Posted on 12/22/2015 10:32:14 PM PST by Mariner
...government-funded “affluenza,” even (those fat, juicy incomes from all levels of government, including local.
Sorry for the slow reply. I have been (and am) VERY busy with family matters. Elderly parents...
Your definition of “a very long time” must be far different than mine. Normally, if I was thinking about “a very long time”, I’d be thinking in terms of millions of years. OTOH, if thinking about persevering under Obama, maybe I’d shorten that to 8 years...
In this context, let’s just say that the odds of an oil & gas glut, or, at least production matching consumption to the tune of oil at $50 max per barrel in 2016 dollars, in, oh, say, 20 years, are about 50/50. This assumes no major wars going on at the time.
As for the short term, production HAS to fall to better match consumption. The current production glut cannot be sustained. But, that said, the present dynamic, in which OPEC now has very serious non-OPEC competition, OPEC countries are at odds with each other (principally SA and Iran), and a great many petro producing countries with low production costs are utterly addicted to petro revenues, remains. This has already hurt the US petro industry, and will continue to. But, the reserves are still there, and competitive pressure will push the technology. Of course, the cycles in the petro business will continue, to some extent, likely exacerbated by the banksters, political unrest, wars, and so on, BUT, the basic equation of readily available* reserves and reasonable cost to extract (say, $70 per barrel of oil, in 2016 dollars, on average) is going to be with us a long time - which I would define as 50-100 years.
*What is a “readily available reserve”? I’d call it anything that can be tapped for production within 4 years with off the shelf technology, for under $100 / barrel (of oil) in 2016 dollars. I’m sure one of our petro industry experts can give a better “industry” definition, but that’s my “economic” definition.
My original reply was to the idea that the world is running out of fossil fuels, causing conflict. Yes, distribution problems and desire(s) for the easiest / cheapest supplies cause problems. (Libya and Syria are recent examples.) Consider: If SA and its friends could not produce so much petro so cheaply, the situation in Syria would likely be far different.
But is the world running out of fossil fuels, in the sense of my definition of readily available reserve? Nonsense.
We do agree on population and RT, though. :-)
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