Luxor4u

During this past week a whole load of American business people are visiting Egypt, very little publicity, but these people are the type like in the B.B.C. program Dragon's Den, however these 'Dragons' offer an awful lot more money to blind 'projects' than we see in the television program.

First let me bring you up to date with the New Cairo plans, apparently things are going rather well. There is certainly no shortage of foreign investment from both China and the Arab world. Such countries as Saudi Arabia are desperate to invest their oil $, being that now begins the start of decreasing revenue returns on oil and natural gas for obvious reasons, therefore such oil sheikhs, (remember only three generations ago, most were simple water well sheikhs.) seek investments away from their own country, which in future may not be as so subservient than what it has been up to now.

The new Sheikh Zajed Development in New Cairo, is measuring its units at LE 10,000 per sq metre. However, where you have a government administrative centres, you need accommodate for your average paid civil servant. We now learn that the Egyptian army, under what is called the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, (in other words army fodder) have already built 56,000 residential units, that have been offered at only 60% of the actual value to suitable persons,......all are sold. A further 16,000 are now being built.

Now, the new tourist centre to be completed by 2021 is on the Mediterranean coast, 80 miles east of Alexandra and about 6 miles before El Alamein, at a place called Marassi, (for those who now do the internet checking, may I suggest you search Marassi Project.) if you check Bookings.com the one ONLY hotel there will show at a cost of around £1,000 per week. (A week later of showing no further interest, I have now been offered the same hotel for half the price.)

Dubai's Emmar Properties has already double its previous large financial commitment to this project. There are also six, one hundred plus rooms, hotel already now being built. The Americans are being regarded as sort of ' Johnnie come late' type people, with regards any of this projects. As for the Brits,.....don't worry they were up the front right at the start, but in a different type of! shall we say more secure, investment.

There are a number of other projects that the Egyptian government are attempting to attract international investment, though from what I can see, they are non starters, including a couple of ridiculous ideas from Luxor.

In the history of mankind, the oil industry will be looked back upon like the coal industry.. And for the same reasons.. more or less.
I have, and can see the future, and it's bright...
Rather than focus on individual events and happenings, one has to view the world events with a more holistic and optimistic mindset.

John Landon wrote:In the history of mankind, the oil industry will be looked back upon like the coal industry.. And for the same reasons..)

It's rather funny John, but after reading a statement last week by Bennu, that Denmark's energy consumption is 40% powered by wind farms, I did a bit of checking and discovered that the U.K. is about 20%. What I then discovered that the massive investment by the French company EDF and huge investment by the Chinessein the new Hinkley Point plant will cost almost double the price of the cost of wind powered generation from the new Norfolk of shore investment, known as the Dudgeon, and then there is the huge installation now being built ten miles off the coast of Brighton known as the Rampon field.

Back to the Middle East, Saudi Arabian has always lived beyond its means, but even it has realised it can no longer subsidies its poor, oil is no longer the international power it once was, and although it may have massive reserves of natural gas so has many other places around the world, and as regards old OPEC, well that was a spent force twenty years ago.

The world is changing,......and fast.

We have many wind farms here especially in the hills, but the thing that I noticed here was that although we do not get the same amount of days of pure sunlight like Egypt, there are now many Solar Plants being built, not only that virtually every home has solar panels for heating the water. (We do) Some have gone further and also provide the power for winter heating. I am surprised that Solar related power has not rapidly expanded in Egypt. They could have factories building these panels, providing local work, and regular income, even if they have not got the technology to build themselves, components can be brought in. Most people know about jigsaws.

Wind farms are a waste of time as a main power source, Wind is not guaranteed, especially the "right kind of wind" to power these machines. I suspect some sort of Quango going on with those expensive monstrosities, although Wind power woudl make a reasonable contingency power source, but the future IS Solar... We have lost the rising Sun in more ways that one in our clouded history..
The Sahara will one day become a lake of sorts, It is already happening.
The Sun is the source of all our energy and we are still not utilising it to its full potential.

The Oil industry will go into steady decline, just as the coal industries have. The push towards electric cars is happening now, and all car manufacturers will invest heavily into that technology, and of course the batteries and power sources for recharging.

We have the genius that is ELon Musk to thank for that and his Tesla company, They have been leading the way for years now..

The UK government has banned the sale of ALL diesel and Petrol cars from the year 2040, which is not that far away. The push towards powering these cars and eventually lorries and buses will become frantic.
So the Saudis not being stupid and forseeing this massive change are now ( and have been for a while truth be told ) investing heavily into their own country in areas like tourism and putting that infrastructure into place.
They are also looking into foreign investment as A-Four was discussing .
Perhaps eventually that will catch on in the rest of the middle east ( hard to tell if it isn't already with biased western so called "News" )

Perhaps the once great Babylon will rise out of the sand for the 3rd time..

We will then see domestic electricity go the same way as the transportation, and a total rethink on how we power our homes and factories.

do you really think that in this day and age we still need 240v AC to power our domestic appliances and lights.. Think again !
How many domestic products have transformers in them to reduce the voltage and the voltage type. ? Just about every appliance and light bulb could be run off 12 -24 volts, all you have to do is cut the cord outside your house
to remove the providers supply and add some batteries and solar panels and change the products in your home. I am not talking about this hippie trend of going off the grid.
We can have a new clean grid of solar panels on our roofs.
The only reason most of these products run on 240 V AC is because our houses have 240 v supplies to them. A rethink is required and I can see quite easily how that can be done, it really is not rocket science.


Sorry about the thread Hi Jack A-Four...

Slowly slowly I convert....I never bother to take down my Xmas & Ramadan lights as they are easily powered and
produce no heat which in this Country is fairly important.
As also is water, I have had a string on white led's on my roof powered by a tiny solar panel 6"x3" cannot remember when
I last cleaned the panel, they still work well even after 8 years..
I'm now working on fun things to do with compressed-air.... 'happy days!

We will still need oil for a long time because of all the other uses it has apart from energy.

Brian Yare wrote:We will still need oil for a long time because of all the other uses it has apart from energy.

We managed perfectly well without oil before the 20th century but I suppose it would be problematic to do without it now.

As you say, even if we replaced its role as a fuel, we've got very used to petrochemicals and their use in the production of plastics, pesticides etc etc.

newcastle wrote:

Brian Yare wrote:We will still need oil for a long time because of all the other uses it has apart from energy.

We managed perfectly well without oil before the 20th century but I suppose it would be problematic to do without it now.

As you say, even if we replaced its role as a fuel, we've got very used to petrochemicals and their use in the production of plastics, pesticides etc etc.

Both of which are now world wide pollutants causing serious, and to some point, irreversible damage to the environment. Just saying.

Although we managed well without crude oil can you image what would have happened to the Whale population ! then what would we have done when we had wiped them off the face of the earth, Ocean whatever...

The west is the biggest consumer, and the east will of course follow the west in Solar and Electric power. Why ? because they make the stuff.

I still think we can see deserts become "lakes" in my lifetime, or at least start to become lakes... though technically you don't need bright sunshine to run Solar, but when you have so much sand sitting there doing nothing, that real estate should be pretty cheap..
Morocco will be 50 % Solar by 2020.

My Uncle also co owns a company based in Germany that deals with something rather exciting regarding solar power.. They have some of the best brains in the world working on this project including Oxford university.
More to follow on that in the future.. watch this space...

Crude wont disappear overnight, I have no illusions about that, but demand will decline quite sharply in the next 22 years or so.
Plastics can of course be recycled, and the west is doing well on that score but can do better. a re-think on what we use plastic for is required. It's not difficult to replace a lot of it with biodegradable alternatives or non production methods..
ie IT AINT FECKING NECESSARY !

Oil will always have a use as a lubricant, but the lifespan of lubricants is much greater than use as the components of crude that are simply just burned. Although synthetic oil can be synthesised from other materials.

I always trust in a higher power rather than the talking heads to guide this world..

If there is a higher power guiding us, he/she/it seems to have some funny ideas about what suits us, makes us happy and successful etc etc.

Just saying.....

Newcastle, I can assure you that in Heaven there is a sense of humour, and the preferred humour is black...

One can easily despair of this world, but remember that "Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread".