Oil depletion facts

Submitted by Earnest (United States), Mar 11, 2007 at 19:38

In response to your first 5 points:

1. In fact, the North Sea oil fields are about to experience a precipitous decline and will make Britain an oil importer very soon. The EU countries to slightly different degrees depend on Russia's gas.

2. Where any individual country imports its oil from is not that important overall since oil is a fungible commodity and a shortage anywhere by any country will soon affect everyone's price and geopolitics. The oil spot market is global, like gold's.

3. You wrote: " For the most part, our direct Middle East purchases come from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, and Oman -- some very good allies, the former two provide staging areas for land operations in Iraq, while the latter two support naval operations for the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa."

The fact that Saudi Arabia and its neigbors can afford to hire the U.S. military to protect its only source of income from neigbors like Iraq and Iran, does not qualify them as "good allies", only co-dependents. And the fact that Saudi Arabia is now a greater exporter of radical Islam than Iran or even Iraq ever was, would also not qualify them as allies. With friends like these ... .

4. The fact that "most petrodollar investments are in Europe and the United States..." sounds pleasing until you realize that they are using our gas pump payments to arm both their own counties' and neigboring terrorist entitles like Hamas with cash. Those investments end up trapping the U.S. into a never-ending game of military catch-up with armed Middle East radicals. A similar example is how Iran, using EU and Chinese oil dollars is arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iraq's Shia with EU, Russian, and Chinese weapons. Those kinds of "investments" are counter-productive to a stable world outlook.

5." While it is true we have reached a reserve peak in the world oil supply, it is not true that oil production is on the decline. Most energy analysts see a continuation of production upwards for one to two generations (30 to 40 years). Price fluxuations in the US are mostly due to the shrinking refinery capacity."

The world is now using more oil than it produces and we are replacing only a quarter of the increase in demand. We may be increasing supply, but demand is still growing 4 times quicker. That's Peak Oil, in a nutshell. And those Middle East sponsored "energy analysts," like CERA, in my opinion have chosen to play down the oil depletion emergency in order to delay the West's wake-up call and delay our needed "Manhattan Project" scenario for alternative energy and conservation. That kind of emergency scenario would keep oil prices from rising as fast and would hopefully minimize a geoplotical energy crisis through the oil weapon. It would help, but not guarantee, the West's post-oil survival.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".