War For Oil

Osama bin Laden continues to hurl tapes at us. Now he's saying that oil should be $100 a barrel. Actually I favor that as well. If nothing else, that may finally force the industrialized world into developing alternative sources of energy. It will also backfire on the nations of the Middle East who have little to offer in terms of resources.

Now some have said that our current war in Iraq is over oil, as was the first Gulf War that liberated Kuwait. I agree. And believe me, if the world's oil supply was as truly threatened as bin Laden would like it to, there would be a lot more nations involved in cleaning up the mess in Iraq than there are now.

Those who would disdain war over oil need to take note that this is not as recent occurrence in history as they would like. In fact, we can trace that as far back as World War II. As Japan was hungrily building their empire in China and the Pacific, the U.S. stepped in and denied Japan access to key resources - with oil amongst the most important. The Japanese knew that in order to sustain their conquests, they had to eliminate the United States as a threat. And even then, they knew the respite would only be temporary. That's when they planned and carried out their attack on Pearl Harbor.

What's really disturbing, though, about wars for oil is that it's only going to get worse - much worse. Experts are now saying that the world oil supply will last only 40 more years. Conservative estimates say it will only last 30 years. Do the math. The world oil supply will disappear in our children's lifetimes, if not our own.

It's not going to run out all at once either. Some places will run out before others. It could run out in, for example, in Venezuela first. Then the North Sea. Then Russia, etc., etc, etc.

The point here is that as oil runs out in one place, the real estate where the oil remains becomes that much more valuable - and hotly contested. Oil wars will break out well before the 30 or 40 years runs out (and war tends to drain oil even faster). Imagine a war in 2030 on our own soil over the oil fields in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Gulf of Mexico!

For more reading here's another article on the subject.

So are we fighting a war for oil? You betcha. But just wait.