[theluckycountry]

Last months prices
WTI Crude Oil $94
Brent Crude $97

This month
WTI Crude Oil $75
Brent Crude $79

And this is with Russia and Saudi Arabia dialing back production.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Saudi kingdom’s oil sector contracted by 17.3% year-on-year in the third quarter — the most on record for any quarter since at least 2011 — because of the voluntary oil production cuts, aimed at shoring up global prices.

[theluckycountry]

Still below $80 and the Saudi's are cutting Another 1 million per day. Where is the demand? It's not there is it. Impoverished people don't consume a lot of oil

[Pops]

COVID aside, the economy has been on life support since the DotCom bust, maybe longer. We've been hooked to the Fed's tubes as they pumped in the cash. How else could stocks sell for 30-40x earnings—or sky high prices on NO earnings? Home prices appreciate by 10-20-50% yearly?

Bitcoin?
NFTs?
Old pickups?

LOL. I don't know if I'm just a doomer or what but it seems sureal these last 20 years. The only thing that I expected to happen that did was the GFC
I try to move along while at the same time being ready for the End at any moment. I've certainly given up prognostication. My feeling is we'll walk into decline and all act surprised (so I have all cash, free/clear home, PV and building an e-bike)
Or, we'll electrify so quickly that demand WILL peak befor supply and oil will be cheap (and I'll drive around in my old diesel beast pulling the trailer and looking at windmills)).

[theluckycountry]

For a lot of us older folk pops, who have retired, own a home, and don't spend all that much, the changes of the last decade or so are not all that evident. If you were in your early thirties though with 3 kids and mortgage...

Grid Solar eradicated my power bills and gave me a passive income of a couple of thousand a year which was nice. I hardly drive anywhere now, most of my travels being joy rides for the day on a motorcycle. A neighbor though is spending $200 a week in fuel alone commuting to a job 100 km away. And he's building sheds on his property and doing renovations inside, hundreds of thousands in total, I'm past all that thankfully.

I remember reading an article about the great depression, many subsistence farmers didn't even know they were in one because they never had any money to spend in the first place and when the jobs disappeared there was no difference. It's a bit like that for us hey. The old age pension, while it lasts, will pay the land rates and buy food etc and any luxuries can come out of the life savings.

[Pops]

Money was free all thru the teens, got us cheap fracked gas/oil that spawned plastic everything from the methane drippings and gave PO a reprieve, gave most everyone a 2-3% mortgage that has crippled the market today, it blew bubbles in the bubbles—Gamestop to trump NFTs to bitcoin pyramids in the billions.

To me everything financial is unrecognizably distorted—though admittedly I'm no expert. The coming of the great recession was obvious to me however. When someone working for me bought a house with nothing down, no employment verification and worthless credit way back in 2003 I knew something was wrong. But from the bank bailouts (and subsiquent bonus parties) on, nothing has made much sense.

And politics these last 10 years is just as nonsensical. I mean I have come to conclusions in my own mind for some of the crazy, but what it points to I really don't know. I took advantage of the easy money in my own little way and we have a little cash and some equity but I'm torn between hunkering down here in the depths of trump-town or selling and going mobile.

I'm no spring chicken but still in good shape for the shape I'm in, I feel like maybe 10 good years or so being relatively active and don't really want to ride the couch into the sunset. We'll see what the winter brings.

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I') took advantage of the easy money in my own little way and we have a little cash and some equity but I'm torn between hunkering down here in the depths of trump-town or selling and going mobile.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'G')ypsies have a fun time in the good times but when things get tough, war, depression, the last place I would want to be is on the road.

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')
My indecision is whether to hunker down for a storm (here in the middle of the likely path) or hitch up my britches and go out and enjoy the nice weather while it lasts... sorta speak.

[Pops]

For a long time on this site (almost 20 years) I was the lone buggedout farmer. Mid oughts we bought 40 acres in the middle of the country after selling for an inflated price on the west coast. I was like you with a list, I wanted rainfall, long growing season, distance from cities, proximity to a small town, as small a GW impact as possible, etc. My estimate wos decline, the supply kind, by 2012.

For a long time Planning For The Future was the most active forum here. And I hauranged everyone about the need to do something to prepare right away. Then along about 2012 it became clear that I'd jumped the gun. That technology (and sufficient free money) thrown at rigs could indeed displace depletion if only for a decade or two. By that time, my kids were well enough established in the military that I didn't expect them to need me, as support anyway.

Since then we've been fiddling around, fixing and flipping houses and pretending the money we were making was due to our handiwork, LOL But we were able to move around the country some. The ole Flipping biz ain't what it used to be to say the least but we've become quite addicted to the moving around. Besides...

Its better to burn out than fade away...

[theluckycountry]

Good Neil young, he can sing it alright.

I tried the "land" thing on 5 acres, I never got around to the growing food stage but one day I realized I was making enough in a couple of weeks to feed myself for a year and more so I lost interest. Like you pops a lot of us jumped the gun, the collapse is long in coming and no doubt there will be plenty of heads up, even a week would be enough for me to super-stockpile, fuel and food.

Even granting a large collapse I calculated that the government wouldn't let 99% of the population starve overnight, they will prioritize farming over a lot of other pointless expenditures and I decided that living in a farming community and making contacts, friends, was a better idea than spending my old age plowing a field and chasing after chickens. Not many people have the farming bone in themselves, I certainly don't. But the old survivalist sites banged on and on saying that it was the way to go, the natural end-point of a preppers evolution. They were wrong, still are IMO. I buy eggs from a lady out of town on 15 acres. They have a pretty straightened life out there because they are the small farm types. The husband works a day job of course, eggs don't pay electricity bills or put gasoline in the car, and every other week they are in the supermarket to stock up on what they can't grow or breed. It's a hard life and most of it a waste of time in my opinion. But having said that they will do better than many in a collapse providing it doesn't get too brutal. I don't write off the small farm apocalypse solution but it's not all a bed of roses.

Many things can go wrong farming. A couple of years ago there was a 5 day deluge here and farms had food rotting in the ground. Just the other week a freak hailstorm trashed a large growing region nearby, it destroyed the crops and a lot of huge shadehouses too.

8 days ago — Freak hailstorm delivers $50 million blow to already struggling Lockyer Valley farming region $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')"I have never seen hail that looks like snow like you would swear that you were driving through Thredbo or Perisher."

[theluckycountry]

WTI $70
Brent $76

Well this is good news in the sense that our gas is cheaper, bad news as far as any conservation efforts go. Someone once suggested that a $200 oil price would be a good thing because it would force conservation on the world, we'd do a lot less frivolous driving, drive far more fuel efficient vehicles. Even mining would be effected and perhaps instead of manufacturing billions of junk metal toasters and iphones every year a trend would have begun building things that last, but I doubt the latter.

The petri dish has no rules, it's simply left under the heat lamp to develop as nature sees fit. That's what all of this really about, not political maleficence or greedy corporations, or brain dead consumers planet-wide, but the natural growth and outcomes of said growth among one particularly virulent species inhabiting the planet.

[theluckycountry]

Well we're definitely on the up cycle again,
WTI $87
Brent $91

We see these cycles every 2 or 5 years now but each time it occurs the global economy is materially weaker. I wonder if we'll crack $100?

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'W')ell we're definitely on the up cycle again,
WTI $87
Brent $91
We see these cycles every 2 or 5 years now but each time it occurs the global economy is materially weaker. I wonder if we'll crack $100?

[theluckycountry]

I think it was JHK that said years ago that prices over $100 bbl destroy the Western Economies and prices under $70 bbl destroy the oil companies. It's a delicate balance now, we live on the knife edge!

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'I') think it was JHK that said years ago that prices over $100 bbl destroy the Western Economies and prices under $70 bbl destroy the oil companies. It's a delicate balance now, we live on the knife edge!

[theluckycountry]

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '[')img]https://i.pinimg.com/236x/ef/28/d7/ef28d7a91b3be5c7c783c0365f550888--inspirational-quotes-images-stupid-people.jpg[/img]