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It’s a jolly good thing that I’ve discovered....

I’m greatly relieved. It was getting to the stage where I thought there were only 2 options. 

1.  I thought I may have to become a practicing polygamist. Not an attractive option but how else does one achieve multiple women on hand at all hours to push ones classic and 4WD cars. Getting ones wife to push the car is a practice made acceptable by a good friend who feats I both admire and try to emulate. His story about his wife pushing their classic sports car to their daughters wedding is among my favorites and should be compulsory reading for all young people considering any relationship that may last longer than the weekend. 

2.   I thought I may have to buy an electric motor for my big 4WD. The downside to this is that I understand electric cars have ‘issues’ with their batteries. I already have regular ‘issues’ with the one battery in my car. It often fails to convert the smelly liquid inside into the throaty roar that I require from the exhaust pipe prior to selecting gear and making smoke up the drive. The other matter that must be dealt with when one starts fiddling with electricity in cars is the possibility of poking a hole in the place that holds all the 240v smoke and ruining ones hair.   

These matters have been exercising my mind and bringing me near to despair for some time as I’ve been hearing that the world is about to run out of my favorite fluid. Much of my life has been spent in the fear that the world will run out of oil before I depart. That has had the effect of making me ensure I’ve been getting my fair share and getting maximum pleasure from it. This is a lesson I learned as a young lad one evening when I arrived home late for dinner. The corned beef with cabbage & broccoli remained in the oven … but the ice cream and jelly had all been consumed by my sweet gobbling siblings. When I pointed out the iniquity of this situation, my mother authoritively advised, “You should have been home earlier”.  Well … I’ve been around throughout quite a bit of the period that helpful people have been turning oil into a fluid that has given me freedom. I’ve made sure that I will not one day be sitting with the rug over my knees bemoaning the fact that everyone else used up all the fuel and I didn’t get my share.  

However, as I mentioned, I’m now greatly relieved. Contrary to the common knowledge foisted on us by the manipulating media, the world is not about to run out of fuel any time soon. You may be starting to realise this because, back in the ‘70’s we had car-less days to help extend the oil reserves past the ‘90’s. We were then told that the last drop of the planets oil would be consumed by around 2010.  That came and went and somehow fuel still flows from the pumps when we pulled the trigger and feed the machine ever increasing amounts of money.  

Seldom a day passes without a green do-gooder advising all who will listen, that we have reached ‘peak oil’ and that, if one peers down the long black hole one can almost see the bottom where the last drops are being sucked out by greedy capitalist oil companies who’s only joy is raping our planet of its finite reserves. They do also admit that there is a bit more lying around in some inhospitable places. Places that are difficult to get at and would require destroying the whales and penguins or digging up the worlds most beautiful mountains to do so. Well … it’s mostly not true.  

What the scaremongers really mean is that OPEC oil is running out. This is the intergovernmental organization of twelve countries that have dominated oil supply since 1960 and through their cartel, influence the prices ever upward so that they can all by big gas guzzling cars to wiz off to the camel races. I admire their ongoing cunning and manipulation of our minds. There is unquestionably lots more oil in other parts of the planet and much of it easy to recover. Politics are playing a big part in the game and I suspect the oil companies and ‘guvmints’ who know about this may be happy for prices to rise on the back of global concern. This is, afterall, very big business.  

My caregiver and I, together with 2 friends, have just returned from an enlightening journey. We drove from Hong Kong to London in a car. Along the way we were quite astonished to be passing through huge oil & gas fields and I made a point of finding out about the industry in this area that is broadly known as ‘Central Asia’. This is region is a vast part of the world that has remained ‘off the radar’ for a long time. It will become a very big player in world events in the near future… especially as China emerges as the dominant power and influence in the region. 

We were fortunate to befriend some Americans in this region who work for one of the world’s largest oil companies. When I expressed sympathy for the imminent demise of their industry and asked what they would do for future employment – they fell about laughing. By their reckoning, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia & Ukraine have more ‘easy to recover’ oil and gas than the Middle East has ever had. Given that our journey carved a narrow scratch across this enormous region yet we witnessed astonishing oil recovery activity, I can quite easily imagine the extent of the resource that exists. It is possible that the news media have overlooked this on the basis that they cannot spell the countries that are sitting on the reserves that will prolong our oily pleasures way past the end of this century.  

I’m greatly relieved … and will live happy with only one woman to care for me and without the fear of fizzing up the ends of the few remaining hairs that poke out from under my crash helmet. We can fire up the V8 without our conscience causing gastoesophageal reflux or even a twinge of guilt.