Truths the Mainstream Media Forgot to Mention about the Energy Crisis
Dr Vernon Coleman
Governments and mainstream media have been pretending for weeks that the energy crisis is over. Their lies are now transparent. On 2nd April 2023, seven OPEC countries cut their oil production by a million barrels a day and Russia cut exports too. Power is moving from the West to the East every day and the petrodollar will soon become the petroyuan. America’s crazy decision to refuse to allow Russia to use the dollar has backfired (just as the other mad sanctions backfired and damaged Europe far more than Russia). The Indian rupee is also being used more and more for international trade. This is a disaster for the United States which has for years taken full advantage of being the world’s reserve currency – printing dollars without responsibility. De-dollarisation is rapidly becoming a reality and will impoverish America. America’s response has been to abuse those with whom it disagrees, and countries such as India are no longer afraid to say that they are fed up with being bullied. America’s response to the cut in oil production is, as usual, to threaten to sue the OPEC cartel. This will simply push the OPEC countries closer to China. America’s arrogance is taking us ever closer to nuclear war. A lot of countries who have been waiting for a weaker America will pounce. The Eastern bloc is growing ever stronger. America won’t negotiate but will huff and puff. The petrodollar will die completely and America will lose the reserve currency. In a desperate attempt to rescue itself from an inevitable fall, America will use NATO to continue to push Russia hard. We are now in a far more dangerous time than ever before. The Iraq War (my outrage and opposition led to my resigning from my last national newspaper column) was as nothing to what is happening now. Not even the Cuban missile crisis (which I remember) came close to this. Are seven billion people really going to die to protect a man whose sole claim to fame is his ability to play the piano with his penis, and a country renowned mainly for its corruption? The mass of people seem uncaring and unconcerned about what is happening. Their staggering ignorance makes them complicit in the crimes being committed. How many know that Ukraine started this war in 2014? How many realise that political leaders believe that World War III has officially started? I despair. It is time to start preparing.
1. During the last two years governments around the world have spent huge amounts of money subsidising `renewable’ energy sources. In 2022 alone they spent $1.4 trillion on solar and wind farms. And yet the amount of energy produced by `renewables’ is still only between 13% and 15% at the very best of times (i.e. when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining).
2. Green experts claim that if all goes well the world will be able to manage without fossil fuels by the year 2207. That is the most optimistic estimate and assumes that the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, etc., all stop using fossil fuels now and start replacing them with wind and solar immediately. Talk of fossil fuels becoming stranded assets is slightly premature.
3. China is building new coal mines as fast as it can. One third of the world’s new coal mines are in China.
4. Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed a deal (brokered by China). The deal means that United States is being pushed out of the Middle East while China’s influence is increasingly massively. The importance of this for the future of the West’s supplies of oil cannot be over-estimated.
5. At least 85% of the world’s energy currently comes from fossil fuels. Abandoning fossil fuels now, or in the next century, will result in billions of deaths from cold and hunger.
6. The UK Government is pushing up the price of gas to force citizens to heat their homes and cook their food with electricity. This is a curious thing to do since the EU has now decided that gas is not a fossil fuel but is as green as sunshine and wind, whereas electricity is largely produced by burning fossil fuels such as diesel and coal or by burning bits of tree which have been transported across the Atlantic in huge diesel burning ships.
7. It takes 16 years to progress from finding a new mine to turning it into an active producer. Unlike `vaccine’ production this cannot be hurried or speeded up. Many commodities are in short supply because governments and banks have been pressured by climate change fruitcakes into refusing to allow mining or drilling.
8. Home owners all around the world are being told to get rid of their gas stoves and gas boilers. It will soon be illegal to install a gas appliance in a new home or to replace an old, malfunctioning appliance in an existing home. (Note that this is happening globally.) Log burners are also being banned. Instead of gas appliances, home owners are being forced to buy heat pumps. Sadly, the evidence shows that heat pumps are ridiculously expensive and don’t work terribly well – especially in older homes which don’t have purpose built space where they can be installed and which are not terribly well insulated. The result of course that all the well-built older homes will have to be knocked down and replaced with cardboard houses made according to the latest silly rules. And that, of course, has been the plan for a couple of decades. Getting rid of gas appliances and replacing them with heat pumps is another piece of idiocy promoted by climate change nutters whose sole aim is to destroy the world as we know it and take us shivering and hungry into the Great Reset.
9. The Saudi energy Minister says his country will not sell oil to any country which sets a price cap on oil. The US and EU are planning an oil cap which will affect the Middle East. This will surely result in the price of oil in the EU and the UK doubling or even tripling. However, the Americans will be pleased to supply oil at the usual price – or, in view of the price cap, maybe just a little above the usual price.
10. The Greens have now, belatedly, decided that natural gas is a clean source of energy and is to be encouraged (except in the UK where the Government is trying to reduce the use of gas). In the US, Joe Biden has boosted that nation’s gas infrastructure and has promised to continue to supply gas to Europe. Indeed, if Biden wants to be re-elected in 2024 he has no choice but to champion natural gas as an energy source for it is the only way to boost the American economy. Even former President Obama is now promoting natural gas as an energy source. Natural gas produces less carbon dioxide and is cleaner than most other sources of energy. (It is cleaner and more efficient than solar and wind energy – both of which require vast amounts of fossil fuel energy for their installation and maintenance.)
11. Qatar is the richest country in the world per capita because of its huge interests in natural gas. Theoretically, of course, each citizen in Qatar has an annual income of $700,000 – or at least they would have if the income from the gas were shared out equally. Sadly, it isn’t.
12. The sanctions and price cap on oil which were introduced to punish the Russians have proved less than successful. Russia is booming while the UK and Europe are in recession. India, which is buying a massive amount of Russian oil is also booming. Russia’s oil production has dropped just 5% as a result of the sanctions and the country’s exports to India have increased 22 fold since the sanctions were introduced. If the politicians who introduced the sanctions didn’t know this would happen then they are even more stupid than they appear to be.
13. Governments in most countries are still refusing to increase their use of nuclear power despite evidence showing that it is relatively safe and economic. The latest madness is the plan from the European Parliament to ban imports of uranium from Russia. US senators are also thinking of banning Russian supplies of uranium. (See above to see how well this worked with oil.)
14. The typical smart phone needs 70 different elements – all of which have to be dug out of the ground using fossil fuels. If the greens want to continue using smart phones and computers they have no choice but to approve the use of fossil fuels for mining and transportation.
15. There is more about oil and energy in Vernon Coleman’s widely praised book `A Bigger Problem than Climate Change’ which is available from Amazon. The coming shortage of oil was always going to lead to a world war. And now we are there.
16. America’s production of oil has fallen dramatically as commercial and governmental expenditure on oil exploration and production has fallen or been banned. As a result of the bans, America’s proven energy reserves are down a good deal. But nothing can survive without energy and it seems that natural gas is now the only game in town – it is also now very cheap because usage has fallen and Europe is still using up its stores.
Copyright Vernon Coleman April 2023
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