Not that I'm an expert or anything, but let the record show that I have long been suspicious of sky-is-falling we're-out-of-oil predictions for the last 40 years. And look at what's happening:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... to-change/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-0 ... reads.html
What's happening is things change.
US Oil boom
Re: US Oil boom
I agree that the amount of available oil is not the problem. The problem is and has been since who knows when is that the cost of oil is not based on supply and demand. It is based on what they can get away with by "producing" less to drive up prices. It is probably the single most price manipulated product on the market.
I am not anti capitalist, but when you have very very few companies (it is the government's fault, they are supposed to regulate this...) controling a necessity, free market doesn't work. You can't have a hurricane (Katrina) that drives up gas prices, yet the oil companies made redord PROFITS. If the cost of gas went up truly due to the natural disaster, then PROFIT would have been the same or less, not more. The excess cost should only have paid for the extra loss that the company incurred due to the disaster.
Rant over,
What I am getting at is that it doesn't matter how much oil there is if the companies that control it hold us hostage and produce little to keep the cost up.
I am not anti capitalist, but when you have very very few companies (it is the government's fault, they are supposed to regulate this...) controling a necessity, free market doesn't work. You can't have a hurricane (Katrina) that drives up gas prices, yet the oil companies made redord PROFITS. If the cost of gas went up truly due to the natural disaster, then PROFIT would have been the same or less, not more. The excess cost should only have paid for the extra loss that the company incurred due to the disaster.
Rant over,
What I am getting at is that it doesn't matter how much oil there is if the companies that control it hold us hostage and produce little to keep the cost up.