Price of oil under $70/barrel

[Admiral Valdemar]

Growth won't be returning until the debt problem is resolved. With most all industrialised countries in huge debt, something needs to be done about that first. Anyone expecting BAU in the EU or US before 2020 is quite simply missing the big picture. I'm not saying peak oil has gone away, far from it of course. It's just not going to be ZOMG $1000 for a pint!11! level crapshoots we expected just two years ago. Save all investors going long commodities, the price will be more likely to fluctuate within a band that has an increasing average, assuming no unforeseen consequences that radically alter the supply-demand paradigm.

[Starglider]

There is no near-term substitute for oil as feedstock for a huge amount of industrial chemistry, but further in the future we might see biotech or nanotech alternatives to those processes.

Vats of microbes or nanomachines making the oil the world uses for non-energy use is just not happening.

I didn't say making feedstock, I said replacing those processes entirely. Crude oil is actually a pretty horrible feedstock, and even when its been refined and reformed most of the products are sub-optimal. Methane is far easier to work with; maybe ethanol for biotech. If we're at the point of powering everything with copious renewable energy and breaking down all plastic/organic waste for raw chemicals, no one is going to bother synthesizing crude oil as an intermediate state.

[Big Phil]

Growth won't be returning until the debt problem is resolved. With most all industrialised countries in huge debt, something needs to be done about that first. Anyone expecting BAU in the EU or US before 2020 is quite simply missing the big picture. I'm not saying peak oil has gone away, far from it of course. It's just not going to be ZOMG $1000 for a pint!11! level crapshoots we expected just two years ago. Save all investors going long commodities, the price will be more likely to fluctuate within a band that has an increasing average, assuming no unforeseen consequences that radically alter the supply-demand paradigm.

Weren't you arguing (way back when), along with many other people, that growth was at an end as we had pretty much reached the limits of the economy? Or am I remembering someone else.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Weren't you arguing (way back when), along with many other people, that growth was at an end as we had pretty much reached the limits of the economy? Or am I remembering someone else.

That it was coming to an end, certainly, depending on how the situation was tackled i.e. not well. Now what's in vogue is phantom growth by simple lying. You just need to look at the way the MSM and US gov't is reporting their so called growth lately to see there's a big disconnect. This without the implications of a real physical limit on energy being in full force.

[Starglider]

You just need to look at the way the MSM and US gov't is reporting their so called growth lately to see there's a big disconnect.

Yeah, we just need to increase our state-sponsored lying by another order of magnitude or so and we will surpass the USSR's state of economic delusion. How ironic that would be.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Aside from simply lying, you can also show growth by borrowing against the future. Individual and corporate overborrowing rocketed headlong into a brick wall in 2008, but the first-world governments are just starting to kick it into high gear.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Hell, you don't even need to dig deeper than a week. Merkel was talking about how the Euro bailout for Greece had saved us from disaster. Now I won't be surprised if she comes out and says we had to kill the euro to save Europe, because clearly no one but the ECB believed that little trick of pulling a trillion out of thin air would sure up the markets. The debt game has run its course, and no one wants to accept that while they can get away with phantom money.

[J]

I see that Sanchez still refuses to back his claims, maybe it's because he's just a smarmy heckler who's got nothing.

[Rye]

Why are British oil prices so fucking ridiculous, still? I hate having to take out a small loan to fill my car up.

[J]

Why are British oil prices so fucking ridiculous, still? I hate having to take out a small loan to fill my car up.

Because you're a bunch of socialist free market haters who tax everything to death. If you had a nice private healthcare system like America, you wouldn't need to put 75% taxes on gasoline to pay for everything.

But seriously. It's the taxes.

[Gil Hamilton]

I didn't say making feedstock, I said replacing those processes entirely. Crude oil is actually a pretty horrible feedstock, and even when its been refined and reformed most of the products are sub-optimal. Methane is far easier to work with; maybe ethanol for biotech. If we're at the point of powering everything with copious renewable energy and breaking down all plastic/organic waste for raw chemicals, no one is going to bother synthesizing crude oil as an intermediate state.

I would think if we are making hydrocarbons from scratch, we'd go with things that are easy to produce and can be mixed for a variety of effects. That is, synthesis gas, which is principly carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas. This is already extensively used in making synthetic fuel. If we could improve upon the Fischer-Tropsch process and made one that specifically made the hydrocarbon we wanted rather than a mixed nuts bag of them, and made it cheap, we could just make our own oil all day, every day, for example. You don't need microbes shitting the stuff or nanotech, just improved chemical engineering.

Granted though, it would be nice to engineer microbes that you could shovel our trash into and have them squirt out petroleum as a byproduct of decomposing it, but the chemical engineering solution is alot more likely to happen in the near future than particularly the gee whize nanotech or even the gee whiz microbes.