Manitou: 3. A Business Threat; Resource

Hello, my group members. Recently, we have seen a video which was about alternative energy. It was interesting content; it showed that they could make electricity through human labor such as children’s play, exercises in fitness club, and steps on stairs. Then, this morning an article made me recall that video. The title of the piece was “Pipeline attack puts oil above $107.” Nowadays, one of the hottest issues in the world is oil price because the rise of price does not seem to be stop, and the velocity is getting faster.

This is the article I read

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures shot back above $107 a barrel Thursday after the bombing of an Iraqi oil pipeline diverted investors' attention away from a stabilizing U.S. dollar. Retail gas prices, meanwhile, inched up overnight while diesel prices slipped.The bombing of a key Iraqi oil pipeline Thursday morning appeared to cut oil exports from the southern oil city of Basra, despite oil officials' statements to the contrary. Dow Jones Newswires reported that exports from southern Iraqi terminals have been reduced to about 1.2 million barrels a day from a normal rate of 1.56 million barrels a day.

Click to the address below if you want to read more
: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/03/27/oil.prices.ap/index.html

According to the article, there was an explosion incident of oil pipeline, and it caused the rising of oil price which is above $107 now. This incident was shown the deliberate act of terrorists and this behavior will be happened more and more, so it will be getting harder and harder to import crude oil. Not only lack of resources but also social cultural conflicts make us consider about alternative resource. Of course, we have already found some alternative resources such as sun energy, wind energy, and so on. These are, however, so-called passive energy, which means that energy has some constrained condition people cannot control to make electricity. Also we cannot ignore environmental pollution from natural resources.

For some those reasons, many scientists are trying to figure out new method to make electricity. One of those efforts is “human power.” Some people invent some equipment to make electricity by using human labor. For instance, a person made a “play pump” at a town in South Africa, and the pump is worked when children play with the pump which transforms the kinetic energy to electricity. It can be called “Fun energy.” Those kind of thinking is still on the study, but really innovative.

Connecting with business strategy, the production cost will be reduced if the company invents new method to make electricity. Also, the company will be able to have good image leading a good environment. Also you can give customer more good service form cutted production cost.