There has not been a good price for oil since conventional (easy-to-get) oil peaked in 2005. Any price is too high for consumers and too low for producers.
Oil still is the blood of capitalism. There is no easy substitute. Trillions of dollars of infrastructure and systems are dependent. Things like millions of square miles of sprawl can not be converted quickly enough.
The owners of this infrastructure have decided to squeeze it until the last dollar and if the biosphere goes down, oh well, too bad. They don't really have much choice given they are locked in a dog-eat-dog system of competition.
There is still some conventional oil in Iraq, under Kirkuk. So war is raging over that. All the profits have been borrowed-against, but the oil is needed just to keep the whole debt-ridden system working for another decade.
It's no longer about profit, it's about interest on debt -- survival of the billionaires.
Oil still is the blood of capitalism. There is no easy substitute. Trillions of dollars of infrastructure and systems are dependent. Things like millions of square miles of sprawl can not be converted quickly enough.
The owners of this infrastructure have decided to squeeze it until the last dollar and if the biosphere goes down, oh well, too bad. They don't really have much choice given they are locked in a dog-eat-dog system of competition.
There is still some conventional oil in Iraq, under Kirkuk. So war is raging over that. All the profits have been borrowed-against, but the oil is needed just to keep the whole debt-ridden system working for another decade.
It's no longer about profit, it's about interest on debt -- survival of the billionaires.
