Quote:
Originally Posted by kdhspyder
For all the reasons stated just below I belive that our current supply of 'easy oil' is all but used up. No, not tomorrow but in the near future there will be very few ploaces where you can just punch a hole in the earth and put a pipe on it to take it to a ship.
In the future our supply of petro-fuel will be found in really really hard to get to locations such as in the middle of the deep ocean and 40000+ feet down, or it will be some new efficient way to develop the largest deposit on earth now, the Athabasca tar sands. But this has problems also. It's expensive and it has huge environmental issues in Canada.
So I'm firmly of the belief that today we are seeing the least expensive petro-fuel that we or our children or grandchildren will ever see again. Oh for the good ol' days of $2.89 gasoline.
My person forecast for my own budget is the following ..
$3.50 on average in 2008 with a minimum of $.50 per gallon increase for each of the following 'x' years.
Average Fuel prices / Year
$4.00 / 2009
$4.50 / 2010
$5.00 / 2011
../..
$9.00 / 2019
$9.50+ / 2020
And that's only a $.50 increase per year, which as all you math-conversant fellow members understand is a decreasing rate of increase.
My Prius is my insurance policy for the shortterm.
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I think your numbers are optimistic.
One of the biggest news stories of the past one hundred years occurred last Monday (1-14-08). King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced to the world (and to President Bush) that the kingdom was going to "allow" the price of oil to be determined "by the market".
This was after the President had asked him to increase Saudi production in order to force prices down a bit. The implications of this are HUGE and yet the whole story seems to have simply sailed over everyone's heads.
The last time I can recall that the Saudi royal family failed to help the West out after a direct appeal from the President of the United States was in 1974 when King Faisel got angry with us for our support of the Israelis after the 1973 Arab/Israeli War.
I don't believe that King Abdullah turned down President Bush's request because he is unwilling to help. I think he turned down the President's request because he is UNABLE to help. In other words, Saudi oil production has officially peaked as of January 14, 2008.
They are no longer the world's swing producer. They are at capacity.
This also explains why after President Bush's return to the States his very first initiative was to engineer a $800 per taxpayer rebate. And the Democrats can't seem to jump on the bandwagon fast enough. I smell panic in the air.