Mexico: The End of Oil, in Seven Years

J · Post by J » 2007-08-12 07:18pm

Mexican Company Predicts End of Oil

Mexico, Jul 27 (Prensa Latina) Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) announced that oil reserves may run out in seven years.

"Supplies of this economically exploitable resource are running out," informed a report sent by the state owned company to the United States stock market.

Until December 31, 2005 the report says proven reserves were about 8.978 billion barrels, while yearly production was 1.322 billion tons. If this rhythm continues oil will run out in the time stipulated..

El Universal newspaper reports that experts of the PFC Energy Advisory company based in Washington pointed out that investments for PEMEX exploration is also running out of time.

Even if heavy investments were made now, new oil fields would take from six to eight years to be ready and, consequently, Mexico may have to import oil to satisfy the internal market, it warned.

The newspaper quotes Carlos Ramirez, PEMEX spokesman as saying that if necessary investments were made, this would provide another 2.9 more years to what is foreseen with the proven developed reserves.

The director of the state owned company, Jesus Reyes, insisted that these are difficult moments due to a reduction of production in Cantareli, the main oil field in the country.

Not past peak, not declined, but flat-out gone. G-O-N-E.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2007-08-12 07:44pm

This is what I predicted, that we'd run the wells to squeeze out every last drop as rapidly as possible and throw off the curve so that the plateau is followed by a cliff.

Mexican oil is enormously important to the USA. It is safe to say that 7 years is now the upper limit until the oil crisis results in major economic disruptions on a scale at least equal to the Great Depression in the USA.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-12 08:02pm

Well, here's even more impetus to finish my engineering and economics degrees ASAP and find some nice farmland up north near a train track and nuclear and hydoelectric plants. Probably no time for grad school now. Probably need to get on some job security. How's Ontario doing right now, guys?

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2007-08-12 08:14pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Well, here's even more impetus to finish my engineering and economics degrees ASAP and find some nice farmland up north near a train track and nuclear and hydoelectric plants. Probably no time for grad school now. Probably need to get on some job security. How's Ontario doing right now, guys?

Economic depression doesn't mean it'll be as bad as the Great Depression. We have far more mitigation factors in our modern society, AND there's no Dust Bowl coming--quite yet. The combination of our social services mitigation to prevent another Great Depression's suffering with the lack of major agricultural collapse and displacement of people means that even though our economy may tank just as bad in seven years, for the average person the relative circumstances will be much better than they were during the Great Depression.

For a while.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-12 08:17pm

Well I'd like to do energy analysis and help implement effective mitigation policies for the government. Failing that go to work for whomever needs engineers and use the econ education to make sound personal economic choices. Everyone else might want to blow sunshine up their asses, but that just means more is left for the taking for us.

Can't say we didn't warn them.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2007-08-12 08:27pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Well I'd like to do energy analysis and help implement effective mitigation policies for the government. Failing that go to work for whomever needs engineers and use the econ education to make sound personal economic choices. Everyone else might want to blow sunshine up their asses, but that just means more is left for the taking for us.

Can't say we didn't warn them.

And you'll do all that from a farm house 'up north'?

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-12 09:02pm

I'm looking for land, I am spreading out my options. You don't put all your eggs in one basket. I don't necessarily need a huge farm. I simply do not wish to be in a disintegrating city when existing heavy/light rail will still permit commutes of some kind. Having land just gives you food self-sufficiency and personal supply inelasticity. Not to mention investing in locally available arable land will be sound merely in the respect that circumurban hinterlands will have to be redeveloped into supportive farming as the marginal transportation cost on food increases. Not to mention I still plan to retire even if most people will never be able. If I find quality work from my education in a city and it doesn't descend into shit, I could easily live there, and simply use rural property as a fallback plan, to retire, or as an investment. If not, I can commute. If the labor market for the technically educated gets THAT bad, well, I'll have more land than everyone else does and sooner to prepare for the pan-American readaption to subsistence farming. I hope it doesn't get that bad.

My family is financially well-off. I have a deeper toolbox than other people have for adapting to the circumstances.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-12 09:26pm

I don't meet to be smug about the aforementioned bit. I simply felt compeled to reply to the query with a clarification about the origin of the necessary resources to adapt in the manner I'd described. It is rather the knowledge that I am more fortunate than most of my peers (to say nothing of the extreme supermajority of our fellow men globally) and that even I will have to adapt strongly that is a major motivation for my activism on this subject. I do not wish nor want people to suffer needlessly, and hope that as many people as possible and hopefully society as a whole can adapt as quickly and painlessly as possible. Since reading more about ethics, and exposure to Mike's social responsibility ethics, I have been moved to change my worldview from the typical North American individualism at the expense of others.

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2007-08-12 10:45pm

economically exploitable

Does this mean economically exploitable by today's standard?

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2007-08-12 10:47pm

With out trying to pick a fight IP, cuz I'm not, what stops hundreds if not thousands of other people more or less like you from buying up the farmland around you, thus in a sense creating a suburb out of your plan B and bringing things right back to the position we're at now?

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2007-08-12 10:52pm

I've already got several acres pegged out in beutiful B.C.! I'll see you neighbor!

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2007-08-12 10:56pm

This particular panic is caused more by the government's insane taxation of Pemex more than an actual lack of oil presence in Mexico.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2007-08-12 11:08pm

Knife wrote:With out trying to pick a fight IP, cuz I'm not, what stops hundreds if not thousands of other people more or less like you from buying up the farmland around you, thus in a sense creating a suburb out of your plan B and bringing things right back to the position we're at now?

A suburb that can feed itself is not a suburb.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-12 11:09pm

Knife wrote:With out trying to pick a fight IP, cuz I'm not, what stops hundreds if not thousands of other people more or less like you from buying up the farmland around you, thus in a sense creating a suburb out of your plan B and bringing things right back to the position we're at now?

Rushes always drive up prices. Therefore only the wise and lucky who get there first and the very rich thereafter will be able to acquire significant property. Suburbs are different from what I'm describing. I'm describing a small town house that is biking/horse/walking distance from a light rail stop that can be used to city commute for work or buying and selling and enough productive land around the house that I could sustain a respectable victory garden and be able to weather labor and food market fluctuations. I'd explain my grandfather's home as an example, when I can find a good map and pictures of the property. Suburbs are ostenatious pseudo-farmhouses where the land per home - the obscenely wasteful lawn - is purely for the purpose of self-indulgent affluence displays. It is only possible because the marginal cost of habitation due to transportation and utilities is low due to the low relative cost and secure availability of high-density liquid fuels. I'd also live in the city and simply have a fallback and investment in the hinterland while I work in my field, provided the cities retain enough quality housing and labor opportunities to compete with small town rail commuting or simply self-sufficient family farming if it comes to that and do not totally or wholly disintegrate due to economic chaos.

Only the first comers (hopefully including me) will be able to carve out such an advantageous position. The late-coming former suburbanites and exurbanites will be forced to either sharecrop for the early land horders in the deep rural lands away from the small towns, cities, and railways, or squeeze into ad hoc tenements along the railways or in the city, in all likelihood, into low quality high-density public housing projects of a more grandiose and extensive nature.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2007-08-12 11:49pm

What do you know about farming, IP?

I hope that you aren't under the impression that it's simple, or easy.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-13 12:49am

Frank Hipper wrote:What do you know about farming, IP?

I hope that you aren't under the impression that it's simple, or easy.

Of course I don't know anything about farming. Preference is seperate from necessity. My preferences go from living decent in the city with property investments elswhere, to commute to city by train with house and victory garden outside town, to farmhouse on the outskirts of small town, to totally self-sufficient homestead. Its dead last because I don't know anything (probably wise to look for a wife amongst the families of modern organic farmers, and probably look into one as a partner with myself providing the capital investment). But its still bleak as shit. Its predicated on the assumption that mitigation goes totally to shit and a huge percentage of the population must be reruralized in order to be fed. I think people think Marina, others, and me believe that transition and adaption will be easy. It probably will not be. It may be unbareably harsh and unpleasant. Its predicated on the assumption that with quality education in economics and engineering I still will not be able to sustain a successful life in the cities. Nothing is guarenteed in this world, and that goes many times more in a world enduring the sustainability crisis. I would like to work for the government or a prescient firm in coming up with solutions and mitigations to this crisis, and hopefully prosper to the best of my ability the educational assets at my disposal (the impending economic problems are a major reason for returning to a hard science education) and maybe even eventually go into local or national politics to provide educated leadership in such a time.

As the saying goes though, you prepare for the worst, hope for the best. If I'm reduced to working a homestead, well, they've already worked up the ranks from the 55% of modern day high school dropouts for shittastic farm and menial labor and up the ranks of lower quality (read: uncompleted degrees, "communications"/"public relations"/ad infinitum) college graduates by a major extent. Everything is totally fucked if it comes to that, so that its not easy or simple goes without saying.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2007-08-13 01:10am

Well I think I mentioned it before, but I'm not sure. I hope you know that setting up a farm can cost millions of dollars. There's a reason why Duchess has 4 people who earn a ton of money together for her plan and she isn't even thinking of setting up a farm, only something self-sufficient. If insufficient market capitalization can kill most half-assed restaurants in under two years, it'd be way worse with something like a farm. And if you don't have a sound business plan, no bank is going to give you the money. I'm assuming you're not a millionaire.

I still think the best bet is to live in the city. Apartments for life, and if the inner city goes to shit then everything goes to shit.

The voting power and population concentration is in cities and towns, and if the worst comes to pass the rural people will be forced to support the city. That's what a government is supposed to do, redistribute resources, at least a responsible one. I can live with a very low standard of life, as long as libraries are still open and electricity still runs and there's still clean water.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-13 01:14am

And what is her plan? Like I said, I'm only barely putting together details. Still guessing, still learning. I do know that a home capable of helping ride out price swings with a victory garden and other amenities (as Duchess and me described seperately in a couple threads, specifically referencing composting, solar/wind power, geothermal supplemental indoor climate control, etc.). And I never meant a productive farm, merely a self-sufficient refuge if everything went totally to hell.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-13 01:15am

The sentence with "I do know that a home..." should've ended after the parenthesis with "would ease the pain of adaption considerably."

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2007-08-13 01:19am

Free-range grazing, though land intensive, is a lot less labour intensive than farming, and anyone with a horse and a rifle can do it, along with a willingness to butcher animals. Toss in a few people very good at gardening and target soil basically good at growing potatoes, which are an easy but nutritious crop, and you can probably easily feed a dozen or more people with said people working about half-time on the farm. The other half of the time goes to maintaining the power generation equipment which would allow us to make money for equipment and some luxuries by selling power back into the grid, which will be starved for it. That's pretty much in terms of a stable survival situation. Depending on how prosperous we remain and how bad things get, there may be more to implement or not.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-13 01:26am

I should've added that my father's side of the family includes family farmers and former farmers - young and alive today - and land already in the family. I'm not just planning on marching out into the wilderness with an "Idiot's Guide" book. Nor do I plan on relying on this unless things, as I said, get totally fucked.

Do you foresee it getting seriously bad enough for you to need this option? Or is it a fallback?