The Tick-Tock of the Clock is Painful...
Posted by Prof. Goose on July 3, 2005 - 3:09pm
Matt Simmons is in the Guardian today (thanks Rajiv!):
Technorati Tags: peak oil, oil
Oil prices could rocket to $100 within six months, plunging the world into an unprecedented fuel crisis, controversial Texan oil analyst Matt Simmons has warned.and then, here's another relevant piece in the Guardian about the US and China:
Occasionally, there are tipping-point moments and we are witnessing one at the moment. Seismic change is afoot. As oil prices breach $60 a barrel and pessimists warn that the world could be as little as 10 years away from a first-order resources crisis, China's largest oil company, CNOOC, has launched a £10 billion bid for one of the US's juiciest medium-sized oil companies, Unocal.
Technorati Tags: peak oil, oil
“Of all races in an advanced stage of civilization, the American is the least accessible to long views… Always and everywhere in a hurry to get rich, he does not give a thought to remote consequences; he sees only present advantages… He does not remember, he does not feel, he lives in a materialist dream.”
—Moiseide Ostrogorski (1902, 302-303)
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Prof. Goose,
I would be curious to hear why you thought the Guardian article was so good, although I think I know the answer. The storyline that China is poking a hypocritical US in the nose is so attractive that the contents don't matter so much. But if you think the US is being hypocritical, you must think the Chinese would let Exxon buy CNOOG.
Other statements in the article were also fairly dubious: The first one I have quoted below claims that China is after oil that Unocal owns in Sotheast Asia and could pipe back for their own use. Below that the whole concept of peak oil is pretty much shrugged off.
"Unocal's attraction is that its oil reserves are all in central and south east Asia, and once owned by China can be moved into China overland."
"...experts like Erasmus University's Professor Peter Odell believe that, far from oil reserves running out, the earliest world production might peak is well after 2050, and that takes no account of more efficient energy use. Today's upward oil price spike won't last long. There is more than enough oil for China."
If the political tone of the article had been different, you would have ripped it to shreds. I thought the article below from the Economist, although it addresses Chinese companies ambitions more broadly, is a much more informative and accurate piece, but of course I do know that's not what most of your readers are looking for.
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=4127399
As you know, I do ascribe to peak oil and think the US should sell the Chinese Uncoal and anything else they want to overpay for. I just think analysis and emotion are best served separately.
that's fair Jack.
and, just to be clear, I meant good as in relevant (which I have changed the post to read), not good as in "the bees knees."
I do want to try to be fair and even-keeled, so I'm going to post the economist piece above, with the same tone as this post, sometime tomorrow.
I really do want people to feel free to express their views and ideas here, and I thank you for your candor.
pedantic point...the article is actually in the Observer which is a sister paper to the Guardian. They have a completely separate set of journalists. I don't know if this point would ever matter but they don't have a "party" line between them. In fact Will Hutton, who wrote a piece on oil yesterday (he namechecked Paul Roberts' The End of Oil) in the Observer has been at some of the Bilderberg meetings. Cue scary "woo-woo" sound.
That's an excellent article from the Economist, Jack. If PG is going to start a thread for it, I'll post my comments there.
Dave: it's up in the post above this one...