Late to the drawing board

I found this in my email inbox today.  It's from a friend who lives in the only place in the nation that probably has higher gas prices than we do right now.  I appreciate the sentiment, but at this late date I can't even pretend that it might work.  After what's happened this week, the most optimistic I can get about the future is being thankful that we get a lot of our energy from hydropower.  No blackouts (or brownouts) here...yet.  But to the message:

"Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 7:05 PM

Subject: Gas War

GAS WAR - an idea that WILL work

This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. It ' s worth your consideration.

Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline
priced at about $1.50 is super cheap.  Me too! It is currently $2.79 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the
marketplace..... not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any
gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers.  It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out at this point.... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people.

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us sends it to at least ten more (30 x 10 =3D 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 =3D 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE

>>>>HUNDRED MILLION >>>>PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am, so trust me on this one.)

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you?

Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.

THIS CAN REALLY WORK."

It's the little things

So, we've crossed the border. As of this morning, we're officially living in a world where there isn't enough oil to go around.

Things are getting tenser here as we finally start to feel the squeeze. People smile less at strangers; they don't offer to help as much. Everyone has little worry lines on their foreheads these days, and even the places where we traditionally go to relax, like coffee houses and farmers' markets, are filled with a sense of uncertainty and fear. The farmers' markets are especially bad. You can see everyone wondering when the farmers will decide that it costs too much to drive their produce into town, leaving us to the tender price-fixing mercies of the chain grocery stores. I don't think it will happen soon--I hope it won't happen soon--not with the prices farmers can charge for their vegetables these days, but there will come a time when no one will be able to afford the price they'll have to charge just to break even with the cost of driving.

I told my landlord today that I was moving out at the end of the month, and I gave my two weeks' notice at work. Quitting work was a lot easier than moving out, it turned out. My landlord was furious. "How am I supposed to find someone else to move in with the way things are now?" he shouted at me. He's always been kind of excitable, but I've never seen him this angry. He's retired, and I guess our rent must be his major source of income. I feel sorry for him, but I won't be able to afford rent if I also have to pay to commute into the city. My boss just looked concerned and asked if I had another job lined up. "There aren't a lot of jobs to go around right now, the way the economy's tanking," she said. I guess I hadn't thought about that. I've got a couple of interviews lined up, so I'll hope one of them works out.

It's still so strange to me the way the smallest things in my life are affected. I decided that one thing I could easily do to reduce my consumption and save money was to make food at home and bring it to work or school with me. I used to do that a couple times a week, but I decided to do it every day. Of course, this meant that I needed something to bring it to work in, so off I went to the store for some Tupperware. I think my jaw must have hit the floor when I saw how expensive it was. $10 a piece (and they were calling that on sale)! It took me a minute to remember that plastics are petroleum-based, so of course the price is skyrocketing. I decided to stick with what I had instead. The grocery store has stopped carrying plastic bags for your vegetables, too; instead they have these boxy containers like berry baskets, but in all different shapes. Apparently, they're made from recycled paper.

Little things. All the time, just little things. But they're adding up to be bigger things.

Wine From These Grapes

If you read the little "about me" section, you know that I have an unhealthy obsession with Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was a poet who lived in the early and mid-20th century, and she was known for being wild and crazy--she was openly bisexual, lived with men she was not married to, was heavily anti-war (and since this was WWII, it was a serious deal), the works. In between being scandalous, though, she wrote some amazing, beautiful poetry. One of the earliest poems I remember reading was called "Wine from these grapes," and that phrase has always stuck with me. It's sort of like "when life gives you lemons make lemonade," for me, but more personal. That's how I've been feeling a lot, lately. Whenever the price of gas goes up more, or they raise the price for a TriMet ticket, or whatever happens, I keep thinking to myself that we just have to make wine from the grapes we have, and make the best of it.

To be honest, I think we have it pretty good here. I've been reading about other places, where people can't leave their cars parked in certain neighborhoods because gangs will siphon off their gas and sell it. I heard a story on NPR the other day about some gas thieves in the southeast who were fooling automated gas pumps with swipable gift cards from department stores, then pumping a full tank of gas into a bucket or something. I guess that's creative thinking, but it sure doesn't make me feel confident about the future. At least that stuff isn't happening here--yet. Or maybe I just don't go to the right neighborhoods.

In other news, my lease is up on my apartment at the end of the month and I've decided to move out. I've been living in Oregon City, which is almost-a-suburb-almost-a-town outside of Portland, where I've been working. I grew up on a farm, so I didn't want to move into a city when I came back to Oregon after college. I only have class two days a week right now, so I've been carpooling into town with my friend, but with all that's happened, neither of us can afford the gas and she's decided to sell her car. Or ditch it. It seems like you see abandoned cars everywhere these days. I guess they don't sell too well right now. The only kind of car you never see abandoned are the hybrids or the ones that get over 30 miles a gallon.

Anyway, I'm moving into an apartment in the city, where I can use public transit and walk to the grocery store and the farmers' markets. It's lucky Portland was so environmentally conscious before all of this started, because I don't think we've felt it as badly as some other places. I listened to what 52 said in his phone call, and while I'm not excited about the price increase for TriMet tickets, it's a whole lot better than paying $4.50 a gallon. I do see more bikes than I used to, though, even though Portland has always been a bike-friendly city. I'll look into getting one when I get my new place. It's pretty cheap, which is good, but it's a little noisy; there's a place right down the street that converts cars to run on biofuels, and there's a line outside day and night, my new neighbors say. I guess that's good, but I can't help but wonder if the people getting their cars converted aren't just putting off the inevitable, you know?

What I found

"There are currently 98 oil producing countries in the world, of which 64 are thought to have passed their geologically imposed production peak, and of those 60 are in terminal production decline."

So says David Strahan. Naturally, this made me a little concerned, so I poked around some more trying to figure out what this whole concept of peaking actually meant. A little bit of what I discovered is below, although there's lots more where that came from. A quick note before I get going. Even though I'm studying Resource Politics, I know almost nothing about the world oil situation. I want to combine my RePol (as we call it) studies with my Conflict Resolution work, so I've been focusing more on water, arable land, access to coasts--resources that groups or nations can generally only acquire by getting and keeping territory. To tell the truth, I've been pretty much avoiding looking at oil's implications for world affairs in my studies...but I guess we're all going to be experts on crude oil indexes now. Anyway, to business:

"The particular scenario shown in Figure 2 depicts the 2 percent demand growth experience of recent years extended up to the production peak (similar to the 2.2 percent rate applied through 2020 in EIA's 2002 International Energy Outlook) and then the decline path from the peak at a constant R/P ratio of 10. The three divergent curves shown reflect alternative resource base volumes. From left to right they are the sum of the USGS's United States and rest-of-world resource estimates at the 95 percent certain (19 chances in 20 of that much or more), the statistical mean (expected value), and 5 percent certain (1 chance in 20 of that much or more) volumetric levels. Thus, if the USGS mean resource estimate proves to be correct, if 2 percent production growth continues until peak production is reached, and if production then declines at an R/P ratio of 10, world conventional crude oil production would be expected to peak in 2037 at a volume of 53.2 billion barrels per year."

---

So, basically, the EIA is planning for oil to peak in 2037. But lots of other people think that it's likely to peak around 2020. Or 2015. Or 2010. Or -gulp- 2005. Now look at this:

Over the years, the excess capacity (and max capacity) of the OPEC nations has been steadily declining, and the price (understandably) of crude oil has been increasing. This make sense - but what if the numbers OPEC gave were inflated? Or even just honestly overestimated? By, say 15, 20, 50 years of production capacity? It could explain the wildly different predictions for when the world's oil supply will peak. And it could explain why we're so woefully unprepared now, if what we're really dealing with is the other side of that graph in Figure 2 above--the side that drops like a stone.

Obviously this is an incredibly broad analysis. But despite all the media hype, I'm not convinced yet that we won't wake up tomorrow, or next week, and find gas prices back to normal--or, at least, $3 a gallon. I'm not panicking yet, and I don't see too many people here panicking either. There's lots of grumbling, of course, but gas prices have spiked before. This elderly woman came into work today and told me about how when she drove a car for the first time, gas was $0.23 a gallon. For her, this is just another jump in a long trend. Maybe in 20 years, we'll look back at this as just another jump too. But if that's the case, I hope we're all driving electric cars by then.

Just one more thing to ponder:

TIMELINE: A HISTORICAL LOOK AT OIL PRICES

In real terms, stripping out the impact of inflation, oil prices are much lower today than the highs of some past spikes. The following details average annual dollar-denominated oil prices in the money of the day and the equivalent price in 2003. Year Money of the day 2003 dollars 1861 - Pennsylvania oil boom 0.49 10.08 1876 - Russian oil exports start 2.56 43.38 1945 - Post-war reconstruction 1.05 10.79 1974 - Arab oil embargo 11.58 43.38 1979 - Iranian revolution 30.03 76.40 1980 - Iranian revolution 35.69 79.99 1981 - Post-Iranian revolution 34.28 69.59 1990 - Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 23.84 33.54 1998 - Asian economic crisis 13.11 14.80 2004 - Year-to-date 35.62* 35.62* 1861-1944: U.S. average, 1945-1985: Arabian Light posted at Ras Tanura, 1986-present day: Brent spot

*As of Sept. 27, 2004 Source: Reuters, BP Statistical Review of 2003

Doesn't look like it's getting better soon

I found this while browsing earlier. It's pretty much par for the course on what I was hearing on the news earlier. "Unexpected drop." That's reassuring, especially when it's the industry experts who are saying they're only hypothesize about where oil supply will go from here. I found some other things too, that I'll put up.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com Updated: 2:58 p.m. PT May 1, 2007 NEW YORK - Oil prices dropped below $65 a barrel in erratic trading Tuesday as investors made final bets while they awaited the government’s report on oil and gasoline inventories. There was little news to influence the market, leaving traders to hypothesize whether Wednesday’s report would exacerbate concerns about dwindling gasoline supplies. Last week’s Energy Department report showed an unexpected drop in U.S. gasoline stockpiles and refinery use.

Up Again?!

I guess I thought last week was a fluke, and that when CNN got into its 207th hour of showing the same footage of an oil rig everyone would start to calm down. Instead, I come home from work, turn on OPB, and find out the price has jumped another 18 cents. Well, one thing's constant at least--we're back to being above the national average again. I'm glad I don't have to drive every day.

I can't believe that the price might go up again tomorrow, too, but all the talking heads seem to think it probably will. They kept using phrases like "unpredicted shortfall" and "ominous silence from the OPEC nations." I don't know what that means, exactly. I guess I'll be doing some research tonight; I have class again with that professor tomorrow, and I bet he assigns us something about gas prices and control of the oil supply. That man loves OPEC; I think his idea of heaven is to become the head of an oil-producing state.

Well, here I am

Wow.

My mom is always telling people "Remember, you live on the same world as everybody else." I guess this oil spike is just another reminder of how interconnected we all are. I got into class today and my professor just waited until everybody settled down and then said "I told you so." Last week, he bet us $20 that we'd see gas prices go over $4 here before the summer vacation season started and nobody would take him up on it. I guess we just didn't want to believe it was possible. But here we are.

I guess $4.12 isn't as much of an increase here as it is in other places--we had $3.30/gallon gas here last week. But it isn't like anyone could really afford that either. I'm lucky we have such good public transit here, but I can't help thinking that even buses mostly run off oil. They've converted some to be hybrids, but I don't know how long they can afford to pay so much for fuel. And, of course, they'll raise the price for tickets, which is already higher than most people can afford.

What happens when we can't drive anymore? Our economy is basically built off of the ability to get from one place to another. I don't know. And I'm not taking my professor's bets either.