DailyDirt: The Curse Of Oil

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Having huge oil reserves can be an economic curse for a developing country. The natural-resource curse often produces oil-rich nations that are ruled by dictators and are so reliant on petroleum that its economic growth is hindered because all other industries are neglected. The prediction of the end of fossil fuels will come true someday, but the exact time of death isn't easy to forecast because improving technology seems to keep extending the useful lifetime of oil. Here are a few links on the topic of planning for a post-oil economy. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: energy, fossil fuel, natural resource curse, oil, peak oil, petroleum, predictions


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • icon
    OldMugwump (profile), 28 Oct 2013 @ 5:29pm

    90 years?

    90 years?

    How can anyone take seriously a prediction that depends on the state of technology 90 years from now?

    How much accuracy would you expect from a prediction of 2013 technology made in 1923?

    90 years from now people could be colonizing the moons of Saturn and using antimatter power - who the heck can say?

    This is just...stupid.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      bigpicture, 28 Oct 2013 @ 6:20pm

      Re: 90 years?

      Yep, I'll buy that. The so called cold fusion or LENR or whatever other name they want to call it now is just one such technology that could displace a lot of oil in the next ten years. That is if big oil does not buy it up and shelve it.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2013 @ 6:19pm

    meh

    Norway is the top in health-care, education, and the economy because of its oil, if it wasn't for the oil it uses to subsidized its public health-care it would be last in Europe

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2013 @ 7:26pm

      Re: meh

      Yeah, Norway was a backwater third world nobody before they found oil in the 60s ...

      What are you, a dumbass?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 28 Oct 2013 @ 7:44pm

    The Curse Of Nauru

    It’s instructive to consider what happened to the Pacific island nation of Nauru. The wealth wasn’t from oil, but from bird guano—the island was covered in the stuff, and it was extremely valuable as fertilizer.

    So everybody got rich, and spent up big. I think the place is still full of expensive US-made luxury cars today.

    Of course, they were vaguely aware that the guano would run out one day. But the citizens assumed their Government was preparing against that eventuality, while the Government assumed the citizens had the foresight to take care of themselves.

    So they woke up one morning to find the money had run out. So Nauru has gone from being filthy rich to being a poor Pacific backwater again.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    anonymouse (profile), 28 Oct 2013 @ 9:23pm

    from a research and development view, oil is a liability for the USA. we've pretty much reached the end of exciting hydrocarbon development, but the powerful oil lobby in our gov't tends to displace a distressing amount of potentially viable energy research and development.

    i love my internal combustion car (VW Jetta TDI, go diesel!), but am impatient to see some of the other techs emphasized...ie: gen 3 and 4 fission reactors.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 28 Oct 2013 @ 10:45pm

      Re: but the powerful oil lobby in our gov't tends to displace a distressing amount

      Is this a more subtle version of the idea that the oil companies are secretly suppressing research into alternative energy technologies?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 5:44am

        Re: Re: but the powerful oil lobby in our gov't tends to displace a distressing amount

        They don't have to, they have politicians giving them more money in subsidies for oil drilling then we spend on research and development of all alternate sources of fuels combined.

        It's really dangerous long term overusing oil. If the entire world went back to burning wood to get heat, the world would run out of trees to burn within a year.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 6:25am

          Re: Re: Re: but the powerful oil lobby in our gov't tends to displace a distressing amount

          Well as long as the population keeps growing unchecked at some point not even tech will help us deal with it.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        anonymouse (profile), 31 Oct 2013 @ 2:44pm

        Re: Re: but the powerful oil lobby in our gov't tends to displace a distressing amount

        i wasn't really thinking of secret suppression by the oil companies, i was thinking of the economic principle of crowding out.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 4:45am

      Re:

      Fission is so yesterday ... and fraught with problems, but let's overlook that because there simply are no other viable alternatives.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Earl Richards, 29 Oct 2013 @ 2:11am

    Electric Cars

    To avoid the gasoline price, rip-off, plug your Tesla S, electric car into your household, solar array.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.