"Signs of an energy crunch"

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC24Dj01.html


Scraping the bottom of the barrel

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Signs of an energy crunch
# It is in this context that the following disclosures, all reported in recent months, take on such significance. ConocoPhillips, the Houston-based amalgam of Continental Oil and Phillips Petroleum, announced in January that new additions to its oil reserves in 2004 amounted to only about 60-65% of all the oil it produced that year, entailing a significant depletion of those existing reserves.
# ChevronTexaco, the second-largest US energy firm after ExxonMobil, also reported a significant imbalance between oil production and replacement. Although not willing to disclose the precise nature of the company's shortfall, chief executive Dave O'Reilly told analysts that he expects "our 2004 reserves-replacement rate to be low".
# Royal Dutch/Shell, already reeling from admissions last year that it had overstated its oil and natural-gas reserves by 20%, recently lowered its estimated holdings by another 10%, bringing its net loss to the equivalent of 5.3 billion barrels of oil. Even more worrisome, Shell announced in February that it had replaced only about 45-55% of the oil and gas it produced in 2004, an unexpectedly disappointing figure.

These and similar disclosures suggest that the major private oil companies are failing to discover promising new sources of petroleum, just as demand for their products soars. According to a recent study released by PFC Energy of Washington, DC, over the past 20 years the major oil firms have been producing and consuming twice as much oil as they have been finding. "In effect," says Mike Rodgers, author of the report, "the world's crude-oil supply is still largely dependent on legacy assets discovered during the exploration heydays." True, vast reservoirs of untapped petroleum were discovered in those "heydays", mostly the 1950s and 1960s, but these reserves, being finite, will eventually run dry and, if not replaced soon, will leave the world facing a devastating energy crunch.
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I think we are peaking right now.

The oil companies are going to make record profits for a while, but it is not a conspiracy. We are running out of oil. And there is nothing else to take its place.

Time to seriously plan to get out of suburbia, so you can be somewhere you can work and get food without driving.

Why is NOBODY talking about a windfall profits tax on oil companies?

We did it in the 70's. We should do it now.

> Time to seriously plan to get out of suburbia, so you can be somewhere
> you can work and get food without driving.

Where might that be?

I see an awful lot of city folks doing the reverse-commute out into the suburbs,
because that's where most of the good jobs are.

How do you live close to work, when work is in some industrial park?
Would you even want to?

In any case, living close to work is difficult, because work keeps
moving around. We do not enjoy the kind of long-term job stability
that existed in the past. Most couples are two-career couples,
which makes it even more difficult to eliminate commuting.

If people move every couple of years to stay close to work, that
dooms any effort to build community. It can be hard on kids too.

Even if there were enough good jobs IN the city, you wouldn't really
want the suburbanites to all move into the city. They'll bring their
cars and all their stuff with them, you know.

you move into the city & you will PURGE your useless shit.

but no one's moving in until tranportation prices make it impossible to do otherwise. american's don't change until forced.

> you move into the city & you will PURGE your useless shit.

Naw, just get a big enough condo to hold it all. Interest rates are
still pretty low, and one thing these people have is good credit.
The banks will be delighted to help them bid the prices up.

That presupposes that they would actually save any gas by
moving into the city in the first place.

If you move into the city, and you JOB is still in the suburbs,
you just made your commute longer. Public transportation doesn't
serve suburban workplaces very well, if at all, so you're probably
still driving (and polluting more, as you get stuck in traffic).

This will not change quickly. Office space in the city tends to
be very expensive and it will only get more so, especially if it
is close to public transit. When cost-cutting and downsizing occur,
it is usually the expensive downtown offices that get closed, while
the suburban locations with marginally lower per-sq-ft costs stay
open.

Those suburban areas will get more citified over time, and that is likely
to happen more quickly as gas prices rise. Development near transit
stations seems like such an obvious business opportunity that it
would probably be in the developers' interest to build out the
transit system itself if necessary.

> but no one's moving in

Moving in where? Do you rent? When is the lease up?
Do you know how much the rent is going to go up?
There isn't room for everybody in the city.

Suburbs turn into cities over time. Obviously, high energy costs
would speed up that process. Suburbanites tend to be homeowners,
which can make it expensive to move, prohibitively so in a down
market. OTOH, if land-use rules change to allow it, they may
sell some of their land and additional housing gets built there.

> until tranportation prices make it impossible to do otherwise.

If the suburbanites all pick up and move into the city as you
suggest, what happens to the people who already live in the city?

It is in the interest of city people to help the suburbanites build
their own cities, so they don't all try to move into yours.

It's the only way we'll break free of oil addiction.

crisis and the 'war on terror.' I'm already prepared for it- with my bus pass.

Restatements are gentle words for: We only tell our friends, other insiders, the truth. Those of you on the outside, who pour over our statements and such: we don't want you to know what is really happening.

Their game has been one of deception. If so, why would anyone trust them now?

"not willing to disclose the precise nature"? What's that about. More lies?