Pakistan and the Price of Oil

It should come as little surprise that the price of oil jumped a dollar today on the news of the Benazir Bhutto assassination in Pakistan. This event qualifies as a geopolitical event with sufficient magnitude to cause a geopolitical premium in the price of oil. How long the premium will last and when it will subside owing to actual supply and demand pricing forces is an inexact science.

Powering Down to Power Up

A few days ago, someone came by the neighbourhood distributing a single free energy-saving light bulb to households. The woman cheerfully delivered the bulb saying it was paid for by the Ontario government in partnership with a community organization. The bulb is supposed to last 9 years. It was a good marketing idea as the box was labelled with the word "Porchlight" suggesting that the bulb should be used on your porch. Like the Ancient Chinese Gods of Wealth placed near front entrances, people will be reminded as they go in and out of their homes that less energy costs less money and that money saved is money earned. They will also start about thinking about the various ways they can save energy and produce energy to sell.

Oil Intelligence: How to Do It

Readers of this site should watch for future posts where I will make available a paper I wrote on the conduct of Energy Intelligence. The basic theory of the paper is that oil supply and demand are very close at about 86 million barrels a day which means that slight changes in either demand or supply world-wide usually have very predictable effects on the price of oil and other hydrocarbons.

Matt Savinar and Life after the Oil Crash

A Salute to Matt Savinar
For several years now, I have followed the website created by Matt Savinar, called lifeaftertheoilcrash.net. Matt's site is probably the best one I've seen on making peak oil understandable to the widest audience. Matt is a lawyer like myself and I appreciate the way he uses documentary evidence to build his case for proving the validity of the peak oil hypothesis. Matt's breaking news service on his site is a very useful tool for getting up to date on the latest evidence which suggests that world oil production has peaked.

The purpose of this blog
The purpose of my blog is to figure out how peak oil, if the hypothesis is correct, will work its way through world economies so that individuals can start new businesses or adjust old ones to an economic environment of higher energy costs.

Send me email
I welcome email from anyone who has ideas about what future businesses will look like. I also welcome leads to sources of excellent information on the Internet which will help businesspeople benefit from the possibility of higher energy prices.