Business as usual and the Middle East

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Business as usual

Predictions for the future 

  • Consumption of natural gas will double by 2030 
  • Oil production will increase by 1.4 million barrels a day to meet growing demand
  • Consuming countries will become more dependant on imports of oil and gas - mostly from the Middle East and Russia
  • After 2015, the easily accessable gas and oil reserves will be spent, new forms of less coventional energy sources will emerge, like deepwater oil and tar sands
  • To close this gap that will be created new and more efficient sources of energy will need to be formed

The cost of "business as usual"

  • Nichaolas Stern in the Stern Review estimated that climate change would cost the world between 5-12% of global GDP
  • Global economic losses due to natural disasters (more extreme weather) have meant losses of over $150 billion a year
  • Also economic output will fall by 3% due to the rising temperatures of 2-3 degrees Celcius, due to failing crop yields
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The Middle East

  • Dramatic rises in the price of oil were the result of rapidly increasing demand from China and India
  • OPEC's reluctance to increase oil supply and risk a price crash
  • Declingin oil reserves, with existing ones harder to exploit
  • New emerging countries such as the MINT's (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) who now demand more oil
  • Political unstbalility in the Middle East and separtists movements in Nigeria (largest provider of oil in Africa)

Iran/Iraq war: 2003

  • By invading Iraq, the US may have hoped to reduce its dependancy on oil from Saudi Arabia
  • The US coated their true intentions with the excuse of stopping WMD and stopping the rise of religious fundamentalism in the region but it was unoffically to gain access to Iraq's oil reserves
  • This region is a production hotspot - with a lot of oil but high levels of political unstablility 
  • Oil is now becoming a strategic resource as Moscow, Beijing and Tehran band together to exchange oil for goods
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