A few past quotes from Mr. Yergin on this glorious occasion...

A more relevant description would be a plateau in production capacity that might be reached in the fourth or fifth decade of this century. -Daniel Yergin

But eventually it's a question of access: Getting access to fields is on top of the oil companies' agenda. We see a substantial build-up of supply occurring over the coming years. -Daniel Yergin

Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of oil. -Daniel Yergin

I think the producers, for the most part, don't want to see prices skyrocket because that will only create problems for them down the road and would also be a, you know, would be a very serious shock for a world economy that can't afford serious shocks right now. -Daniel Yergin

It's extraordinary how inventive one can be with ethanol right now. -Daniel Yergin

So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology. -Daniel Yergin

The other are the strategic, so-called strategic stocks that the United States and the other Western industrial countries have, which could put in as much as four million barrels a day of oil into the market pretty quickly. -Daniel Yergin

This has a lot to do with the unrest in Nigeria, but also with the production loss after the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, the decline in Iraq since the 2003 war, and the decline in Venezuelan output since 2002. -Daniel Yergin

We are living in a different world now. You can see it everywhere in international relations: It was noteworthy that, after his visit to Washington, the Chinese president's next stop was Saudi Arabia. -Daniel Yergin

Within four or five years the US might be getting 10 percent of its gasoline from ethanol - that would be like creating a new Indonesia. -Daniel Yergin

You know, some of these wise quotes belong in the upper right corner... :)

It was my understanding that OBL/UBL wanted to bankrupt us similar to what he accomplished with the USSR. Looks like it happened in the same country, same reasons........."mission accomplished" rings pretty true here in 2008.

Looking at it from an oil demand perspective, as we discussed in an earlier DB the U.S. military is using the energy equivalent of about one month's worth of crude oil production from Iraq every year (82 million barrels per year of JP-8, the energy equivalent of roughly 77 million barrels of crude oil). That's 0.2 million barrels per day, or mbpd. That's not an insignificant amount of demand, about 1% of total U.S. consumption. If this sounds small, remember that T. Boone Pickens said world demand right now is 87 mbpd, world production is 85 mbpd, a 2% difference.

Iraq production has only now come back up to its pre-war levels, 2.5 mbpd, just eye-balling it it looks like average production was around 2 mbpd for most of the war. Taking the difference, maybe we've missed about 0.5 mbpd or 183 million barrels per year, 2.5% of U.S. daily consumption.

So, thus far the Iraq war has decreased the supply of oil while increasing the demand for oil. Moral questions aside, it would have been much better for the U.S. economy to buy oil from Hussein instead of invading. If the Bush administration really did have us invade Iraq to secure oil supplies, it has turned out as a damn poor tactical decision so far.

*I've been editing this a lot, but I think I'm done now. :) *

Is there a difference?

Just as the Bush family has always found common cause with the Saud family and the bin Laden family, it is apparent that Cheney and his gang had a common interest with Islamic militants in 2001.

In the Weimar Republic, the Nazis and Communists coordinated their riots, because even though each intended to exterminate the other, they had to first discredit the middle of the political spectrum, the barely-functioning German democracy. It was just a matter of who could act fastest against the other once democracy fell. The right-wing usually wins these contests with superior organization and greater numbers of armed bully types (Spain, Indonesia, etc). Unfortunately, in our current war both sides are right-wing.

In 2001, the middle that needed to be destroyed was cultural modernism, with its attendant international law and the UN. While many American businessmen had allied with our fascists (as happened in Germany), there were still centers of economic power that wanted a peaceful world. Bin Laden similarly needed Westernizers fully discredited in the Arab world, not that this needed much to accomplish.

More succinctly, both sides needed secular civilization replaced by holy war. Unlike any holy war in the past, this one was covertly framed as a battle over whom God intended to control the one substance that powered the world economy.

According to Michael Scheuer (bin Laden expert and author of "Imperial Hubris"), bin Laden's short-term intention was not personal conquest, but inspiring ordinary Moslems to obey their obligation to defend each other from aliens. So he was fine with helping other groups carry out attacks even if he lacked central control. Now if such a man knew that one of the groups asking him for money to attack the US might have been infiltrated by the Mossad or CIA to carry out a Reichstag fire, would he hesitate, or would he be just as confident as Cheney that his movement could prevail in the resulting World War?

You might have to run, if there are any shortages of transp fuels to drive with. But you won't be alone.. there will be all the runners on the highways carrying specialized parts and refined fuels to the Reactors, things which today travel by truck. I suspect Nuclear is too complex to survive without a robust Transportation base to support it.

Bob