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Jim Rogers: "Saudi Arabia Is Lying About Being Able To Increase Its Oil Production"
Jim Rogers joins Zero Hedge in being highly skeptical about just how credible Saudi's call for a 1MM + boost in its oil supply is: "Saudi Arabia has been lying about the reserves for decades. Saudi Arabia the last two times said they are going to increase production and they couldn't increase production. Don't fall for that. The reason oil is going up is the world is running out of known reserves of oil." Of course, then there is the question of does one trust the Quantum fund creator who retired at 37, or does one go with the sellside lemming brigade of monkeys with typewriters who will groupthink anything and everything to death, just to get paid another completely unwarranted bonus. As to those who are concerned that the commodity "bubble" is about to pop, Rogers says: "It's still years away." And some reinforcement for the gold and silver bulls: "Gold will certainly go over $2,000 by the end of the decade, and silver will pass $50." And as a hedge to his great commodity bull market call, Rogers continues to be short Nasdaq stocks. His thesis: "If the economy gets better I am going to make money in commodities, if it doesn't get better, I am going to make money in commodities cause they are going to print huge amounts of money." Call it the adjusted Tepper call. Rogers is also holding a contrarian all on the dollar: "I own some dollars now because there was a huge drop in the dollar. I do sometimes like to buy things when they collapse, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I lose money." We assume this is merely a short-term revulsion trade as all the near-record USD shorts get flushed out as we highlighted in the latest Committment of Traders update.
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Jim Rogers to Saudi Arabia. "Liar liar, pants on fire."
But really Jim, since everyone else is lying through their teeth, why pick on the newly returned King Abdullah. Sheesh, give the poor guy time to service his wives before you take him down a few pegs.
since everyone else is lying through their teeth
yeah, but the truth is forcing its way out. they can't stop it.
on his live interview on the view today, alex jones hijacks the last two minutes, while whoopi and barbara try to shut him down.
we've got the banks bankrupting the the u.s.
charlie sheen didn't steal $23.7 trillion, like the federal reserve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVqC-ncLDk8
Marc talks mostly energy today.
Marc Faber on CNBC 02/28/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL6pXqeyLWM
Peter Schiff talks Fed + Inflation - CNBC 02/28/11
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1822989050&play=1
Louis C.K. to Donald Rumsfeld: Are you and Cheney lizards? Hilarious starting at about 2:30 mark.
Michael will finally get an answer.
Michael Landon was a friend of mine and you're not.
Take your ass back to the prairie.
Jim Rogers on CNBC 02/27/11 (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY3QuT5xWpc
Jim Rogers on CNBC 02/27/11 (Part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNcRpYpp81U
Love me some Louis CK - maybe he can be our genreation's George Carlin. Eat a bag of dicks Bernake!
Careful. I used that bag o' dicks line and was junked to shit by the easily offended. You see, the PC crowd has a hard time with shit like context and origin.
The simple fact that you would even watch Louis CK after he used a line like that..... Homophobe.
Don't you have a gay field hand needs whipping?
Why does it not surprise me that CK would talk about lizards. Just like the Roots talking about the all seeing eye. Just like Mos Def talking about central banks and the CIA.
Removed?
yes, i saw that & sent a video clip of ALEX saying the words "TSA with their hands down your pants" & " We're becoming a police state", & " George Bush kills a million Iraqi's" . ...... sent it to all my skeptical friends & family . Oh, & how about the statement on NATIONAL T.V. in front of 30,000,000 viewers : "The FEDERAL RESERVE steals $23trillion " ! ALEX steamrolled over BARBARA WALTERS !
All those women don't have a fucking clue about what Jones is talking about. They were completely unprepared to discuss anything of substance because they don't know anything. He will never be asked back on that show, you can bet on that.
why was he on THEIR show?
Good question.
Who watches the view?????
the 3 stooges: bay o pigs, col coop, tlooser and u.
right. but it is besides the point.
why did the VIEW invite the opinion of Info Warrior Alex Jones?
hmmm... and why did Alex Jones accept?
it's not info wars. it's propaganda wars. in a war, the truth is the first casualty.
Whoever booked Alex Jones in order to get the Charlie Sheen flap was played like a fiddle. I love Alex, but they should have known that giving him a seat to the "big chair" on a daytime show with 30 million viewers helped him more so than it hurt him. And thinking that Barbara Walters and the others would be able to control him where dead wrong.
well, i'm a woman & I KNOW. i'm finally getting through to my son (cause i put some silver in his hand) & my daughter & even my sister is coming around. i told her that the first thing she had to do was to accept that what i was telling her was fact. if you accept certain things as being FACT, then, start to expand your knowlege through your own internet research.
Well, now why don't you listen to this about Alex Jones "facts": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsXVO1pBi7U
Thanks for the video. Jones is an Israel-first rat like the traitors in our government.
Here is some great Alex Jones FACTS from new years 2000, "The RUSSIANS ARE LAUNCHING NUKES!!" Alex puts out allot of truth, but he's an ego maniacal fear monger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WkGyAqVmCk
Breaking news: "allot" means to apportion or divide by shares.
I think you meant "a lot".
good call. My apologies :)
lynny
Just keep giving them articles. At some point (as happened to me), they start saying... "Hey that stuff you were saying ,,, I just read in the paper today.... Everything you said I see in the news 6 weeks later...."
The Saudis learned to lie from the best, Obama.
Obama hadn't been born when the Saudis were already well into the lie.
on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 15:43
#1004815
Jim Rogers to Saudi Arabia. "Liar liar, pants on fire."
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
Excellent post on peak (cheap) oil - Thanks!
Jim Rogers has picked some good winners in the past and I'd follow him anywhere. No BS, goes by the (easy to read) numbers, and plain logic. The only fly in the ointment to ANY perfectly thought out plan is GOVT INTERVENTION, which has screwed up most of the markets everywhere. I'd like to hear JR comment on this and how to hedge against govt intervention.
And Matt Simmons (lest we forget) was saying this quite a while ago:
http://www.iags.org/n0331043.htm
Ark, thanks for bringing Simmon's back to the table, bless him. Everyone was going ape then about how he was over the top and under the bottom (of the GOM). And while the whole GOM story has been dying on the vine (talk about brilliant perception management by Govt/BP), the real story, as it continues to filter out, is worse by the day.
The New Madrid Fault line is the target. Balkanization, it's what's for dessert.
Oil is the lever in this oil driven world. And they have it in their hands, firmly. And since we are like junkies now, cutting it off is the ultimate lever on people.
Looks like they are getting ready to use that lever for realz.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/wisdom-for-warriors-7/
Jim Rogers traveled around the world...twice. And not as a vacation...he was just a common guy. I did this after high school and my perceptions of the world were forever changed.....and I realized how far off many peoples perceptions of what they haven't seen are. Jim Rogers says what he thinks and believes. He is modest. Because he has seen with his eyes what we all haven't I trust his judgement more than my own on these topics. His words actually carry weight in a world of talking heads and bull shit.
That may be, but he's ridiculously conservative for someone with such wisdom. Gold over $2000 by the end of the decade? Silver over $50? These are hardly epiphanies... understatements of a lifetime. Inflation alone will push them much higher. No doubt he knows this, why isn't he saying it?
He isn't saying it precisely because his words carry weight. Unfortunately, on this most sensitive of subjects he isn't willing to expose his fellow billionaires.
Yeah, $2,000 by the end of the decade? Puh-leeze
Along these same lines.... Tyler Durden used to tell us the Chinese were selling Treasurys; now he says they were the ones behind the English accumulators.... and that he knew it all along.
WTF
Tyler was at least suspicious all along. I remember reading articles where he postulated that someone else (the chinese perhaps) was buying treasuries through London.
I'll vouch for that as well.
Rodgers knows the score - why isn't he giving a more realistic view of gold and silver prices?
Pretty simple - credibility. When you make calls that are absolute certainty, and then they come true within a short time frame - people put a lot more weight on that then calling high side estimates that might take years to play out.
He knows those thresh holds will be broken within less than 2 yrs, possibily within 1 yr, or even 3-6 months.
When you say it - and it happens soon, then people will listen closely to the next prediction and start having some clue you are not guessing.
People have short memories.
Gold $2000/oz. by the end of the decade means a four percent annual return, cumulative. Hell, even inflation exceeds that. Sure, Jim Rogers has past merits, but he sounds like a stockbroker.
For a guy who made his money being a contrarian he sure is a member of the herd these days.
Coulda told ya...bitchez
Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of math would know that eventually the "neshek" (ie usury) would begin to smart one day. It really was the ultimate "sell in May & go away" strategy writ large over generations. Once the debt-as-money scheme was firmly established amongst the global economy, it was all over except for the crying.
Funny how humanity had to literally plow through every known natual resource, and increase world population by some incredible multiple, just to keep Shylock at bay. And here comes the bill due anyway, just when the poor mice running the wheel are all tapped out. LOL
At a certain level, one should step back and survey the situation with sufficient aplomb to exclaim "well played sir"!
About the only remaining question is whether or not they will want to retain an army of serfs as a substitute for stored energy, or get rid of the whole lot of us in an effort to preserve what remaining stores are for themselves.
You mean like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17218700@N00/514277483
Was thinking more like several hundred million Chinese riding bikes to charge up flywheels.
Let's get physical...physical...
Great post as always k9
Some people don't understand geometric progressions. Like the rule of 72(+/-)
Wages go up Linear
Interest goes up geometric.
Period.
My bet is they can't keep it together to serfville.
Now, Gene Specific Bioweapons.... Now that could do the trick.....
and make of a world of drunk, foxy, sluts
"One need not necessarily scrape bottom, as it were, in order to view his society subjectively. Rather than moving vertically downward, one might rather move horizontally outward where a modicum of creature comforts are not necessarily precluded. And I was there, on the very rim of our age...." from the Journal of a Working Boy
As per usual, K9, your perception and comments are spot on.
but but Gull Island, Lindsey Williams said...
The entire oil industry is a sham. No doubt about it. Artificial scarcity. Rogers is pimping for the Man. Williams’ Oil Non Crisis is likely accurate. Ken Fromm former C.O.O. of ARCO supplied the technical data and helped Williams write it. But hey, people love being swindled.
"Geologist Peter Barker didn’t sit in on senior oil company executive board meetings, but he did sit the Gull Island No. 1 well in 1976 (“sitting a well” is geologist speak for monitoring and interpreting the geologic evidence from a well while the well is being drilled). The objective of the Gull Island drilling was to test a deep structure on the north side of a geologic fault, to the north of the Prudhoe Bay field, Barker told Petroleum News July 7. The drilling proved disappointing, he said.
“There was an (oil and gas) trap there but there wasn’t an economic quantity of oil,” he said."
http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/690171677.shtml
Nice leg work....
From your linked article-
“…allegations of massive oil find off the North Slope on Gull Island. Those allegations range from a business cover-up to a giant federal conspiracy to perpetuate our energy crisis,” These allegations are very likely true. The article also states in part “…“Both the geologic evidence and the small area not yet developed into oil fields around the Gull Island wells preclude the possibility of a giant oil accumulation,” Bird said. But the Gull Island legend seems to persist…” Legend my ass. I read about this years ago. I’d bet good money massive producing wells are already drilled and capped just as has been claimed. This Petroleum News piece is nothing more than disinfo and propaganda. (IMO)
Near total control of energy allow these Globalist criminals to manipulate us. I had a very good friend, a DOE chemist, who was in on development from the start of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. You’d be disgusted as I was if you heard about how that was put together.
During the 1973 ‘Arab Oil Embargo’ and its aftermath the general public could actually see parts of the scam as they played out. [The truth clampdown is much tighter now.] Once the ‘Embargo’ was announced gasoline prices shot up within four days where I was, although the affected supply would not reach the West Coast for six weeks. In the San Francisco area local news reported from the refineries that oil was in short supply but also flew their news helicopters twenty miles outside the S.F. Bay to the Faralon Islands where oil tankers were literally ‘Parked’ sitting low in the water. The news people actually said, “The ships are low in the water because they are full of oil!” It was all a scam by Big Oil. And it still is!
"In the San Francisco area local news reported from the refineries that oil was in short supply but also flew their news helicopters twenty miles outside the S.F. Bay to the Faralon Islands where oil tankers were literally ‘Parked’ sitting low in the water. The news people actually said, “The ships are low in the water because they are full of oil!” It was all a scam by Big Oil. And it still is!"
- hmm, sounds like some sort of an Embargo to me.
Yeah IIRC it was called the 1973 Arab Oil embargo. Only the Arabs were just a front for Big Oil screwing the American people over. Around that same period, friends of the family who were in the candy business (Supplying the bulk candy for Sears, then the largest retailer in the world IIRC) had something interesting to say. They said about six weeks before a massive unexpected increase in the price of sugar they were told to stock up ,which they did… It’s pretty much all rigged that’s what I’m saying
Thanks benb, but you're preaching to the choir here.
The oil embargo of 73 supposedly was a scam according to Another (Thoughts!). He said that with the 71 default fresh in the world's eyes, the banksters figured the world needed a push (pusherman!) in the direction of dollar usage. How? By driving up the one commodity priced in dollars that everybody needed: presto! Arab Oil Embargo psy op!
It's true that the genocidal maniac Rockefeller aka Mr Big Oil pulls the strings (in more ways than many could imagine).
I don't know if this translates into peak oil being fake. I don't think it's brainwashing and manipulating this time but what the hell do I know!
So the whole world has been fooled about U.S. oil reserves for 30+ years? How'd they do that?
No not the whole world. Just those who believe what they're being fed by The Man.They rule through effective total control of the mass media and the puppet Federal Government. The apparatus showers the people with propaganda and lies. Bathes them in it. Keeps them in a state of stupidity from cradle to grave. War is Peace.
right ........ the world is running out of oil ....until we open the GULL ISLAND field ! & then, we can charge $200/barrel for that oil !
There is no 'we' lynnybee. The US is gone... an illusion conroled by our masters. It's just us peasants getting a Golden Shower from David Rockefeller and his pals. I won't stand around like some of his victims with my mouth open saying, "This is good, tastes like champagne."
IMO, wouldn't count on it.
"Gold will certainly go over $2,000 by the end of the decade, and silver will pass $50."
He thinks the dollar will survive the decade?
Jim's in Singapore, IRRC. Must be talking Aussie $.
That's $2,000 in New World Dollars, or $60 Trillion in current USD. He assumes everyone knows that already.
For gold to equal its high in inflation adjusted dollars of today it would need to be $2,200+(ish) and silver would need to be $120+(ish)...
Thusly, buy low sell high... until you see Gold @ $2k or silver near $100... you are safe to buy.. FACT!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a3w9OGzFRe3Y
Quoting JW n FL / GLP ^TrInIty^
For gold to equal its high in inflation adjusted dollars of today it would need to be $2,200+(ish) and silver would need to be $120+(ish)... Thusly, buy low sell high... until you see Gold @ $2k or silver near $100... you are safe to buy.. FACT!
Hop back to the farm, and post this nonsense there. This post is about oil not Bob Chapman drivvel advice on how to buy gold and silver. You may be the guru (and owner) of www.godlikeproductions.com where this sort of comment is considered as financial (along with the guns, ammo and preps.) People here at ZH are a little better informed in the understanding of such matters.
Why would the Saudis lie about that? If you want mo' money for something, you say you got less, not more.
Because we told them to..
Because the Saudi's have always tried to keep the price of oil in the "sweet spot" of maximum profit but below encouraging development of competition. Look at what happened when gas went over $4 a gallon years ago. Ethanol plants started sprouting up like weeds. They were everywhere in less than a year. The oil Majors had to go around and buy them all up and close them down. Cost a lot of dough. Bad business letting the price go too high.
Actually most of them went bankrupt like Verasun
Slight correction. Those that could not be bought were driven into bankruptcy by the drop in oil prices and shenanigans pulled by big oil. It was a managed process, believe me.
I was under the impression the EROEI resulted in miniscule profits for the ethanol refineries.
Because the US had the Saudi Oligarchs by their balls!! They have their personal fortune invested in the US. If the US economy collapse, so do their fortune. No choice but to play along!
@ Max
so you're saying that they're our bitch? i'm not so sure about that.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JIxtZ0JeqqU/TTevci_KLjI/AAAAAAAAA-E/t_KohiXOfN...
I beg to differ Mr. Head.
US Mints ‘Gold Disks’ for Oil Payments to Saudi Arabiahttp://fofoa.blogspot.com/2010/03/us-mints-gold-disks-for-oil-payments-t...
and...
It's the Flow, Stupidhttp://fofoa.blogspot.com/2010/10/its-flow-stupid.html
"The Western governments needed to keep the price of gold down so it could flow where they needed it to flow. The key to free up gold was simple. The Western public will not hold an asset that going nowhere, at least in currency terms. ( if one can only see value in paper currency terms then one cannot see value at all ) The problem for the CBs was that the third world has kept the gold market "bought up" by working thru South Africa! To avoid a spiking oil price the CBs first freed up the publics gold thru the issuance of various types of "paper future gold". As that selling dried up they did the only thing they could, become primary suppliers! And here we are today. In the early 1990s oil went to $30++ for reasons we all know. What isn't known is that it's price didn't drop that much. You see the trading medium changed. Oil went from $30++ to $19 + X amount of gold! Today it costs $19 + XXX amount of gold! "
-ANOTHER
http://www.usagold.com/goldtrail/archives/another1.html
In a missguided effort to make believe that we still got 30 years of oil left and current consumption rate, it's more like 10
But when we wake up and notice we ain't got anything to replace it with well SHTF
i agree with you there, we are at the top of the bell curve now with rate of extraction, and in 30 years we'll be using less than now
Given the global decline rate is about 7%, production will be one half of today's rate in 10 years. Good luck with that.
Now, to be fair, the rate of decline for existing field is 4.5 to 7%. It is a really tough number to measure. There are a few new fields that will come on as well. The best estimate from people whom I trust is a net fall off of about 3% or so a year... Still not good. The killer is ELM... no idea what happens with that or how it plays out.
which existing fields? The more recent the field, and the deeper the water, the sooner to peak and steeper the decline. If it's Cantarell, shit, hail mary for only 7%.
As for XLM, here's how it will play out...oil available for import will vanish. You either take paper for your barrels and face riots or you try to placate the public that will hang you.
How long could ANY sovereign hold out if they are "selling" the oil for our dogshit paper?
yup
Re: XLM, I am pretty aware what the implications and time scales are... I don't know if we are smart enough to not blow up the world along the way...
I don't make many predictions, but Venezuela will be the focal point by mid-2012. The US and China figure out a way to share it, or go to war. Just like Iran.
I've been hearing EXACTLY that same line about the bell curve since the early 70's. Even saw beautiful mathematical proofs that there would be not a single drop of oil to be had by 1980. ALL THE SAME SHIT. Yet here we are today with more oil than ever, still at the top of that bell curve.
You been looking at the wrong bell curve chief. Regardless, "enhanced extraction methods" (ie: high cost energy intensive attempts to boost production) make it less of a bell curve and more like that alpine yodeller game on the Price Is Right. "Yo-de-lay-de-yo-de-lay-de... Oh fuuuuuuck!". Splat.
"at the top of that bell curve" - gee I feel better already
Said that 10yrs ago and will say it 10yrs from now.
It's complicated. OPEC production quotas are partially determined by reserves, so misstating reserves upwards means short-term output increases under contract. Also end user consumption contracts are always predicated on a sense of long term availability. If everyone suddenly understood that the-end-of-oil (for lack of a better term) were 10 years off then nobody would open a contract for delivery that extends past 10 years, and probably not past 2 years. Transportation planning would turn on a dime towards more electrified mass transit and away from accomodation of personal automobiles and trucking (read, road building and maintenance). This would amount to demand destruction apart from pricing and would tend to drive prices down rather than up. SA and OPEC want to sell every last barrel of oil at the highest price into greatest demand, and then abruptly close shop. They don't give a tinker's dam what happens after. They will have already sponged up all the world's wealth via their geological resource, and will then do as they like in a declining situation.
Great insight.
second that
You mean they're acting in their own best interest? Shame on them. I thought they were just dumb ass sand monkeys. At least that's what the average Joe wants to think as he fills up his SUV with his entitlement of sub $3.00 per gallon oil. Well........average price anyway. :>)
That slurping sounds isn't oil coming out of the ground, but rather wealth rotating to the ME.
Yes, but think of SA as the basket with all the eggs. When the bad day goes down, someone is going to be sitting off the coast of SA with 50 warships "helping" the ruling family in exchange for "information" about where those eggs are.
Does GS have a navy? Probably not. Can they rent one for a couple days? Oh I think they probably can. So at the end of the day concentrating wealth just leads to one castle to storm.
Too bad they blew it on hookers and blow. 50 years from now Saudi Arabia will be back to milking camels and pounding sand, baby.
On the long enough timeline...
On the long enough timeline...
and those Dubai sand-thingies off shore...
Because the Saudi's like our warplanes and "influence" on their side. If they admit to having less oil, they lose relevance.
Like they give a fuck what you think.
Opec agreement allows production based on reserves, the more reserves you 'have' the more you can pump and sell. All the Opec countries over stated their reserves so they could sell more in the short term.
The Saudis need tech help from Big Oil. They won't get it if Big Oil thinks there isn't much crude left.
The Saudis need tech help from Big Oil. They won't get it if Big Oil thinks there isn't much crude left.
I'll believe it when I see it. They can talk about this miracle discovery lost production but until it starts flowing, I ain't buying.
Where is a giant BULL SHIT flag when you need it?
I was thinking like this too...but then I read about the huge new off shore field discovered off South America recently. Williams may be full of it on THIS one but don't buy into the "woe is me" crowds BS.
Agghh, he looks like Jimmy Carter mated with Orville Redenbacher.
And Marc Faber has a ponytail.
But still Rogers, Faber, Schiff... they're all the shit.
Real FUCK YOU money amongst them.
Great contribution, LF
Thanks, Bitch. Be sure to tip your waitress.
I am beginning to totally dig the bow tie, though.
When I see it, I know its time to listen.
Tom Keene has one and he's as dumb as they come. It's an affectation with him though.
and has made more money then u ever will
and, on his association with Soros has said: "come on, that was 40 years ago."
- Ned
One thing Saudi is not lying about, they demand higher oil prices when sold in devaluating dollars.
The Saudis just promised their people 36 billion in goodies.
That's the equivalent of 360,000,000 barrels of oil.
Or 1 million per day, every day for a year.
Gosh, I'd love to be a sheik and be able to pay my bills in oil. More bills? Just open up the spiggots and sell more oil. Ah, life is good as a sheik.
What? The oil fields are slowly depleting?????
By the end of the decade? In USD? So he's bear-ish on gold?
He's just being cagey. Remeber all the debate over what year constitutes the end of the century?
Bought the dip.
Thanks Jim... from all who are holding out of the money crude calls...
I've said it here before: In the battle with speculators, SA can threaten to increase production and keep prices low. They don't even have to produce one additional barrel of crude and accomplish 90% of their price control desires.
But that works only for a little while. After a period of speculators testing SA resolve with no clear response, the speculators will make their move. What will be lost is not price controls, but any sense that SA is in control at all.
At that point things will get ugly. The oil play is the play for the next 10 years. All the way to the bottom. The quantity of money to be made here is simply astronomical.
There's also the "pesky problem of the greed thing." So what if SA still has the oil? All that means is "SA has the oil and you don't." The USA is far from lacking in "oil substitutes" needless to say and as any nat gas trader can attest to. Talk about "being carried out on your shields." Still--"we have a technology gap." In short "our entire transportation system runs on the goo." Why the TV media never asks the question "if it's all about choice why don't we choose well?" will be one for the ages. Perhaps they get a rich husband out of the deal? And I'm including "the media guy folks" in that one as well.
There is no substitute for crude oil for the things in which it is heavily used. I've seen all the arguments on the topic, and that's where it stands in my mind. That means that automobiles, trucking, the entire airline industry and most leisure travel are on the chopping block. Right now. There is no technological fix here. The stored energy in oil is what is at stake, not energy in general. There is no other source of portable stored energy on earth to compete with oil for the applications given above. Coal is best at producing electricity (CO2 issues aside) which points to mass transit and centralized planning, which the portability of oil largely eliminated. That period is over. Centralized transportation planning and development is all that remains (again, CO2 issues not even being considered)
Hi Cougar, I agree with everything you said above but you forgot to mention one big one which is food. Food production and delivery in North American is heavily dependent on oil.
Oil is king but natural gas and NGL can be a decent alternative. They will run out aswell but when gasoline becomes 6 dollars a gallon the natural gas angle will all of sudden become mainstream. Natural gas is at an incredibly depressed price level compared to all other commoditys, especially energy.
Powering a combine with natural gas does seem a bit far fetched though.
Already been done:
http://tinyurl.com/5tkq8cg
I worked at a butane/propane distributor back in the early 1980s and we converted everything that could burn gasoline or diesel to LPG. That included all the City buses! They ran just fine and the conversions, done on scale, cost only a few hundred dollars per vehicle.
Coal can be liquefied and become the total basis of the entire chemicals and fuels industry. It has more high value aromatic content than any crude. And direct liquefaction, unlike combustion, doesn't produce CO2. Germany based their entire fuel and chemicals on coal in WWII and South Africa via SASOL does it right now. So with nuclear for electricity and coal for chemicals and fuels (augmented by natural gas) crude isn't necessary.
Hard to quibble with lot of what you wrote, but there is no "oil substitute" in the US. For the record, we have not exceeded the peak in dry gas production from 1970. That may change, but all NG may do for us is smooth the transition to whatever lies ahead.
If you look at the trillions of dollars in phantom housing equity that went kaboom, we could have payed for a whole bunch of goodies, had a crash, and when the smoke cleared there might have been something left of tangible value. Instead we walked down the path of least resistance and took all too many steps closer to a group enabled assisted mutual suicide.
there is an oil substitute--we've had nat gas vehicles in the USA for decades--drove one in "oil rich Alaska" back in the 80's. what we are lacking is of course that most "elusive" of things called "political will." i ask you, then--is the reason the USA which defeated both Germany (with help obviously) and Japan (without any help whatsoever just as obviously) is "capable" of finding a solution--or just "capable of not finding one." Obviously as the former owner of GM (that would be you and me btw) we all know the latter is in fact true.
Natgas doesn't scale for transportation. I know people who drive on fry oil from restaurants, also doesn't scale.
Nobody is arguing if there are other ways to do things. The question is scale. If you cannot get the scale issues resolved then you have not solved the problem.
We are rapidly running out of time to change infrastructure, let alone time to ramp up alternative energy sources, to transit to a different mode of transportation, and all those things that easy oil is facilitating. At least given the information that I have.
I just have to wonder if the elite planners of what is in store for all of us,( they must surely include their offspring in the equasion even if they dont give a flying about us plebes) have alternatives up their sleeve that they will feed into the system as they please to maximise power and profit to themselves.
It is hard for me to believe they would be short sighted enough to just allow us to backslide to amish type lifestyles.( I highly respect amish.)
Of course it could be that they are planning an event that will wipe out 50% or more of us, I suppose that would make a lot of sense. (Mother nature may do that for us anyway.)
Does anybody in Z.H. land have similar suspicions?
The question of ultimate motives is a popular one here. One should take such things with a grain of salt, is the usual recommendation.
Myself, I tend not to give these "smartest guys in the room" much credit for smarts. They are clever, they are sneaky, most importantly they have insider information. But as for smarts, not so much. There is plenty of evidence that they have actually shortened their run, not made it longer, by some of their nonsense. I think that is the essence of all Ponzi operators; faith, more faith, nothing but faith, and then you run away with your hair on fire.
They just want the money. They don't actually care about anything else. Once they have the money they imagine they can turn it around and buy anything that they've actually lost. If things get dicey they can buy an island, populate it with uneducated slaves, and enjoy a Feudal lifestyle until they die and then gift their holdings to their sons.
Seriously. If any of them think past get all the money then that's where they wind up.
The observation that there are not enough isolated islands to sequester all the rich vermin of the world never occurs to them. Nor do they wonder how they'll be fed when the world winds down around them nor who will rescue them when a Cat5 typhoon scrapes them off their 2 meter elevation atoll and deposits them in the Marianas Trench.
Rich, greedy, selfish and stupid. Coming to a 200 acre island near you.
This is one of the more astute comments I've read on Z.
+10000....n
I agree with MC, well Worth the read Cougar.
Masterpiece, Cougar. Bravo!
eddiebe: you ask really good questions. Following are some thoughts (although not very "positive" for some kind of resolution).
Like a 30 year project? Yep, outta' time.
The reason that they are alternative is that, well (I'm going to drop into tech-speak here) they suck. They are neither economical nor are they reliable on the total energy delivery system basis. Otherwise, well, they would have been a firestorm and taken over the world in like 1880.
Elite planners? Ever met anyone who buys all family food from "Zone Manhattan?"
https://www.zonemanhattan.com/
did that answer your question?
Amish style lifestyle? Kinda' good, as are the Amanas and others. Of course, it requires all hands to work their as... ..er.. "fingers to the bone." Like all the time. and the detergent really messes with them fingernails. It is truly unfortunate that in the Amanas, they fatten up my brothers and sisters for the eventual ... I can't go on.
http://amanacolonies.com (really intersting history there in many respects)
and yes, some event that wipes out significant population has been discussed here. Tom Clancy did one of his Jack novels about same (and what a great ending).
Welcome to uncertainty.
- Ned
We can't backslide to Amish type lifestyles. There are too many of us. I believe TPTB are not addressing the energy depletion issue because there is no politically salable solution. Nothing can replace oil over the full spectrum of its uses. Conservation is probably the best option we have right now. But that means economic contraction, big reduction in US consumption and "quality of life", and big unemployment. All of this at a time when we are already broke. Joe Sixpack would never buy it. Hell, half the posters on here don't think there is an energy problem. So we do nothing and wait.
Of course it could be that they are planning an event that will wipe out 50% or more of us
Google the holy grail of answers.
Gene Specific Bioweapons...
Now why was there that push for the Human Genome Project again???
we have city buses that run on natural gas and have for decades. can't scale? you know how many people you can fit on a city bus with "daily ridership"? the word "millions" come to mind. i agree "you can't scale up an interstate highway system"--give the world a break otherwise: we wait for the idea of profit, that's all. "what's in it for me" is all Wall Street has ever asked--and the purpose of government is to stand opposed to this not in league with it. and one need not even be a "critic of greedy" to understand this. needless to say "if anarchy is all you want" then you have "arranged this quite well."
I ride the bus and take the train to work nearly every day. Buses and really good trans-continent rail would save us as a country, but would doom the auto industry and their supporting suppliers and infrastructure and gasoline taxes and registration fees and sales taxes, which all together are maybe 15% of US GDP (just guessing on the figure, feels about right).
Besides, if people don't have a Ford F350 diesel to drive 6 blocks to the TastyFreeze, the terrorists win.
We are in agreement. My point perhaps was only that Business As Usual (tm) is fooking doomed in a post-peak world.
Business as usual doomed? Good, way too many monopolies and barriers to entry for entrepreneurs. Local and regional scale atomized economies will provide much more opportunities for smaller entrepreneurs than the old, old set in stone oligarchic economy we have now.
That is if they dont visit a "mass extinction event" upon us - which I wouldnt put it past them AT ALL.
on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 19:21
#1005470
Besides, if people don't have a Ford F350 diesel to drive 6 blocks to the TastyFreeze, the terrorists win.
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Hay!! Hay!!! Now lil lady... lets settle down now... simmadownnow even.. hitting a little close to home on that one...
http://www.bankspower.com/app/index/3#
and dont forget...
http://www.dieselperformanceproducts.com/
If you dont have a 1,000 plus horse power Power Stroke... you are part of Al Qaeda!!!! and a Nazi!!!! and a fucking Commie Pinko Bastard!!!! only Homo's let friends drive Chevy's!!! (no offense to the gay community meant)
Quoting JW n FL / GLP TrInItY - If you dont have a 1,000 plus horse power Power Stroke... you are part of Al Qaeda!!!! and a Nazi!!!! and a fucking Commie Pinko Bastard!!!! only Homo's let friends drive Chevy's!!! (no offense to the gay community meant)
Nice!
Exactly DV, buses are the way to go. Gasoline prices are only an issue because we have this completley insane idea that we should each drive a two ton piece of plastic, steel and glass that on average costs 2/3 of the average annual income.
Cars are a completely insane, stupid idea. Amazing to see people on Federal support complain that the cost of car ownership is "too high", as if car ownership is rational.
Buses are the way to go. Very little new infrastructure is required -- and the savings are massive.
Whaddaya mean? As I commented above, I worked for a propane/butane distributor for a time. "Scale" was incremental. It was ramped up as needed. Tanks were placed where needed. Scaling is progressive. We serviced the City bus system which had their own tanks, farmers with tanks, homes and businesses. Conversion takes time and with it comes the infrastructure. We had transports made in every imaginable size by an in-State company that specialized in high-pressure tanks and truck conversions. The industry is already there waiting for the signal. Your imagination is laking!
My imagination is probably not the problem, my lack of experience might be tho.
Here's the problem as I see it: Not every place has natural gas nearby, but every place has roads and cars wanting to use them. Just as with petroleum distilates (gasoline and deisel) you have a distribution problem. So maybe we can solve that with a new fleet of transports and pipelines. Lots of work and money, but not intractable. Then there is the sourcing issue. Our entire liquefication infrastructure is serving the niche needs of maybe 1% of the rolling stock. But again, it's just a matter of money and time, right? Put in 100X the capacity and problem solved. However ultimately you have to get the gas out of the ground and distributed around the continent to all these (supposedly local) processing plants. I don't know it for a fact, but I suspect that the current extraction footprint is about enough to meet heating and electrical generation requirements and not a whole lot more; why would anyone build 10X more capacity than they need? But again, time and money and it's sorted out.
So yes it can be done. I said it could be done, and I said it was a problem with scale. That was a deliberate distinction, and a really important one. It's just money and time and oh look we don't have any of either.
That's the tragedy here. We could have done it, at one time. We could have turned this whole thing around and gone LNG for most uses. Over the span 20-30 years, at great expense and political commitment. But we didn't. And now, we won't because we can't.
We agree in principle. I just happen to think that ship has sailed.
The ship is loaded and sitting at the dock. All that is needed is $5 gasoline.
Don't short sell the LPG distributors and the really hard working folks in that field. There are some ingenuitive and clever people who deal with this stuff every day. I've worked with them and have a respect for their ability to overcome some very obstinate roadblocks. The only shortage will be finding good welders.
Well it does not work that way. There was never really any real wealth, just "trillions of dollars in phantom housing equity" that is marked to fantasy. The "trillions of dollars in phantom housing equity" could not have been used to do anything real. At best the raw ingredients, energy and time required to build the excess housing stock could have been used more wisely, and invested into R&D and infrastructure. That sum would be billions, not trillions.
Faber is mentioned in the post. A slip or was he hiding in the background?