Not Enough Oil? (Politics)

[lyndserae]

I'm not sure if we can trust any of these:
http://www.opec.org/library/

They also have a nice chart about the reserves:
http://www.opec.org/home/PowerPoint/Reserves/OPECshareWorldcrude.htm

[Boreades]

I see the "Law of supply and demand" has got a mention. For balance, perhaps some Laws of Strategic Marketing need to be mentioned as well?

a.k.a. Seven Steps to Controlling an Industry

1) Make sure you own or control known reserves
2) Minimise the value of any reserves not yet being tapped, to deter competitors
3) Maximise the difficulty of getting the goods, to deter competitors
4) Inform the public that whatever you are selling is in short supply, and likely to get worse, to set their attitudes and the price accordingly
5) Form alliances and offset-trading operations to control the distribution as well as the production.
6) Dominate the media, academia and education systems by any means necessary to maintain the propaganda
7) Form strong bonds with local politicians, police and military to defend "their" territory from hostile takeovers.

We might be talking about oil.

Funnily enough, our megalithic/bronze age/iron age metal producers and traders did (1) to (5) quite well. Not sure how well they did (6), but c.100BC they failed badly on (7) - (See Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars)

[Ishmael]

Swill.

[Mick Harper]

That's Canadian for 'swell', Borry. Ishmael always has difficulty communicating with us.

[Boreades]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

There was an incredibly bad spy saga on the BBC over Christmas that depended on the notion that Stalin was trying to keep the US out of the European War in December 1941! Clearly his deviance often led him up his own trousers.

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

British popular authors are always writing about a) the war and b) spies so combining the two are sure to get you a telly commission from equally unoriginal BBC controllers.

But therefore new wrinkles are always being required. By an unfortunate circumstance of history, the best enemy in a) is the Gerries and the best enemy in b) is da Bear and this particular plotline managed to combine the two but only by coming up with the ludicrous notion that in 1941, when Stalin was desperate for any support he could get from anywhere, he was actually plotting against US involvement in the war.

The reason given was that he wanted to keep them out of Europe. Plausible to a dullard audience, a dimwitted author and a teenage BBC commissioning editor because of the later Cold War but still completely stoopid at that time and at that place.

[Mick Harper]

Oh and one other thing. For excitement purposes this story -- and so many others -- required that considerable numbers of Abwher or NKVD (it wasn't always clear which) were mobilised in Albuquerque and various other places. Some humble desk porter in an obscure hotel was required to be a foreign agent of some description. And so on and so forth.

Everything we have learned since -- and which should by now be part of the background of any modern spy fiction -- is that these people simply didn't exist. For instance the Germans had to make special U-boat journeys across the Atlantic just to insert an agent to try to get a network going. They were always promptly rounded up. Basically there wasn't a single German agent in the USA let alone a whole gang of mobilised desperadoes.

The Russians it is true always maintained lots of agents in the USA but the idea that these laboriously created networks of sleepers and atom spies would be available for shoot-'em-ups down Mexico way is preposterous.

Even spy fiction has to be based on the real world.

[Ishmael]

Looks like we have a limitless supply of "Fossil Fuels" everywhere in the universe.

[Mick Harper]

Actually this is rather important for SCUM. In that theory I argued that Titan is an ex-star and that everything in it was (therefore) the by-product of stellar nuclear fusion. This would imply that the hydrocarbons on Titan are of this origin. I think everyone here will have a good laugh at the idea of hydrocarbons raining down from the heavens, as is claimed (presumably by orthodoxy) in this report.

However, this might imply that most of the hydrocarbons on earth, which is also an ex-star, came from the same source. But since we know from the fossil evidence that at least some of our hydrocarbons are produced from compressed vegetation, this means that we have one effect and two causes. Which is a no-no according to AE principles.

[Boreades]

"But since we know from the fossil evidence that at least some of our hydrocarbons are produced from compressed vegetation"

Surely you mean the (western) theory of the origins of oil?

e.g.
Crude oil and natural gas are believed to have been formed over millions of years by the decay of vegetation and marine organisms, compressed under the weight of sedimentation. Because oil and gas are lighter than water, they rose up to fill the voids in these overlying formations. This upward movement stopped when the oil and gas reached dense, overlying, impervious strata or nonporous rock.

http://www.ilo.org/iloenc/part-xi/oil-exploration-and-distribution/item/611-exploration-drilling-and-production-of-oil-and-natural-gas

But nobody explains how millions of square miles of porous sedimentary rocks, all over the world, containing vegetation, have somehow become covered by impervious strata or nonporous rock.

Here's an experiment you can try at home. Take (say) a litre of engine oil, pour it on the ground, then covered it with compost from your garden. Pack it down hard, cover it with an impervious slab of concrete. Wait one year, and then look at what the rotted-down compost now contains. What would you say to the conclusion that the oil in the compost was produced by the compost because the oil now contains bugs and things from the compost?

[Mick Harper]

I do not deny any of this, Borry, in fact I mainly agree with it, but surely the fact (the fact) that lots of pieces of coal have plant fossils in them must count for something.

[Mick Harper]

Whoops, now I have read your last paragraph properly I concede that my argument is not terribly strong.