Energy for energy

Author: Alfredo Colunga 

-Are things going well for oil owners?

One has to consider the position of the oil owner. Owning oil or gas is very different to owning a factory or some soil or some farm.

If you are the owner of an ice-cream biscuit factory or you work in it, you would like to think that if you work hard, you will obtain income and you will be able to continue manufacturing and selling. If you work on the fields, you will have enough profit to invest a part of it in technology to produce more. An electric plant of any kind, even one working with oil or gas, is conceived as the investment of a company, which is expected to give enough profit to build new plants based in the same or other processes in the future.

But oil simply runs out. As it does not regenerate, his owner is sat on a mountain of possible profit, and it doesn’t matter if he has reserves for five or fifty years, he is submitted to continuous pressures. The more he opens the tap the more he earns, but also the faster the mountain diminishes. If, imitating his colleagues, he invests in his business in order to sell more, he also earns more but the mountain diminishes even faster.

If one gets into the oil owner’s skin, one sees there are others selling the same product. If prices increase, why not save for the time being and sell later?

Even more paradoxical: owning oil and selling it in exchange for dollars or euros is a process facing an even greater contradiction.In a world which is non-viable without oil: either oil is not substituted, and therefore, when petrol runs out the money obtained will not be worth anything because there won’t be energy –oil!- to spend it with, or at some point this business will be taken over by another.

You do not think about this, but the oil owner does. The oil business unlike the cured pork meat business will run out sooner than later. His owner knows the oil business has no future.

And this makes of it a unique business, because what are occidental economic settings based on as well as the power of their planning, of their laws and working agreements? Precisely on future trust. If a company agrees with a trade union, it is all based on the existence of future and continuity. If not in exchange for future, what agreement could be possible? The more uncertain the future is, the more difficult the agreements get.

It is obvious that if a cured pork meat manufacturer is doing well, he will be able to open new factories and reach agreements with his employees. However, if he knows he does not have machinery to continue the production and that he has two or three hundred tons of cured pork meat to be sold before closing down, all his actions will be directed towards cost reduction. He will be on a new stage: for you or for me.

When a company is going to close down, the game rules change. Oil companies are, by definition, “a company always about to close down”.

Are oil owners doing well? Let me be them!, let’s think. When you say you are doing well, it is because you are doing well… and you expect that tomorrow you will be at least the same and even better if possible. If not, nobody says they are doing well.

Even sat on a mountain of oil.

-Claim energy for energy

Simplifying our means, it can be said that up to date there are to big groups on the energy field: on the one hand, the owners of the energy of today and on the other the builders –and presumably the owners- of the energy of tomorrow. The owner of the energy of today observes the energies of tomorrow, which do not belong to him, with obvious mistrust. At the minimum opportunity he will undo what others have done during the day. The builders of the future energy, neither sillier nor wiser than the oil owners, know of their manoeuvres. However, they remain silent, as today they need this energy to survive.

What is missing then? If, on top of money, the oil owner had also a part in the exploitation of future energies, the oil owner would have the continuity of his business assured. The business stops having an expiry date.

The countries and companies owning fossil fuels should claim from the most advanced countries, apart from a price in dollars, a percentage in the future energies. Enough quote to assure them that, at least, they will not lose when the energy transition arrives. A quote in research, development, commercial production and in distribution of these energies.

Just for the mere fact that my country or company own oil, do I have the right to claim a part in the future energy business? If I can do so, of course. And with deadlines. When will the ITER start to work? If you tell me when it will be ready and you give me a share in it, then we will agree on prices and I will supply you. No problem, because I am also interested in that day to arrive. But I clearly want to have a share in the development of that future energy and a percentage on the profits

How many alternative energies does the humankind have available? One, two, fifty? If I owned the oil, I would claim a share in each of them. If the energy producers of today have a piece of the cake guaranteed we will all be looking at the future in a different way. Instead of fearing it, we will wish for it to come.

Such agreement is a future agreement with the producers and the companies. Also with the governments. In any society, and our global world is no exception, the control of energy, which empowers society, is closely linked to the control of an army to protect it. Does this place some people in a position to claim? Well, let them claim, let them guarantee their future, let them normalise their business