World 'Could Become Violent' As U.S. Loses Dependence on Middle East Oil

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"We could see that world becoming a very violent one. If the United States isn't getting any crude from the Gulf, what benefit does it have in policing the Gulf anymore? All of the geopolitical flux that wracks that region regularly suddenly isn't our problem."

Thus spoke former chief of Middle East and East Asia analysis Petere Zeihan for Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas, in a telephone interview to Bloomberg News on Thursday, April 24th.

Strategic Forecasting has been called "the shadow CIA". Zeihan's comments are in regard to Brazil's reportedly having made two of the three biggest oil reserves discoveries of the last 30 years.

Whether or not the United States' military involvement in the Middle East now rests solely upon oil supply concerns is debatable given the new global mobility and access to destructive technology possessed by Islamic terrorists and tyrants as well as our continuing active "allies" status with Israel and Turkey. However, at least much of Zeihan's point is valid. The U.S. would no longer feel the need to do that much policing for pirates or to put a damper on the machinations of fascist Islamic regimes in the Persian Gulf region, and emerging major oil consumers India and China would become the biggest clients of Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern oil cartel powers as the United States prudently bought from its more local ally, making their seemingly never-ending political upheavalings and internecine power wars much, much more of an Asian concern.

Strategic Forecasting is of the opinion that Brazil would be pumping enough oil to make itself one of the seven leading producers on the planet by 2020 if the oil field discoveries are being accurately reported.

There are potentially 33 billion barrels of oil to be brought up and shipped. The reported discoveries were made by Petroleo Brasileiro S.A., or "Petrobras", in the Carioca and Sugar Loaf fields off Rio de Janeiro.

Petrobas is Brazil's largest government-owned oil exploration and production company. The company is remaining taciturn about confirming or denial of the size of the finds, with company officials saying they will know more in two or three months.

Great Britain's BG Group and Spain's Repsol YPF also have stakes in the oil fields.

Brazil's currently proven oil field reserves come to 11.8 billion barrels. Those of the United States come to 21.8 billion barrels.

Meanwhile, the MegaWest Energy Corporation of Calgary, Canada, has newly discovered oil reserves on a farm in the state of Missouri, as new technology and record oil prices provide opportunities for huge profits to those with the smarts and the tenacity to dig deeper for oil and gas reserves in innovative ways and places not seen since the late 1980s, when world fuel prices sank and partially helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union.

ExxonMobil recently announced that it will be increasing its capital and exploration expenditures by $25-30 billion over current outlays through 2012. The world's largest oil exploration corporation's outlays of such a nature last peaked in 1994 and troughed in 2006.

Many economists and investors expect oil and gas prices to continue to rise in the near future due to a flood of cash into oil investments and the subsequent remaining weakness of the U.S. Dollar, in which all oil is bought and sold on world markets.

According to Barry Bannister, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, approximately 87% of the current sharp rise in oil prices is due to the increase in global money supply as global demand reaches record highs.