How the Petroleum Age Will End

Quote:

To put the matter baldly: The world economy requires an increasing supply of affordable petroleum. The Middle East alone can provide that supply. That’s why Western governments have long supported “stable” authoritarian regimes throughout the region, regularly supplying and training their security forces. Now, this stultifying, petrified order, whose greatest success was producing oil for the world economy, is disintegrating. Don’t count on any new order (or disorder) to deliver enough cheap oil to preserve the Petroleum Age.

I can't believe that we are STILL "driving" cars - steering wheel, pushing a gas pedal, hitting the brake - on roads.

There are HUGE, STRONG entities out "there" that want oil to run this WORLD.

I suspect that many pension plans are highly invested in oil and we CAN'T get out of this stranglehold without a huge market crash and losses.

More quote:

Between 1973 and 1979, Iran had achieved an output of nearly six million barrels of oil per day, one of the highest in the world. After the revolution, AIOC (rechristened British Petroleum, or later simply BP) was nationalized for a second time, and Iranian managers again took over the company’s operations. To punish Iran’s new leaders, Washington imposed tough trade sanctions, hindering the state oil company’s efforts to obtain foreign technology and assistance. Iranian output plunged to two million barrels per day and, even three decades later, has made it back to only slightly more than four million barrels per day, even though the country possesses the world’s second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Dreams of the Invader

Iraq followed an eerily similar trajectory. Under Saddam Hussein, the state-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) produced up to 2.8 million barrels per day until 1991, when the First Gulf War with the United States and ensuing sanctions dropped output to half a million barrels daily. Though by 2001 production had again risen to almost 2.5 million barrels per day, it never reached earlier heights. As the Pentagon geared up for an invasion of Iraq in late 2002, however, Bush administration insiders and well-connected Iraqi expatriates spoke dreamily of a coming golden age in which foreign oil companies would be invited back into the country, the national oil company would be privatized, and production would reach never before seen levels.

Who can forget the effort the Bush administration and its officials in Baghdad put into making their dream come true? After all, the first American soldiers to reach the Iraqi capital secured the Oil Ministry building, even as they allowed Iraqi looters free rein in the rest of the city. L. Paul Bremer III, the proconsul later chosen by President Bush to oversee the establishment of a new Iraq, brought in a team of American oil executives to supervise the privatization of the country’s oil industry, while the U.S. Department of Energy confidently predicted in May 2003 that Iraqi production would rise to 3.4 million barrels per day in 2005, 4.1 million barrels by 2010, and 5.6 million by 2020.

None of this, of course, came to pass. For many ordinary Iraqis, the U.S. decision to immediately head for the Oil Ministry building was an instantaneous turning point that transformed possible support for the overthrow of a tyrant into anger and hostility. Bremer’s drive to privatize the state oil company similarly produced a fierce nationalist backlash among Iraqi oil engineers, who essentially scuttled the plan. Soon enough, a full-scale Sunni insurgency broke out. Oil output quickly fell, averaging only 2.0 million barrels daily between 2003 and 2009. By 2010, it had finally inched back up to the 2.5 million barrel mark -- a far cry from those dreamed-of 4.1 million barrels.

One conclusion isn’t hard to draw: Efforts by outsiders to control the political order in the Middle East for the sake of higher oil output will inevitably generate countervailing pressures that result in diminished production. The United States and other powers watching the uprisings, rebellions, and protests blazing through the Middle East should be wary indeed: whatever their political or religious desires, local populations always turn out to harbor a fierce, passionate hostility to foreign domination and, in a crunch, will choose independence and the possibility of freedom over increased oil output.

The experiences of Iran and Iraq may not in the usual sense be comparable to those of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Oman, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen. However, all of them (and other countries likely to get swept up into the tumult) exhibit some elements of the same authoritarian political mold and all are connected to the old oil order. Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Oman, and Sudan are oil producers; Egypt and Jordan guard vital oil pipelines and, in Egypt’s case, a crucial canal for the transport of oil; Bahrain and Yemen as well as Oman occupy strategic points along major oil sealanes.

i see it more like this


when societies crumble
and everything's gone
and the cars are all rusted away
and there ain't no more money
and there's nothing to buy
and all that we have is the day

when the world becomes silent
no planes in the air
when the voices just gather to sing
when the guns are the fence post
the cars are the doghouse
and the telephones no longer ring

what, what of the night
with no electrical light
so what then?

you, you and the candles
will be all that i need
your face bathed in the firelight
will be all i want to see
and i'll still sing you a song
that will last the whole night long
you, you and the candles

when the grocery stores are hollow inside
and the airports are filled with a breeze
after the anarchy finally subsides
when you reckon with how it will be

when empires are humbled
before the eyes of the people
and the truth will be like a parade
when industry's fallen
we'll make our own clothes now
and gifts of our hands rise again

and what, what of the night
with no electrical light
so what then?

you, you and the candles
will be all that i need
your face bathed in the firelight
will be all i want to see
and i'll still sing you a song
that will last the whole night long
you, you and the candles

in a waste paper basket
the timing's fantastic
for lovers to mean what they say
and a night lit in candles
on stained wooden mantles
keep us safe 'til the night
turns to day

you, you and the storm clouds
and the puddles at our feet
the lightning cuts through the heavens
and light you so briefly
and i'll still write you a song
to last the whole night long
you, you and the candles
you, you and the candles

Petroleum based gasoline and diesel are energy DENSE liquids that are portable. We will easily develop equivalents in many different ways. It will all come from entrepreneurs rather than oil companies(who are not invested in innovation no matter what they preach) Im betting that a mass produced biodiesel will become a transitional fuel until we do develop a new energy source for transportation.I think its easier for all our engines to become diesel than it is for "fuel cell" or more exotic means.

We will always have a need for a portable fuel source for our transportation needs. I dont believe that regional and intercity rail will really catch on big time in the US.

Urban mass transit is plausible, and i think municipalities will increasingly be obliged to provide it. It is regional communications which are the problem. Not only was there always a problem in regional transport, but it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s as Greyhound reduced service and eliminated some routes altogether. Especially west of the Mississippi, this means that people in towns and small cities have few options other than to own an automobile, or to give up long distance travel or rely on others for it.

when they can get over right pf way issues and get on with a real hyperspeed train between NY and DC, Ill buy the "marketing". I agree that its a great solution, but weve been screwing with a hyspeed line tween Phill/Harrisburg and PEnn State for a "reasearch traingle" and its failed about 8 times.

Houston has been installing commuter trains lately. Not many routes, as yet. I am not comfortable with them being right in the auto traffic, but mass transit is a dire need. I loved living in NYC, where the subway made cars unnecessary.

When I work in NYC , I am always am,azed at how many people I deal with dont even have cars in the city.

Parking must be pretty expensive, by now. When I lived in San Francisco, I got towed because I didn't fully understand a few of their signs about parking hours. The trolleys were so much simpler.

Well, as i see it, the problem of regional transport is in the small towns. I know that high speed trains might solve problems of regional transport between cities like Philly and New York--but that still leaves tens of millions of people "stranded" in largely rural areas where the bus don't run no more . . .

MAny eastern states are defined by their topo. Its a bitch to cross mountains and connect towns without using the few "wind gaps" and water gaps of the Appalachians. The entire rapid transit in NY and Pa is dependent upon 4 gaps where lower grade track could be laid. Cross country roads are where they are for a good reason. Otherwise wed have to engineer many "Horseshoe Curves" through the first mountains, second mountains, the Blues and the MAin Appalachians (there are 4 main Appalachians and then the palteau). Id hae to be planning a regional light rail in West Virginia. Theres really only 2 gaps in that whole state to traverse East and West.

I think the connection of small towns is gonna be a nightmare of engineering. The big trestles of the past are mostly all gone and collapsed. Tunneling ios extremely expensive, and even the roads have had to engage in major blasting . Theres only 6 major road segments going E/W from MAine to Va and most of them (I90,Pa6, I 84, I80.(US30,Pa Turnpike/) I 70,) are in the central states (NY/Pa,Md)

The proposed "MAglev" in PA, has actually been [planned to go WITH the Appalachian orocline rather than against it. What that does is selectively connect areas that aren really centers of anything now(Penn State is the only benefactor) but the bill for the maglev has been in the 15 + BILLION range. Pa cant even fix its existing roads.


I still see biodiesel as the answer to much of the decline of gas. Making biodiesel leaves us with a diesel product and a feed stock for plastics that are biodegradable. A diesel engine has more torque than a gas engine and , based on clean diesel tech in the bio engineering field (algae and coal "wax" diesel) we can have all our cars and trucks powered by diesel engines (The technology for small diesels has been available for years and trucks, have been all diuesel since the 30s)

Goat powered go-carts. - No, that's dumb. Looks like country folks may live more like 19TH Century in the near future.

There isn't any shortage of oil in the world and in fact the United States should be exporting oil and not importing it and we would be if libtards hadsn't spent the last 50 years shutting down all of America's energy ventures.

Nonetheless I have no love for the oil industry either.

IF you or Bork Obunga or anybody else really wants to end the petroleum economy, there is one and only one possible real shot at it and that would be a thorium/supercapacitor economy, and you'd have to give up on the practice of shutting down every effort the country ever makes to develop new reactors to do it.

Speak for yourself. Some of us don't do that anymore.

Cycloptichorn

Greater battery energy density is the key to advancement of human technology at this point, and the only thing keeping Oil in the game, regarding portable power.

I'm enthused by the new ultra-capacitors that look likely to hit the market soon, with both a higher energy density than current batteries and longer life cycles as well.

Cycloptichorn

I have to drive. The alternative is by bike, on a heavily traveled one lane road, with no shoulder.

Not everybody can give up their car, I understand that. But; if you had the choice, could you have bought a house where you COULD have walked or ridden a bike?

This is one of the prime reasons I'm a city boy, and it's the reason that urban real estate has risen in popularity over the last two decades.

Cycloptichorn

We should have listened to Jimmy Carter when he said to turn down the heat and put on a sweater.

I lived in Manhattan for 15 years - never needed no stinkin' car. Public Transport was just fine. I think I had to rent a car maybe 6 times in all those years. I got around to 8 countries in Europe without ever getting in car.