Another thought.
You should not be surprised at the $10/bbl figure. Most offshore fields are only sanctioned for development if they can show an acceptable return at an oil price of $18 to $20/bbl. This number has slowly crept up over the past few years, but oil companies are notoriously conservative in this area.
The cost of development and production has nothing to do with the market price of oil, which is totally driven by supply and demand. Post PO when oil hits $100/bbl, it will still cost $10/bbl to produce in deep offshore (and much less onshore).
The only way out of this is to break the supply/demand equation by securing a dedicated supply sufficient to meet a countries demand, and bypass the international oil market. For example, if the US was to secure supplies from Iraq, Iran and Saudi they could dicatate their own internal sales price, oustide of the chaos in the rest of the marketplace....
Maybe Cheney already thought of that one?




Good lord, the thought makes me almost giddy!

