GEOG 122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Non-Renewable Resource, Geopolitics, Oligopoly
Document Summary
Supply and demand are important but far from the whole story: the play of geopolitics. The importance of technology in defining the existence of a resource. Significance of the middle eastern shatterbelt, the major source of supply. At current rates of use, we would have already run out of oil(1960 projection) Power of new technology to access difficult deposits, especially off-shore: north sea, hibernian. Oil sands and oil shales are re-defining the global business. But oil resources are reducing everywhere(resulting in increase for oil process) Most of the middle east are major source of oil. There is oil, but location is politically unstable. Russia: using reserves to make political point to western europe. Choke points: straits of hormuz, bab-el-mandab, mallaca. Us threatened war twice in 1980s to protect strait of hormuz. Possible pirate access from the horn of africa. Demand for oil is down sharply in north america and europe since 2008; it is up in asia and.
