by Starman » Fri Jun 10, 2005 2:13 pm
<br>Sorry Human -- Your attitude in condemning the apparant reality of Peak Oil simply because you refuse to accept the projected consequences of our institutionalized dependency on an ever-abundant supply of cheap oil is a major reason WHY the crisis predicted by Peak Oil is essentially inevitable -- It's a classic case of 'What ME Worry???'<br><br>The great majority of data relating to discovered oil reserves, annual and historic production, development costs and investments and like that, daily/annual supply-demand facts, are a crucial part of how the global economy and the oil industry operates -- Even Shell and Atlantic Richfield couldn't continue to fudge ther numbers any longer and had to revise their reserve estimates considerably downwards to conform with reality. <br><br>The whole US and world economy is based on abundant, cheap oil. If you recall, the short-term artificially-contrived oil-supply production shortage of 1973 caused a 400 percent increase in refined-oil prices. The US was able to make-up for OPEC-induced production quotas through other sources (ie, Mexico and Venezuela), and costs eventually declined and stabilized -- but at significantly more than before. And that was only about a 2-3 percent shortage.<br><br>Independant analysts have determined that a 3-5 percent shortfall now could cause immense ripple-effects that would result in a global depression and financial meltdown, affecting almost every segment of modern society.<br><br>Most people actually have an attitude like yours -- they realize for all practical purposes they can't affect the big picture, so they're not gonna worry about it. I'd argue that 'worry' is a waste of effort and emotion anyway, but that's a moot point. In the absence of a concerted, immediate, collective and cooperative crash-program to address the seriousness of the consequences of Peak Oil, the trend of price increases, resource wars, economic refugees, environmental deterioration, global warming, famines, inflation, increasing militarism, inflation and severe economic crises will just keep getting worse.<br>The downside of Peak Oil for the last 20 years has ALREADY shown itself to those observant enough to recognize the true cause for a lot of the political, economic and military positioning by leading global-stage players. It's just gonna get worse BECAUSE people can't bear to deal with it -- it upsets their complacent apple-cart. They'd be more courageous and honest if they recognized their motives for denial.<br><br>I HAVE researched the theory of abiotic oil -- There's a ctually a strong case that can be made for it as explaining the origin of crude oil resources as occurring when calcium carbonate, water and hydrogen are cooked 60 miles deep in the mantle, under 1500 degrees and 50,000 psi. But the few instances where oil fields give some evidence for being recharged through great fissures are extremely few and relatively insignificant, and generally not very convincing. In other words, even IF the theory of abiotic oil stands-up, it's not (yet) shown itself to change anything. Even if we could locate abiotic oil where it's 'made', there's no WAY we can get 60 miles down to get it.<br><br>--excerpt--<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.kitwatkins.com/index_truth.htm">www.kitwatkins.com/index_truth.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>from James Howard Kuntsler in 'The Long Emergency'<br>--quote--<br>The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.<br><br>The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.<br>. . .<br>Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.<br><br>It will change everything about how we live.<br>. . .<br><br>The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.<br><br>-- I urge you to read the entire article excerpted above.<br><br>Info links:<br>• Peak Oil Primer <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050204132153814>">www.911truth.org/article....132153814></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> from EnergyBulletin.net<br><br>***<br>More on debunking the 'Peak Oil is a Con-scam' thesis:<br>Following -- Excellant resource with detailed analysis and numerous cited links:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/011205_no_free_pt2.shtml">www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/..._pt2.shtml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>No Free Lunch, Part 2:<br>If abiotic oil exists, where is it?<br>Dale Allen Pfeiffer<br>--excerpt--<br>Furthermore, as Ugo Bardi has pointed out in this newsletter (Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics? <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml">www.fromthewilderness.com..._oil.shtml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> ), if you insist that the standard explanation of oil formation is the result of some conspiracy, then you have already stepped outside of the realm of scientific investigation. The theory of the organic origin of oil evolved gradually and has been refined through many decades of investigation and observation. It does a superb job of explaining the observed phenomenon and predicting new discoveries, and it is consistent with the mechanics of geology. <br>. . .<br>Conclusion<br>Other questionable fields could be surveyed here, but for considerations of length. Suffice it to say that a sound argument for organic origin can be built for all other examples. The fields surveyed here constitute the core examples repeatedly adduced by abiotic adherents. And we have found ample evidence that none of these plays are of abiotic origin. As for volcanic outgassing, that too is explained by organic chemistry in conjunction with plate tectonics. The abiotic hypothesis remains just that, an hypothesis which has failed in prediction and so cannot be elevated to a theory. It is completely ignored by the oil industry worldwide, and even within Russia. And that is the final testament to its failure.<br>***********<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://ranprieur.com/crash/abiotic.html">ranprieur.com/crash/abiotic.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Abiotic Oil: Inorganic Oil, "Sustainable" Oil<br>The peak oil <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633>">www.rollingstone.com/news...d/7203633></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> theory says that oil production will reach a peak, or already has, and then as production declines while demand increases, our oil-dependent global industrial system will break down. That link goes to a great essay on the issue by James Kunstler. Here's another good summary on Life After the Oil Crash <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html>.">www.lifeaftertheoilcrash....dex.html>.</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> And for a ton of graphs and links, check out Die Off <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://dieoff.org/>">dieoff.org/></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> or the bloated oilempire <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.oilempire.us/peakoil.html>">www.oilempire.us/peakoil.html></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> page. It's all pretty non-controversial, unless somehow there's a lot more oil than we think.<br>Enter abiotic oil <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/peakoil1.html>,">www.questionsquestions.ne...il1.html>,</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> also called "inorganic oil," the theory that oil is not from dead dinosaurs but from chemical reactions in the Earth's mantle. That link goes to a summary of the issue that leans toward abiotic oil. Dave McGowan <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/>">www.davesweb.cnchost.com/></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> has used the abiotic oil theory to attack the peak oil crowd, suggesting that they're part of a conspiracy to make us think the oil is running out when it's not, perhaps so the oil industry can inflate prices. (Indeed, according to this story <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/bigoil0603.php>,">www.workers.org/ww/2004/bigoil0603.php>,</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> they are inflating prices!) Here's another article alleging that the Russians are getting apparently unlimited oil from super-deep wells <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://joevialls.altermedia.info/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html>,">joevialls.altermedia.info...oil.html>,</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> but then, why is Russia's oil output slowing <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/10/20/044.html>?">www.themoscowtimes.com/st...044.html>?</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br>If it's true that there's plenty more oil, it just changes the character of the coming crash -- it will be through toxicity or ecological catastrophe instead of lack of energy, it will take longer, and the earth is a lot more likely to die. Here's an excerpt from öWilliam Ktke's summary <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/FEchap2.htm>">www.rainbowbody.net/Final...chap2.htm></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> of the 1972 "Limits To Growth" study:<br>The scholars programmed the computers so as to double the estimated resource base, they created a model that assumed "unlimited" resources, pollution controls, increased agricultural productivity and "perfect" birth control. None of these or other aversion strategies could take the world system past 2100.<br>The reason that the world system cannot go on with unlimited growth is because each of the five factors is interactive. If we assume unlimited fuels such as a simple fusion process, this simply drives the growth curves faster. There is more cheap fuel so the wheels of industry churn faster and resource exhaustion comes more quickly, population continues to climb and pollution climbs. If there is more food production, then population climbs and resources are exhausted more rapidly. If population is stabilized, resources still continue to decline and pollution increases because of increased consumption. If the factors of resources, food, and industrial output grow then population grows but the resulting pollution creates the negative feedback of having to maintain cancer hospitals and institutions for the birth defected and mutations caused by pollution as well as pollution damage to factors such as farm crops.<br>As of October 2004, the peak oil writers are finally posting some strong critiques of the abiotic oil position. Here's one from Richard Heinberg <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.rense.com/general58/biot.htm>,">www.rense.com/general58/biot.htm>,</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> who hits a few points but says the issues are so complex that you'd need a whole book to cover it properly. And here's one from Ugo Bardi <<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml>,">www.fromthewilderness.com...il.shtml>,</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> who argues that the abiotic generation rates would have to be so small as to be politically insignificant. The consensus is that there might be abiotic oil, but that it's not going to delay the crash. My own correspondent, chemical engineering student Ryan Glinski, comes to a similar conclusion: <br>. . .<br>I followed your link to a link to a link, to an actual scientific article. Seems there's more to oil than some primordial forest. That oil they're drilling in the Ukraine and Russia really is of a different ilk than oil found in other places. A few points.<br>One: This does not mean that all oil is abiotic. They say in the same article that there are no biotic-microparticles (or something) in the Russian oil, which proves it's abiotic. The reason they looked for these particles is that they are found in other sources of oil, proving, I guess, their biological origin. But the different results from the same experiment suggests that there are two kinds of oil here -- the evidence doesn't prove that all oil is abiotic.<br>Two: This doesn't mean current oil wells will start filling up again. As far as I can tell, tectonic activity transports, in bulk, swaths of oil from very, very deep wells. So the oil they're drilling in Ukraine/Russia may be abiotic, but it's not connected to some bigger well. Just like any well, when it goes dry it will stay that way.<br>Three: Sure there are huge stores of oil somewhere deep underground, perhaps descendent of our planet's alloted share of the solar system's methane; but oil really, really deep under the ground is useless. The technology to drill down to these wells, much less the technology to find them (the Soviets found evidence of these wells, not an actual well) is not available or all that feasable.<br>Four: These wells are all in the Caspian basin, an area already known to have large energy reserves. Kansas might like to get their hands on some of this abiotic oil -- do you think they're going to find some under their lot of land? The evidence is circumstantial. The conventional explanation conflicts with some evidence. The Ukranian paper presents a theory that does not conflict with the evidence, but the paper doesn't present evidence for that theory.<br>Summary: Oil and other fuels of the ilk are being consumed at a rate that is growing exponentially. Even if the science of where the oil came from happens to be wrong, the replacement science still implies that there is not an infinite supply. Therefore, there's going to be growth until supplies hit a wall, and then the production will decrease: a rise, a peak and a fall.<br>Maybe I'm just afraid of death by pollution. If we do find some really huge well, then yeah, some other factor will crash civilization before energy shortages get their chance. Everything I just said is just stuff I noticed about the article, but those Russians really are drilling oil in an area most people wouldn't have thought to look.<br>My friend Thad toured a chemical plant with some older engineers he interned for a couple summers ago. As they were walking, his nose alerted him to some danger, and to his comment, one of the engineers said "The smell? Don't worry about the smell, that's the smell of money."<br>***************<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html">www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.<br><br>In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't have to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.<br><br>The effects of even a small drop in production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%. <br><br>The coming oil shocks won't be so short-lived. They represent the onset of a new, permanent condition. Once the decline gets under way, production will drop (conservatively) by 3% per year, every year.<br><br>That estimate comes from numerous sources, not the least of which is Vice President Dick Cheney himself. In a 1999 speech he gave while still CEO of Halliburton, Cheney stated: <br><br>By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent <br>annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, <br>along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline <br>in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we <br>will need on the order of anadditional 50 million barrels a day. <br><br>Cheney's assesement is supported by the estimates of numerous non-political, retired, and now disinterested scientists, many of whom believe global oil production will peak and go into terminal decline within the next five years.<br><br>Some geologists expect 2005 to be the last year of the cheap-oil bonanza, while estimates coming out of the oil industry indicate "a seemingly unbridgeable supply-demand gap opening up after 2007," which will lead to major fuel shortages and increasingly severe blackouts beginning around 2008-2012.<br><br>The long-term ramifications of Peak Oil on your way of life are nothing short of mind blowing. As we slide down the downslope slope of the global oil production curve, we may find ourselves slipping into what some scientists are calling a "post-industrial stone age." <br>. . .<br>Re: The Whole International Modern Banking System is Dependant on Cheap Oil<br><br>The global financial system is entirely dependent on a constantly increasing supply of oil. Since as explained above, all modern economic activity from transportation to food production to manufacturing is dependent on oil supplies, money is really just a symbol for oil. Commentator Robert Wise observes:<br> <br>"It's not physics, but it's true: money equals energy. Real, liquid wealth represents usable energy. It can be exchanged for fuel, for work, or for something built by the work of humans or fuel-powered machines. Real cost reflects the energy cost of doing something; real value reflects the energy expended to build something. <br><br>"Nearly all the work done in the world economy -- all the manufacturing, construction, and transportation -- is done with energy derived from fuel. The actual work done by human muscle power is miniscule by comparison. And, the lion's share of that fuel comes from oil and natural gas, the primary sources of the world's wealth." <br><br>As Dr. Colin Campbell writes in "The Financial Consequences of Peak Oil," the continued expansion of this wealth is only possible so long as the oil supply continues to grow:<br><br>"It is becoming evident that the financial and investment community begins to accept the reality of Peak Oil, which ends the First Half of the Age of Oil. They accept that banks created capital during this epoch by lending more than they had on deposit, being confident that Tomorrow’s Expansion, fueled by cheap oil-based energy, was adequate collateral or Today’s Debt. <br><br>"The decline of oil, the principal driver of economic growth, undermines the validity of that collateral which in turn erodes the valuation of most entities quoted on Stock Exchanges." <br><br>Consequently, a declining supply of oil must be accompanied by either a declining supply of money or by hyperinflation. In either case, the result for the global banking system is the same: total collapse.<br><br>This financial collapse will, in turn, further devastate our ability to implement alternative systems of energy. Any crash program to develop new sources of energy will require a tremendous amount of capital, which is exactly what will not be available once the global monetary system has collapsed.<br><br>Thus, the aftermath of Peak Oil will extend far beyond how much you will pay for gas. If you are focusing solely on the price at the pump, more fuel-efficient forms of transportation, or alternative sources of energy, you aren’t seeing the bigger picture. <br>*<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/4404.html">www.energybulletin.net/4404.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>The effects of this will be frightening. As former oil industry insider Jan Lundberg recently pointed out: <br><br>The scenario I foresee is that market-based panic will,<br>within a few days, drive prices up skyward. And as supplies<br>can no longer slake daily world demand of over 80 million<br>barrels a day, the market will become paralyzed at prices<br>too high for the wheels of commerce and even daily living in<br>"advanced" societies. There may be an event that appears<br>to trigger this final energy crash, but the overall cause will<br>be the huge consumption on a finite planet.<br><br>The trucks will no longer pull into Wal-Mart. Or Safeway or<br>other food stores. The freighters bringing packaged techno<br>-toys and whatnot from China will have no fuel. There will be<br>fuel in many places, but hoarding and uncertainty will trigger<br>outages, violence and chaos. For only a short time will the<br>police and military be able to maintain order, if at all.<br><br>The collapse will be hastened by the fact that the US national debt will become completely unsustainable once the price of oil gets into the $100 range (<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=greider).">www.thenation.com/doc.mht...=greider).</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> Once this mark is passed, the nations of the world will have no choice but to pull their investments out of the US while simultaneously switching from the dollar to the euro as the reserve currency for oil transactions. Along with the breakdown of domestic transportation networks, the global financial shift away from the dollar will wholly shatter the US economy.<br><br>If you're wondering why the mainstream media is not covering an issue of this magnitude 24/7, now you know. Once the seriousness of situation is generally acknowledged, a panic will spread on the markets and bring down the entire house of cards even if production hasn't actually peaked (<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://deconsumption.typepad.com/deconsumption/2005/03/the_most_import.html).">deconsumption.typepad.com...ort.html).</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>In summary, we are a prisoner of our own dilemma:<br><br>1. Right now, we have no economically scalable alternatives to oil. (Emphasis placed on economic scalability, not technical viability.)<br>2. We won't get motivated to aggressively pursue conomically scalable alternatives until oil prices are sky high;<br>3. Once oil prices are sky-high, our economy will be shattered, and we won't be able to finance an aggressive switch-over to whatever alternative sources of energy are available to us. Without cheap oil, and without economically scalable alternatives, we will basically be "dead in the water."<br>4. An aggressive conservation program will bring down the price of oil, thereby removing the incentive to pursue alternatives until it is too late.<br>5. Any attempt to secure the energy and raw materials necessary to power a large-scale transition to renewable forms of energy is likely to be met with fierce competition, if not outright warfare, with China, which has a million man standing army fully-indoctrinated to hate the US (<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/454b9d94-7fbf-11d9-8ceb-00000e2511c8.html).">news.ft.com/cms/s/454b9d9...1c8.html).</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>**<br><br>"What About All the Various Alternatives to Oil? Can't We Find Replacements?"<br><br>Many politicians and economists insist that there are alternatives to oil and that we can "invent our way out of this." <br><br>Physicists and geologists tell us an entirely different story (<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/PageTwo.html).">www.lifeaftertheoilcrash....Two.html).</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>The politicians and economists are selling us 30-year old economic and political fantasies, while the physicists and geologists are telling us scientific and mathematical truth. Rather than accept the high-tech myths proposed by the politicians and economists, its time for you to start asking critical questions about the so called "alternatives to oil" and facing some hard truths about energy.<br><br>While there are many technologically viable alternatives to oil, there are none (or combination thereof) that can supply us with anywhere near the amount of net-energy required by our modern monetary system and industrial infrastructure. <br><br>People tend to think of alternatives to oil as somehow independent from oil. In reality, the alternatives to oil are more accurately described as "derivatives of oil." It takes massive amounts of oil and other scarce resources to locate and mine the raw materials (silver, copper, platinum, uranium, etc.) necessary to build solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants. It takes more oil to construct these alternatives and even more oil to distribute them, maintain them, and adapt current infrastructure to run on them.<br><br>Each of the alternatives is besieged by numerous fundamental physical shortcomings that have, thus far, received little attention:<br><br>***********<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html">www.lifeaftertheoilcrash....dPage.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Global oil discovery peaked in 1962 and has declined to virtually nothing in the past few years. We now consume 6 barrels of oil for every barrel we find. <br>. . .<br>According to an October 2004 New York Times article entitled "Top Oil Groups Fail to Recoup Exploration Costs:"<br><br>. . . the top-10 oil groups spent about $8bn combined on <br>exploration last year, but this only led to commercial <br>discoveries with a net present value of slightly less than <br>$4bn. The previous two years show similar, though less <br>dramatic, shortfalls.<br><br>In other words, significant new oil discoveries are so scarce that looking for them is a monetary loser. Consequently, many major oil companies now find themselves unable to replace their rapidly depleting reserves. <br><br>Take a look at the above chart. During the 1960s, for instance, we consumed about 6 billion barrels per year while finding about 30-60 billion per year. Given those numbers, it is easy to understand why fears of "running out" were so often dismissed as unfounded.<br><br>Unfortunately, those consumption/discovery ratios have nearly reversed themselves in recent years. We now consume close to 30 billion barrels per year but find less than 5 billion per year.<br><br>In light of these trends, it should come as little surprise that the energy analysts at John C Herold Inc. - the firm that that foretold Enron's demise - recently confirmed industry rumors that we are on the verge of an unprecedented crisis.<br>. . .<br>The real reason no new refineries have been built for almost 30 years has more do with simple good business practices than the efforts of environmentalists. A company isn't going to seek to build new refineries if its management knows there is going to be less and less oil to refine. <br><br>*************<br>Well, if you bothered reading this far, you might recognize there's a lot of holes in the idea that Peak Oil is JUST a scam -- the likely consequences will be devastating too for the big companies and banks, who will have to scramble to avert their OWN meltdown.<br><br>But perhaps you're not amenable to reason -- Frankly, I find this position of yours at-odds from the pretty-sharp individual who made posts and comments on other threads. But I DO understand the reluctance to grasp the seriousness of what Peak Oil portends. I'd rather not deal with it either -- But I can't just ignore it.<br><br>Ennyway ...<br>Starman<br> <p></p><i></i>
