The capitalists are beginning to realize their own mortality. How to take advantage?
Published by The Wall Street Journal.
July 1, 2008, 2:56 pm
Peak Oil: IEA Inches Toward the Pessimists’ Camp
Posted by Keith Johnson
What’s up with oil prices? Well, it’s not speculators, and there’s no relief in sight, meaning at least five more years of high prices with no easy fixes. The ugly truth? Peak oil isn’t fringe anymore—it’s going mainstream.
That’s the reading from the latest oil market report from the International Energy Agency, the rich-country energy watchdog. The IEA’s latest x-ray of the oil market includes plenty of disturbing nuggets.
The fact that there are no growing stockpiles of crude around the world, for example, suggests speculators aren’t behind crude’s dizzying rise this year (much to Paul Krugman’s satisfaction and Congress’ chagrin.)
And while U.S. drivers fret and worry over how to pay for the Prius, the sad truth is that it doesn’t matter: By 2015, developing country oil demand will outstrip the rich world’s. They’re already in the driver’s seat: 90% of the demand growth over the next five years will come from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, the IEA said.
But the juiciest nugget? The conservative IEA appears to be inching ever-closer to the “peak-oil” crowd. Supply simply can’t keep pace with demand—everybody with an oil well has the taps open, but there’s not much left in the keg. Oil fields are aging quicker than free-agent pitchers, and the global oil industry has to run faster just to stay in place. From the IEA:
Project delays averaging 12 months, coupled with global average decline of 5.2% - up from 4% last year – are the factors behind these revisions. Over 3.5 mb/d of new production will be needed each year just to hold global production steady. “Our findings highlight again the need for sustained, and indeed, increased investment both upstream and downstream — to assure that the market is adequately supplied,” stated [IEA Executive Director Nabuo] Tanaka.
So where’s that fresh supply going to come from? As the IEA noted, Saudi Arabia is the only country with a glimmer of spare production capacity—and the jury is still out on that. Increased domestic drilling, the U.S. energy agency already said, would be but a hiccup in the global market. Non-OPEC countries, from Norway to Mexico, are expected to chip in just 1.2 million barrels per day of new crude by 2013, IEA head of market analysis Lawrence Eagle said—or less than half the global shortfall.
Politicians can pick their bogeyman—be it speculators, OPEC, or Democrats. But more and more it seems like the oil connundrum boils down to an age-old truth: Finite supplies can’t meet infinite demands.
World Economy Would Collapse If Oil Hit $200, Deutsche Says
By Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada
June 25 (Bloomberg) — The global economy would collapse if oil hit $200 a barrel, said the top energy analyst at Germany’s largest bank.
“Two-hundred dollar oil would break the back of the global economy,” Deutsche Bank AG’s Chief Energy Economist Adam Sieminski said in an interview today in Tokyo. “Next step after $200 would be global recession and bad news for everybody.”
Sieminski’s comments come after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast oil may rise to between $150 and $200 within two years as supply growth, especially from producers outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, fails to keep pace with demand. Deutsche Bank is due to release its oil-price forecast on June 27.
Oil doubled in the past year, touching a record $139.89 a barrel on June 16. Read the rest of this entry »
“U.S.: Oil production has not met demand”
from CNN
June 21, 2008
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) — Oil prices are hitting record highs because production has not kept pace with increasing demands, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told reporters Saturday.
“All nations must be better at conservation, and the U.S. is at the top of that list,” said Bodman, who is attending a international meeting of oil producing and consuming nations focusing on high oil prices in Saudi Arabia Sunday.
While some have blamed speculators for driving up oil prices, Bodman said he did not believe they are the cause.
Since 2003, he said, global demand for oil has increased because of industry in China, India and the Middle East. But from 2005 to 2007, there was very little increase in supply. Read the rest of this entry »
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
By Patrick Cockburn
Published by The Independent, Thursday, 5 June 2008
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November. Read the rest of this entry »
“Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman”
by Cathy Wilkerson
2007 by Seven Stories
This is probably the most important book on the Weathermen written by one of its participants, tackling the many difficult inner complexities and questions that haunted the explosive project while remaining deeply committed to progressive social change and anti-racist organizing. In the end, this book taught me quite directly how and why the WUO went astray, and how a lack of open and participatory democracy can distort even the brightest of movements. Read the rest of this entry »
“Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement”
by Carl Oglesby
2008 by Scribner
Carl Oglesby, former top-security-clearance defense contractor stooge-turned SDS President, writes a personal view of SDS and the movement against the Vietnam War that is insightful, amusing, and cutting. However, Oglesby has a clear bias and it’s hard to know how much of his account (which is largely based on his memory of various heated conversations) is completely fair or accurate. Also, Oglesby’s account ends up being more depressing than inspiring, as he falls into some pessimism about the prospects for movement building in the US, largely based on his experience of SDS cannibalizing itself.
Worth reading though, mostly because it’s a quick and interesting read that cuts through a lot of bullshit about the romantic 60s, and attacks the reality of war and social change with simple and rough words like so many arrows. Read the rest of this entry »
“Oil Seen Hitting $150 This Summer: Goldman Analyst” from Yahoo! News
Mon Jun 9, 1:39 AM ET
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Oil prices are likely to hit $150 a barrel this summer season, the global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs (GS.N) said on Monday, as tighter supplies outweigh weakening demand.
“I would suggest that the likelihood of that happening sooner has increased tremendously … sometime in summer,” Jeffrey Currie told an oil and gas conference in the Malaysian capital, referring to oil at $150 a barrel.
Goldman Sachs, the most active investment bank in energy markets and one of the first to point to triple-digit oil more than two years ago — a once unthinkable level — said last month oil could shoot up to $200 within the next two years as part of a “super spike.”
Forecasts that oil could head towards $150 and above have multiplied over the past month as prices broke through several records, the latest being last Friday, when oil soared more than $11 a barrel on Friday, its biggest one-day gain ever.
Oil hit an all-time high of $139.12 on Friday on the back of a weak U.S. dollar and mounting tensions between Israel and Iran.
Goldman Sachs forecast almost a month ago that U.S. crude would average $141 a barrel in the second half of 2008, up from a previous projection of $107, due to tight supplies.
“Demand for oil is weak but supplies are even weaker,” Jeffrey Currie told the conference, citing supply disruptions in Nigeria and struggling output rise in Russia.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley, another big Wall Street energy player, said on Friday that crude may reach $150 by July 4 due to robust Asian demand and falling inventories.
(Reporting by Chua Baizhen, writing by Maryelle Demongeot; Editing by Ben Tan)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080609/bs_nm/oil_price_goldman_dc
Student Power and the Sit-in at Evergreen
written by SDSers and sit-in particpants Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, KTeeO Olejnik, Brooke Stepp, and Jamie Hellerman
May 30th marked the 10th day of the sit-in of Evergreen State College administrator Art Costantino’s hallway. Students are demanding the immediate reinstatement of Olympia SDS and have recently added the additional demands that Kelly Beckham, an SDSer be offered her job back as well as compensation for time lost, and a change in the process by which student groups lose their RSO (Registered Student Organization) status that is determined by those most affected, the students and members of these organizations.
The banning of SDS as a student group is an indication of the current political climate at The Evergreen State College, one that has been increasingly suppressing student dissent, which includes the aiding of law enforcement agents in the arresting of students, the handing over of student records to law enforcement agencies, punishing students for their political beliefs and activities. Read the rest of this entry »
PRINT and DISTRIBUTE to your Chapter, Campus and Community!
The SDS News Bulletin working group is proud to bring you our fourth issue, the best yet. From front cover to articles to action reports to poetry to art, we loaded this issue up for maximum Dangerousness, and once again you made it all possible by sending in your work, thoughts, ideas and love.
Now here’s the result:
Print Version
Online Reading Version
(You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view the PDF file, which is FREE software you can download Here)
Enjoy! and Distribute widely!
Send us your stuff to be published in Issue 5: sds.bulletin@gmail.com
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-The SDS News Bulletin Working Group
Two stories on CNN.com today show how the deepening oil crisis is sending the addicted US government searching in desperation for more petroleum to come to market, as prices have broken records every day for the last week.
While Congress votes to cut off sending more oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Bush is in Riyadh pleading with the Saudis to increase production, and being outright denied (see below). Though CNN doesn’t say it, the reason the Saudis won’t do it is most likely that they simply can’t. If Matthew Simmons’ book Twilight in the Desert is correct, Saudi Arabia has no more spare capacity, and therefore can no longer be called on to increase supply when the market gets tight. The US is up the creek without a paddle.
No small fix here or there is going to be anything but a drop in the bucket as this crisis develops. $4-per-gallon gasoline will be remembered as amazingly cheap in a few years, and $100-per-barrel crude oil might never be seen again.
The only solution to this crisis is to create an economy that does not rely on oil, or fossil fuels of any kind for that matter. We can accomplish it by focusing on meeting human needs above the interests of corporations and governments, who are the real petroleum consumers. One positive first step would be to abandon the $3 trillion War against Iraq and use those resources to provide universal health care and universal higher education in the US, the most backwards industrialized nation. Likewise, the smart money is on dropping ethanol and other so-called biofuels like the dead weights they are, and once again making all those millions of tons of corn and other grains available for hungry people to eat.
Common sense forever evades a junkie government.
…
Saudis rebuff Bush’s request to pump more oil
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/16/bush.saudi.arabia/index.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) — Saudi Arabia Friday rebuffed President Bush’s request to immediately pump more oil to lower record prices, saying it does not see enough demand to increase production.
President Bush walks with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh Friday.
The Saudis said they would increase production if customers demanded it, Steven Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser, said.
Bush is spending much of the day in closed-door meetings with King Abdullah, the Saudi ruler.
Friday’s visit was Bush’s second trip to the kingdom this year, coming as oil prices reached a new record high Friday of more than $127 a barrel. When he traveled to Riyadh in January, his request for the Saudis to pump more oil was also rejected.
Oil prices were just below $100 a barrel in January, and Americans were paying an average of $3.06 for a gallon of gasoline. They were paying $3.78 on Friday, following more than week of record highs every day. Read the rest of this entry »
Excerpts from Democracy Now!, May 6, 2008.
[Kevin Phillips, author of "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism", surveys the economic crisis facing U.S.-dominated global capitalism - including peak oil, the collapse of the Dollar, rising food costs, and the growing dominance of the banking and credit industries. This is fairly radical stuff coming from a former GOP strategist.]
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is one of the most serious signs of this overall global crisis of American capitalism?
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, not to single out just one, I have an approach I use to say that normally when a country is—United States is—heading into a recession, there are one or two, sometimes three, factors that you worry about. But at this point in time, the American economy, you can think of it as being kind of in a shark tank, and there are like six or seven sharks, and you don’t usually see anything like that number. Read the rest of this entry »
“The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power”
by Daniel Yergin
1991 by Free Press
Yergin’s classic book The Prize surveys a sweeping history of oil, and its storied relationship to War, Geopolitics, and Imperial ambitions. The strengths of the book are its thoroughly detailed accounts of events such as World War II, The Arab Oil Embargo, and the various European/American meddlings in the Middle East region. No other book takes such a comprehensive view of oil’s geopolitical history, and at 800 pages this book actually seems short for such a major topic.
On the other hand, there are some severe limitations to Yergin’s analysis. Yergin tells the story of oil from a mainstream/dominant perspective, which means the entire history is in the words of capitalists, heads of states, diplomats, etc.; in a word, the story of oil is told from the perspective of imperialism. Read the rest of this entry »
http://www.chycho.com/?q=oil_us_dollar_euro
Update April 30, 2008: Iran dumps U.S. dollar for oil trades - “Iran, OPEC’s second-largest producer, has stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars.”
In the last eight years implementing the plans for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) designed “to promote American global leadership” has backfired.
To accomplish PNAC’s goals, all threats needed to be eliminated. From the onset, the United Sates earmarked two countries as mortal enemies: Venezuela and Iran. With Venezuela, it is well documented that the CIA attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of Chavez. And with Iran, the United States continues to use it as a scapegoat for its failures in Iraq. These cold war tactics however are proving to be US’s undoing.
The United States is hemorrhaging from every orifice, and oil prices can be used to measure the rapidity of its demise. Read the rest of this entry »
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