Fixing oil ? What's your approach?

[Arrian]

Lemme get this straight: you have to be a true believer to implement something and have it work?

Everything the government does (now and forever) will be done for "political reasons."

-Arrian

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Arrian
Lemme get this straight: you have to be a true believer to implement something and have it work?

I don't think that's exactly what I said, but yes.

[Imran Siddiqui]

[Arrian]

Is there a "I'm speechless" smilie?

-Arrian

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Arrian
Is there a "I'm speechless" smilie?

-Arrian

Say we're playing chess, and we both have two strategies. Then I start losing, and I start using your strategy. Do you think I will play as well as you? No. Because I probably don't even really understand your strategy. I would just be desparate, and that's what Nixon was... a desparate moron. And you wonder why he implemented price controls poorly?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Arrian
Is there a "I'm speechless" smilie?

-Arrian

I'd just use

[Arrian]

Say we're playing chess, and we both have two strategies. Then I start losing, and I start using your strategy. Do you think I will play as well as you?

It depends. If you actually understand it and are a competant player, then yes. Otherwise, perhaps no. But then again, you're already losing, so you must not only play it was well as I do, but better - in order to reverse the situation.

Anyway, I see what you're saying.

-Arrian

[Spiffor]

For France:

1. Set-up the truck-train infrastructure. Improve the freight ability on rail (which is now utterly sucky - our rail rules for passengers, but it sucks for freight)

2. Lobby the European Union to promote a standard of organic fuel. Once the standard is found, force oil retailers to have a pump of that organic fuel in each station. Entirely de-tax that fuel, and give a slight subsidy on the acquisition of a car equipped with an engine compatible to it.

3. Make sure that every city recycles its plastic.

[duke o' york]

They should lower the bus pass prices goddamit! They've gone up 30% in the past four years in Leeds, and if they were lower then it might convince more people to get the bus to work (at least, although probably not to use it at weekends).



Doing something for the environment has to be the cheaper option as far as transport is concerned. Although, despite the fact my uncle is an organic farmer, I shan't be buying organic produce and would heartily support GM crops.

[JohnT]

Re: Fixing oil ? What's your approach?

Originally posted by Flubber
In the ExxonMobil profit thread there were some posters railing against the "profiteering" of the oil companies and the general high price of a barrell of oil. Some were fair comments and others were just corp-bashing but either way I want to hear about solutions from those that think there is a "problem".

Assume you are the head of state of any country or any organization in the world. You can pick your country/organization. How would you act to lower the price of oil? Now please be realistic. Solutions that involve every country in the world holding hands and singing "kumbiya", are not really solutions. Please assume as well that countries and corporations will generally act in their own self-interest.

If your solutions involve changing the entire world order, creating a socialist or communist utopia, nationalizing the resource or otherwise radically altering the world as we know it, please feel free to share those as well.



Now, saying something is terrible or whatever is easy. Solutions are hard.

** For the purposes of this thread please stick to oil. Things like gasoline and natural gas prices are a separate (but obviously linked) issue

I was thinking along these lines just last night. I was reading a number of "Peak Oil" posts and a number of them kept correcting the detractors by claiming that the theory doesn't state that the oil will run out, but that the cost of oil will become so high that civilization will come grinding to a halt.

However, one thing nobody has ever done, as far as I can tell, is run the numbers to determine:

What price is "too high"?

Obviously $65/barrel can be laughed off w/o any grave effects on the economy or our actions... $150? $250? Has anybody ever tried to find out?

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Flubber


But which cost? Today a conventional well might have say 3-5 dollars a barrell production costs while an oilsands project might have costs of 25$ of barrell to produce and extract to sweet crude, AND an offshore project might have production costs of $8 a barrell but there was 500 million in exploration costs in the 20 years before production started. So its not easy to say what it "costs" to produce a barrell of oil.

I found the following citation:

As a member of OPEC, Venezuela already has a prominent position on the proven reserve charts, with 47 to 76 billion barrels of proven reserves, according to oil industry / DOE estimates.The USGS puts Venezuelan reserves around the same level, at 48 identified and 110 ultimately recoverable. And yet Venezuela itself claims 1.2 trillion (trillion, with a T) barrels of unconventional oil reserves in the supergiant heavy oil field stretching from the mouth of the Orinoco River near Trinidad down the east side of the Andes mountains. (Arcaya, 2001) The oil is located in a geosynclinal trough that some geologists belive may be continuous through the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina. Only parts of the heavy oil field have been fully explored, but those parts have been estimated at some three to four trillion barrels of heavy oil in place, with perhaps one third recoverable using current technology. Heavy oil is pumped, transported and refined with the same equipment used in conventional oil. It is "unconventional" only because the cost of refining is significantly higher -- from $10 to $20 per barrel higher than "sweet light" Saudi crude oil. It could translate into anywhere from 25 to 50 cents more at the pump for consumers.

http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/oil/3unconventional.html

[RGBVideo]

I thought there was a pretty obvious cartel among the major oil drilling companies -- then again, JohnT clearly PWNED me and PROVED me wrong when he, in another thread, listed the amount of small oil-related retail companies in his small home town.

OH JOHN, I LAUGH WITH YOU AT MY PUNY ANTI-CORPORATION STUPIDITY. THANK YOU FOR SHOWING ME HOW NAÏVE, SILLY AND KNEE-JERK ANTI-CORPORATION I WERE!

[Kidlicious]

You can have lots of small producers. That doesn't mean that the large producers can't form a cartel and manipulate the price.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by VJ
I thought there was a pretty obvious cartel among the major oil drilling companies -- then again, JohnT clearly PWNED me and PROVED me wrong when he, in another thread, listed the amount of small oil-related retail companies in his small home town.

OH JOHN, I LAUGH WITH YOU AT MY PUNY ANTI-CORPORATION STUPIDITY. THANK YOU FOR SHOWING ME HOW NAÏVE, SILLY AND KNEE-JERK ANTI-CORPORATION I WERE!

Uh... because in that "other thread" we were talking about the effects Chavez's offer to sell gas to the State of Mass. (IIRC) would undercut local retailers.

To cite:

QUINCY, Mass. - Venezuelan officials signed a deal Tuesday to ship 12 million gallons (45 million liters) of discounted home heating oil to poor Americans in Massachusetts as part of plan by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to help needy U.S. communities.

The fuel is being offered by Citgo Petroleum Corp., a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company which runs roughly 16,000 gas stations in the U.S.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who helped broker the deal, called the agreement "an expression of humanitarianism at its very best," and rejected criticism that the move was motivated by politics. Chavez often blames the plight of the poor on unbridled capitalism and had criticized U.S. President George W. Bush's government for failing to reduce poverty.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=144036

Note that they are talking retail, VJ.

Here is the post that VJ is talking about. Note that neither the post nor the thread mentions drillers:

It's a 40% discount (from $2.00/gallon to $1.20), available at local Citgos only. The Citizens Energy Corp is a non-profit co-op who currently has a large number of agreements with local small businesses, people who supply the local residents with oil. According to the Left, this is apparently how the co-op model works, with government helping small businesses stay small.

Do me a favor. Click on the above link, then click on "Oil Heat Program", then click on "Oil Dealers." See those smiling faces, those small business owners with their shiny new truck, the epitome of the American dream? See that list of over three hundred small business owners, people who sell already-subsidized heating oil to middle and low-income families?

Well, Bill Delahunt just ****ed them over to the tune of a 40% discount given to a Communist multi-national so he can make a statement about the Iraq war. Good going, Bill! That's "protecting your own"!

Now take your attitude and cram it up your ass, OK?

[RGBVideo]

Sorry, had to vent a bit. "Peak oil" seems to be, apart from a trendy catchphrase which everyone who wants to seem like a responsible person repeats mindlessly, a theory which states that when underground oil reserves start decreasing, the supply of drilled oil at the market decreases, the production amount peaks and thus the oil will only be more expensive in the future. Damn, what kind of Einstein came up with this brilliant conlusion? It's so hard to reach, he'll probably get a nobel for this.

The question is not if the oil peaks, but when it peaks. There's currently no peak visible (the known world oil reserves are constantly increasing and there's plenty of room for increased production even with the currently known reserves), so I think it'll take AT LEAST after the following market cycle. Large reserves and workaround systems for oil extraction from hard-to-reach places (think oil sands, 15 years ago that idea would've been dismissed as ridiculous among the mainstream population) lead my gut feeling to think that there won't be an oil "peak" for the next 50 years.