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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The following (in italics) is part of a letter sent
to me by a friend who has been living in Malaysia. I'm passing on to you all for
the insight on oil extraction once oil passes the
$70/barrel mark. Jenny</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><EM>As a non-fundamentalist muslim state,
Malaysia has been an interesting place to live. By Asian standards it's a
tolerant society, with the three main ethnic groups, Malays,
Chinese and Indians reasonably at peace with each other. I have been
working up here part time for a friend of mine in Melbourne who runs a
business supplying packaged plants to oil rigs and the like. A
lot of action up here, as in most places in the
world, developing smaller oil fields that were uneconomic when oil was
a third of the price it is now. This oil is a lot harder to extract,
takes more equipment to extract it, but is worth doing at $70 per barrel. With
the quest to wring the last drop of hard to get oil out of the ground, equipment
supply for hydrocarbons extraction is a boom industry right now. Oil rig
builders are booked out for years ahead. As well as general depletion of
oil fields, one of the restrictions on the supply of oil and gas in
the next few years will be lack of infrastructure to get at
the oil out of the ground. Since the demand for oil is still rising at
about 2% pa and with China and India poised to experience the joys of
motoring on a massive scale, you'd have to think the rise in oil prices will
continue for a while yet.</EM><A
href="mailto:jgoldie@snowy.net.au"></A></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>