For those of you that think "Big Oil" is just conspiring to raise prices, please read this -- it's very short:
"How is the Oil Industry Reacting to This?"
If you want to know the harsh truth about the future of oil, simply look at the actions of the oil industry. As a recent article in M.I.T.'s Technology Review points out:
If the actions - rather than the words - of the oil business's
major players provide the best gauge of how they see the
future, then ponder the following. Crude oil prices have
doubled since 2001, but oil companies have increased their
budgets for exploring new oil fields by only a small fraction.
Likewise, U.S. refineries are working close to capacity, yet
no new refinery has been constructed since 1976. And oil
tankers are fully booked, but outdated ships are being
decommissioned faster than new ones are being built.
Some people believe that no new refineries have been built due to the efforts of environmentalists. This belief is silly when one considers how much money and political influence the oil industry has compared to the environmental movement. You really think Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush were going to let a bunch of pesky environmentalists get in the way of oil refineries being built if the oil companies had wanted to build them?
The real reason no new refineries have been built for almost 30 years is simple: any oil company that wants to stay profitable isn't going to invest in new refineries when they know there is going to be less and less oil to refine.
In addition to lowering their investments in oil exploration and refinery expansion, oil companies have been merging as though the industry is living on borrowed time:
December 1998: BP and Amoco merge;
April 1999: BP-Amoco and Arco agree to merge;
December 1999: Exxon and Mobil merge;
October 2000: Chevron and Texaco agree to merge;
November 2001: Phillips and Conoco agree to merge;
September 2002: Shell acquires Penzoil-Quaker State;
February 2003: Frontier Oil and Holly agree to merge;
March 2004: Marathon acquires 40% of Ashland;
April 2004: Westport Resources acquires Kerr-McGee;
July 2004: Analysts suggest BP and Shell merge;
April 2005: Chevron-Texaco and Unocal merge;
June 2005: Royal Dutch and Shell merge;
July 2005: China begins trying to acquire Unocal
While many people believe talk of a global oil shortage is simply a conspiracy by "Big Oil" to drive up the prices and create "artificial scarcity," the rash of mergers listed above tells a different story. Mergers and acquisitions are the corporate world's version of cannibalism. When any industry begins to contract/collapse, the larger and more powerful companies will cannibalize/seize the assets of the smaller, weaker companies.
(Note: for recent examples of this phenomenon outside the oil industry, see the airline and automobile industries.)
If you suspect the oil companies are conspiring amongst themselves to create artificial scarcity and thereby artificially raise prices, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Are the actions of the oil companies the actions of
friendly rivals who are conspiring amongst each other to
drive up prices and keep the petroleum game going?
or
2. Are the actions of the oil companies the actions of
rival corporate desperados who, fully aware that their
source of income is rapidly dwindling, are now preying
upon each other in a game of "last man standing"?
You don't have to contemplate too much, as recent disclosures from oil industry insiders indicate we are indeed "damn close to peaking" while independent industry analysts are now concluding that large oil companies believe Peak Oil is at our doorstep.
As the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently observed, even ExxonMobil is now "sounding the silent Peak Oil alarm." In their 2005 report entitled, "The Outlook for Energy", ExxonMobil suggests that increased demand be met first through greater fuel efficiency. The fact that ExxonMobil - one of the largest oil companies in the world - is now recommending increased fuel efficiency should tell you how imminent a crisis is at this point.
