Thursday, January 8, 2009

The Peak Oil Crisis: Cars - Redux


08 January 2009: I hate to keep coming back to cars, but in the last hundred years they have come to be one of the most significant facets of civilization - yet their future is in doubt.

Cars have been much in the news lately. New ones have not been selling too well in recent months and their manufacturers, at least in the U.S., are bankrupt.

Unless you are employed in the automobile industry or indirectly make a living from the manufacture or sale of motor vehicles, the demise of Detroit-as-we-know-it will probably not make too much difference to our mobility.

Shortly, the problem, of course, will not be the cars, but the gasoline and diesel to power them. At the minute, gasoline prices are hovering around an all-time inflation adjusted low; however, this situation is reversing again. OPEC is in the midst of cutting its production by 4.2 million barrels a day (b/d) and U.S. gasoline consumption seems to be inching up again despite increasingly severe economic problems. Within a year or two we could be back over $100 a barrel again. More >>>

No comments: