What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

Jan 20, 2006 -- Almost everywhere geologists have looked - which
means everywhere by now, at least at some level of exploration -
there is no oil because one or more of the key geological
requirements is missing, (for example source rock) . Only one well
drilled in every 10 finds oil. Only one in a hundred finds an
important oilfield. And the more wells that are drilled in a
province or country, the smaller the oilfields generally tend to
become.

"We've looked around the world many times. I'd say there is no North
Sea out there. There certainly isn't a Saudi Arabia."

In February 2005, Matthew Simmons speculated that the Saudis may
have damaged their giant oilfields by over-producing them in the
past: a geological phenomenon known as "rate sensitivity". In
oilfields where the oil is pumped too hard, the structure of the oil
reservoir can be impaired. In bad cases, most of a field's oil can
be left stranded below ground, essentially unextractable. "If Saudi
Arabia has damaged its fields, accidentally or not," Simmons
said, "then we may already have passed peak oil."

Chris Skrebowski believes that, from as early as 2007, the volumes
of new oil production are likely to fall short of the combined need
to replace lost capacity from depleting older fields and to satisfy
continued growth in demand. In fact, given the time frames with
which offshore oilfields are developed and depleted, it seems
certain that there will be nowhere near enough oil to meet the
combined forces of depletion and demand between 2008 and 2012. If
there were, it would be from projects we would know about today (oil
companies liking as they do to boast to their shareholders about
every sizeable discovery). Given the inevitable time-lag from
discovery to production, there is now no way to plug that gap.

There is worse: people in the oil industry must know this. They
should be alerting governments and consumers to the inevitability of
an energy crunch, and they aren't.

"The perception of looming decline may be worse than the decline
itself," Campbell said. "There will be panic. The market overreacts
to even small imbalances. Prices are set to soar in the absence of
spare capacity until demand is cut by recessions. We will enter a
volatile epoch of price shocks and recessions in increasingly
vicious circles. A stock-market crash is inevitable."

"If the economic recovery continues," Skrebowski added, "supply
will get very tight from 2008 or 2009. Prices will soar. There is
very little time and lots of heads are in the sand."

Oil in the Caspian (an oil field maybe the size of North Sea) is
central to every scenario that envisages oil supply meeting demand
off into the 2020s. The oil industry has long regarded the Baku-
Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey . Turkey has had 17 major
shocks in the past 80 years, and the pipeline is supposed to last
for 40 years.

As for competition over diminishing supplies: The Pentagon
established a Central Command in 1983, one of five unified commands
around the world, with the clear task of protecting the global flow
of petroleum. "Slowly but surely," Michael Klare concludes, "the US
military is being converted into a global oil-protection service."

Beyond the Middle East Five, the Bush strategy of supplier
diversification will look to eight main sources, which Klare calls
the Alternative Eight: Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Russia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and Angola. These countries and
their oil operations are characterised by one or more of the
following attributes: corruption, organised crime, civil war,
political turmoil short of civil war, and ruthless dictators. The US
military is being forced into deeper relationships with such
regimes, including joint military exercises.

The bottom line for Klare is this. "Any eruption of ethnic or
political violence in these areas could do more than entrap our
forces there. It could lead to a deadly confrontation between the
world's military powers." Because obviously, in a world as
enduringly addicted to oil as ours is, others are going to be
looking for their own supplies. Russia and China will be among them.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article339928.ece

Adapted from Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy
Crisis, by Jeremy Leggett, published by Portobello Books.

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(In addition:) emerging shortages of several major industrial
commodities including cement, steel, and (perhaps most importantly)
copper – the essential ingredient of electrical transmission lines.
Then there is the problem of compound growth or the fact that at
current growth rates within two decades (2026) there will be as many
internal combustion powered vehicles in China as there are on the
entire planet today (with very relaxed emission control standards).
Cal Tech Vice Chancellor David Goodstein in 2003 that it takes 30
years to replace an energy infrastructure even if a solution is
found.

Michael Ruppert

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012306_world_stories.shtml#
1

New Study Raises Questions About Sustainability Of Metal Resources

Researchers studying supplies of copper, zinc and other metals have
determined that these finite resources, even if recycled, may not
meet the needs of the global population forever. According to the
study, if all nations were to use the same services enjoyed in
developed nations, even the full extraction of metals from the
Earth's crust and extensive recycling programs may not meet future
demand.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060123122555.htm

Iran's Bourse, the Dollar and "Pre-emptive" War
We all know (hopefully) from reading Dr. Gordon Prather 3 times a
week here at Antiwar.com and World Net Daily (and even from rags
like the Washington Post) that if the government of Iran began to
enrich uranium for nuclear bomb making purposes right now, it would
take them 10 years to make one simple gun-type nuke (Prather's term)
(and nevermind the delivery system). In other words, all the hype
about some imminent nuclear danger is a pack of lies.

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., the great witness to the Office of Special
Plans, has said repeatedly that she believes one of the principal
reasons for the invasion of Iraq was that in the year 2000 Saddam
Hussein had begun demanding Euros instead of dollars as payment
for "his" oil.

Now there is this incredible article by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.,
along the lines of Dr. Prather's piece this weekend speculating that
the reason the neocons and the Israeli government keep asserting
Iran will have nukes and require bombing by March is because they
are about to open a new oil and gas exchange - the Iranian Bourse,
and will be demanding payment in Euros.

This is bad news for the US dollar because the Saudis et al. demand
dollars for their oil and the powers of the Earth must therefore
hold large amounts of US currency. Iran, a state run by people who
for some reason aren't happy with us, plan to demand Euros in their
new exchange. That could lead to the government banks of the world
to diversify their holdings and a flooding of the US with our
government's paper money that has been held in those foreign
accounts. Then comes inflation - bad inflation.

The War Party may have decided that the time is now for pushing the
nuke program lie and striking while the getting's good.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2608

http://www.countercurrents.org/us-petrov200106.htm

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