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Wow.

The European Union's member countries have a 90-day strategic reserve on hand. The US, which consumes one third of the 76 million barrels produced daily worldwide, has a 40-day stockpile as a cushion against wildcat action.

The United States is using its war on international terror to help secure a future alternative to Gulf fossil fuel from the almost untapped reserves of the Caspian Basin, estimated at a staggering 70 billion barrels.

According to my math, this means at present usage, there is about a 3000 year supply of oil under the Caspian Basin. This is based on the British usage of a Billion being one million million. Am I off by a couple of orders of magnatude here? If it is only a thousand million, as Americans define a billion, it is only three years supply, which, while nice, doesn't seem as important.

--it's the latter. Saudi Arabia is gonna be the top dog on oil for any foreseeable future, and no one is going to "nuke" them. There is so little oil left that the caspian field IS a big deal but it's not all that large. this is the century of the oil and water wars. In fact the next decade looks pretty touchy as demand rises astronomically while avaialble supply drops alarmingly, mainly from asia-china and india, the continuuing usages in europe and the us. Oil is cheap now but the world is eating it's oil-seed corn to keep it cheap.

There's another factor involved as well. A lot of these raw figures that quote "money" as what it "costs" to extract oil are not as accurate in gauging supply and true costs as using "energy costs" instead. For example, the US still has just oceans of oil underground-the big problem is a lot of the fields now require more btus to get it out than it's worth, it's a net energy loss. Even the ones that are somewhat profitable at 40$ a barrel are only profitable because most of that 40$ if you follow the dollar chains around are still made to be spent on cheaper saudi and local area oil being on the market so it can get used. At some point all fields become a net loss even when a lot of the oil is left in them. Similar to most of the fields on the planet, for example, north sea oil has just about peaked in the terms of energy in > to energy < out. Again, saudi arabia will be the big dog and the last big dog with what is termed "cheap" energy exchange oil. It takes cheaper oil to get more expensive oil in other words. Once those two libnes cross, it's a waste of time and energy, let alone "money".

China's projected needs by 2010 to 2015 will double (or more) from what they need now, just as an aside. Not that they just will want it, they are gonna need it or collapse.

Now let's see, hmm, china is selling arms to whom and supporting whom and where again?

Lots of interesting geopolitics revolve around oil and the middle east. All this talk of human beings involved in these struggles is public political soap opera nonsense mostly, all these various middle eastern and central asian and african wars are about drugs, water and oil, oil ownership, who get's it, how they get it, and for how long they get it, and that's about it.

Madmax was a fun puff action movie, but it's gonna be true too.

If you or anyone want a really good synopsis / overview / explanation of this by some smart guys, I heartily recommend this page, the olduvai theory. Long read, plenty of graphs, easy to understand. Back up the url to the main site, tons of good energy reading and links.