Mexican Company Predicts End of Oil

[robertpaulsen]

Source: Prensa Latina

Mexican Company Predicts End of Oil

Mexico, Jul 27 (Prensa Latina) Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) announced that oil reserves may run out in seven years.

"Supplies of this economically exploitable resource are running out," informed a report sent by the state owned company to the United States stock market.

Until December 31, 2005 the report says proven reserves were about 8.978 billion barrels, while yearly production was 1.322 billion tons. If this rhythm continues oil will run out in the time stipulated..

El Universal newspaper reports that experts of the PFC Energy Advisory company based in Washington pointed out that investments for PEMEX exploration is also running out of time.

Read more: http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BF1F8B8FE-DA99-4717-8FBD-2B3C4F90FBA3%7D%29&language=EN

---

Hmmm...maybe that explains why oil closed over $77 a barrel today.

[Deja Q]

1. With air and battery powered cars coming out, one needn't fear too much.

http://autos.msn.com/advice/article.aspx?contentid=4024853


The PHEV (though the written description would make the acronym PEHV! :D )

Let's hope India can, *cough*, offshore those fairly soon.

:shrug:

[Auggie]

2. That is one very cool car

[earthside]

7. You Had Better Fear!

Mexico running out of oil it can export ... the end of cheap oil ...

What kind of car you can drive will be the least of your worries.

Take a look at this: The Oil in Your Oatmeal by Chad Heeter/San Francisco Chronicle - March 26, 2006

... For decades, scientists have calculated how much fossil fuel goes into our food by measuring the amount of energy consumed in growing, packing, shipping, consuming and finally disposing of it. The caloric input of fossil fuel is then compared with the energy available in the edible product, the caloric output.

What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)

But this is only an average. My cup of coffee gives me just a few calories of energy, but to process 1 pound of coffee requires more than 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy -- the equivalent energy found in nearly a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal. ...

Oh, yeah ... that eating thing.

[NickB79]

9. We need to add millions of cars like these per year to have an effect

There are over 250 MILLION cars in the US. To make a serious dent in our oil consumption, we would have to replace tens of millions of them with electric/air/whatever-powered vehicles. Currently the closest option we have is the Prius, which still relies on gasoline (though less so than other vehicles).

The biggest problem is that people won't invest in buying new technology like this until it is too late to do much good. People are still buying trucks and SUV's at $3/gallon now. When the Mexican oil industry finally collapses, the price of fuel in this country will skyrocket. At that point, the US economy will plunge into a recession/depression, and no one will be able to afford to replace their vehicles with new ones that run off electricity.

There is one other thing those of us living in the US should also keep in mind. Mexico derives 40% of it's tax revenue from oil profits. When those profits decline, the government will either have to cut services to the population, or raise taxes on them. If the decline is as rapid as only 7 years, there will be rioting, civil unrest and most likely a full-blown uprising against the Mexican government. At this point, the US will see MILLIONS of Mexican refugees streaming across the border.

Makes you wonder if the politicians hyping the US/Mexico border fence know more than they're telling us....

[robertpaulsen]

14. Exactly. If Mexican oil will RUN OUT in 7 years, the problems will occur BEFORE 2014.

There have been a number of recent articles detailing the reasons for this, but I think this article explains it best:

Mexico: Peak Oil in Action

There is a present-day example of the World Problematique unfolding on the North American continent. It involves Peak Oil, climate change, food scarcity and socioeconomic instability. It brings the nature of the problems the world will face over the next few decades into stark relief.
The Scenario

* Mexico's biggest oil field is Cantarell. Its 2 million barrel per day output was responsible for 60% of Mexico's production, and all its oil exports to the United States.
* Those oil exports account for 40% of Mexico's public funding.
* Cantarell's output is known to be crashing (see graphic above). Production has declined by 25% in the last year and is predicted to be down about 60% from its peak by the end of 2007. The field will probably lose over 75% of its production capacity by the end of 2008.
* When this happens Mexico's economy will probably implode.
* The United States currently exports about 20% of its corn crop.
* Next year, 20% of the United States' corn crop is going to be used for ethanol.
* Mexico imports a substantial amount of corn from the United States.
* As Cantarell's output declines, oil exports to the US will drop in lockstep.
* As oil imports drop in the US, the pressure will mount to produce more ethanol as a substitute.
* As more corn is bought by the American ethanol industry, US corn exports, especially to Mexico, will slide.
* At the same time the probability is high that Global Warming will result in higher temperatures in Mexico, a country already at temperature risk.
* Rising temperatures will bring more drought conditions and a drop in Mexico's own corn production.
* Now you have a country with a decimated economy and declining food. This is a recipe for massive migration.
* The migration moves North as it has in the past, but this time in enormous numbers.
* As the economic refugees cross the border what do they find?
* In January, 2006, KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton) was given a $385M contract to build a string of very large detention camps in the United States...

Peak oil, global warming, food, biofuels and authoritarianism — all rolled up into one neat but ugly little package. Coming to a border near you within 3 years.

snip

The Spectre of Revolution

When contemplating Mexico's future you should always remember her past. Mexican history is full of revolutionary episodes: the War of Independence of 1810; the Mexican Civil War or War of Reform of 1857; the Mexican Revolution of 1910; the Zapatista actions in Chiapas in 1994; and the recent violent confrontations in Oaxaca.

The effect of NAFTA on the lives of the Mexican poor has been devastating. In an echo of the enclosure movement in Britain many have been forced off land they traditionally occupied, either by economic circumstances or legislation. A good overview of Mexican agrarian history, including the impact of NAFTA, is available in this FAO document.

The 100+ year-old push-pull effect of the US economy on Mexican migration is a very well documented historical phenomenon. This time, circumstances are somewhat different. Many Mexican campesinos — subsistence farmers that either owned their own land or held it jointly in a collective called an ejido — were forced off their land due to NAFTA rules that allowed the dumping of highly subsidized, below market-priced US corn on the Mexican market. The land is still there, but now sits idle. In the event of a severe economic downturn there would likely be a large movement to return to the land as well as increased northward migration.

Cantarell's crash and PEMEX's impending bankruptcy present a political crisis of the first magnitude for Mexico's elite and threaten the stability of the small middle class. This crisis presents a great opportunity for the long downtrodden majority to gain power as has happened in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Conditions will be ripe for a resurgence of revolutionary sentiment in Mexico, which will probably take the form of an import of the Bolivarian Revolution championed by Hugo Chavez.

Of course, having such an incendiary political movement on their very doorstep will not sit well with the American industrial/political establishment. The probability of direct American political, economic and even military involvement in Mexican affairs as a result should not be lightly dismissed.

more...

http://www.paulchefurka.com/Mexico%20and%20the%20Problematique.html

This was part of a GD post I made detailing the crisis Mexico faces, which, for geographical and geopolitical reasons, is also an American crisis:

We need to wake up to what's going on in Mexico NOW.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1334856

[roamer65]

21. Ooooo...Bolivarian revolution in MX.

That ought to get all the "Red Dawners" here in the US whipped up into an absolute, flying monkey frenzy.:evilgrin:

[robertpaulsen]

22. The "Red Dawners" are either working for Halliburton...

Or they're working for Blackwater. Same difference. This will not be pretty.

[Megahurtz]

31. This is what really worries me:

>>>"In January, 2006, KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton) was given a $385M contract to build a string of very large detention camps in the United States..."<<<

And I guess right now all of these detention camps are just ready and waiting.......
for what and who???

:wtf:

This is just pure evil. :scared:

[Deja Q]

32. Won't know until it actually happens.

If it happens that way, what can you do about it?

Until then, it's hyperbole. Don't think too seriously about it. It'll warp your judgment.

[Megahurtz]

34. I know, you're right

I've just been spending the last half hour Googling it.
I could get carried away there's so much :scared: but what can you do? It's just too big.
I guess we'll find out in time and in the meantime better not to take it too seriously.

[dysfunctional press]

16. there are non-hybrids that get as good of mileage as the prius.

hybrids are not the answer.

[Deja Q]

28. So it's interesting India gets this innovation before we, the purported wasters.

[dysfunctional press]

15. and where does the power to compress the air come from...???

oops.

[Deja Q]

27. Political debates!

:hide:

In seriousness, the ability to compress air doesn't require oil.

[NuttyFluffers]

45. electricity. which can be generated in many ways.

but that requires us to actually implement our options beyond oil and create better grid interconnection, as well as individual production. but if we sit back and mourn our future without preparation, then yes "oops."

[ngant17]

3. the air car

has a composite fiberglass tank charged at 4000 psi. I think I could handle driving it, but I wonder what kind of crash rating it would get? And how much protection I would get if the tank blows up?

[NuttyFluffers]

46. apparently it's a solid design. read up on it.

and then, there's always worries about gas tanks in movies... explosion naturally are not the norm, but if i had to choose one of air or of fire, i think i'll choose the air.

[candice]

4. Tesla Motors is predicted to introduce a $35,000 sedan electric...

after the Roadster (this is rumored)

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php

[enid602]

5. revenues

But petroleum revenues are over 30% of the Mexican Government's revenues. Watch for a huge economic collapse.

[Solon]

6. I find it somewhat sad that when people think of oil, they think of JUST cars...

Newsflash, oil involves more than cars, here's a small list:

Plastics and Polymers, a LOT of shit, in your home and elsewhere are made of this.

Industrial processes, including the manufacturing of cars, somewhere around 20 to 80 barrels of oil goes into just MAKING a car, doesn't matter if its electric, air, or traditional.

Clothing, including artificial fibers, like nylon, to natural, like cotton, rely on oil to be produced, more in a second.

Food, this is the big one, since the Green Revolution, which was a great thing, there has been a reliance on oil based chemicals to fertilize the fields, get rid of the pests, and power the machinery to harvest and plant the crops. We have 6 billion plus people on this planet, and can feed them just fine, unless the oil gets too expensive, then cut food production by at least 3/4, and that is a realistic estimate of how many people are going to die in the coming decade and a half, give or take. 10 Calories of Oil goes into every ONE Calorie of food, there is no replacement for this production bonus due to cheap oil chemicals.

You know, that air or Tesla car does no good if there is no food on the grocery store shelves.

[skids]

11. I find it sad when people think of plastics, they think of just petro oil...

...and it goes for most of the other uses of petrochemicals as well.

[NickB79]

12. Well, the alternatives are pretty lacking at this point in time

Theoretically we could produce plastics from plant-based materials, but the biofuels boom that is sending food prices soaring has soured me on the concept of food to fuel or food to plastic. The only thing that would seem to work on a scale needed (tens of millions of barrels of oil per day) is algae-based oil production. So far there hasn't been much actual production from algae, just research facilities still trying to work the bugs out.

[skids]

19. 10s (to hundreds) of millions of barrels per day...

...is the amount needed to produce fuel AND plastic/chemicals.

The amount needed to produce just the plastic/chemicals is extremely smaller. So were oil use for fuel tackled sincerely, we'd be pretty damn far away from "peak chemical feedstock" day. People cannot be blamed for focusing on transportation as it is the end use of well over half the oil.

Moreover, the cost of plastic is going to go up, dramatically, under any scenario. Whether bioplastics or oil from less "cheap" extraction processes is used will be something decided by economic factors (hopefully, instead of the fiat politicized economics in place today.) "Things" are about to get much more expensive, there can be no argument to that, even things that are made "without" oil, since you still have to ship them.

I don't think anyone who seriously thinks about energy would argue against conservation. What we do here in this country is not just unsustainable, it's insane by many other measures as well. That's not the point.

While the blunders of the biofuels industry/agribusiness are not to be taken lightly, the reports on them are also not to be taken without a grain of salt. The truth lies somewhere between the utopia the media owned by biofuel advocates portrays and the hysterical crisis that media owned by petro advocates claim. Both biases are readily evident in the press these days, albeit the petro industry owns more media at present.

[Solon]

13. The problem isn't that such chemicals can be produced, but at what quantity...

There are millions of tons of plastics and chemicals produced from oil EVERY DAY, there is absolutely NO resource on this planet that is that plentiful. You can make plastics from biomass, usually vegetation by products, as long as its made from "waste" products that aren't fit for human consumption. There is always a give an take when it comes to replacing oil, the reason is because oil is, in a very basic sense, concentrated solar energy. Nothing else on the planet has nearly as much energy per gallon or pound as oil, and we consume over 83 million barrels of the stuff PER DAY.

There is always a catch when it comes to replacing oil with any other substance, for its varied purposes, most of it deals with the fact that we cannot replace oil wholesale, not in the quantities it is taken out of the ground per day. So that means we need to use less total energy worldwide, and less chemicals derived from oil, per day, in order to survive. To give some examples, hydrogen is an energy storage, rather than production, system, one that needs electricity, which is usually derived from either coal or natural gas. Its oil free, in a sense, but then again, both coal and natural gas are not limitless either, in fact, we may have peaked in production of natural gas as well, and coal will not last beyond this century, not economically anyways.

Biofuels suffer a different problem, first, they rely on oil to keep production values high enough for the biofuels to be competitive at all, at the same time, they take up land that may be better used for food. Having food and fuel directly compete for space is foolhardy. The fact is that our energy intensive way of life is simply unsustainable.

[NuttyFluffers]

47. well conservation is going to have to be part of the solution as well

i remember my agriculture science professor showing the latest studies and successes they were having with milk vetch and other fixating plants. they were finding that petrochemicals were great for quick yields. but after reinvesting the soil with milk vetch, then plowing it under for the crop, they found it took just around 7 years for a field to completely switch from petrochemical fertilizers to this natural method of fertilization. in fact, after those seven years my teacher said they were starting to see exciting results that yields were better and plateaud at a point higher than petro-fertilization.

artificial pest control can be controlled by bio-diversity and natural predator encouragement. granted it won't produce the same yields of perfectly identical, absolutely unblemished produce, but that shit tastes like crap anyway. we'd be better off switching wholesale. the big reason i think petro is so needed is that they crush any competitor before they reach a critical mass point in mass production.

if we advance conservation technology atop this, along with advanced hydroponics and localized food production (such as urban farming), there's a very real chance to survive this and even thrive. but that would first require will, then calm, next strategy, and finally cooperation out of all of us as a people. so yes, in essence we are doomed.

[Deja Q]

33. I've known all that for decades. But consider transportation is the biggest user OF oil...

the rest of it is put into perspective. ;)

[ohio2007]

8. Is that why Columbia is building bases along their oil pipelines

or are they defending from an imaginary invasion from their east ?

[CANDO]

10. Societal meltdown cometh.

Humans facing desperation over survival. This truly scares the living hell out of the upper echelons. Makes me wonder if this is why Halliburton built detention centers and for the dictatorial powers the pResident has given himself. Try and imagine worldwide famine. Massive scale depopulation of humans with upper classes trying to stay in their "upper class". This will be genocide numbering in the billions. Scary, huh? Read Crossing The Rubicon.... and stock up on seeds and gardening tools. Oh, and have a wonderful weekend!

[GliderGuider]

17. Think about what this graph implies in the face of declining oil and gas...

Here's a leg up on the idea. Over at least the last 2000 years, per capita energy consumption has increased in lockstep with population - it has followed essentially the same curve. To me this implies that increasing energy availability drives population growth. The total energy used grows much faster, because the total energy is the result of multiplying the per-capita use by the population. Both of those numbers are rising exponentially.

Notice that glitch around 2000? That's the effect of the 1980 oil crisis. Per capita energy use stopped growing for a few years, and it forced humanity to develop a lot of various efficiencies in order to keep the shibboleths of Business as Usual and Happy Motoring Forever alive. Could we repeat that minor miracle today if we had to? Could we increase our efficiency every year enough to offset the decline of oil and natural gas? Maybe, maybe not. Notice also that since 2000 per capita energy consumption has started to grow again, enabling our population to keep rising.

Only the exploitation of ever more dense energy sources has enabled the per capita consumption to keep rising through history. Now the most ubiquitous, most energy-dense source humanity has ever exploited is about to go into decline.

What are the implications for our civilization and the human species if per capita energy falls over the long term? What was the world population in 1800? What sorts of events could send us back to that point in 100 years?

Paul Chefurka

[Deja Q]

29. If it happens, it happens.

Let's just pray that if we're not suitable to be saved we at least get a quick and painless demise we won't know about.

And forgive me for not trying to wallow in a gloom'n'doom scenario, I'm going back to the Lounge. :D

[UTUSN]

18. If this item were about AMLO, his supporters would claim this is propaganda from

wingnut, disinformational sources (El Universal, Prensa Latina, and especially the WASHINGTONG-based "Advisory company"---WHATEVER the sources!!1

[robertpaulsen]

20. Right. And if it was President AMLO saying oil would run out in 7 years...

I doubt oil would be at $77 a barrel. More like $97 a barrel, because the paranoid reich-wingers running Wall Street would suddenly see the truth - that oil exports to this country would drop to a trickle WAY before they run out. This is why AMLO could not be allowed to win. Having someone under their thumb gives the appearance that the situation is more "manageable".

[KansDem]

23. So let's drill more!

Honestly, this was predicted some 50 years ago:

Theory:
It is widely accepted that oil is a finite resource; there are basic laws which describe the depletion of any finite resource:

Production starts at zero;

Production then rises to a peak which can never be surpassed;

Once the peak has been passed, production declines until the resource is depleted.

These simple rules were first described in the 1950s by Dr. M. King Hubbert, and apply to any relevant system, including the depletion of the world’s petroleum resources.



Hubbert Peak

Why nothing was done at that time is a crime. We were duped by the oil companies, who thought all they had to do was get their toadies in the US Congress and White House to "look the other way" and authorize our military to invade foreign oil-rich countries using trumped-up charges and outright lies. The end was there, they just didn't want to face it! We were too busy "fight communism" and, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, fighting "terrorism." Talk about distraction from the important issue(s) at hand!

We were lied to; deceived; manipulated; and just generally ****ed over for half a century. And now it's time to "pay the piper."

I fear world economies and social unrest will just worsen during Century 21. :scared:

edited to correct word choice

[robertpaulsen]

24. Speaking of being too busy fighting communism, have you seen this?

Smoking Gun:
The CIA's Interest in Peak Oil

(Special to From the Wilderness)

by Richard Heinberg

A recently declassified 1977 CIA study on Peak Oil in the Soviet Union is a telling indicator that Peak Oil issues have been of secret concern to policy makers in the US for a long time. Here, Professor Richard Heinberg, author of the best-selling book "The Party's Over" describes what the CIA was looking at, and offers some insight as to why.

I recently discussed the CIA document with Professor Kjell Aleklett of the University of Uppsala in Sweden, who is the current President for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (www.peakoil.net). Aleklett shed further light on the current phenomenon of large Russian oil exports by noting that the demise of the Soviet Union and Russian economic crashes of the mid-to-late 1990s effectively delayed Russia's peak for about ten years. This is the so-called "second peak" for Russia, which production graphs currently show.

What this also means is that while Russia is currently a major oil exporter, selling oil hand over fist, it will not be able to sustain either its economic recovery or its current production rates for more than a few more years. Russia's continued salvation and future economic clout will no doubt be based upon the fact that it possesses half of all the natural gas reserves on the planet. Current business and economic developments with Britain and Western Europe indicate that Europe, and especially Britain -- already experiencing severe gas shortages – are well aware of this reality.

For those who have not already read Heinberg's book "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies," I cannot encourage it enough. It is the blueprint for what is to come, even as a massive and yet unexplained power outage cripples the Northeast US and parts of Canada. Whatever the cause of this blackout it is a future-image of what is coming for all of us. FTW now has the book for sale at discount rate at www.fromthewilderness.com. It's about the best investment for your future that I can think of. – MCR

August 15, 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- A recently declassified CIA document casts new light on some of the most significant geopolitical events of the past quarter century. This document, an Intelligence Memorandum titled "The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis (ER 77-10147)," was issued in March 1977 by the Office of Economic Research and classified "Secret" until its public release in January 2001 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. (1) Until now, the document has prompted little discussion.

The Memorandum predicts an impending peak in Soviet oil production "not later than the early 1980s" (the actual peak occurred in 1987 at 12.6 million barrels per day, following a preliminary peak in 1983 of 12.5 Mb/d). "During the next decade," the unnamed authors of the document conclude, "the USSR may well find itself not only unable to supply oil to Eastern Europe and the West on the present scale, but also having to compete for OPEC oil for its own use." The Memorandum predicts that the oil peak will have important economic impacts: "When oil production stops growing, and perhaps even before, profound repercussions will be felt on the domestic economy of the USSR and on its international economic relations."

The significance of the document requires some unpacking. First, we must understand the historical context in which it appeared.

Oil production in the US had peaked in 1970, just a few years earlier. This was arguably the most important economic event of the past half-century: until then America was the world's foremost oil producer; for much of the twentieth century it was also the world's foremost oil exporter. American oil won both World Wars for the Allies and made the US the world's richest and most powerful nation. Meanwhile, throughout most of this same period the USSR remained the world's second foremost oil-producing nation.

more...

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081503_cia_russ_oil.html

[Deja Q]

30. Fighting what communism? We offshore lots to the Chinese, and Russia is being eyed for globalization

[robertpaulsen]

35. Read the article. It's not about now, it's about 1977. n/t

[David Zephyr]

25. PEAK OIL.

Just another acknowledgment of what's to come.

[Megahurtz]

26. Time To Start Printing

these:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19915895/from/ET/

:)

[lakeguy]

36. and they will stop exporting years before they

run out. unless we believe they will deny their own population's increasing demand for oil. if they do keep exporting, then get ready for some real (bad) action similar to what is happening in nigeria.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

37. ...

[lovuian]

38. North Sea OIl gone and now Mexico

Saudia Arabia to follow

the Party is over...

[hogwyld]

39. It's going to get REAL ugly soon

China's probably already setting it's sights on the Siberian territories of a sparsely populated Russia, and it's demographics point to a rapidly shrinking population. Ten's of millions of economic refugees flooding across our southern border, and the collapse of everything we have known as well as the worldwide famine to follow, and we're looking at the loss of Billions (yes a B) of people.

[lebkuchen]

40. Germany's one of the world's leaders in solar power usage

It's now moving heavily toward wind turbines as well. Scotland is also considering a greater use of wind turbines, especially on islands like the Outer Hebrides. Smart moves, imo, to minimize reliance on oil in preparation for a future with no oil.

[robertpaulsen]

41. OUT OF OIL, not just beginning to decline.

Monday, July 30, 2007
Losing Our Balance?
Interesting times, indeed. Oil (WTI) closed within one penny of the all-time record closing price of $77.03 last Friday. The markets seem shaken, and suddenly people are realizing that the recent explosion of derivatives may have created as much hidden rigidity as resiliency in our financial markets (as I wrote about here).

Mexico continues to reveal how deep its problems run. After my article on Mexico Collapse sparked quite a conversation on this topic, the meme of Mexico collapse spread quickly (though I don't take credit for that--the situation speaks for itself). One little gem was PEMEX's announcement late Friday that they will probably be out of oil in seven years--out of oil, not just beginning to decline. Notice how this came out on Friday afternoon. This is when you issue a press release when you want to bury a story.

And electricity seems to be a growing problem, at least in the third world (and those areas that the US military has transformed into the same). It is interesting to note that Jay Hanson (of dieoff.org notoriety) has always predicted that it would be electricity, not oil, that would be the actual cause of collapse. This seems quite plausible to me, though I still think that it will be fundamentally driven by declining oil production, with the resulting electricity-grid problems being best understood as an "above ground factor" stemming from oil. Oil is driving metal theft to new highs, which impacts the viability of electrical grids everywhere. Oil and natural gas prices makes it more difficult to maintain fuels for peak-generating capacity. Oil prices breathe life into infrastructure insurgencies everywhere, which repeatedly target electrical grids for their high return on investment.

http://www.jeffvail.net/2007/07/blog-post.html

[ohio2007]

42. Chavez will find oil in Cuban waters

supposedly there are reserves in the Gulf that rival Saudi Arabia. Chavez is willing to harvest the oil under the sea....if it really is there between the Chinese and European oil platforms.

[robertpaulsen]

43. The only thing I've heard about oil in the Cuban waters is this:

In July 2004, however, the Spanish oil company Repsol-YPF, in partnership with Cuba’s state oil company, CUPET, identified five fields it classified as “high-quality” in the deep water of the Florida Straits, 20 miles northeast of Havana.

Seven months later, a report by the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed it: The North Cuba Basin held a substantial quantity of oil — 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels of crude and 9.8 trillion to 21.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Cuba wasted no time, dividing the 74,000 square mile (120,000 square kilometer) area into 59 exploration blocks, and then welcoming foreign oil conglomerates with offers of production-sharing agreements.

Oil companies from China and Canada, already prospecting for oil along Cuba’s coast, began talks with Cuban energy officials about investments in deep-water operations.

Then, in May, Spain’s Repsol-YPF announced it was partnering with India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp., and Norsk Hydro ASA of Norway to explore for oil and gas in six of the 59 deep-water blocks along Cuba’s maritime border with the United States. (Sherritt International Corp., the Canadian oil company, has acquired exploration rights in four of the deep-sea blocks.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14095881/

A good find, but not big enough to rival Saudi Arabia or offset the arrival of Peak Oil to any significant degree.

[robertpaulsen]

44. DRUNK VANITY KICK

:kick:

[robertpaulsen]

48. A more sobering reason to keep this at the top.

Did Guerrillas Strike at the Heart of Mexico's Oil Industry?
Bombing Pemex--Or Not?
By JOHN ROSS

snip

The Popular Revolutionary Army or EPR for its initials in Spanish, a long dormant guerrilla whose home base is usually in the conflictive states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, explained that the two explosions had been "surgical strikes against the oligarchy" and signaled the initiation of a "national campaign of harassment" that would continued until two disappeared EPR leaders are presented by the Calderon government "with life."

Although the Mexican government refrained from using the T-word, it was definitely in the air. "EPR ALLIANCE WITH AL QAEDA!" whooped the headlines on newspapers hanging from the kiosks. Indeed, a purported Al Qaeda document emerged in 2006 encouraging attacks against U.S. allies that supply Washington with oil - Mexico exports 1.6 million barrels of petroleum to the U.S. daily, without which George Bush would be hard pressed to wage war in Iraq.

snip

Washington has a proprietary interest in the Mexican oil flow and news of the bombings furrowed brows in the U.S. capital. As a signatory to the euphemistically named North American Agreement for Security and Prosperity (ASPAN), Mexico is designated as the U.S.'s southern security perimeter, potentially invoking military action by the United States North Command housed in Colorado should terrorist activity be detected in the neighborhood. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security regards Mexico as a potential terrorist staging area.

snip

In Mexico's hothouse political ambiance where Calderon's credibility is constantly questioned, news of the EPR's purported assault on PEMEX was met with deep skepticism. Failure of the nation's top intelligence agency, the CISEN (now run by Calderon's favorite political pollster) to anticipate EPR resurgence is compared to the CIA's blackout prior to 9/11. AMLO describes the bombings as "a smokescreen" to privatize PEMEX and reinforce the criminalization of social protest.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07272007.html