This is indeed a cliffhanger

I have been away for some time due to a family problem. While that was going on, like everyone else, I witnessed on TV and other media the damage and suffering caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I have never seen anything like the destruction of an entire city, as though it were nuked, and the struggles that went on afterwards. Now people are pointing fingers at each other and vowing it would not happen again. It seemed to have worked with Rita. Now the opposite pattern has appeared. Some people are going to ride out hurricanes rather than roast for hours on a traffic-clogged interstate at 100 degrees F and 1 mph.

My main concern with these storms is the damage that they cause to oil facilities. Several refineries are now offline, and much production of oil and natural gas has been disrupted. The question is whether there is enough capacity to handle all the demand now. Gasoline prices rose from $2.51 to $3.29 after Katrina, and there were some stations out of gasoline. Since then the prices have been receding. After Rita, prices jumped, then fell back, and are now rising again. I was afraid that real shortages will appear.

They may not. Now that the $3 barrier has been reached, demand is finally going down. People are driving less and they are carpooling and otherwise saving gasoline. This lowered demand, and that has caused prices to fall. It's the supply and demand equation working. When prices of a commodity rise, demand for it will decrease, and other alternatives will become profitable and will activate. It seems that supply and demand will take care of this peak oil problem.

However, oil and other hydrocarbons are non-renewable resources and there is only a finite amount of these substances. Sooner or later we are going to run out, and supply and demand may not take care of this sudden change easily. That is why I say this situation is a cliffhanger. It could go either way. Supply and demand and other energy sources are tending to ease the situation, but the continued demand overseas and finiteness of the resources are taking us the other way. It is not clear what's going to happen; it could be anywhere from a gradual changeover to other resources to a world catastrophe. That is why I think this situation is a cliffhanger, and why I have named this blog that.

I will, if I have a chance, post again this Monday; I chose this day for this blog because that's when James Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles comes out. If you follow this link, you may have to increment the number "15" to make the chronicle current.