[NeoPeasant]

I have registered A PEAK OIL RELATED PREDICTION on longbets.org

In case someone challenges my prediction (making it a bet), any suggestions on a peak oil related charity to assign the winnings to?

[savethehumans]

postcarbon.org has a campaign going ($100K in 100 days). They need the money for additional staffing/computer use. Since the price of oil is expected to rise (and supplies dwindle) during the 4th quarter, much more public inquiry to their sites is expected. This may be the best push to inform the sheeple of PO, et al, we get before TSHTF. It would be a good cause to which to contribute.

[Aaron]

peakoil.com is a member supported, non-profit, volunteer effort to educate on depletion issues.

Many of us dedicate significant time & money to this cause.

Postcarbon is a similar effort.

Anything which helps to get the word out is important. So pick a place & make your mark.

Most of you know I'm a pessimist... & you're right.

But even if we are doomed... everybody deserves to know.

[lorenzo]

Wow NeoPeasant, this is very courageous of you! Of all the bets on longbets, yours is the shortest! You really must have a very strong case.
I for one, will not challenge it. I have voted "Agree".

I hope you find a generous challenger and I hope you win, even though that would be a tragic event for all of us!

[EddieB]

I like it. I'm not going to bet against you though. Another good prediction that might get a taker would be to bet that over the two year period from 2009 to 2011 total global liquid fuel production would be less than over the two year period from 2006-2008. That way it's risky... maybe ramping up gas-to-liquid, tar sands, and Fischer-Tropsch will offset enough decline to hold us up here at 86-90 mbd for a few more years... Nobody really knows, but I bet some economists would be willing to take that bet.

[julianj]

I thought most of the bets were preposterous.

I liked yours though - cleverly constructed.

If PO happens as we think it will, most of the other bets will look ridiculous, cities staying as now for 100 years, the Chinese becoming Christian

In fact we'll be far to busy surviving to bother with estoteric betting systems.

[NeoPeasant]

The peak oil prediction I made on longbets.org has attracted a challenger. He offers a typically cornucopian counter argument.
We have each put up $200. If I win, $400 goes to the Post Carbon Institute. If he wins, it goes to "The Property and Environment Research Center " which looks like some public policy think tank striving to eliminate all public land ownership.

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NeoPeasant', 'W')e have each put up $200. If I win, $400 goes to the Post Carbon Institute. If he wins, it goes to "The Property and Environment Research Center " which looks like some public policy think tank striving to eliminate all public land ownership.

[Graeme]

Russia and US reach deal on WTO

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ussia and the US on Friday agreed in principle on the terms for Russian entry into the World Trade Organisation, giving a significant boost to Moscow’s hopes of joining the 149-nation body after 13 years of talks.

The two countries are set to sign the deal in Hanoi on November 18 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit, following final consultations in coming days.

Russia’s economy, too, would receive a significant boost from membership, though analysts say the benefits would be less than those experienced by China, with Russian exports heavily dominated by oil and gas.

[Graeme]

Fossil fuels: Peak oil is affecting the economy already

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'J')ames Murray and David King sound the alarm in pointing out that oil's tipping point has passed (Nature 481, 433–435; 2012). The days of being able to produce oil cheaply and easily are over, and the economic effects are upon us. We believe that the 'peak oil' issue is as important as climate change, and more urgent. We call for peak oil to be considered more seriously as a subject of peer-reviewed research.

Economic growth began to stall at around the same time as conventional oil production in 2005. Oil-exporting nations are consuming more of their own output every year, reducing availability for the rest of the world. Yet importers who rely on oil exports include some of the world's largest economies.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote(' ', '
')Economic growth began to stall at around the same time as conventional oil production in 2005.

[Pops]

The government is crippled plant. It isn't abe to pass normally bi-partisam BAU like the hiway bill - on friday the ability of the gov to collect road tax expires for cripes sake.

We aren't going to do any big infrastructure projects because the conservative populism unleashed by the deregulate and detax PAC financiers has brought the political process to a halt.

Even the small business people the GnOP ostensibly represents are getting the shaft:
Business Bets on the G.O.P. May Be Backfiring
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/business/with-bank-teetering-a-bet-on-the-gop-backfires.html

Sorry for going straight to politics but the long and short is the owners pretty well have things rigged at this point, stalemate is just fine for the Corps without a Country. I am beginning to think we are going through something like a reverse New Deal where the monopolists have once again got the ear of the population and convinced them that they are actually better off in the hands of the CEOs.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')Sorry for going straight to politics but the long and short is the owners pretty well have things rigged at this point, stalemate is just fine for the Corps without a Country. I am beginning to think we are going through something like a reverse New Deal where the monopolists have once again got the ear of the population and convinced them that they are actually better off in the hands of the CEOs.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')iven the recent ramp up in oil prices, Barclays Capital analysts explored the impact on oil demand and economic growth. They’ve built a set of three scenarios at prices of $100, $125 and $150 per barrel, and one bonus scenario based on their base-case status quo oil price forecast of $115 per barrel. They then quantified the implications for oil demand based on those prices. Here it is summarized neatly in the Forbes blogosphere:

Oil $100: Non-OECD country oil demand “extremely strong”; OECD demand “mildly lower”

Oil $115: U.S. oil demand -1.3%; European demand -2.1%; Japanese demand +2.5%; Chinese demand +7.4%. Global oil demand +1.2%

Oil $125: Non-OECD demand “continues to grow”; OECD demand lower, but non-OECD will still keep global demand positive. Until…

Oil $150: Non-OECD possibly positive; OECD “demand destruction”; global demand likely negative.

“With the current market fundamentals characterized by extremely low inventories and stretched spare capacity, oil prices are to likely to remain high. Indeed, given the structural factors of strong non-OECD demand and weak non-OPEC supply, the market-clearing equilibrium oil price is now likely to be sustained at considerably above $100 per barrel in the long term, in our view,” Barclays analysts wrote on Thursday.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 't')he International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday (327), if crude prices do not decline, then the oil-consuming countries now pay for imported oil is expected to reach a record two trillion U.S. dollars, thus undermining economic recovery.

[Lore]

I wonder at what point demand destruction hits the wall? There has got to be a level somewhere down the pike in which you cannot make due by cutting back anymore.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne of the most pronounced trends in the Western world since the onset of the global financial crisis has been the plummeting demand for petroleum and the subsequent losses for the refinery industry, which has been squeezed by a combination of declining credit availability, higher prices for input crude and lower demand/prices for refined products (over-capacity). What we are witnessing within the refinery industry and the petroleum industry in general is a situation in which higher prices, mainly fueled by leveraged speculation, geopolitical tensions and rising demand in the East, are burning themselves out by destroying demand in a positive feedback spiral. Here is a portion of the conclusion reached in the post linked above:

"As is the case with most analyses by official institutions such as the IEA, we can safely assume that the effects of credit contraction on refinery utilization are being under-estimated. Refineries forced to scale back or go off-line in the short to medium-term will negatively impact crude oil demand, and we should see this add to the pressure currently weighing on crude oil prices. Lower prices will then feed back into the marginal financial pressures facing the oil industry"

For those who think that oil prices can only go up, up and away from here on out, I am still waiting to hear how plummeting demand for crude oil from refineries, which are now dropping off like flies, will contribute in the short-term. Some may argue that the developing economies of the East will single-handedly keep prices elevated, but they are ignoring a) the speculative premium built in to oil prices and b) the fact that these emerging economies do not exist in a bubble that is isolated from the effects of demand destruction in the West, i.e. a decoupled global economy. Demand for oil is certainly still rising in the emerging economies at a rate faster than demand is falling in the West, but the question is how long before the latter burns out the former. In our hopelessly inter-connected global economy, there is little doubt in my mind that it will happen, just like higher oil prices will burn themselves out by feeding back into downstream demand destruction in the refinery industry and businesses/households.

"As consumption flags in developed economies and grows in emerging markets, refineries are dying from Japan to Pennsylvania. Half the refining capacity on the populous US east coast is set to disappear. More than 3m barrels of daily refinery capacity have closed in western countries, since the financial crisis. Emerging economies have meanwhile added 4.2m b/d in capacity, with another 1.8m b/d coming this year. "It's really a tale of two markets," says Toril Bosoni, IEA senior oil analyst. "You have very contrasting pictures for economic growth and demand, and refining is reflecting what's going on elsewhere."

The gains for crude outpaced the rise in petrol prices, which began to rally in earnest only after news of the latest refinery closures in the US and Europe. Petroplus, Europe's largest independent refiner, filed for insolvency in January and has been lining up buyers for five plants. Keeping a lid on refined fuel prices has been weak consumption. US petrol demand has fallen steadily since 2007 as cars became more fuel-efficient, fuel marketers blended more corn-based ethanol into their product and high unemployment kept highway travel light. This wedged refineries between high input costs and a poor appetite for their fuel.

The US story is echoed throughout the west. Oil demand in Europe contracted by 320,000 b/d last year, the IEA says. Emerging-world demand more than offset these falls, led by countries that Barclays has nicknamed "Bics" – Brazil, India, China and Saudi Arabia. In the past five years their oil demand has grown by 5.1m b/d, while demand everywhere else has declined by 1.4m b/d."

[AgentR11]

The upward price pressure on crude stays until China is out of US$ reserves.

[AirlinePilot]

Crude oil is a global commodity. I'll say it again for emphasis..CRUDE OIL IS A GLOBAL COMMODITY.

Speculation is a futures/monthly gambling scheme with little or nothing to do with how real barrels of oil are bought and sold.

Global net Exports are falling and CRUDE OIL is on a statistical plateau DESPITE high prices.

Thats all you need to know. Slight demand destruction in the OECD is being met with global GROWTH and an apparent inability to grow the supply. Its basic fundamentals but that argument is too scary to point at.

[SeaGypsy]

About the same time as the petrodollar dies, slated for 2020; as discussed elsewhere depending on initiatives like the BRICS bank getting up/ maybe much sooner.

However I dispute the basic premise. The USA and Europe managed to grow for a long time based not on globalism, rich customers externally, but on domestic production and consumption. The only essential imports being raw materials, minerals. As these were coming from mostly poor countries, they were cheap.

Now we have a first world dependent on continuing growth in the east and south, and many resource based economies thinking along ELM lines, trying to use what they have to build an economy which will outlive the resource. Why anyone (Americans seem particularly fond of this idea) thinks they should virtually give the stuff away so we can prop up our high tech- high consumption- outsource based economy beats me. So does the thought that India, China and many other countries cannot continue to grow their economies for the sake of being dependent on healthy growth in the west. I would feel equally comfortable arguing the exact opposite, that in the long run Chindia will benefit from the demise of the west.

The argument would be valid were consumption of imported goods falling off a cliff. If the US and Europe went down the toilet next week, they would take the rest with them. However if the writing on the wall is clear enough and read by all, the US and EU can stick their fingers in their ears singing 'Lalalala' all they like, the general trajectory is set and will continue.