Jan. 2nd, 2008

peristaltor: (Default)
Yes, oil has reached the magic number, $100/barrel. However, as the Angry Bear notes, since 2001, the United States had less to do with breaking the price glass ceiling than many shrilly declare.

Don't believe me? Check out this graph, which shows flat US imports of both crude and refined fuels since 2001. Had our profligate nation been wholly responsible, this $100 benchmark would have been reached much, much earlier.

Frankly, I was a bit surprised by this, but I shouldn't be. After all, a few years back something monumental may have happened to oil supplies. I do wish the Angry Bear would have shown worldwide delivery of oil, not just national. Such an analysis might have through the smokescreen of Byzantine exceptions OPEC members use to inflate their own production numbers.

(OPEC production allowances each year are based upon production numbers from prior years. Thus, if, say, Saudi Arabia delivers a few million barrels to Qatar, and Qatar then sells this same oil back to Saudi Arabia in the same year allowing the Saudis to then put the oil on a ship, the Saudis can list both deliveries, the one to Qatar and the one to the ship, as production. They don't have to declare their imports, thus making an actual determination of how much they extract from their wells difficult.)

Back to the expensive barrel: Sure, the US imports were flat, but I'll put a small wager out there, and say that worldwide imports of ground-extracted crude is also flat.

But that's not what we're hearing, is it? "While daily price rises have been blamed on unrest in oil-supplying countries such as Nigeria, an underlying and significant factor has been an increase in demand from China and India." Other sources add poor weather in Mexico's fields to the list of blame.

Red herrings, all. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I say excuses because in the decades prior to today, the world has seen unrest, bad weather and consumption competition, but has never seen oil prices this high in real dollars.

These citations, this laundry list of excuses, addresses only specific supply/demand hiccups and avoids the Uncomfortable and Difficult Overlying Possibility; that a planetary peak in oil supply verses demand must be substantively addressed with real policy change, not excuses.



Chicken Little gets a bad rap; but sometimes the sky really falls.
peristaltor: (Default)
I started writing this in November, but faltered, and started again, and faltered again. I find the entire topic just too important to treat lightly, but too emotionally fraught to resort to the bludgeon of didactic accusation. Telling people "You're evil!" just gets you dismissed.

I'm not trying to make that accusation. Ah, but just making the argument that the words used to vilify those that wish us dead could be better applied to many of our leaders. . . . I hope you can see the difficulty. The trouble: Those should know of our country's history with fascism have been blindsided by sloppy use of the word. Over the decades, few remember what the word actually meant to those that coined it. )

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