Peak Oil Passnotes: Here’s My Tupi’s Worth

The world has been fixated by the possibility, now the probability, of oil reaching $100 per barrel in recent weeks. The recent run-up in pricing has been the talk of large sections of the media, and the notion of expensive oil is now widely understood. But the reasons why and what is to be done about it are not.

Regular readers of this column will have seen that we do not believe in markets to bring about what is needed – more energy for more people. Market ideology is a political ideology that benefits the elite, not a method of best allocating resources. That is far better achieved by firstly democratising governments – including those who falsely believe they are already democracies, such as the U.S. and European nations – then creating planned economies that can move towards sustainable energy patterns. Much more closely aligned with what we see in Scandinavia, for example.


But of course there are many hydrocarbons still to extract from the ground, in conventional and non-conventional oils, natural gas, shale and so on. Some of them lie off the shores of Brazil and one field, Tupi, has recently been trumpeted as a kind of saviour. Tupi is interesting in that it is the biggest find of recent years, it has significant room for expansion – there may be more Tupi