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The end of the Arab world’s oil age is nigh
- kelvin0 6y agoIt's far more profitable to mine the spice on Arrakis then to use solar energy.
- throw1234651234 6y agoArchive link please? Also, won't the price bounce back after COVID? We are nowhere near sustainable on renewables.
- gruez 6y agoI'm getting catchas when trying to access archive.is, so I ended up using outline instead https://outline.com/myj3NB https://outline.com/myj3NB >Also, won't the price bounce back after COVID? addressed in the article. >With commerce resuming, the price has ticked back up, though a peak in demand may be years away. >But don’t be fooled. The world’s economies are moving away from fossil fuels. Oversupply and the increasing competitiveness of cleaner energy sources mean that oil may stay cheap for the foreseeable future. The recent turmoil in oil markets is not an aberration; it is a glimpse of the future. The world has entered an era of low prices—and no region will be more affected than the Middle East and north Africa.
- fred_is_fred 6y agoFracking producers in the US act as a cap or brake on prices. When prices hit $50/barrel, some oil shale becomes profitable and comes online. When it hits $60, more does, and at $100, even more, etc etc.
- Robotbeat 6y agoNot only that, but the costs for frakking have become much lower in the US as oil companies have gotten better at cost control. The US’s generous bankruptcy system also makes it fairly straightforward for companies to shed debt and continue operating. And unlike the Middle East, Low fossil fuel prices are a boon to the rest of the economy, so you don’t experience broad societal decay and upheaval due to low fossil fuel prices but instead higher stability.... This is why a diversified economy is so important because it reduces hysteresis losses in the case of sectoral interruptions.
- m12k 6y agoYay, maybe the West can stop invading countries and propping up dictators once there's no valuable natural resources there. I just read that back, and I really wish I was kidding.
- lordnacho 6y agoIt's not all bad. If your economy depends on simply taking money right out of the ground, the government will make sure that's done, but with zero accountability. An economy with more diverse interests will also be one where no interest has total power and will need to explain itself. Edit: yes, the transition is gonna be painful.
- albntomat0 6y agoThat makes sense, but I am worried about the path from where many Middle East oil producers are right now, and a future where they have a robust economy based on diversified production.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wolco 6y agoUEI, Qutar, Saudi Arabia have started the process. It might be similiar.
- golergka 6y agoThat makes sense, but omits the fact that transition from one state to the other can be very bloody.
- rbanffy 6y agoAnd the end state is hard to predict
- Fragoel2 6y agoIn fact we're going to see a great difference between those nations that invested the "money from the ground" to develop an economy and those who used it to buy soccer teams.
- toyg 6y agoFootball teams at a certain scale can be self-sustaining PR machines. Take Manchester United or Real Madrid: they largely make enough money to stay afloat and competitive, while at the same time opening a lot of doors for their owners/controllers. Man United is even an actual profit generator for its owners. I think a bunch of those flashy oil-money acquisitions that were seen as wasteful, will eventually be recognised as a decent diversifying strategy in sectors where barriers to entry are very high. The Emirates airline was initially seen as a white elephant, but it kickstarted the Dubai hub and was, overall, a pretty strategic move.
- bulgr0z 6y ago> No Arab oil producer, save tiny Qatar, can balance its books at the current price, around $40 (see chart). This is pretty much an open secret for anyone following the price of oil, but how can Aramco still brag about producing for less than $10 [1] a barrel while the kingdom is openly hurting from the current prices ? [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/03/16/oil-prices-fall-further-as-virus-kills-demand-ahead-of-saudi-flood/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/03/16/oi...
- dageshi 6y agoFrom what I recall reading on previous threads here, their production prices are that low but the country itself requires much higher prices to balance the books.
- wigl 6y agoTechnically SA wouldn't be the only country in the area to be able to produce a bbl under $40, but as you and others have echoed, that's not the whole story.
- kiriliponi 6y agoThe cost of production and the price level required to balance the government's budget are two different things.
- pa7x1 6y agoCorrect, to further explain the difference. The budget is drawn with a certain assumption of the price of oil, which nets them an expected profit per barrel with which they can balance income and expenses. If the price of oil is lower than that they may still make a profit per barrel but the budget is not balanced anymore and they will run deficits.
- koheripbal 6y agoThis is why higher oil prices seem to correlate with military adventures.
- albntomat0 6y agoWhat other sources have written about how this will affect other oil producers with 'interesting' political situations, such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran? Looking for recommendations of similar articles.
- konschubert 6y agoI think the price will recover a fair bit more. As low as it is, it will keep pushing out other energy sources until demand goes up. But for the sake of mankind and planet, I hope shale never becomes profitable again.
- athesyn 6y agoThey've been saying this for the past 20 years and even though it's inevitable it's still nowhere near our lifetimes.
- Dumblydorr 6y agoHow do you figure that? The Saudis have a ton of cheap oil, but they still want high prices and high demand. It's one thing to say they will sell to petrochemical forever, but IMO peak oil was reached in 2019, which isn't good for countries whose main revenue is oil.
- martythemaniak 6y agoWe have mainstream electric vehicles now and more are on the way. A very large part (40-60%) of petroleum is used for gasoline. That will wreak havoc on oil producing places, although who gets hit how hard and what consequences it has is impossible to say.
- toyg 6y agoAs more oil is freed up by reduced demand in transport, I wonder whether we will see more cheap plastic flooding our cities. People are switching to electric in part because they are keen to reduce their reliance on petrol (and its cost), but nobody is really moving away from plastic.
- nsl73 6y agoThere is a push to move away from disposable plastic. Why else were paper straws such a big deal?
- nsl73 6y agoThe developing world, a group very cost sensitive and unlikely to switch for environmental reasons, is putting gasoline vehicles on the road much faster than the developed road is taking them off. For electric vehicles to eat the world they have to be cheaper than gasoline counterparts. Not only for luxury electric vehicles to be cheaper than luxury gasoline vehicles, but for the cheapest gasoline motorcycle/scooter/car to be more expensive than the cheapest electric motorcycle/scooter/car. Given the current cost materials inside a battery/electric engine compared to the current cost of materials inside a combustion engine it’s unlikely to happen with our current approach.
- Dumblydorr 6y agoSaudi Arabia missed a huge opportunity in the 2010s. They could be one of the biggest solar players in the world, they are equatorial with a ton of cloudless desert land for utility scale. They waffled on their impulsive solar plans and they are years behind where smart policy could've put them. Step back and just imagine: they are burning oil for electricity in one of the best solar markets possible. Burning oil for electricity is like using whale oil for lamps, it's harming your own society and planet due to myopic decision making.
- csunbird 6y agoHave you ever been there? Solar panels would be extremely useless because of the sand building up everywhere. I mean, literally, people never open up their windows, because of the extreme amounts of sand in the air.
- Robotbeat 6y agoFar from accurate. The price of solar power in the Middle East is record low, on the order of 1 cent per kilowatt-hour.
- csunbird 6y agoMy experience visiting there disagrees. They have a large amount of land, but they also have sandstorms, along with sand being everywhere. In the long run, the maintenance should outweigh the benefits, unless they find a way to deal with this issue.
- zigzagzog 6y agoGood, now they can go back to being a third world backwater and stop influencing western politics and financing the spread of Islam.
- Robotbeat 6y agoHopefully they will be able to transition to a more sustainable economy based on development of manufacturing and export of higher quality goods. As others have noted, they have some of the best solar resource in the world, but that’s not as easily exported. More like farming than oil production. To take advantage of it, they’ll need local industry. https://www.alternativeenergyhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/SolarGIS-Solar-map-World-map-en.png https://www.alternativeenergyhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/...
- ArkVark 6y agoThis is unlikely as they have the advantage of neither cheap labor, nor a highly intelligent workforce: https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php They are limited by an ideology/culture which discourages women from participating in the workforce or receiving an education, and also encourages cousin marriage (60-70% of marriages in Saudi Arabia) which lowers IQ and leads to birth defects https://english.alarabiya.net/en/life-style/art-and-culture/2015/04/04/Health-fears-question-Arab-tradition-of-cousin-marriages- https://english.alarabiya.net/en/life-style/art-and-culture/... I think its more likely that Arab leaders will siphon off as much wealth as possible then flee to London and other tax havens. The survivors will be left to fight over the scraps and places like Saudi Arabia will come to resemble Yemen (which is a country which simply exhausted its oil reserves faster than the rest).
- ackbar03 6y agoThis seems like a huge issue and a major social/economic trend going forward... As a startup how do I take advantage of this?
- mothsonasloth 6y agoDoes this mean Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations will go bankrupt after their state sponsored funding dries up? I don't mean this in an inflammatory way. All I can see from this is more instability in the Middle-East which means more bad news in the years to come... Perhaps Turkey will take up a bigger role in the future for policing the Middle East as they have a more diversified economy?
- DSingularity 6y agoYeah I agree with your conclusion. Instability in the present is due to western interest maintaining their dictatorships. Instability in the future will be as the western policies shift and they cut and run for whatever reasons. I’d like to think that will come when we realize the immorality of our policies but it will probably just be when our interests shift. Maybe that’s why Israel is ramping up their annexations and colonization of the West Bank. If the west loses interest in the Middle East they may lose interest in maintaining Israeli geo-political supremacy.
- ilstormcloud 6y ago>Maybe that’s why Israel is ramping up their annexations and colonization of the West Bank. This is probably because they don't expect Trump to be reelected. Now is their chance.
- benja123 6y agoYou are mistaken to assume the west is the reason for the present instability in the Middle East. You can argue it plays a large part, but it's part is no bigger than Russia, China and Turkey (I am intentionally leaving out Iran and Saudi Arabia, although both countries are presently creating havoc in the middle east) who are all busy propping up dictatorships in the middle east. For a counterpoint I am going to argue the opposite. The west and the other major powers are possibly one of the reasons the middle east is relatively stable today (all things considered) and without them the Middle East would actually be in a much worse place. If we were to assume that if the west and others never propped up the current set of dictators and we would have instead ended up with some type of democracies or at the very least relatively stable regimes than you would probably be right. But who is to say we wouldn't have ended up with an endless cycle of civil wars or regimes that are much worse than the ones we have right now? The middle east is a very religious and tribal place in which the borders were badly demarcated (thank you France, Great Britain, Italy and Russia). The poorly planned division of the middle east + the sunni/shia divide have been the main driver of the current conflicts and instability in the Middle east. Oil has been the curse that has brought in the world powers and has provided funding for most of these conflicts. Oil has also prevented these countries from seeking alternative, modern industries. I do agree if oil revenue dries up and major powers pull their support for the current dictatorships, it will be a disaster, at least in the short to medium term. You will get civil wars in one of the most militarized places on earth. I would also argue that contrary to popular belief Israel has been a stabilizing factor in the middle east. There are two main reasons for this. 1. Hatred of Israel is the one thing that unites the arab world. 2. Dictatorships need a way to distract their population. There is no greater distraction than a mortal enemy. In fact if you compare the arab-israeli conflict to other modern conflicts in the middle east, it has been pretty minor in terms of costs, damage and casualties. The middle east is an interesting place, a place I call home and a place I love, but extremely complicated. And last point: with regards to Bibbi and his plan to annex parts of the west bank. What he is planning is really not that popular here in Israel. For the right wing, he isn't annexing enough and the annexation will still allow for a palestinian state. For the center and left wing it's not really going to change anything on the ground but will cause a lot of damage to how we are perceived internationally. Even if the annexation does go through it does not mean that the "annexed" territory can't and won't be given up in the framework of a peace agreement. IMO Bibbi is trying to do it for internal political reasons and he knows he won't be able to do it once Trump is gone so this is his chance (another possibility is he wants to make it look like he tried to annex parts of the west bank, without the intention of actually doing so. He will blame someone like Gantz saying they stopped him, which will get him some more right wing votes while not antagonizing the center voters - it would be very Bibbi like).
- Shivetya 6y agoAny article about oil profits declining should really make to to mention Russia because if their economy starts to tank from loss of too much income from this trade it could lead to more adventurism by their leadership.
- koheripbal 6y agoI wonder who they'd invade next... Armenia? The rest of Ukraine? Turkey?
- Balgair 6y agoWhatever they (Vlad) are going to do, they have a closing window to do it in. Russia's population is expected to fall to ~130 million by 2050 [0]. The dual upcoming hits of reduced fuel purchasing and climate change are not going to affect Russia well. Their petrorubles are not likely to maintain a punch in a solar/wind/etc world. And as the temperate zones move towards the poles, with the grain belts tagging along, all of Russia's neighbors are likely to look at that unmanned land in a more hungry way. Their southernly neighbors of India and China are still growing in population to ~3B combined in 2050, let alone all the other countries. Whatever balance there is now will change with a hungrier and hotter populace. In some ways, these issues with Donny and Boris are amazing feats of engineering. But they are only delaying the inevitable. Whatever they (Vlad) are planning on doing, I don't see how they get out of this hole. Sure, they bought time and space to move, but that time is limited. The next election in the US is likely to reveal more of their (Vlad's) hand. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
- koheripbal 6y agoOn one hand, you're saying their land is going to be more valuable - and then on the other you're saying their land is going to suffer under climate change. Your analysis seems very politically motivated, rather than objectively looking at probable outcomes. If anything, more fertile land will drive immigration, not invasion, and help solve their demographic problems.
- curiousllama 6y agoA couple points to keep in mind, that make this a bit overblown: (1) While COVID is a negative demand shock, but is likely rather temporary (2) Non-COVID oil demand is declining, but is more of a melting glacier. Infrastructure-level energy operates on looooooong cycles due to immense cost. COVID doesn't change that. (3) The recent misfortune of the fracking industry is likely less temporary. Demand is more likely to recover short term than supply. 2030 has perhaps become 2020, as the article suggests, but that doesn't mean 2022 will be what we thought 2032 will be. We can't just pretend we're all the sudden up the maturity curve with renewables just because demand dropped for a few months.
- anoraca 6y agoMany companies switching to work from home will definitely have an impact on gas usage: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-15/new-work-from-home-culture-will-cut-billions-of-miles-of-driving https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-15/new-work-...
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago>But don’t be fooled. The world’s economies are moving away from fossil fuels. There is absolutely no evidence for this, and much to the contrary. Global CO2 production, which is a good proxy for overall fossil fuel use as steadily risen [0]. This comparison is limited only in that it fails to show that switching from coal to LNG does decrease emissions while doing nothing to change reliance on fossil fuels. The dip in emissions and oil production that happen with the pandemic demonstrate very clearly that emissions and fossil fuel consumption are directly tied to our economic activity. Since our goal is to resume to "normal" as soon as possible global fossil fuel consumption will get back to "normal" as soon as our economies do (now what plays out there is an interesting question). Bizarre that the Economist can make an assertion like that and people swallow it without question. [0]. https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019 https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019
- crunchyfrog 6y agoThe report you link says the same thing: > Emissions trends for 2019 suggest clean energy transitions are underway, led by the power sector.
- Retric 6y agoUS fossil fuel consumption has been dropping for a while, with per person emissions peaked in the 70’s. Population growth offset that, but total US CO2 emissions peaked in 2007. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb... Globally population and economic growth has hidden the trends, but kg per PPP $ of GDP shows very steady improvements. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD This goes beyond simple efficiency gains, fossil fuels are inherently limited in what they can provide and we are moving past them.
- caymanjim 6y agoYou're citing evidence of falling emissions, but that doesn't mean consumption has fallen. It looks like US fossil fuel consumption peaked in 2005, slightly above the mid-70s peak, based on data from the US Energy Information Administration[1]. It's split out into petroleum/coal/natural gas categories, but some hovering and mental math shows 2005 was the peak. The preceding decade was about as high as the mid 70s. There's a significant drop after 2007, but still not below the early 70s level. US energy is cleaner now, and the percentage of total energy from fossil fuels has been steadily decreasing since 1970 [2], but total consumption of fossil fuels is still high. Edit: this isn't per-capita; the per-capita numbers would definitely be lower. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10 [2]: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fossil-fuel-consumption https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/foss...
- macspoofing 6y ago>But don’t be fooled. The world’s economies are moving away from fossil fuels. To what?!? If your geography does not allow for large scale hydro or geothermal development, then your only alternative is Nuclear or Fossil Fuels. Solar and wind need base load provided by Fossil Fuels to be remotely viable and clearly are not capable of replacing fossil fuels.
- teraku 6y agoThis is not true. There is a bunch of papers and releases by universities, that show that if you manage your power grid properly, which is already done for any grid having more than 15% renewables, you actually gain an advantage with their flexibility and can work around any base-load problem.
- macspoofing 6y ago>you actually gain an advantage with their flexibility and can work around any base-load problem. I'm not sure what you mean by 'base-load problem', but what I mean is that you need a fossil-fuel base-load.
- gerbal 6y agoDo various sorts of batteries (gravity, fly-wheels, LiON) provide reasonable alternatives for some base load and peak generation?
- imtringued 6y agoI personally am a fan of gravity batteries but the amount of scammy companies operating in the space is dragging the entire field down. The energy density of weights is really low so manufacturing a weight is absolutely uneconomical. What you want to do is take material from a landscape. Usually this means pumping water up a hill but you can also carve out a hydraulic cylinder out of the landscape and use water to lift it. [0] It has absolutely insane scaling potential. Energy capacity grows like so: r^4. Doubling the radius increases energy capacity 16 fold. Energy storage up to 1.6TWh is definitively possible. Of course this is so ambitious that it might never get built but I can definitively tell you that a crane system like this would be barely economical [1] because weights are really expensive but it's a good attempt and can be refined further. And finally here is an example of a scam concept: [2] Digging shafts is unaffordable unless you reuse old mine shafts which would reduce the number of shafts in the picture to just a single one. If you can only have one weight per generator that means the system doesn't scale. The power density of lifting a 1000 ton rock 100m high is pathetic. It's just 270kWh. The cost of the concrete is negligible in this scenario but you won't find a generator that is cheap enough to compete with a conventional battery. However, to stay realistic. Gravity batteries are about as likely to happen as everyone suddenly switching to nuclear power. The odds aren't great. [0] http://www.eduard-heindl.de/energy-storage/energy-storage-system.html http://www.eduard-heindl.de/energy-storage/energy-storage-sy... [1] https://insights.globalspec.com/images/assets/784/10784/Energy_Vault_35MWh_Storage_System.jpg https://insights.globalspec.com/images/assets/784/10784/Ener... [2] https://offgridquest.com/images/banners/gravitybattery.png https://offgridquest.com/images/banners/gravitybattery.png
- ur-whale 6y ago> Pain will be felt across the region And much relief will be felt across the rest of the world.
- charlysl 6y agoTHE Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil. Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country's oil minister five decades ago, quoted by the Economist in 2003 ("The End of the Oil Age"). [0] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/10/23/the-end-of-the-oil-age https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/10/23/the-end-of-the-...
- rapnie 6y agoYes, 17 years ago.. > Hydrogen fuel cells and other ways of storing and distributing energy are no longer a distant dream but a foreseeable reality. And that was said at least 20 years earlier still. I really hope we'll reach the end of the Oil Age, but as one gets older it becomes hard not to be sceptical of these claims. Seeing is believing.. more evidence. In this thread so far only one comment mentioned geo-politics surrounding oil - a building block of global power - that needs to be dealt with. Hampering the transition to clean energy.
- jseliger 6y agoI really hope we'll reach the end of the Oil Age, but as one gets older it becomes hard not to be sceptical of these claims. Seeing is believing.. more evidence. Tesla keeps outperforming other car makers, even in a difficult environment: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/tech/tesla-sales/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/tech/tesla-sales/index.html. VW's electrics are about to hit: https://electrek.co/2020/07/13/volkswagen-vw-id-3-electric-car-july-20/ https://electrek.co/2020/07/13/volkswagen-vw-id-3-electric-c.... Electric semis are moving towards production, by Tesla, Daimler, and others. Even electric bikes and scooters are still seeing massive sales growth. If you've not tried you, you should. The change is happening. Long-haul plane flights will remain on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future but the rest of the world is changing, fast.
- rapnie 6y agoYes, I don't deny there are good signs to be hopeful this time. Also those energy packs, once no longer usable in a car, can still be used for years for domestic solar energy storage.
- ur-whale 6y agohttp://archive.is/FMaId http://archive.is/FMaId
- christiansakai 6y agoI'm trying to go more into investing in green energy/renewable/alternative of some sort. If the world is going to end in 50 years due to fossil fuels then might as well put my money in the alternatives. I have some things in mind but maybe HN readers can give me a few suggestions on what to read/look.
- koheripbal 6y agoWhat do you mean by "investing"?
- christiansakai 6y agoI meant by putting money into index fund.
- koheripbal 6y agoAlternative startups aren't great investments - even on the index level, because of the large number of corporate failures that happen. Think about the complete collapse of the US solar industry a few years ago. Solar might win, but that mean the companies that make it will be part of the index you invest in.
- christiansakai 6y agoYeah I am aware of that. I think for me just a way of putting my money where my mouth is. I won’t put everything there of course
- joelbluminator 6y agoI bought this ETF https://www.ishares.com/nl/particuliere-belegger/nl/producten/251911/ishares-global-clean-energy-ucits-etf https://www.ishares.com/nl/particuliere-belegger/nl/producte... , if you're not familiar with the concept of ETF it's best you read about it but basically it's a basket of stocks that follow a certain index, in this instance its the global clean energy index
- john4534243 6y agoThe Arab world failed to use the opportunity. They could have invested more in education and built in home research labs, etc. Instead they used the money to build more taller buildings and imported the tech while the culture never changed.
- adventured 6y ago> So the end of this era need not be disastrous if it prompts reforms that create more dynamic economies and representative governments. There is no scenario where it won't be disastrous. The most important number in the Middle East is barrels of oil (produced) per capita. That figure has been falling for decades and is reaching critical low levels (as represented by their budget situations). What the Middle East producers have to try to do economically, is like trying to replace the landing gear on a 747 while you're hurtling down the runway. They don't just have to plot for replacing oil vs their economy today (a nearly impossible task), they have to do it and come up with enough economy to manage another 100% increase in population in the next few decades. Realistically it's impossible, it will end in catastrophe; the conflicts (including civil) will be far larger, matching the size of the population increases. As the regimes melt under the pressure, wars will spiral out from it. Neither the House of Saud nor the Iranian theocracy will survive it intact. Here is the population expansion for some prominent OPEC members since 1970: Saudi Arabia: 5.8m -> 34m (486%) (Saudi's oil production hasn't gone up much in 40 years, and their population has increased by 250% in that time; a lot more mouths to feed, dramatically fewer barrels per capita) Iraq: 10m -> 40m (300%) Iran: 28m -> 84m (200%) Egypt: 34m -> 100m (194%) Oman: 700k -> 5m (614%) Kuwait: 750k -> 4m (433%) Libya: 2m -> 6.6m (230%) Sudan: 10m -> 42m (320%) Algeria: 14m -> 44m (214%)
- sremani 6y agoIn spite of its flaws -- twitter is probably best place for finding top-shelf analysts and their opinion for free. For Oil follow: @anasalhajji https://twitter.com/anasalhajji/status/1284132912850522115 https://twitter.com/anasalhajji/status/1284132912850522115 Enjoy!
- minikites 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum >A quote commonly attributed to Sheikh Rashid, "My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel", reflected his concern that Dubai's oil, which was discovered in 1966 and which began production in 1969, would run out within a few generations.
- davidf18 6y agoPrior to the oil embargo of 1973, the cost of a barrel of oil in today's dollars was about $23. In 1973, OPEC created an artificial scarcity, "economic rents", in oil transferring and over the past five decades "robbed consumers" of trillions of dollars of wealth transferred to oil rich nations such as those in the Middle East. These "economic rents" not only harmed consumers but they helped certain oil rich nations such as Russia and Iran to invade other nations. The hope is that with US fracking and oil export, the days of more than $50 per barrel oil is over. It is estimated that the Arabs spent $1 trillion of wealth to combat Israel. Imagine, if instead of attempting to destroy Israel they had partnered with it investing in the "Startup Nation?" Had that happened, the Middle East may have been a very wealthy region for all of it's citizens. Historian Paul Johnson wrote an article in Commentary in 2005 called "The Anti-Semitic Disease" along these lines. [1] [1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Anti-Semitic-Disease-Johnson/65c0aa0fddb84641518c22aef8f409e95b4c3942 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Anti-Semitic-Disea...
- notmyfriend 6y agoFossil fuels are only part of the usage. Oil and hydrocarbons are used in a lot industrial production, housing, foams, chemical plants etc. Even if you somehow replaced all fossil fuels with some other energy alternative (nuclear container ships, electric cars, trucks, trains and planes) you would still use a massive amount of hydrocarbons from oil and gas to power the worlds economy. And before you say use plant based hydrocarbons. It's kind of perverse to use trees and food crops to create fuel and industrial products.
- ryder9 6y agoi read this article 10 years ago, and i'll read it 10 years from now
- psadri 6y agoAs demand for oil falls, it will get cheaper, making it more attractive and alternative energy less competitive. It’s a weird dynamic. We literally need to run out of the stuff or pass laws that make it much more expensive (by taking into account its real environmental cost).
- known 6y ago"If it moves tax it. If it keeps moving regulate it. And if it stops moving subsidize it" --Reagan
- chansiky 6y agoJust because we eliminate oil as a source of energy doesn't mean we end its dominance. The stone, bronze, iron age were not about using them as fuel. Plastics are still everywhere and not about to change any time soon.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoGoogle: Percent of oil used for plastics? Answer: 4%
- PHGamer 6y agooil is used for so much more than gas...
- thecleaner 6y ago... and with it hopefully Wahabi Islam with other more peaceful sects raking up more influence.