AutoblogGreen

Hear Hear! Good post. And @ No17 > I am also "glad the Future is Electric."

Reply

meme @20, I think we are in almost complete agreement. All of the new oil producing technologies are profitable only if the price of oil stays high. The higher the price is, the more profitable they are. The age of cheap oil is coming to a close. That is exactly what the premise of Peak Oil is. We are not going to see $40 oil ever again.

It may very well be possible to extract great quantities of oil from the Bakken, but that reamains to be proven. The one certainty is that it will not be cheap or easy.

Given the enormous amounts of money involved, in the trillions of dollars, and the high mallability of our elected officials, it is very likely that big oil will steer us into their preferred alternative. Right now their preference is for us to keep buying oil, at higher prices. Down the road, it looks like they prefer hydrogen, or at least anything other than battery electrics.

Reply

that article is crap, the US has WAAAAY more more under it then that.

I would name them...but everyone else allready has.

I think we should be moving towards electric cars, but Its not unrealistis in saying that cars powered by oil will still be the highest sold ones for at least 20 years to come.

I'm glad to see that hey are increasing drilling in North Dakota (bakken field), I hope we continue to get our oil from underneath us, and not thousands of miles away.

Just want to throw this out there, for the global warming crowd (meaning those who still believe Gore), our planet is getting colder, not warmer, it hasn't been this globably cold since 1998.


I dont think we (humans) are having any "planet-wide" effect on earth.

Reply

Big Oil may be fighting a losing battle at this point because they are going up against Big Dumb. It is very difficult combat dumbness just because of what it is. Big Dumb is also going to give us compact florescent light bulbs in place of what has worked wonderfully and economically for years. Big Dumb is on a roll, so it will probably take something catastrophic to head off the economic and social disasters we are setting ourselves up for.

Reply

There are oil companies and there are refinery (or gas) companies. Sometimes they are the same thing. Sometimes they aren't.

This is not about the oil end of it. Its about the refinery or gasoline end of the business.

Hybrids don't scare the refinery side of game. The price of gas is so inelastic they can easily make up the profits from 20-30% drop in consumption that 100% hybrid implimentation might bring. And that reduction is over optimistic since there is a premium to pay for hybrid capability. Regardless, any drop in demand for oil and decreases costs in general. Profits can more or less be preserved.

Alternatives like ethanol are a different story. Ethonal has the least impact on the vehicle users in car capability and cost. Corn based ethanol doesn't seem like much of threat. But once cellulosic ethanol started to seem more practical, they started pushing back against ethanol. They primarily use corn-based issues to smear ethanol as a whole. Cellulosic ethonal even if more expensive than promised also would provide a ceiling on the seemingly unending rise in gas prices.

Plug-ins are another category. They have the potential to drop consumption so far, profits may not be able to be compensated for.

And yes my 401(k) might suffer a little but life is about (income-expenses) and for me the expense of gas outstrips any profits I make from Exxon and others in my 401(k). Must be nice to have it reversed.

Reply