The one thing that consistently recurs across ions of human existence is the burning need of mankind to find an opportune punching bag.
One, on which, we can conveniently pass on our burden of pain, guilt, fear, hurt or offence. Such visibly “soft targets” have been chosen with remarkable impunity throughout the history of mankind whenever are faced with a crisis- big or small.
Undoubtedly, one of the biggest catastrophes facing us today is the meteoric rise of that one precious barrel of crude. And, true to character, we have found a poor soul on whose Door we can easily lay the blame and, for good measure, also through some brickbats and rotten eggs, at that very Door.
Agreed, that for this particular problem, we have, in our ingenuity, found a number of such Doors but the biggest and by far the most (un) popular belongs to that of India and China, and their mammoth population.
I recently heard a man quote his grandfather and he said “They need to have a course in college called common sense and everyone should take it. Problem is there aren’t too many people that could pass…. or teach it."
Maybe I would'nt need to write a whole lot more if all we could do was just understand and learn from Gramps!
I agree that India has had an increased consumption of Crude but a look at statistics above gives a totally different picture:
I may be wrong, but from what I can see above, the US consumes (and imports) 8 times more crude oil than India, for a human populace that is one third that of India.
In effect, one American consumes 27 times more oil than a single Indian!!
How’s that for finding a Door to lay blame on…??
I do agree that Indian’s have been consuming more oil than their father or grandfathers did, but there are other factors also that need to be discussed. The first is time. These high prices have not been around all that long and development of new supplies takes many years. The second is access to new resources. And the third factor is what is happening to costs. The public focuses on the price at the pump, but the oil industry is preoccupied, and indeed somewhat stymied, by how rapidly their own costs are rising - far exceeding the rate of general inflation. The latest IHS/Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera) Upstream Capital Cost Index - the consumer price index for the oil field - shows that costs for developing a new oil or natural gas field have more than doubled in four years. Some costs have risen even more: a deep-water drill ship might have cost $125,000 per day to rent four years ago. Today it goes for more than $600,000 per day - if you can find one.
Everything is in short supply - people, equipment, engineering skills. Be-cause of the contractions that came with the price collapses of 1986 and 1998, there is a missing generation in the oil industry. More than half the petroprofessionals are less than 10 years away from retirement. A petroleum engineer graduating this year is likely to receive a higher starting salary than an Ivy League graduate going to Wall Street. This competition for people and equipment has driven up costs dramatically. These costs and shortages are now causing delays to new projects.
Demand is already responding to the new prices except in those parts of the world where retail fuel prices are controlled or subsidised. What can be done to improve the supply picture? The International Energy Agency's work on future supply is getting attention. But the IEA's message is not that the resources are not there. Rather it is the likely risk that the required investment will be "deferred" - will not take place in a timely way - because of these rising costs and because governments restrict access or postpone decisions.
So maybe we can stop driving big fuel guzzling SUV’s, or maybe stop driving at all and walk a lot more. I guess that will have a much greater impact on the crude oil prices.
Think about it before we go searching for another Door….
