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"Oil is not a crop that will rot in the field if left unpicked." Kind of. You can almost draw contour lines of "your economy must be this healthy at this time
by VLM 11y ago
"Oil is not a crop that will rot in the field if left unpicked."
Kind of. You can almost draw contour lines of "your economy must be this healthy at this time to pull this much oil out of the ground at this contour line five years later". That can turn into an optimism vs pessimism thing very quickly. Also note that we're not talking about attitudes toward the american economy in that most of our resources have been drained and burned... After you burn the easy oil you go after the less stable suppliers. Will the Saudi Royal Family still be in power in a decade, for example? Is Iraq a stable oil supplier and if so how much longer? And so on.
- pjc50 11y agoOil drilling expertise is globally mobile. If the oil is there and economically extractable, companies will supply the capital and equipment to get it out. The interesting thing about the US is that it has run out of cheap oil, but was becoming self-sufficient in more expensive fracked oil (plus Canadian tar sands). The middle east has a colossal delayed-Malthus problem in that some countries have populations that are entirely economically dependent on oil+gas revenue. Yemen would be fine if it had enough oil; as it is, it's running out of water and the civil war will continue until enough people are dead or fled that it's sustainable again. I wouldn't bet on Saudi Arabia avoiding a civil war in the next 20 years.