Petrole Et Gaz Arabes Analyst - "No Non-OPEC Member Is In A Position To Pump More"

Oil producers outside the OPEC cartel are unable to pump enough oil to reduce crude prices, hampered by robust domestic demand, weak investment and exhausted oil fields, analysts say.

In the short term, "no non-OPEC member is in a position to produce more," said Francis Perrin of the publication Petrole et Gaz arabes. "They are selling all the oil they can."

EDIT

While in the long-term Kazakhstan, Brazil and Canada could boost output, "it would hardly compensate for a decline" in British and Norwegian fields in the North Sea, Perrin said. And in the United States, he added, "the development of off-shore fields in the Gulf of Mexico will not be enough to compensate for the decline of older facilities."

In some countries, a lack of investment is the problem. In Mexico, for example, the national oil group Pemex turns over all its profits to the state, depriving the company of the means to look for new sources. In other producers, notably Kazakhstan, production has been plagued by physical difficulties, such as the great depth at which oil is found. Kazakhstan's Kashagan field, the world's largest discovery since the end of the 1960s, should eventually produce nearly 1.5 million barrels a day. But its operational launch, repeatedly delayed, is not likely to take place before 2011.

EDIT

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=25644

"We can't either..."

The delay of Kashagan is bad news -- every year's delay menas another half billion barrels of oil that won't make it into the global machine, that can't be made up later. The same goes for every megaproject that slips.

I no longer believe that OPEC has the ability to increase production despite their protestations about "spare capacity", and I especially don't believe they have the ability to increase exports to any significant extent. I think their senior oil people know that, but are shit-scared to say anything in public.

Slipping in phrases like "In the short term" is spin doctoring to give the sleepers, cornucopians and other assorted PO deniers the wiggle room they need to keep from having to accept what is rapidly becoming a manifest reality. "Don't worry, this is just a short term problem. We're working on it and good news is probably just around the corner." A pox on their lying houses.

You'll wake the children.

"I keep dreaming that the lights don't come on when I press the switch
and that there is no food in the fridge and the water isn't coming out
of the taps and ..."
:cry:

To think that at one time the answer would have been "It's ok sweetheart,
it was just a nasty dream, it's not really going to happen ..."

:scared:

Uh oh.

:toast:

Have I ever mentioned what it is like to be an Ayn Rand apologist on DU? I still say she got a bad rap after being appropriated by the neocons.

But I still have to appropriate Twain's quote re. the Book of Mormon for Atlas Shrugged - "chloroform in print".

No offense! :hi:

She was really wrong about a lot of things. Hard-core libertarianism being just one good example. And she was a queen of straw man argumentation.

I just remember reading her stuff, and not coming away from it thinking that she was proposing Gordon Gecko was a role model. I am also quite certain that she would have utter contempt for people like George Bush, or Ken Lay. She would consider them talentless parasites, pretty much embodiments of the villains in her novels.

I suppose that's not really enough reason to endure the social leprosy that is Ayn Rand apologism. I should let it go.

quote: "I no longer believe that OPEC has the ability to increase production despite their protestations about "spare capacity", and I especially don't believe they have the ability to increase exports to any significant extent. I think their senior oil people know that, but are shit-scared to say anything in public.

Slipping in phrases like "In the short term" is spin doctoring to give the sleepers, cornucopians and other assorted PO deniers the wiggle room they need to keep from having to accept what is rapidly becoming a manifest reality. "Don't worry, this is just a short term problem. We're working on it and good news is probably just around the corner." A pox on their lying houses."

quote: ""Daddy, I'm having nightmares again!"

"I keep dreaming that the lights don't come on when I press the switch
and that there is no food in the fridge and the water isn't coming out
of the taps and ..."
:cry:

To think that at one time the answer would have been "It's ok sweetheart,
it was just a nasty dream, it's not really going to happen ...""


No matter what the facts are, some people just love to make up their own...

nt

Be sure you don't let reality intrude anywhere else either. You can probably shut it all out with duct tape and plastic sheeting.

I thought I linked to a micro course.

Basic supply and demand behavior; including the forces that act to constrain supply. There is absolutely no evidence that there is a "shortage" of oil. What there is a great deal of evidence for, IMO, is that the price has been artificially low due to over production and that producers are behaving in a rational manner considering the impending carbon constraints.

Since the US has lost control of and influence over world production, IMO we can expect a forced change in our lifestyle; but that doesn't equate to the type of doomsday talk that is thrown around here.

As a youth we had an outhouse, carried water from the well and used a wood stove to cook on and heat our bathwater. We had electricity for lights and radio and the only person that had a TV was my grandmother.

The point being that we can do without a lot of what we think of as essential and still not have social collapse.

I've also lived for many years overseas where the percapita energy consumption is less than half of the US figure. The point being that most of the world lives comfortably on a much tighter energy budget than we do.

We aren't going to fall to the point where I was as a child. And it shouldn't take us too long (as infrastrucute development projects go) to get to the point where we are comfortable using less. There is a lot of economic activity associated with developing new infrastructure like this, so the chances are good that as deployment of fossil alternatives really ramps up, the net economic benefits on employment, lifestyle, and the environment are going to be positive.

> No matter what the facts are, some people just love to make up their own...

... and you are living proof of this.

Ecology trumps Economics every time. The yardsticks of economics are artificial, inconsistent, and always transitory. The playing fields of Nature don't change, only the players. Economies and empires of the sort we live under don't last.

As the physical effort, energy, and ingenuity required to find and extract petroleum and natural gas increases -- for the simple reason that we have already extracted the easier oil and gas -- the only certainty we can entertain is that the society we have built cannot continue on as it is.

Since Nature doesn't care in the least about human death and suffering, it is very likely there will be a lot of that, maybe not so much here in the United States, but almost certainly elsewhere.

It doesn't do anything to bolster my own optimism by trusting my own kids will do well enough while someone else's kids are starving. The enthusiasm you attach to conventional economic theory neglects the human and environmental carnage that always accompanies radical restructuring of the human economy. Economic numbers that appear positive on paper can reflect very negative impacts on human communities.

Probably not.

In contrast, I'm reasonably certain that the laws of thermodynamics did.

Your imply that there is some sort of superiority demonstrated by your statement. There isn't. It's like saying did calculus exist during the Mesozoic?

Read a frickin book.

Puuuure and simple, bullshit. Human history and prehistory do not support your thesis.

I challenge you to take some economics courses. You clearly don't have any idea of the content of the field, it would probably help you understand what's happening around you. I'm not saying that it is the end-all-be-all for understanding life, but it is a big help. Maybe you could then do something besides wallow in despair.

But perhaps not in the same way you do.

They are very similar to religious teachings in many respects in that the founding principles are matters of faith.

No more than a road map is a matter of faith.

No more than a hammer is a matter of faith.

Go to amazon and order an econ 101 book with workbook (and email support) then work your way through it 2 pages a day.

You already understand almost everything there, but you probably haven't connected a lot of the dots.

All you have to lose is your lack of knowledge.

It's a State Religion one is forced to profess one's faith in.

Those who refuse to be assimilated into this State Religion are crushed.

Indigenous people who did not practice a monetized form of economics often had much higher standards of living than the poor wretched souls of the european empires that overwhelmed them.

The econ 101 book you speak of is a tool of indoctrination, and you are an optimistic and eager acolyte of that faith.

The first time I took econ 101 I flunked it because I sometimes disrupted classes with my questions, and wrote things like "this is bullshit!!!" on my exams. I once told a TA that the statistics he was basing his doctoral thesis on were probably fraudulent and we got into a fight. (It was a guns vs. butter question concerning the war in Viet Nam.)

The second time I took econ 101 I aced it. I was one of those assholes who finished the exam in half the alloted time and left early with a bounce in my step and a very smug smile on my face.

Our economic system is a cruel game that kills and maims many people. It is unethical. But it's a game that one is forced to play whether one is for it or against it, because if you don't you will be crushed, and if you are crushed you will not have the power to change the rules and create a game where social justice prevails.

It occurs to me that kristopher's injunction to "order an econ 101 book with workbook (and email support) then work your way through it" sounds suspiciously like, "You would realize Jesus is your saviour if you just got a Bible and worked your way through it with the help of a priest."

Economics is not a science because it's impossible to experimentally validate any of the major economic theories. Instead, it's mainly a descriptive field. As such, any economic theory is wide open to bias, including contamination by the opinions of the theorist, and it's impossible to validate the theory to the requirements of a true science. Economics is definitely not up to the level of rigour of 2+2=4.

The mere fact that every economic framework extant, with the single exception of ecological economics, has as its foundation the implicit assumption that growth is essential and inevitable makes the entire field a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution.

"The mere fact that every economic framework extant, with the single exception of ecological economics, has as its foundation the implicit assumption that growth is essential and inevitable makes the entire field a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution."

If anyone is acting like a fundie it is you, dude. You condemn without understanding. I've gone around on this topic with you enough to know that you DO NOT have the education in economics to pass the judgments you do. You are speaking from ignorance - a hallmark trait of fundamentalism where preconceptions preclude learning that contradicts and threatens cherished beliefs and values.


You say "every economic framework". WTF is that? It isn't a real part of economics, so WTF, you just make it up as you go along?

Economics, as a field of study, has no implicit assumptions as you describe.

Those assumptions do lie in choices of governing systems that favor one aspect of decisionmaking over another, such as capital over labor; but the tool to describe those choices and decisionmaking processes (and predict their effects) are independent of the pbject being described.

You did get one thing right, econ is a descriptive tool, much like the written word is a descriptive tool. You are wrong in everything else, including the ability to experimentally validate finding. I don't use your word 'theory' here because you are again, using it like a CC denier or a Xtian fundie saying evolution is "just a theory."

Please name one school of economic thought that doesn't have economic growth as its premise. Besides Ecological Economics, of course.

Adam Smith?
Bentham?
Say?
Marx?
The Fabians?
The Marginalists?
The Monetarists?
The Chicago School?
Pareto?
Keynes?

Each of these schools of thought was ostensibly concerned about issues other than simple economic growth. However, I claim that all of them have as their underlying premise the idea that growth is the sign of a healthy economy, and that lack of growth signals a dysfunction. You may prove me wrong by finding one school of thought other than Ecological Economics that explicitly rejects the requirement for economic growth.

I'm not nor have I been advocating for a "school of thought" regarding the USE of economics. I've directed your attention to the toolkit offered by basic economics. After having explained the difference to you any number of times, you still don't understand the difference between normative and positive economics.

The underlying premise that you are trying to identify is a thing called "capitalism", which is indeed predicated on unending economic growth versus a system premised on sustainability.

I'd suggest that after you do that econ 101 workbook you delve into some of the thinking on sustainable development; thinking that underpins many of the fundamental goals of the United Nations.

But, of course you wont do that because you are so much more clever and caring than all the other idiots in the world who just think they give a damn about this world.

I'm saying it doesn't matter which school of thought you follow, this premise is endemic to all of them but one. As a result, it can be regarded as ubiquitous to modern economic thought.

The United Nations' prattle about "sustainable development" is an attempt to balance the Third World desire for material growth against First World overconsumption in the presence of increasingly obvious limits to further growth. It is an attempt to square the circle, and like all such attempts is fundamentally flawed. The fact that it is well-meaning doesn't make it any less erroneous.

Neither normative nor positive economics offers much in this situation, I'm afraid. Normative economics (what the economy ought to be like, and attempts to create that state through policy choices) suffers (IMO) because economists have an incomplete grasp of thermodynamics and ecology. As a result it is hobbled in its attempt to prescribe courses of action that correspond with physical reality.

Positive economics, on the other hand, is purely descriptive. As a result it suffers from predictive difficulties in the presence of sharp inflections in physical situations or human behaviour patterns. To make matters worse, it shares with normative economics the lack of incorporation of thermodynamic and ecological principles, thus removing some essential underpinnings of physical reality from the descriptions it does provide.

There is no underlying premise of growth in Marxism, that is false. He addresses population growth as a function of poverty and proposes that a just society where wealth is fairly distributed will experience declining population growth (sort of true - population growth is linked to poverty, but the thing that reduces population is the cost of rearing offspring).

So that claim is untrue just as it is untrue when you say that "economists have an incomplete grasp of thermodynamics and ecology". How could you possibly know what all economists are thinking? Where do you get this nonsense???
Of the economists that I've known (many) almost every single one of them is extremely concerned about resource depletion and work very hard trying to find solutions that do, in fact, deal with the realities of the constraints imposed by the physical world around us.

You have a totally paranoid (and error filled) picture in you head that you think somehow imbues you with some sort of superior power to see into the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of people you've never met. You clearly have no idea of how economics is used at the policy level - or by who - or what the values, beliefs and goals are of those using it - and yet you trot out this bullshit over and over again. I suppose it works for you with people who don't know any better, but your analysis, if we can call it that, is filled with ignorance that is on a par with the xtian fundies in its persistence and defensiveness.

Take this tripe:
"Positive economics, on the other hand, is purely descriptive. As a result it suffers from predictive difficulties in the presence of sharp inflections in physical situations or human behaviour patterns. To make matters worse, it shares with normative economics the lack of incorporation of thermodynamic and ecological principles, thus removing some essential underpinnings of physical reality from the descriptions it does provide.

I'll wager that an hour ago you had never heard of either positive or normative economics (you certainly don't use them when they are in integral part of the argument you keep attempting to make), yet here you are, trying to explain them away instead of trying to understand and integrate them.

Both positive and normative economics are capable of incorporating "ecological principles" and "thermodynamics" as much or as little as needed. The fact that you make a statement like this shouldn't surprise me, I suppose. You've demonstrated repeatedly your preference for your imaginary world over the real world. Your ignorance is exceeded only by your arrogance.

Is there one that advocates for steady state economics? Aside from Ecological Economics, I don't know of one. You could shut me up by pointing one out.

You call my analysis "tripe", but provide no justification for your assessment beyond your suspicion that the difference between normative and positive economics is a new understanding for me. I'm not trying to "explain away" economic thought, I'm just trying to describe why I think that the field has an insufficient understanding of the industrial and economic consequences of peak oil and ecological damage to allow it to adequately describe, predict or ameliorate the consequences. This doesn't apply to ALL economists of course. Birol himself is a notable exception. It does seem to apply to the field as a whole, as far as I can see. There is no reason economics couldn't incorporate ecological, thermodynamic or other biophysical principles, as it must if it is to deal with the real world and not just a set of heavily qualified abstractions. In economics as generally practiced in modern halls of power, however, there is precious little evidence that it does.

BTW, for someone who objected to my little dig a number of encounters ago as an ad hominem, your personal attacks in this sub-thread are astonishing.

You don't want to wrap your head around the concept that your attempts to shoehorn positive economics and normative economics into the same box is a basic error of conceptualization. You persist in doing it for a reason.

"There is no reason economics couldn't incorporate ecological, thermodynamic or other biophysical principles, as it must if it is to deal with the real world and not just a set of heavily qualified abstractions. In economics as generally practiced in modern halls of power, however, there is precious little evidence that it does."
Here is the same error at work. How do you know how economics is "generally practiced in modern halls of power"?
Do you routinely read the work of the entire range of economists as they deal with "the real world"? Or is it possible that you are just blaming the messenger for everything you don't like about the way things are going? Isn't your reaction to my comments really based on the fact that you have tied your identity to conclusions that are demonstrably wrong, and that the tool which demonstrates the falsity of those conclusions is economics? To admit the validity of the tool challenges that identity, IMO.

Don't believe me? Review your posts on this thread in order written and look at the progression of your thought.

I can find a lot of work by economists that I dislike because of the values behind it; and I can find a lot that I would argue is based on faulty understandings on the part of the author. There are any number of causes I can think of that would lead me to reject a work of economics. But the tools themselves don't lie and they aren't biased. The biggest problem with the field I see is that it is trying to model something probably more complex than Earth's climate - and that is human behavior. Like I've said several times, econ isn't the end all be all of understanding, but in spite of its shortcomings it is one of the best tools we have for understanding what is happening around us. It is unfortunate you can't work that fact into your world view.

If I'm being testy I apologize. I know your concern is genuine and when it comes down to what each of us believes really matters, I'm fairly confident our disagreements are trivial compared to the fundamental values we share.

A theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation. I place less trust in verification though empirical observation, though, because of the possibility of confounding influences and biases including selection and/or confirmation bias. For that reason experimental validation is the gold standard of a scientific discipline -- one that economics cannot use to test the primary conjectures of any of its major schools of thought, thereby diminishing its claim to be a "scientific" discipline.

"...it's mainly a descriptive field. As such, any economic theory is wide open to bias, including contamination by the opinions of the theorist."

See previous post about your confusion regarding normative vs positive economics and basic tools vs "schools of thought".

The basic tools offered by economic theory are indeed falsifiable.

How did you get "CC denier or a Xtian fundie" out of that?

"You condemn without understanding. I've gone around on this topic with you enough to know that you DO NOT have the education in economics to pass the judgments you do. You are speaking from ignorance - a hallmark trait of fundamentalism where preconceptions preclude learning that contradicts and threatens cherished beliefs and values."

I haven't seen this much pride in ignorance since that last time I heard a xtian fundie opine on evolution. Or perhaps it was the last time I heard Glen Beck talk about Global Warming.

In any case, your criticisms are of precisely the same nature. They are founded in a faulty mental model that creates preconceptions that fail to allow valid information to integrate.

As part of a response to discussion of "economics" you say "Our economic system is a cruel game that kills and maims many people. It is unethical." The two are unrelated, your example this time is no better than the lame Mesozoic one before. The study of economics is no more responsible for the "cruel game" you point to than algebra is to blame for Hiroshima.

And no, I don't believe you took econ.

I maintain you are defending your faith, kristopher. Your arguments remind me very strongly of Christian apologetics, another subject of which I am well acquainted.

The gold they can import for oil is at an extreme high and everything else is extremely high.

Everyone that can is going at MAX while the getting is good.

There are a wide range of very valuable applications for petroleum even in a world dominated and functioning well on renewables. Why should they invest heavily in production just to glut the market and push their per unit price down? Why the hell do you think they would do that?

This is why I keep harping on basic economics. If you would take a basic course, you'd see why pricing is as it is and why the producers are producing as they are. Their actions make perfect sense from both a self interest point of view and an ecologically aware point of view.

Profits are being into so badly people are taking slight losses now.

So hell yes they will want the gold as eventually the whole damn system is going to collapse. And of course there is always the threat of the president dumping the reserve on the market.

There is no question energy is going to be more expensive, that doesn't mean that everything is going to collapse.

You are talking from FEAR.

Don't presume what my points come from when many of your own in various posts are totally incorrect.

I'm not asking you to provide references for every darn thing. Just explain why you think something is so, support your opinion, otherwise, we can't really separate the wheat from the chaff.

Some (many?) marginal nations, industries, businesses and individuals will suffer, but the OECD and the USA will keep bumping along well beyond $120.

Can the world economy survive a 3% per annum decline in oil production beginning in 2012 and ramping up by 3% per decade after that? Can the American economy survive the net oil export crisis reducing the international oil market to 20% of its current volume by 2030? Those are different kettles of crude entirely.

Biophysical limits are much more important in this case than price, though the price will come to reflect those limits.