How Big Oil Conquered the World

Important understanding about the oil cartel from James Corbett:

Oh Oil, Where is Thy Peak?

F. William Engdahl, journal-neo.org
October 9, 2015

ACS Editor Comment:
For several years I myself was a “peakist”, after reading Michael Ruppert’s book Crossing the Rubicon. Fortunately I decided to revisit the topic and discovered that Ruppert and many others were victims of a very extensive and successful propaganda campaign – science for hire, so to speak. See The Peak Oil Theory Story. Unfortunately, the CO2 climate change theory is another example of science for hire that is being funded and promoted by those who want to install a one world government. Both falsehoods are exposed in John Truman Wolf’s wonderful short but concise exposé The Anatomy of a Con Job.

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There are two great myths used in recent years to convince the world of imminent catastrophe unless we drastically change our living style in the direction of austerity. Both myths are based on scientific fraud and uncritical propagation by sympathetic mainstream and even some alternative media. One is the idea that world climate is warming, or at least “changing,” owing almost solely to us, to our man-made emissions. The second great myth, launched first in 1956 in Houston Texas by an employee of one of the world’s largest oil companies, was dusted off some 15 years ago at the start of the Dick Cheney-George W. Bush Administration. It’s called the theory of Peak Oil.

The good news is our coastal cities are not about to be washed away by melting icebergs or rising oceans, nor is our supply of conventional oil and gas–hydrocarbons–likely to run out for centuries or more. It has nothing to do with the highly damaging and very costly extraction of tight oil from shale rocks, but with the abundance of conventional oil around the world, the vast part of which has yet to be discovered or even mapped.

The most dramatic discoveries of new oil and gas reserves in recent years has come from the Mediterranean in areas off Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon and believed to be offshore Greece as well. In 2010 Israel and the Houston, Texas company, Noble Energy, discovered the largest offshore gas field, Leviathan. It was the world’s largest gas discovery in a decade, with enough gas to serve Israel for at least a century. The geophysics of the offshore areas around Greece suggest that that hapless country could also have more than enough undiscovered oil and gas to repay all foreign debt and more. Not surprisingly the Washington-led IMF demands that Greece privatize her state oil and gas companies, a near certainty that major Western oil firms would sit on their development as was done in past decades until leases expired in 2004 and reverted back to the Greek Government.

We Were Wrong on Peak Oil

Editor’s Note: And George is wrong about CO2 global warming as well! So, why has so much money been thrown at promoting TWO false theories? To create the ‘need’ for a replacement of the petrodollar – the carbon credit electronic currency!

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George Monbiot, The Guardian
Monday 2 July 2012

The facts have changed, now we must change too. For the past 10 years an unlikely coalition of geologists, oil drillers, bankers, military strategists and environmentalists has been warning that peak oil – the decline of global supplies – is just around the corner. We had some strong reasons for doing so: production had slowed, the price had risen sharply, depletion was widespread and appeared to be escalating. The first of the great resource crunches seemed about to strike.

Among environmentalists it was never clear, even to ourselves, whether or not we wanted it to happen. It had the potential both to shock the world into economic transformation, averting future catastrophes, and to generate catastrophes of its own, including a shift into even more damaging technologies, such as biofuels and petrol made from coal. Even so, peak oil was a powerful lever. Governments, businesses and voters who seemed impervious to the moral case for cutting the use of fossil fuels might, we hoped, respond to the economic case.

Some of us made vague predictions, others were more specific. In all cases we were wrong. In 1975 MK Hubbert [originator of the “technocracy” theory], a geoscientist working for Shell who had correctly [foretold] predicted the [orchestrated] decline in US oil production, suggested that global supplies could peak in 1995. In 1997 the petroleum geologist Colin Campbell estimated that it would happen before 2010. In 2003 the geophysicist Kenneth Deffeyes said he was “99% confident” that peak oil would occur in 2004. In 2004, the Texas tycoon T Boone Pickens predicted that “never again will we pump more than 82m barrels” per day of liquid fuels. (Average daily supply in May 2012 was 91m.) In 2005 the investment banker Matthew Simmons maintained that “Saudi Arabia … cannot materially grow its oil production”. (Since then its output has risen from 9m barrels a day to 10m, and it has another 1.5m in spare capacity.)

Peak oil hasn’t happened, and it’s unlikely to happen for a very long time.

Refineries Full, Oil Tanker Sent Back to Alaska

Alex DeMarban, AlaskaDispatch.com
May 01, 2012

“Drill, baby, drill” and other hogwash designed to make Americans think the country can drill its way to cheaper pump prices gets a blast from reality when you consider one pesky fact: Domestic crude-oil production has reached historically high levels yet gas costs haven’t come down to earth.

The unfortunate irony gets play in a Houston Chronicle article that dives into the new oil glut and some of its ramifications. The piece indirectly casts doubt on a favorite argument of pro-drilling politicians, such as our beloved Rep. Don Young.

“Supply and demand, buddy,” is how Alaska’s lone Congressman explains his logic that more domestic drilling leads to cheaper oil. He recently reiterated that message at a meeting in Fairbanks on high fuel prices that included talk of $12 per gallon diesel in rural villages. Of course, Young blasted Obama: If he’d only allow more drilling!

But despite the rhetoric, America appears to be over-supplied with oil. The story starts with a recent tale of a 940-foot tanker that returned to Valdez recently with 300,000 barrels of oil it couldn’t deliver to Washington refineries because onshore storage tanks there were full. Not normal, a state environmental officer in Valdez is quoted as saying.

“Valdez inventories are pretty high. Our inventories are high. Nobody is taking much crude on the West Coast,” Bill Kidd, a spokesman with the BP refinery in Washington, is quoted as saying.

Domestic crude oil stocks are up in part because new drilling technology has increased production. Demand for gasoline is down too, for reasons that include more efficient cars and drivers cutting back to save cash.

So why the heck do gas prices stay aloft? Because the price of crude oil, the mother of gas and other fuels, are set globally. The system aids producers by eliminating price fluctuations tied to local supply and demand.

“The profitable oil production industry benefits from the fact that it operates within a global market,” says the article, which turned to experts such as Richard Newell, former head of the Energy Information Administration. “Fuel conservation in the United States cannot overcome the rising hydrocarbon demand in emerging markets like China and India. The price stays up even where more local market pressures might force it down.”

To Young’s credit, he gets it right when arguing that more oil production creates high-paying jobs, boosts state and federal treasuries and reduces US dependence on foreign oil.

And what about Valdez? Tanks there were more than 90 percent full when the Alaskan Explorer sailed back into port with its unusual load on April 11, the article says.

The reporter says Alyeska spokeswoman Michelle Egan downplayed the significance of the close-to-full tanks. But she also “acknowledged that Alyeska officials begin worrying when the storage tanks at the terminal are over 90 percent full. Such a glut could force a slowdown of oil production on the North Slope. That would reduce flow in the trans-Alaska Pipeline, she said, which can result in increased maintenance problems,” the article said.

Link to original article

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Related

Why would they want to drill when there is plenty of conventional oil available? Answer: The Oil Depletion Allowance