A pretty insightful look at what’ll happen as the price continues to rise.
One major issue as the world enters an era of scarcity will be who gets how much of remaining OPEC exports. When there was a nearly unlimited supply, nations could buy as much as they could store, use, and pay for. This resulted in a situation where the US , as the richest country, ended up building an infrastructure consuming some 25 percent of world oil production despite currently having some 4.6 percent of the world’s population.
Now that China and India are taking an increasing share of a depleting resource, there are bound to be troubles ahead unless the major oil consuming nations can get together and agree on a “depletion protocol” specifying shares of a fast-shrinking resource. Such a protocol is already being discussed by European thinkers who are several years ahead of America in coming to grips with this problem.
The alternative, for those who have the military power, is to occupy and control uncooperative oil producing states in order to “protect” oil supplies. Indeed, many believe this may be happening already.
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