Oil prices in light of oil sands shutdown, oil strike in Israel

A number of seemingly disparate variables are influencing the world's volatile equation of oil and fire, needing just a spark to ignite a conflagration. And one of huge proportions has been blazing well to the north of us in Alberta, consuming the tinder dry landscape surrounding Ft. McMurray, the hub of Canada's oil sands development. Initial cause of the fire is yet undetermined, investigators employing drones to examine the hundreds of square miles of scorched earth left by the searing flames that depopulated a city of 88,000. The city was surrounded by the fast-moving blaze that destroyed more than 1100 homes and edifices but didn't burn actual oil production centers.

It's a fascinating anomaly that the industry itself remained largely untouched, but perhaps that was not so much luck as design. Amid calls that the devastating fire was karma, or payback, for greedy corporations defiling the earth in gouging it of oil-rich sands to create global warming energy, facts point to this being human-caused. The question is whether it was accidental or arson. Yet why would arsonists target the city rather than industrial facilities? Because people are necessary to run those facilities. Destroy their homes and services, driving the workers from the workplace, and you've hamstrung the industry. Did someone figure out it would take years to rebuild the city infrastructure to serve the workforce needed to keep the industrial complex operating? But this doesn't come down to crippling Canada's oil industry for only environmental reasons. This is just one facet of oil-based economic strong-arming. While a worldwide clamor is raised to cut carbon emissions that supposedly cause "climate change" (that's 'weather' to us average folks), the underlying rationale is all about economic power struggles. Like it or not, the global economy runs on energy, oil and coal derived energy. (No, I won't refer to them as fossil fuels, being an unproven narrative directing people to assume it is a finite resource, which makes one wonder why we keep finding more and larger reserves.) Until very recently the OPEC countries had a stranglehold on the West as being the major suppliers of that energy. It was a money machine that kept the sheiks ensconced in sumptuous oases where our subjugation was plotted and implemented.

The equation changed as oil and gas recovery methodology was revolutionized. From there, the form of economic extortion switched from under-supply to keep prices elevated, to that of glutting the market in an effort to undercut Canada and America's booming oil industry. The strategy was making inroads in the fledgling US industry, forcing cutbacks in the Bakken fields and other oil-producing regions of Texas and New Mexico. But that scheme was mutually harmful to Middle East producers' revenues. Perhaps a new tactic was needed, although it also had its drawbacks. Whether the firestorm that's setting back the Canadian oil sands industry by years was deliberate or accidental, it has already caused a spike in oil prices. The outcome is two-pronged, however. Increases in the commodity price could jumpstart the US oil industry while putting additional funds into Middle East pockets as the demand remains steady. Green energy is decades away from being profitable and is of no real value in that respect.

Oil Finds in Israel

But here is the other side of the fire factor of the energy equation--new oil reserves discovered in Israel. Last year Afek Oil Company procured permits to sink exploratory wells near the Golan Heights, sparking another potential tiff over the region's control. Offshore gas reserves, discovered a few years back, are still challenged by Israel's other neighbors. Just last week, Israel divulged another reserve, this time located near the Dead Sea where there is no contention of national jurisdiction. An estimated seven million barrels lie in the Hatrurim Reserve that would catapult Israel into the envious position of supplying its own energy in what has become a rapidly disintegrating political arena on every front--Palestinian Authority, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt's Sinai.

The last has become a hotbed of terror infiltration by ISIS-affiliated Ansar Bait Al-Maqdis, which has been making noise of a plan to attack Israel. Coming from the south, the newly registered oil reserve might be within the terrorist group's sights--another firestorm to be kindled? Fire feeds on oil in more ways than one, and in the world of eco-terrorism and Islamic terrorism, it doesn't make much difference. Either way, the idea is to pitch western civilization backward a thousand years into another dark age, one craving enlightenment, both literally and figuratively.

A. Dru Kristenev——Bio and Archives

Former newspaper publisher, A. Dru Kristenev, grew up in the publishing industry working every angle of a paper, from ad composition and sales, to personnel management, copy writing, and overseeing all editorial content. During her tenure as a news professional, Kristenev traveled internationally as a representative of the paper and, on separate occasions, non-profit organizations. Since 2007, Kristenev has authored five fact-filled political suspense novels, the Baron Series, and two non-fiction books, all available on Amazon. Carrying an M.S. degree and having taught at premier northwest universities, she is the trustee of Scribes’ College of Journalism, which mission is to train a new generation of journalists in biblical standards of reporting. More information about the college and how to support it can be obtained by contacting Kristenev at cw.o@earthlink.net.

ChangingWind (changingwind.org) is a solutions-centered Christian ministry.

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