Mid East countries invest in Electric cars

[daniel]

Originally Posted by McShemp

My intent was not to focus on oil supply and future sales. It was to keep alternatives from gaining traction, acceptance, support, use, etc. Hence, to keep the alternatives off the market for as long as possible to retard their development and use for as long as possible.

Oil will always have buyers, but demand would be slashed if alternative transportation takes off as I hope it does.

And I'm saying that rather than trying to block acceptance of alternatives, it's in their long-term best interest to gain market share in alternatives, so as to be well-positioned when the oil runs out. An OPEC nation knows its oil is running out. Blocking alternatives will only keep up its profits in the short term. But jumping into alternatives guarantees their profits in the long term.

It's only when a company is run by criminals who care nothing about the nation or the company, but only care about this quarter's profits and their own consequent pay bonuses, that it tries to block alternatives instead of investing in them.

When you own a finite resource, your best policy is to conserve it. But when you are profiting from someone else's resource, it's in your selfish personal interest to squander it. OPEC nations own their own oil. The decision-makers of oil companies are executives who profit from the oil, but do not own it themselves, and therefore have an incentive to squander it, not conserve it.

Thus Chevron blocks the manufacture of batteries for EVs, while Arab nations invest in alternative energy.

[Shawn Clark]

Originally Posted by donee

In Short - The SUV is how we are selling our country to foriegners.

You mean sold our country to foreigners, right?

[Ogo]

Oil is one of the finest raw materials. You can produce from it many things, ranging from medicines to plastics. So humanity should preserve its oil reserves for something more important than simple burning.

[daniel]

Originally Posted by Ogo

Oil is one of the finest raw materials. You can produce from it many things, ranging from medicines to plastics. So humanity should preserve its oil reserves for something more important than simple burning.

I put your statement in big letters because it needs to be shouted from the rooftops!!!

[tochatihu]

Crude oil is the starting point for almost all hydrocarbon manufacture (plastics, mediicne, etc.). This is because the chemical conversions and factories to perform them have already been developed, designed, optimized and built.

Theoretically one can make essentially any hydrocarbon from any other. The limitations are in cost and lead time. If crude oil becomes much more expensive (and I assume it will) then we will begin to manufacture hydrocarbons from other starting materials.

Desired hydrocarbon products will not disappear w/o crude oil. Low production costs are another matter.