What we need is someone with a shitload of cash, to actually make a stand out of his or her own pocket to fund the development of alternative-fuel transportation.

MR GATES, SORT IT OUT!

they complain when it goes above 45p per litre … try 95p like it is over here!

Oh, btw, it’s about time those americans started driving cars like the rest of the world instead of lorrys… maybe they wouldn’t whine that much about high prices then?

As for S.A. it’s been documented both officially and in fiction that the middle east are at the centre of power for fuel production going forward .. we could get to the point 50 years from now where the middle east is the ONLY region on the planet with easy access to oil reserves .. we’re talking about military / agriculture / commerce … everything being in a nice indirect control of the very states that the Western World currently demonises .. not exactly the most pleasant picture for the governments which have been pushing those states more and more heavily in recent years.

Personally I see Hydrogen Fuel as the “next big thing” and the breaker of the Oil monopoly, it’s not like this kind of a resource can be easily monopolised.

Already several bus routes in London use Fuel Cell buses (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/fuel-cell-buses.asp) and I have seen them around .. the new Fuel Cell cars from Ford and Toyota(I think) have a range of over 200 miles and a top speed of 80mph .. the only fuel emmission being water. And it’s not like pressurised Hydrogen gas is hard to find now is it?

Also, we drive pissy little cars in the UK. We’re a pissy little country. Gordon’s demands are UK oriented, so you’d have to factor in the demands from the US and China, as well as India and the rest of Europe.

Check this out, along with google. Again, check who’s behind the reports, because some people don’t want to give you an unbiased view.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08B97BCF-7BE6-4F1D-A846-7ACB9B0F8894.htm

( Given our rapacious (Love that word!) abuse of the planet at large, oil expiring could only be a good thing for mother earth. If J.Lawler is correct in his theory, and improved reclaimation techniques could recover twice what’s left in the ground, we’ll choke ourselves to death long before we have to get out of our cars… )

TOTAL OPEC Reserve: over 800 billion barrels.

Now .. to sustain 10 times! Gordon Brown’s request, an increase of 5,000,000 barrels per day .. OPEC could provide that from RESERVES ALONE for .. quick calc .. approximately 438 years! (ok .. by then their production will have dried up .. but you get the point)

Oh .. and they still have spare “production” capacity of over 1,500,000 barrels per day if they ever feel the need to catch up.

Now, what they do (and this is the nasty bit) .. they limit the amount of oil that they will pump (and note I said pump, not make) to way beyond their actual production limits .. this causes a shortage in supply, driving up oil prices. This of course keeps them nice and rich .. because if the price drops too low, then they won’t make as much money. At the same time, they don’t want prices TOO high .. and, the more people who actually want to buy their oil, again the more they sell and more money they make ..

(the point being it’s all a very fine line)

As far as OPEC is concerned, a massive drop in non-OPEC oil production is fantastic .. because it puts them back in the powerful driving seat position. They have the capacity to simply “pump more oil” and increase production by millions of barrels per day .. they don’t usually want to though, because prices will drop and they’ll lose their initiative.

So .. it’s not as rediculous as it sounds. Asking OPEC to produce an extra 500,000 barrels per day is well within their limits, and given the current state of oil prices (which are almost double what they were 10 years ago?) I don’t think they’ll disagree.