Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Supply and Demand? What's That?

Stop the presses! This just in: the laws of supply and demand still work.

'Huge' oil field found off Brazil
A huge natural gas field has been found a short distance off Rio de Janeiro's coastline, Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, says.
The company believes the new field, Jupiter, could match the recently discovered Tupi oil field in size.

Tupi is thought to be one of the largest fields discovered in the past 20 years.
A lot of crude oil is probably there, too.
Petrobras estimates Tupi contains between five and eight billion barrels of light oil.
The bottom line is the world's known oil/gas reserves just got a lot bigger, while a lot of the world is still yet unexplored for these resources.

So, as the price of energy rises around the world, the higher price/profit motivates further exploration. The higher prices bring into play possible deposits that previously were not economical to tap.

Now they are.

So rather than fermenting our corn fields into fuel, maybe we would be better served searching for more oil instead.

Regardless, it's amazing how the free market provides solutions to problems, every time it's tried.

No comments: