Posted on 05/30/2013 2:25:35 PM PDT by Enza Ferreri
I know that this is difficult to believe, but petrol prices are probably going to decrease.
This is the likely prediction that can be derived from a June 2012 study by one of the world's top experts on oil, gas, and energy, Leonardo Maugeri, entitled "Oil: The Next Revolution: The Unprecedented Upsurge of Oil Production Capacity and What It Means for the World" and published by the prestigious Harvard University Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in America.
The paper says that we expect a global growth in oil production "from 93 million barrels per day today to 110 million barrels per day by 2020", an increase of almost 20 percent, the largest increase in a single decade since the 1980s.
The surge by 2020, though, is only part of the picture: it represents not even 40 percent of the new oil production under development all over the world, so the remaining 60 percent will reach the market after 2020.
This increase is mainly due to discoveries and developments of new fields. The popular theory of "peak oil" is thus laid to rest.
The growth in oil production capacity will take place almost everywhere, but the largest increases will be predominantly, beside Iraq, in the American continent: the United State and Canada in North America; Brazil and Venezuela in South America.
The consequent, reduced reliance on the Middle East for oil is of momentous positive importance strategically, as the study observes.
The other obvious happy consequence that is plausible and legitimate to predict is the reduction, and even collapse, in oil prices, similarly to what happened in the 1980s. Then that oil price decrease was a powerful factor driving economic recovery and growth. It may indeed happen again.
For millions of people in Britain fuel prices are the biggest household bill concern, it will be a great relief if car petrol and other fuel prices go down.
That we would run out of oil sooner rather than later is one of the myriad wrong predictions inspired by the environmentalist "doom and gloom" movement.
Although what for practically everybody else is good news, for the greens is bad: more oil, more fossil fuels consumption, more carbon emissions, more "global warming", even though the anthropogenic climate change theory gets more discredited by the day.
George Monbiot, the Guardian journalist who is one of the greatest supporters of the man-made global warming hypothesis, mourns the loss of the peak oil belief. Peak oil is defined as the moment when the maximum rate of oil extraction is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline.
He says:
"Some of us made vague predictions, others were more specific. In all cases we were wrong... Peak oil hasn't happened, and it's unlikely to happen for a very long time.
"A report by the oil executive Leonardo Maugeri, published by Harvard University, provides compelling evidence that a new oil boom has begun. The constraints on oil supply over the past 10 years appear to have had more to do with money than geology. The low prices before 2003 had discouraged investors from developing difficult fields. The high prices of the past few years have changed that...
"So this is where we are. The automatic correction – resource depletion destroying the machine that was driving it – that many environmentalists foresaw is not going to happen. The problem we face is not that there is too little oil, but that there is too much." [Emphasis added]
In other words, the laws of the market dictated the production. I wonder if anyone has ever calculated what percentage of the environmentalists' various predictions over the decades have actually materialized. I suspect a very, very low proportion.
If you'd like more reasons to be cheerful about the UK economy, read the articles Economic Optimism at the Horizon and Britain is Not in Recession, Economist Says.
The ease with which a red state can obtain oil must have an effect on oil speculation.
Although what for practically everybody else is good news, for the greens is bad: more oil, more fossil fuels consumption, more carbon emissions, more "global warming", even though the anthropogenic climate change theory gets more discredited by the day. George Monbiot, the Guardian journalist who is one of the greatest supporters of the man-made global warming hypothesis, mourns the loss of the peak oil belief... "...The low prices before 2003 had discouraged investors from developing difficult fields. The high prices of the past few years have changed that..." ...In other words, the laws of the market dictated the production. I wonder if anyone has ever calculated what percentage of the environmentalists' various predictions over the decades have actually materialized. I suspect a very, very low proportion.
If oil prices start declining the Democrats at the state and federal level will insist on increases in the highway tax and push harder to pass a carbon tax.
Thank you.
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