Quote Originally Posted by dean_martin
My son just returned from a visit to Central Europe where he had an oppurtunity to go to OPEC headquarters in Vienna. His group heard a speech from an OPEC rep then they were allowed to ask questions. My son asked if OPEC funded research for alternative fuel sources. The rep went into a rant about the US ceasing oil drilling and production in Alaska because the US was going to wait until the world's supply was spent then the US could control the distribution and price of oil. Interesting perspective, eh?
Well, I'm sure it's possible - I won't pretend to know the politics - but I do know Alaska is a super expensive place to get oil from compared to most alternatives, so it's not good business yet. If supplies goes down, demand goes up, or both, suddenly becomes more worthwhile...but relative some other drilling spots, it'd still be a the last option. Canada's sitting back on the second largest oil reserve in the world (and has several others) as well - Russia's got gobs of it too. I think the logic here is to take care of your own if push comes to shove and stocks start to dwindle before we figure out how to make flying cars run on water...

Hopefully by then (or long before then) we'll get somewhere with other technologies to a point where the caps are off and we flood the market with cheap oil during the "transition" from oil to whatever. This would help insulate any massive shocks to the economy, not to mention really stick it to some of those countries that are completely dependant on oil.