by Twilight » Fri 15 Aug 2008, 17:11:16
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('joeltrout', 'B')esides physical preps what are you doing to profit from that. It seems like a huge opportunity if you really believe that.
Profit is becoming relative. For now not stepping into the trap is enough because most people are losing money. If an opportunity presents itself later, we will see. People do too many stupid things in pursuit of returns and in the present environment I am not inclined to join them.
Here is how I see it - most people will be able to ignore the ceiling imposed by eventually declining oil production capacity because the floor will give way first. The economic floor that is - it
is giving way - we are sliding towards global recession now. In this crisis, demand will be destroyed, efficiencies will be improved, and those not impoverished along the way will assume they are OK forevermore. There is lots of fat to cut. We will use less oil and nominally it should be much cheaper than it has been this summer. Supply will be adequate. Affordability is something else though. It will not necessarily feel cheap, and by historical standards it certainly will not be. We are still talking triple or quadruple the price everyone took for granted a few years ago, because the business is more energy intensive and costs are higher.
But that is going to be a fairly brief period in the great scheme of things because the challenges posed by declining provinces like the North Sea and key exporters like Mexico will mature. We will see competition for remaining export flows once they decline to whatever our economies will be demanding at that point. Then all the things we talk about happening in the future will materialise. But in all likelihood, there will have been an interval of some years where peak oil has been on the back burner if not the subject of outright ridicule, and this price action declared to have been the bubble that indeed it may well have been.
I am sure by then I will have figured out a way to fill my boots, or be in the one percent that does not lose its ass, which as far as I am concerned, amounts to the same thing. Failing that I will have the luxury of not caring all that much. Something for the hundred mile commuters out there to work towards.