when the shit hits the fan, they'll be ready to retire on the huge amounts of money they were paid under the table by oil companies.

Business as usual.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, sweet, so you've found a magical new renewable energy source that we can put in our cars, or use to make plastics and fertilizers, not to mention other use in barbecues, heating applications, and so forth?

Or, wait, no... maybe you just like to harp on the "NIMBY" folks without knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

This is SO TRUE.

Well, unless there are other ways to pay for renewable energy research that aren't federally funded.

Because wow, if private industry could raise money in some way other than federal grants, you'd sound like an idiot!

Re:/. News Network

[Darkness404]

Exactly. The safest, most efficient form of energy we have right now is nuclear energy but of course we can't have that because its nuclear! We need to focus on the here and now and the here and now is nuclear.

Re:/. News Network

[Darkness404]

...And the democrats want to pump money into unworkable schemes to fund their "green energy" friends. Neither side is about sustainability and real progress, both sides just want to funnel as much of your tax money as possible into whatever pet projects they have that make them/their friends money.

Re:/. News Network

[h4rr4r]

They call that electricity. With enough of it and some water and a source of CO2, like that dissolved in water you can make all the hydrocarbons you want. For evidence there was a recent article about an aircraft carrier making jetfuel from seawater. If you have a better source of carbon, like turkey carcasses, you can make oil or other hydrocarbons via thermal depolymerization. I mention turkey carcasses since there is already a plant owned by Cargil doing just that.

Also you can make electricity from tons of renewable and non-renewable sources.

Re:/. News Network

[h4rr4r]

Only if we can reprocess the waste. Until we can legally do that, we should not be building new reactors. Also once you factor in all the subsidies used for nuclear power it is no cheaper than wind or solar thermal. This does not mean we should ignore its use for baseload, merely that putting all our eggs in that basket is not the right approach.

Re:/. News Network

[Darkness404]

Except for the fact that it is more practical in most places. If you are in a windy part of the country, of course wind farms make some sense. If you are in death valley, of course solar thermal makes sense. If you are on the east coast where there is a lot of coal, coal makes sense. But in areas that these conditions aren't true, or where there is limited area to build a wind farm or solar farm, nuclear makes a lot more sense and a lot of the opposition to nuclear power being used is based on media hype and misinformation.

Re:/. News Network

[Waffle Iron]

Exactly. The safest, most efficient form of energy we have right now is nuclear energy but of course we can't have that because its nuclear! We need to focus on the here and now and the here and now is nuclear.

If nuclear power were the answer to the world's energy problems, we'd be helping Iran and North Korea with their programs right now.

Nuclear power isn't going anywhere, and it's not just because of hippies. Neocons realize that the vast expansion of nuclear activities that would be required to make even a small dent in the world's energy budget would create huge new opportunities for countries around the world to secretly tinker with weapons programs. Neocons are totally frightened by this scenario. (And it's one of the few things that they're actually correct.)

Neocons cleverly use a passive-aggressive approach to the issue, blandly stating that they "support" more nuclear power without ever seriously pushing for it. They know that almost nobody but some nerds on /. are genuinely in favor of massive increases in nuclear energy, so even the feeble pushback from NIMBYs and hippies will result in more status quo. Which suits them fine.

Fission power is a dead end. Move on to the next idea.

Re:/. News Network

[ColdWetDog]

Exactly. The safest, most efficient form of energy we have right now is nuclear energy but of course we can't have that because its nuclear! We need to focus on the here and now and the here and now is nuclear.

It's a tad ironic - your statement juxtaposed with your sig. Do you realize that nuclear power has enormous, truly enormous government subsidies (from tax revenue)? Without those subsidies the industry would be completely dead in the water, as opposed to severely moribund. There are several reasons (and discoverable by a trivial search) for this, among them the very long lead time involved in plant siting, design and construction. But as a 'free market' short term proposition, nucs aren't glowing very brightly.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

how is nuclear 'here and now'? you know how to whip up a nuclear plant in 6 months?

Re:/. News Network

[dr2chase]

Not so sure. The thorium fanatics have got me interested in trying that experiment. PITA to get fission bombs out of it, though I suppose dirty bombs are an option (the waste is contaminated with a short-lived hard gamma emitter).

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if we can reprocess the waste. Until we can legally do that, we should not be building new reactors...

Yeah, exactly. The nuclear industry has this crazy idea that they want to concentrate the poisonous waste to a tiny bit of space and then put it a small well-contained storage far away from people and nature to protect them from it. Everyone knows that the right way to handle poison is to pump it out through really, really tall chimneys, thus letting it spread by the wind, allowing it to be breathed in by humans and animals, allowing them to enjoy diseases like lung cancer...

And the kicker is that your grandchildren will be able to enjoy really warm weather!

Re:/. News Network

[Isaac-1]

It sounds like time fund research into deep water drilling, and start drilling for oil in all those places where we know it is, but drilling is off limits due to those ugly oil rigs. That and do sensible research into alternatives, it is also time to build nuclear power plants and tell the anti-nuke crowd that the 60's and 70's are over and live with it.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that all the waste generated to date will fill a couple of football fields. And also that without any sort of protection, a distance of 2 km would reduce the radiation to below background radiation. And that there are plenty of completely uninhabited areas where it is over 10 miles to the next house that this stuff could be shipped to. And that it is easy to properly encase this stuff to withstand a nuclear attack.

Right?

No. I didn't think so.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, NIMBY groups are opposing the construction of everything other than oil and coal plants on the basis that everything else is ugly and might even let the poor have enough electricity to survive the weather conditions of the coming years.

You have never, even once, heard anyone object to any kind of alternative power on that basis. You cannot name a single one.

NIMBY is a bad thing; you don't need to puff up your case against it by lying about what it is.

Re:/. News Network

[pyrosine]

Perhaps, but money that is worthless none the less as the economy collapses because of the rising oil prices

Re:/. News Network

[0123456]

Except for the fact that it is more practical in most places. If you are in a windy part of the country, of course wind farms make some sense.

Except 'wind farms' shut down when there's too much wind, or not enough wind, and tend to fall over when there's way, way too much wind. The UK has been building 'wind farms' like crazy over the last couple of decades and has had a number of days in recent years where they were generating no power whatsoever.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

You have never, even once, heard anyone object to any kind of alternative power on that basis. You cannot name a single one.

Did he hit a nerve?

Re:/. News Network

[diegocg]

of course we can't have that because its nuclear

Wrong, you can't because nuclear is too expensive:

Exelon [largest nuclear operator in USA] said it needs natural gas prices to reach about $8 per million B.T.U. — almost double today’s price — and a carbon fee of $25 a ton to make the project worthwhile economically. “We don’t have the right stimulus right now,” said Christopher M. Crane, president and chief operating officer, in a recent interview.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, he hit my Strawman Argument Nerve.

Re:/. News Network

[h4rr4r]

Yes, I did actually. Reprocessing it would cut your numbers by giant margins. It would also be cheaper to deal with since there would be less of it.

Re:/. News Network

[Spykk]

In related news, NIMBY groups are opposing the construction of everything other than oil and coal plants on the basis that everything else is ugly and might even let the poor have enough electricity to survive the weather conditions of the coming years.

Are you really suggesting that that opposing everything but the cheapest options is somehow a conspiracy against the poor? I'm all for sustainability but replacing oil and coal with renewable energy won't be doing the nation's downtrodden any favors...

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think the GP was completely serious with that remark. I think the point was that the NIMBY crowd cares about property values while the poor care more about energy costs (because they don't own property). I do not think anyone is intentionally trying to keep the poor down here as much as just not caring about their opinions.

Re:/. News Network

[Jeremi]

And the democrats want to pump money into unworkable schemes to fund their "green energy" friends.

Unworkable? Why, because you say so?

It's easy to assert that anything new and different is "unworkable". Just keep in mind that you are expressing your skepticism via a home computer, another piece of technology that was widely claimed to be unworkable, just before it caught on and changed the world.

Re:/. News Network

[Reziac]

So why don't we have nuclear-powered automobiles? Seriously... someone enlighten me, why not? What's wrong with scaling down a nuclear submarine?

Yeah, yeah, high cost per each... but think in terms of millions of units. Could it scale??

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power will be the answer to the world's nuclear problems. Just that the US govt has issues with it doesn't mean that the rest of the world will not use it. France, Russia, China and even Argentina rely on nuclear power to diversify their energy production matrix. Even Venezuela that has a lot of oil is going nuclear to increase their power generation, since the rationale is that it's more profitable to sell oil and produce electricity by using hydroelectric dams, natural gas (which you get for free from oil production) plants and nuclear power.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

a home computer, another piece of technology that was widely claimed to be unworkable

citation?

i think you are thinking of :"technology that was widely claimed to be a passing fad that would never last"

there are three stages to new ideas: ridicule, resistance, and acceptance as self-evident.

but those in power don't really give a shit about long-term gains, because it's better to make money in the short-term.

Re:/. News Network

[Anonymous Coward]

cheapest options

?
oil and coal ?

are you a politician?

cheapest right now perhaps. but since you have to keep burning the shit, i'd like to see you prove that it's cheaper over ..... say a century.

short-sightedness and narrow-minded insularity are some of the biggest fucking problems with humanity in general, and government in particular.

the long-term gain might cost a little more today, but fuckloads less in the long-term, but since people don't care about fuck all besides their next partially-hydrogenated processed MRE, or... their election in a few months, hey who really cares.

  y'a'll come on back now, i'mm'a' gonna' go watch me some 'america's biggest fattest cutest most talented loser puppies'. check 'em out on facebook fansite.

Re:/. News Network

[Anspen]

Except that nuclear is highly dependent on the presence of water for cooling. Without a big river or direct access to the ocean you can't build a nuclear reactor. Coal has a similiar (though smaller) problem (and of course coal can be shipped anywhere by rail). Wind makes sense in a significant part of the US, solar-installed-on-housing is viable pertty much everywhere (though sometimes with some cost issues). Ultimately you need a balance.

Re:/. News Network

[Anspen]

Actually the UK is only now getting larger numbers of wind online. Denmark and Spain have a far lager percentage of their electricity coming from wind for years now. And yes, when there are gale force winds the power can go from maximum (strong wind) to zero (too strong wind) in a matter of minutes. That doesn't have to be a problem though. Geographic dispersion and alternative capacity handled such situation fine in both countries. And of course a similar thing happens with other power generation.

Re:/. News Network

[Waffle Iron]

Even Venezuela that has a lot of oil is going nuclear to increase their power generation,

Hugo Chavez has a keen interest in nuclear technology? I'm shocked. Shocked.

You've just proved my point.

I wonder how this cable got leaked.

[Dripdry]

Or by whom, really. Of course there are people who will profit mightily from this information, like Shell and BP. Sure glad we found those huge oil reserves in the Western U.S. recently. Funny, that....

Re:I wonder how this cable got leaked.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need for crazy oil company conspiracy theories.

As TFA says, this is part of the big WikiLeaks diplomatic cable leak. So we know exactly who leaked it (Bradley Manning) and why (he was disgruntled and grabbed everything he could).

This is just one cable among 251,287. You should expect reports about these leaked cables to continue to come out for a long while as the documents are slowly released and picked over by news agencies.

Re:I wonder how this cable got leaked.

[nusuth]

The conspiracy theories rely on lack of transparency in releasing of the documents. Noone knows why document X gets released before Y. The order *does* have a non-random feel to it. It doesn't make sense to pick documents randomly anyway. But who choses what is released and on what grounds?

Re:I wonder how this cable got leaked.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Illuminati of course!

Oil output has already peaked

[Anonymous Coward]

We're on the down-slope now.

Re:Oil output has already peaked

[ScentCone]

We're on the down-slope now.

We're on the downslope of the fraction of the available hydrocarbons we've even begun to bother retrieving and using, if that's what you mean. Or did you mean to just troll?

Re:Oil output has already peaked

[marcosdumay]

Bothering or not, the slope seems to be down, but just for oil. Hydrocarbons are still somewhat up.

I just wonder why gathering oil was so interesting when it was priced $30 a galon, and now at $90 people don't bother with it.

Re:Oil output has already peaked

[ScentCone]

I just wonder why gathering oil was so interesting when it was priced $30 a galon, and now at $90 people don't bother with it.

Don't bother with it? It's one of the largest industries in the world, and all the rest of the industries (and the world's economies) would grind to a complete halt without "gathering" oil. And it's going to be that way for a long, long time.

Re:Oil output has already peaked

[marcosdumay]

"We're on the downslope of the fraction of the available hydrocarbons we've even begun to bother retrieving and using..."

That is your sentence, not mine.

US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[zrbyte]

Question is who doesn't think so? I mean really.

A leak originating from the Saudis themselves could be the real news.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[zAPPzAPP]

The origin of this information is a former saudi oil company exec. The leak just quotes it and tells us, that US diplomats think he's believable.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[pak9rabid]

Wouldn't it be in the best interest of the Saudi's to give the opposite impression (IE, tell everyone there's lower supply than there really is to hike up prices)?

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Wouldn't it be in the best interest of the Saudi's to give the opposite impression (IE, tell everyone there's lower supply than there really is to hike up prices)?

No. It's because of the way OPEC is structured. OPEC's goal is to restrict supply to increase prices. They set the limit for each country as a percentage of that country's oil reserves. So the larger a country's reserves, the more oil it is allowed to sell under OPEC rules. The problem is that OPEC doesn't use independent evaluations of oil reserves, they use each country's official numbers. So there is plenty of incentive for each country to overstate the size of their reserves so as to sell more oil.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard experts, yes real experts that have worked in Saudi Arabia, say that Saudi oil has already peaked. A couple of years ago when oil prices were out of control the US and other countries asked Saudi Arabia to increase their output and they admitted they couldn't which also suggests they have peaked. It's been known for nearly two decades that countries in the middle east have consistently upped their domestic reserve estimates so Opec would allow them to pump more oil. The problem with this is there have been no major reserves found in the area since the early 70s. Where's all this new oil they claim to have coming from? The point is no one is sure just how much is left but we do know the reserves are finite and the US peaked in the early 70s. Whether it's already happened or happens in ten years we know The middle east oil won't last forever. One ugly fact is Saudi Arabia has always based their oil estimates on what is in the ground not what they can extract. Their claims of having a 100 years of oil reserves reflect total volume. The best technology to date can extract a third of the ground oil so cut their estimate by two thirds. Basically by the middle of the century they'll run out not counting increased demand so they have likely peaked. They won't run out for fifty years but the output will continue to drop and prices will just keep going up. Cheap oil is a thing of the past.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they are trying to prevent turmoil in their own country. If the people there knew it was being squandered (being their only real natural resource that's worth anything) for a few dollars a gallon, they would be pissed. And rightfully so. Riots like we are seeing in Egypt right now might seem like a weekend party compared to what could happen there. And they would spread to the rest of the region from there. We could end up looking at something closer to a conventional WWIII by the time it was all done.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[ColdWetDog]

The origin of this information is a former saudi oil company exec. The leak just quotes it and tells us, that US diplomats think he's believable.

This has been an "open secret for some time. It's pretty clear from various analyses that the Saudis (and everybody else) are just flat out lying when it comes to their reserves.

On a semi related note, the Oil Drum as a collection of the best articles of the past 6 years. Anyone moderately interested in reasonably coherent discussion of Peak Oil and related subjects should read most of those articles.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

Once oil is exhausted, saudis will have to start working.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[CGordy]

Wouldn't it be in the best interest of the Saudi's to give the opposite impression (IE, tell everyone there's lower supply than there really is to hike up prices)?

No.

OPEC sets a total production quota, with the goal of maximising production without depressing prices. The overall quota then gets divided up between the individual member states, based on the size of their reserves. This has led to a situation where it is advantageous for countries to overstate their reserves, as that allows them to increase production (and profits) without a corresponding decrease in the oil price.

As this has been going on for a few decades, we've now got to a point where it is impossible to say even approximately how large the reserves of the OPEC countries are.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting to juxtapose that against the folks who believe it'll all just work itself out because gradually-increasing price will slowly cause things to change and people to adopt new technologies without disruption.

It worked for the housing market, why not for oil? ;)

Captcha: Mankind is not really that "educable".

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

I read somewhere that during the Reagan administration, Reagan encouraged the Arab stats to produce wildly exaggerated reports on their oil reserves, I don't recall the details, but it was supposed to be part of a plan to destabilize the Soviet economy. The plan worked, but the inflated reserve estimates remain to this day.

Re:US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated

[snookiex]

Question is who doesn't think so?

The Saudi Arabs, of course. That's why they keep squandering industrial amounts of dollars.

Who is drinking their milkshake?

[snookerhog]

Who is drinking their milkshake?

Re:Who is drinking their milkshake?

[MagikSlinger]

DRAAAAAAIIINAGE,YOU BOY!

oh no

[acehole]

What will the 10,000 odd saudi princes do?

Actually a proportion of the population has no need to work at all, i'm sure the country is going to be a swell place to live once the oil stops.

Re:oh no

[AfroTrance]

Get (even more) really really rich once the oil price sky rockets?

And now, over to the speculators.

[Duradin]

Day Trader Speculators: PANIC!

Average person on the street: Well great, guess we'll be seeing $5/gal gas shortly. Thank you Wikileaks, you could have at least waited until winter was over so I could actually afford to heat my house.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[Anonymous Coward]

southern hemisphere

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[Anonymous Coward]

You heat your house with gasoline?

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[plopez]

Maybe now you'll be "incentivized" to super insulate your house. BTW, insulating works for the summer bills too if you use air conditioning.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of rural folks use #2 fuel oil. Not everyone is in range of the city natural gas pipes.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[schnikies79]

Super insulating can cause a lot of moisture problems too. My aunt/uncle "super insulated" their house and started running into bad mold problems. After a few thousand more dollars upgrading ventilation and heating/cooling, it was okay again.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[h4rr4r]

Those folks can burn any number of vegetable oils, oils generated from coal to fuel conversion, or a product of thermal depolymerization of waste. They can also convert to LPG or other liquefied flammable gases that are available in tanks.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[Duradin]

Insulation is all well and good but you do have to generate some heat. If your house is bundled up tight enough to be warmed by body heat during -30F weather you're going to be having other issues.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[C_amiga_fan]

Probably be cheaper to just tear down the whole house (while saving appliances and other reusable materials) and rebuild a new one based on the PassivHaus model

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[rfc1394]

Day Trader Speculators: PANIC!

Average person on the street: Well great, guess we'll be seeing $5/gal gas shortly. Thank you Wikileaks, you could have at least waited until winter was over so I could actually afford to heat my house.

You ain't seen the 1/4 of it. There's a book - I haven't had the chance to read all of it - but just what to expect (real pain and serious problems plus a worsening of the infrastructure decay problems) when gasoline reaches $6 a gallon is interesting; you can guess what will initially happen when the first three words of this book's title comes true: $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[Duradin]

Can they eat cake as well?

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[eugene ts wong]

Why didn't they just crack the windows open? I figure that an upstairs window opened about 1 cm, and a downstairs window also opened the same would do the trick. Even a door shut, but not tight, would probably help. Seriously, do you know why they chose the modifications to the ventilation?

I'm arguing with you. I just want to know.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[Anonymous Coward]

Panic? Do you know anything about trading at all? This is the best time ever to be long oil. Less supply means higher prices. In other words, if you're long then now your oil is going to be worth even more.

It's not panic, more like KA-CHING!

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[quenda]

Thank you Wikileaks, you could have at least waited until winter was over so I could actually afford to heat my house.

You people still use oil for heating!? Don't you idiots know we are running out? There are any number of alternatives: gas and electric (heat pumps) come readily to mind. For pity sake save what little oil is left for transport and other things that cannot so easily use alternatives. Around here, people stopped using oil heaters 30 years ago.
    What can be done to stop people squandering such scarce resources? Come the revolution the home-oil-burners will be lined up against the wall with the SUV drivers.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry too much about that, the real SHTF may happen when it's the people that actually make everything work can't afford to drive to work. (And people think the real unemployment numbers are bad now.) But that $5/gal mark is cutting it close, particularly when you look at how transportation is done in this country.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[schnikies79]

Don't know really. It makes sense though.

I have a very well insulated house with leaky windows. Sucks.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[shaitand]

yeah but does anyone use oil to heat their house? I heard of oil and coal stoves being used back in the day but its all electric and natural gas these days. Even coal would be more sensible since there are shit tons of it here in the states.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[eugene ts wong]

Yeah, if there are uncontrollable vents and leaks, the house can become drafty or unevenly heated. Having control over the windows allows you to time when you vent as well.

Argh! I just checked what I wrote *again*, and realized I said, "I'm arguing". That's not what I meant, which is what you seem to have understood.

Re:And now, over to the speculators.

[toddestan]

Heating oil is widely used in areas where the weather is cold and natural gas is not widely available. In the US this is mostly in the northeast, as the midwest generally has natural gas available, and the rest of the country either doesn't need heat or gets by with electric for what little heating needs they have.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

More accurate observations will help drive up the price. This will make new exploration and coal and natural gas more cost effective.

And will also get prices to the point that all the so-called alternatives might be able to stand on their own.

Re:Good

[mace9984]

+1

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit observations can help drive up the price as well. This could be a well-crafted money-making scheme.

Who knows.

Glad we are taking the necessary steps...

[MoldySpore]

...to ensure we are ready for the day when the oil runs out by embracing clean energy and slowly phasing out our dependence on foreign oil...

Oh wait, that was a dream I had. Shit.

Re:Glad we are taking the necessary steps...

[diskofish]

We'll reduce our dependency on oil. Right after shit starts to hit the fan.

Re:Glad we are taking the necessary steps...

[Culture20]

We'll reduce our dependency on oil. Right after shit starts to hit the fan.

You just described the renewable energy process of Bartertown.

Re:Glad we are taking the necessary steps...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Probably not then either. Everything will suddenly get more expensive as the high price of oil works its way down the value chain. We'll use less for sure, but by then demand will be much less elastic. People have to eat, you know, and we are pathetically dependent on liquid hydrocarbons for our fuel supply.

Pretty soon, oil price feedback sets in, as the high price of oil itself increases the cost of locating, extracting, refining and distributing refined liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Prices spike suddenly, and crash, and again, and again.. with greater time between spikes and a diminishing height to the spikes before each crash, until we just can't maintain the supply chain any more and we all start to get used to a lower energy level, and starvation. 7 billion of us, remember?

Cheers!

Re:Glad we are taking the necessary steps...

[Locutus]

it'll probably hit the fan right around the time GM kills the 2nd electric car.

LoB

Re:Glad we are taking the necessary steps...

[dudpixel]

We'll reduce our dependency on oil. Right after shit starts to hit the fan.

actually, it'll be sometime even after that...

Re:Glad we are taking the necessary steps...

[rrohbeck]

Hmm. I have a feeling that the next recession due to high oil prices (this year or next) is not going to change anything. Not as long as Koch and Exxon control almost 50% of the public opinion and the US doesn't experience a clearly climate related disaster like Russia last year.

No worries - they already sell it to us.

[Penguinisto]

As sibling mentioned, the whole damned market is fungible (Hell, we sell Alaskan crude to Japan and the rest of Asia, if memory serves... with very little making it to the lower 48).

I figure that, *if* renewables do start picking up, then we have options...

* rising gas prices will almost guarantee that folks will (if they can) shift to more fuel efficient vehicles. Hybrids? Probably not until the come down in price to something sane, and EV's will likely not be viable until they come with a decent range (the Nissan Leaf IIRC only gets around 140 miles per charge... then you get to wait an hour or two for it to recharge). Meanwhile, the very poor and the very rich will still be driving SUV's (the former because the things will be cast off like so much detritus), but only one group will actually be able to afford to.

* there will likely be a surge in public transit in many areas - those areas where it exists will likely get a huge boost in routes (now if only they can string a track from PDX to the coast...) Even out in the Western US, where distances between towns are obscenely long, this is already happening to an extent (e.g. Ogden to SLC light rail).

* I get the feeling that the NIMBY crowd will start getting bitch-slapped once the masses realize that either we build the solar/wind farm on that Western Cross-Eyed Spotted Dormouse habitat, or you start putting up with brownouts.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[rolfwind]

Solar/Wind won't do it.

Nimbys and environmentalist wackos will have to be slapped asiden and nuclear plants (and breeder plants) built for the first time in 30 years. Nuclear is the real hope. Solar and Wind is a pipe dream except for localized energy.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[characterZer0]

The real solution is to stop using energy to push 3500 pound cars with a few hundred pounds of human all over the place. Half the cars in this country should be replaced by bicycles.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The socially interesting(if probably ugly) phenomenon will be the steep rise of the cost of living in the suburbs and the exurbs...

With the recent partial collapse of the enormous bubble in real estate prices, we saw all kinds of hell break loose. Most major financial institutions were shown to be idiots rolling rigged dice in a burning casino, the middle and upper-middle class collectively shit themselves and demanded that Something Be Done when their god-given right to ever-increasing home values was pulled, and things generally got unpleasant.

An increase in the cost of driving would mean a permanent, structural, reduction in the value of suburbs and exurbs: too far from the city for efficient walking/mass transit, too dense for self-sufficient farming. Some will, certainly, hang on as places for the genuinely wealthy to escape from crime and those of the pigmented persuasion; but Joe "Middle Class" isn't going to be able to afford a white picket fence and two hour commute.

A lot of people's real-estate holdings will collapse in value, while the city centers will presumably be gentrified good and hard. What shape the new suburb/exurb slums will take remains to be seen...

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[dkleinsc]

* I get the feeling that the NIMBY crowd will start getting bitch-slapped once the masses realize that either we build the solar/wind farm on that Western Cross-Eyed Spotted Dormouse habitat, or you start putting up with brownouts.

The NIMBY crowd and the Cute Fuzzy Animal Lovers are two entirely different constituencies. NIMBY generally comes from folks who think that whatever it is that's being proposed will decrease the value of their property, so it's basically about money, which means there's the possibility of buying them off. Cute Fuzzy Animal Lovers have the impression that there's value in preserving wild species, so it's about principles, which means there's no buying them off. There are a lot more NIMBY folks than CFALs, but the CFALs have disproportionate ability to stop these sorts of efforts because they travel around a lot more and are more organized.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[rolfwind]

The real solution is to stop using energy to push 3500 pound cars with a few hundred pounds of human all over the place. Half the cars in this country should be replaced by bicycles.

The problem is that so much of this country has been built around the car. The bike is excellent in Europe, specifically Holland. But the zoning there doesn't seperated stores from the people in the same way they do it here, surburbia wasn't sold to them as the ultimate dream like it was here in the 1950s to get away from the cities.

Also, weight is not the ultimate problem. A honda civic gets 30mpg. A moped/motorcycle that has a small engine but still can go highway speeds gets maybe 75mpg, often 60mpg. For the sacrifice, not a huge multiplier. If you can get away with 60mph top speed, then maybe a moped with 100mpg. Really not the 300mpg some people I talked to thought in the past (when gas was nearing $4 a gallon). It surprised them because they see a lot of sacrificed weight (saftey) and convenience (space).

For one, standard bicycles/motorcycles have a tall profile with the rider in the standard position, not that aerodynamic compared to a lower car or recumbent bicycle (which hold the speed records since aerodynamics make a huge difference at speed). Then another factor is rolling resistance -- trains are heavy as hell but their steel wheels deform a lot less than a rubber wheel - giving them decent efficiency all things considered (along with not stop and going and aerodynamics). Lastly is the huge engines Americans love even though they never use 90% of the capacity. In Germany, with the unlimited autobahn and where they go at least 85mph (~140kph) on average on the autobahn, many drivers make do with 1.2-1.6L engines while in America so many people have 1.8-2.4L+ just so they can peel out the driveway a fraction of a second faster. And consume more fuel the rest of the time.

I don't see the US making the move to rail/bike lanes. Too much central control and will power needed to make the changes. Before we go to mopeds/bikes, something like the Aptera could provide similiar mileage w/o too many sacrifices. Too bad it'll never get made.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[lgw]

Sponser a hippie today: for every car you don't drive, I'll drive three!

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[hajus]

Maybe electric bicycles or maybe someone could invent some kind of gasoline powered bicycles. I don't think every couch potato is cut out for pedaling.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[Penguinisto]

An increase in the cost of driving would mean a permanent, structural, reduction in the value of suburbs and exurbs: too far from the city for efficient walking/mass transit, too dense for self-sufficient farming. Some will, certainly, hang on as places for the genuinely wealthy to escape from crime and those of the pigmented persuasion; but Joe "Middle Class" isn't going to be able to afford a white picket fence and two hour commute.

Dunno... if you can park enough commerce in the middle of a chunk of suburb, and run a rail line to it... (well, you'd get something like the towns around Portland, Oregon).

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[citylivin]

Your simply dreaming. What about peak uranium? or are you just ignoring that... The sun has ALL the energy we need. It has nothing to do with environmentalism and everything to do with almost FREE energy.

Whats the statistic? The Sahara covered in solar panels would provide enough power for the entire earth 100x over?

Conceptually, which do you think is easier; generating power, or simply harvesting it?

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[locallyunscene]

Nuclear is not a magic bullet. The plants have a high upfront cost to build and require a lot of skilled supervision to maintain safely. And that's before you even start talking about the waste that comes out of them.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[circletimessquare]

uranium gets used up, you switch to thorium. lots of that. enough for a century or two. by then, if we haven't figured out fusion, which marks the end of energy problems, then we deserve what we get

solar is wonderful, and should be used. but the infrastructure investment to get the energy tapped is HUGE. for example, arizona covered in solar panels would power the usa just fine. great! now you tell me how much it costs to cover arizona in solar panels

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[Anonymous Coward]

Less than the 3 trillion the war has cost I'd bet.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[click2005]

Not just the cost of the plant itself. Getting the fuel will get more and more difficult/expensive.

There is around 50 years of fuel in the reserves at current usage levels.
Uranium from seawater requires 5300 cubic metres of water to be processed per second continuously to supply one reactor.
Uranium from granite requires a block 100 metres wide, 100 metres high and three kilometres long each year, for one reactor.

While the equivalent cost of nuclear plants spent on solar would produce around 35% less energy once it is built the running and maintenance costs are orders of magnitude lower. With solar there is no need to store waste and the fuel is free to collect.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate_change_debate/2587.jsp

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[currently_awake]

If you put in electric light rail for longer distances (over 20 miles) and use electric cars for short range stuff then you don't need gas. Of course that would require the government (state/federal) to actually look out for the interests of the people instead of helping the rich loot america.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[wierd_w]

Think of it this way: It helps combat both rising fuel costs, AND the rising obesity epidemic!

It's win-win!

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[Prune]

Wind/solar cannot achieve decent density. I'd hate to see a good percentage of land covered by such an eyesore. Now look at the rising world energy demand as 2nd and 3rd world nations industrialize fully. Nuclear reactors avoid this problem, and breeder and thorium-fueled ones have enough fuel for dozens of thousands of years while minimizing waste.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[shaitand]

Solar and wind work just fine at the plant level. But there are bacteria that produce gasoline, diesel, and kerosene directly from sunlight and nutrient water and the process costs less than the current subsidized price of oil. So why do we give a shit?

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[Anonymous Coward]

Run the numbers your self. How much solar do you need and how much will it cost. Don't forget that using an area the size of a fucking country is not going to be cheap. Unless you want to pay 10US per kWh your shit out of luck.

And then it only produces its peek power a few hours a day at best, and nothing at night. What then? Run the numbers on *all* storage schemes to date and you will come up will some very very very serious short falls, and insane costs that drive the cost up even more.

Wind is even worse. Again RUN THE FUCKING NUMBERS your self and stop eating the hippy shit.

With reprocessing, Nukes are good for 1000s of years.... We should have fusion by then.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[NewsWatcher]

uranium gets used up, you switch to thorium. lots of that. enough for a century or two. by then, if we haven't figured out fusion, which marks the end of energy problems, then we deserve what we get

I think the problem is that we have worked out fusion. The problem is that we have worked out it only works under massive pressures and temperatures. That is fine in the sun, but here on earth it just doesn't add up financially.

I would love to see cold water fusion a reality, but living in the real world, it would take a quantum leap in our understanding of the fusion process.

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[stubob]

Saying

Cute Fuzzy Animal Lovers have the impression that there's value in preserving wild species

is like saying you have no value beyond the value of the materials that compose you. Some carbon, some oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and trace elements. Those elements aren't particularly valuable, so call it a couple bucks. What, you think you're worth more than that? Doesn't that make you a Smelly Hairy Mammal Lover?

Re:No worries - they already sell it to us.

[HornWumpus]

You think 2.4L is big?

455 cubic inches is big. Perfect for a two seater.

Your pessimism is misplaced

[SuperKendall]

For balance:

New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US.

Eventually we'll have a president with a realistic understanding of the proper mix and growth ratio of renewable power and traditional power, and we'll start to make use of natural assets again.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[MoldySpore]

Since oil is not a renewable resource, I think my pessimism is very well placed. Perhaps we won't see the oil run out in our lifetime, but it will eventually. It doesn't matter how much new, dangerous to drill, domestically based oil fields we find. It will eventually all be gone. Especially at the rate we consume it. But then again it's always easier to put off until tomorrow what can be done today, right?

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[circletimessquare]

i'm certain we can eke out some extra bits of oil here and there with some shiny new tech. meanwhile, china, brazil, india, are growing economically. it's simple economics: increased demand, and harder to get supply = price levels that make petroleum as a fuel source unpalatable

it just begs the question: what does it take to convince some people that the era of digging petroleum out of the ground is over, and you need to look at alternatives?

because when i read posts like yours, i just see denial

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[cptdondo]

At what cost? That method involves breaking rock under high pressure, by using gas, water, sometimes mixed with chemicals.

I'm sorry, but I don't think that we should be cracking rock and injecting crap into the ground, especially in a region that's already critically short of groundwater.

The fractured rock creates new pathways for water to migrate, and for pollutants to get around, and in general to fuck up acquifers in a region that may well be uninhabitable due to a lack of water in the near future.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[Darkness404]

The alternatives will start coming when A) we stop federal subsidies for "alternative energy" and B) when the price actually hits where it makes sense for people to transition.

All federal subsides do is delay real, marketable solutions for stuff that doesn't work in the real world. Just look at ethanol, it is completely impractical for use in the US, especially from corn, but because of all of the subsides going to it, we continued on even though it is a dead end. Perhaps if we stopped interfering with the automotive industries we might actually see a practical electric car on the market, rather than attempts to gain tax credits and subsides.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[Americano]

I'm all for it. Can we start building some very efficient and very safe nuclear power plants instead?

I ask because a lot of people who want alternative energy sources seem strangely unwilling to accept any alternatives involving anything except sunlight, wind, and perhaps tide power on the coasts.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[FriendlyPrimate]

For balance:

New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US.

Eventually we'll have a president with a realistic understanding of the proper mix and growth ratio of renewable power and traditional power, and we'll start to make use of natural assets again.

Sheesh....been watching the anti-Obama propaganda on Fox a little bit too much?

In your opinion, in what way does Obama not have a realistic understanding of a proper mix of traditional and renewable power? He did recently just open up significant new sections on the continental shelf for drilling. Is it that you think he's promoting renewable power more than traditional power? Isn't that what he SHOULD be doing? After all, traditional power doesn't NEED any help. It's already mature and highly profitable. Obama's not stopping anyone from using these new drilling techniques if they indeed are for real. However, renewable power is new and not profitable yet. It needs help in terms of money for research if it has any hope of BECOMING mature and profitable and self-sufficient. Therefore, all emphasis SHOULD be placed on renewable energy, since traditional energy is doing just fine on it's own.

I'm not a big fan of Obama for lots of reasons, but not having a "realistic understanding of the proper mix of renewable and traditional power" is not one of those reasons.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[Idbar]

I'm pretty sure there's already OILv6 out there already. We just need to make the move from OILv4 smoothly but soon.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[the eric conspiracy]

The idea that hydraulic fracturing is new is a ridiculous invention of mainstream media journalists who are completely uninformed on the topic. It's been used for at least 60 years and on over a million wells world-wide. It was first used in 1949 in Oklahoma and Texas.

The depth at which this fracturing technique is actually used is far below any aquifers; the only cases of contamination that have occurred are due leakage from well bore casings and well blowouts, not from the fracturing of rocks. These types of incidents while serious and do need remediation in no way threaten a water supply.

http://www.spe.org/jpt/print/archives/2010/12/10Hydraulic.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[necro81]

By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day

Wow, a whole 2 million barrels per day! Compare that to the 20+ million barrels the US goes through each day, and the worldwide demand of over 80 (90 by the 2015 date). I'm sure that this remarkably destructive and inconsequential band-aid will allow us all to sleep well at night knowing our cars will start in the morning.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[cptdondo]

Did you actually read that wikipedia article?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing#Environmental_and_health_effects

It's bad, and no one knows what's in it. We should not be injecting stuff into the ground, period. And I say this as someone with 25 years experience in water resources engineering.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[RingDev]

Petroleum engineers first used the method in 2007 to unlock oil from a 25,000-square-mile formation under North Dakota and Montana known as the Bakken. Production there rose 50 percent in just the past year, to 458,000 barrels a day, according to Bentek Energy, an energy analysis firm.

The Bakken and the Eagle Ford are each expected to ultimately produce 4 billion barrels of oil.

so .5M barrels a day. 4,000M total barrels. 8,000 days, assuming the Bakken range doesn't continue its production growth and Eagle Ford doesn't come online until Bakken starts tapering off. Odds are though, it'll be closer to 4,000 days of production. So we're looking at ~20 years, "best" case scenario out of these two fields production run (@.5M barrels a day) and likely closer to 10 years once both fields are up and running optimally.

Realistically though, we're burning through +20M barrels a day. So these two ranges could fulfill our demand for about 200 days if we could pump them out fast enough. The 4th largest oil field ever found in the US, and it wouldn't last us a year. It shouldn't take much to figure out that in the relatively near term, we're going to need an alternative fuel stock.

-Rick

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[TooMuchToDo]

Drilling service companies have injected at least 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground as part of a controversial drilling technique, a Democratic congressional investigation has found.

Injecting diesel as part of "hydraulic fracturing" is supposed to be regulated by U.S. EPA. But an agency official told congressional investigators that EPA had assumed that the use of diesel had stopped seven years ago.

"The industry has been saying they stopped injecting toxic diesel fuel into wells," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who led the inquiry. "But our investigation showed this practice has been continuing in secret and in apparent violation of the [Safe Drinking Water Act]."

But heh, don't let oil/gas companies poisoning US citizens for profit keep you awake at night.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/01/31/31greenwire-fracking-companies-injected-32m-gallons-of-die-24135.html

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[circletimessquare]

we need german pebble bed reactors all over the place. i agree with you 100%. modern nuclear tech doesn't go china syndrome, you can walk away from a pebble bed reactor and nothing bad will happen. pebble bed reactors are passively safe, they require no human intervention to keep things safe, so things don't get out of hand. you would have to be a terrorist intent on breaking the pebbles or stealing them to do harm (so yes, your security does need to be good). but your average bart simpson nuclear tech just cannot make something melt down with pebble bed reactors, no matter how hard he tried to be a complete screw up. and pebble bed reactors are air cooled: no need to festoon our waterways with nuclear plants and keep our fish in saunas all year long. fear of nuclear power is from 1960s era nuclear tech

and we need breeder reactors so we produce 1/10th the quantity of waste with a half life on the span of decades rather than millennia. but of course, breeders produces plutonium, which is what scares people about breeders. so just have good security, and burn up the plutonium too. 10x the nuclear waste with 10,000x the half life... or produce plutonium, which you can use as fuel. i'm afraid of the nuclear waste more than the plutonium produced, myself

and when we run out of DOMESTIC uranium, switch to thorium, and we should be set for a couple of centuries. in which time, we figure out fusion, which solves energy problems once and for all

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[Exoman]

Yes, eventually, we will have a president who understands that we need as much oil as we can get, at any price we have to pay. Heck, if fracking for natural gas has been so good for our aquifers, why not jump in with both feet and grab that oil? No thank you. I prefer my water unflavored and non-flammable.

The point somehow is sadly missed that extraction of every last drop of oil may not be a goal for which we should be striving. Yes, we need a transition plan, and fossil fuels will be a part of that plan. In these decisions we make today, will we consider only our immediate easiest path, or what we're leaving for the next generations, e.g., polluted aquifers, dead rivers and seas, and disrupted climates around the world? Burning all the fossil fuels we can find for our immediate needs, and leaving future generations screwed is completely immoral.

Buckminster Fuller likened our foundational use of oil instead of renewable energy as equivalent letting our abundant (solar) paychecks fall on the ground while we live high on our savings. We should instead be using that savings to switch foundations and begin living on our abundant daily paychecks.

My prediction is that we will not figure it out in time because we'll be unwilling to get out of our comfort zones. We will instead follow a classic overshoot and collapse systems pattern that is enabled by delayed feedback loops, and reinforced by masking the true cost of using fossil fuels. We needed to get serious about renewables decades ago. When dropping supply curves and rising demand curves cross, prices won't be changing incrementally, a few cents at a time. It will mean sudden, dramatic, and far greater oil price increases than most people would every dare to imagine. The economic carnage of delaying will make the cost of doing it now seem like the missed opportunity of the millennium.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[HornWumpus]

Oil won't be gone. It will be too expensive to use a fuel.

The 'last' barrel of oil in the earth will be insanely expensive and will never be pumped.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[Kyusaku Natsume]

Well, is hard to believe that the same people that show such contempt for human life or dignity around the world will show respect for the lives of american peons.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[Anonymous Coward]

'The alternatives will start coming when A) we stop federal subsidies for "[automotive and petroleum industries]" and B) when the price actually hits where it makes sense for people to transition.'

There; fixed that for you. The U.S. has presented overflowing government troughs from which major auto and petro companies have fed for decades.

Maybe it's time to bail out commuters instead of automobile execs.

Oh, btw, "alternatives", such as all-electric cars with 100+ mile ranges, have been viable for many years for many commuters. We've just been subsidizing exclusionary markets by outright corporate welfare and tilted, lobbyist-written laws.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[DarkOx]

Wow... just wow you are crediting Obama for finally obeying a court order his admistration argued against, tried to do an end run around, and was found in comptempt of court over fist.

Your standards are really low.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[the eric conspiracy]

Excuse me, but are you saying that injecting oil into oil wells is a huge environmental threat?

Exactly how is that?

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[the eric conspiracy]

The statement that nobody knows what's in it is flat out stupid.

Of course people know what's in it, and in fact that information is disclosed during the permitting process to the various state agencies, and is published on their web sites.

A simple Google search would turn up this information.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[TooMuchToDo]

Yes, I'm saying pumping diesel fuel into the ground with no restriction on its dispersal is a huge environmental threat.

When oil companies are pumping crude from the ground, the well has a casing surrounding it. This prevents any leaks into aquifers, rockbed, etc between the deep well and the surface. With fracking, there is no such thing. The whole point is to use proprietary fluid combinations to fracture the rock in order to get to the natural gas deposits. By definition, there is very little control over where these liquids go.

Re:Your pessimism is misplaced

[MaDeR]

But... but... CHERNOBYL!!!111oneoneiamecoretard

Leaked huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way possible this was leaked by an oil company.

Those poor oil companies who have an ever dwindling supply of oil, and now have to state that they have so much less oil than they thought.
They might have to charge more for oil because there is now so little left.

Re:Leaked huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way possible this was leaked by an oil company.

You are correct. It was leaked to WikiLeaks, along with 250k other documents, by Bradley Manning, not by an oil company.

Perhaps you saw something about that in the news....

Come on up!

[jpedlow]

Better come up during the summer, the winters are cold and I'm not sure you guys can deal with the swing from desert heat to canadian winters (except those living in victoria, lucky jerks)

Also, we could finally have our terrible gun laws thrown out if you guys invade, and I can take the rivets outta the 20 round mags on my M1A (30s on my AR)! Dont touch our beer though, for serious.

Re:Come on up!

[HornWumpus]

I've tried plenty of Canadian beer.

You can rest assured I won't be touching that piss. It's as bad as American can beer, maybe worse.

Electricity? No.

[loshwomp]

Electricity is a red herring. So little oil is used for electricity production that you can round it down to the nearest zero.

Inaccurate Headline

[Wyatt Earp]

The leaked cables are that someone from Saudi Aramco thinks the estimates are overstated by up to 40% and they told the US Embassy.

It's in the damned summary of the story

"Nevertheless, cables from 2007-09 reveal some U.S. diplomats were convinced by Sadad al-Husseini, a former executive at Saudi Aramco, who said crude reserves from Saudi Arabia were overstated by as much as 40 percent.

"While al-Husseini fundamentally contradicts the Aramco company line, he is no doomsday theorist," the cables state."

You know what they say about assumption...

[SuperKendall]

Besides, the oil revenue the US was counting on from Iraq to pay for the invasion never materialized.

That's kind of an odd assumption because the war was never about oil revenue from Iraq but instead of a platform of relative stability in the region once we started realizing Turkey was headed south.

Re:You know what they say about assumption...

[DamnStupidElf]

Yeah, that whole blood for oil thing stopped as soon as they renamed "Operation Iraqi Liberation."

Re:You know what they say about assumption...

[dave562]

What do you mean when you say Turkey is heading south? Everything I've read points to Turkey being the largest player in the region within the next decade or so.

Re:You know what they say about assumption...

[jbengt]

Yes, the kind of assumption that's odd because it's not arrived at by assuming, but by remebering the quotes of the architects of the war at the time.

Re:You know what they say about assumption...

[Boronx]

The best part of the Iraq war is how every single apologist makes up his own bullshit reason for it.

Re:You know what they say about assumption...

[tsm_sf]

For "heading south" read "starting to think for themselves."

Re:You know what they say about assumption...

[DeathElk]

Whitehouse conversation circa 2001 (actually, probably sometime around Feb 2001); "Lets jam our fists into this plump iraqi beehive and lick the sweetness... but how can we do it without annoying the bee freaks?"

March 20, 2003; >PUNCH<

Whitehouse conversation circa 2004 (continuing to this day); "Ouch stingy things!! Help us stop the stingy things!!"

Re:You know what they say about assumption...

[tehcyder]

For "heading south" read "starting to think for themselves."

And for "starting to think for themselves" read "no longer toeing the 100% US-is-always-right line".

If only we would do the same in the UK...

Obvious Solution

[FrankDrebin]

The obvious solution to losing all that oil would be plugging the leak.

Why to leak this info?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really unsure if this kind of leaks are useful for us. In really I think it might really damage our government strategy. I don't really care that the US government is not transparent about those evaluation. Where is the value of this info here? Why does wikileaks publish this document?

Re:Why to leak this info?

[heypete]

It could be useful for people who are concerned about the future availability and cost of petroleum, which is just about everyone.

Re:Why to leak this info?

[RingDev]

Well, for starters it may motivate more voting Americans to lean towards candidates and initiatives that involve alternative energy sources?

-Rick

Re:Why to leak this info?

[HornWumpus]

Anybody that has been paying any attention has known this for decades. It's implicit in how OPEC sets their national limits.

This was leaked to stir up shit. Simple.

Wrong

[SuperKendall]

And the Republicans are trying to unfund any research into renewable energy.

They are trying to cut budgets across the board, because the government has no money.

Plenty of Republicans and other conservatives back things like construction of new nuclear power plants, a form of renewable energy that actually makes sense.

Wind energy makes little sense at the moment (all we will end up with is more dead windmill fields such as the ones in California and Hawaii). Solar panels are starting to make sense but why do they need government help to make it happen? People are already starting to buy things like solar shingles of their own accord.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The tax credits had nothing to do with that, right?

Re:Wrong

[aaarrrgggh]

Um... have you been to California or Hawaii? Both have significant, operating, and expanding wind farms that were commercially viable with a minimum of subsidy/regulation. Hell, at $0.50/kWh in Maui or the Big Island wind and solar have 3 year paybacks!!

Re:Wrong

[h4rr4r]

Really? Across the board?
Please do provide some more information on all these defense budget cuts. We do spend more than the rest of the world combined on that so it seems a pretty safe place to start cutting. Nuclear is not renewable, you are burning the matter of dead stars, there is a limited supply of such stuff. It is still an excellent choice for baseload power though, if reprocessing of spent fuel was legal.

I live in Western NY, wind power is huge here. We keep putting them up and selling power to the eastern seaboard.

Re:Wrong

[Lonewolf666]

And the Republicans are trying to unfund any research into renewable energy.

They are trying to cut budgets across the board, because the government has no money.

Plenty of Republicans and other conservatives back things like construction of new nuclear power plants, a form of renewable energy that actually makes sense.

Wind energy makes little sense at the moment (all we will end up with is more dead windmill fields such as the ones in California and Hawaii). Solar panels are starting to make sense but why do they need government help to make it happen? People are already starting to buy things like solar shingles of their own accord.

Nuclear power plants are not renewable. Uranium will eventually run out just like oil. Granted, with breeder technology it might last a few centuries, but after Chernobyl I'm a bit wary about claims of safe fission reactors.

Solar panels being cheap enough without subsidies to pay for themselves are a very interesting development, but also a new one.
Germany is currently approaching that point for private use, but it is not quite there. Maybe in another year. Large industrial customers get cheaper prices per kWh, so installing solar panels for their own use is less attractive for them.
For some countries in southern Europe, we may already be beyond the break-even point. I'm not familiar with their prices per kWh, but they certainly have more sunny hours per year and get more energy from the same amount of panels.

Re:Wrong

[h4rr4r]

Comparing Chernobyl to any western plant is rather disingenuous. It did not even have a containment dome and had a positive void coefficient. I say this as someone who was in Germany when it happened and had that stuff rain down on them. Powering Europe would probably be better done via Solar thermal in northern Africa. I believe the Moroccans are already starting to do this.

Re:Wrong

[cpt kangarooski]

Plenty of Republicans and other conservatives back things like construction of new nuclear power plants, a form of renewable energy that actually makes sense.

Nuclear isn't renewable. You're probably thinking of breeder reactors, but they're merely more efficient than other designs. Eventually you run out of fissile material anyway, and there's only so much of it in accessible places on the planet.

Nuclear also has major problems with regard to hazardous waste -- not just spent fuel but also contaminated equipment, materials, and mine tailings. There still isn't a good plan for dealing with this stuff that anyone can get agreement on and put into practice.

Plus, in order to be implemented worldwide, there are serious security concerns. Breeder reactors tend to present a proliferation risk, but even without that, radioactive material could be used in dirty bombs. And for some reactor designs, there are very dangerous failure modes; if you're going to have tens of thousands of nuclear power plants around the world, we're probably bound for some nasty problems, whether accidental or deliberate.

At least with things like wind or thermal solar, there's a real abundance of available energy, no significant pollution concerns, no reliance on energy sources that may be controlled by hostile powers, and little danger of a catastrophic accident or deliberate attack on large numbers of people. There are issues with power transmission and and storage, but I bet these are a lot easier to overcome, especially if we can reduce our energy consumption as well.

Re:Wrong

[QuantumPion]

And the Republicans are trying to unfund any research into renewable energy.

They are trying to cut budgets across the board, because the government has no money.

Plenty of Republicans and other conservatives back things like construction of new nuclear power plants, a form of renewable energy that actually makes sense.

Wind energy makes little sense at the moment (all we will end up with is more dead windmill fields such as the ones in California and Hawaii). Solar panels are starting to make sense but why do they need government help to make it happen? People are already starting to buy things like solar shingles of their own accord.

Nuclear power plants are not renewable. Uranium will eventually run out just like oil. Granted, with breeder technology it might last a few centuries, but after Chernobyl I'm a bit wary about claims of safe fission reactors.

No, uranium will not eventually run out just like oil. We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for 10,000 - 100,000 years. Not even counting reserves - I'm just talking about the leftover depleted uranium already processed and sitting around unused at enrichment plants. Yes, using fast breeder technology. Yes, it was in fact Democrats whom cancelled breeder, reprocessing, and fast reactor research.

As an interesting tidbit, for the amount of money Obama spent of the stimulus package, we could have built ~300 new nuclear reactors and converted the country to 90% nuclear power. Save the coal and natural gas for transportation, we'd have enough to last 1000 years and total energy independence forever.

Amazing how efficient liberals are at wasting money, eh? :)

Re:Wrong

[lgw]

Solar is quite reasonable if you don't insist on photoelectric panels. Paint a pipe black, run it through a mirrored trench, and put a steam generator at the end, and you have cheap solar power. Photoelectric panels are great for "off the grid" power, but if we were serious about industrial solar power they aren't required.

Chernobyl is not a lesson on the dangers of nuclear power, but the dangers of communist engineering. Far more people have died from chinese dam failures - hydro power has caused for more direct accidental death than any other form of power generation (nothing says "safety" like imprisoning any engineer who speaks out against a project!).

Re:Wrong

[HangingChad]

>They are trying to cut budgets across the board, because the government has no money.

Some of the tea party Repubs are trying to cut the budget, the rest are working on such weighty affairs of state as making sure the EPA can't regulate greenhouse gases, re-defining rape, and making sure poor people don't get decent medical care.

Republicans aren't going to be serious about alternate energy as long as the Koch family is funding most of their outreach, so don't even pretend like you care.

Re:Wrong

[HangingChad]

>Yes, it was in fact Democrats whom cancelled breeder, reprocessing, and fast reactor research.

I was in DoE in those days and most of the program cuts came during the reign of Ronnie We-Don't-Need-No-Steeking-Alternate-Energy Reagan. He derailed many programs that held real promise for cutting our use of fossil fuels. Some of those programs have been revived recently.

DoE pulled funding for the breeder reactor in the face of budget realities in 1994 when Republicans swept back into power.

Re:Wrong

[hey!]

Plenty of Republicans and other conservatives back things like construction of new nuclear power plants, a form of renewable energy that actually makes sense.

Well, let's not get too nitpicky here about the fact that breeding nuclear fuel doesn't make it a renewable resource. I'm suspicious of the claims boosters of this technology have made, particularly about how long the global fuel supply will last. On economic grounds alone, I do not find claims that breeder reactors can supply our energy needs for thousands of years plausible. Nor do we know whether any of the design concepts proposed will be as economical and practical to operate as we hope they'll be. Still I think breeder technology is promising in the short to mid term, and I'd like to see this technology pursued.

What I don't want to see is a crash program on which we pin too many of our plans for the future. Once too much money and too many hopes have been invested in a particular design, we won't be able to tolerate any bad news about it. It would be like Ibsen's play, "An Enemy of the People." We should allow ourselves a decade or so in which questions about the merits of a design or design concept don't brand a critic as unpatriotic or against human progress or economic survival.

In the meantime we should work on improving our electric grid. That's a no-brainer that will serve us well when the time comes (if it ever does) for a nuclear crash program. If that time never comes, and improved grid will serve us in diversifying our energy sources. An improved grid will promote competition in energy technologies, allowing developers of new power plants (nuclear or otherwise) to recoup their investment over a greater geographical area.

Re:Wrong

[Jeremi]

Chernobyl is not a lesson on the dangers of nuclear power, but the dangers of communist engineering.

The lesson is that nuclear materials and sloppy engineering/management/maintenance don't mix.

The problem is, in a world with ubiquitous nuclear power plants, there will always be some plants that are not-well designed or well-run. 99% of the nuclear power plants will be fine, and the other 1% will cause enough damage to give nuclear power a bad name.

Re:Wrong

[Capt James McCarthy]

Really? Across the board?
Please do provide some more information on all these defense budget cuts. We do spend more than the rest of the world combined on that so it seems a pretty safe place to start cutting. Nuclear is not renewable, you are burning the matter of dead stars, there is a limited supply of such stuff. It is still an excellent choice for baseload power though, if reprocessing of spent fuel was legal.

I live in Western NY, wind power is huge here. We keep putting them up and selling power to the eastern seaboard.

Well, it looks as though Health and Human services spend more then the Defense Budget: http://www.federalbudget.com/

So I start cutting there. The Defense Budget has already started a movement to trim 10% of the their budget. Let's see H&H do that. Or how about Social Security (Which isn't part of the federal budget, but agencies can 'borrow' against the Social Security trust, it's a broken system of spending).

This is really a political/social issue of what to cut. One side says Social Services, while the other screams Defense cuts. And nothing gets cut. It's a stale mate and we the tax payers are all going to lose and have been on the losing end. And it doesn't help when States can't keep their own budgets in line and then ask the Fed for $$ to solve their issues. Or the amount of subsidies out there are way too much as well.

The real bitch of it is, when these cuts happen (they should one way or another), does anyone really think that our taxes are going to go down? And the Govt should never have a large surplus of cash on hand once the budget is taken care of. They are not a for profit business.

Re:Wrong

[lgw]

Just about any kind of large scale engineering can kill a lot of people if it goes wrong. But Three Mile Island was a worst case failure for old school US nuclear power plants - the operators made the wrong decision at every turn, causing the problem to grow as much as they were able to. The result just wasn't that bad - that worst case was still far less dangerous than an old-school coal power plant.

In the meantime we've learned more about safety and usability, and could make the worst case even less worrisome, for a US plant. Admittedly, we also know how to build a coal plant a lot cleaner than we did in the 60s.

Re:Wrong

[MaDeR]

"but after Chernobyl"
You just lose credibility.

"I'm a bit wary about claims of safe fission reactors."
If you are ignorant about what exactly happened in Chernobyl, how and why - then sure.

Not quite

[twoallbeefpatties]

It's not about a "blood for oil" trade. It's that the architects of the war grossly underestimated the costs of the invasion, and part of the pitch for the occupation was that the cost of war would be minimal considering that the money recouped from Iraq's domestic production would help to repay for the invasion. This link has a few good quotes:

"The bulk of the funds for Iraq's reconstruction will come from Iraqis -- from oil revenues, recovered assets, international trade, direct foreign investment -- as well as some contributions we've already received and hope to receive from the international community." -Donald Rumsfeld, 2003

this is commonly debated

[mschaffer]

This isn't really news. Geologists have been debating this for years. It would be news if a Saudi geologist would officially state this.

Re:this is commonly debated

[wiredlogic]

It would be news if a Saudi geologist would officially state this.

It may be a bit too presumptuous of me but I expect most Saudi geologists like having their heads attached to their necks.

Re:this is commonly debated

[cyber-vandal]

Sticking your neck out in Saudi Arabia is a pretty bad idea. What lovely allies we have.

Re:this is commonly debated

[Maritz]

Barbaric.

Back a year or two ago when the Saudi king visited Britain, the Royal Preceptory band greeted him off the plane by playing the Vader theme from Star Wars. Found that pretty odd and hilarious in equal measure.

Re:NIMBY

[TaoPhoenix]

Take a look at the housing depression figures out west. There's room to build a couple of power plants out there.

Your pessimism is REALLY misplaced

[SuperKendall]

it just begs the question: what does it take to convince some people that the era of digging petroleum out of the ground is over, and you need to look at alternatives?

Who said alternatives are not desirable?

The only denial I see is in the people who think technology will not produce reasonable alternatives to oil for large-scale production of energy when oil gets expensive enough. People will naturally stop digging for oil at some point when it makes sense, which it simply does not today.

We have already seen that with this story, oil starts to get expensive so techniques to get at oil you couldn't previously use are found.

But in addition to that, nuclear energy research advances as does solar and hydrogen, and even biologic production of hydrocarbons! All of those are also partly in response to oil being harder to extract and recognizing the need for other forms of energy.

That's why "peak oil" has to be the stupidest scare term to come out in a long time, because what humans are really really good at is thinking of alternatives when problems arrive. That includes alternative energy.

When my roof next needs to be replaced for example I intend to spend a little extra and get solar shingles. How is that denial?

Re:Your pessimism is REALLY misplaced

[gearsmithy]

I would like someone to explain to me what exactly will replace petroleum wholesale without using the terms "future technology" or "has yet to be developed."

Re:Your pessimism is REALLY misplaced

[Culture20]

I would like someone to explain to me what exactly will replace petroleum wholesale without using the terms "future technology" or "has yet to be developed."

Whale Oil. Whaling. On the Moon.

Re:Your pessimism is REALLY misplaced

[Cwix]

Nothing, it will probably take many different things to replace oil. Just cause there is no one magic solution doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

Re:Your pessimism is REALLY misplaced

[shaitand]

"The only denial I see is in the people who think technology will not produce reasonable alternatives to oil for large-scale production of energy when oil gets expensive enough."

Yes. We shouldn't develop and advance reasonable alternatives because we will eventually develop and advance reasonable alternatives. Flawless logic here. These things will appear via a free market magic carpet.

"People will naturally stop digging for oil at some point when it makes sense, which it simply does not today."

We can produce carbon neutral gasoline with bacteria, sugar water, and sunlight today for a price equivalent to $33/barrel which is far less than oil. Your right. Obviously there is still DEMAND for oil thanks to stupid people and as long as that is the case it doesn't make sense to stop destroying the world to harvest it. I'm with you. Let me just buy some oil stocks...

Re:Your pessimism is REALLY misplaced

[shaitand]

The bacteria that is also developed and can turn sunlight and a tank of sugar water into the fuel of your choice for less than the current subsidized price of oil? It already exists, the company is just scaling up commercial production.

Old News

[Anonymous Coward]

At least a decade ago I saw a publicly available, heavily redacted CIA report that indicated Saudi Oil was depleting faster than they stated, and that their reserves were also overstated.

Why is this news now?

Re:Old News

[raind]

Source?

So is this proven reserves, or projected reserves

[Sir_Sri]

The problem with proven oil reserves is that they (by definition) include only economically recoverable oil at any given point in time, which is a stupid way to define things but that's beside the point. Saudi Light crude (which is the 15-20/barrel stuff, or less... a lot less), is not exactly going to last long, it's dead easy to get out of the ground and makes it hard to justify the effort in anything else for the saudis (as opposed to say canada, where we have relatively little of the cheap easy to get stuff). But the Saudi's have a lot of heavy oil that at 60 or 70 bucks a barrel wouldn't be economically viable, but at 100 bucks a barrel, with bangladeshi slave.. I'm sorry, foreign worker, labour becomes reasonably profitable. (In 20 years feel free to replace bangladesh with some random impoverished muslim nation in africa, I doubt the Saudi's care where the cheap labour comes from all that much).

So then we can ask a question. As the light, cheap, easy to get stuff dries up, and then there's inflation, economic growth etc. what will the price of oil be in 10 years, 15 years, 20 etc. The Saudi's and americans almost certainly disagree on what will be economically viable to extract, in the same way two experts on the price of oil aren't going to come to exactly the same number for 15 years from now. It's hard to see the future. There are different ways to count oil recoverability too, and that will depend a lot on well... price ( and technology).

Using some measures the US should run almost completely out of domestically produced oil in less than 8 years. Does anyone seriously think that's going to happen? That's supposedly been the case for at least a decade, and yet US oil production doesn't appear to exactly be in a massive imploding crisis of supply. In 2007 the US produced 8.5 million barrels/day (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_pro-energy-oil-production)... there's a long way from that to 0 in 11 years.

The geology question, of how much actual oil a country has, is mostly useless, since it only matters what you figure you can extract. But very reasonable people can have very reasonable disagreements on those numbers, with no one lying. Are the saudi's lying about their oil reserves? Probably not, at least, not significantly, at the current rate of production saudi arabia will run out of officially declared reserves... in 130 years (10 million barrels/day, 430 billion barrels of declared reserves). If they're lying by 40%, then they're lying about a problem that will manifest in the late 2070's or 2080's. That's a long time to hold onto a lie for relatively little gain, since shit will hit the fan either way. Can they disagree with the americans on what exactly the source of that will be? Certainly.

Essentially you could say the same thing about the US. If the figure the price of oil will be > 100 bucks a barrel (in todays dollars) then shale deposits suddenly become economically viable, given the US the largest reserves in the world, by a lot, if the price of oil is less than 70.. well then shale isn't viable to extract. Caveat: I'm not 100% sure on those numbers (100 and 70) but they're good enough to illustrate my point. Now anything in between and we have a fairly difficult calculation.

The Saudis could easily be lying about how long they can keep cheap production of 10 million barrels a day up. But I'm not sure how much of a problem that is, or how much difference it would make, since the price of oil is something like 4 or 5x the cost of most saudi oil, I'm sure for that much money they'll find something. It might be convenient to pay lip service to the americans and say 'oh yes Mr president we'll keep supplying cheap oil and keep the price down just give us more F15's' when they're still marking it up 300% (and that would still bring the cost down), but it's in their interest to convince the americans they're trying to keep oil cheap, when they probably can't do much about the price of oil anymore (by themselves), while at the same time

Oh the horror

[PPH]

This means we will be at the mercy of the Canadians.

Re:Oh the horror

[Anonymous Coward]

Mohoooohahahahaaaaa.... Prepare to be boarded.
We shall force you to make real beer and learn how to use the word "sorry".

Re:Oh the horror

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier to invade a country right next to us that go all that way into the deserts on the other side.

!Good

[Darkness404]

Your post makes no sense. How is it good if our standard of living declines? Sure, perhaps you have a lot of extra cash that you really want to spend on more expensive food, clothes, electronics and other goods, but for everyone else, this isn't a good thing.

A decline in the standard of living for a country is never, ever a good thing.

Re:!Good

[zzatz]

It's good if a small decline in our standard of living now prevents a major decline later.

Re:NIMBY

[tnk1]

Take a look at the housing depression figures out west. There's room to build a couple of power plants out there.

Now that you mention it, I've just thought of something we can do with Detroit. And it would be the one place where nuclear plants would be a beautification project to boot.

Great, just when gas dropped below $3 again...

[Culture20]

Now the gas stations have an excuse to raise prices another $0.50 like with these winter storms.

Re:Great, just when gas dropped below $3 again...

[rwade]

Honestly, how much of your budget could gas really consume? If you're driving 10 miles each way to and from work and have a 30 mile per gallon car you're burning 2/3 of a gallon of gas daily. At $3 that's $2. At $3.50 that's $2.33. An increase of $.50 is going to bankrupt you or anyone else?

The sales of starbucks coffee suggest otherwise...

Why would they lie?

[FriendlyPrimate]

I don't really understand why the Saudi's would lie about how much oil they have. If everyone knew that world oil reserves were lower, then oil prices would be even higher than they are today, and the Saudi's would be making more money on the oil they do have. What incentive do they have to mislead people that overrides the profit they're missing out on? If anything, oil-producing countries have an incentive to make oil seem more scarce than it actually is. Perhaps that's the real reason why we keep hearing these 'rumors'?

Re:Why would they lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

They would lie to prove that they can control world oil prices (preventing even larger price spikes than we have seen so far) by ramping up production at will. Without this ability, their use to the US would be greatly reduced, and they run the risk that the US says 'goodbye' and finds other partners. And then all of those Saudi princes would have to find new homes when the revolution happens.

Re:Why would they lie?

[h4rr4r]

Because OPEC members production is capped at a ratio of their reserves. So the higher they claim their reserves are the more oil they are allowed to sell.

Re:Why would they lie?

[gearsmithy]

Aren't they drilling offshore now? I thought offshore drilling was really expensive, why would they do that if they have plenty of oil inland?

Re:Why would they lie?

[Animats]

Because OPEC members production is capped at a ratio of their reserves. So the higher they claim their reserves are the more oil they are allowed to sell.

Right. Mod parent up. The claimed reserved of most of the OPEC countries went up when OPEC put in that rule in the 1980s. That didn't reflect any new discoveries. Saudi reserves have been widely believed to be exaggerated, but no one is clear on how much.

World oil production peaked in 2005.

Re:Why would they lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to the OPEC production limits, a higher amount of reserves attracts more foreign capital and investments. So, the more oil we think they have, the more wells we drill (that the Saudi's don't have to).

Its been thought for decades...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

Read up on Hubbert's estimates. States they are indeed running out, peaked 4-7 years ago. OPEC production quotas are based on each country's stated reserve estimates, so it is always in the best interests for each country to lie about it (over stating their reserves).

Re:Its been thought for decades...

[BBTaeKwonDo]

Even absent OPEC, the Saudi Arabian leaders also have a vested interest in not admitting production has peaked. What leader / dictator wants to go before his country and say, "Sorry, but the party is over. Hard times ahead. Please don't revolt!"

Re:Its been thought for decades...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you smoking? According to the estimate by the same guy, the USA was going to peak in 1970...I guess it's 1974-77 on your calendar.

Re:Its been thought for decades...

[Flaming Foobar]

it is always in the best interests for each country to lie about it (over stating their reserves).

If you are selling something, wouldn't you want what you sell be scarce so you get a better price?

I'd say it'd be in the interests of the oil industry to perpetually maintain an image of there always being a couple of decades of cheap oil left. You want a good profit, but you don't want your customers to move away from oil.

This is old news

[Anonymous Coward]

I read this years ago from some website that talked about "peak oil" and they didn't need Wikileaks to mention it; in fact it was interesting in that it might even have said basically the same thing, that Saudi Arabia is overstating its reserves by 40%. I'm not even an expert on oil, and in my own blog from three years ago, I wrote:

the amount of predicted reserves for some of the OPEC countries might simply be total fiction, accounting hocus-pocus where they count proven reserves as well as the net amount of oil that supposedly could be removed if all possible oil were obtainable. And as anyone who has ever tried to get the last drops of a milkshake by a straw out of a glass would realize, even I know that 100% recovery of all reserves isn't possible.

Re:Electricity? No.

[ColdWetDog]

Electricity is a red herring. So little oil is used for electricity production that you can round it down to the nearest zero.

But the converse is not true - we can use electricity (hopefully from environmental reasonable sources) to replace much of what we use (non renewable) petroleum products.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Just buy from Venezuela...their reserves are up.

Not news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

People have been suggesting that since the 1980s, when all the OPEC countries reserve estimates jumped by substantial amounts, will little to no technical justification. "Coincidentally" OPEC quotas are set based upon reserve estimates.

YARRRR!!!

[kgeiger]

There'll be plenty o' whales, me boy-o, when we get the Japanese t' stop servin' 'em with sushi.

YARRRRRR!!!

peak oil is a misnomer.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as peak oil.

Oil is produced abiotically by the earth's crust.

we will never run out of it.

The purpose of "peak oil" is to control us and to prepare us for what they have planned for us.

Re:peak oil is a misnomer.

[nomadic]

And all those nefarious geologists are part of the conspiracy?

GREAT!

[SnarfQuest]

This should be great news, because in the '70s we only had 10 years of oil left in the world. Now we have more than 10 years left! Sounds to me like our oil reserves have increased since the '70s. Maybe in another 40 years we will only have 20 years left.

Nuclear

[omb]

More ignorant gumph from the US Ecotards, early 1960-70 nuclear reactors were slow-neutron to produce Plutonium-238 by neutron capture from Uranium-238, this was spun.

We now have enough Plutonium, and with a half-life of c 24000 years it will be around for a good while.

The down side of slow reactors is they produce Actinides cerntred on AW 116, fast neutron reactors are designed (a) so they can not go super-critical and (b) burn down (existing) Actinides to AW c 29 which have very short half lives.

This is what is the matter with Ecotards and Watermelons in the USA, they were dreaming of cheerleaders and holding their dick when they should have been paying attention in Science Class, if any real unpoliticised science is still taught in US schools.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[dasunt]

If they're lying by 40%, then they're lying about a problem that will manifest in the late 2070's or 2080's. That's a long time to hold onto a lie for relatively little gain, since shit will hit the fan either way

Why do you say "little gain"?

I could see several reasons to lie now.

1. Investors: Would you rather put money into drilling into a small oil field, or a large oil one?
2. Collateral: Would you rather take a small oil field for collateral on a loan, or a large oil field?
3. International power: If the world thinks you have a large chunk of the world's petroleum, there are political benefits.
4. Discourage competition: If you're a (practically) endless source of oil, why would anyone look elsewhere? If oil is going to always be cheap and available, why invest in alternative energy sources? Why try to conserve it?

Economic Regulatory Administration

[mdsolar]

By law, the president must appoint an administrator for the Economic Regulaltory Administration withing the DoE: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/usc_sec_42_00007136----000-.html We'd be in a much better position to deal with this kind of thing if President Obama would do his duty.

It doesn't matter

[wcrowe]

It doesn't matter, because long before oil peaks, there will be a revolution in Saudi Arabia, and those in power are not going to sell us any of that oil anyway. Get used to walking.

Not running out of oil, just cheap oil

[scharkalvin]

As others have stated it's not so much as running out of oil, but rather the cheap, easy to extract oil.
In other parts of the world oil companies have developed technology to drill for deeper and harder to extract sources. Wells that at one time would not have been tried are today being developed. Part of this is due to the rising price of crude that has made the more expensive deeper sources worth going after. However the better technology available today also makes it less expensive than it would have been years ago. Still, there are increased risks and problems with these deeper wells (as BP has found out). If solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources can replace some dependence on oil demand will be lower and price will depend more on the cost of delivery rather than mostly on supply vs demand.

Re:Not running out of oil, just cheap oil

[dbIII]

Running out of cheap oil - effectively what peak oil is. Sure, we could build a dozen nuclear plants to warm up tar sands and get oil but it becomes very expensive oil with an feedback cycle of increasing expense and diminishing returns since the uranium mining gear currently runs on oil as does nuclear fuel production (and we'd be better off using that generated energy directly for something else anyway).
Oil at any cost is not the point - cheap oil is.
The peak was in 2008 anyway. Oil production has decreased since then.

Of course they are overstated, just like all OPEC

[Anonymous Coward]

All members of the OPEC cartel have a quota they fill based on their estimated reserves. They all have an incentive to overestimate their reserves so they can sell more oil.

Also, the Saudis have been claiming 265 billion barrels since the 1970s. Does it make sense that their reserves have stayed the same for 40 years, despite the ravenous global petrol consumption? I seriously doubt any new finds are enough to keep up with what they ship.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[HeckRuler]

And on the flip side, if they say that they only have 5 million barrels left, those 5 million barrels will be LUDICROUSLY expensive.
After which, they can magically pull out ANOTHER 5 million barrels from nowhere, and sell that at ludicrous prices as well.

Reserves extractable with net return?

[xtal]

EROEI.

The amount of oil the Saudi's have with a integer mulitple EROEI is a lot more interesting.. and probably, a lot better guarded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI

wrong on several points

[RelliK]

> But the Saudi's have a lot of heavy oil that at 60 or 70 bucks a barrel wouldn't be economically viable, but at 100 bucks a barrel, with bangladeshi slave.. I'm sorry, foreign worker, labour becomes reasonably profitable.

Not necessarily. Not if extracting that oil results in a net energy loss.

See, we extract oil to get energy out of it (well, among other things, but let's simplify here). But the extraction process itself takes energy. If you spend more energy than you get out of it, then the process will never be profitable. You talk about certain oil reserves being profitable at 100/barrel. But you are assuming today's energy prices. As the energy prices increase, the break-even point for those reserves will also increase. Some reserves will become profitable but some will be forever too expensive to bother.

Let me give you a practical example. Canada has 1/3 of the world's oil reserves. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those reserves are in the form of tar sands. You can't just pump the oil out of tar sands. You need to use steam extraction.

Here is how it works. First they strip the top layer of vegetation to get to the tar sands. Then they use natural gas to boil water and then use the steam to extract oil out of tar sands. The contaminated oily water is then dumped into massive reservoirs called tailings ponds, where it continuously kills wildlife.

To extract 3 barrels of oil out of tar sands you need to spend the equivalent of 2 barrels worth of energy. Oh and you also have to contaminate 15 barrels of fresh water. So the process is energy-positive, but the environmental damage is enormous.

> If they're lying by 40%, then they're lying about a problem that will manifest in the late 2070's or 2080's. That's a long time to hold onto a lie for relatively little gain, since shit will hit the fan either way.

Actually, huge gain. OPEC quotas for each country are limited by the amount of proven oil reserves (i.e. the more oil reserves a country has, the more oil it can export, according to OPEC rules). Therefore, it is in each OPEC country's interest to overstate their reserves to artificially increase their quota. The fact that Saudis, as well as every other OPEC country, has been overstating their reserves has been an open secret for the past couple decades. In the case of Saudis, it matters more because their reserves are (still) the largest.

Peak oil is already here. Two of the predictions came to pass:

1. Peak discovery, i.e. fewer new oil reserves are discovered than existing ones put in production. Happened in the 70's.
2. Peak production. Despite growing demand, production of existing fields cannot be increased. Happened in 2008.
3. Long tail of falling production and rising prices. We were "saved" from this by the economic downturn. For now. Once world economies start to pick up, oil prices will go through the roof.

Re:wrong on several points

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. Not if extracting that oil results in a net energy loss.

See, we extract oil to get energy out of it (well, among other things, but let's simplify here). But the extraction process itself takes energy. If you spend more energy than you get out of it, then the process will never be profitable.

Hmmm. More carefully stated, if you must spend more on the energy to extract the oil than you can sell the extracted oil for, it will never be profitable. But an estimate for economic viability of a process based on the price of oil should be taking the increased cost of the process into account. Note that it doesn't matter if there is net energy loss when discussing profitability (although I'm sure it there are some correlations there). If there were some method to generate energy right next to the oil production site that wasn't feasible/practical/advantageous to use at the point where the oil is to be consumed, even a net loss of energy can be profitable. Say I can build a nuclear plant at the tar sands extraction site to generate the steam, but it's actually still an energy-negative process. Still may be profitable to fill gas tanks this way.

Unless you meant to say it can't be profitable with a net loss of oil? I.e. you have to put more oil (not energy) in than you get out. Which your example is expressly does not demonstrate (2 barrels in, 3 barrels out).

2. Peak production. Despite growing demand, production of existing fields cannot be increased. Happened in 2008.

Do you have a citation for this? Not challenging the statement, just interested in reading your source.

Re:wrong on several points

[Prune]

Just a note about the tar sands: the solution is simply to see oil as a dense and transportation friendly store of energy rather than a source of energy. Just use nuclear reactors to boil the water for steam extraction. If you use breeder and thorium fueled reactors, fuel for them is essentially limitless and final toxic waste is minimal. Until the battery-electrical motor combo beats gas tank-internal combustion engine in energy storage density and power-to-weight ratio, it will be worth producing oil this way even when the input nuclear energy is more than the energy of combusting the extracted oil.

Re:wrong on several points

[Anonymous Coward]

To extract 3 barrels of oil out of tar sands you need to spend the equivalent of 2 barrels worth of energy. Oh and you also have to contaminate 15 barrels of fresh water. With our current technology.

Fixed that for you.

Re:wrong on several points

[rrohbeck]

FWIW, Peak Crude Oil was in 2005. The slightly higher peak in 2008 was only after adding natural gas liquids and nonconventional sources.

Re:wrong on several points

[Flaming Foobar]

. If you spend more energy than you get out of it, then the process will never be profitable.

This is a naive way to look at it. In reality, so long as you use cheap energy (wind, solar, tidal) to extract oil, it will be profitable. The main reason oil is valuable is its high energy density.

Re:wrong on several points

[Anonymous Coward]

Has demand increased since 2008? I thought the economic downturn occurred then. Perhaps production did not increase because demand did not. I am not sure...overall, given China and India, perhaps worldwide demand continued to increase since 2008.

Re:Electricity? No.

[blair1q]

Depends what you look at. One table in the Energy in the United States article in Wikipedia, Consumption Summary, simply says 1% of electricity is produced by oil But if you add up all the % of annual production from petroleum sources in another table in the same page, Electrical Production in the United States for 2006, you get over 2%.

It's still not much. But that second table actually says we're underutilizing our oil-burning plant capacity, and could be generating twice that much electricity from oil.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[blair1q]

Yes. It's likely both.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[myrdos2]

That's supposedly been the case for at least a decade, and yet US oil production doesn't appear to exactly be in a massive imploding crisis of supply. In 2007 the US produced 8.5 million barrels/day

Here's what the United States Department of Energy has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Oil_Production_and_Imports_1920_to_2005.png It shows US production at 5 million barrels/day in 2005, down from 9.5 million in 1970. The CIA world fact book shows current US production at 9 million barrels/day - a pretty large discrepancy. I wonder if they're using some kind of different barrel size.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[vadim_t]

That only works if nobody else has plentiful enough reserves to sell cheaper.

Bumping the prices right now would be unprofitable. There are other suppliers. And sitting on the oil isn't economical as there is infrastructure and people to pay.

But, a strategy of trying to outlast everybody else would pay off awesomely. For that they'd have to pretend everything is still fine, but try to avoid increasing the extraction rate as much as possible, hoping other people will run out first.

Energy is not fungible. Electricity !=Oil.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

In terms of energy density, our battery technology is pathetic when compared with liquid hydrocarbons. Electricity isn't anything resembling a drop-in replacement for the approximately 166 exajoules of energy that oil currently provides to civilization each year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil).

Even oil isn't fungible. You can't equate light sweet Saudi crude that's cheap to extract and refine and has a high energy return with heavy, sulphur laden asphalt in the Orinoco basin that's expensive to extract, refine and has a lousy energy return.

Re:Energy is not fungible. Electricity !=Oil.

[evilviper]

In terms of energy density, our battery technology is pathetic when compared with liquid hydrocarbons.

This is untrue on most levels.

For starters, liquid hyrocarbons are useless on their own. You need a large, complicated engine to make it do work. Then all kinds of supporting machinery, like a radiator, fan, fuel pumps, gas pumps, and most importantly, a massive transmission and axle.

Meanwhile, the best efficiency you can hope for is 25%. So you get to divide that energy density by at least a factor of 4, while batteries and an electric motor are extremely efficient.

And finally, if you think theoretical energy capacity is even remotely relevant, I'll have to remind you that fission of PB, NiMH, or Li would produce more energy.

Of course, none of that matters... What matters is that electric cars are practical, and in a fairly short time their shortcomings will be resolved. Absolutely nothing else holds that promise... Decades of work on ethanol, biodiesel, algae, and hydrogen never showed the slightest sign of being able to scale up. Electricity can, and will. There's nothing else even on the horizon, so there's no point in arguing whether its good or bad, practical or impractical. It is the future, no matter how hard car companies pushed to prevent it, and the future will form up around whatever limitations they have, just as the car changed the world long before it.

Right now, electric cars are probably practical for a large minority of the public, if not for the high initial price. Extending car loans further would likely solve the intial price problem, and the net cost (at least for something like the Nissan Leaf) will likely work out better than a conventional vehichle if you are lucky enough to fit into that category.

For the rest of us, hybrids make a good trade off in the mean time as the early adopters help pay for the research and development.

Ride Bikes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ride bikes like the rest of the world has been doing to do. We will all end up on bikes... it is only a matter of time and we will be healthier because of it. Don't fight it. Obama should stop encouraging people to be dependent on the government and instead encourage them to ride bicycles if they cannot affford gasolinel.

Sometimes

[Shivetya]

I wonder if the politicians are sinister enough to prevent us from using our own resources until we use up theirs first?

I think I put too much faith in their abilities, but it would be good fun

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[Anonymous Coward]

When the drilling gets though, the important question is how much ENERGY it takes to produce 1 barrel of crude, and compare that to its energy content. Even if reaches 1000$ a barrel, it might not be viable to exploit the hard to get oil.

Haven't you heard?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Weebles wobble!

No Surprise

[CapOblivious2010]

I've heard that the way OPEC allocates their oil quotas is based on reserves (if country A has twice the reserves of country B, they can sell twice as much oil per month)... which seems reasonably "fair", as far as that goes. BUT it also gives EVERY (OPEC) country an incentive to overstate their reserves!

...so I bet SA isn't the only country overstating their reserves.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[Anonymous Coward]

So then we can ask a question. As the light, cheap, easy to get stuff dries up, and then there's inflation, economic growth etc. what will the price of oil be in 10 years, 15 years, 20 etc. The Saudi's and americans almost certainly disagree on what will be economically viable to extract, in the same way two experts on the price of oil aren't going to come to exactly the same number for 15 years from now. It's hard to see the future. There are different ways to count oil recoverability too, and that will depend a lot on well... price ( and technology).

So then they WOULD lose the ability to effectively control the price of oil. Which is what TFS says.
I think everyone is misreading TFS and concluding that the Saudis are running out of oil. I mean, not you but.. obviously the intended audience of your piece, and most other posters I see.

No, it's not

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't even come up with the insurance money and cash reserves to close the plants that are nearing end of life cycle, let alone build new ones.

The future (for people who actually want affordable watts) is in decentralized production, a lot more smaller plants, community/co-op or individually owned and run *at cost*.

Utility prices are getting to be ridiculous, and if you haven't noticed, we are approaching 1/5th the workforce being unemployed completely or underemployed, 1/5 being government workers (so that is 2/5ths nor really producing anything) and we are also crossing a threshold where those folks still working will be paying for tens of millions of retireds, including government mc workers with big pensions, at the federal, state and local level.

It can not be done, so there won't be any real money worth anything to do anything else either.

I fail to see how anyone can not notice the US is beyond broke and will be going through an extremely rapid decline to second world level status at best. This is going to rule out all the grandiose schemes of mass transit 500 MPH trains, universal free or cheap healthcare, roads and bridges and tunnels that are repaired, you name it, it ain't gonna happen.

The "good old days" are OVER. People still working making good coin may argue with this, they just mostly can't see the forest for the trees, but anyone really taking an honest neutral look at things can readily see otherwise. The demand for oil on the international market will switch to those nations with hard currency and tradeable products, which means like china and India and so on. The US makes football players and basketball player wannabes that are barely literate, government workers, a few remaining factory jobs turning out empire war making "tools" and that's about it. Even the agriculture and mining and so on industries are going to collapse due to extreme levels of bureaucracy and regulations and the international cartels and wall street speculators skimming all the real profit.

They may well start to build some new nuke plants, my wager is very few will be completely built and once up and running, there won't be enough people left working to pay whatever kilowatt hours price the "investors:" think they will be able to charge.

I so much believe my analysis I relocated rural, am in the process of getting totally off the grid so as to have my utilities paid off, etc. I've bailed out without resorting to going to another nation. The only reason I don't leave completely is I have found it is near impossible for me to learn a foreign language due to being mostly deaf with severe mid range loss, the exact area human speech falls in. That and a few other reasons..so for better or worse, I'm a 'merican dammit, and I am going to stick it out. And I know it is going to be rough, so I got a head start on coping with what's to come. Simple as that. I put my money where my mouth is.

I've been doing this sort of analysis for years as a hobby, and have been way more accurate than not. To each their own, but the handwriting is on the wall. I am old enough to have seen the general differences in the generations and..being a great videogame player is not a serious life skill. Same with being a football player or basket player. Only 1/1000 at best ever make a pro career out of "sports" or "being in the arts" or any other modern joke job, and that ratio will fall further as the economy gets worse.

If you like Mexico today, great, what they are today is what the US will be in a few years now, the accelerating pace of change now is amazing. This is a collapsed economy and society, my guess is one more big push by government to try and maintain the illusion of being in control and having a real economy, then it will fall apart fast just like the soviet union did, with a twist..The people in the US are by and large NOT used to living in tough times and rough poor conditions and don't have the skills or the mindset to be able to cope with rapid change for

Re:Electricity? No.

[HornWumpus]

Most CTs that burn oil also burn gas.

The two places left in the USA that use a lot of oil for power are Hawaii and S. Florida. S. Florida only uses oil when they get their gas use forecast wrong. In Florida the further south you get the more lead time you need on your gas 'order'. When you get in wrong (low) you burn oil. When you get it wrong (high) you flare off excess gas.

Hawaii is a special case.

Citation? [Re:Thank goodness for Canada]

[Geoffrey.landis]

This was well researched during the Reagan years. Money spent on defense does less to stimulate the economy than other government spending, which in turn does less than private spending, but it's not a huge difference.../p>

Interesting. Do you have a reference?

Also wrong on some points? Parable of apples

[Paul Fernhout]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
"The fully-loaded cost (not price) of solar electricity is $0.25/kWh or less in most of the OECD countries. By late 2011, the fully-loaded cost is likely to fall below $0.15/kWh for most of the OECD and reach $0.10/kWh in sunnier regions. These cost levels are driving some emerging trends:[8] ... Oerlikon Solar announced in 2010 that its 'ThinFab' production line is capable of manufacturing 143Wp panels at a cost of 0.5 euro per watt (0.64 dollars per watt) and has a capacity of 120MW per year. The company also claims that its production plants have very low energy consumption rates, so that the energy payback time of its 10% efficient, silicon thin-film modules is less than one year.[12] ..."

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/11/nuclear-battery-can-be-used-to-help.html
"The Hyperion [nuclear battery] site claims to be 30% of the cost of natural gas approaches to insitu recovery of oil shale"

And maybe someday LENR "Cold Fusion":
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360&cpage=6#comment-20270

Not to disagree that oil production has (or will soon have) peaked, but whale oil peaked, too, and we survived that, and the whales are better off for us moving on to other things, too. Wind and PV are here now, and growing exponentially. In twenty to thirty years at current rates of growth, they will supply all our power. And nuclear continues to improve, too, as with Hyperion, for somewhat the same reasons as renewables are getting better, more research, better materials, and a design focus on safety.

Look at it this way. We live in a community with lots of apple trees making golden delicious apples that are healthy for you and let you live a good long happy life. Those trees are outside everyone's homes. The problem is, you have to walk a little ways, get out a ladder, climb into the tree, and pick the apples. There are also rotten oily coal fruits that drop from the sky all the time. To eat those, you just have to walk out your door and pick them off the ground, although a group of people said they have first rights to them and you have to pay an annual "defense" tax just because you might pick them. Rotten oily coal fruits taste awful, give you gas, and shorten your life, but they sure are easy to get, and they are cheap at baseball games, plus you are already paying a tax for them anyway. So, everyone says golden apples are too expensive, eats rotten coal fruits insteads, suffers bloating from gas, and dies early. Whenever a few crazy people try to get together organized groups to pick the golden apples, or to make special equipment to make those apples easier to get without climbing trees, the large numbers of people who make money off of selling rotten oily coal fruits at baseball games beat the crap out of these innovators with baseball bats, and then they go around and cut down some of the golden fruit trees, too, just to make their point. Some scientists now say rotten coal fruits are not falling as often from the sky these days, and may stop falling altogether in a few years due to changing weather conditions. Is this a good or bad thing?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume flat demand. Last I checked, demand has continued to go up ever since oil was discovered. So that century's worth of oil isn't really a century's worth assuming exponential growth.

T. Boone Pickens

[Toothpick]

Pickens has been saying this for years. Iran, Iraq and Kuwait, too.
http://books.google.com/books?id=0E5moUIGpKAC&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=kuwait+iran+reserve+pickens&source=bl&ots=bpNS_UqyKK&sig=DID0Bjkw6eWmoiee011tADMV1vc&hl=en&ei=m7tUTf-zOIW8sQOP8dHIBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Totally wrong.

[microbox]

Essentially if the Demand for oil by the US is met by the supply the US has, the prices only really go up for everyone else who loses out.

wtf? Talk about a sense of entitlement. The USA can plunder other countries resources, but protect its own. Not according to all those free trade agreements that the global corporate elite have been pushing on the world.

The only way the USA could keep local oil prices significantly different from the global market is to put trade restrictions on oil export. That would not go over well, and probably trigger global resource protectionism: we all know that there is a coming crunch. Even the ones in denial. The USA would lose big-time in this scenario.

Even if it succeed in keeping treaties in tact but horde oil to itself, the USA would lose its ability to bargain from a stronger position. Besides, the corporate elite would never do that, because they don't give a frack about USA sovereignty.

Your assertion bespeaks of a huge sense of patriotic entitlement that will cause lots of damage until the cold hard light of reality pieces through the veil of ignorance. Waking up from such dreams is never pleasant.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[Eclipse-now]

I take your point, but what is the ERoEI of Shale oil? There are limits to the speed of extracting the non-conventional oils, and they take SERIOUS investment and lots of time. I don't think the non-conventional oil will have a remote chance of replacing conventional oil at the speed at which we need it to come online — not even the most optimistic stuff I've read the tar-sands boosters in Canada raving about has a chance of replacing the accumulative depletion rate of oil post-peak. And this depletion rate gets larger each and ever year, with 56 out of the top 65 oil producing nations having peaked. There's going to be rationing, one way or another. Shame it will have to smack us into a Great Depression, but that's probably what it will take to WAKE US UP to the limits of geology and DO something about it. There's plenty we can do, when the political willpower arrives. I'm not a Malthusian doomer. But peak oil denial just isn't funny any more.

Oh-oh

[ThatsNotPudding]

Here comes the return of massively Red State subsidized looser Ethanol, the production of which will lead to something called Peak Water.

Price stabilization

[danhaas]

In about 50-80 years, we will stop burning fossil for energy. It will be cheaper to generate that energy through other means, ie nuclear or renewable, so as the demand for oil decreases, it will stabilize a little above the cost of nuclear/renewable. Of course, for certain things we may still be burning fossil, like aviation or in remote areas, but that will just inflate the price a bit.

We will, however, still use oil as a source material for fabrication. We can sustain a very high price for oil if it is used only for plastics/lubricants.

100-150 years from now, our grandsons will be cursing us for burning oil. It will seem just as stupid as using whale blubber as fuel.

T. Boone Pickens said this

[Anonymous Coward]

already about 4 years ago.

Who cares, its all BS anyways...

[hesaigo999ca]

More stories to drive the price of oil up again...yeah, yeah.....but we all saw the oil spill in the gulf, and saw that it was a well that was closed for being supposedly unprofitable, and yet it was leaking up to a 100,000 barrels of oil per day...or more..?
They also stated in a separate review, that in the gulf there are (since 1047) about 67,000 of these supposedly non profitable oil wells...
of which BP owns 1000. These wells are closed, but can be reopened....so guess what I do not see why we need to worry, and pay more, as there is no shortage, only shortage to make the shiks richer....and I am tired of making them richer..

History, not news.

[RockDoctor]

Subject says it all.

What? You wanted an answer that would make you feel comfortable? Sorry, you've got the wrong department. This is Reality, not Fantasy.
Go down the corridor, take a flying car at the end and turn into the 4th dimension at the second orc on the right.

Re:So is this proven reserves, or projected reserv

[ukemike]

blah blah blah... But very reasonable people can have very reasonable disagreements on those numbers, with no one lying... yammer on etc.

The thing is, there is no reason behind any OPEC countries' estimate of their reserves. Up to the 1980s there might have been some rhyme or reason, but during the 1980s the OPEC countries all were selling oil at a rate that was connected to their total estimated reserves. Prior to this the estimates had been based on actual known reserves but by this time the OPEC nations had all nationalized their oil industries and outside verification became difficult. And every one of them revised their reserves up. Irag by a factor of 3, Saudi Arabia by about 50%, on average by almost a factor of 2! These revisions were not driven by new discoveries, they were driven by the greed of each nation and each nations' desire to increase their quota. But don't believe me, read and learn: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7149

Since the very suspicious upward revisions that happened during the 1980s each of these countries has continued to pump and sell oil, yet their estimated total reserves have remained unchanged. Major discoveries in about 1997 and 2003 actually were reflected in slight increases of estimated reserves in those years, but other that they estimates have remained unchanged. So how is it that they have sold billions of barrels of oil on the open market for decades but their reserves have remained exactly the same? Their reserves seem to only increase, never decrease. In the absence of new discoveries during a period of depletion of reserves, you would expect that the reserves would decline by the amount pumped and sold, but that hasn't happened. It is obvious that they started lying about true reserves in the 1980s and they never stopped. All the OPEC countries over-report their reserves. This is obvious and well known among people who pay attention.

It is a bit comforting that at least someone in the Saudi government has tried to tell us the truth through back channels. I wish our government would start acting like they don't have their heads up their collective asses.

Anyway this is why it is useless to rely on the reserve estimates of the OPEC countries. Look at production numbers, which cannot be so easily faked. We have been on a production plateau for almost a decade now. We may or may not have hit the peak yet but that hardly matters it is pretty clear that we are on the broad plateau of the peak and that we are very near or past the actual peak. In another 5 years, I predict that the days of $4/gallon gasoline will be looked upon as the good old days. Brace yourselves, it's going to be a bump ride!

Overstated Reserves No Surprise

[LibRT]

In 1985, OPEC tied member countries' production quotas to "proven" reserves. In response, several countries immediately declared substantial increases in their "proven" reserves, including Saudi Arabia. For example: in 1985, Kuwait boosted their declared reserves from 63.90 to 90.00 billion barrels of oil (a 40.85% increase). In 1988 alone, Iran claimed to find an additional 44.05 billion barrels in declaring 92.85 billion barrels against 1984s 48.80 billion barrels (+90.27%), Iraq jumped from 47.10 to a nice, round 100.00 billion barrels (+112.31%, where it stayed, consistently (and regardless of production), for another four years, before increasing to 115), while Venezuela suddenly got lucky and declared 56.30 vs. 1984s 25 billion barrels (+125.20%). In 1990, Saudi Arabia suddenly declared an increase of 51.79% in oil reserves (from 169.97 to an even 258 billion barrels), while in 1988, Abu Dhabi went from 31.00 to 92.21 billion barrels (+194%). Even little old Dubai got into the act, in 1988 nearly tripling their reserves to 4 billion barrels from 1.35 previously. 1988 was one hell of a busy year in the world of oil discoveries: the five countries which increased their declared reserves went from a combined 153.25 billion barrels to a whopping 345.36 billion barrels!

It is highly likely Canada has the world's largest (as opposed to second largest, after Saudi Arabia) supply of oil. It is also highly likely there is not anywhere near as much oil under Saudi Arabia as the Saudis claim.

Re:NIMBY

[HornWumpus]

And it would be the one place where nuclear plants would be a beautification project to boot.

And it would be the one place where nuclear bombs would be a beautification project to boot.