Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
"It's All A 3 Card Monte Game Designed To Lure Sucker Citizens Into Thinking Govt Really Cares"
Do you know why oil and prices are moving sharply higher? Some blame the oil companies, charging they are manipulating prices. Others cite U.S. sanctions on Iran and the threat of a military encounter that would disrupt the flow of oil from the Middle East.
Speculators, too are blamed for ostensibly bidding up the price of oil.
...
Yet, the basic reason for higher energy prices is being overlooked, even though it is right before our eyes: Oil prices are up because the value of the dollar is down. Our common sense hides this source of higher prices because we view the dollar as fixed, and prices as moving. News reports explain the sharp rise in consumer prices in February were caused by higher energy and food prices, implying that higher prices cause inflation. Of course, higher prices do not cause inflation. Higher prices are inflation. Read more: The Rising Price Of the Falling Dollar
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Oil or Snake Oil?
In a speech last week Newt Gingrich exulted that the estimated Bakken shale oil reserves in North Dakota had recently been revised upward to 24 billion barrels. So much, he said in a tone of patronizing dismissal, for the “Peak Oil doomsayers.” These remarks by Gingrich, who also says he’d lower gasoline prices to $2.50 a gallon as president, were just the latest version of Sarah Palin’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” theme of “domestic oil (or natural gas, or coal) production” as the solution for high energy prices.
It’s interesting that politicians who so tirelessly proclaim their opposition to government meddling in the economy, and deny the effectiveness of such meddling, would express such hubris on the ability of activist government to solve an economic problem.
Not only do these people fail to understand the nature of the problem they’re promising to fix, but the promised fix itself is chock full of government intervention.
For example, Professor Gingrich seems to have a poor grasp of what the Peak Oil hypothesis actually says. Maybe they didn’t cover that on The Jetsons. Peak Oil has nothing to do with the total size of oil reserves underground, or how many years of America’s present energy needs they could supply. What Peak Oil is about is the rate at which those reserves can be extracted, the cost in money and energy of extracting it, and the diminishing size of the net energy returns when the energy cost of extraction is accounted for. The Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of the predominant sources of fossil fuel energy has been declining steadily since they first started distilling petroleum into gasoline.
The EROEI of the light sweet crude extracted in the early 20th century — the kind of black gold that come a-bubblin’ up when Jed Clampett was shootin’ at some food — was a mind-blowing 100. That is, for every barrel of oil consumed in the process of extracting, processing and distributing the fuel, the net return was ninety-nine barrels of oil.
The average EROEI on oil extracted today is about 20. The EROEI from the Canadian tar sands is under ten. Anything with an EROEI under three — like corn ethanol — isn’t economically worth the trouble of extracting unless it’s subsidized by the government. Over the history of fossil fuel consumption, we’ve consumed the low-hanging fruit first, and then moved on to progressively costly and energy-intensive alternatives as the cheaper stuff was exhausted.
Now let’s take a look at those Bakken oil reserves. The seemingly astronomical figure of 24 billion barrels that Gingrich cites is about the same size as the Prudhoe Bay reserves in Alaska. But despite the enormous size of the reserves on paper, the productivity of each well was far lower than the typical light sweet crude well in the older oilfields of the “lower 48″ — for a relatively modest output from a large number of wells.
And compared to the Bakken reserves, Prudhoe Bay was a cake walk. A much lower percentage of the entire reserve is recoverable, and the oil that’s extracted will require extremely costly hydraulic fracturing to remove it from the shale strata in which it is embedded. According Derek Andreoli at The Oil Drum:
The EROEI on Bakken shale oil is a whopping 6.
The simple fact of the matter is, with EROEI and output per well going off a cliff, all these miracle sources of new oil won’t be a patch on the output of the old, high-EROEI fields that are becoming exhausted.
Even if Professor Gingrich doesn’t believe in Peak Oil, the oil companies do — and what’s more, they actually understand it. The “Drill, Baby, Drill” peanut gallery is fond of pointing to offshore drilling as some sort of panacea. But the fact is that, even before the BP oil spill, the oil companies sat on enormous reserves of offshore oil they didn’t bother to develop.
The reason is that oil production is increasingly governed by the same laws Henry George observed in real estate. Because the supply of land is for all intents and purposes fixed, the supply cannot increase in response to demand; its price is governed entirely by the fluctuating rate of competition for the fixed supply at any given time. So the rate of real estate development is governed by the land owners’ estimate at any given time of the relative payoff of selling the land now, versus sitting on it and selling it when the price appreciates.
That’s exactly what the oil companies were doing with their offshore reserves. You can open up every square mile of offshore waters up to unlimited drilling, and the oil companies will still sit on it and wait to develop it when the price is right.
Back in the early ’80s, before oil production peaked, Reagan’s deregulation and the subsequent steep price rise resulted in a significant increase in oil output. So when gasoline hit $4.50/gallon in summer 2008, why didn’t oil exploration and production go through the roof? Why did production levels remain essentially flat?
Contrary to the promises made by these apostles of the activist state, the government simply can’t do much to affect the energy supply. Promises like Gingrich’s are pure snake oil.
Now for the second point: The proposed energy policies of Gingrich, Palin and the rest of the “drill baby drill” crowd require enormous levels of government intervention in the economy. You can hardly turn on your TV without seeing examples. The Keystone XL natural gas pipeline couldn’t be built without condemning land through eminent domain in order to acquire the right of way. Oil company trucks serving the Alberta tar sand fields are driving through Lakota land in violation of Lakota law, in order to avoid South Dakota’s per truck fees on heavy-hauling trucks.
Besides that, the more costly and intensive the methods required for fossil fuel extraction, the more harm is typically imposed on the people of surrounding areas. Hydraulic fracturing simply wouldn’t be economically cost-effective if oil companies were fully subject to tort action before local juries for the damage to groundwater caused by the toxic chemical cocktail used in fracking. The same goes for the economic and health damage caused by mountaintop removal, for the people living in the surrounding countryside.
The state provides enormous benefit to extractive industries by giving them privileged access to land originally preempted by the state, and by subsidizing their operations. But perhaps the single biggest subsidy government provides to the fossil fuel industry is regulatory preemption. The regulatory state’s environmental standards preempt more stringent common law liability standards, and create a safe harbor for corporate bad actors engaged in creating what is clearly a public or private nuisance. The liability cap for offshore oil spills is just the best-known example of the phenomenon.
Let there be no mistake about this: Newt Gingrich and the “Drill, Baby, Drill” people are not pro-market. They are pro-business. Palin and Gingrich may mock Solyndra, but they have no problem at all with fossil fuel subsidies and otherwise greasing the skids to make low-EROEI operations like Bakken profitable.
Gingrich has professed admiration for Henry Clay and the Whig policy of federal development of the economy through blockbuster infrastructure projects. Gingrich & Co. say they just want big, intrusive government to get out of the way of a fossil fuel economic boom. But despite their framing of the issue it’s actually about big, intrusive government intervening — right now — on the side of the fossil fuels industry. Like Dick Cheney and his hunting buddies, Gingrich just wants the government to be even bigger and more intrusive — on behalf of the right people.
by Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society under Creative Commons
It’s interesting that politicians who so tirelessly proclaim their opposition to government meddling in the economy, and deny the effectiveness of such meddling, would express such hubris on the ability of activist government to solve an economic problem.
Not only do these people fail to understand the nature of the problem they’re promising to fix, but the promised fix itself is chock full of government intervention.
For example, Professor Gingrich seems to have a poor grasp of what the Peak Oil hypothesis actually says. Maybe they didn’t cover that on The Jetsons. Peak Oil has nothing to do with the total size of oil reserves underground, or how many years of America’s present energy needs they could supply. What Peak Oil is about is the rate at which those reserves can be extracted, the cost in money and energy of extracting it, and the diminishing size of the net energy returns when the energy cost of extraction is accounted for. The Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of the predominant sources of fossil fuel energy has been declining steadily since they first started distilling petroleum into gasoline.
The EROEI of the light sweet crude extracted in the early 20th century — the kind of black gold that come a-bubblin’ up when Jed Clampett was shootin’ at some food — was a mind-blowing 100. That is, for every barrel of oil consumed in the process of extracting, processing and distributing the fuel, the net return was ninety-nine barrels of oil.
The average EROEI on oil extracted today is about 20. The EROEI from the Canadian tar sands is under ten. Anything with an EROEI under three — like corn ethanol — isn’t economically worth the trouble of extracting unless it’s subsidized by the government. Over the history of fossil fuel consumption, we’ve consumed the low-hanging fruit first, and then moved on to progressively costly and energy-intensive alternatives as the cheaper stuff was exhausted.
Now let’s take a look at those Bakken oil reserves. The seemingly astronomical figure of 24 billion barrels that Gingrich cites is about the same size as the Prudhoe Bay reserves in Alaska. But despite the enormous size of the reserves on paper, the productivity of each well was far lower than the typical light sweet crude well in the older oilfields of the “lower 48″ — for a relatively modest output from a large number of wells.
And compared to the Bakken reserves, Prudhoe Bay was a cake walk. A much lower percentage of the entire reserve is recoverable, and the oil that’s extracted will require extremely costly hydraulic fracturing to remove it from the shale strata in which it is embedded. According Derek Andreoli at The Oil Drum:
Whereas conventional wells like those in the Thunder Horse reservoir produce at a rate of 40,000 bpd, only 14 of the nearly 9,000 wells in the Bakken produce more than 800 barrels per day, and the average well produces only 52 bpd. Even at 800 barrels per day, 50 Bakken wells would need to be drilled for each Liberty/Thunder Horse size well, and nearly 800 of the average size Bakken wells would be required.
In order to arrest North Slope declines, 700 average size Bakken wells will need to be completed each and every year.
The EROEI on Bakken shale oil is a whopping 6.
The simple fact of the matter is, with EROEI and output per well going off a cliff, all these miracle sources of new oil won’t be a patch on the output of the old, high-EROEI fields that are becoming exhausted.
Even if Professor Gingrich doesn’t believe in Peak Oil, the oil companies do — and what’s more, they actually understand it. The “Drill, Baby, Drill” peanut gallery is fond of pointing to offshore drilling as some sort of panacea. But the fact is that, even before the BP oil spill, the oil companies sat on enormous reserves of offshore oil they didn’t bother to develop.
The reason is that oil production is increasingly governed by the same laws Henry George observed in real estate. Because the supply of land is for all intents and purposes fixed, the supply cannot increase in response to demand; its price is governed entirely by the fluctuating rate of competition for the fixed supply at any given time. So the rate of real estate development is governed by the land owners’ estimate at any given time of the relative payoff of selling the land now, versus sitting on it and selling it when the price appreciates.
That’s exactly what the oil companies were doing with their offshore reserves. You can open up every square mile of offshore waters up to unlimited drilling, and the oil companies will still sit on it and wait to develop it when the price is right.
Back in the early ’80s, before oil production peaked, Reagan’s deregulation and the subsequent steep price rise resulted in a significant increase in oil output. So when gasoline hit $4.50/gallon in summer 2008, why didn’t oil exploration and production go through the roof? Why did production levels remain essentially flat?
Contrary to the promises made by these apostles of the activist state, the government simply can’t do much to affect the energy supply. Promises like Gingrich’s are pure snake oil.
Now for the second point: The proposed energy policies of Gingrich, Palin and the rest of the “drill baby drill” crowd require enormous levels of government intervention in the economy. You can hardly turn on your TV without seeing examples. The Keystone XL natural gas pipeline couldn’t be built without condemning land through eminent domain in order to acquire the right of way. Oil company trucks serving the Alberta tar sand fields are driving through Lakota land in violation of Lakota law, in order to avoid South Dakota’s per truck fees on heavy-hauling trucks.
Besides that, the more costly and intensive the methods required for fossil fuel extraction, the more harm is typically imposed on the people of surrounding areas. Hydraulic fracturing simply wouldn’t be economically cost-effective if oil companies were fully subject to tort action before local juries for the damage to groundwater caused by the toxic chemical cocktail used in fracking. The same goes for the economic and health damage caused by mountaintop removal, for the people living in the surrounding countryside.
The state provides enormous benefit to extractive industries by giving them privileged access to land originally preempted by the state, and by subsidizing their operations. But perhaps the single biggest subsidy government provides to the fossil fuel industry is regulatory preemption. The regulatory state’s environmental standards preempt more stringent common law liability standards, and create a safe harbor for corporate bad actors engaged in creating what is clearly a public or private nuisance. The liability cap for offshore oil spills is just the best-known example of the phenomenon.
Let there be no mistake about this: Newt Gingrich and the “Drill, Baby, Drill” people are not pro-market. They are pro-business. Palin and Gingrich may mock Solyndra, but they have no problem at all with fossil fuel subsidies and otherwise greasing the skids to make low-EROEI operations like Bakken profitable.
Gingrich has professed admiration for Henry Clay and the Whig policy of federal development of the economy through blockbuster infrastructure projects. Gingrich & Co. say they just want big, intrusive government to get out of the way of a fossil fuel economic boom. But despite their framing of the issue it’s actually about big, intrusive government intervening — right now — on the side of the fossil fuels industry. Like Dick Cheney and his hunting buddies, Gingrich just wants the government to be even bigger and more intrusive — on behalf of the right people.
by Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society under Creative Commons
Thursday, March 15, 2012
US threatens India over Iran oil
The US is reportedly threatening India with penalties, if it doesn't comply with Washington's sanctions against Iran.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Energy Independence for America?
I remember writing an essay in school once, where I made the bold claim that there was more energy (I specifically at the time meant oil) in the ground that anyone imagined, and that we weren't in any danger of running out soon. Was I psychic? Because to this day, I don't know where the hell I got that notion at that young age. Maybe I was just already tuned in to "exposing the machinery of mass conformity"...
Many analysts expect that in the coming decade the US will leapfrog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest producer of liquid hydrocarbons...Already, America has cut the share of its oil consumption met by imports from more than 60 per cent in 2005 to 47 per cent last year.-Pendulum Swings On American Oil Independence
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Looting Libya -Oil!
The race for Libya's vast oil wealth is gathering momentum. States who worked together during massive NATO airstrikes, are now working against each other in the battle to secure lucrative energy contracts
Western Oil Companies To Get Libya's Oil
Western Oil Companies To Get Libya's Oil
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Question of the Day: Are We Heading For An Oil Crisis?
Three years ago, we got a glimpse into the room when Royal Dutch/Shell issued a scenario forecasting the world in 2020. Based on current economic and energy-use patterns around the world, Shell said that energy supplies will be so tight that they will tip the world into a full-blown crisis in which governments will force their populations to reduce driving, use less electricity, and pay an extremely steep increase for what they do consume.
Read the rest: The Coming Misery That Big Oil Discusses Behind Closed Doors
Read the rest: The Coming Misery That Big Oil Discusses Behind Closed Doors
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Question of the Day: What Will High Gas Prices Do To The Economy?
Gas prices continue to increase, and analysts say five dollars a gallon by summer is very possible.
We don't have a real economic recovery going (like they pretend in the video), but what hope there is for improvement could be derailed by high gas prices. I'm paying over $4.00 a gallon right now for regular. I have had to cut back on everything else as a result, including food, entertainment, clothing and more expensive items (such as a new digital camera) I've been planning to purchase but will have to postpone for a while.
How high will gas go, and do you think it will stall any potential economic improvement? Or will the effects be temporary?
pp
We don't have a real economic recovery going (like they pretend in the video), but what hope there is for improvement could be derailed by high gas prices. I'm paying over $4.00 a gallon right now for regular. I have had to cut back on everything else as a result, including food, entertainment, clothing and more expensive items (such as a new digital camera) I've been planning to purchase but will have to postpone for a while.
How high will gas go, and do you think it will stall any potential economic improvement? Or will the effects be temporary?
pp
Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Peak Oil and the Globe's Limitations
Richard Heinberg, senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute and the author of The Party's Over
, Peak Everything 
and, most recently, Blackout
, discusses the phenomenon of peak oil and how it will affect life on this planet.
Post Carbon Institute
, Peak Everything and, most recently, Blackout, discusses the phenomenon of peak oil and how it will affect life on this planet.Sunday, March 20, 2011
New Oil Spill In Gulf Of Mexico?
Here we go again?
The U.S. Coast Guard is currently investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles away from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion last April.
According to Paul Barnard, operations controller for the USCG in Louisiana, a helicopter crew has been dispatched to the site of the Matterhorn SeaStar oil rig, owned by W&T Offshore, Inc.
Multiple reports have come in of a sheen nearly 100 miles long and 12 miles wide originating near the site.-Potential new deep water oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico-100 mile sheen reported
Oil Spill Reported Near Deepwater Drilling Site in Gulf
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Oil Crisis Looming?
Unrest in Egypt has not only political, but economic ramifications as well. Will 5 dollars a gallon gas prices be here sooner than later?
Friday, January 7, 2011
Life After Oil
In this edition of Peter Lavelle's CrossTalk, he asks his guests how long the world can remain addicted to oil. What is, or should be, our energy future? Should we embrace green technology to replace our current addiction to carbon fuels? (Though there are those who believe this an unrealistic scam at the moment). Is the future path nuclear energy, considered by many as far safer today than a generation ago? A combination of both? Or is oil the only real answer for the near and medium term?
Monday, January 3, 2011
He Loves That Bubbling Crude!
As we saw that thing bubbling out, blossoming out – all that energy, every minute of every hour of every day of every week – that was tremendous to me. That we could deliver that kind of energy out there – even on an explosion.- Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX)
-New Science Chair Ralph Hall Praises ‘Tremendous’ BP Spill, Plans To Subpoena Climate Scientists
Incoming science chair Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) plans to put big oil back in charge of his committee. In an interview with the Dallas News this month, the climate zombie declared his intention to use the House Science and Technology Committee to investigate the “false statements” of climate scientists, and “subpoena” those who don’t appear willingly. Hall also explained why the BP disaster “didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for offshore drilling.”
-New Science Chair Ralph Hall Praises ‘Tremendous’ BP Spill, Plans To Subpoena Climate Scientists
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
War for Oil?
Everyone has watched one of the best TV series of all-time – M*A*S*H. You also know the tune that played during the opening credits as helicopters delivered wounded soldiers to the 4077 Mobile Army Surgical Unit. Most people have never heard the lyrics that go with the music. The song is Suicide is Painless and the lyrics were sung during the M*A*S*H Movie. As I watched the movie a few weeks ago, the lyrics struck home. Our country has been slowly committing suicide for the last 40 years. The movie and TV series were set during the Korean War. It is fitting that military spending is one of the major causes of our suicide as a nation. On an inflation adjusted basis, the US has doubled spending on Defense since 1962. It is on course to rise another 20% in the next four years. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex in 1961:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
The fact that the US currently spends 7 times as much on Defense as the next nearest country is proof that the military industrial complex has gained unwarranted influence and a disastrous rise of misplaced power has occurred.
When you critically analyze why we would need to spend 7 times as much as China on military when there is no country on earth that can challenge us, the answer can only be OIL.
...
The U.S. military knows we are on the verge of an oil crisis. There are no new supplies ready to come on line before 2015. The President and his advisors know that an oil crisis is in our immediate future. We have military bases in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait. We have active fighting forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have a naval armada of aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. Our forces completely encircle Iran. Is this a coincidence when the countries with the largest oil reserves in the world are noted?
Saudi Arabia – 262 billion barrels
Iran – 133 billion barrels
Iraq – 112 billion barrels
Kuwait – 97 billion barrels
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Now Illegal to Build Sand Castles on Florida Beaches?
Also, the reporter is told that you can't film in a National Park unless you're with the media? WTF?
A comment from a reader at this post on The Agitator seems to offer a possible answer on the digging question:
The reason that the fellow wasn’t allowed to dig is related to the fact that the area is a National Park and the Park Service has stringent rules regarding compliance with NEPA, the National Environmental Protection Act (I think one of the antiquities Acts applies, as well). On almost all government facilities, digging (typically deeper than 12 in, but I guess in the case of the Park Service, 6″) without a permit is verboten. You might disturb some animal’s habitat, or kill a valuable plant. Of course, this seems absurd on a beach, where the sand is routines changed out naturally over time. But, rules are rules, and the ones who make and enforce the rules don’t care about reality. After all, one of their jobs is to show you who is boss.
Bureaucracy run amok. And some people think we are free…
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Oil or Nothing?
Despite apocalyptic coverage, oily pelicans, and President Obama's description of the BP spill as "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," Time's Michael Grunwald contends that the Gulf spill isn't anywhere near as bad as the public has been led to believe. Grunwald, whom Mike Allen praises as "on the speed-dial of all enviro flacks," acknowledges that even though the Gulf spill is the biggest in U.S. history, and even though we can't say for sure what the long-term effects will be, the numbers on the ground haven't justified the hype.
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