Re: Hummers

["lvnadal" <lvnadal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Reply to comrades Stan and Jon:

I read the posting by MJ prior to this discussion.  I do not find it
confirmed by the actual history of reserve estimates and production
delivery.

Certain empirical facts must be analyzed:  Between 1973 (OPEC 1 and the
first popularization of the oil scarcity theory) and 1996 estimates of
proven reserves doubled.
In 2000, the companies participating in the US Federal Reporting System
replaced at a rate of 2:1 barrels extracted with proven reserve increases.

Not ony has 3D Computer Assisted Seismic analysis led to better extraction
techniques, it has extended the life of the UK North Sea fields by
approximately 7-8 years.  Not only has it extended the life of such fields,
but the cost of 3D analysis has declined by more than 50% in the last
decade.  Not only has this cost declined.  But overall production costs of
oil had by 1998 fallen below the historical low reached in 1972.  Not only
had production costs fallen, but finding costs have declined by 75% since
1974, until, by the way, the 1998-2000 three year period.

Not only are there anywhere from 10-20 times as many barrels of oil
estimated for tar sand reserves as estimated for "liquid" reserves, the cost
of producing such oil has declined by 70% since 1973.  Not only are the
difficulties in extracting these reserves, and the reserves in the Caspian
Sea and Russia, difficulties of extraction, but more and more they are
difficulties of transportation, of the circulation of the commodity.

 Now to say the supply of oil is finite is to say a truism.  To say we are
going to run out tomorrow and repeat tomorrow for the next  10,20,50 years
is a little bit like predicting the collapse of the stock market tomorrow
and then repeating the prediction for 10,20,50 years-- that is to say the
parameters are expanded to the point where they lack meaning, define
nothing, except the waste of time.

I am sympathetic to the arguments that state the war is about oil, but I
think those arguments, are incomplete, and wrong, unless we explore the
production of oil as a commodity, and the rate of return on investment in
oil.

I most definitely do not think the war is about scarcity.  Nor do I think
the war is about securing "cheap oil."  There was an interesting quote in
Forbes magazine from an article about oil in which some "expert" stated:
"The only thing keeping Iraq production from exceeding three million barrels
a day is the  US Navy."  I'll try and find the specifics and post it.  But,
be that as it may, one of the interesting items involved in the collapse of
oil prices to $10/barrel in 1998 was the upsurge in oil output by Iraq under
the oil for food program.  And what happens?  Perle, et al.  go to Clinton
and demand the reshaping of the Mideast, the elimination of Hussein,  the US
increases the rate and intensity of attacks on Iraq,  OPEC #3 hits in 1999,
and the US, always looking for a place to dispose of old machinery, used
cars, depreciated capital, depleted uranium, and expired on the shelf-life
weaponry, attacks Yugoslavia, making the world safe once again for the
heroin connection through Albania.  Money, oil, and heroin, the basic food
groups of the capitalist diet.

And since the US Navy is the largest single consumer of petroleum products
in the world, I think an intriguing argument can be made that the US Navy
wants this war to secure its petroleum reserve so it can conduct other wars
without worrying about refueling.

In sum, oil is very much like the canary in the coal mine of capital
overproduction.

We can argue about this from many different perspectives.  My opinion is,
for what it's worth, that arguing about this from a scarcity perspective, or
from an entropy perspective, is not a Marxist analysis and thus will not
expose the capitalist dynamics at work.