wintler2 wrote:Saurian Tail wrote:eyeno wrote:^^^this is a real jet. It determines the shape of the oil market.
It is fiendishly clever of the genocidal bastards if you think about it. If low EROEI sources like deep sea and tar sands are the long term future, you would want to create this kind of short term artificial scarcity in order to make your long term prospects viable during the transition. This kind of artificial manipulation would definitely extend the bumpy plateau as well as ease the backside of the curve ... and make your remaining high EROEI sources extremely profitable. I'm going to chew on that a while.
On edit: Iraq is the ultimate strategic reserve.
Iraq is the volcanic-co2 of peak oil denial.
Sure Iraqs exports have been lower than if Saddam hadn't suffered war with Iran, Kuwait/US&allies, UN sanctions, and again US&allies. But its exports haven't been nothing,
They've been consciously suppressed, go and look further back in this thread, ever since oil was first discovered there. The big oil companies took control of Iraq's oil and stopped production growth. Production in Iraq was denied investment, information was suppressed, exploration prevented, nationalist governments overthrown to keep control of the oil and to keep production in Iraq down, all before Saddam was put in charge. Saddam who started as a CIA agent hired to kill Qasim.

and how much oil is there supposed to be there?
113bil. according to
BPs 2009 statistical review. (theres a good summary of OPECs 1980s reserve revisions controversy at that link too, one among many reasons to think oil exporting nations and corporations over-estimate their reserves).
To this day Iraq's oil fields haven't been properly explored.
Okay, but 113bil.barrels, big number. How many days global supply is that, at 85million barrels a day consumption? 3.6 years. Whoop de do.
Okay, lets follow their pipedream. Assume there is some vast lake of secret oil under Iraq, enough to make up for declines in production from North Sea, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia, US, Columbia, Nigeria, etc and stop the peak being now.
1. does that mean oil will never peak?
2. what mysterious breed of businessman has appeared that it can put off its greed far into the future? Never before have i seen its like, the rule i observe is 'get it now, get it cheap, leave nothing'. Yet for the Iraq=strategic reserve theory to stand up, the responsible elites must be deferring reward decades into the future at the cost of political capital, blod and gold that if nothing else has an opportunity cost. For a reward decades in the future? I know of no precedent.
This, from the man who thinks oil companies pump flat out to lower the price of their sole product and viciously compete with each other at the expense of profits. So what's more likely: planning for long term profits or just reducing your profits immediately and permanently?
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia