Well, finally Iran gets to laugh at the United States. Hopefully Israel will not get its wish for an invasion of Iran this year, and I think by next year this question will not really be very important anymore. And who knows, maybe the next US president might actually realize that’s it’s good policy to create strong international relations based on a degree of trust and good faith. Just a weird thought, excuse me if it’s off topic…

“The oil price of $115 a barrel in today’s global markets is a deceiving figure. Oil is a strategic commodity that needs to discover its real value,” the Web site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
[…]
Ahmadinejad accused Western industrialized nations of “selfishness” in their quest for cheaper oil.

“When they get hold of oil, they assume that oil is a free commodity and belongs to them and has wrongly been placed in other territories. … This is the spirit of selfishness and arrogance,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.
[…]
A weaker dollar makes commodities such as oil less attractive to investors as a hedge against inflation, and it makes oil more expensive to investors overseas. Analysts believe the weaker dollar is the primary reason oil has soared this year. The effect tends to reverse when the greenback gains ground.
[..]
Iran has stopped using the U.S. dollar in its oil transactions with the outside world, switching to currencies such as euro.

“The dollar is not money any longer but a handful of paper distributed in the world without commodity support,” the Web site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Will the USA respond by asking its tired and over-reached military forces to attack Iran? Keep in mind what happened in 2000 when Iraq started to sell oil in Euros. Stay tuned, pick your favorite quality news source and you’ll know soon enough…

Now, this isn’t to attack or defend Ahmadinejad, but just to note, the way the American people see this situation is not at all the way much of the rest of the world sees it.

Consider for a moment: We ask, almost demand, that OPEC pump more oil. But why should they do that?

They are already maxed out in terms of production, many are already in decline, and oil is their primary resource, it’s how they pay for their people and goverment, it’s their main source of support.

So when you demand that that OPEC increase production, which can at worst permanently damage the fields being produced, just so we can enjoy a year or two more of slightly cheaper oil, it’s not hard to see why the US is getting no sympathy at all.

What about fixing our own house first? What about living within our means? What about not wasting a finite resource to drive to the store to shop to buy something shipped around the globe to save us a few cents? What about conservation?

Let me repeat: what about conservation?

Why does the United States have the right to use 25% of the world’s oil every year? The rest of the world does not agree it does, so the US is going to find itself pretty isolated if it tries to persist in that ridiculous policy for much longer. It’s time to get used to the idea: we aren’t going to be using 21 million barrels of oil per day much longer. The faster we get used to this idea, the better off we’ll all be.

When the White House makes a public announcement that the end of cheap plentiful oil is here, and after we try to start changing our consumption patterns, and maybe, after we pull our occupying army out of the OPEC country we invaded, we might deserve some sympathy, but even with all that, you can’t ask someone to destroy their production capacity to shoot a tiny amount more oil into the daily supply for a few months.

So who is going to break first? USA, Great Britain? Or will it be one of the more rational nations? Germany? France? Or some surprise contender? China?

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 17:47 and is filed under Our World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.