OPEC gets pissed, cuts off all oil - what happens next?

Let's say some global event causes OPEC nations to shut of the spigot. Perhaps the economic collapse is bad enough countries can't pay, so OPEC says no pay, no oil. The spigot gets shut off.

Now what?

How would the military continue to function? Could this create a vulnerability that OPEC countries could exploit? What happens to China and Russia?

How long would the US continue to function if OPEC cuts off oil? What would oil prices spike to? Would the strategic oil reserves help at all, or is that just junk oil?

Would people start to starve because we can't transport food supplies? Would the economy halt completely?

How long would it take for us to come up with an alternative?

Immediate war would be the outcome, to ensure more suppliers. Do you know who provides the most oil to the US? Check it out.

The alternative would be for the US to start drilling in places that
the tree huggers and save the snail folks don't want us to drill in,
such as the pristine wilderness of Alaska and other places.
believe me, that is coming soon. Possibly after Martial Law is
imposed, so no one can do much about it.

ZOOMER

reply to post by intrepid


I agree. War would be the immediate outcome if this were to happen. Zoomer, drilling in those places might occur but it would take way to long to get that oil into the economy.

The OPEC nations have their own money invested throughout the world.

It wouldn't be in their interests to shut off the pipeline that runs their own industries. They would be cutting off their noses to spite their face.

Why would it take too long for the oil to get to the US mainland?
There already is a humungous pipeline pumping oil as we speak.
If push comes to shove, and it is probably on the way, the US will
find alternative outlets for oil, and lots of it. If we just quit spending
the billions and billions of dollars on this Iraq mess, we would have
plenty of money to drill for oil, and pay for health insurance and give
our vets and retirees a decent life. But that is another subject.

ZOOMER

That did happen in Oct 73, OPEC, led by the Saudi's cut production and put an embargo on most oil shipments to the West (except UK and France), due to the Yom Kippur War. It was mainly directed at the US and Netherlands for support to Israel in the war.

The price of oil quadrupled immediately. I remember very long lines at gas stations, many of them running out of gas. Some shut down. Alot of businesses, facilities, schools closed early to save energy. Rationing went into effect, could only buy gas on odd or even days depending in on your car's license plate number.

Today it would be disasterous, depending on how much of our reserves we use since we basically use everyone else's oil, while mostly saving our own.

en.wikipedia.org...

www.buyandhold.com...

Go here

Most of our oil does come from opec, but not all. Canada gives us most of it. Rationing would most likely happen, yes. Prices go up, yes. End of life as we know it, not totally. We'd work around it, We always do.

Shale Oil becomes extremely attractive and since the USA has some of the largest deposits in the world your sitting pretty good. Except some greedy pig decides to charge a fortune and profiteer off the situation...situation normal.

Immediate effects are obvious: Prices on oil will go through the roof, with a ripple effect on consumer goods' prices across the board. There'll be a downward dip in the economy, as well.

Short-medium term effects: Gasoline rationing, possible price controls. OPEC nations start to notice that they're losing money as the world economy cools off, and they start feeling political pressure not only from the US, but from the entire industrialized world to turn the oil back on....after all, with Americans not buying anything, China, Taiwan, and most of Asia are going to take a major economic hit, as will Europe. With the US not producing nearly as much, they'll take a hit in goods and services to go with the hit in cash.

Long-term effects: Hopefully, cooler heads prevail in OPEC, and they resume supplies of oil to stave off a world-wide economic drop. No laughter from the peanut gallery, please. Barring that, you'll see a long-term economic crash that will last until demand and supply equalize at some rate of consumption lower than current. You might (if the economic impact was large enough) see a military response from the U.S....or even a coalition of the industrial nations. They can't afford to have one of their biggest markets vanish, and they're going to realize that their oil supply could be the next target.

Military effects? Minimal in the short term. That's why we have the strategic oil reserve. After 2-4 months, military operations wil be impacted....but by that time, we only need enough JP-something to fly about 200 aircraft for about 8 hours.

Originally posted by bg_socalif
That did happen in Oct 73, OPEC, led by the Saudi's cut production and put an embargo on most oil shipments to the West (except UK and France), due to the Yom Kippur War. It was mainly directed at the US and Netherlands for support to Israel in the war.

The price of oil quadrupled immediately. I remember very long lines at gas stations, many of them running out of gas. Some shut down. Alot of businesses, facilities, schools closed early to save energy. Rationing went into effect, could only buy gas on odd or even days depending in on your car's license plate number.

Today it would be disasterous, depending on how much of our reserves we use since we basically use everyone else's oil, while mostly saving our own.

en.wikipedia.org...

www.buyandhold.com...

You make a great point at the end of your post about us using everyone elses oil and save our own. I never thought of it before but thats a great idea by our gov.. Once the rest of the worlds oil supply runs out then we will have the only oil and will have a monopoly on it.
I think this is why alternative energy is so slow to progress in the world because it could foil their plan.
I think there is more to it than just that but I haven't figured it out yet.

The shale oil thing is real I think, I read an advertisement on another forum about 2 years ago, that we in the US have more oil in the shale rock than the rest of the world has combined. True or not, I don't know.

On topic, perhaps it would be time for all the free energy to come to the forefront. I doubt 98% people in the world have even heard of Tesla or zero point energy for that matter. I believe we have the Technology to go oil free now. As my sig line on another forum says, oil companies need oil, we don't.

If that happens a great wave of self-sufficiency would sweep the world, and OPEC would be caught short in the imported food and comestibles department. The food producing nations, namely America, would be forced into using food as a bargaining chip or weapon and I don't see that happening. OPEC's financial interests overseas would also be frozen so I don't see that happening either. But at least, for one shining moment, common sense would rear its pretty head and smack down everyone with the truth of our world's interconnectedness.