Just as global warming gains international traction with treaties, targets and timetables the price of oil miraculously drops. A coincidence? I think not.
Just as solar, wind, biofuel and electric technologies become more competitive with high-priced oil and gain wider adoption worldwide the price of oil miraculously drops. A coincidence? I think not.
Big Energy, the oil and gas industry, has had its foot on the neck of the developed world for a very long time, and it knows all the ins-and-outs of making barrels of money. That oil prices suddenly drop to mid-$50-a-barrel while investment, supply and production increase shows Big Energy knows how to use the powerful weapon in its hands. As oil prices decline the value of alternative energy companies begin to collapse, their product no longer as competitive therm-for-therm. Some very innovative and brilliant young companies are going to be picked up by Big Energy at rock-bottom prices in the year or two to come.
As for the economies of countries dependent upon high oil prices, like Venezuela? They too will become vassals to the Big Energy syndicate. Facing economic failure, some political regimes hostile to Big Energy will be replaced with new and favorable regimes, which will enjoy the financial largesse Big Energy capital and projects provide. The global political order will hew to the common-denominator – energy prices – and the Big Energy masters of the world will demonstrate the hardball practice of power.
There are those who will say “market forces” are simply at work; supply has increased beyond demand, and thus the price has dropped. The problem with this naïve line of logic, however, is that Big Energy controls both the market and the forces. Americans are not going to complain about lower gas prices; to the contrary, most people are not obsessively thinking about Big Energy’s global squeeze-play as they fill their tanks for under $2.80/gallon.
A year or two of lowered profits at Big Energy is no big deal when compared with the chance to squeeze their competition out of the market for what might be another 25 years or more. We are talking about a TRILLION dollar industry here, not some five-and-dime operation with empty pockets. Big Energy knows their shareholders will hang in there for the ride, bumpy as it may appear to the uninitiated. Once the squeeze-out period has passed and Big Energy has consolidated the new technologies into its food-chain, it can feed or starve any alternative energy source at its whim.
Oil price declines from the near-monopoly-like-syndicate of Big Energy forces consumer complicity in the application of naked power. Public opinion, in our democracy now measured by the consumer price index and GNP, takes on the appearance of popular support, adding backbone to national politicians who otherwise, supported by Big Energy money, collude with it to block carbon-regulating legislation and provide new tax breaks.
When it’s all over, the well-established hegemony of Big Energy will be renewed. Innovation and energy competition will have been savaged, restive national economies brought to their knees, global corporations and politicians rewarded for their loyalty, the myth of supply and demand reified, and attention to global warming pushed aside by fears of deflation. All it will cost Big Energy is a few trillion and what’s that among friends?
This article is so typical of the global warming hysterics’ meme. It is written by a politician and not a scientist. It has no scientific information and uses propaganda techniques ( “foot on the neck”, “Big Energy”, “become vassals”) to promote the hysterics’ agenda. And a conspiracy theory among OPEC and the oil companies- really????
You’re way to paranoid.
It’s pretty obvious that the Saudis, after not getting any agreement under OPEC to reduce output, decided to crush their competition (and perhaps teach the other OPEC members a lesson.
US oil companies, particularly deep sea drillers, are in trouble. It’s not worth drilling for $50 oil. Russia is in big trouble. (Oil prices should have started dropping because the US is rapidly moving towards less dependence on foreign resources.)
Fracking may still be making some money at $50.
Big Energy has helped increase the standard of living for the developed world. If Big Green doesn’t convince policy makers to increase the price of fossil fuels, the developing world will also reap the benefits that cheap energy has given us. Energy competition must occur without the subsidies that Big Green enjoys. Without those subsidies solar, wind, biofuel, and others just can’t compete. If government stays out of the way, the free market will reveal the true competitors to Big Energy.
One has to hand it to the Saudi Arabians for this change in strategy, aiming for a global oil price of US$40 per barrel.
I don’t even care that we have been ripped off for decades with high oil prices, under the pretext of the “peak oil” theory.
What is important is that a low oil price brings political reality to the world … which effectively defies the green energy subsidy train that has been rolling along for too long, destination unknown.
Well, that subsidy train will almost certainly be brought to a complete halt if the world gets to enjoy a low oil price for at least three years.
This is just wishful thinking. The reduction in oil and gas prices is strictly market driven by Middle Eastern oil interests in their “war” against American fracking. That it harms the green mafia and their insane carbon fixation, is a benefit for all, except for the far-left.
I don’t think that oil is generally a direct competitor for renewables, certainly not for electricity. Maybe a little bit for transport, but EVs are not yet a big segment of the market.
“Big Energy, the oil and gas industry, has had its foot on the neck of the developed world ”
So “big oil” is “wickedly” giving the developed world plenty of inexpensive energy, letting us all travel inexpensively to visit family and friends over the Christmas holiday, letting us communte from the suburbs to our place of work rather than being “green” and walking to work, letting us use refrigerators and washers rather than canning our food and washing our clothes by hand. I’ll take the “evil’ energy supplied by the oil companies.
Welcome to the real world of competition! In the real world alternatives just aren’t viable right now. Perhaps in the future.
Wow…conspiracy ideation or what?
Who are you casting as “Big Energy” – if it’s anyone other than Saudi Arabia, you’ve certainly gone too far (though, in fact, the US administration may be supportive of this lowering of oil prices, given the effect it has on actors such as Russia, Iran & Venezuela).