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85 comments on Saudis announce oil production increases...again...and again...and again...
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The Saudi Royals gallop around on prize thoroughbred horses, brandish gigantic sabers and travel the seven seas on 400 foot yachts. Who says they have to be in touch with reality? I mean they're basically the kings of the world as the western world grovels at their feet like lowly beggars begging for bread scraps, it is not their problem too baby along our civilization. I think the real oil began crisis began 40 years ago when we started importing oil in some sort of capitalist free-market drug induced hallucination, where we believed everybody could trade their infinite amounts of resources with each other into a magical world of prosperity and spaceships. We have all lost touch with our roots.. Those who don't learn the mistakes of their past are doomed to repeat them..
Beautiful imagery there, SoD.
Putting aside political and ethical issues, and taking as a given that the Sauds have mined their oil facilities to put a high price on invasion, how long would it take, at what cost, to rebuild them? Maybe with the fields as depleted as they are it just wouldn't be worth it?
Thanks, I would think that would depend on exactly how they mined their facilities and all, would they just blow up their infrastructure or the actual pipes in the ground themselves, making the invader have to re-drill every single field? Either way I would bet it would take more than three decades to get anything near previous extraction rates, because this is about the period of time it took for the saudi's to get expand their own production in the periods other than after the 70's and 80's when oil prices were low and not much effort was being made to increase production. The fields would likely be declining at ridiculous Cantarell like rates due to the fact secondary and tertiary recovery technology is being used, and you would likely have to replace all that salt water injection infrastructure, so It would be the most god awful desperate move in the world to invade KSA. I mean it would be like a starving Somalian child trying to swim to across the Indian ocean to find food. You might look at joules burns blog for information on Saudi oil infrastructure and look at the Iraqi Invasion and see how those fields were manipulated. I can't see how it would be worth it even purely economically because invading Saudi would collapse the world economy no doubt about it with supplies as tight as they are. Although being aware of history much less logical invasions have taken place.
http://satelliteoerthedesert.blogspot.com/
Two comments--As soon as oil became more expensive than ag products and weapons, the US became a loser in the game, but certainly didn't think that then, or even now. Second, it would take far more than 30 years to reconstruct as there's already a massive backlog in the logistics realm.
"It's not their problem to baby along our civilization."
Actually to a large extent it is, since our civilization is the only thing that makes their oil worth pumping.
Not anymore, if you ask westexas, you could see how Saudi's internal consumption rates are going to infinity and beyond.
Except the main reason they have increased internal consumption is because of their wealth, which exists only because other people consume their oil. Their economy has virtually no existence independent of "our" economy. Which is not to disagree with anything I understand WT to be saying.