Re: does anyone know how much oil there is?

Compared to the industry at large, Japan's oil minister is certainly headed in the right direction. I might quibble with them on what the price of oil per barrel "should be". Perhaps I'm too old fashioned? I suppose that in this day and age, it may be an outdated concept to fix the price of an essential commodity within proximity of what the actual cost was to produce it, plus a nominal profit margin for the producers. The actual cost in this context is defined by - how much $$ outlay was required by an oil company to expend by way of paying the overhead expenses - research, equipment, materials and labor, necessary to retrieve "produce" oil per barrel?

By the early 1900s, the actual cost had reached $7 to $10 per barrel. What, pray tell, happened between then ($10) and today ($140)?. Did the quality of the oil, per barrel, mysteriously improve and increase commensurate with its increase in price? hardly. I mean, seriously folks, to begin with, there may have been a bit of headroom for improving the quality of a barrel of oil of the early 1900s; 1400% worth? If quality does not account for the meteoric increase, then what? Factor in that when it comes to the oil industry, yes even the oil industry, is an entity that is not operating under it's own powers. Neither a lone corporation nor a cabal of corporations has it's own powers, per se. Just like there are puppet people, there are corporations and entire industries comprised of puppet people ... lots of puppets, being controlled from behind the scenes. It is for this reason that the "open market" as such is not an open market. If the controllers desire to call it an open market, fine, that is nice as far as that goes, but if governments are strictly regulating such a market, determining who gets to play and who doesn't, this is not the picture of an actual open market. It is the picture of racketeering at a global level. At best, the capability in improved efficiencies (technology, equipment, better trained labor) for producing oil by the barrel, and subsequently refining it, if they have changed at all since the early 1900s, these efficiencies have gone up, not down. According to Lindsey Wagner, the actual cost of producing oil per barrel, today, is around $5 per barrel.

The hidden vigorish in all of this oil traded on the so-called open market is the effects of inflationary efforts. This oil market still trades its product in terms of US dollars. This "hegemony", may not last forever but has held sway for many decades. Just from the inflationary angle, how bad does the the US economy need to be, how badly inflated / debased / beaten up does the US dollar need to be in order to justify an asking price of $140 for something that actually cost $7 to produce? This is the same US that has a long-standing history on blowing billions. Its blown over a trillion dollars - 1,000,000,000,000,000 on a middle east war effort the past 5 years. It blew a few hundred billions on bailing out sectors of specialized financiers that had been plundering the home lending industry. As I type it is still in the act of blowing several hundred billions on stimulating it's tax-filing citizenry. The war effort has a double whammy effect. By coincidence the theater it is being waged within just happens to be the same basic neighborhood that houses a significant component of the aforementioned oil market. In the interests of keeping the cost of oil at reasonable levels, that can't be good for business. What if it turns out that there are no actual, bona fide interests genuinely interested in keeping the cost of oil at a reasonable level? That, plus the ongoing war effort, plus the ongoing effort to inflate the US economy far beyond it's capacity to maintain this pressure... alla these might be pretty good for those in the oil biz, eh? One has to figure that just from the perspective of hazard pay, that, and the tendency for Wall Street to pee it's pants at the drop of a the latest, worrisome "late-breaking financial news update" broadcast, might also be doing wonders for the skyrocketing price of petro.

Between $5 a barrel, or $7, or $10, or $60, and $140 (and counting) the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Who, or more likely what, does one suppose is producing the lies necessary that allows them/it to pocket the difference? Discover the answer to that and it will be a lot easier to understand that: although a nice, PC-friendly dream, a green dream at that, there is no oil shortage - present nor past; just like many other established institutions of industries, oil is not an end, it is a means to an end; the current upward spiral has little if anything to do with the age-old "supply & demand" myth; like establishment efforts to cure cancer, "new, better, and practical energy solutions" will forever remain as "potentially right around the next corner", nod nod, wink wink, all the while the body bag count on inventors who already invented methods for harnessing clean, natural, free energy sources continues to rise; that the price for oil will continue to be pegged at whatever price they wielding power from the shadows say it is to be pegged at. The latter - power to wield, is the end to be reached by oil / energy as a contributing means. All this oil / energy power control is a matter of prophecy, particularly globalists prophecy, circa 1945.