Chavez: World Faces Major Energy Crisis

SALAMANCA, Spain (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that the world faces an energy crisis but there is little chance of his country and other OPEC members increasing production because they are already pumping near "their capacity."

"The world will have to get used to a barrel price, I think, of above $50, and energy will have to be saved," he told reporters as leaders from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries met in this central Spanish town.

After soaring in August, crude oil prices have been between $60 and $70 a barrel for more than a month.

"We're at the doorway of major energy crisis worldwide," Chavez said. "We'll have to develop other resources such as wind, solar and nuclear energy -- naturally for peaceful purposes." He said Venezuela was in talks with Argentina and Brazil regarding nuclear power.

Chavez said a "lack of imagination in the United States and the war in Iraq, which has destabilized the market in the Middle East, has also driven up prices." Increased demand from countries such as China and India is making the problem worse, he said.

"The whole world right now is producing petroleum at their maximum capacity," he said. "In Venezuela, for example, we can't produce a single barrel more."

Venezuela, a member of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier to the U.S. market.

Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, says it pumps 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day. But industry analysts put the figure lower, saying the country has never fully restored output since an extended strike in 2003 that sought to force Chavez's resignation.

"The cause of the increase in the price is not in the production. It's partly the intermediaries who make things dearer. It's also because of the increase in demand and the irrational capitalist consumerism model," he said.

"The United States for example, with scarcely five percent of the world's population, uses almost 25 percent of the petroleum and combustion fuels produced in the world," he said.

""Prices will continue to rise but oil is running out," he said."

Socialists all fall prey to that. Which is why they are all so abysmally incompetent.

"Experts" (and this guy is no expert, he is a moron) have been saying for years that the supply of oil is running out. Oddly enough, they keep finding MORE oil! According to Thomas Sowell in "Basic Economics: A Citizen's guide to The Economy", in 1960, a best selling book stated that the USA only had 13 years of oil left at the then existing state of usage, 32 billion barrels. At the end of that 13 years, the then current estimates were that there were 36 billion barrels of oil left. And so it has gone. Why, I wonder how that works? Here is a little primer, Hugo...you should read Thomas's book...

(in a hoarse stage whisper)
Hugo...no matter how much oil there is , it will never pay to discover more of it when its present value per barrel is less than the combined cost of exploration and extraction from the ground.

While quantities are indeed decreasing (there can be no other way) we do not yet know how much is really out there. And how cost effective it is to get it depends on how much it can be sold for.

For example, look at coal. Once upon a time, coal could be stripped right off the surface of the earth. People said "What, you are going to dig MINES and get all kind of expensive machinery to get it? That's NUTS!" And it was, at the time. Now look at it. Someday, we will find a way to extract oil from shale, because it will be cost effective.

But idiots like Hugo just don't understand, because they are leftists, socialists, and communists.

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