How generous
June 16, 2008 at 1:52 pm by Andisheh Nouraee in Don't PanicFrom The Independent:
Saudi Arabia will raise oil production to record levels within weeks in an attempt to avert an escalation of social and political unrest around the world . . . the Saudis will be pumping an extra half-a-million barrels of oil a day compared to last month, bringing total Saudi production to 9.7 million barrels a day,”
Let’s see:
500,000 barrels per day
x $140 per barrel
x 365 days
= The Saudi royal family has just promised to boost its oil revenue at an annual rate of approximately $25.6 billion.
But they’re doing it to avert social and political unrest, not for the money.
Forgive me, Saudi royal family, if I neglect to mail you a thank you note.
Send to a friend:
June 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Anyone for drilling these days? Bueller? Anyone?
June 16th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Dale: Our domestic oil reserves are so small compared to the global market that drilling domestically will literally provide only a drop in each bucket of global demand. That won’t move the price very much or very long, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which is the leading industry consulting group on this subject.
No point in teasing the addict with little nibbles of the drug, Dale. The key is to reduce domestic and global demand.
June 16th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Our unwillingness to drill emboldens OPEC and other oil producers to keep production low. The Saudis may be illustrating that already.
Opening areas to oil drilling also opens them to trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, which I predict will be a bigger burden this winter than gas prices are right now.
The reserves in the outer continental shelf, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and ANWR are in the tens of billions of barrels. Rocky Mountain shale oil reserves, currently not viable to extract, are between 2 and 3 trillion barrels. We use about 20 million barrels, so our reserves are hardly insignificant.
That “small” amount of oil could give us gas prices of 8 years ago and bridge us to new tech that replaces fossil fuels without econoically damaging the economy and all of us middle class people.
June 16th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Our reserves never have to leave the country, but our ability to introduce them into the supply will lower prices enough that the oil producers will lower their prices to prevent our entry.
Daily production is the key, not reserves. They can wait us out if they like, but we could have tens of thousands of high paying jobs for our citizens while we pump that oil for a decade or two. Is that not helpful? Aren’t people, especially liberals, constantly bitching about low paying jobs?
Don’t drill = find alternatives while everyone uneccesarily suffers high fuel prices.
Drill = find alternatives without all of us suffering high prices with the added benefit of high paying jobs and increased tax revenues to the government through an expanded economy.