This isn't a basso-esque pun, I'm just talking about an issue we've skipped here. World oil prices soar to record highs NEW YORK (AFP) - World oil prices shot to new all-time highs on a market stunned by Russia's withdrawal of a promised financial lifeline for oil titan Yukos. New York's benchmark contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, soared 1.67 dollars to 44.50 dollars a barrel mid-afternoon, smashing the previous record of 44.34 dollars. Brent North Sea crude shot up 1.60 dollars to a record 41.30 dollars. Russia's justice ministry said it had "recalled" an earlier decision allowing Yukos to access its current accounts to keep its operations running while paying a massive tax bill. "All of the financial resource that have or will continue to enter the company's accounts will be seized or switched (into) the state budget to pay off the tax debt" that Yukos owes the state, the ministry said. The decision quickly reversed a slump of 1.32 dollars on the New York crude oil price the previous day. "Clearly the stunning reversal of the Russian government's stance on Yukos makes people even more uncertain about supply at a time of very strong demand," said Fimat USA market analyst Mike Fitzpatrick. "Apparently demand is still strong enough to push prices higher." He declined to forecast where prices will go on a market awash with speculative money. Boiling oil prices singed the stock market, depressing the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average by 100.95 points, or 1.00 percent, to 10,025.56 in afternoon trade. Oil traders took little comfort from a statement Wednesday by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that it had surplus capacity of up to 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) immediately available. "OPEC continues to hold, at present, a spare production capacity of around 1.0-1.5 million bpd, which would allow for an immediate additional increase in production," OPEC President Purnomo Yusgiantoro said in a statement. Many traders reacted with skepticism. A few days earlier Yusgiantoro had said OPEC was powerless to boost supplies. In any case, 1.0 million to 1.5 million barrels was hardly a major boost to global supplies, Fitzpatrick said. "It is not going to be a tidal wave of oil coming on to the market, for sure." Fifty dollars a barrel was now a real possibility, some analysts said. "Onwards and upwards as oil prices head towards 50 dollars," analysts at Barclays Capital told clients. "The market continues to be dominated by the potential for a severe supply crunch as global oil demand swings up towards its seasonal peak," they said in a report. Traders were also keeping a nervous watch on Venezuela ahead of an August 15 referendum on President Hugo Chavez's rule. Opinion polls generally show Venezuelans would vote for Chavez to serve the remaining two years of his term, but there are fears that unrest and strike action could disrupt the country's oil production. "The concern over supply disruptions still remains on the forefront of traders' minds," Commerzbank analyst David Thomas said in London. "There are still potential supply disruptions in the Middle East due to terrorist activity, and Venezuela remains an issue in the near term. Those two issues are still leading to a substantial premium in oil prices above fundamental levels." http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040805/323/ezp7d.html
What are you talking about? Exxon finally has a way to make MASSIVE profits. Why would we try to develop alternate sources of energy NOW?
By Thomas Wheeler A review of The End of Suburbia – Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream (The Electric Wallpaper Co., c/o VisionTV, 80 Bond Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 1X2, web site: www.endofsuburbia.com) 87 minute DVD, $27.75 US / $34.50 Canadian A simple fact of life is that any system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is unsustainable. Despite all the warnings that we are headed for an ecological and environmental perfect storm, many Americans are oblivious to the flashing red light on the earth’s fuel gauge. Many feel the “American way of life” is an entitlement that operates outside the laws of nature. At the Earth Summit in 1992, George H.W. Bush forcefully declared, "The American way of life is not negotiable." That way of life requires a highly disproportionate use of the world's nonrenewable resources. While only containing 4% of the world population, the United States consumes 25% of the world’s oil. The centerpiece of that way of life is suburbia. And massive amounts of nonrenewable fuels are required to maintain the project of suburbia. The suburban lifestyle is considered by many Americans to be an accepted and normal way of life. But this gluttonous, sprawling, and energy-intensive way of life is simply not sustainable. Few people are aware of how their lives are dependent on cheap and abundant energy. Are these Americans in for a rude awakening? In a fascinating new documentary, The End of Suburbia – Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, the central question is this: Does the suburban way of life have a future? The answer is a resounding no. The film opens with the quote, “If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.” You’d think from that opening we’re in for a very depressing flick. Not so. Despite the serious subject matter the documentary is actually quite engaging and entertaining. Not only is it informative for those already familiar with the issues but it’s also quite accessible and enlightening for the uninitiated. It serves as great introduction and a real eye-opener for people who are largely unfamiliar with the topic of energy depletion and the impact it will have on their lives and communities. The End of Suburbia marshals an impressive array of evidence that the growing energy demands of the “American dream” in suburbia will eclipse our planet’s ability to provide it. The suburban way of life will soon become economically and ecologically impossible to maintain. We will see the inevitable collapse of the suburban lifestyle and the end of the American Dream. And it will happen within our lifetimes. How bad will it get? Put it this way. We are looking at the mother of all downsizings. For those who are familiar with the issues of peak oil and resource depletion, the usual suspects are here. They include Richard Heinberg, Michael Klare, Matthew Simmons, Michael C. Ruppert, Julian Darley, Dr. Colin Campbell, and Kenneth Deffeyes, among others. All of these individuals provide valuable information and insights concerning the coming energy crisis and the impact it will have on the lives of people on the North American continent. But the standout star of the film is author and critic of contemporary culture, James Howard Kunstler. The sometimes humorous and always entertaining presence of Kunstler is prominent throughout the documentary – and for good reason. He grabs your attention. He explains in refreshingly blunt, easy to comprehend language that suburbia is screwed. His undiluted, tell-it-like-it-is style is a potent mix of George Carlin humor and wit wrapped around an incisive Chomsky-like comprehension and understanding. With Kunstler you get an intellectually penetrating person armed with a functioning bull**** detector wrapped up in an intensely candid New York attitude. Kunstler has a blog on the web he calls “The Cluster#### Nation Chronicles” (www.kunstler.com). Need I say more? Kunstler calls the project of suburbia “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world” and says “America has squandered its wealth in a living arrangement that has no future.” You immediately get the idea he’s not exactly a fan of suburbia. How and why did this happen? The End of Suburbia outlines the seemingly rational and logical impulse behind the project of suburbia, tracing the beginnings to the late 19th century when it was originally envisioned as an antidote to city life and an escape from the hideous aspects of industrialism. Modern suburbia traces its beginnings to just after World War II when the suburban project took off with a massive housing boom and the increasing dominance of the automotive industry. This car-centered suburban project ended up being the template for the massive development of the second half of the 20th century. That project was wrapped up, packaged, and sold to the American public as “The American Dream.” The End of Suburbia points out that the rise of the suburbs was made possible by abundant and cheap oil. It allowed for the creation of a system of habitation where millions of people can live many miles away from where they work and where they shop for food and necessities. And there is no other form of living that requires more energy in order to function than suburbia. But the voracious and expanding energy needs of our industrial society, our insane consumer culture, and the affluent suburban lifestyles are brushing up against the disturbing reality of finite energy resources. The biggest impact will be felt by those who currently live in the sprawling suburbs of North America. The end of cheap oil will signal the end of their way of life. Frankly, many of the things we take for granted will come to an end. The End of Suburbia makes clear that the effects of energy depletion go way beyond paying more at the pump. It will literally get down to the question of how you will feed yourself and your family. Although the documentary mostly avoids the gloom and doom of some peak oil theorists, it does occasionally touch on some of the darker aspects of fossil fuel depletion, notably how it will impact food production. The film briefly looks at the energy-intensive process needed to bring food to supermarkets. Our modern industrial agriculture relies heavily on petroleum for pesticides and natural gas for fertilizer, not to mention the energy used in planting, growing, harvesting, irrigating, packaging, processing and transporting the food. It stands to reason that if suburbia is going to collapse, it also means this centralized model of agriculture will collapse too. The End of Suburbia shows how the suburban way of life has become normalized and reveals the enormous effort currently put forth to maintain it. On a foreign policy level, it means continued aggressive attempts to secure access to the remaining reserves of oil on the planet in order to prop up and maintain the increasingly dysfunctional and obscene suburban lifestyle. But The End of Suburbia makes it crystal clear that suburban living has very poor prospects for the future. Any attempt to maintain it will be futile. There will eventually be a great scramble to get out of the suburbs as the global oil crisis deepens and the property values of suburban homes plummet. Kunstler asserts that the suburbs will become “the slums of the future.” What about alternative sources of energy? The End of Suburbia points out that no combination of alternative fuels can run and maintain our current system as it is now. What about hydrogen, you ask? The film does a great job of shooting down the hysterical applause for hydrogen. The idea of a hydrogen economy is mostly fantasy. Hydrogen is not a form of energy. It is a form of energy storage. It takes more energy to make hydrogen than you actually get from hydrogen. Same with ethanol. It is a net energy loser. It takes more gasoline to create and fertilize the corn and convert it to alcohol than you get from burning it. When you look at all the conceivable alternatives the conclusion is there is no combination of any alternatives that will allow us to continue consuming the way we do. What is in our future? The consensus is the suburbs will surely not survive the end of cheap oil and natural gas. In other words, the massive downscaling of America – voluntary or involuntary – will be the trend of the future. We are in for some profound changes in the 21st century. The imminent collapse of industrial civilization means we'll have to organize human communities in a much different fashion from the completely unsustainable, highly-centralized, earth-destroying, globalized system we have now. There will need to be a move to much smaller, human-scale, localized and decentralized systems that can sustain themselves within their own landbase. Industrial civilization and suburban living relies on cheap sources of energy to continue to grow and expand. That era is coming to an end. One of the most important tasks right now is to prepare for a very different way of life. While The End of Suburbia doesn’t provide any easy answers, it does provide a much needed look at the reality of the situation many in North America will be facing in the coming years. For that reason, The End of Suburbia is one of the most important must-see documentaries of the year. http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op...e=article&sid=239&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
According to the Veep, the reason prices are so high is because Kerry and Edwards wouldn't join with the Republicans in passing the Energy Bill.
More doom and gloom forcasts. Deutsche warns oil price may hit $100 JAMES DOW ECONOMICS CORRESPONDENT OIL prices could potentially hit $100 per barrel, analysts at Deutsche Bank warned yesterday - as the cost of US light crude hit a 21-year record of almost $44. Adam Sieminski, Deutsche’s global energy strategist, claimed that oil supplies have become so tight in recent weeks that a serious disruption in the Middle East could send prices rocketing to unprecedented heights. He said: "It is worth asking ourselves - ‘what would happen tomorrow if we lost four million barrels a day, due to some accident?’ Or let’s say Iraq’s two million barrels a day became unavailable. OPEC’s got no spare capacity. And that could be it - $100 per barrel." Sieminski stressed that this was not a wild claim. "The last time OPEC was at 95-100 per cent capacity was in 1973-74, and again around 1980. And disruptions put prices up by 50 to 100 per cent. "We’re at $40 already, so a repeat gives you $60-$80 per barrel." Two separate instances of disruption, on this logic, could take the price up a further step to $100. Benchmark US light crude came within a whisker of $44 yesterday, touching $43.92 at its peak. The price sank back to $43.50 by late evening. The spike came after the US raised its security alert to "high", citing a possible al-Qaeda attack on financial institutions. The announcement was made on Sunday, but yesterday was the first chance for markets to react. Separately, Russian oil giant Yukos was told by Moscow it will begin investigating the company’s tax payments from 2002 - earlier than before, and a move that could add to its already massive bill. The news was softened by an announcement from the Russian energy ministry that oil output in the country hit a new post-Soviet high of 9.33 million barrels per day in July. Brent crude, which rose above $40 to a fresh 14-year high of $40.05 on Friday, sank 20 cents to $39.85. Sieminski said: "Most of the analysts who look at the fundamentals of supply and demand will tell you we’re now at the top [of the oil price]. But as long as the incremental supplies continue to come from countries where availability is an issue, the potential for prices to stay high is, itself, very high." Market fears will calm down if sabotage or other disruptions do not emerge, and this could see $5 a barrel come out of the price by the end of the year, he estimated. "But, fundamentally, we’ve got to slow down demand growth. And, historically, the only way to make a lot of progress with that is a recession. So if you’re worried about the oil price perhaps you’ve got to ask, which do you prefer?" http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=887522004
wait, i thought the reason we invaded iRaq was for oil, to keep prices low, mollify the poor oil-addicted american consumer in his gas guzzling SUVs. does this mean somebody lied???
you do know we are investing a lot in getting that oil out right? thus all the contractors getting kidnapped? did you know that getting oil out of the ground and out of the country can take a long time? Just because we own the land doesn't mean we have the precious sweet-sweet oil yet.
No, it means they greatly, greatly, greatly miscalculated their ability to rebuild Iraq and it's oil capacity, as well as impact on world oil prices, despite there being information to the contrary http://www.iht.com/articles/112497.htm So the rise in oil prices itself has little bearing on their lying; more on their incompetence. Anyway: the people who believed that we invaded Iraq for solely oil (I'm not one,) generally believed that the oil was not to "mollify the poor oil-addicted american consumer", but rather to line the pockets of the Energy industry, from whom the President and VP have came, and to whom they regularly prostrate American interests. But other than that, you're right.
Personally, I think that the high oil and gas prices are poetic justice for the people bent on ever bigger and less efficient vehicles. I will keep chugging away at 30 MPG until I can afford a hybrid that will get 60-80 while my less conservation centric brethren waste more and more money on gas. I can't wait to see how many used SUVs go on the market once gas gets to $3-$4 per gallon (like it already is in almost every other part of the world).
Didn't we see these same dire prediction of resource depletion in the 60s and 70s (ie Ehrlich and Ehrlich)?
Well, if Zion's first article is to be believed, we can go ahead and just stop this partisan bickering over whose fault it is that oil's getting slowly too expensive to be a long-term viable option for our society and start brainstorming ways to prevent the starvation, wars unemployment and general mayhem that are ensured to ensue when affordable energy is a relic of a previous generation.
Since I live close to town, high gas prices will increase my property value and since I cycle a lot fewer cars are, to me, a good thing. It's interesting though, notice that while oil prices are increasing, gas prices haven't been. They went up a few months ago, then the went down a little bit and now oil prices are higher than they were back then but gas prices haven't risen. I think it's because the high gas prices were actually tied to a gas shortage (lack of ability to refine enough to meet the start of summer demand) as opposed to high oil prices.
I hate to break this to you but higher gas prices are going to be passed on to you if you enage in practices such as consuming goods and services.
