[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Does Mr O Know?

[Bill Totten]

Clusterfuck Nation

by Jim Kunstler

Comment on current events by the author of
The Long Emergency (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005)

www.kunstler.com (December 01 2008)


A lot of readers are twanging on me for refraining to castigate
President-elect Obama for deeds yet undone. They're discouraged by the
advisors and cabinet secretaries he's picked, ostensibly because the
crew coming in are Washington "insiders", meaning they can't possibly
see or do things differently.

My own starting point for this is the belief that in the years just
ahead any sociopolitical entity organized at the giant scale will
flounder - this includes everything from the federal government to
global corporations to factory farms to centralized high schools to
national retail chains. So even expecting Mr Obama's government to act
effectively may be asking too much in a situation that will require
mostly local action.

The meta-situation will be the overall decline of energy resources and
the necessary downscaling of our activities. We are obviously in a
transitional period between the old profligate energy economy and the
new economy of relative scarcity. We have no idea how disorderly this
transition will be, but there is certainly potential for tremendous
instability in daily life.

For a while, perhaps, the federal government may retain some ability to
affect the way things go, or give the appearance of doing so. This
raises the issue of what Mr Obama and his team really know about our
energy predicament. The president-elect has made some noises - recently
on the 60 Minutes show - that he understands something about the current
price dislocations in the oil markets resulting from the larger
financial turmoil. He alluded to the public's erroneous notion that
current low-ish oil prices mean the oil problem is over. But does the
incoming president know some of the following details?

For instance, does Mr O know that global oil production appears to have
peaked at around 85 million barrels a day, with poor prospects of ever
getting beyond that? This single naked fact has broad ramifications,
above all whether we can continue to think in terms of industrial
"growth" as the benchmark for economic health. There are many
interpretations of the current financial fiasco. Some of them are based
on long-term technical wave theories. A more down-to-earth view suggests
the shock of peak oil - though it doesn't exclude wave theories.

Does Mr O know that world oil discovery has fallen to insignificant
levels after peaking long ago in the 1960s? Does he know we are finding
no more super-giant oil fields on the scale of Arabia's Ghawar or
Mexico's Cantarell, which have supplied most of the world's oil for the
past forty years and are now running down? Does he know that you can't
produce oil that hasn't been discovered?  Does Mr O know that virtually
all the oil-producing nations have entered production decline. Surely
someone has whispered in his ear about the IEA's projection that global
oil production would fall 9.1 percent in the coming year.

Does Mr O know that oil exports have been trending to decline at a
steeper rate than oil depletion? That is, the exporting nations are
losing their ability to send oil to the importers (like us) at a rate
mathematically greater than the run-down in their production.They are
using more of their own oil even while their production is going down.
For example, Mexico is depleting overall at more than nine percent a
year (with the Cantarell field alone running down at more than fifteen
percent annually). Does he know Mexico's net exports are crashing?
Mexico has been our number three leading source of imports. In a very
few years they will not be able to send us any oil. A deluded American
public has no idea that this is happening. Will Mr O explain it to them?

Does Mr O know that the "old major" oil companies (Exxon-Mobil, Texaco,
Shell, et al) produce less than ten percent of the world's oil now - the
other ninety percent coming from the foreign nationals - and that
blaming them for the situation is a waste of time. The foreign national
companies are changing the landscape of the oil markets. They're making
special contracts with "favored customers" rather than just putting
their oil up for auction on the futures markets. One thing you can infer
from this is that we're entering a period of national oil hoarding based
on coming scarcity. The futures markets were based on relative
abundance, and they will not operate very well in a climate of scarcity.
Consider that the USA will probably not be among the "favored customers"
for several oil producing nations. Figure that in with the coming loss
of imports from Mexico (and Venezuela and Nigeria).

Does Mr O know that the current drop in oil prices (due to massive
financial deleveraging) has resulted in the cancellation or postponment
of the very oil production projects that were hoped to offset the coming
depletions? It's not worth it for an oil enterprise (private or foreign)
to drill in deepwater or venture into arctic regions when oil is priced
at $50-a-barrel - if it costs $80 to get the stuff out of the ground.
It's not worth digging up tar sands in Canada at that price. This halt
in activity is going to boomerang back on the US in a year or so, with
depletions ongoing everywhere and no new oil to take its place. Does Mr
O know that we're just as likely to see shortages as a resuming rise in
oil prices here in the US during his coming term?

Does Mr O know that the current re-inflation program being run by the
Treasury and the Federal Reserve is so egregious that it may lead to
loss of the dollar's legitimacy, to the renunciation of dollar holdings
by other nations, to the down-rating of US Treasury debt instruments,
and finally to an inability of the US to purchase foreign oil - which
comprises two-thirds of all the oil we use every day?

Does Mr O know that we are not going to run the US automobile and truck
fleet on any combination of alt.fuels? Continuing it by other means is a
fantasy that will only disappoint us. The motoring era is coming to an
end. Heroic investments in highway infrastructure to create jobs will be
a tragic waste of our dwindling capital. The pressure for Mr O to make
these misinvestments will be enormous, perhaps insurmountable. There are
probably not a thousand people in the US who agree with what I am saying
- meaning the consensus to keep the cars running at all costs overwhelms
reality at the moment. Does Mr O's concept of "change" include the
possibility that we may have to live very differently in this society?

Chances are, if Mr O knows any of these things he might be crucified in
the polls and the media by acknowledging them. The only "change" that
America really wants to hear about is evicting George Bush from the
White House. They're sick of him and all the disturbance he has caused
in their financial affairs. But beyond that, the American public is
deathly afraid of the kind of changes we actually face - such as, the
end of consumer culture, the gross loss of value in suburban real estate
(which forms the bulk of the middle class's private wealth), the
prospect of food and fuel scarcities, the need to re-localize our lives,
the need to physically shape up to stop the costly and unnecessary drain
on our medical resources, to grow more of our own food, to work harder
at things that actually matter, and to save whatever we can for a
difficult future.

If Mr O introduces any of these themes into the national discourse, the
public and the media and the bloggers will all dump on him for failing
to prop up the wild party that American life became in recent decades.
_____

My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at
all booksellers.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/12/does-mr-o-know.html


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