The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

That would be the same Brian Fisher that stated with a deadpan face that "if the price of eggs gets high enough, even the rooster will start laying"!

Over here, in the UK, I seem to have had a lot more luck with getting my letters published than you. I find that if I try to be humorous (very difficult with this subject matter), the letter is more likely to get published. Lately, they seem to have stopped publishing my letters as the joke does not work so well when oil is at U$120.

Here are a couple of samples that did get published in the Financial Times

Dec 06, 2006 What use will China be making of its intellectual capital?

Sir, John LLoyd and Alex Turkeltaub make the case that Russia will eventually suffer grievously - because of its dependence on oil export revenues and the expected decline in its oil production. However, China and India will continue to shine because of their investment in "intellectual capital". This argument presupposes that Russia and the rest of the world are not sharing the same planet. Russia, and other oil producers, always favour domestic consumers and as a result the share of oil being exported is in decline in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, among others. Once it is generally understood that the volume of conventional oil being internationally traded reached its peak in 2005, oil will cease to be subject to the "commodity cycle".

The question now arises as to what the graduates from China's "100 world-class universities" will be doing. Designing better bicycles?

Dec 19, 2005 By 2025, aircraft will be flying on empty

Sir, On December 12, the US Energy Department reported that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries will produce, in 2025, about 11m barrels a day less than the International Energy Agency had forecast earlier this year. This quantity is in excess of that ever produced by Saudia Arabia - Opec's so-called "swing producer". By 2025, it is generally understood, the North Sea and mainland US will be almost completely dry.

On December 15, your article "Qantas opts for Boeing over Airbus" was accompanied by a graph that forecast world air travel (revenue passenger kilometres) is set to double by 2025. Are these aircraft flying with empty tanks?

I have also had a private correspondence with Martin Wolf their chief economist and below is an extract of an article he wrote in today's FT. Our discussion was the usual one between an engineer and an economist - he thinks that oil is substitutable. I think he is gradually coming around to understanding that this is a different type of economics

May 13 2008 The market sets high oil prices to tell us what to do

...the fact that peak production is reached sooner, because of today’s efficient technologies, also means that subsequent declines are steeper.
...
But it means we should expect a sustained period of relatively high prices even if “peak oil” theorists are proved wrong. If proved right, this would be true in spades.