Countries need to oil their wheels

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in conjunction with the UN, published a major agricultural study last week.

The study said that there are very few countries in the world that are able to produce biofuels that can compete on price with conventional fossil fuels. In fact, with the exception of Brazil, all countries are finding it very difficult to reduce their dependence on oil at all.

”In only very few countries is the required feedstock available at prices that would presently allow ethanol and biodiesel production to be competitive with transport fuels from crude oil without government support,” said the report.
It is evident that the world (not just Brazil) must, at some stage, reduce its reliance on a finite resource but it is not clear when or how this will happen.

The OECD report was released in the same week that oil demonstrated its hold on the global economy; the price of a barrel of oil nudged up to US$75; Goldman Sachs predicted US$105 barrels in the not too distant future; the United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke continued to push up interest rates over worries of oil-fuelled inflation (which would likely slow the world economy); Chinese and Indian economies announced super growth, putting further strain on oil supplies; and political concerns in Iraq, Iran, Russia and Venezuela – some of the world’s most important vendors of oil – continued to spook the oil reliant West.

There are further concerns oil is running out. Estimates say that if no more oil was discovered from this day onwards and if current trends of oil consumption continued, then we would use up the final drop of crude around 2046 forty years from now.

MercoPress