"What's happening? We don't get it!"
You would if you had been listening to what we have been saying for eighteen months. Peak Oil is here. The world is starting to run out. There is no more oil to find and what's left can't be put into your gas tank or our power generating stations quickly. Global production capacity is stretched like a rubber band about to break and the slightest hiccup in world oil production will crash the global economy like a Styrofoam cup under an elephant's foot at a Rave party. Don't believe me? Well then perhaps recent warnings by Goldman Sachs and James Baker might. Those warnings, and an incredibly precise economic analysis by Marshall Auerback, were recently published by The Prudent Bear at: www.prudentbear.com.
To make it simple, the problem is this: In spite of microscopic fig leaves stating that OPEC will ramp up production to meet oil needs, the fact is that OPEC just can't do it. Goldman Sachs knows it. James Baker knows it. Bush knows it. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, having survived U.S. coup attempts, now holds a "whip hand" as Venezuelan production still lags behind. Saudi Arabia is unstable. Nigeria, the world's sixth largest producer ... just had an oil strike. Its production is down and every other producing facility is on overtime. In the latest issue of FTW we poke yet another hole in the grand illusion about an Iraqi windfall. It may take two to five years and as much as $50 billion in new investment to increase Iraqi production from two to five million barrels a day as the rest of the world's reserves dry up.
The planet is currently consuming a billion barrels of oil every 12 days. Peak Oil is here now. What difference does it make if Saudi Arabia and OPEC might be able to add five million barrels a day? It's who gets it that matters.
Worse, countries like India and Pakistan have announced a version of panic buying to build up their reserves before the war. This places a further strain on production capacity. With the invasion, if the Iraqi supply is interrupted for just a month then the markets will see the light and there will be a capitulation sell-off on Wall Street that might take the Dow down to 4000. Ten million could be unemployed inside of six months. U.S. reserves are at 27 year lows and the administration is prepared to open up our Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) which can sustain the US for about 75 days. Tap into the SPR and what do you think prices will do? And if prices double or triple what do you think will happen to your job? Your checkbook?
Gas prices have not yet begun to rise. This is what FTW has been saying since October of 2001. There may soon come a day when we will all look back on $2 gas the way I look back on the 28 cent premium gas I bought in 1969.
Now think for a moment what happens if the U.S. backs down, as I think it should. 36% of all the proven recoverable reserves in the world are in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Not all oil reserves are recoverable. Only lunatics believe that wells, pipelines and refineries are already in place and paid for in the smaller fields that have not been developed. A perceived American power vacuum would unleash a polite, at first, but ultimately frantic, scramble for Saudi and Iraqi oil in the full knowledge that whoever loses out will be the first civilization to collapse; the first of many.
Yes, it all makes perfect sense.