T. Boone Pickens on Oil Prices, Trading, Wind Power

New energy generation sources, nuclear, wind, solar, will be an investment in fixed productive capacity, god, we haven’t had a surge in that in the U. S. since forever it feels like. As it is fixed and the ability to to use math to discount the future earnings potential is there, I think there will be little room to hype the investment.

I thought a saner security plan after 9/11 would be to start a 5 year plan to build 5 new nuclear plants a year and use 10% of that new capacity to power investment in wind and solar. The second 5 year plan we would step up the pace. I know that this will sound naive, but I imagine we could be paying for 5 new nuke plants for the price of 2 months in Iraq.

T Boone I liked except for his role in the swiftboating of Kerry in 2004; he was one of the mega-rich backers of that propaganda effort. In this case I can admire and study his career of highs and lows, presently up, but on the whole due to his finger in 2004 he is one of the ones that has worked to destroy the United States. Sorry, that’s granite. And not asshat.

BTW, the windows embed is courtesy of Center for Instructional Technology, University of California, San Francisco

http://cit.ucsf.edu/embedmedia/step2.php?mediatype=WindowsMedia

I listened for a while, but the pace was too slow to keep my interest.

Basically, what I heard him say was that price inelasticity of demand for oil is infinitely inelastic, or very close. Thus sellers can charge anything they want and nobody will undercut the price. Conscious parallelism is working to keep prices rising at avaricious rates.

There is no compelling interest that has enough influence to provide a reason for speculative demand to slow down. In addition, there are pseudo-intellectuals who are useful idiots for the suppliers. These halfwits couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. “Peak Oil Theory” is the cry of the helpless volunteer victim.

Extrapolating, the only conclusion is that the majority of consumers are starting a downward slope towards subsistence levels of living, since oil and natural gas suppliers and their speculator financing arm have no reason to stop bidding up prices.

Those who claim oil prices will fall later this year must offer proof of the economic relationships that will make this happen.

This video causes Safari to become unbearingly slow. And the video starts (on the front page) without me clicking it – is this by intention?

Oil has overshot, by a large amount, the level at which alternatives are economically viable.

Cite please? 22,000 man hours in a barrel of oil for a cheap, cheap $126. Give me an alternative that’s even half that bargain price.

I made it about halfway through the video, mostly because I was in the mood for folksy this morning. But if he’s right, look at this chart of supply vs demand for oil. The gap between the red line and the light blue line increasing between 2007 and 2008 caused a doubling in the price of oil. A doubling. And there is no sign of that gap getting any smaller. In order for the red demand line to become anything like the shape of the supply line (giving it not only flat, but downward slope), we’d need a worldwide recession that would make the great depression look like a rainy day picnic.

Barry,

Perhaps this is a new innovation and I missed the announcement. Seems that the video clips auto-start. At least that is the case with this particular story (T Boone Pickens on Oil Prices). I generally like to pick what videos to watch so I can modulate the volume on the TV, iTunes, and any other sound producing application. And there are plenty of times when I just like reading without any background sounds. However, with the video auto-starting, the accompanying audio can be disruptive.

Love the site.

Brett

Cite please? 22,000 man hours in a barrel of oil for a cheap, cheap $126. Give me an alternative that’s even half that bargain price.

Not sure if you are saying that I need to cite an alternative at $63/bbl or $256/bbl, but the liquid fuel from coal I mentioned qualifies on both counts.

If you want to go up to $256/bbl, then you can even enter the universe of some otherwise unwieldy concepts such as metal-air batteries or manufactured liquid fuels that would be electricity intensive (and would therefore require nuclear and/or renewable electricity generation).

And, of course, there are alternatives both below and above $126 where there are varying degrees of compromise on the capabilities of liquid petroleum-based fuels. Currently, a lot of such fuel is burned in applications that don’t require all of the advantages of the petroleum fuels – especially the high energy density (both by volume and weight) and the rapid refueling time (a few minutes every 350-500 miles).

cinefoz,

When are your fact-free attacks on peak oil theory going to start making sense? You’ve been harping on this for some time now in various threads, but you offer no citations, no data, and only ridiculous literary characterizations to make your point. You’re essentially saying the fundamentals of oil make unending, risk-free speculation possible. This exact result is predicted by peak oil, as supply constraints become shortfalls and rapidly rising costs – hence the bullish speculation.

Stop peddling your B-movie grade presentation of speculators as villainous propagandists and peak oil proponents as naive tools, because its pedantic crap. Put up something to back up the claims you’re making, or stop making them. Your credibility is close to zero here. I suggest that you actually read some of the preposterous statements you make, reconsider what you’re saying, and either offer substantiation or a recantation.