It isn't hitting just the US. We whine and kibbitz about ourselves so much we don't bother to notice that we are peeing on the feet of our friends. You wonder why we are loosing friends globaly? Becuase the US, as a nation, is like dealing with a five year old; if we want to stay a superpower, we need to grow [censored] up and realise that other nations have the same situations we do.
If crude hits $100 per barrel, it's going to screw up Japan. While they might not use petrofuels as much as we do for electricity, they use a lot of petrochems industrially. Thier economy looks healthy, but that's like saying that someone is healthy just becuase thier inoperable brain tumor is in remission. Sure you feel fine, but there is still a ticking time bomb in your head. Taiwan and South Korea will be in the same straights, only more so becuase they don't have the nuclear power to fall back on.
A lot of Western Europe has nuclear plants to fall back on, but again, industrial uses. And they do use a lot of petrofuel. Unfortunately (sorry, friends, I've got to be blunt) since thier economies are declining on a global scale (population drop), I'm just not as up to speed on thier situation. I know that they use a lot of LNG, but that isn't beeing affected quite so much by shortage as it is general worry.
Now, for some corrections.
Chavez isn't sending money to Cuba, Castro has his own income from unknown (but speculated) assets and while Cuba's paying a slightly reduced price for crude, it isn't that significant a cut. Seriously, would you charge your parents full price? That money is getting publicly flipped over into funding the oil pipeline into Columbia, and privately into what I'll politely call "rainyday funds". Problem there is that two years ago, we got almost as much crude from Venezula as we did from Saudi. But since less of that oil is coming up, and what is coming up is going to Central and South America, I'll take the glass is half full view: Chavez is creating a strategic supply in this hemisphere, and we'll buy the oil that Venezula's new customers aren't from thier old suppliers.
(I'd cut Cuba out of most global conspiracy theories right now. Castro is sweating the succession issue too much right now to do anything overly sneaky, and the canidates to replace him are all smiling at eachother with daggers behind thier backs. That is going to a brawl in the dog pound when when he kicks it. All he's doing is standing up and smiling for the public as the guy who's still flipping off the US, and that makes him VERY popular with the man on the street south of the some point between Cidudad de Mexico and the Rio Grande. Even if he is a lot like a washed out rock star on the world stage, he's still got his fans. The only reason he bugs us is we let him.)
China pays as much as we do for oil- they buy it off the free market. And if someone thinks they like the idea of $100 per barrel, I'm sorry, but I think you've been in the sun too long. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Actually, the Chinese are pushing oil prices up up with increased consumption levels. Funny joke- as one of the designated developing countries under the Kyoto Accord that everyone whines about us not signing, the PRC has by treaty relaxed pollution controls, which just impresses the heck out of the Japanese, but it's already been signed.
Ditto the Indians, but they only annoy Bangledesh and Tailand, both countries that no one outside thier borders really care about. Unfortunately.
Anyone want to take a guess when the next major attempt at taking the Spratly field will be? I'm almost tempted to start a pool.
And Russia doesn't sell on the open market. Thier are closed bid contracts, and most of those were probably made under Yeltsin. Of course, that doesn't mean that they can't ask for donations to help protect the oil pipeline. I can begrudge them the technique, but in Putin's shoes, I'd probably use it to.
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