More Oil?

Courtesy of The Independant:

Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer, and Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company, yesterday declared that the world had decades' worth of oil to come, in an attempt to calm fears about the record prices experienced in recent weeks.

We're subject to the daily indoctrination that there is no more oil. Yet every year, proven oil reserves continue to climb.

Mr Naimi also said that there were "no takers" for more oil right now, as a result of constrained refining capacity. Roughly a quarter of US refining capacity is still shut after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the country's southern coast, but global refining capacity - to turn crude oil into petrol and other products - was struggling to keep up with demand even before that.

It's just those refineries that no one wants to have in their backyard. When the cost of operation makes keeping the darn things open, it's no wonder that their owners shut them down. The declining oil reserves is a myth. And while the oil that's down there may get harder to out of the ground, we are today getting oil that the experts of 30 years ago thought were too hard to get. If you want gasoline - let the risk takers build one.