Remember posters, "oils ain't oils". We live in a world now manufactured largely from the petrochemical industry.

A reduction in the purchase of consumer goods will enable us to depend less on oil.

Products from the petrochemical industry range from cars to computers, clothing to cosmetics, synthetic rubber, nylons, plastics, plumbing, fertilisers, pesticides, dyes, pharmaceuticals, detergents, hip replacements, even chewing gum! There are thousands of other products!

Some of the petrochemical products are manufactured from gas and coal though we are largely and unwittingly at the mercy of the oil barons.

Yabby's smugness in his self-sufficiency may come unstuck with his plans to sell us his "pasture raised lamb" and canola at inflated prices when the oil crisis starts to take effect.

Unsustainable agricultural practices have had a severe effect on our climate.

Perhaps it would be prudent for Yabby to invest in a water diviner!

"Perhaps it would be prudent for Yabby to invest in a water diviner!"

Umm Dickie, sorry, but I am not into hocus pocus. My lambs are
doing fine thank you, very healthy too, eating natural clovers
and grasses. All very sustainable too.

Given your faith in water diviners etc, I tell you what. You
do your thing, I'll do mine. Reality does not go away, when
we close our eyes and with it would, but you are free to learn
the hard way...

Now back to your hocus pocus. Once again its been shown that
ignorant city slickers don't have a clue about farming or the
countryside, but then I expected little else.

Back to a core of an article, newly discovered oilfields put Iran firmly on the second place between oil-rich countries.

Shift to non-fossil fuels is surely long-overdue.

Hi Michael,
got a link on those new Iranian oil fields?

I thought Iran peaked decades ago and is now in serious decline.

I guess there is always room for a bit more discovery of oil in the world, but discovery itself did peak 40 years ago and has been in decline ever since. Production will soon head into permanent decline as well, as SBS made clear the other night.

Iran

Iran has the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil at 133 gigabarrels, according to the CIA World Factbook, although it should be noted that both Canada and Venezuela have larger reserves if Non-conventional oil is included. Iran is the second largest oil holder globally with approximately 10% of the world's oil.

Iran averages about 1.5 gigabarrels per year, which is a significant decline from the 6 gigabarrels per year it produced when the Shah of Iran was in power. The United States prohibits imports of oil from Iran, which limits its exposure to an Iranian oil cutoff, but does not reduce the likelihood that an interruption of Iranian oil would cause a spike in world oil price. American pressure on Iran to renounce Iran's nuclear program makes the possibility of military confrontation quite high, and the political risks of Iranian oil far outweigh any geological ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#Iran

Eclipse, you have to understand why little oil was discovered for
years. I remind you that it was around 1999 IIRC that oil dropped
as low as 10$ a barrel and it was simply not worth bothering looking
for it, so people didn't .

Exploring for oil does not happen overnight, it takes time. Right now,
if you try and find an offshore rig, you are scratching, all are
booked out and hugely expensive. As they build a few more, prices will
drop. The thing is, now its starting to pay to look for harder to
access oil, like offshore, deeper water, in less politically stable
countries, etc. etc.

Even places like Lybia have just released new areas for drilling,
areas where nobody bothered before. What was simply tapped for a
start was the stuff that people virtually fell over and cost
1-2$ to extract, like in Saudi Arabia etc.

1999 is not very long ago in oil terms. Now that explorers are
starting to accept that oil won't go back to 10$, they have reason
to start investing some serious money into exploration, like BHP
is doing in the Gulf of Mexico deep water etc. I remind you how
much gas has recently been found in our own NW shelf, when
they started drilling a bit more. Some of these holes cost
25 million$ a hole, so its not chicken feed and explorers need to
know that the risk is worth it. Similarly tar sands are only now
coming into play, as oil prices stabilise higher. If they go to
100$, there will be even more incentive to look and to apply
expensive technology, which made no sense in the past.

There are other options. Algae have huge potential, but projects
were canned in the late 90s, due to the 10$ oil price. All these
things will start to happen once again. So naming 2013 as the
end of oil is nonsense basically, as it won't be.

Hi Eclipse Now, abov mentioned info on Iran oil was provided by non-English language media sources, and my post was following immediately.

I think your explanations, as all speculation on this topic in general, omit a simple question: what will countries-oil exporters do as their natural resources be exhausted?

To me, it is not less important geo-political component than engineering solutions to political problems.