The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. If technical progress were allowed to flourish in directions other than war and surveillance, there would be no more need for human drudgery and human inequality would disappear.
The needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is a deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.
--from Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
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EVEN IF THERE WEREN'T SIGNS OF A POSSIBLE MEXICAN STANDOFF (SO TO SPEAK) BETWEEN OIL-EXPORTING AND OIL-IMPORTING NATIONS by way of an international forum opening today in Rome discussing the energy issue, there emerges the likelihood for what amounts to wasteful and counterproductive practices being excused, tolerated--even encouraged as official policy--in the name of "energy self-sufficency" as United States public policy.
Case in point:
This morning, Mein Innkeeper Friend was recalling where, several years back, a close relative of his was employed with Halliburton drilling oil wells in the Williston Basin of North Dakota--and capping them as soon as drilling was complete.
In effect, taking such wells out of production as soon as drilling was finished; the better, so the line of thinking went, to "stabilise prices" on the crude oil markets so that oil-company profits could be all the more maximised.
Which is enough to wonder if a similar policy will be "advised" with respect to the Bakken fields in North Dakota and Montana, notwithstanding its having an estimated 500 million barrels of crude--which, @ the current spot market price of $117/bbl. (one barrel of crude oil being 55 gallons), would be worth US$58.5 billion.
And that's not counting mineral-rights payments to landowners, property taxes paid by oil companies or even royalties which Bismarck or Helena are entitled to; how they would use their share of the oil wealth is, for want of anything better, a "state's rights" matter, and whether they would likely emulate the Alaska Permanent Fund (in which proceeds from investments made using the State of Alaska's share of oil and natural gas royalties from the North Slope fields are returned to The Last Frontier's residents) is anybody's guess.
And the excuse to be given?
Officially, "to stabilise prices."
In reality, to benefit His Fraudulency's Great Within, whose investments in crude oil, natural-gas, gasoline and heating oil futures are so substantial, methinks, they could stand to lose heavily if there were but one fatal misstep in the markets--especially so the Bakken field's going into full-on production without "waiting for the proper signs" beforehand.
(Said "proper signs" coming by way of fortune-smellers with whom the Great Within, and especially its "inside of the inside," has a special relationship. Not unlike North Korean propaganda in the fall of 1997, as reported where spontaneous, out-of-season blossoming of thousands of pear and apricot trees across North Korea, as well as a fisheries crew catching a white sea cucumber, "confirmed" the formal elevation of the heretofore "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il to "Great Leader.")
And those involved in the drilling operations being instructed to deny any and all knowledge of such "drill-and-cap" operations being carried out, especially for fear that "meddling bloggers" might expose the whole and "distort things out of proportion."
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FOR ITS PART, OPEC'S RELUCTANCE TO INCREASE PRODUCTION OUTPUT AHEAD OF THE SUMMER SILLY SEASON, even if to reduce prices for the benefit of the Lower Classes especially, isn't good enough for oil-consuming nations such as the "morally superior" United States.
Especially when OPEC resorts to such platitudes as suggest that demand is but one factor as controls world market prices ... and certain elements of oil-consuming nations (especially such reliant on imports) resorting to all manner of xenophobic paranoia to push for energy self-sufficency as one with national identity and cohesion.
Some specimens of xenophobic paranoia resorting to Islamophobia and anti-Semitism to make their point known for "winning of hearts and minds" (witness Pat Robertson's blatant Islamophobia packaged as "Christian Love").
In any case ... suffice it to say that there may be no royal road to energy self-sufficency.
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