oil (Page 8)

Oil prices have risen drastically, leading to a potential collapse in our economy. But an oil industry spokesman says the oil shortage is a myth. If so, it’s working well for two very divergent groups: the oil companies, who are making record profits, and environmentalists, who want to hasten development of alternate fuels.

In the June 9th edition of the Independent, Steve Connor reports that UK oil industry CEO Richard Pike is saying that there is more than twice as much oil in the ground as major producers say?in fact, there are 1,200 billion barrels of oil available worldwide in proven reserves. Pike claims that big oil companies?which are making record profits?are happy to go along with this misconception, since it means they can keep their prices high.
read more

Here’s the REAL Reason – Oil prices are hitting new highs every day despite the fact that demand for gasoline is plummeting in Europe and North America. The reason for this is that Asian demand remains explosively high due to the fact that Asian nations continue to subsidize prices at the pump, meaning that consumers pay less than market value for gas and demand remains high. And guess where your rebate checks are going?

While in recent months subsidies have been reduced, they are still high enough to protect demand. By March 2008, India, for example, had paid $12.7 billion over a year to keep fuel costs to the consumer low, and the huge subsidies continue. In contrast, fuel has been rationed in China, but subsidies have returned for the Olympic year. read more

Maybe we don’t need to import oil or create biofuels?maybe we just need to figure out how to use the oil we have. One researcher has figured out how to squeeze more petroleum out of abandoned or soon-to-be-abandoned oil fields.

Using his 40 years in the petroleum industry, Lewis Brown has already extended the life of one field by 17 years. His research involves the forced growth of oil-chasing microbes used to redirect injected water that, in turn, sweeps once-inaccessible oil from old wells into production. These are microbes that were originally developed to clean up oil spills.
read more

When we think of fuel reserves in the US, we think about coal. But it turns out that America may be sitting on a huge, 200 billion barrel oil field that has gone unnoticed and could make us energy independent.
read more