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181 comments on OPEC Declines and the World Plateau

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jkissing on May 3, 2006 - 2:00pm

The us still manages around 7mmb/d, so what is in the spr is 100 days of us production. how is it hoarding to pump from one hole in the ground to another one? Is it hoarding to not produce oil in alaska's preserve?
The us is accused of insufficient savings. the spr is one of the few places where the us is actually storing something for future use that is likely to have value at that time.

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Leanan on May 3, 2006 - 2:07pm

The American Heritage Dictionary defines hoard this way:

A hidden fund or supply stored for future use; a cache. Or To keep hidden or private.

It's not really hidden, so you could argue it's not a hoard. OTOH, it certainly is "private," in that not just anyone can use it.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with hoarding. As long as it's not carried to extremes, anyway.

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odograph on May 3, 2006 - 5:03pm

everone hoards. the spr is a hoard on a large scale. keeping the car above 1/2 tank as "preparation" is hording on a small scale. iirc, one of the factors in the 70's shortages was that everyone tried to get their cars up to F (full) at once. 200 million cars, and say 10 gallons per car, that's a sudden (fear fueled) 2 billion gallon blip in quantity demanded.

i think politicos try to argue against that kind of small sacle hoarding, and set as "bad" buying extra containers & etc.

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“This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”

—Max Weber, 1905