Have we reached the tipping point in world oil production? The ongoing disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico may signal an end to deep water drilling by companies and countries who support them.
Jeff Rubin, a leading economist and writer about oil markets, writes a blog at The Globe and Mail. He says that this latest spill is like the near nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Since then, for forty years, no company in the U.S. has built a new one.
The Deepwater leak is already approaching the volume of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.
"The scene of hurricane-force winds raining oil on New Orleans and the rest of America’s Gulf Coast will no doubt make for an apocalyptic image of the end of the age of oil. Unfortunately, our dependence on the stuff will survive this catastrophe, even if the fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico and the marsh ecosystems of the Mississippi Delta won’t...
If the Deepwater Horizon disaster is the offshore energy industry’s Three Mile Island, then not only has world oil production already peaked, but it will also very soon start to shrink.
So if you think oil prices are high today, you ain’t seen nothing yet."
As I mowed the lawn today, drove about town, purchased some fruits and vegetables shipped in from around the world, saw the store racks piled high with consumer goods, and thought about the burgeoning developing countries like China, India, and Brazil who want a similar lifestyle... I realized how our world revolves around oil. Rubin's warnings may not be that far-fetched. Will the world become a smaller place, as he suggests, and will it mark the end of globalism?
What does the future of our world look like?
Tags: Gulf of Mexico oil leak, clean up, disaster, long term effects, economic implications,
