Oil Price thread

[bruce]

$100-a-barrel oil also made strip-mining northern Alberta for oil viable.
It makes the developing nothern Alaska oil fields financially and politically viable.
It makes developing previously untapped off-shore oil fields viable.

Ron Paul explains the increasing price of oil as being due to the depreciation of the dollar by the Federal Reserve, & a warmongering policy in the Middle East. He notes that oil was $27 a barrel when Bush went to war to protect "our" oil. Mentioned a WSJ chart that shows oil is up 350% in terms of dollars, and flat versus constitutional gold money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIwlKyz6LvU

[LMagic007]

Originally Posted by bruce

$100-a-barrel oil also made strip-mining northern Alberta for oil viable.
It makes the developing nothern Alaska oil fields financially and politically viable.
It makes developing previously untapped off-shore oil fields viable.

It might make these technologies commercially viable in the short to medium term, but in the long and very long term, large scale fossil fuel extraction and burning is not viable at all, in the context of global CO2 emissions and environmental degradation and the future economic costs that will bear upon the planet. That's why we need to accelerate the development of renewable energy technology. We need to think beyond today, because contrary to the old saying, tomorrow always comes.

Oil has remained firm at close to $96 a barrel, but off last week's $100 peak.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7176504.stm

[forfi]

Originally Posted by Rog

Oil has remained firm at close to $96 a barrel, but off last week's $100 peak.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7176504.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7169543.stm

Oil prices have continued to slide amid fears that a US recession will weaken global demand for crude and President Bush called for production to be upped.

US light crude fell $1.06 to $90.84 a barrel, after sliding $2.30 on Tuesday. London's Brent crude oil dropped $1.23 to $89.75 a barrel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7191260.stm

Oil prices rose Friday at the end of a week in which they have slumped further from recent record highs of above 100 dollars amid concerns about a possible drop in energy demand.

They said growing concerns over the economic outlook in the United States, the world's largest energy consumer, had put pressure on the market.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, gained 87 cents to 91.00 dollars per barrel.

Brent North Sea crude for March firmed 95 cents to 89.70 dollars.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...CNyX_nUVNAww3A

[bruce]

Crude was at 88.42 last time I checked.

[bruce]

Crude price is $89.40 today, down around 1.4% for the day.

[nemesis9]

Originally Posted by bruce

$100-a-barrel oil also made strip-mining northern Alberta for oil viable.
It makes the developing nothern Alaska oil fields financially and politically viable.
It makes developing previously untapped off-shore oil fields viable.

When it comes to energy, more than cost needs to be taken into account. Basically, it takes energy to get energy, and if you are using a resource for energy, then EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) must be taken into account. If it takes more energy to extract the resource than the energy you get out, then it's not viable as an energy resource no matter what the cost.
The EROEI of light sweet crude (Texas or Saudi Arabia), is many times that of tar sands or deep water oil.
Once a source gets to an EROEI of < 1, forget it.