This question pertains to everyone here, including those not to fond of the topic. My comment is this, based on your own knowledge & comprehension of the world is Oil really being fairly marketed? What we see now is gas being charged at ridiculious pricing, oil being sold at this ridiculious pricing as well. I can hardly fathom how there would be such a shortage of it when the entire planet is at our disposal. Is there some sort of lying going on to increase profits, is there reason to doubt claims oil is as rare to aquire as they say? Finally are the current oil companies overcharging or is it a fair price for what they offer? Offer your opinions my friends!
I don't know if the markets are being deliberately manipulated, but it is not that strange that the price would be so volatile now. Demand is trending towards exceeding supply at which point we have hit "peak oil", and things really start getting scary. The supply of oil is not infinite, and the supply that is easy to obtain (meaning cheap) is dwindling.
Wasn't there something about countries "capping" oil wells a while ago? Sounds like a way for them to increase the price artificially if anything.
Good comments so far, the other question we must address here is why any country would develop an economy based on usage of oil. From what I can see they knew it was a very scarce resource to begin with, by adopting it for use nationally / globally all they were asking for is this kind of trouble. Any half brained more-on would recognize a resource isn't something that's non-renewable, saying that makes it something else. The only kind of resource is a rewenable one! I'd like to mention when I brought this up in freshman year of high school the teacher laughed at me, well whose laughing now jerk!
Another thing that should make us all suspicious is the fiat US dollar and its relationship with oil. You limit the supply of oil, the price of oil goes up....it's not hard to work out how that affects the dollar.
In the short run--measured in years--the supply of fuel fluctuates because refineries have to be built to produce it. As demand shifts--say from gasoline to diesel which is modestly superior in economy--it is not a simple matter of flipping a switch and turning a gasoline refinery into a diesel oil refinery. Politics and the willingness of the various oil-producing nations to sell to the various oil-consuming nations also plays a part in pricing. In the medium term--measured in decades--the supply of raw petroleum fluctuates as new oil wells are discovered, new technology is perfected to extract more oil out of exhausted wells, and populations attempt to conserve energy or adapt to alternative sources. Politics also plays a role as alliances among nations shift. In the long term, it's not likely that there is enough fossil fuel to satisfy humanity's needs for 200 years. And that is a generous estimate assuming our idiot managers start allowing us to work at home, people stop driving to the grocery store in trucks disguised as station wagons for Klingons, we conserve more, exploit alternatives like solar and wind, coal is converted to oil or simply burned for fuel regardless of its soot, more oil reserves are discovered that can't be found with current technology, the population levels off at around nine billion around the year 2080 as expected... and that the Third World doesn't repeat our mistakes as its people enjoy a new prosperity. If humanity continues to be led by short-sighted morons whose motto is, "I don't care what happens as long as it doesn't happen on my watch," and we keep burning petroleum at a prodigious rate until the wells actually start running dry, chaos will ensue. It is not difficult to design a happy, prosperous civilization of nine billion people who get all their energy from renewable sources without having to ration or to create an underclass of people who barely subsist... on paper. It is quite another thing to make a transition to that civilization from the current model, within the ten or twenty years we'll have to do it when the supply of fossil fuel begins to dwindle precipitously... and with the types of leaders who would have to be in power at that moment in order for this global emergency to take place.
There is enough untapped oil to last for probably more than a century, but fresh water suitable for drinking and irrigation is set to become a much scarcer commodity in many parts of the world within only a few decades.
There's a car in the concept stage that runs on seawater. I saw it being driven around on Top Gear, a British TV program. Search youtube.com for "hydro car" or something like that. Anyway, this thing has no mirrors, just LCD screens inside the car, and the steering column can move to either the right or left. Also if you get bored you can just whip the top off and change to a convertible/saloon/coupe, you name it. I don't know what those last three terms are in yankspeak. Don't think we'll be seeing that one for a while.
I love "The End of Suburbia". One of my top 3 documentaries Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I think we are screwed. In the next 50 years anyway. There is no decent alternative fuel and unless somebody pulls something out a hat soon, it'll be too late to get an alternative up and running before the shit hits the fan. Everything we make/use/buy/own/need/want requires oil to produce, pretty much. I love the end of the world as we know it idea though. I guess I romanticise it, but if it did come to that, life would be painful.
Alternatve fuel doesn't have to come along in the next 50 years– technology that lets us use our existing energy resources more efficiently wcould give us a long time to develop entirely new sources.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry6w3mRm-FM&mode=related&search= http://www.classscoop.sunherald.com.au/view_page.asp?intpageid=92&strsection=&intsectionid=2
It's interesting, but hydrogen takes more energy to produce than it gives. Just now anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if GM had some ulterior motive. I can't remember exactly the companies, but when cars were first becoming popular, a car company, an oil company and a tyre company (I think) bought out all the streetcars in certain areas and just scrapped them. They can afford to buy out and suffocate any kind of competition. It's of the same ilk as End of Suburbia, but Who Killed The Electric Car? is an interesting docu. I reckon it's slightly biased, but even the widely accepted facts are quite entertaining in the docu.
Of course. This is what capitalism is all about. It is not about fair competition and improving the quality of products and standard of living for all. Capitalism is about destruction and deceit.
For the OP. Judging by your other posts, you don't have a clear grasp on reality. You should try to educate yourself on issues. This sentence is pretty much nonsensical, also shows what I stated above. For your info, if compared to the number of humans on Earth, we passed peak oil back in 1979.... No shit!!! So of course it is going up over the long run...
Yeah ... if I were a bee, I'd be distracted by all the flowers on their costumes ... gowns ... clothes ... things.
You have not defined what you mean by 'fairly marketed'. Oil is a non-renewable commodity whose price is subject to the laws of supply and demand. This is overlain by issues such as government taxation, transportation bottlenecks, political preferences and refinery capacity. Add to this a volatility in oil futures related to the central role of oil in the global economy, coupled with political uncertainties in the major oil producing nations, and there is ample opportunity for large fluctuations in price. That said, the present oil price is not out of line with the price one hundred years ago, adjusted for inflation. Given that peak oil will be reached at some point, whether in one year, or twenty, then the current price seems, if anything, somewhat low. When we add concerns over global warming and the role of hydrocarbon usage in this, then the price seems inordinately low. Are the oil companies seeking to maximise their profits? Of course they are. If you feel this is in some way reprehensible I suggest you contact the company dealing with your retirement fund and demand they remove all oil companies from their portfolio.
