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| Thread ID: 90073 | 2008-05-22 06:47:00 | Petrol at $2 fro 91 octane | gary67 (56) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 671475 | 2008-05-27 17:06:00 | The sad thing is that the planet is not running out of oil! There are huge reserves much greater than those controlled by the Arabs. Until these are tapped and refineries can handle the crude the Arabs are holding back on increasing production causing this 'shortage' thus pushing up the oil market prices. This is being compounded by the huge increase in demand from growing nations like China. No matter how much oil we find in this country in years to come it won't alter the price we pay for fuel at the pumps. It could however reduce taxes as was quoted recently "If the South basin reserves prove as large as some pundits speculate, then the Govt will be able to wipe much of our personal taxation and the country could be funded from Oil Company Tax and Royalties from the crude" (If we are still around then) I don't see any reason to believe that there's hidden oil reserves in the ground that are so far, unfound. Chances of "huge" fields are pretty slim, what with satellite imagery and dynamic testing with shockwaves and such. There are some basically untapped fields where the fuel is so full of sulfur that it becomes very expensive to process. Mexico is a prime example. It's no wonder that there is NOT a huge crush on to get to the oil there. Bush #1 and #2 and Vincente Fox (en.wikipedia.org) (ex-Pres of Mexico) were getting to be pretty close bedfellows for a while there when it was being considered that the US would buy into the Mexican oil industry...which is solely owned by their government. Mexican governmental corruption is so bad (worse than the US version) that the chances of that happening were slimmer than a cat in a vegetarian house. Maybe if the US invaded Mexico for the oil...but then again, the GIs would take a lot of war brides, and we already have more than enough of illegals here now. Dr. Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel somewhere in the very early 1900s said that the foreseen (by him) quantities of oil underground were not eternal in an Audel's Engineers Handbook which I have misplaced at the moment..and he wasn't all that insightful. However he was a realist and recognized that oil is in finite Earthly volume and it isn't being generated any more because of the shortage of dinosaurs and the tropical forests in which they lived. In one of his books Diesel published a treatise entitled "Theorie und Construktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors zum Ersatz der Dampfmaschine und der heute bekannten Verbrennungsmotoren" whereby he expostulated on the imminent demise of any fuel at all in the earth and that in a while it would be very necessary to invent something newer and better. His Diesel-cycle engine, an offshoot of the engine based on the Carnot-cycle engine (c. 1893) soon after Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz had invented the automobile in 1887 was marketed with the idea that it could be converted to less-noble fuels later on. He knew. One sidebar is that there was a lot of conjecture that steam would be the propelling medium and there also were quite a few designers working on that development. Sadly, people were not ready for a vehicle that could, if it wasn't tended well or correctly, leave just a smoking crater where the vehicle, operator and spectators had once stood. Steam regenerates almost without control when the boilers casrep and are very dangerous in the hands of neophytes. Nuclear power in the hands of drivers would be much safer. What really bothers me nowadays is that Popular Mechanics in some of their 1920s and 1930 and even up into the 1960s forecast that I would be transporting via personal car-converts-to-aircraft vehicles..and that nuclear power generation would be so efficient and cheap that electricity would be free. I just paid my utility bill last week and there were no zeros in front of the decimal. I also just looked in my garage...and alas..there are no aircars there either. |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 671476 | 2008-05-27 21:07:00 | Hi Joe, What do you pay per electric unit with your power company?? |
paulw (1826) | ||
| 671477 | 2008-05-28 01:16:00 | The sad thing is that the planet is not running out of oil! There are huge reserves much greater than those controlled by the Arabs. Until these are tapped and refineries can handle the crude the Arabs are holding back on increasing production causing this 'shortage' thus pushing up the oil market prices. This is being compounded by the huge increase in demand from growing nations like China. No matter how much oil we find in this country in years to come it won't alter the price we pay for fuel at the pumps. It could however reduce taxes as was quoted recently "If the South basin reserves prove as large as some pundits speculate, then the Govt will be able to wipe much of our personal taxation and the country could be funded from Oil Company Tax and Royalties from the crude" (If we are still around then) People are not understanding the concept of Peak Oil and supply exceeding demand. Any new fields being discovered are nearly irrelevant now, prices will continue to rise as demand and speculation takes its toll. Production increases will not keep up with demand increase and in fact production is set to decrease. We will not "run out" of oil for many decades, there is still heavy oil and the oil sands that are now profitable to exploit etc, however that is in no way going to protect us form US$200+ a barrel over the next year and a lot worse to come having a massive impact of world economy's. There is only way to combat this and thats lower consumption, however thats a big fat chance. |
Battleneter2 (9361) | ||
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