Oil Be Moving Closer to the Subway Station

World oil production will peak around 2010. At that time 70% of the remaining oil reserves will be in five countries in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Plus China and India are rapidly increasing their thirst for petroleum, much faster than the rest of the world. All this adds up to a looming "crisis" in America, one which will demand permanent and basic lifestyle and transportation changes. This article by Brian Kaller on PulseTC.com briefly touches the historical, political, social and future aspects of this ever-more-dominating subject that will affect pretty much everyone except the Amish (snippet):

....As for discovering new fields, global discovery has been declining each year since 1964. Even if the oil does not run out as quickly as some think, most of the remaining reserves are in countries openly hostile to the United States. “More than 70 percent of remaining oil reserves are in five countries in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman,” said Dean Abrahamson, professor emeritus of environment and energy policy at the University of Minnesota. “The expectation is that, within the next 10 years, the world will become almost completely dependent on those countries.” Drilling in the Alaska National Wilderness Reserve, he said, will offer only an additional three months of oil. “In 2000, there were 16 discoveries of oil ‘mega-fields,’” Aaron Naparstek noted in the New York Press earlier this year. “In 2001, we found eight, and in 2002 only three such discoveries were made. Today, we consume about six barrels of oil for every one new barrel discovered.” If the world ran on oil and had to stop, that would be problem enough. But there is one more issue: most of the world doesn’t run on oil, and wants to start. They see Americans, and want what we have, when in a decade or two we will not have what we have. “The issue of peak oil is not that we are at the point of consuming the last drop,” said Michael Noble of Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy. He uses the analogy of a party of 100 guests and 24 bottles of champagne. Around midnight the host finds 12 bottles of champagne left, but then many more guests show up, and there’s not much champagne left to go around. “The United States has drunk most of it, and now the Indians and Chinese, with six times as many people, are showing up expecting to be served,” Noble said. “Sales of autos in China rose about 70 percent in 2003 alone, and almost as much in India, and half the population of the world is in those.” Privately, at least some politicians are aware of this issue. In a 1999 speech to the London Institute of Petroleum, then-Halliburton chair Richard “Dick” Cheney told his fellow oil executives that the United States “will need an additional 50 million barrels of oil per day” by 2010, the most commonly-cited peak oil year, implying an awareness of the peak. But Cheney had a solution, he said: “The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.” Publicly, however, the election year is the season for Democrats and Republicans to blame the other party for rising gas prices, and to boast that they will make it cheaper again. On March 29, Cheney accused Kerry of once supporting a gas tax and now denying it. Kerry fought back that evening at a speech in San Francisco, blaming the administration for the rising gas prices. If the rise continued, he said, “Dick Cheney and President Bush are going to have to carpool to work together.” The line gets a big laugh every time, but as Naparstek noted, carpooling was mentioned exclusively as a laugh line, not as a sensible and urgent policy. The Bush campaign struck back with a new television ad, called “Wacky,” showing early 20th century footage of 12 men in suits riding a comically long bicycle. “Some people have wacky ideas,” said the voiceover. “Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That’s John Kerry.” In fact, it is not John Kerry, but a growing number of Americans wish it were....