Watch those oil prices fall

So everything is going to be ok. It'll all go back to the 'way it was'. Hummers & Suv's are back in style. Kick it and relax.

or

Maybe take a look at a few things:
- Our war in Iraq and Afghanistan is continuing and escalating. Bankrupting the nation.
- We're about to have an election.
- Approximately 72% of the world's conventional oil lies in the Persian Gulf region
- OPEC oil is sold only in the US Dollar, and we pressure or remove anyone that tries otherwise.
- The US economy is inflating and the dollar value has plummeted
- Several of the last "long term" capacity projects have come online and created a temporary
boost in production, coupled with a world recession (decline in demand for oil)

Here's what our energy outlook might look like without crisis extraction for short term relief:










(image from the Oil Drum)


There's a model in the Oil Depletion Protocol that would create a way to institute conservation as a measure to deal with the terminal decline of our most vital resource. Conservation & technology as a means to help societies evolve into the next Energy Resource.

Instead, the US is at war to control the last major region of this resource and through an increase in extraction either through technology or political/economic pressure, we get a Shock Oil model and may end up with something that looks more like this:












(image from the Oil Drum)



This creates a severe drop-off of the resource that would be disastrous to the world's societies, ours included. I wrote in an earlier blog post that our problem is time. We need time to evolve into our next energy resource, it cannot happen without hydrocarbons to get us there.
Through short term economic/power-gain thinking we are going to create a situation of depravity unmatched in human history.

I wish to commend the Oil Drum and the Energy Bulletin.net for their efforts and the creation of such a resource of knowledge on these topics.