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Guest Post: Former Shell Oil Chief Predicts $5 Gas by 2012
Submitted by Mac Slavo of SHTFplan.com
Former Shell Oil Chief Predicts $5 Gas by 2012
Though he’s no longer running one of the largest companies in the
world, former President of Shell Oil John Hofmeister warns that the
outlook for gas prices in the coming decade is not looking good:
I’m predicting a worse outcome over the next two years,
which takes us to 2012 with higher gasoline prices, uncertainty as to
the future of hydrocarbons, more regulation on the hydrocarbon industry
based upon who the administration is today…And what I fear the most is that by 2012 prices are so high that we
have a backlash from the electorate and we go into reverse and we go
back to a hydrocarbon only type of a future, maybe with some nuclear,
instead of moving on in the 21st century.…
I’m predicting, based upon the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, up
to a million barrels a day of US production gone because of the politics
of freezing drilling in the Gulf.The headline is the moratorium is lifted, the reality is you can’t
get a permit… I’m expecting no new drilling for two more years at least.…
If we stay on our current course, within a decade, within ten years, we’re into energy shortages in this country big time. Black outs, brown outs, gas lines, rationing - that’s my projection based upon the current inability to make decisions.
…
When the American consumers are short, or when prices are so high - $5 a gallon for gasoline by 2012 - I believe that’s going to happen
- that’s going to set a new tone, it’s going to be panic time on the
part of the politicians, they’re going to suddenly get some kind of a
sense we better do something.
The scary thing is that Mr. Hofmeister is basing his $5 per gallon
gasoline prediction on supply/demand issues, not even taking into
account the unfettered digital creation of dollars by the Federal
Reserve.
If we’ve learned anything in the past few years, it should be that
government is totally incapable of taking the necessary steps to prevent
a problem before it happens. We saw it in the housing crisis in
2007/2008 and we’re seeing it now in the state budget crisis. Meredith
Whitney explained it best in a recent 60 Minutes interview
when she was asked why government wasn’t taking action to mitigate the
state budget crisis, “because they don’t pay attention until they have
to.”
If Mr. Hofmeister is correct about supply tightening over the next
couple of years, we’ll begin to see global oil shortages. This is not
only going to raise the price of gas, but everything else dependent on
oil, which is, well, just about everything else - manufacturing,
transportation, food, you name it.
Watch John Hofmeister discuss oil shortages and the coming energy crisis:
»
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In the movie Who Killed the Electric Car it details that in 2000 the electric car on an overnight charge of 6 hours could drive for 500 miles and had a top speed of 110 mph. Now the leaf and volt go 80 mph topspeed and do not recharge the half of it. I know that the price has come down, but where is the technology gain? Has the car topped its potential?
Sarcasm (Good film)
yeah...saw that flick (how many years ago?) couldn't fuckin' believe it. I mean I kinda knew the bastards would buy up inventions & shelve 'em and all sorts of shit (in a vague way) but that story really brought it home. I was still a touch naive at that time.... full-blown & toasted cynic now
Battery technology is not there yet. When a suitable battery is developed
we'll have electirc cars. All this other shit, volt, leaf, etc. is part of the
development phase.
The technology gain? What about infrastructure requirements of millions of vehicles being charged at night.... where does that fit into the film?
Or power creation via petrol based products at power stations. Just like the FED/Treasury balance sheets, the problem is just being moved around.
Exactly, no one addresses this issue. I talk to people all the time and they try and tell me the electric car is the savior of our environmental problems.
When I ask them where the energy replacement will come from they give me a quizical look, like I grew a second head and often reply, "from the wall plug."
When I try to explain how many BTU's are produced by burning fossil fuels in cars could not be replaced by our current electrical production I usually get, "well, we will make more hydro-electric dams..."
There is, in general, no understanding of energy generation and usage.
Only if based on cheap electricity... get ready to fire up even MORE coal plants (and drive around watching stories of trapped/killed miners on your in-car TV screens). Let's bump up the electrical grid's dependency from 50-some percent to 100 percent! Yeah, giddy-yup, move them coal trains... And, more (eventual taxpayer) money for GM to gamble with!
Motherfucking idiotic.
10/4 on that.
You need to live only in San Francisco. In Minneapolis, the heater will leave frozen in with your foot stuck to the accelerator with half the battery capacity. In Phoenix the batteries will be drained and ineffective when pavement temps reach 150 degrees which they often do.
The Volt is idiotic. The fuel of the future is methane. It can be generated using coal, it can be generated electrically from CO2 and water using nuclear power electricity. Of course you can drill for the stuff too.
$5 fuel should be good for a loss of 4 GDP points. This country is configured to run on cheap, plentiful fuel sources. The vast quantity of cheap energy was one of the structural forces that drew us out of the great depression. We are in no way prepared to ignite the next major leg of growth in this country without lots of new, inexpensive energy sources.
If this fellow is right, it will take us a decade to adjust, and the maximum pain will arrive at the outset. Best to prepare for that possibility -- you wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of that trade.
+1
You guys really believe you can trade the end of civilization as we know it.
The untimely death of between 60% and 90% of the current population,
and the total destruction of anyone without enough imagination and true grit
to be able to survive without any money at all.
farm out. out of state.
You are just as incredible as Bernanke, Dimon, Summers, and the rest ....
Right on. You got junked by fucking dipshits.
Tru dat. The next 20 years are going to suck, big time.
Quick straw poll
Oil is up because of:
1) monetary inflation (decreased value of dollar against a barrel of oil)
2) increased global demand (recovery)
3) peak oil or decreased production due to regulation (decrease in supply)
4) manipulation by TPTB
5) other
6) all the above bitchez!
Is anyone worried about deflation anymore?
http://therookiecynic.wordpress.com/
Even if oil demand is flat, due to the fact that oil production does seem to be falling, the price will increase. Yes inflation is ever present in the FIAT system.
During hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, all items didn't go up in price in unison; all the essentials took off, while luxuries plunged.
And yet those individuals defending CPI claim we're experiencing deflation, despite all our essentials spiking.
Have to recommend that people read When Money Dies. Might make a "killing" in the stock market but when priced in terms of hard money find out that you lose your shirt.
Also shows how the start of a hyper inflation is downright benign and the bulk people don't catch on till the wild and insane later stages.
The first stages of hyperinflation will look very much like economic "growth", only it will be anything but that. More like a cancerous "growth".
The crack up boom will be heralded as an economic turn around. Most people on the ground don't pay enough attention and the media will intentionally deceive. It's important to note that prices to not always rise with the increased money supply, but have a tendency to explode to the upside when the tipping point is overcome.
Agreed. I wish I could get more people to prepare accordingly.
But the Bernank said he could stop inflation in 15 seconds, so why worry?
"When Money Dies" is a good book, but it suggests Germany fixed hyperinflation through the introduction of the Rentenmark + balancing of the budget.
But according to "Tragedy and Hope", they did no such thing. The Dawes plan (dreamt up by JP Morgan) distributed $18.5bn mark to the German economy, of which $10bn were spent to pay off reparations. In fact, from 1924-1930 they were still running huge deficits.
JP Morgan profited significantly from this, though.
http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X
I didn't get that impression. The book points out that the Rentenmark was basically just another fiat currency they put some spin on. A degree of discipline was held on it, but the money supply kept on expanding even after it was introduced. The impression the book gave was faith in the questionable Rentenmark allowed things to cool enough to get foreign capital. The later books points out the continuing massive deficits you mention.
What really seems to be the case in both German post war recoveries was a willingness to work hard for low wages. At least until capital/savings could be built or attracted. If the Marshall Plan alone was enough to rebuild then the UK should have taken off like a rocket post war, but it did not.
Captain Obvious is out in force today, with Shell and Gulf calling for outrageous oil prices, Outrageous unless the American workforce can be fully employed. Roubini saying that real estate is overvalued.
Supply demand for oil has the production platue looking like it could peak at any time. Maybe we already have, who would know?
Oil production peaked in 2005. I can't understand why that isn't
acknowleged. API world production data is available for all to see.
API world production data is available for all to see.
paul simon
...Still a man hears what he wants to hear and "disregards the rest."
Or you might like Upton Sinclair more....
“It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.”Exactly! This alone should drive prices sky high IMO.
Throw in a fat tail event, such as the downing of a tanker or a port explosion in my favorite part of the world and we're talking game over, kids!
I hereby deem this post "full retard".
Please, in the future, stop giving any credence whatsoever to the assholes that are fucking us. The dude's saying this shit as a scare tactic to try and get the offshore permits process greased. There's no way in hell it's going to $5. Supply and demand do matter, that's correct. Assuming demand will support $5 a gallon is hilarious.
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2008/may/global050808.html
The Hofmeister, back in 2008, saying the exact same thing.
Good news: "There's no way in hell it's going to $5." You may be right.
Bad news: You may end up being unemployed, in which case even $2/gallon gas is going to be hard to swallow.
It's about affordability. Been arguing this for years. Unemployment is high and prices are low. Prices to go up with employment (this is going to be harder to pull off, since it does't look like employment is going to go up again). And then there's the hidden trap: reversal of "economies of scale," in which investment costs in the oil industry just can't free up enough money to keep exiting production levels, let alone increased ones, going.
... even $2/gallon gas is going to be hard to swallow.
You shouldn't swallow gas, no matter what the price.
How many foreclosures have their been, in the last two years?
Do you know what many of those geniuses are doing for living space?
Have you seen many tent cities? Do you see people living on grates,
in churches, park benches? Well, where are they?
What do you think SUV's are good for, especially in the cold?
The simple fact is that demand for gasoline is hitting all time highs in this country,
despite or because of all the unemployment ....
You got junked because they don't understand the difference between 'demand' and 'desire'. The former requires an ability to pay, the latter doesn't.
Ummm ... production is about to begin it's permanent decline in 1-2 years, and ever heard of China, India, Southeast Asia, Brazil and all the developing economies that are beginning to consume more like the West?
Let's not forget the genius elites now want to distill our corn supply into ethanol in place of gas. So now corn is $6.25 a bushel on the March contract. So lets see oil back to $150 a barrell and corn going to $7.50. 10% unemployment with rising prices.
You gotta love elites who have never held a real paying job in their life.
Rangle spent $2 million defending his ethics charge? Is he serious? He represented himself! That number has to be sandbaged so he can rake in an unencumbered load in a legal "defense" fund.
This has to be the single greatest scam of the decade !
1-Create and then submit to an ethics charge
2-Claim millions of unaudited expenses in "defense"
3-Start a legal trust to collect from "constituents" to fund the legal "expenses.
Genius. Complete and Fantastic Genius.
For a minute there I couldn't see a connection to this thread, but I guess I'm starting to see it now... another subliminal party jab (can't wait until there's a day when all this petty shit ceases).
No political parties in Venezula. Go there.
Sorry. I don't accept this prediction. I believe the Legend's prediction is more accurate
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3118/2644505909_6d71e9a64f_z.jpg?zz=1
I thought I read somewhere that Bolivia was eliminating much of its subsidy to gas - and like quadrupling prices. I think 2011 will be the year of the global gas and food riots. Thanks to the Bernake.
That was Iran.
Gee, I wonder if this guy has any open positions that cause him to be 'full on retard.'
I will make a bet right here and now: If gas is more than $4.00 in 2012 (and I think it will be far less), let alone $5.00 per gallon, I will fill up Mr. Hoffmeister's tank on my tab, and wash his windows on his vehicle, too.
If he's wrong, what is he prepared to do for me?
You can do all the QE, TARP, TALF, wealth transfers and other high crimes to the American People, but do not...I repeat, do not, ever, mess with Football, Dancing with the Stars, Hot Pockets, XBox 360 or gasoline prices in this manner: It could cause a true revolution, with live ammunition and such.
Even those in Idiocracy with IQs of 80 will learn how to pronounce Bernanke's name, associated the bearded clam with high gas prices, and The Bernank will have to travel with security rivaling the POTUS.
Not to mention, the Congress will be on fire, the President's approval rating wil be 7%, and we will work out a deal with OPEC to do whatever it takes (what'dya want, what'dya need?) to 'mitigate' the crisis (and supply will not be an issue - not in 2012, and not in 2020 - in fact, the Saudis and OPEC, contrary to claims to the contrary and green fairy tales, are preparing to sabotage alternative energy as we converse).
Don't get too hung up on the price prediction. Even $4 gas is an economic disaster. We are over 3 right now with high unemployment and weak demand. Will we go to 5, 10? Doesn't matter.
People aren't going to storm the Bastille anyway; they didn't when gas went over 4 last time. They will just go on blogs and complain.
The only storming we do is Walmart. Michelle Antoinette and Barry XVI can rest easy.
I pay $3.49 per gallon right now, South Florida. Doesn't seem too hard to imagine another $.50 a year from now. To me, too many forces are at play here to ever imagine it getting cheaper.
does the POTUS even need security anymore/? even hillbillies know he's a stooge puppet
You ignore the power of the blame game. Get the MSM to tell the masses that its "Arabs", "Rag Heads" Terrorists" or what have you to deflect the blow. "Gas is going up because of them dirty Arabs hate our freedom! TV tells me that if I stop eating McDonalds and mud boggin in my truck then the terrorists win!"
Never underestimate the manipulative power of the oligarchy or the unbridled stupidity of the masses. And what revolt do you think it would cause? You mean the kind where idiots loot and burn down their own neighborhoods? I kinda have to think the oligarchy would get a kick out of that. After all with expensive gas it's not like the masses could drive to them ;)
Shameful, I like your style. I wish you would lose that avatar though.
well said shameful
Take a look at this ...
http://www.ecofuel.com/ConversionsMakeYear.aspx?make=Chrysler
Those are BI-FUEL cars ... meaning they can run on EITHER gas or CNG. How about that 300c hemi eh?
The extra hardware to do this is not that big a deal. It could easily be offered from the factory at a hefty margin. Those in areas where NG is cheap (e.g. north Texas) could simply go for the extra hardware and charge their cars/trucks at home in the garage.
At current NG prices that is roughly $1.30/gallon (equivalent) at residental prices.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_STX_a.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent
If I am off the mark here, I would be interested in a constructive rebuttal.
Regards,
Cooter
Interesting site. Thanks!
Cooter...I worked in a Phillips 66 station in Shrevesport Louisiana when in HS. All the oil rig worker's pick up trucks, and some autos, were equipped to run on either gas or nat gas. The conversion cost about $150 at that time. This was in the 1959 - 1961 era. What you have 'discovered' has been in use since at least the early 1950's.
In Lima, Peru they changed over a large part of their small car taxi fleets (voluntarily) to Nat Gas starting some 5 years ago.
I follows some of the links just for kicks and, it would figure, no CNG stations within 200 miles (PA, not the desert!) and no conversion kits available for my car. Not like I could afford it, though, if all of those estimates clocking in between $10K-20K to start are anywhere near accurate.
Opening gun for another oil bubble.
Uhhhh scary: 5 dollar/gal for gas in 2012.
How about smaller cars or better electric cars? Public transportation?
Better isolation for homes? Stop eating and loose weight?
This is only one problem with a million solutions.
Hey, Eating is one of the very last things that give me pleasure in my life anymore. I need my 3 course meals.
I hope you meant better insulation. Of course there's a limit to how well you can insulate a building. Hey, genius, how do people living outside of a city take advantage of public transit (mobile bathrooms) that doesn't exist? What does eating have to do with fuel prices unless you're retarded and think buring corn for fuel is especially bright? Where does the electricity for the electric car, crappy or imaginary (your better, my useable, model), come from?
Reminds me of Goldman's call of $250/barrel when oil was at $140. Always happens - once something starts up all the crazy predictions start to roll in...again.
Yeah, if I didn't know it was impossible, I would suspect someone was trying to manipulate the price of oil for their own profit. (Sarkylert)
Kinda like SPX 1650 Huh? Depends on which god you worship don't it?
Harry, your aunt (Robo's mom) is looking for you........
Exactly, and T Boone Pickens was there too calling for $200 oil right at the top in '08. Somehow I doubt either he or Goldman lost any money on those calls.
A little off topic but does anyone know where to get the breakdowns on the Greek and Irish sovereign debts?
Total Debt.
Breakdowns of what they owed to whom and the proportion of the total.
Thanks
if we fall off the plateau like Cantarell or Prudhoe did, it's going to go a lot higher than $5.
People talking about NG or Thorium...think about how we spent the last 15 years. In a HOUSING bubble, building intentional suburban sprawl, wasting our money on granite countertops.
It's going to turn out that Jimmy Crater was right and nobody could think far enough into the 20 or 30 year lead time we'd need for a switchover. The Japs got the message in the 70s and today consume the same amount of oil as then. Oh, and they get FOUR TIMES as much GDP/BTU as we do. (6-8x that of China)
Japan is a geographically small country in demographic collapse. I agree with your other statement.
Well said
The Saudis haven't (yet, and to our knowledge) rolled out large-scale tertiary extraction methods, which was the cause of the collapse of Cantarell.
But yeah, otherwise I agree with what you say.
Strictly speaking N2 injection is still considered secondary recovery.... Cantarell collapsed because it was basically pumped dry (yes, I know about recovery and OOIP....), they were only able to keep up production with the N2, then they hit the wall. The wall that every oil field has hit or will hit.
They accelerate the production profile, causing a quicker falloff. I obviously didn't mean it would somehow alter the OOIP.
Secondary or tertiary recovery methods are not the cause of declining
production. They are the result of it.
maybe not to our knowledge, but there was some info in Twilight that documented employment of tertiary extraction measures at Ghawar.
The extraction measures didn't cause Cantarell's collapse; what caused it was that when the oil basically ran out, it ran the hell out right away.
More aggressive technology allows the extraction of oil at higher rates, meaning the things really run dry faster and more abruptly. Think about sucking fluid out of a sponge or bucket. The better you get at it, the higher your flow but the quicker and more suddenly flow takes a dirtnap.
At any rate, I do not recall mentioning any Saudi fields in my post. If you look at deepwater fields, which represent the bulk of production growth lately, you'll see much quicker average time-to-peak, and steeper decline-after-peak than conventional fields. This, plus the employment of secondary extraction measures at the outset (since the 70s), may make the downside of the peak curve steeper than forecast, which is like a really bad fucking situation
Bravo! Bravo, 777! People do not like to hear the truth. They will be behind the curve and pay more than dollars.
"...think about how we spent the last 15 years. "
Ya and 2-3 years of that was back when the public(thanks MSM) were enthralled with someone getting a BJ while on the job.
At the same time the Public was getting reamed in the rear without lub....
We will deserve what we get I fear.
Peak Oil folks.
If you think $5 is bad, what till 2012+ when we start slideing down a 4% decline in Export Quanity slope...
Blah, blah, blah.
I hear the same shit every time oil spikes, and always due to geopolitical strife and/or rampant manipulation of commod markets.
We're so full of oil just in the U.S., the largest terminal in Cushing, Oklahoma is full, as in - they can't store any more oil.
The earth is full of glorious oil, and new methods of location and extraction, on more and more efficient bases, are constantly being developed and refined.
But the Peak Oil Church is like the Flat Earth Society, complete with heads buried in tar sands.
Watch what happens when alternate energy actually does threaten oil as the best 'bang for the buck' source: OPEC will turn on the spicket, and bury the new threat under a gusher of oil. It will be $10 a barrel, if that's where OPEC needs to be, just like in 1990.
Let me guess, Your majors weren't Geology or physic right? MBA?
How up close and personal are you with the 1st three laws of thermodynamics?
Police in my normally safe suburban area tell me that the MSM is not reporting significant increases in robberies; if gas even makes it to $4, I better buy more ammo.
Burglaries are up even more
...and a locking gas cap...one of those cheapos made in...China. lol
Last time we saw $4.00+ per gallon was summer of 2008. No problem, people adjusted, economy was utterly unaffected and shrugged it off on the way to new highs. All the way until September 2008.
Yeah, $4/gallon is nothing when your rent is covered (defaulted on mortgage and sitting in the house that the bank won't recognize as a loss).
Sorry, but most can gut it out for a short while. Our existing massive paradigm was built on and created to operate on sub $30/bbl oil. There's been a lot of squeezing going on, which will not hold up. Pop!
Whoever junked me- Wanger for example - can go fuck themselves.
market manipulators will make sure it happens, its what the saudi's want and since demand has been hit, to keep the profits flowing, the manipulation must accelerate.
I think it will get worse and stay worse. Any economic or political upheavals will create fear of disruptions of oil.
That sound you hear is the systematic annihilation of prudent savers, risk averse, and boomer-offspring in general as they are forced by their central bank to reward failure and bailout the fuck-ups on fraud street, and cronyism in goverment.
Brace for impact.
My frame off restoration 72 Chevy pick up with 454, 400 turbo tranny with 3500 rpm stall and 411 posi rear will still be taken out on nice days for a spin...even if gas is ten bucks a gallon.
If you bought gold when you should have you have nothing to worry about.
If you are into paper investments...well, good luck.
And, Happy New Year to all!
Cool. I have an '85 El Camino SS with more or less the same set up.
And I will drive it as long as I can get fuel. My gold was bought
under $400 and silver under $10. A Happy New Year to you as well!
Fuck Hofmeister and his ilk!
try Peyton Energy Trust PEY-UN.TO Up over 40% this year, with a nice kicker on the exchange rate.
and still the Chevy Bolt is a POS
why the f*** is oil so cheap in US?
Oil is the same price everywhere. It is bid for on the COMEX.
Gasoline is cheaper because our gov't. hasn't put a 100% tax on it. Yet...
Time to build nukes...lots of them....create jobs here at home and stop shipping $$$$ to the terrorists....if the French can manage to get 80% of their electricity from nukes I would hope we could too!
Time to get serious about converting our autos to CNG....such a simple solution....only the oil lobby stands in the way...and that appears to be enough.
Sadly not going to happen. We have lost the expertise by and large to build the plants, so would have to contract out to foreigners, IE the French or Koreans come to mind. Also not a snowballs chance in hell of getting through the permitting system until there is a crushing need and then it will be to late. It's not like you just toss a nuke plant up overnight.
Might see more nat gas vehicles, but only post collapse much like Argentina.
Can't we get some of those brainy North Koreans to come over here and build us some spiffy new nuclear reactors, like the very modern one they just had Richardson tour?
Our national energy policy is quite an embarrassment.
But an online book editor just won over 200 grand on Jeopardy. Dude said he has over 3500 books in his home and probably 0 are physics related.
What national energy policy?
at least that's consistent with all our other policies
Actually, a lot of the Asian nukes are being project managed by American and Canadian (and European) companies, and a large contingent of nuclear workers still exist in the US, now they mainly do rebuilds and outages. It would not be much of a problem to design and build a new nuke in the US....the problem - as you mentioned - is permitting, and lawsuits. The last nuke build I worked on, Comanche Peak in Texas, took forever...from inception to start-up, there were people who entered the work force and then retired on that project.
An Environmentalist is someone that already has their cabin in the woods -- let'em freeze in the dark!
That is what will happen when I chainsaw their cabin to feed my own roasting fireplace.
And why pray tell would the oil lobby stand in the way of CNG since
they are also producers of natural gas? Get real.
A couple of stations around me (Chicago) are selling regular unleaded for $3.64. If oil stays around $90 for the next 4 months and the summer blend kicks in not to mention the start of the summer driving season gas will be over $4 by then. If oil keep on going up and passes 100 then I predict a price of $4.25+. Now add to this our politicians are talking about raising the gasoline tax and maybe the sales tax so that elusive $5 might be here sooner than we think.
well the economy breaks again (a-la 2008) if gas goes to those sort of numbers...which will send oil back to 40 bucks eventually. Western economies (and hence the world economy) cannot withstand the oil price up here for much longer
In the U.S., at least, the biggest cure for high prices is high prices.
I find truly eery omens and ghosts ala 2007 all around.
yep, agree
What in the FUCK is wrong with you people?
Read the article. Not the headline. The article.
The former CEO of RDS is saying there will be global spot oil shortages.
I have news for you morons. If there is a shortage of oil in France, people are not going to eat. Trucks won't deliver food to shelves. Ships won't bring oranges from Brazil or Spain. In the US, there will be no winter fruit from Guatemala. France will call for help and guess what, if France doesn't have oil to ship food, neither will the UN.
How long do you think it takes for a country without food, looking next door at a country that DOES have food, to go take it?
.40 ranger talon ammo + silver + water filtration = safe.
7.62 + fire - all of that = dead
I hope you can reload really fast when the Starving Hordes decend upon your apparently lone-guarded compound.
How long do you think it takes for a country without food, looking next door at a country that DOES have food, to go take it?
Um, How are they gonna get here to take our food without oil? Walk?
Have you noticed, just casually, looking even obliquely at a map, that France is not next door to the US?
If the French citizenry are starving and Italy is not, do you envision them sitting at home shrugging at their bad luck as they die?
I never mentioned the US. How do you know where I am right now?
So there is no oil for food trucks, but the weak and starving French are gonna do what? Walk to Italy and drop thier rifles there, then run home?
They'll invent the 1hp, uh, horse.
On second thought, they will probably just stay home and eat the horse.
lol.
France? George Patton - "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me."
Listen up BOY,,,, what the CEO of RDS says don't mean shit. Smarten up and quit being a "tool". Look at the world crude production numbers, broken down by regions, look at the expected new reserves being developed, LOOK AT THE "best case" PRODUCTION RATES OF THE NEW RESERVES!!!!!!
Global oil shortages are not here yet, to many variables to predict with any certainty what the landing will be like, best case, it's going to be a bumpy ride down...
BTW, the "shill from shell" said that the loss of production from the gulf would mean many millions of barrels of oil per day, to date the production has not exceeded 500,000 barrels/day. The reserves from deep water have not produced what the oil companies stated they would and have been "disappointments"..... (and I would say not nearly as profitable as anticipated due to extra production costs overruns).
Coming soon: "gas stamps" for the poor, in the form of government-paid fuel debit cards, of course. Ben will print the money, banks will make nice fees, politicians will buy votes. Think I'm wrong? You'll see.
We just spent $1600 buying new bikes for the family members needing them. We do that about every 4 years or so because we put so many miles on them, or they wind up stolen.
No "poverty stamps" for that kind of thing, is there? Not that we would quality, but there aren't any and never will be.
The deck is stacked against ever getting free of the machine. Even the poor have to stay on the machine, unless they manage to steal one of my bikes (again). I am daily less confident than the day before that we'll ever turn this ship around before we simply wreck it and sink with massive losses.
Chevy Volt song and dance. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvwTMZNWGuk
Reminds me immediately of those creepy, soul-wrenching commercials they ran for the EV1. Do you think those chicks would be invited to dance for a new roll-out of a 600hp Camaro? Of course not.
The Volt will be on the roads exactly 6 months with waiting lists still at dealers when the "disappointing reception" donkey is suddenly trotted out, and 12 months after that the Volt will be a collectors' item.
We've been here before. Sucks to be optimistic. You alt-vehicle fanboys got my sympathies, you really do.
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We are NOW in a Houseless, Jobless RECOVERY according to the CROOKS on WALL STREET!! It’s such a FRIGGIN TERRIFIC RECOVERY watch the YouTube video “Jobless..Houseless..Recovery. Let’s Celebrate!” at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNY96ovxy2o).
Anonymous-
This guy? is kinda! like a love child from Peter Schiff & Max Keiser!
Anybody who thinks Hofmeister isn't still a shill for Shell needs to have their head examined. He's probably a paid lobbyist now.
So what does all this hand-waving mean? It means Big Oil can see the end of their own road and wants to recruit the American People early and often to get behind their own efforts at self preservation. And what might those efforts include? They aren't saying, are they. They're just saying it's going to get ugly so you better get ready to make a sacrifice, America.
They will pump every last barrel of oil from every remaining reservoir of the stuff until the last is in hand, and then they'll roll up the playing field and go find another resource to exploit. Like maybe -- us. Id say they've already started.
Yeah get ready to sacrifice. Bitchez.
In order to get a job you need a medical.
During the medical, you are junked with nanoparticles. 1 out of 10 gets induced parkinsons, alzheimers. The nanoparticle gang kick the bucket due to cancer at about 45ish. The neuros get placed into the mental institutions for big pharma drug research.
The funny thing is this nightmare scenario doesn't cut it. Frankly, I think there is going to be a swap at the slaughterhouse. We're going into the slaughterhouse instead of the animals and the elite are going to feed us to the animals to restore their populations.
HO HO HO.....wonderfully hilarious!
Does this mean Amazon.com will shut down?
Not until we run out of enough diesel to run the UPS trux.
Or when the Gov starts applying sales tax to their transactions.
I thought the most telling point in the interview is when MW said; "because they don’t pay attention until they have to".
What was interesting is that elaboration was not requested. I thought that was very strange. Especially, when he was asking about the possibilities to find a solution, or be proactive and not reactive.
So the path is one of inaction until crisis. But, at what level of crisis threshold, and who would actually provide the plan (strategy) to address the crisis? Treasury? FED? Who? and if presented with crisis, is it not too late to control events?
So in this respect, I would relabel MW remarks and say this is a warning. We must be proactive and put in place strategies before the politically uncontrolled happens. Because at the first warning signs, it would be better to be on the outside looking in.
Perhaps it is better said that we are no longer investing, we are hedging against crisis. This is our political legacy.
Mark Beck
I say $10 by 2012
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/28/white-house-plans-push-global...
Wait till Ben's printing press goes full throttle next year, then we will surely see gas at $10 by 2012. Maybe ZH should start a poll on key consumer price expectations in 12 months, and get other websites get their readers to join in the poll. Then we see true inflation expectations, rather than rely on some academic figures which the Fed uses to con the markets.
Yeah, it's almost like there should be some market where people could bet their money on what they believe will be the future prices of commodities such as gasoline, and that would tell us something about expectations. That would be cool.
Who fucking cares. If the energy/transportation problem was solvable the aliens would be here, instead of being long dead. Looking outward died with the Apollo program, only looking inside of life matters now. There is a reserve currency lurking somewhere there just like mastering splitting the atom did it in 1945. Oil as a paradigm for expansion is a failure because there is nowhere to go.
The price of gasoline is not going to $5/gallon. We've already seen this movie. The last time gasoline hit $4/gallon, the economy had a heart attack. SUVs disappeared and got replaced by Priuses. Some Americans do not have the money to pay $5/gallon. Those that do will buy more efficient vehicles. This isn't the 1970's. We've seen that movie, too.
I agree- $5.00 / gal is not going to work in America anytime soon.
"Some Americans do not have the money to pay $5/gallon.
Those that do will buy more efficient vehicles...."
Those who Don't .... What?
They will cut back on their driving. Way too many unnecessary trips in the car. Plenty of room for conservation. Once the consumer shuts off the gasoline spigot, the price will tumble.
Plenty of room for permanent changes in gasoline consumption.
PEAK OIL - People
diesel and petrol prices in the UK are much higher than when oil was at $145. GBUPUSD explains some but not all of it. it's getting to the stage where people are grumbling...when the food inflation hits next year, i suspect we'll see more of that.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44681000/gif/_44681621_petrol_pric...
Geography lessons indeed. Canada has both oil sands and temperate rainforests... However, these two things are in very different areas of the country.
Hofmeister has always had an axe to grind. Don't buy this prediction. Short oil if it hits $100/bbl. It's goign to go down along with everything else in 2011 Q1.
There is a lot of merit in the concept of price destroys economy, poor economy destroys demand (and consumption), price falls, until demand tries to rise again and oil chokes it off. A relentless sawtooth downward for GDP and upward for oil is a very credible scenario, with teeth of about 6 months duration which shorten each iteration .
This is exactly how I see it playing out. We can argue about the pitch of the teeth, but it is basically buy and hold for oil with some trades around the margins.
Peak Oil & Global Warming go together like peanut butter & jelly.
Two whacko themes, driven by eco-terrorists or economic extortionists, to either do that 'ends justifies the means' thing that will 'better' the environment, or to extract as much scratch from the masses as possible (or both).
These enviro/eco-terrorists and financial terrorists have finally found a common cause and a silly, even shockingly ridiculous 'event' to rally around (memo to Al Gore - one large volcanic eruption puts out about 100,000,000 cars' worth of carbon emissions over their useful life, fucker, but you already knew that. Hey look! Boone Pickens wants billions in subsidies to build windmills, because he cares about the environment so much, everyone!).
Underneath AND above the earth's crust is all the oil man will need for hundreds - even thousands of years. Technology evolves in such a way to allow us to more ably and efficiently locate, extract and refine it (refine it even from sources not now imaginable).
If you really believe that, I have Unicorn that shits Rainbow Skittles for sale. Cheap...
I'd have to see it, but if I do see it, and it does what you says it does, I will make a healthy offer for it.
While we may disagree, I am sure sensible people would never ignore facts for the sake of pride in their present or existing opinions, and would be amenable to revising their views. On that note:
Debunking the Myth of Peak Oil - Why the Age of Cheap Oil is Far From Over (Part 1)Excerpt: Over the past 33 years mankind has consumed more than three times the world’s known oil reserves in 1976 – and today proven oil reserves are nearly double what they were before we started. The story with natural gas is even better – here and around the world enormous amounts of natural gas have been found. More will be found. But if you had asked in 1976 what the supply of oil would be like given the demand of 2010, you would have come up with the “Peak Oil” theory then, and we would have supposedly run out of oil decades ago; an ongoing impending crisis.
The New Pessimism about Petroleum Resources: Debunking the 'Hubbert Model' (and Hubbert modelers).
Closed Coffin: Ending the Debate on "The End of Cheap Oil."
These articles you cited are laughable junk.
Please, just STFU before you embarrass yourself any further. I mean this in all seriousness.