> But I suspect we'll see very expensive
> gas in the future. More like six to ten bucks a gallon. How soon--don't
> know.
I think it's a long way out ... there are a whole lot of oil reserves that
aren't being used today. Many of them are considered "unproven" because the oil
companies deliberately quit mapping them ... cheaper to use Arab oil than to
bother looking in our backyard. Back in the 80's, Shell had half a dozen ships
exploring just in US waters, and I was spending a fair amount of time onboard.
Then they dropped back to just one or two after oil got cheap, and quit buying
million dollar navigation systems from the company I worked for, so we quit
building them.
Haven't taken a tour of the oil fields lately, but I'd guess there's a larger
percentage of the pumps running today than there were a few years ago. Still
not all of them by a long shot, but more. The oil companies claim it's
"uneconomical" to run the idle pumps ... but I can see how big the motors on
them are, and there's no way it takes a gallon of oil to pump a gallon out of
the ground.
Randall
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