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The Forum > Article Comments > Why is petrol so expensive? > Comments

Why is petrol so expensive? : Comments

By John Mathews, published 8/8/2006

Australia, as a member of the 'Coalition of the Willing', cannot escape the consequences of its actions in Iraq - rising oil prices.

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2bob,
The price is in lives lost. Wars continue because not enough people die.
What we need is more killing and slaughter in wars and war will stop.
You mention metals and fossil fuels but not people.
You do not mention the number of people who died in the wars.
That is the trouble with you theory.
What we need is for 16 billion people to die not a few thousand, then war will stop.
People are not 2bob, they can't even have good 'shoot'em up' war without going on to the next one.
What we need is for all the world popul;ation to die.
Then we would learn something.
Posted by GlenWriter, Wednesday, 9 August 2006 1:51:23 PM
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Oh dear, blame John for everything. Oh well he is the prime minister so I suppose he is fair game.
Ethanol is a dead end if ever there was one.
A bits of info which I believe are accurate;
Brazil produces only 40% of it fuel as ethanol.
It is made from sugar cane.
Ethanol has a EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) around 1: 0.7
This figure depends largely on how it is produced.
If the ENTIRE Australian wheat harvest was turned over to ethanol production it would provide for only 10% of our cars.
I would prefer to have my breakfast Weetbix than drive the car.
To produce ethanol commercially you have to plant the same crop every year over and over again. To do this large amounts of fertiliser have to be used, which are themselves oil derived.
Diesal is used to plow the land, diesal is used to plant the crop, diesal is used to cultivate the crop, diesal is used to harvest the crop, diesal is used to transport the crop to the manufacturing plant.
Diesal is used to transport the ethanol all over the country.
It can't be put through pipelines because of corrosion problems.
Is it any wonder that the EROEI is so poor.

The upshot is there is no alternative for liquid fuels in the next 20 years at the earliest or maybe forever.

BTW, our oil price is not set by the NYMEX but by TAPIS in Singapore.
Yesterday Tapis was US$82.20.
Posted by Bazz, Wednesday, 9 August 2006 2:09:44 PM
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'get used to petrol prices, get used to inflation'

Realist could you elaborate,do you think as I do that this shift is here for the long term? If you do why do you believe that? also I believe Howard could use some of that surplus hes wrung out of us for relief in these areas.Ideas?
Posted by OZGIRL, Wednesday, 9 August 2006 2:38:32 PM
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I find it hard to disagree with anything Generic Hippy has said about Americas real intention for starting conflict.Even being relatively niave about these issues,even I see that America fabricates 'reasons' to invade oil rich countries and its obvious why.America is a warmongering nation and will plunder the wealth of a nation,destroy its economy and be deaf to the misery of its people.

10 yrs back, when the slaughter of millions of Rawandans was ignored and America and others turned a blind eye. Noone came to help out this nation in crisis.
No wealth to be plundered there.No economic gain for America.
Posted by OZGIRL, Wednesday, 9 August 2006 2:49:46 PM
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2bob,

A case can be made for both the first and second world wars being fought over oil (most of the others you list can't though).

Do some research on the Berlin-Baghdad railway project and consider the implications of Germany dominating access to middle eastern oil. Then look at when the British seized southern iraq from the Turks - and then ponder how long it took the British to move their troops from India to Iraq - and decide how long they had to leave before war broke out in Europe. Sometimes history ignores a lot of inconvenient facts.

As for WWII, have a think about the crucial battles the Nazis lost - El Alamein and Stalingrad - both stopping the German drive to middle eastern and central asian oil fields (for that matter the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour because they'd been denied access to south east asian oil).

A lot of wars are fought over ideology - but just as many are fought over resources...
Posted by biggav, Wednesday, 9 August 2006 8:27:10 PM
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Wobbles,

Possibly El Alemain, however, Stalingrad was not fought for the purpose of oil politics, Hitler had access to all the Russian oil he had any desire for prior to his shortsighted invasion of Russia, et al. The Iraqi revolt was less due to oil than it would appear, it was mainly driven by the fact that the mufti of Jerusalem, the infamous Al-Husayni, had fomented a revolt, which threatened more than the oil from Iraq, which was decidedly insignificant at that time, as the British held Saudi Arabia, thereby preventing any benefit to the Axis powers, but more because of the threat posed to the Suez canal.

If you research the history behind the Japanese entry, it was far more likely to have been over the restrictions imposed by the Americans (particularly) on their ability to access sufficient steel, iron, coal, etc (thus giving ‘Pig Iron’ Bob (Menzies) his name). Access to oil was relatively insignificant in providing the Japanese with cassus belli.

I am not simply nitpicking, the fact remains that access to sufficient mineral ores to sustain economies, particularly war economies, is a major cause of conflict from the last century particularly (but also throughout time). This is particularly important, as it is the major reason that Australia needs STRONG allies, as we have an embarrassment of riches, insofar as our resources sector, but we have not the population with which to protect it if push comes to shove, particularly in the North where the majority of the resource riches are situated, and where population is sparse to non-existant.

These resources include oil, natural gas, iron, manganese (for armour), copper, zinc, gold, aluminium, coal and last, but certainly not least, uranium. All of these are essential to a ‘war economy’, and make Australia a far more tempting target than most in our region, or on the planet, coupled with which is our miniscule population and almost non-existent armed forces, makes us an incredibly tempting strategic target.

Thus the overwhelming importance of strong alliances with America/UK, but of course, it couldn’t happen, I’m imagining things.

Inshallah

2bob
Posted by 2bob, Thursday, 10 August 2006 1:40:25 AM
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