[Jdelagado]

I find Matt, his personality, and some his lap dogs on this forum who practically hero worship him to be rather repellent. He sometimes addresses bogus cricticism like a thirteen-year-old when he should be professional enough to let it slide. I also hate it when he acts if he is the funniest motherf-er to ever walk the face of the earth.

That being said, I do appreciate the fact that he is spreading the word on peak oil and not sparing some of the ugly details. I think the people who attack him for a lack of credentials in energy, environmental studies, thermodynamics etc. need to realize that he gets his information from the people who have credentials in energy, environmental studies, thermodynamics etc. I will also give him props for getting his material on the floor of the House.

I haven't looked into the 9/11 stuff to make a clear judgement. So, I suppose anything is possible.

Is that fair enough for you? You &*#%$!*bag.

Fair enough, jesus. Now with all your great power and wisdom, please refill our oil fields.

jdelagado

[MattSavinar]

I find Matt, his personality, and some his lap dogs on this forum who practically hero worship him to be rather repellent. He sometimes addresses bogus cricticism like a thirteen-year-old when he should be professional enough to let it slide. I also hate it when he acts if he is the funniest motherf-er to ever walk the face of the earth.

Dude, it's a life-and-death stuff, major depressing stuff we''re talking about here. Forgive me (hey, you're Jesus) for cracking a joke every once in while, will ya?

I'm going to start posting under a fake name so as not rile up your suburban -holiness.

Satt Mavinar

[OilyMon]

I first heard about Peak Oil on Coast-2-Coast AM, when Matt Savinar was on the show. I read the book in one day at work the next day (the 186 page version) while it was available for free leading up to the US election last November. Thank you for that Matt, I haven't and will not purchase a copy, but have directed people towards the website for information. Since then, I have begun to educate myself about the realities of the situation because, being naturally skeptical, I did not take the book at face value. The book did for me what I believe it was intended to do: introduce the subject of peak oil. Since then, I've learned the other names of the respected scientists, and others that have been leading the peak oil charge for quite some time. I think Matt (you need a new name, or at least call yourself Matthew - it sounds more professional!) had an advantage over the others and that was he has no respected scientific carreer to speak of. The experts all need to worry about thier reputation, and so temper their responses so that they aren't attacked and ostracized from the scientific community. Matt had the advantage of being a respectable source - he holds a law degree and so has demonstrated some degree of intelligence - and being on the outside of the issue. From this perspective, Matt was able to disect the issues accurately, and I believe with an enormous unbalanced pessimism.

That being said - I think the worst case scenario (after my own limited research) is likely, and that the issue is bigger than just peak oil, although global events leading up to the ceassation of our moden industrial world will invariably lie in the peak's shadow.

Thanks again Matt, for your generosity - if I ever run into you post peak I promise I won't kill you.

[Raxozanne]

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The oil market may be quickly headed for a massive crash as global economic growth slackens, alternative energy gains ground and financial traders sense a price peak, an economist with Morgan Stanley said on Thursday

source: Yahoo

Anyone got any opinions on this?
They say Chinese demand is going to slacken (I don't know if that means a real fall or just a slow in growth). But if China is going to start filling a strategic reserve for itself won't demand be going up quite a bit?

[MacG]

It is not unthinkable. There is a crowd of economic "dissidents" out there which is larger and many times more educated than the PO crowd, and they claim (with good backing) that our economies are in for a crash of rather spectacular proportions independent of PO. It might even be that PO will never be noticed as an issue - people will just notice the financial crash, which of course will reduce the demand for oil and contain the price.

Le Metropole Cafe has a nice gathering of economic "dissidents" but you find them in many other places also, such as 321gold and moneyfiles.org . The "goldbugs" are somewhat overrepresented and I belive they are right on most issues but wrong on just one.

Follow this guy for some deeply interesting reading:
http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=335

[MD]

Any attempt to extract one or two econpmic conditions as a basis for prediction will result in failure unless you just happen to be lucky.
Reality almost always turns out to be a surprise either in outcome or in cause.
That said, most likely outcomes for the United States include difficult to very difficult times. Same can be said for China and India. Europe and Segments of South America appear to be best positioned to avoid the most difficult times, for the moment.
And that said, prepare for the big surprise!

[tokyo_to_motueka]

as far as i can tell, the oil price crash predicted by Mr. Xie can only happen if either the Chinese economy, the US economy, or both, collapse beforehand. if this happens, the global financial system is toast, imho.

a "slowdown" in either of these economies will only cause a slight downward correction in the crude price, which will be quite temporary as depletion and new demand in the developing world suck up excess capacity.

[PK]

I just came back from China 2 weeks ago. I visited both Guangzhou and Shanghai.

In Guangzhou, there appears to be a rationing of diesel (Never been implemented before until past month or so). In Shanghai, the electricity crunch is expected to be worse than last year during summer. Therefore, I do not understand how Mr Andy Xie arrived at his conclusion. Do you?

[Sys1]

MacG : we not dumb here. Of course oil will be cheap if world economy collapse. Anyway, it won't change the result. Our civilization as we know it will definitely disappear.

[MacG]

MacG : we not dumb here. Of course oil will be cheap if world economy collapse. Anyway, it won't change the result. Our civilization as we know it will definitely disappear.

I would say that dumb people are somewhat underrepresented here, but there sure are some!

[pup55]

It is not unthinkable

One need only look at the price and production curves for the period between 1979 and 1985 for an example of this.

What he is not telling us is how deep the recession/depression is going to have to be in order to get this accomplished.

[Sgs-Cruz]

It is not unthinkable

One need only look at the price and production curves for the period between 1979 and 1985 for an example of this.

What he is not telling us is how deep the recession/depression is going to have to be in order to get this accomplished.

And that's the key. It's fun to pay attention to the oil price now because it keeps going up, up, up, and it's exciting. But we have to remember that at some point it is going to come down as our economy won't be able to support the high price. At that point the "negative" effects of PO that we talk about on here kick in. (Incidentally, that's about when I expect a large percentage of the membership on here to get a bit of a "rude awakening" as the apocalypse they currently wish for begins to hit close to home.)

My problem is that living without a job and growing vegetables in your front yard isn't as fun as tracking the price of WTI on nymex.com! (Edit: And it's not even because of the supposed forthcoming collapse of factory agriculture that we'll be growing our own food, it's because in a depression, you grow your own food or you starve...)

[KevO]

Things are speeding along it seems

A couple of hours ago, Morgan Stanley said,-

"A deceleration in the world economy could gather pace in the fourth quarter, causing the oil bubble to burst.
As oil has worked for so long, the financial community is hanging on to this position," he says. Speculative funds have been increasingly active in commodity markets over the past two years and are often blamed by OPEC for keeping prices high.

"They will likely keep prices up until an oil market collapse. That day is not too far away, I believe... What is occurring now is probably the final frenzy, in my view."

full article at
http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArtic ... ID=8806298

[Leanan]

I saw that. I can't see a crash coming any time soon. A lot of volatility, yes, but not a crash.

[KevO]

Bear in mind this is an Oil crash, beacuse of _lower_ demand.

What would that mean?

KevO

[Leanan]

A recession would reduce demand. But I don't think it would reduce prices. At least, not for the long term. China has yet to fill their new strategic reserve. They are waiting for the price to drop. I suspect a lot of other countries (including Saudi Arabia?) will be building reserves as well, so that will limit how far oil can fall.

As for alternatives...they will be far less competitive if the price of oil drops. Canadian tar sands are not gonna flood the market with cheap oil and put OPEC out of business.

[MacG]

I think they are referring to a gargantuan amount of leveraged speculation in various oil derivatives which seem to be going on. There is a hell of a lot of leveraged speculation going on in many markets and nobody has a clear picture of this incredibly complex, intertwined and messy situation. Leveraged speculation in derivatives can backfire big time and money lenders and financial institutions can end up such deep sh-t that the Federal Reserve dont has the capacity to bail them out.

Leveraged speculators are really easy-going and dont worry about anything since the bailout of LTCM.

[FoxV]

hmm, the oil analysts are saying supply won't meet demand between Q3 and Q4, and these guys are predicting a price crash in oil.

Sounds to me like more Pie in the sky economist lip service.

and to add to their ignorance they throw out this statement

But Morgan's Xie said increased efficiency and conservation measures and the viability of alternatives like oil sands and liquefied gas and coal was already undercutting demand for oil.

ya, just look at how much Tar sand oil we're pumping these days, all the LNG we're importing and liquified coal we're producing. Who needs oil anyways

The only way we're going to have an oil price crash is if we have a massive stock market crash. Fortunately for these guys, I think we're going to have one this fall. So I guess Morgan Stanley is right, just for totally clueless reasons.

how can one profession be made up of such consistantly stupid people

[KevO]

how can one profession be made up of such consistantly stupid people

just think about you math teachers

KevO

[nth]

This makes no sense at all.
I wish these guys will read Campbell's book.
It is good reading and knock some sense into them.
It doesn't matter if you believe in PO or not.
The fact of the oil industry is written in stone.
Unless oil companies are lying to SEC.
The cost of oil production has gone up!
Companies cannot afford to sell oil for $20.
Unless demand falls by over 5mbpd.
oil prices will stay above $40.
high oil production costs are around $18. This is non-conventional oil like tar sand, deep sea, arctic region, etc. This is barring any unforeseen accidents, storms, etc. Actually, all hurricanes are unforeseen according to their financial projections. STUPID! They never account for possible hurricane related costs in their cost models.