Follow the oil and gas. Corollary to "follow the money."
Analysis of potential of Syria as a resource and the history of attempts to access it. It's now in play and this is real issue rather than Assad or ISIS.
Insurge Intelligence — a crowd-funded investigative journalism project
Western firms plan to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier
Insurge Intelligence — a crowd-funded investigative journalism project
Western firms plan to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier
Nafeez Ahmed, The Cutting Edge
If you think about it, in the multi-fuel world where we are, cartels and corrupt officials should have less and less room for manipulation and rent extraction than in the past. Electric is really not a fuel, but a technology that allows for easy substitution between the range of fuels that can generate electricity from wind to coal and everything in between. The cost per unit of energy in oil has long been higher than in most other fuel sources. Granted a very small portion of vehicles have converted, but it doesn't take much to bring parity between different fuel prices. Additionally, within existing fuel burning models, engines are being designed to run on a range of liquid and gas fuels from a variety of alcohols like ethanol, butanol, and others along with gasoline and natural-gas (for big vehicles-trains and trucks) and those conversions have happened on a much larger scale than consumers.
ReplyDeleteUS Govt has spent an enormous amount of money to ensure that we never go back to a transportation fleet that is completely dependent on one source of fuel like oil again. There is a lot of momentum behind electricity because it is highly subsidized so it is cheap and electronics companies like it, software companies like it, the environmental lobbies like it because they can shift the pollution away from cities to places that manufacture the chemicals like China that are off their radar, academics like it (research dollars) and ensure public-subsidies from the Dem side. The Republican side, power companies, solar/wind companies, and battery and renewable manufacturing chemical companies are supporters because they make lots of money selling their goods. It's fairly non-controversial politically in the two-party government that occupies Washington DC and the partisan rhetoric reflects that. Bio-fuels are controversial because they primarily benefit republican supporters and their constituents receive most of the subsidies. With electric everyone suckles from the teet of government except the poor who kind of get shafted with the highest electric bills as they subsidize the rich people's consumption. And that means the premium in oil should come off, so these guys fighting over oil wells may have to find some other way to extract rent.
Oil and gas is a huge business. Just look at the Fortune 500. If need be, they will diversify and continue collecting their rent.
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