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The evil empire of oil addicts

1 October 2002

There was an air of gloom and foreboding in the Brushtail Café. Even patrons who normally took no interest in world politics were muttering that George Dubya Bush was an imperialist madman.

“My God, this man is just nakedly telling every country in the world they’ll do things America’s way or they’ll be bombed, invaded, then ruled directly from Washington. It’s like we’re in a timewarp and 19th century imperialism is back again, but this time there’s only one imperialist power and it’s got nuclear weapons and air supremacy”, said the old retired brigadier who dropped in for lunch on most days.

Old Possum, stirred from his usual position at the end at the bar. “Forget September 11 and the fear of terrorism, they’re just excuses for war and conquest. You can sum it all up with one word -- oil”, he remarked. “What’s really behind this is that the American elites know the end of the age of oil is at hand, and they’re desperate.”

“Is it as simple as that do you think?” asked Joadja.

“ Yep”, Old said, taking another swig of cider. “This is the fundamental position: The world’s geology is now very well understood and oil geologists aren’t expecting to find many more really big oilfields. Nowadays they’re only finding smallish fields and usually they’re difficult to exploit.”

“Which means expensive.”

“Right, offshore in deep water for example. So the fact is, the oil industry’s finding new oil at a fraction of the rate at which it’s being used. Over the last few years we’ve been burning the stuff four times faster than we’ve been finding it.

“And now there’s agreement throughout the industry that what they call the midpoint of world production has already been passed or will shortly be passed. Experts differ here, but not by much. The pessimists think we’ve probably already passed the midpoint and optimists think it’s only eight or ten years in the future. Whatever. Fact is, from the midpoint, world production will fall as rapidly as it rose, so that by 2050, oil will be very scare indeed.

“And that’s where the American obsession with controlling the Middle East comes in. The biggest oilfields are in the Arab world, and with the smaller oilfields in other parts of the world starting to go out of production, the proportion of the industrialised nations’ supply coming from the Middle East -- it’s now something like a third -- is rising relentlessly and on top of that, China is starting to import oil in a big way, bringing more competition to the market.

“So the US elite are terrified the economic and political leverage of the Arab states will increase and unless the world economy goes deeper into slump and consumption falls, oil prices will inevitably rise -- steeply.”

“Yeah and I read somewhere the other day that the US is already running a record current account deficit, something like $500 billion, or 5 percent of GDP, no wonder they’re terrified of oil price rises.” I added

“But, surely, that’s capitalism, that’s their Great God Market”, Joadja snorted. “If the Yanks were smart they’d accept the inevitable and use their vast wealth and technological prowess to convert their industries and cities to green power, stuff like solar and wind electricity.”

“Granted, but it’d still be tough, very tough”, Old possum said. “The scale of the problem is huge. America is absolutely addicted to cheap oil. The US consumes 26 per cent of world production and they import just over half of their oil. Most of their cities rely totally on the cars and buses for mass transportation. We’re talking petrol rationing, queues at the petrol stations, big price rises in the supermarket. Then there’s their agriculture which absolutely depends on oil for irrigation, plowing, harvesting, not to mention the production of fertilizers. No, they’re desperate to dominate the world’s supply before the decline sets in and if a US empire in the Middle East is the price, then so be it.”

“This is the nasty big picture stuff mainstream politicians don’t want to talk about”, I said, contemplating another stubby of cider.