If Saudi Arabia falls, what happens to our oil supply?

[miles]

I'm becoming more and more leery of one of our last remaining "allies" in the Middle East. If a fundamentalist coup assumed control of the country, that would be the last time we'd see any of their oil.

What would happen to our economy? Would we take military action?

I think the big question is why we are so vulnerable and dependent on others for oil. What are we doing about it now?

 

[Gaultier]

good one

I guess u guys will vote Republican and drill a little bit around in Alaska.

Don't bother Bush is gonna give u a discount...lol


I hope that it won't happen. Or we might really face a WW.

 

[ZoeKat]

Alaska?

hi miles..
Errm isn't Alaska what your country is doing about oil supply?
that and being paly with us(australia) re- the east timor sea oil??

interesting thing is..for the last 50 years oil/petrochemical coy's..have been buying up the patents for alternative energy sources/methods...most of the directors of these coy's are rich westerners..who must know that all natural resources are finite at some point...and what's the point in building a dynasty if you can't ensure perpetual succesion?
LOL..how screwed would the arab world be if USA/the west suddenly turned around and said.."bye bye..you have nothing we need anymore..bugger off"..LOL

it's just a thought..i'm stoned..

 

[Marxist]

We could modify our car engines to burn a gasoline with a much higher alcohol content. Dependence on oil is a farce. We've had the technology for years to reduce the amount of oil used in making consumer grade gasoline but no one wants or has seen a need to do a thing about it. Oil men in the White House and all.

 

[WriterDom]

I don't know if they'd cut the West off. What are they going do? Eat the oil? It's to their advantage to have a strong world economy. And I think any desert country learned their lesson about fucking with us from the gulf war. It would be a very short war.

 

[Pokerman]

Even if they would sell us the oil, would we buy it from a rogue nation? We don't buy oil from Saddam Hussein, we would not buy it to support an illegal government....

And yes, I think we'd send in the troops again...

 

[Purple Haze]

I think the big question is why we are so vulnerable and dependent on others for oil. What are we doing about it now?

I am drawn to thinking about Jimmy Carter -- not so much for whatever efforts he made toward peace in that bellicose region of the world, but because of what he feared the United States would have to endure as a result of increased tensions there.

He had observed the Arab oil embargo that threw this nation into such turmoil during the Nixon years and the oil panic that gripped us during Carter's own administration as a result of collapsed and volatile relations with Iran.

In an effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, Carter pushed for more energy-efficient automobiles, including tax penalties for owners of autos that used excessive amounts of fuel. And he sought new forms of fuel as well. Out of it grew the Synthetic Fuels Corp., a federally subsidized fund that would dole out loan guarantees, among other incentives, to private groups seeking alternative fuel sources.

Pitiably, it did little to bring us closer to Carter's declared goal of stopping our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

American auto makers, following the lead of Japanese manufacturers, produced vehicles that were somewhat more energy efficient but we Americans didn't like them; not enough torque, no going from zero to 60 in 6 seconds, cars too small.

By 1985, the Synthetic Fuels Corps -- and most talk of such alternatives as methanol and gasohol -- was a thing of the past. The Reagan administration and the Congress pulled the plug on a program that simply was not working.

Despite the ever-dangling threat of oil embargoes as a result of political upheavals, or contrived shortages for greater profits, Americans continued to want their cars bigger and more powerful. The price tag: Further dependence on foreign oil.

In 1983, the Reagan administration unveiled a National Energy Policy Plan which, in effect, abandoned the goal of energy independence and said the U.S. will rely "to some extent" on Arab oil for at least the next 20 years.

http://www.coxnews.com/newsservice/columnists/h_kleinberg/10-15-00KLEINBERGCOLUMN13COX.html

So what are we doing about it now?

World War III

Cool, huh?

 

[CelestialBody]

Could someone validate tis for me?

 

[miles]

Instead of invading S.A., burdening us with more taxes, and pursuing alternative fuels that are too expensive and nobody really wants, why don't we do the obvious? Dig for oil in Alaska!

Why are we even listening to the hysteria coming from the left?We need oil, we have oil in Alaska. It's a no-brainer - pump it. This crap about killing Bambi is ridiculous. If you want to talk about environmental pollution, go take a look at ground zero to see what our enemies are capable of.

 

[Marxist]

"Brazil, which took a major initiative under its alcohol programme, has set an example of biomass application on an economic scale. About 14 billion liters of ethanol is produced from sugarcane in Brazil every year. This substitutes about 2,00,000 barrels of gasoline per day."---Government of India

http://pib.nic.in/feature/feyr2001/fjun2001/f210620011.html

 

[WriterDom]

But Miles, the last time we drilled in Alaska, the Caribou population increased. And as part of their diet, Caribou eat the spotted turd mushroom, an endangered plant. We should think twice before we drill in an arctic wasteland. You environmental nazi!

 

[sigh]

oh really, miles...relax a bit...the answer is multi-leveled and decades late in being instituted

yes, we must dig for oil in alaska, as distasteful as that is, because the oil companies (shored by the reagan, bush, bush administrations) have been amazingly effective in blunting the development of alternate fuels since the late seventies when this problem last became shockingly obvious...now we are way behind where we should be, so need the oil as a stopgap

but oil is so temporary...what do we really have? another few decades? a century? oil IS going to run out and we have to find alternatives before that happens...but profits of the moment outweigh the worries of tomorrow, so i fear that won't happen until our circumstances are even more desperate

 

[Purple Haze]

It's all about money, always has been.

We have so much untapped energy in own country, we could have told the whole Middle East to fuck off a long time ago.

We could develop vehicles that run on alcohol. Isn't that what they use at the Indy 500? No shit. We don't have any grain or corn in the United States do we? This would make the farmers pretty well off, can't have that.

Last time I checked, the Earth was 73% water. Has anyone figured out how to use hydrogen as a fuel, or has Exxon bought that patent and hidden it away?

We have oil. They have oil. Lots of oil. Their oil is way cheaper for us than our own. Why else would we even deal with them?

It's all about money.

 

[p_p_man]

S'OK Miles...

We'll let you have some of ours...

Strictly on a lend-lease basis though...

 

[enslaved lioness]

the question is, are we willing to sit back and let terrorist acts happen against us because we are too afraid that we wont be able to drive down the block to the 7-11 to buy a pack of cigarettes.

we have to take a stand. there will be loses and some inconviences but i have faith that we will bounce back. Americans can be ingenius when they really have to. we have just gotten lazy in the last few decades.

but if we needed a fire burning under us to get on track again these terrorists did a fine job of accomplishing that. i wouldnt count the threat of no oil from arab countries with too much hold on us. i think we will come through some how. have faith. we have only begun.

 

[sigh]

But Miles, the last time we drilled in Alaska, the Caribou population increased. And as part of their diet, Caribou eat the spotted turd mushroom, an endangered plant. We should think twice before we drill in an arctic wasteland. You environmental nazi!

a mushroom is a fungus...is that part of the plant kingdom? i suppose it is, depending on your classification scheme

perhaps i should try to hijack this thread into a discussion of bio-ecology?...long live spotted turds!...er, i mean mushrooms

i for one support the lowly spotted turd mushroom and will chain myself across one to protect it from the dreaded oil-seeking auger...(or the caribou who come to feed upon it)...but only in summertime, mind you...it's way too damn cold up there for me to spend the winter...lol

we've had decades of warnings...we should be driving solar powered cars by now and be damned with the whole middle east thing

 

[KillerMuffin]

Guys, we've been pumping oil in Alaska for years. Selling a little bit of it and the rest we're sticking in what we call "the reserves." In case shit like this happens. We didn't have it during the 70's, but we have it now. This is the reason why we've been so heavily dependent on foreign oil when we have our own. Use theirs, stockpile ours. Feel better or do we feel like panicking?

 

[OUTSIDER]

It's all about money, always has been.

We have so much untapped energy in own country, we could have told the whole Middle East to fuck off a long time ago.

We could develop vehicles that run on alcohol. Isn't that what they use at the Indy 500? No shit. We don't have any grain or corn in the United States do we? This would make the farmers pretty well off, can't have that.

Last time I checked, the Earth was 73% water. Has anyone figured out how to use hydrogen as a fuel, or has Exxon bought that patent and hidden it away?

We have oil. They have oil. Lots of oil. Their oil is way cheaper for us than our own. Why else would we even deal with them?

It's all about money.

Several years ago or so I saw a Brit science programme about maveric inventer's who had come up with strange devices, although I can't remember the name of the show I can remember the name of the the episode, it was called "And it runs on water" the guy who most stood out to me was an American guy who had invented a way of cracking hydrogen from water that was 17x more efficient than the normal way.

What this guy had found was that by pulsing electricity at more than 70,000 time's a second with a charge of 60/70,000 volts he could crack the hydrogen out of the water using less than 1 amp of electricity, he got the patent and even built a car that ran on tap water (hence the title of the episode)..........the show was only ever aired once and I've searched the net for anything about it or the man on a dozen occasions and found nothing.

In the show they said the guy had invented the hydrogen cracker because of the 1970's oil shortage and he hated seeing the world being held to ransom by a few middle east countries, the guy had been offered a billion dollars for the patent by Opec and had turned them down flat, he was also under FBI protection but from that day to this I've never seen anything about him or his water powered car.

Now you all know I love a joke but I assure you all of the above is true and etched on my memory, I am in no way shitting you guy's here and if you know anything about this man or his work then please PM me.

 

[Azwed]

Re: Could someone validate tis for me?

One thing I don't know how to start looking for, T/F-PLatics are made from oil or it's by products? I know that the materials are available to make alternative energy vehicles, that there are resources available to sustain our energy crisis-expensive as all hell, but it's there. The question is, are there ways of producing platics, which affect us from the day we're born, incubators, tubs, some speculums etc to things we use every day-they are an integral part of a technologically advanced society. Is it true that petrochemicals are used in production of platics-and if so, what resources are available to sustain that industry once oil is no longer available in mass quantities?

Nearly all plastics are made from some form of petroleum(sp?) You can recycle plastic of course, something we don't do enough of, and some plastic can be made from different kinds of oils. Most however is made from hydrocarbon type petroleum soureces.

 

[Marxist]

Folks there's lots of alternatives but no one in big industry, especially oil, wants to play that card. Check out BMW's hydrogen powered car.http://www.edmunds.com/news/innovations/articles/46906/article.html

 

[Azwed]

In 15 to 20 years oils supplies will be so low that we will have to find alternative ways to get oil.

This means drilling in areas that were to expensive to drill in before. Mining oil bearing shales, getting oil from heavy oil tars and other alternative sources.

This is of course barring the discovery of a new large deposit. There are probably a few large deposits we have not found yet. Mainly in sibera and the deep ocean.

Not long after that maybe 30 or so years from now oil will be so expensive that it will be uneconomical to use. If we find some great new sources or new technology to refine it bettre we maybe able to extend this time line some.

The fact is that the oil supply is finite and even if we find many new sources and advance our technology it won't last much longer. We need to find more alternative sources of fuel and energy now before we get into an energy crunch. Every day we wait is one more day that we put off important discoveries. It is never going to be easier then now to start this research. Starting it later when we are running out of oil will be much more difficult.


I think the current projections for using up our current oil reserves is a little over 50 years. We do however have enough coal to last 150 or 200 years. To bad that stuff burns so dirty and if we used it that long the world would probably be unlivable.

 

[Gaultier]

Thread attack

I don't know if they'd cut the West off. What are they going do? Eat the oil? It's to their advantage to have a strong world economy. And I think any desert country learned their lesson about fucking with us from the gulf war. It would be a very short war.

Go girl, go....GOD Bless America....seriously though :


1) OPEC produces about 40 % of the world's oil and holds more than 77 % of the world's proved oil reserves

2) the USA use over 30 % of the world's energy resources but hardly accounts for what 3 or 4 % of the world population...let's not even talk about pollution. (I know u guys just love those SUV's)

3) Saudia Arabia is an ally of the US, or should we say, the Royal Family is an ally of the US. Let's not forget, that the US massively exchange weapons and F-16's for crude oil.
Should there be a war, the US will once again fight a country it massively supported before. (Bin Laden's men were CIA trained by the way in the 80's).

4) A fungus is neither a plant nor a animal. I do think Bambi should not die.

5) Let's hope, the US will start WWIII, everybody knows that a war always does a lot of good to an economy (heavy industries).
I am sure all the Financial Analysts and other multinationals have a war scenario in their drawers.

Ok guys, watch the World for us...

 

[crystalhunting]

I'm becoming more and more leery of one of our last remaining "allies" in the Middle East. If a fundamentalist coup assumed control of the country, that would be the last time we'd see any of their oil.

What would happen to our economy? Would we take military action?

I think the big question is why we are so vulnerable and dependent on others for oil. What are we doing about it now?

This scares me...Miles and I may agree on something.


As a Geologist..I can tell you...we have plenty of oil we could drill out,between Texas,Alaska,and the Midwest...we could drill plenty of oil...and even export some,and thats not counting offshore drilling operations.

And it is NOT NESSESARY to destroy the enviroment to do it,nor drill in National parks.

Why arent we drilling it then you ask?

It is far cheaper to buy it from the Arab world and elsewhere,where they pay the men on the rigs slave wages,and they do not have the benifit of medical insurance.etc.

It is all about money I'm afraid,the cost vs the profit.

As to what we would or could do....I dont want to consider that...it would be far to bloody.


CH

 

[miles]

crystalhunting

This scares me...Miles and I may agree on something.

LOL!

We probably agree on more things than you think.

 

[Thumper]

Marionettes

are we all.

And Exxon plays the tune we all dance to.

Seems strange that we have gone from being Earth bound to walking on the moon in 66 years and electric battery technology is still mired in the lead acid mode of the llast century. Oil is profitable....

and we will sell our souls for it. We supported the oppressive Saudi's, Hussein's and all the rest just to keep it flowing.




Give me my SUV or give me death.

The US is like a heroin junkie that complains about the high price of his junk. But refuses to kick his habit.

If we did go to war simply because the mideast withheld it's oil then I would denounce this government totally.

When it becomes easier to take by force that which we need(?) or want, rather than thinking of better alternatives, then we become the very antithesis of what we supposedly stand for, and should pass the way of the Roman Empire.