On Apr 8, 7:59*am, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
Move the pain up sooner? *Leave the oil in the ground and force the
collapse to happen sooner?

you'll die without oil?

I don't think you've thought this all the way through, Martin. *The affect
on the world economy of $100/barrel oil prices is staggering. * The recent
run-up in gas prices alone has thrown the U.S. into a major (if
media-enhanced) recession.

Trillions of dollars that were being spent on, oh, say, *food*, is now being
spent on oil. *The economy can't make that up instantly or fully,
translating into terrible hardship for common folks.

An example close to home: *Our employees have been hit terribly hard by the
decades-old decision to not develop our domestic oil reserves.
Housekeepers, desk staff, and other entry-level jobs don't pay exceptionally
well in the best of times, and no one has received a raise to "make up" for
the sudden doubling of energy costs. * EVERYTHING -- gasoline, heat, air
conditioning, (and, thus, rent, food, clothes, etc.) -- has gone up in cost
dramatically, causing them extreme hardship. * I see and hear about it every
day.

Unfortunately, there is no way for me to raise their pay to match, because
no one is willing to pay more for a hotel room during an economic downturn..
As business drops, there is LESS money with which to pay employees, and the
downward spiral can really get wound up tightly.

And it's only just begun. *Thanks to the short-sighted policies of people
who put the well-being of polar bears ahead of people, we haven't developed
our Alaskan oil reserves. *Thanks to the short-sighted policies of people
who fear marring the beauty of the Rocky Mountains (as if we *could*), we
have not developed our Colorado oil reserves. * And the Canadian oil shale
reserves. *And the off-shore reserves.

The list goes on and on. *My father was in the energy business his whole
life, and predicted this exact scenario almost 40 years ago. * He called it
the "environmentalist's energy crisis", and -- although he predicted the
collapse for the year 2000 -- he was only off by a decade or so.

You may wish to ponder this, Martin. *You're well protected from a backlash,
sitting in Austria, but at some point people around the world -- stupid,
slow, and easily kept in the dark for short periods -- are going to wake up
to the fact that their economic hard times are due to people who think like
*you*.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

So I guess the huge increases in demand for oil from China and India
aren't responsible for the high price of oil? It's all because of
environmentalists? What happened to supply and demand?

If the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil reserves were used to
supply 5% of the U.S. demand, they would last about 12 years. That's
hardly a real solution to the problem. The oil shale in Colorado
would be expensive to extract and refine. It's not going to yield
fuel that is cheaper than what we have today. Same goes for the
Canadian oil sands. They will yield oil, but not cheap oil.

And what about the problem of refining? That's the real bottleneck
on the fuel supply We have far fewer refineries now than we used to.
In 1982 we had 263 refineries in this country with a capacity of 17
million barrels a day. In 2002, we had only 159 refineries with a
capacity of about 17 million barrels a day. Same capacity, but higher
demand. As a result, we import a lot more refined fuel now, and when
one refinery goes down, it has a much larger impact. These were
existing, approved refineries that had regulatory approval that were
shut down. Most of this was due to consolidation in the oil industry,
leaving a total of only five large integrated oil companies. In 1993,
the largest five oil refiners controlled one-third of the U.S. market,
while the largest 10 had 56 percent. By 2005, the largest five
controlled 55 percent of the market, and the largest 10 refiners
dominate the market with over 80 percent market share. Consolidation
leads to a decrease in competition. Competition, according to most
conservatives I know, is supposed to be a good thing. Yet most
conservatives don't seem to be bothered at all by this wave of
consolidation in the oil industry.

I think your desire to blame environmentalists is an
oversimplification of a complicated situation. I think your
description of short-sighted leadership is probably pretty correct,
but not for the reasons you like to believe.

Phil