Oil: The Inconvenient Truth

The title alludes to my feeling that the biggest challenge facing mankind (especially mankind in the USA) is not "global warming", but a future in which worldwide oil supply will not keep pace with worldwide oil demand. I have often commented on Seeking Alpha that the "oil problem" has the ability to induce catastrophic consequences by 2015 and is therefore the more imminent issue to be addressed. Since the solutions to both global warming and the "oil problem" are the same, focusing on the nearer term problem would seem more logical to me. The problem, of course, is that those in power apparently disagree.

In this day and age of media and political double-speak, it did not surprise me that hurricane Gustav actually made oil and natural gas prices fall dramatically. After all, Gustav only shut-in the majority of US oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico along with a few refineries in the area. The Bush administration announced it would be ready, willing, and able to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to those companies requesting it. This apparently calmed the market and oil sold off to $109/barrel, or thereabouts. Oil swings so wildly these days, it's hard to keep track of its daily moves.