Energy Prices Collapse, World in Chaos

It will be hard for a lot of people to believe but energy prices around the globe are in freefall. Some types of crude oil are now so worthless that producers in the United States are paying to have them hauled away.

Oil prices are collapsing because the only way that countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Iran can pay their bills is to sell off oil at whatever price they can get. This has effectively broken the back of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC - the cartel of oil-pumping countries that once had a stranglehold on the world’s economy.

One reason why OPEC has lost its power is that countries outside such as Russia and the United States can now export as much or more oil than it can. Even if OPEC raises the price all America or Russia needs to do to pull the rug out from under it is to turn up the pump and flood the market with cheap oil.

The world is now facing an energy glut and growing political chaos because of cheap oil. The government of Venezuela is collapsing because of it and governments in places like Saudi Arabia and Russia could soon follow. One nightmare we could soon face is Vladimir Putin or King Salman of Saudi Arabia not being able to pay their armies or worse paying the army with worthless money the soldiers cannot spend.

This is particularly frightening because Russia has nuclear weapons and some of the world’s most advanced weaponry including robotic tanks. Saudi Arabia has an arsenal of the latest American military technology including fighter planes and tens of thousands of highly trained professional soldiers.

Even advanced economies could be hit, the Royal Bank of Scotland thinks lower oil prices could push economies into deflation. Deflation occurs when commodities lose their value and people who sell them have no money. Some experts think this could lead to a situation similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The chaos that cheap oil is creating is incredible. Cheap oil was created by new energy technologies like fracking. This chaos should cause us to ask what sort of havoc will be wreaked by other even more disruptive energy technologies that could soon come online.

These include low energy nuclear reaction or LENR, hot fusion, better battery technologies and improved solar panels just to name a few. Solar power and improved batteries are already here, Porsche claims to have to have a car with a range of 500 kilometers on a charge of electricity and battery that can charge to 80% capacity in 15 minutes.

LENR could be even more disruptive because it promises to provide vast amounts of energy with little or no fuel. Basically successful LENR could wipe out hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs in a few short years. Coal miners, oil field workers, oil tanker crews, refinery workers, railroad workers and many others could find themselves on the unemployment lines.

One has to wonder what those technologies will do the world’s economy and the havoc they could wreak. Something we need to worry about is complete economic collapse which could come because of such technology.

Continue reading here: LENR could help end California Water Crisis

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