I disagree that their is just to much of it. Why is T Boone Pickens trying to get oil out of sand. Supply we eventually start being hoarded. Demand from Asia is incredible.
If you want to stop our dependence on oil all you have to do is get the government to tax gasoline at a much higher rate. How about putting a 4 dollar a gallon tax on it? That will change people's habits and dependence on oil real quick, but I think people would probably overthrow the government. If ethanol were not subsidized and cost 5.00 a gallon at the pump, and gasoline was at 3.00 a gallon would you sacrifice more of your income to buy ethanol? How about if the utility companies decided to do the right thing and buy ethanol only as well. Would you say "sure I want to pay 40% more so we as a people will not be dependent on the limited supply of oil"? I don't think so. The pocketbook always wins, and that is why oil will continue to be the fuel of choice until something becomes cheaper than oil on a day in, day out basis.
I know you belive that the market is always correct right? Why has oil stayed so stubbornly high? Do you have access to crude charts going back to the 70s?
I see your still "trying" to figure this game out. You better run along and return to the "assembly line" before the big boys take your rent money
I've never said the market is always correct. I don't think anything is always correct. No I don't have charts on oil from the 70's, and even if I did, I don't know what they could possibly tell me. I live in the US oil capital, Houston. We have plenty of oil in the US, and Alaska. The problem is at $20 a barrel it is not worth the time or effort to get it out of the ground so we generally import it. At 40 dollars a barrel we open up most of our rigs in the US and begin to consider other types of drilling which are more expensive. At 60 dollars a barrel almost every process or drilling technique is profitable. You could liquify coal at 60 dollars a barrel and make good money. You could horizontal drill and make good money. You can take oil out of sand and make good money. The problem is all of this takes a huge capital investment. Before anyone shells out the bucks they want to be assured oil will stay above 50 dollars a barrel. As the price of oil goes up people will find newer ways of getting oil out of the ground. It is just a natural phenomena. None of the oil companies were looking at processes that they knew would cost them 50 dollars a barrel to extract from the ground back when oil was at 12.00. Now that it is close to 80 they have plenty of alternatives IF THEY WERE CONFIDENT THE PRICE WOULD STAY HIGH. This is why our limited supply of oil is not that limited. If there is no cheaper way, oil will remain king.
I largely agree with this sentiment, which means it's probably wrong Oil is never going to run out. The scarcer it becomes the more expensive it will be. As it becomes more expensive other alternatives become more viable as well as it becoming more economical to extract oil from places that were hitherto cost-prohibitive. Yes, temporary supply/demand imbalances e.g. short term 10-20 years, but long term equilibrium IMO. MoMoney.
If oil is not replaced as the prime source of energy in your lifetime, then you might as well spend everything you have cause your kin will certainly not need it as they will be dead, along with most of the world's population. Oil is not the cheapest, Coal is. Yet oil is preferred because of how dirty traditional coal plants have been. Oil in comparison to coal is simply more practical, along with a comparable cost. Oil has also been the backbone for many many rich men & institutions in the 20th century, symbolically it's almost interchangeable with the $ sign. How is wind & solar not transferable to fuel? Most common form of energy that the modern population uses is electricity. Does it not make sense to streamline everything in the world to electrical use, practically everything runs on electricity nowdays already. Automobiles are all electric except for the engine, HMMMMMM. Current automobiles still run on gasoline not because it is the most efficient & logical choice but because we live in a world where big business makes the rules. Consider a company like GM, which has not made an innovation in 50 years, yet managed to have so much control over the industry for so long. Ever wonder why 20-30 years ago, no small US company came to the market with a different more efficient design? Only Japan & Germany had penetration, they aren't affected so easily by Washington lobbyists. The technology for electric vechiles has been out there for decades, the fastest car on the face of the planet is electric, there are kits you can buy on the internet that convert your current car into an electric vechile with 60-80 mile roundtrip, that can fully recharge at night for 30-99 cents. It's all out there. But this is the real world, where a semi retard gets "democratically" elected for two terms in a row while he continues to f**k up and lie through his teeth as he and his administration get rich by feeding a certain company billions in government contracts.
Put on the a/c and you get half of that 60-80 which wouldn't even get me to work. I don't think there is any question people would buy electric cars if they could perform even half as good as a gasoline engine. They're just not there yet.