[King Nothing]

Well guys don't ever expect it to drop down again, and be ready to be paying it for the next 50 years. As I said in the other thread, I've just come back from a conference which had presentations from global resource experts. The world will be dependant on fossil fuels for at least the next 50 years, it simply isn't possible with current and foreseable technology to economically replace it.

Now it won't be conventional crude powering the world, it will be things like shale oil and oil sands. Which is a shame, because these processes are more expensive to operate, not to mention more polluting. So when they replace traditional crude, it will NEVER drop back down significantly as the production costs are higher. They will still be turning a massive profit, but the big oil companies will want to maintain the margin.

The world has used about ~1 trillion barrels of oil. The canadian oil sands alone has about 1.7 trillion barrels. Venezuala has a hell of a lot as well. We have so much it isn't funny. Then there is shale oil. There is about 2 trillion barrels in North America. Even relatively unexplored Queensland has about 16 billion barrels. At around $140/barrel, that is hundreds of trillions of dollars, far too much money for any corporation or government to ignore. And then there is coal-to-liquid technology, God knows how much oil we can get from that.

There is nothing wrong with the technology, it works, it's just been the economics that has held it back. There has been about 3 waves of interest in shale oil, the biggest being during the oil crisis in the 70s. Heaps of money was poured into projects, but when oil dropped back down again the money didn't make sense. But this time, if we really are running out, then these technologies will come out to play.

So be prepared to be shafted for the next lifetime. My prediciton is that biodiesel and electric cars will be on the road, but won't be the majority for some time as they are relatively expensive at the moment (for your average battler anyway), and will probably be held back by oil interested anyway.

My own little crazy conspiracy is that the US is deliberately trying to use up arab oil before they release their own sources, and developing the technology in the meantime. Look how rich the arabs are, now imagine that money in a stable western democracy. The US would control the world for another century!

Now chuck in carbon taxes. China has recently commissioned 800,000 MW of coal fired power stations! They are not going to shut them down, so if the world takes on a carbon tax system, it will have to be sequestered at massive cost.

The idea is we need to reduce emissions, generally by controlling emissions compared to a previous baseline. This could potentially be used to stunt the progress of developing nations such as China and India. Let alone Africa when it eventually gets going, if ever.

So the situation would be, the arabs have no oil left hence no control, the US controls the majority of the world's supply of oil, developing nations are strangled by carbon trading schemes, or simply by costs controlled by the US. And we keep paying massive amounts to fill our falcons until our grandkids are old men. The question is, who would we prefer to control energy? The yanks or the arabs? The only upside I could see is that Australia does have large reserves of shale oil, not massive but could help insulate us. Surely I'm not that crazy?