Peak Oil
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I’ve been wanting to write about this issue for a long time, which is sure to radically affect the price of gold in the next few months and years. Recently, there has been some analysis surfacing debunking ‘peak oil’ theory . By way of background, peak oil was a concept first proposed by a guy named M. King Hubbert in 1956, who accurately predicted that US oil production would “peak” in or around 1970, which it did.
Now, people are applying his analysis to world oil production, and estimates for world peak production variously range between 2007 and 2020.
There’s a bigwig consultant from Calgary named Peter Tertzakian who wrote a book called 1000 Barrels a Second. A concise interview with him can be found here. I read the book and it provides a good background to the history of energy starting with whale oil. His thesis is that we are entering an energy break-point and concomitant re-balancing period where oil will no longer be cheap. What he calls light, sweet crude is fast disappearing, and there’s no new magic bullet alternative to replace oil in the future. This may not be true, however. There’s quite a bit of information coming out these days about possible “free energy” alternatives.
But even so, the sheer scale of the use of oil today rules out any quick fix to the problem. F. William Engdahl, an analyst I’ve posted on previously, has stated that he no longer believes in the peak oil issue, because there has recently surfaced information that Russian geologists have found “deep sources” of oil, and their findings suggest that the fossil fuel theory is false, and that ‘deep geological processes’ are involved in the creation of crude oil. This is a tantalizing idea, but since the knowledge only exists in Russia, it’s unlikely a revolution in crude oil drilling will solve the peak of “conventional” oil production in Western countries. I don’t think Putin is about to share his secrets with the West.
While peak oil may be a farce in a sense, I think there’s a cold hard reality manifesting itself. The big industrial age boom has spent itself, and the re-balancing period is at long last coming into being. Whether or not there are vast reserves of oil left matters not. We’ve used up the majority of the easy-to-access reserves, and it seems the power-brokers are using the real or imagined shortage to force what they see as upstart oil producing countries, such as Venezuela, some of the Gulf states, Iran and Russia, into bankruptcy. Lindsay Williams claims to have contacts in the circles of power who told him as much. When you listen to the George Soros clip in this video, notice how he condemns the “major oil-producing countries” for being the, “enemies of the prevailing world order.” He says they have been, “using oil to maintain power”. It’s obvious he completely misses the point that there is a growing consensus around the world that opposes that Western recipe. It seems like he completely underestimates Russia, Chavez, Iran, China. As he belittles Chavez for his “Bolivarian revolution”, suggests that it will fail, and decries efforts of the Russians to jostle for influence in the region, I can’t help but to laugh at their desperate attempts to hold onto what little control they have left.
If Williams is right, we’re in for a rough ride in the coming years. A guy named James Howard Kunstler came out with a book called The Long Emergency a few years back. Here’s an overview of how the shortages and costliness of oil will affect life in “suburbia”:
This idea is supported in a very recent book by a Canadian economist, Jeff Rubin. Here’s a short talk he gave on the same topic:
The idea that a small group of elites is trying to break the upstart countries and “consolidate” power, as Alex Jones suggests, seems more and more to be supported by an assortment of sources. Of course, I don’t think it will turn out exactly as they want. There are too many variables and intangibles that will affect the outcome, some of which I want to write about in future posts. But the fact remains that these guys are intent on trying to force the issue and do a power grab at the expense of the rest of the world. While they go about it, we’re all going to suffer the consequences of expensive oil, volatility in prices, stage-managed “crises”, bio-weapon beta-tests (i.e. pig flu) etc. etc. I make this point simply because I want to be prepared for what’s coming. Hopefully the doomsayers are wrong, and things will just go along nicely through 2012 and beyond. However, these guys who wield influence are real wierdos. Who knows what they want to pull? Cornered mongrels are the most dangerous. Let’s hope the Bolivarian revolution succeeds. I’d trust Evo Morales over George Soros any day.
