Preparing for the last Oil Bonanza

Whats the plural of bonanza? Bonanzae? The image is called Homer Simpson after Rembrandt, and I found it on limpfish.com, which has Groundskeeper Willie by Van Gogh and some other great timewasting things on it. The pole dancer they replace Princess Leia with in the Star Wars clip also has to be seen to be believed....

One of the things about our great and glorious occupation of the garden of eden and its associated territories(c), is the way it has liberated lots of desperately needed oil fields for western use.

I write that slightly sarcastically, since the Iraqi people will probably benefit from licensing and sales agreements more than they would have under Saddam, and at least the Kurds are getting gas receipts and not being gassed with the proceeds. Still, with the Chinese buying up oil, and the Saudis driving it up, where would western oil companies be without Iraq?

Up a creek, frankly. The allocation of fields for development in Iraq will be announced very soon. Keep an eye out, since there are quite a few interested parties. Regardless of whether you agree with the theory behind it, the idea is gaining ground amongst oil companies and governments that oil at viable prices is in decline. That's what peak oil is.

As a consequence, dirty and somewhat dangerous experiments to develop Canadian tar sands are proceeding apace, as are attempts to find reserves in places like the arctic. Since there is a good chance of global cooling accelerating fairly soon, by all accounts, I think that people may have worked out that the arctic is a diversion. The seabed, currently being carved up under the International convention on the law of the sea, central asia, and the remaining supplies of the Levant are where the action is going to be at.

There is a caveat, which I've put into some of these posts before, but which I feel optimistic enough to re-emphasise here. The capacity of businesses and ordinary people to find ingenious ways to buy time and keep going shouldn't be underestimated. Just last week, for instance, there was a neat story from Australia about liquified natural gas supplies being available that would far exceed the demand of Asia.

The great crunch and sundry discoveries may have bought us the decade or two, provided that we can avoid war, that is needed to re-arrange our energy and to build up coal, new nuclear, and lower-energy lifestyles with new or renewable materials. I write 'may'; my words may just be the wishful thinking of a nice late Spring morning.

Meantime, of course, though the depression hasn't yet pushed down oil to low prices (because it can't), at least the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Venezuelan government are seeing their cash flows restrained. Given what they used to do, or threatened to do, with their money (not least in cash for the Palestine gang leadership) I'm not too appalled. They still get lots in oil revenues, but the saner ones amongst them seem to be in favour of salting the money away rather than giving it to nutcases or stealing it.

That's one of the final ironies of oil, isn't it? It has done tremendous things in plastics, in food production, in the shape of cities and in the ambitions of states. Yet it corrupted and ruined many of those it touched, as cultures and republics as much as people. What if it or gas substitutes finally, at the end, do some last good? What if all that energy stored off the coast of the Palestinian proto-state encouraged them into actually putting down the guns and the men of hate and all that anti-Jewish rubbish and working for the future? They could be sitting on a pot of gas and all they need to do is calm down and let the British and Greeks work for it. Wishful thinking, probably, but why does it need to be?

Europe seems out of the game, given the late entry of the Nabucco project and then all its complications, but I wouldn't write it off completely. Don't be surprised when the politicians start focussing on the oil though--and don't worry. We ought to be past panic. It's almost too late. There is no point to panic at all.

Still, here's Lorne 'Voice of Doom and Authority' Greene singing the Bonanza theme, for no good reason at all other than that it reminds me of my Uncle Columba, may he rest in peace.