The Oil Drum

To fight the power of a cartel, you have to think like a union. We hang together or hang separately.

It is not clear to me that OPEC will benefit from a continuation of the current steady oil price increases. Eventually the world's economy is going to be seriously damaged, and a global financial collapse is not in OPEC's interest. The best option for extending BAU operation of the global economy for a period of time will be a global cooperative oil trade (i.e. rationing) involving both producers and consumers. However, the goal of prolonging BAU by such a method only makes sense if you think that electrification of transportation or some other technological innovation is going to ride to the rescue in a decade or so and allow the stock market to go on rising for many decades into the future. My best engineering judgment tells me that such an arrival of the technological cavalry is unlikely, and that the OECD nations are going to have to accept economic contraction. I am not saying that it is impossible for some combination of renewable/nuclear energy to help cushion the effect of the decline of fossil fuel supplies; I belive that they can do so. However, I believe we need to create an economic system in which it is not the goal of all major economic players to get richer forever. Abandoning this goal will require far more radical changes than energy conservation.