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High fuel prices, what should KRudd do?

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Created by Mobydisc > 9 months ago, 25 May 2008
teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
30 May 2008 4:49PM
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Oil Is NOT A Fossil
Fuel - It Is Abiotic
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer
9-29-5

It seems so easy to believe this idea. Oil contributes greatly to polluting the environment. The industrial age has intensified its use greatly. The more we use, the more we lose fresh air, even the ozone. And therefore it seems almost divine justice that we are about to exhaust this so-called "fossil fuel" within several decades and two hundred years, this cursed blessed hydrocarbon which took millions of years to produce.

And, therefore, it almost seems we get what we deserve: a petro-powered society in which once the oil supposedly runs out we will suffer mass annihilations of population, famine, war, total deceleration, a withdrawal into the caves. And, therefore, we should have our prophet From the Wilderness.com, Michael Ruppert, predict this on an ongoing basis. And his biblical tome, Crossing the Rubicon shall subhead the big idea: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. Well, no, not so, kimosabe, not by a long shot.

To begin with, oil is not a fossil fuel. This is a theory put forth by 18th century scientists. Within 50 years, Germany and France's scientists had attacked the theory of petroleum's biological roots. In fact, oil is abiotic, not the product of long decayed biological matter. And oil, for better or for worse, is not a non-renewable resource. It, like coal, and natural gas, replenishes from sources within the mantle of earth. This is the real and true science of oil. Read all about it.

In fact, working in the 1950s, Russian and Ukrainian scientists, cut off from the Western World's oil supply, applied their keen minds to the problem and, by the 1960s, had thoroughly demolished the idea of oil as a 'fossil fuel,' Is it any wonder then that Russia is one of if not the leading producers and exporters of oil. The isolation of the Cold War forced Russia to dig deeper, literally, to find oil deeper in the earth in some places, and to look in other places where no one had thought to look to reveal more. This while America feels incumbent upon itself, since it claims oil production and discovery has peaked and will fade to nothing in several decades, that America's feels it must make war to take other people's oil: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Caspian Basin, Sudan, etcetera.

And to others who have oil, it must either rattle its saber, as with Venezuela, threaten to kill its president who will not buckle and sell all his oil to America. And with the Saudis we will protect them from their own terrorists and any Saddam that comes along. And we will get in bed with them so long as we can have the lion's share of their oil, and the say-so as to who gets the rest. And therein lays the evil genius, secret and sham of the 'Peak Oil' put on.

If oil, as coal, and natural gas, restores itself by nature, if we will more likely run into it then out of it, how do we continue to make money on it? Certainly not by giving oil away at some reasonable price. After World War II, oil was about 25 cents a gallon at the pump. Even given the spiraling inflation since then-last week I paid $3.50 a gallon for it in New York City, 14 times that price. A week after the summer holiday season ended (the peak usage season), oil is down to $3 a gallon. I doubt if I'm the only one who notices oil's price shoot up every summer, then slither down a bit after, and then climb up in the middle of the winter when the heating bills waft in, and old and poor people who can't afford the hikes begin to freeze and die in their own homes.

Someone is shilling for the American petro-brokers, because 'Peak Oil' is a wonderful concept to use to go out and war for "the control" of oil resources. So that a barrel of crude can suddenly jump from $20 to $70 to $100 a barrel, or to two, three or four hundred dollars a barrel, therefore providing exponentially expanding profits for oil companies and oil suppliers who relish the idea of having an "inelastic demand" for their gasoline. 'Peak Oil,' as writer Dave McGowan points out in his priceless Newsletters, which you can find at Educate-Yourself.org, 'Peak Oil' will even drive oil companies like Shell, to attempt to shut down an incredibly profitable facility, like the one it owns in Bakersfield, California,.

This Bakersfield facility, like others in California, runs along the San Andreas fault line, which abounds along its route through the state with rich crude oil and natural gas fields, products of seepage from the earth's mantle, from the tectonic plates, as Dave would say, 'passing gas' and rumbling as they move. In fact, oil and the family of hydrocarbons are often found at volcanoes and fault lines, as they are in deserts, watery gulfs, and sea basins. Let's demystify it all.

The real reason a company like Shell Oil would close a facility like Bakersfield-to bulldoze it, stop it-is to halt the production, refining, and supply to drive up the price of oil. It's that goddamn simple and ugly. And we're doing the same thing today in Iraq, bulldozing a country, to control and reduce its oil supply. Never mind supplying a botched democracy that we can't even supply for ourselves in America.

Concurrently, we are also bringing apocalypse to its population, thinning it with more than 100,000 dead, tearing its infrastructure apart, water, sewage, power, media, hospitals, name it. We are decentralizing Iraq's cities, driving people out of them or out of the country, or bombing them back to the Stone Age as our generals are so found of saying. And Iraq, like Afghanistan, is the paradigm of the future, of how we will engulf and devour countries, cities, even our own, like New Orleans for instance, whose Gulf is a rich source of oil, and through whose ports pass a large percentage of our nation's supply.

The U.S. political henchmen are thinning the Iraq population to fatten the profits of the oil barons like David Rockefeller. In McGowan's own inimical words, from page three of another Newsletter:

THE ROCKEFELLER CORPORATE OIL MAJORS should be thrown into jail for selling fraudulently priced items as well as cheating on generations of their corporate taxes (due to tax write off 'depletion allowances,' which they knew were lies. This abiotic oil story is perhaps the largest underground ((no pun intended)) scam story of the past 200 years: an ongoing corporate success of pricing abiotic renewable oil to act out an artificial scarcity, combined with all the related ideologies required to sell that motif of artificial scarcity, and all the millions they have made and still make on the fraud, and all the tax dollars they have, stolen, etc."

In this concept of 'Peak Oil' you have the system's secret to hold the world hostage. Not that we shouldn't take care to not overuse oil, not that we should avoid conservation, or even to stop poking the planet, and actually seek purely organic ways in which to live. But now, now that we are here, and have billions of people to sustain, we must not let vast numbers of them be harmed, murdered, abused, because of feigned shortages, economies overturned by outrageous prices, everyday working people be bankrupted by same, to get to work, to warm their homes, to cook their families' food, to participate in an organized society. We must not make the beasts, the Bilderbergers, the elites, the oligarchs use the 'Peak Oil' lever to bend the backs of the world on its wrack.

Believing in 'Peak Oil' is not a price to pay to avoid the price of drilling for oil in new ways, for setting fair and unwavering commodity prices. The cost of blood and lives and the future of nations are too much to pay for the folly of 'Peak Oil.' In fact, realizing that oil is a self-renewing resource puts the neocon agenda into a new perspective. Instead of seeing 'Peak Oil' as the end days of technological civilization literally losing its power, see this idea as the further manipulation towards fascist power and subjugation that it is: still another way to scare the world into believing its resources are terminally finite, and that we must be led into another and another war that must be waged to survive.

If we do not accept the lie, the manipulation of 'Peak Oil," it is not to say we can't devise new systems to bring life and the world forward. It is only to put the petroleum barons on notice. It then gives us a chance to bring people together, to tear away the false scarcity, to share resources, to experience peace, to alleviate poverty with the abundance of renewable hydrocarbon resources, as with the abundance of the human imagination. Or else we end up with another Ruppert rubric, Sizing Up the Competition - Is China the Endgame?, another piece of priceless paranoia to peddle for perdition, another dark ops for a bright new generation of believers. More war, endless war it is, to enrich the already rich, to impoverish the already poor.

Do not let this happen, even in the short run. As reported by the Energy Information Administration, International Energy Agency, files: "THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF OIL."

"Before hurricane Katrina reached the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, most oil companies had taken the precautionary measure of evacuating their 30,000 offshore employees and shuttering their platforms and oil rigs. Therefore, it was not a surprise that on Aug. 30, some 95% of the Gulf's production of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day was 'shut.' By Sept. 6, that figure had dropped to 58%, with close to half of the oil production capacity having been restored.

"On Sept. 2, the 26-nation International Energy Agency agreed to make Available to the U.S., 2 million barrels of oil per day, half petroleum and half gasoline. In other words, when the gasoline shipments start arriving from Europe in the next week or so, along with the 1 million barrels per day from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which are being released under IEA guidelines, the U.S. will be swimming in oil."

And then there's this from the LaRouche Executive Intelligence Report News Service: "When Sen. Byron Dorgan (ND-N.D.) introduced his Windfall Profits Act on Sept. 7, he estimated that the major oil companies were stealing $7 billion more per month in profits than they had been 18 months ago. There is no shortage of oil." Again from EIRNS:

"THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR-PIVOTED OIL CARTEL IS POISED TO CARRY ON ITS GLOBAL LOOTING OPERATION BY PUSHING THE PRICE OF OIL ON THROUGH $70 PER BARREL. Key to this is that the oil cartel controls all the critical facets of the industry, as a single integrated system: (1) in the U.S., the oil production system (aside from the imports); (2) the oil refinery network; (3) the oil distribution network; and (4) international, the oil derivatives market. It extracts a margin of $40 per barrel of petroleum in pure theft to try to bail out the bankrupt world financial-monetary system."

From the Observer, 9/11/05: THE OBSERVER OF
LONDON DESCRIBED KATRINA AS HALLIBURTON'S "PERFECT STORM." Halliburton stock has risen 10% since Katrina on expectation of "Iraq-style" contracts-no-bid, cost-plus bonanzas. The Observer notes that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who leads the fight against the massive corruption by Halliburtn and other Bush/Cheney cronies in Iraq, is 'keeping a very close eye' on the contracts now being put together for Katrina reconstruction.

The Observer also notes that Joe Allbaugh, Bush's first FEMA chief and now a lobbyist in D.C., with Halliburton's KBR as a client, is known as the "Karl Rove" of contracting."

And on and on it goes. And thanks to men of good will like Dave McGowan, Lyndon LaRouche, geologist Thomas J. Brown, and many others, for their knowledge, their courage, and their guiding light. Let us follow wherever it shines, far from the "Peak Oil' precipice to a level playing field for humanity. We have nothing to lose but our shortages.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer residing in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.

The views expressed herein are the writers' own and do not necessarily reflect those of Online Journal.
Email editor@onlinejournal.com
? 1998-2005 Online Journal. All rights reserved.
You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.

http://onlinejournal.com/Commentary/091705Mazza/091705mazza.html

evlPanda
NSW, 9202 posts
30 May 2008 6:00PM
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Thank god, paragraphs!!!

Actually quite a good read and I am going to do some background checks by asking "The Professor".

getfunky
WA, 4485 posts
30 May 2008 4:27PM
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Crikey!!

Well there is a fair bit to digest there old bagg.

I will av to check on some of this monday but will try to keep an open mind.

How many blisters do you have on your typing fingers????????

cwamit
WA, 1194 posts
30 May 2008 8:07PM
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Little off topic, but why is it that 5 years ago one would pay 5 to 6 k for a plasma screen and these days 1k is the base price for same size plasma, but solar panels that have been about for almost two decades (perhaps longer) manufactured by several companies - Mitsubishi, Sony, to name a couple - yet the price still seems to be very high for an average watt panel, is it because the materials used are rare? Or is it because users are paying for the social cost of using them?

teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
30 May 2008 10:25PM
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probably most likely to discourage consumer use of these products. tesla, the father of magnetic electicity, first discovered electromagnetism and how to harness it, basically free energy... all these 'eco friendly' means of generating magnetic electricty are nothing but a sheeple distraction to the fact the a limitless supply of unlimited potential surrounds us.. and in fact life on this planet could not exist without it.. there is much information on this topic for anyone seriously determined to find it, and you'll be absolutely amazed where it will take you, and equally as horrified that a society as 'advanced' as we believe ourselves to be, could be so completely hoodwinked and led astray.... truth, basically because we have been lied to for so long, really is stranger than fiction....xxx

The Grinch
WA, 733 posts
30 May 2008 9:12PM
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Electric cars would be a good start.

100% torque at zero revs.
NO exhaust, Carburetter, ignition system, starter motor, clutch, gearbox, sump, oil pump, spark plugs, generator, radiator, fuel tank.........

Of course you got to charge the thing but that can be done with a solar panel kit and pump into the grid in daylight hours.

Funny how its 2008 and it took mobile phones to bring about battery development.

http://www.avt.uk.com/
Lithium batteries can already get a small car 150km plus. Enough for the commute to work from anywhere in Perth!

greenleader
QLD, 5283 posts
30 May 2008 11:24PM
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teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
31 May 2008 4:22PM
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post 33.. hehe, in this topic.... thats funny

evlPanda
NSW, 9202 posts
31 May 2008 7:19PM
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cwamit said...

Little off topic, but why is it that 5 years ago one would pay 5 to 6 k for a plasma screen and these days 1k is the base price for same size plasma, but solar panels that have been about for almost two decades (perhaps longer) manufactured by several companies - Mitsubishi, Sony, to name a couple - yet the price still seems to be very high for an average watt panel, is it because the materials used are rare? Or is it because users are paying for the social cost of using them?


They don't sell as many

au_rick
WA, 752 posts
3 Jun 2008 3:52PM
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nebbian said...

When the liberal leader started spouting this rubbish about reducing fuel prices, didn't Costello say something along the lines of "No, that'll never work, don't be ridiculous"?

So why did labour then pick up that policy?

Labour still haven't figured out that it's them that are in power now, they don't have to claw votes back on every perceived issue.



I think you'll find that BOTH parties have to vote to change any laws, so it doesn't matter which party is in power it's the sum total of ALL the nobs in canberra who set Australias policies

au_rick
WA, 752 posts
3 Jun 2008 4:00PM
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cwamit said...

Little off topic, but why is it that 5 years ago one would pay 5 to 6 k for a plasma screen and these days 1k is the base price for same size plasma, but solar panels that have been about for almost two decades (perhaps longer) manufactured by several companies - Mitsubishi, Sony, to name a couple - yet the price still seems to be very high for an average watt panel, is it because the materials used are rare? Or is it because users are paying for the social cost of using them?


this is not off topic at all, it's bang on.
basic economics 101,... the higher the demand the more units ship, therefore the cheaper it is to produce each unit.
Anyone who thinks using less oil will lead to cheaper prices is a fool.
The government rely on the taxes derived from fuel sales, and the producers rely on their profits from sales.
If the world used 50% less oil, the price would only go up to compensate for the reduced number of units being sold. Since the 1970's OPEC have repeatedly reduced their output for exactly this reason - to keep prices high !

teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
5 Jun 2008 11:02AM
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a further distraction.....

Johnt
WA, 108 posts
5 Jun 2008 9:05PM
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Supply/demand is what drives it all.
On this and just about every other problem that is going around everyone is busting their gray matter trying to sort out the offshoot and looking for instant solutions and missing the real cause, which is overpopulation.
Crowded surf
High house prices
Crowded kite spots
No parking
No food
Environmental rape for new roads, services and houses
Most War
et al et al et al

Two children maximum for all.

teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
6 Jun 2008 12:00AM
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^^ rubbish, its slave creating economics, nothing more. we (mostly) are forced to play to their rules, and any opposition or alternative is quickly, and thanks to their bought and paid for media, quietly crushed. any promoted faux alternative distraction (pathetically idle and itself corrupted, green movement, for example) is just exactly that, just a distraction.
if you truly believe there to be too many people on the planet, in the surf, then practice what you so selfishly preach, do the world a favour and get off it.
enviromental rape...? name a piece of sporting or recreational equipment you use that does not pollute an ecosystem... there is not one. there is plenty of food on this planet for all, but the reality is..... money is more important than you, money that is created out of thin air and sold to you at interest, so that as free as you believe your self to be... your kids of tomorrow will be paying for your debt of today. all war, every single one, is economic, every 'hero' dying in battle makes a fat banker fatter. how dare one person with their snout already in the trough, make the decision to deny another life, how greedy and selfish are you..?
it really is time people who feel like they deserve the right to an opinion, take a real good look around and see just how much of what they believe to be their own thoughts, is just rubbish that they have been fed and are now regurgitating, without any real idea of what they are saying.... T-minus 1600 (and a bit) and counting......xxx

evlPanda
NSW, 9202 posts
6 Jun 2008 10:04AM
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teabagg said...

^^ rubbish, its slave creating economics, nothing more. we (mostly) are forced to play to their rules, and any opposition or alternative is quickly, and thanks to their bought and paid for media, quietly crushed.


For example? It all sounds very romantic.


any promoted faux alternative distraction (pathetically idle and itself corrupted, green movement, for example) is just exactly that, just a distraction.


The greens have had a MASSIVE influence on politics and society over the last 20 years. Walk down you local supermarket aisle, the hive of local capitalism, and count the number of eco-friendly, dolphin-safe, bio-degradable, unleaded, GM free products.

I suspect that a large chunk of Labor's success last year was of their environmental attitude, when comnpared to the Libs. The Greens can take credit for influencing politics.


if you truly believe there to be too many people on the planet, in the surf, then practice what you so selfishly preach, do the world a favour and get off it.


Are you suggesting he die?


enviromental rape...? name a piece of sporting or recreational equipment you use that does not pollute an ecosystem... there is not one.


When I swim.


there is plenty of food on this planet for all, but the reality is..... money is more important than you, money that is created out of thin air and sold to you at interest, so that as free as you believe your self to be... your kids of tomorrow will be paying for your debt of today. all war, every single one, is economic, every 'hero' dying in battle makes a fat banker fatter. how dare one person with their snout already in the trough, make the decision to deny another life, how greedy and selfish are you..?


Hyporcrite, may I quote you? "...do the world a favour and get off it".


it really is time people who feel like they deserve the right to an opinion, take a real good look around and see just how much of what they believe to be their own thoughts, is just rubbish that they have been fed and are now regurgitating, without any real idea of what they are saying.... T-minus 1600 (and a bit) and counting......xxx


You are just regurgitating the videos you watch. It's very obvious. Do you have any thoughts of your own, or do you just think about those internet videos all day, and regurgitate them to people like they were your very own thoughts and investigations?

You see you've taken one form of rubbish (TV), and simply replaced it with another. You think you've evolved but you've only changed. Same coin, different side.

If you want to have a revolution I suggest you talk with the French. They've had a few. I guess they finally got it right?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution


My 2 pesos: The government should have never gotten involved in this fuel price debate at all. The goverment has nought to do with commodity prices except for legislation to prevent monopolies, price fixing etc. and that's partly where the ACCC steps in. Rudd should have pointed that out, end of story. Some idiot's advised him incorrectly.

It's supply and demand like that's affecting the prices, like everything else in a free market (global) economy. Just like it always has been and always will be. Occasionally a govt might introduce measures to protect local producers.

cwamit
WA, 1194 posts
6 Jun 2008 8:48AM
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Johnt said...

Supply/demand is what drives it all.
On this and just about every other problem that is going around everyone is busting their gray matter trying to sort out the offshoot and looking for instant solutions and missing the real cause, which is overpopulation.
Crowded surf
High house prices
Crowded kite spots
No parking
No food
Environmental rape for new roads, services and houses
Most War
et al et al et al


Two children maximum for all.





I agree, its too many people on the planet, when will enough be enough? looking at the food riots, planet warming, oil price increases, water shortages, I think we have had too many people several billion humans ago, of course I am not naive to realize its mostly third world populations that prop up our cheap consumerism goods in western civilization, but at least western civilization has the information at hand to understand the problems we have created ,western technological advances is what has caused the population explosion, i.e. health advances has had a huge part in the population growth same goes with chemical farming practices to increase production.


its not about finite mineral deposits, over polluting practices in third world countries or reducing oil demand as outcomes of not having such a large population, obviously companies that control all these things allow for growth and demand issues so if it was anticipated that we would have 8billion humans in the world then oil companies wouldn’t have drilled so many wells, but the point is that, less wells less oil outtake more oil to last longer, still a band aid to the long term reality that oil pollutes and is a finite resource. What I am getting at is, if civilization in western worlds had made the decision two decades ago to curb population growth perhaps the slim chance is we could also then have had the environmental awareness to create far greener technologies than the current situation.

Maybe the new slogan should be have one for dad and mum and don’t have another for the good of the world.


teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
6 Jun 2008 1:35PM
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evlPanda said...

teabagg said...

^^ rubbish, its slave creating economics, nothing more. we (mostly) are forced to play to their rules, and any opposition or alternative is quickly, and thanks to their bought and paid for media, quietly crushed.


For example? It all sounds very romantic.


.... maybe google search royal rife, or salt water to fuel


any promoted faux alternative distraction (pathetically idle and itself corrupted, green movement, for example) is just exactly that, just a distraction.


The greens have had a MASSIVE influence on politics and society over the last 20 years. Walk down you local supermarket aisle, the hive of local capitalism, and count the number of eco-friendly, dolphin-safe, bio-degradable, unleaded, GM free products.


.... hmmm, no its called conditioning, all the things you've listed above are merely to make you feel better about buying garbage, they are nothing more than marketing catch crys...


I suspect that a large chunk of Labor's success last year was of their environmental attitude, when comnpared to the Libs. The Greens can take credit for influencing politics.


.... again, right wing, left wing..? are controlled by the same central body... the media tells us who is going to 'win' an up coming election, for the last decade they told us it would be howard, this time they told us it would be rudd, the party distractions may change, the agenda remains the same...


if you truly believe there to be too many people on the planet, in the surf, then practice what you so selfishly preach, do the world a favour and get off it.

Are you suggesting he die?


... if you wanna get totally philosophical about it, no one every really dies. but i will stand by what i have said... if you believe there to be too many people on this planet, and your stament of this as 'fact' obviously must stem for your concern for the planet,and all who dwell upon it, then do the egalitarian thing, and get off it...


enviromental rape...? name a piece of sporting or recreational equipment you use that does not pollute an ecosystem... there is not one.

When I swim.
[/qoute]


.... what do you wear when you are swimming...? nylon..? cotton..? nice try, you can try and hide behind, or dodge reality with semantics, but the only person you are kidding is yourself...



there is plenty of food on this planet for all, but the reality is..... money is more important than you, money that is created out of thin air and sold to you at interest, so that as free as you believe your self to be... your kids of tomorrow will be paying for your debt of today. all war, every single one, is economic, every 'hero' dying in battle makes a fat banker fatter. how dare one person with their snout already in the trough, make the decision to deny another life, how greedy and selfish are you..?

Hyporcrite, may I quote you? "...do the world a favour and get off it".
[/qoute]


... where am i being hypocritical, maybe you should read what is written, and maybe ponder before spraying verbal diatribe... read again...
.......there is plenty of food on this planet for all, but the reality is..... money is more important than you, money that is created out of thin air and sold to you at interest, so that as free as you believe your self to be... your kids of tomorrow will be paying for your debt of today. all war, every single one, is economic, every 'hero' dying in battle makes a fat banker fatter. how dare one person with their snout already in the trough, make the decision to deny another life, how greedy and selfish are you..?



it really is time people who feel like they deserve the right to an opinion, take a real good look around and see just how much of what they believe to be their own thoughts, is just rubbish that they have been fed and are now regurgitating, without any real idea of what they are saying.... T-minus 1600 (and a bit) and counting......xxx


You are just regurgitating the videos you watch. It's very obvious. Do you have any thoughts of your own, or do you just think about those internet videos all day, and regurgitate them to people like they were your very own thoughts and investigations?

You see you've taken one form of rubbish (TV), and simply replaced it with another. You think you've evolved but you've only changed. Same coin, different side.



..... now this comment really makes me wonder who you are... adl..? its true the hardest thing of all about seeking 'truth', is wading through the tonnes of distraction, and dealing with where it might end up taking you. mainstream or corporate media is nothing but a conditioning tool, unless, we are able to see it through 'their' 95-5 eyes.. 95% rubbish, 5% truth, what makes it disheartening, is otherwise intelligent people who jump on this bandwagon and immediately assume everything on the internet is rubbish...
well excuse me, but your commercial tv stations are still telling me that 19 terrorists outsmarted the 'greatest millitary on earth', but still have no explaination as to how building seven collapsed, hell, it was even left out of the official investigation, commercial television still tells us that 95% fat free is better for you, when its fake food oil, sugar and corn syrup that is making our kids slow, letharic and fat, or that aspartame is safe, or that oil comes from dead dinosaurs...
.....short answer, give me tens of thousands of individuals who can voice their own opinion, or give their own eyewitness reports over any bought and paid for, 'brought to you by' media 'company' anyday, and i will wade through the rubbish and make my own mind of the facts that come to hand....
like the stories emerging from eyewitnesses in china that there was a military base at or very close to the epicentre of the recent quake....
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-6-3/71353.html
.... it is the same coin, but they are two very diffent faces...


If you want to have a revolution I suggest you talk with the French. They've had a few. I guess they finally got it right?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution


....which french should i talk too..? all of them, at once..? sorry now it is i who is playing semantics....


My 2 pesos: The government should have never gotten involved in this fuel price debate at all. The goverment has nought to do with commodity prices except for legislation to prevent monopolies, price fixing etc. and that's partly where the ACCC steps in. Rudd should have pointed that out, end of story. Some idiot's advised him incorrectly.


It's supply and demand like that's affecting the prices, like everything else in a free market (global) economy. Just like it always has been and always will be. Occasionally a govt might introduce measures to protect local producers.


... the market is not free, nothing in this consumer world is free, someone or something (which existentially is a someone) always pays the price, its just convienient for the masters of us, that in this white bread society in which we live, that mostly those paying the price, are in 'far off' lands, will never be exposed by their owned media, and usually don't live long enough to kick up much of a stink... thanks mostly to their own manipulated internal distraction..(war/famine/poverty/etc)....

.... finally, anyone wanting to pm me their postal address, i will gladly send free of charge, some copyright free internet based documentaries, showing glimpses from 'the other side of the coin'

evlPanda
NSW, 9202 posts
6 Jun 2008 2:08PM
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teabagg said...
... the market is not free, nothing in this consumer world is free, someone or something (which existentially is a someone) always pays the price, its just convienient for the masters of us, that in this white bread society in which we live, that mostly those paying the price, are in 'far off' lands, will never be exposed by their owned media, and usually don't live long enough to kick up much of a stink... thanks mostly to their own manipulated internal distraction..(war/famine/poverty/etc)....


The market is free in the sense that there is no government control, they do not set the price of milk or housing or oil etc, like they used to. That is what a free market is.


.... finally, anyone wanting to pm me their postal address, i will gladly send free of charge, some copyright free internet based documentaries, showing glimpses from 'the other side of the coin'


J. Vialls,
45 Merlin Drive,
Carine, Western Australia 6020

teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
6 Jun 2008 2:22PM
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nice try, but we need more like mr vialls+co, and less like mr sandilands+co

evlPanda
NSW, 9202 posts
6 Jun 2008 3:00PM
Thumbs Up

teabagg said...

nice try, but we need more like mr vialls+co, and less like mr sandilands+co


har har

elmo
WA, 8727 posts
6 Jun 2008 11:35PM
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Heres the solution

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NEVER-PAY-FOR-PETROL-AGAIN_W0QQitemZ200229428419QQihZ010QQcategoryZ1467QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

mattyjee
WA, 575 posts
9 Jun 2008 8:37PM
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Really, we should not be complaining about the price of petrol. Lets look at what is involved in putting petrol in your car. Firstly, someone has to do extensive subsurface study to find the oil. Then they have to build an expensive rig to drill down kms into the earths crust to reach the oil. The oil must then be pumped up onto a ship and sent halfway across the world to a billion dollar refinery, much like the one we have here in perth. Now also, let me remind you, that a typical crude oil is only about 20% petrol and 25% diesel. And of that petrol, none of it is good enough to burn in your car (yet). All this oil has to go through a refinery to improve it's quality and to turn some of the sludgy **** into workable petrol and diesel. After this, it is piped to a terminal and trucked to all the different servos.

And it's still cheaper than bottled water!!!

The real problem is, that fuel has been way too cheap since the beginning (especilly since post WWII), and our lifestyles have embraced it so much, that it is now too hard for us to give up. In the old days, communities used to be set up around work. For example, the suburb of kwinana was first formed in 1955 to house all the workers of the refinery here in perth. This is back in the days when a car was a luxury item, not an item of necessity as it is now. These days, almost all of the workers on the kwinana industrial strip (myself included) live over 25km away due to the cheapness and convenience of petrol and cars. All our cities are set up in a reliance of fuel and oil and as it becomes more expensive i think we will be cursing some of our desicions over the last 50 years.

It's only going to get worse...

spot1
WA, 1588 posts
9 Jun 2008 10:19PM
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RUDDS A DUD

TonyC
WA, 410 posts
9 Jun 2008 10:24PM
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Ruddy's becoming the great Australian ambassador and peace maker to the world. He has found his true calling - destined for far greater things than be worried about country affairs. Good on you Ruddy - you have everyones utmost respect for your tireless, self-sacrificing benevolent character.

getfunky
WA, 4485 posts
10 Jun 2008 11:19AM
Thumbs Up

TonyC said...

Ruddy's becoming the great Australian ambassador and peace maker to the world. He has found his true calling - destined for far greater things than be worried about country affairs. Good on you Ruddy - you have everyones utmost respect for your tireless, self-sacrificing benevolent character.



As opposed to Johnny sticking his head in the monarchistic sands, casting our racial views back 40 years to the white Oz policy, and dividing every faction that differs from a flag draped, flame haired, freckle faced, redkneck witch (who appears to be breeding if the latest Pauline clone is an example). Wish theysd throw redknecks overboard mate

Rudd has done more to drag this country back in the right direction in 6 mths, than Johnny did (in an excellent time of opportunity too) in 10 years! All Howard and his smug cronies did was watch the international clams come raking and act like it the huge demand of china etc were all their work. 10 years of opportunity to improve schools, hospitals etc (you know the sort of stuff that improves the social fabric) wasted right there.

Tony, Rudd is not responsible for a global down turn or the price of oil mate.

getfunky
WA, 4485 posts
10 Jun 2008 11:24AM
Thumbs Up

mattyjee said...


Really, we should not be complaining about the price of petrol. Lets look at what is involved in putting petrol in your car. Firstly, someone has to do extensive subsurface study to find the oil. Then they have to build an expensive rig to drill down kms into the earths crust to reach the oil. The oil must then be pumped up onto a ship and sent halfway across the world to a billion dollar refinery, much like the one we have here in perth. Now also, let me remind you, that a typical crude oil is only about 20% petrol and 25% diesel. And of that petrol, none of it is good enough to burn in your car (yet). All this oil has to go through a refinery to improve it's quality and to turn some of the sludgy **** into workable petrol and diesel. After this, it is piped to a terminal and trucked to all the different servos.

And it's still cheaper than bottled water!!!

The real problem is, that fuel has been way too cheap since the beginning (especilly since post WWII), and our lifestyles have embraced it so much, that it is now too hard for us to give up. In the old days, communities used to be set up around work. For example, the suburb of kwinana was first formed in 1955 to house all the workers of the refinery here in perth. This is back in the days when a car was a luxury item, not an item of necessity as it is now. These days, almost all of the workers on the kwinana industrial strip (myself included) live over 25km away due to the cheapness and convenience of petrol and cars. All our cities are set up in a reliance of fuel and oil and as it becomes more expensive i think we will be cursing some of our desicions over the last 50 years.

It's only going to get worse...




Totally agree...


Wassup with Coke being cheaper than water too?? So you take water, process it, add refined suger, caramel and gawd knows what else it is that rots ya guts and "Hey presto!!" it's cheaper than the 1st ingredient is on the market???

Sumpin not right there... It doesn't excactly encourage fatties to chose a better option now does it. Course Tony Abbott had no probs at all with Maccas Coke etc etc being sturation marketed during kids tv time (contrary to the existing laws that state a minor is not to be the target of advertising).

getfunky
WA, 4485 posts
10 Jun 2008 11:27AM
Thumbs Up

Oh and finally....

teabagg it has been very enlightening reading about oil/abiotic etc. I must admit I was completely in the dark on this... very worrying to be honest.

Unfortunately I am only on page 403 and have another 2/3rds to go

teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
10 Jun 2008 5:13PM
Thumbs Up

TonyC said...

Ruddy's becoming the great Australian ambassador and peace maker to the world. He has found his true calling - destined for far greater things than be worried about country affairs. Good on you Ruddy - you have everyones utmost respect for your tireless, self-sacrificing benevolent character.



you've got to be farking joking....

timomo
QLD, 38 posts
11 Jun 2008 12:04PM
Thumbs Up

As a geologist working in the oil and gas industry I find some of the opinions expressed sad and seriously mis-informed. The atitude that "they" or "the big oil companies" are out to get everyone is incredible. they are companies like any other and if they fail to make a profit they disappear. If oil was as plentiful as some of you believe then I and people like me wouldnt be paid to try and find it. Currently around 1 in 20 exploration wells result in a discovery, onshore an individual well costs around 1.5 million, ofshore between 20 and 30 million. If you think australia should just keep it all then australia also has to pay the money to find it and sorry thats just not going to happen. the reason we have sold futures to china and japan in LPG at what some of you consider to be low prices is because unlike oil, you cant just put it in a can, for many year the gas found above an oil column was flaired to atmosphere as no one was interested in buying it. selling futures worth many billions of dollars gives the companies the capital required to develop the projects which we as consumers can then benefit from. if you dont want to sell it on to foreign countries then fine, it will stay in the ground, as it wont be economic to extract. Peak oil does not mean that all the oil in the earth will disappear, what it means is there will be a point where it is no longer cost effective to find and extract because the consumer is not willing to pay the price. the same as any commodity.ie if we have to drill 100 wells for every 1 success and the the discoveries are getting smaller and smaller in volume how much per liter do you think that would be, just to cover costs? increased prices are good for clean energy producers, when the price is high enough they will be seen as cheaper than oil and when that day comes the oil game is over. Wave power will be cheaper than coal power stations if you smash them with carbon tax for example and so on. To answer the initial question, it is not a question of what krudd should do but what can he do and the answer is nothing, you cant tell a country to sell oil cheaper anymore than you can tell Australia to sell its gold, coal, iron ore, or wheat cheaper.
the quicker people get used to the idea of higher prices the quicker alternatives will be developed. historically you would first improve efficiency then move to new technologies as has been done in other areas. be greatful we live in a rich country where we wont starve due to our food crops being replaced with crops to produce biofuels which you as consumers in a rich country buy.

teabagg
NSW, 141 posts
11 Jun 2008 1:41PM
Thumbs Up

^^^ what sort of business makes billions upon billions of dollars per year, recieves tax cuts and incentives worth hundreds of millions per year from governments around the world, suppresses any new emerging technology that might attribute itself as competition, and invests nothing, in terms of profit, in developing technologies to keep up with world demand.....? 'they' do not have to be competitive, they own the game.... and as if a geologist is gonna bite the hand that feeds.. tow the line timomo, tow the line



Oil reserves 'will last decades'


By Hayley Millar
Business correspondent, BBC Scotland


The North Sea has almost as much oil left as has already been extracted, a BBC Scotland investigation has been told.

Experts believe between 25 and 30 billion barrels could still be recovered over the next 40 years.

Calculating oil reserves is not an exact science and this fact has made it difficult over the years to weigh up the true wealth of oil beneath the North Sea.

Oil producers have tended to play down their oil reserves. The markets do not cope well with shocks, so companies take the view that it is better to pleasantly surprise than disappoint them.

In 2004, Shell stunned shareholders when it revised its proven oil and gas reserves, slimming the figure by 20%. The revelation had an instant impact on the company's share price and has served as a lesson to the industry ever since.

The first minister and former oil economist Alex Salmond told me that there was another motivation for oil companies' reticence.

He said: "If oil companies said 'look we've got lots of reserves in the future', the immediate response of government would be to stick taxation up. So there was a kind of incentive for the big companies to underplay the significance of the province."

That is hardly surprising - since the late 1960s, the oil companies have paid £140bn in taxation to the Treasury.


We're bringing on four new fields this year. We're talking hundreds of millions of pounds
John Gallagher
Shell

That is a pretty big disincentive. No wonder there is such divergence over how much oil is left in the North Sea.

Sir Bernard Ingham, who was press secretary in the Department of Energy when North Sea oil came ashore, admitted that government negotiations with the oil companies always boiled down to the same thing - taxation.

As he put it: "The whole political calculation is how much brass can you get out of North Sea oil without driving the oil companies away."

The one thing that I did not expect to find in my investigation was that the proven reserves on some of the region's oldest fields are in fact rising.

The Forties Field, one of the biggest and most iconic, is still producing oil 33 years after the first oil was pumped ashore.

Higher costs

Five years ago, BP sold it to the Texas-based oil exploration and production company Apache. Since then Apache has invested $2bn in the field's sub sea network, its platforms and in re-evaluating how much oil is in the field.

According to Jim House, CEO of Apache, flow rates from the Forties field have increased and the amount of recoverable oil has also increased.

He said: "Forties was definitely showing her age when Apache took it. At the time when it was sold, pre-developed reserved were in the region of 150 million barrels. We ended last year with 200 million barrels on our books."


Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Preview of the BBC Scotland investigation

The downside to operating off the coast of Scotland has always been the relatively higher cost and, as the region matures, that cost factor is becoming more fundamental for the oil majors.

Shell has also been selling off some of its core assets in the North Sea to newer and more aggressive companies like Fairfield Energy.

Through shooting new seismic surveys and drilling new wells these new players are extending the life of North Sea oil fields.

John Gallagher, from Shell in Aberdeen, said his company was still committed to the area.

He said: "We're bringing on four new fields this year. We're talking hundreds of millions of pounds.

"The plant rejuvenation work that we're doing is hundreds of millions of pounds and the work we're doing cross-border - linking up Norway and the UK, which is a growing trend in our industry - is again hundreds of millions of pounds."

Huge gamble

The same high oil price that makes it harder for you and me to drive to the shops on a whim is making it easier for companies to take a gamble on previously undeveloped parts of the North Sea.

With a simple oil well costing $22m to drill, exploration companies are taking a huge gamble.

Canadian oil exploration company Oilexco last year drilled 39 out of 140 exploration and appraisal wells in the North Sea, despite rising costs.

Its chief executive officer, Arthur Millholland, said "In 2004 we were paying approximately $55,000 a day for a drilling rig.


"Today we're paying $350,000 a day. So even though the price of oil today is higher than it was in 2004, our costs of doing business here have increased just as dramatically."

It still seems to be worth their while staying in the North Sea, despite the high costs.

What I have seen in my investigation is an industry that is better placed to shoulder these costs. Smaller companies with lower overheads can go after smaller pockets of oil and still make a decent profit.

How long will North Sea oil last? The answer to that depends on many things, including market conditions, future government initiatives and constant technological improvements.

Technology alone is playing its part in extending the activity in the North Sea. John Forrest, Talisman Energy's general manager for the Flotta Catchment Area, said the company was now drilling wells that they were unable to drill five to 10 years ago.

World-class

He said: "We're bringing on fields that we've known were there for quite a long time but they just weren't economic or we didn't have the technologies. We recently brought on a field without drilling any more wells. We just had better technology."

The Talisman-owned Claymore platform is expected to keep pumping oil for another 30 years.

Mr Forrest said: "We foresee an economic life at that installation until the late 2030s and that's with the ideas we currently have. We think other innovations will come along that will almost certainly extend that."

The North Sea has many things in its favour. It has world-class geology which makes it attractive to those wanting to harvest its rich reservoirs.

Compared with many of the world's oil producing regions, it is governed by a relatively stable political and economic regime.

The market price of oil is a much more volatile factor, but at current prices the oil that still lies beneath the North Sea is becoming more and more valuable every day.

BBC Scotland's journalists are focusing on the high price of oil, and what this means for the industry in the North Sea, this week.

Hayley Miller will present a special hour-long documentary - Truth, Lies, Scotland and Oil - at 2240 BST on Wednesday on BBC One Scotland.



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"High fuel prices, what should KRudd do?" started by Mobydisc