Search This Blog

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Why I aint selling my fuel guzzler

Roy Maugeri is my new hero.
Roy Maugeri, oil pundit who predicts
an oversupply in seven short years.
One of the world's foremost experts on oil, gas, and energy, he released a study showing that oil is NOT running out... haikona bru: its getting more.
Maugeri's latest paper show worldwide discoveries of new oil and gas supplies are at such an unprecedented level that the latest predictions have supply outpacing consumption by 2020. More on him here.
Would this lead to a drop in oil prices as he predicts?
Nope.
It costs more to get the oil out of the new fields, the new
wave of Chinese and Indian motorists all wants to burn the stuff, and besides, oil producers have a fine tradition to uphold when it comes to charging top dollar - using any excuse and exploitative law under the sun.
In short, they still have us over a barrel.
But it may slow down the spiraling increases we have glumly been accepting as a fact of life because the oil-peakers said it was so since the mid 2000s.
A bit.
Based on Maugeri field-by-field analysis of most oil exploration and development projects in the world, his paper suggests that an unrestricted, additional production (the level of production targeted by each single project, according to its schedule, unadjusted for risk) of more than 49 million barrels per day of oil (crude oil and natural gas liquids, or NGLs) is targeted for 2020, the equivalent of more than half the current world production capacity of 93 mbd.
After adjusting this substantial figure considering the risk factors affecting the actual accomplishment of the projects on a country-by-country basis, the additional production that could come by 2020 is about 29 mbd. Factoring in depletion rates of currently producing oilfields and their “reserve growth” (the estimated increases in crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids that could be added to existing reserves through extension, revision, improved recovery efficiency, and the discovery of new pools or reservoirs), the net additional production capacity by 2020 could be 17.6 mbd, yielding a world oil production capacity of 110.6 mbd by that date – as shown in Figure 1. This would represent the most significant increase in any decade since the 1980s.
Read more here
Toyota marked the Land Cruiser’s 30th birthday with a
remake of the series built between 1984 and 2004.
So if we won't pay less, but just more less faster, why am I so happy? For  one, I don't have to sell my fuel-guzzling, genly-rusting slow-but-steady old Toyota Land Cruiser - a car that fits my ego like a metal glove. And two, the mendicant nomads on www.couchsurfing.org can still afford to fly all over this wondrous planet of ours.
UPDATE: Toyota seems to have read my mind, for they have relaunched my 80s series Cruiser. 
The series that established the Land Cruiser’s legendary abilities over America’s snow, in Africa coup d’états, on Arabian sand dunes and through Australian billabongs, as can be seen in countless YouTube videos. Called the Land Cruiser 70, it will only be sold in Japan. A five-speed manual gearbox will make drivers feel nostalgic, while better headlights, ABS brakes and airbags will make them feel safer in city traffic. A 4,0-liter V-6 rumbles under the new-old 70s’ hood, but because most of these collectible 70s  will never leave the cities, Toyota made diff locks optional. A bakkie is also available. The station wagon will sell for 3,6 million yen (about R360 000) and the bakkie wll sell for 3,5 million yen