Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[Brian H]

There are a number of problems with that article. Amongst them is that the resort of drillers to deep water is in large part the result of being barred from more accessible resources. There is, e.g., a de facto ban on on-shore and near-shore drilling in the continental US, despite large proven reserves. Then the companies are demonized for high prices when only expensive operations are left to exploit, which must compete with drilling costs about 90% lower in such places as Saudi Arabia. Like everything else, NIMBY must be paid for.

As for Nigeria, it is a poster child for reliance on The Devil’s Excrement (oil) as a sole source of government funding. There is not a single functional government in the world which is entirely oil-dependent. Venezuela almost escaped the ‘rentier’ trap, before Chavez did his populist-dictator-for-life thing.

But with FF, oil has had its day anyway. Be grateful for the economic consequences of its use for the last century or so.