Iraq and the Problem of Peak Oil

Good Grief! I used to think this peak oil topic was mostly alarmist ravings, but now I'm starting to wonder.
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Iraq and the Problem of Peak Oil
http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2004/01/20040118.php

In a speech to the International Petroleum Institute in London in late 1999, Dick Cheney, then chairman of the world's largest oil services company, Halliburton, presented the picture of world oil supply and demand to industry insiders. 'By some estimates,' Cheney stated, 'there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.' Cheney ended on an alarming note: 'That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.' This is equivalent to more than six Saudi Arabia's of today's size.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Cheney, as Vice President, was given as his first major assignment the head of a Presidential Task Force on Energy. He knew the dimension of the energy problem facing not only the United States, but the rest of the world.

Cheney is also well identified as the leading Iraq warhawk in the Bush Administration, together with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Repeatedly it was Cheney pushing for military action against Iraq, regardless of which allies support it.

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Read about the Right-Wing "Master Plan": http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

Have you read "War is a Racket"?: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

'By some estimates,' Cheney stated, 'there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.' Cheney ended on an alarming note: 'That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.' This is equivalent to more than six Saudi Arabia's of today's size.

As demand increases, so does price. As price rises, conservation will increase, consumption will decrease, and energy substitutes will be sought. Also, hitherto uneconomic deposits will become worthwhile and will be tapped.

We're not going to run out of oil.

Rising oil prices might make alternate forms of energy more competitive? I wonder how the rate of developing new technologies compares to the rate at which we run out of oil? I guess the market price will set the balance point, huh?

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Read about the Right-Wing "Master Plan": http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

Have you read "War is a Racket"?: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

And you completely ignore something else important. As prices rise to extremes (possible $3 gas this summer?) some will not be able to commute to their jobs. Heating and electricity costs will devastate personal budgets. Imported food and energy intensive agriculture will drive food prices through the roof. Everything you buy that is imported / shipped will become more expensive (that's everything you buy, by the way). In short, the increasing prices will drive our economy, not to it's knees, but into total collapse. The peak oil scare is not about running out of oil, it's about running out of enough oil to support our economy. Add to that the fact that the US Treasury is completely dependent on growing oil sales in US Dollars, and we are looking at a financial disaster by 2010, followed immediately by civil disaster as the populace begins to starve/freeze. We are completely dependent on cheap oil, and no effort is being made to shift our economy away from the precipice.

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