The Oil Drum

Yeah!  How will we keep our redneck hockey rinks iced if those in the Great White North cut off "our gas."  

My understanding is that the Chinese have bought up the future production from the Canadian tarsands. So Canadian NG will make synfuel for China. Cool!

Matthew Simmons, in his interview with Jim Puplova, called the entire process "turning gold into lead." He said the synfuel crude was low quality. (www.netcastdaily.com)

I think under NAFTA we are actually exporting NG to Mexico while importing it from Canada.  I understand their constitution prevents foreign investment in their oil fields, but they do they still rely enough on foreign expertise to be afraid to cut everyone else out entirely?  That could hurt their internal availability more in the long run than continuing exports.

Excellent post, Dave. Very comprehensive.

The rather pathetic and alarming potential that oil companies may use nukes to extract oil indicates the lengths the powers that be will go to in order to continue the parasitedigm.

Also, good post, Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ.

The upcoming political contractions will accelerate the undoing of any polity we may see remaining in the world. As the oil producing countries realise that it is not in their interest to continue funding a parasite like the US through currency reserves and unfavorable trading terms. Eventually they will shift their focus inward and will no longer worry about the world's largest consumer market. The corporations who have been shifting their manufacturing facilities offshore for the past 25 years will complete the process and move even their corporate headquarters overseas to more amenable countries -- a process that has already started with much of corporate wealth being offshored for tax breaks. It is only a matter of time before the dollar collapses due to a shift to PetroEuros and PetroRoubles.

We will find ourselves friendless in this cold cruel world with either our hands out, begging for the oil and gas we took for granted, or we will have our weapons pointed, demanding that our "friends" provide us what we want.

My guess is we will use the latter technique. More lives squandered. More energy wasted. More time sifting through our fingers as we continue the parasitedigm.

I hope the Canadians wise up and stop the foolish destruction of their environment designed to fuel our silly lifestyle. But, greed is an international trait and the chances that humans will see the continued track as a dead-end are slim to none. Having just read a very good history of the Spanish Flu, I see that cronyism, greed, political machinations, ego, a tenacious clinging to the old ways even in the face of new understandings, all contributed to the horror of that epidemic, and so it will this crisis.

How can we hope to wise up when there are no stacks of bodies to the ceiling in every corridor of today's hospitals, no steam shovels digging mass graves in Philadelphia, no people collapsing in the streets, and even then the people in power in 1918 did not heed the experts of the time? How can we expect change when cheap oil still reigns?

The countdown is on. We are witnessing a grand and disturbing confluence of events, all destined to result in a reduction of the human population. Anyone with a basic understanding of our pyramidical economic and physical infrastructure realizes that if enough blocks at the base are pulled out, the entire edifice will collapse like so many cans of peas at the market.

God help us.