Yeah, what's with that family combo thing anyway, it's like the English Monarchy then however they're just figureheads who don't govern.
Even when I was a kid in school we discussed oil running out, and not a lot has changed since then.
Hypothetical situation.
Here's the problem and lets use Bio Diesel#2 as the new fuel.
Oil company XYZ makes $46 billionUSD profit but then switches to Bio Diesel#2 which is a totally engineered product and does not rely on any oil at all. The company will still want to make maybe $50billionUSD the next financial year coz you know, all that BS about share holders etc.
So to do so the price doesn't change much, the only "savings" to be made are the cost of raw product and refining however the new product also requires "refining" in a different sense and the raw material still has to be acquired and freighted.
There wont be any real significant savings at all. The substitution to engineered resources from natural resources wont provide much savings at all ... in fact it could increase the cost as the existing infrastructure would have to perhaps be re-engineered.
This wiki page has more on bio diesel but you can see not much savings, never will be as long as huge profits and exuberant executive salaries have to be paid.
Biodiesel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On a similar note here, the NAB decided to raise interest rates on mortgages even though there was no official rate rise by the reserve bank. This pissed off the new govt bad, and typically never happened to the old govt. The reason was they owed it to the shareholders to make more profit.
I make my own beer in a micro brewery. It goes through pretty much the same processes as commercial beer but without the overheads etc and I get better and cheaper beer. The true solution to this is like what happened to Microsoft. These empires need to be broken down, a new style of corporation that is not profit driven has to evolve like a co-operative or community bank.
