Donald Trump has asked for at least $100bn (£75bn) in oil industry spending for Venezuela, but received a lukewarm response at the White House as one executive warned the South American country was currently “uninvestable”.
Bosses of the biggest US oil firms who attended the meeting acknowledged that Venezuela, sitting on vast energy reserves, represented an enticing opportunity.
But they said significant changes would be needed to make the region an attractive investment. No major financial commitments were immediately forthcoming.
While this is true most oil is used as fuel not as material isn’t it? Given that the world opts out of oil as fuel there would still be a massive oversupply for the remaining use. Prices would probably come down a lot making exploration of new fields unprofitable in the near future or am I missing something?
Yes, only 10-15% of oil is used for non-fuel purposes. That is a dramatic reduction in demand.
Also, much of our technology has been built around oil due to byproduct availability. We could, in theory, create all the products we use without oil. It would definitely take time, research, and retooling though.
Yea that’s about what I’ve seen 15 or so % toward plastic, then another 10-20% is used for heating purposes (think home heating oil, kerosene etc) not saying we can’t get away from it but for example I’d have to completely redo my home heating system to even think about getting away from using nearly 600 gallons of oil for heat a winter, which for reference I use 40 gallons of gas a month to get to work in my car (significantly less on the bike, but it’s a snow globe out there rn) and it takes about a half gal of oil to make a gal of gas. Most of my annual oil consumption comes from heating my home, not fueling my vehicles to transport me 250 miles a week on average
I am in the same boat, I spent $680 on heating oil last month. I would love to move to split-level heat pump system. Most of the work would be running the electrical as the pumps/vents themselves are pretty easy to install.
No kidding some days I want to put a sign in my front yard labor free oil changes so I can sift the waste oil and burn it like we do at the shop. I live in the mountains so the heat pump does not work well through most of the winter, but I do have a ac/heat pump mini split and in my small home on the chilly seasons abutting winter it can work well instead of the oil but once were buried in snow im back on the petroleum. This summer I plan on having a good pellet stove installed as I need chimney repair anyhow, my friend had offset almost half his oil usage going that route.