Oil Prices

What does the FOAK think about long term prospects for cheap oil. This
article worried me a bit:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/416F7BA6-90FC-48E6-8F4C-CA30FDD6EB39.htm

 

Maybe you're right but won't that happen anyway when the oil runs out?

 

In

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/416F7BA6-90FC-48E6-8F4C-CA30FDD6EB39.htm

I think our government should be piling resources into finding alternatives,
rather than using that budget to ensure our hold on what is ultimately a
terminally depleting resource.

 

but how many million barrels of rapeseed oil can be produced a day?

 

I think so, yes. Forgetting for the moment the conspiracy-type
theories that guvmints wouldn't let it be done, the problem is not a
technical one, but one of cost. It's quite easy to synthesise oil, but
it tends to be much more expensive than the stuff that's pumped out of
the earth and any advances in chemistry or manufacturing would not
happen 'suddenly'.

So in effect, when the decreasing cost of producing artificial
substitutes starts to meet the increasing price of the real thing,
governments and industry will gradually start moving in that
direction. Oil stocks would start to drop, except that it'll be the
oil companies producing the new stuff as well - after all, who else
has got the manufactoring capabailty and know-how, so although there
would be winners and losers I think overall it would balance out.

 

If we're not all dead then one day an alternative energy source will be
revealed and the history books will no doubt document the machiavellian
shenanigans of the oil barons and governents. There will still be problems
with energy sources but they will be fixable within an hour usually by
re-routing the secondary bypass relays through to the dilithium crystals.
Flux capacitors will figure heabily as well.

 

You meen like Rapeseed oil?

shhhh, you aint seen me right.

 

Andrewr At Work says...

IIRC most of the oil pumped from the ground goes to the plastics and
chemical industries rather than making fuel. Interestingly most of the
research into alternative energy sources seems to be done by the oil
companies anyway. So they're probably going to come up trumps what ever
happens.

 

Heabily?

 

Real heabily.

 

If someone magiked a cheap energy source overnight, that could be the
case. However, that's not how tech changes tends to happen. New
technologies tend to start expensive, and get cheaper as they are
refined, and as economies of scale kick in. So, whatever our
replacement source is, it will only start to take over as its
decreasing price meets the rising price of oil (as Ace has said).

 

In

Yebut most of the world's engines rely on oil fractions, so no replacement
is going to be immediate anyway. People don't like change, it would take
decades to convert everyone over to a new energy source, assuming that such
a source was not backwardly compatible.

 

And even if power generation was switched to a cheap effectively unlimited
source then there are still plenty of other uses for oil in manufacturing.
--
Alex

"I laugh in the face of danger"
"Then I hide until it goes away"

www.drzoidberg.co.uk
www.upce.org.uk

 

Andrewr At Work wrote

Yes. And no. As far as the primary energy producers are concerned: the
oil companies and the infrastructure around them would crash and burn
but the suppliers of the new technologies would be richer than bill
Gates.

Swings and roundabouts innit?

Although, I suspect that the end consumers of energy wouldn't give a
toss as what they want is the energy, regardless of it's source. So for
them life would carry on uninfected.

 

There are no long term prospects for cheap oil.

It's a finite resource and simple economics dictates that as something
gets scarcer the price will increase.

 

You've just watched The Saint, haven't you?

 

Will we get holo decks?

 

You're already in one...

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the

And don't forget the water carburettor, the perpetual motion device and
the everlasting battery that those dirty rapacious bastards in the oil
companies have been keeping to themselves all these years.

I know it's true, I read it on the interweb thingy.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, "flash@work"

Good news! Scientists have discovered a cheap and easy replacement for
oil.

Bad News! It's made from camel shit.

Worse news! Look at who's got all the fucking camels...