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For the last couple of years or more I have been grinding on and on to anyone that would listen, that fuel prices would rise by 6% above inflation, and that transport companies would need to learn to be fuel efficient to stay afloat. I am sorry, but it appears that I have misled you all, diesel fuel prices have actually increased by a whopping 100% over this period.
In 2002, oil was US$25.00 a barrel and it’s now US$50.00 a barrel plus, and climbing. Investment banks have warned their clients that it could easily hit US$61.00.
Oil production is near its peak, but is still struggling to meet world wide demand, due to booming economies around the planet.
New Zealand’s own five year run of four percent growth, pails into insignificance when you compare it to China, with their whopping nine percent.
China’s economy is expected to expand greater than the USA’s by 2020, not bad for a non capitalist society.
So, oils running out, there is a huge demand for what’s left, and the war on terrorism is all about oil, well actually, it’s all about fighting capitalism. If you truly want to terrorise America, you have to seriously threaten capitalism and world trade. World trade runs on oil and Osama Bin Laden and his cronies know this well. While the cowardly act on 9/11 was intended to get world wide attention, the real goal I believe, was always to knock out the communications centre of world trade. While the deaths of three thousand innocents stunned the free world into action and stunned us all, into starting to take this threat to our lifestyles very seriously, I don’t believe that the free world has even come close to a victory yet. Therefore this situation must get worse before it can get better.
Also the climate that we have managed to alter by our wasteful lifestyle is starting to impact on oil prices. Four, grade 5 hurricanes in the Florida bight last year, have certainly had an impact on production coming out of the area. Add to this tale of woe, the odd civil war or two, bandits blackmailing multinationals and straight out incompetence by some petroleum company officials and I think the climate is ripe for US$100.00 per barrel if you add in to the mix, a little old fashioned greed. Fuel companies have never made so much money as they are now.
Could your Transport Company cope with diesel fuel prices of NZ$2.70 per litre?
Could an International Freight Forwarder cope?
So what are we going to do about this?
Do we have a plan in place deal with this situation?
Because this is real folks, it’s not a fiction novel you have just read, and only my modest guess of a futuristic US$100.00 per barrel has come out of my imagination, the rest is cold hard reality.
As Kiwi’s, we are an amasingly inventive and proactive race of people, we have had to be just to survive in the past, and this trait will definitely be our savior in the future.
So, let’s all make a solid New Years resolution, to fight back, to do something, anything, which collectively adds to a solution. Seek out some good solid advice on how to conserve fuel, to teach your drivers and co workers how to be more fuel efficient than they are already.
Don’t allow terrorism to destroy your lifestyle.
And remember two things as we head into the future, it’s still better to live in NZ than in Iraq and Santa’s reindeer, don’t run on diesel.
But then, that is just “an old trucker’s point of view”
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