I have heard many perspectives on this. Do we have an endless supply of oil (Canada, Russia, Alaska, and Antartica)?
Canada supplies roughly half of your oil. However, the oil sands project must be profitable for this to continue, and for oil sands to be profitable prices must rise. Sucks. Build a windmill - they're great for energy. Anyway, many people have predicted the end of oil, but the world's got a lot of reserves. However, in order to get to a lot of newfound reserves (like, say, with oil sands or deep sea drilling) prices must rise to meet with the costs of procurment. For now, there's enough oil in the world. The question is whether you can afford it.
One reason for the rise in oil prices is we are in a bidding war with China. China's economy is booming and with it there is a great demand for oil. The only way to stabilize oil prices is to increase production. OPEC is very reluctant to do that since they are the ones benefiting. We need to look for our own reserves and soon or our economy will suffer tremendously.
OPEC cannot raise production, and it only accounts for about 40% of the supply now and it will be decreasing further, this is imo mostly a demand side problem and will only be solved with less demand.
With over a billion Chinese, demand for oil is only going to increase. If supply doesn't go up at the same time then prices will skyrocket. Soon developing our own oil supply will become a major national security issue.
The US cannot develop what it doesn’t have, the US doesn’t have enough oil to supplement its massive imports of oil, the US cannot depend on oil anymore it has to develop extremely efficient cars has to stop with this Hummer Bull shit, and SUV crap, if you want to talk about helping your enemy that is the best way to do it, buy a SUV. The US needs to significantly drop in demand, and it must be done to avoid a collapse of the US economy. Which is why I think the US joining Kyoto would have been better then nothing) because it would have given the US much needed impetus to make the necessary changes to reduce demand for oil. If the US does not change its consumption patterns war with China, or proxy wars will become much more likely. Also the US economy will begin to lag even further behind, capitalism demands constant changes, since the US is the world's largest market (for now) the US auto makers have little reason to reform its fuel efficiency standards to a higher level since Americans aren’t being told to through regulation. As a result Japanese and European car companies are going to destroy American car companies because they will be FAR ahead the US automakers in technology. Drilling for more oil is totally not in the interests of the US environmentally, economically, and logically its only preventing the inevitable and at that not even.
What about under Antartica? Or within the inner core of the earth? ive heard both may contain huge amounts of oil.
China is selling American dollars which is making the American dollar weaker, oil is traded in American dollars thus making the oil more expensive! Well thats what i thought
We have no idea if there are significant oil deposits in Antarctica. My own guess , based on a background in geology and a lifetime in the oil industry, is that at best it might contain the equivalent of an Iran or a North Sea. The extraction costs would be horrendous (set aside the problem of reaching international agreement to allow the exploration and production to take place.) All this would do is to briefly delay the inevitable. There is no oil in the inner core: it is too hot. There is no oil in the outer core: its is too hot. There is no oil in the mantle:it is too hot. There is no oil in the crust much beyond 20,000': it is too hot. (Do you see the pattern?)
antartica has massive oil supplys and gold supplys, but drilling is very very hard because of the weather and amount of ice. and what the hell are you thinking about the "inner core" of the earth... there is no oil there...
good evidence. But like i said in my first post the question is whether or not consumers can afford oil once we're drilling in Antartica. I wouldn't worry too much about that just yet though - Oil sands and deep sea drilling are the next big things. Of course, the cost of these things will raise the price of oil. Want to lower your energy consumption? Build a windmill on the corner of your farm. Drive an energy efficiant car - and if you live in the city, whey the hell would you drive and SUV in the first place?
maxzuk your funny as hell you just pop out of no where with a hyper link Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It is too expensive right now to manufacture ethanol or any alternative fuel. I wonder what the price of fuel was in 1880. If enough people need a product then the price will go down as long as there is not a finite amount of the product. When oil becomes expensive enough the major food centers of the world will be forced to research ways of making alternative fuels affordable. An example of this would be cars and computers both of these products have made vast improvements while the actual cost has lowered. It is easier at this moment to loot the resources of third world countries and insure that when push comes to shove America and probably Europe will be the ones that have instead of the have nots.
What would happen is expensive setup and development , after those stages are complete the oil prices will decrease dramatically.
you're exactly right. The current rising price allows companies to pursue deep-sea drilling and oil sands, oil is produced, and teh price slowley goes back down after development is well underway. However, the price of oil rarely goes back down to what it was before the new rounds of development.
Ladies and gentlemen, has anybody given any thaught to the plight of the electric car? the bike? infact anything that we use has been made using energy which will ultimately come from 2 places, the sun or fun and games with atoms. Is it not of concern that a wind farm is remarkably expensive in money and energy to make for something so ineefective, in rainy britain the chances of solar power working are minimal. so what do you think i'm getting at? For the moment fossil fuels are our only real solution to the current enrgy crisis we face. But the real crisis is the abandonment of nuclear energy as the idiotic public consider it to scary and that they might grow a third eye... Agian perhaps education is the solution... Do we really need so many cars... and if we do, why does it have to be a 4 ltr V8 mercedes or worse a big fat gas guzzeling SUV? Surely america should start puting tax on more wastefull vehicles? or mayby if americans had to deal with the prices we have for fuel in the united kingdom... (there sillyly high) the us migh be cured of wasting energy. As for oil... it is looking likely that for the imediat future we will continue to find more of the black stuff, technology is starting to be able to break plastics down into burnable clean fuels and this probibly gives us just over a centuary to sort our energy sources out... Till then perhaps the human speceis should tighten its belt a bit.
