166 replies to this topic

[Emax]

While speaking of both politicians and petroleum in the same sentences, check this out: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=WcU4t6zRAKg

[k2skier]

Emax, on Sep 12 2008, 11:47 AM, said:

While speaking of both politicians and petroleum in the same sentences, check this out: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=WcU4t6zRAKg

These guys are too funny! I just saw this on a different blog. A wave, at sea, 1 in a million, lol.

[k2skier]

Another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2Rs-05ReA...feature=related

[Andoman]

liftmech, on Sep 12 2008, 12:00 PM, said:

I won't pretend I'm completely educated on the issues this year. I do know that the cost of just about everything has gone up lately, and much of that is due to increased transportation costs because of the price of fuel. I understand that. What I have a hard time believing is the mantra from the far right of 'drill, baby, drill!' Please. Unless you know for a fact that there's oil directly underneath you, and there's a refinery in your neighbour's yard, drilling is at best a placebo to gain votes. It takes several years of exploration (spending money and not making it, I might add) to find the oil. It then takes several more years to get approvals, permits, and the like. Assuming the aforementioned goes through, you then need to build drill platforms and the related infrastructure to actually get the oil out and transport it to the refinery. (Aren't most of our refineries in the Gulf region?) Finally, the finished product gets to market. All told, you're looking at five to ten years from the time you say,' Drill here now!' I don't care what side of the 'fence' you're on, we all know that oil will one day run out. I don't think it will be in my lifetime, but I think my generation will see the end of our oil-based lifestyle. I'd like to see a mantra of new energy instead. (I don't call it alternative energy because it will soon be mainstream.)

Off the soapbox.

My problem with this argument is the time tables given are based on off shore drilling time frames, there is oil on land in places like Alaska, Louisiana, Tennessee, Michigan, north & south Dakota, Wyoming, Montana....etc. Some of these oil sources are shale oil and have to be mined and processed like the canadian oil sands but some of these sources are accessible with the assistance of high pressure water. These sources are available within 2 years and is enough to sway the market at least on the speculation side of the equation. When everyone has had time to examine the problems we've experienced (a few years down the road) I would bet 75% of the increase in price was speculative due to hedge funds and traders looking to try to make quick money to shore up faulty bets on mortgages. The government whomever that might be in the future needs to streamline the process to allow exploration and drilling without endless courtroom battles with greenpeace or peta. Whatever you choose to believe don't believe in the data stating the U.S.A. only has 3% of the worlds oil, I've personally seen Shell Oil's accounts of oil quantities in the dakotas and they far exceed this number and these studies are based on old methods of estimating oil fields not newer sonic and radar studies. I could ramble on about this all day but I'll stop unless you want more detail.

[Emax]

Andoman, on Sep 12 2008, 02:10 PM, said:

My problem with this argument is the time tables given are based on off shore drilling time frames, there is oil on land in places like Alaska, Louisiana, Tennessee, Michigan, north & south Dakota, Wyoming, Montana....etc. Some of these oil sources are shale oil and have to be mined and processed like the canadian oil sands but some of these sources are accessible with the assistance of high pressure water. These sources are available within 2 years and is enough to sway the market at least on the speculation side of the equation. When everyone has had time to examine the problems we've experienced (a few years down the road) I would bet 75% of the increase in price was speculative due to hedge funds and traders looking to try to make quick money to shore up faulty bets on mortgages. The government whomever that might be in the future needs to streamline the process to allow exploration and drilling without endless courtroom battles with greenpeace or peta. Whatever you choose to believe don't believe in the data stating the U.S.A. only has 3% of the worlds oil, I've personally seen Shell Oil's accounts of oil quantities in the dakotas and they far exceed this number and these studies are based on old methods of estimating oil fields not newer sonic and radar studies. I could ramble on about this all day but I'll stop unless you want more detail.

Yuh think ??

[Peter]

Andoman, on Sep 12 2008, 12:10 PM, said:

My problem with this argument is the time tables given are based on off shore drilling time frames, there is oil on land in places like Alaska, Louisiana, Tennessee, Michigan, north & south Dakota, Wyoming, Montana....etc. Some of these oil sources are shale oil and have to be mined and processed like the canadian oil sands but some of these sources are accessible with the assistance of high pressure water. These sources are available within 2 years and is enough to sway the market at least on the speculation side of the equation. When everyone has had time to examine the problems we've experienced (a few years down the road) I would bet 75% of the increase in price was speculative due to hedge funds and traders looking to try to make quick money to shore up faulty bets on mortgages. The government whomever that might be in the future needs to streamline the process to allow exploration and drilling without endless courtroom battles with greenpeace or peta. Whatever you choose to believe don't believe in the data stating the U.S.A. only has 3% of the worlds oil, I've personally seen Shell Oil's accounts of oil quantities in the dakotas and they far exceed this number and these studies are based on old methods of estimating oil fields not newer sonic and radar studies. I could ramble on about this all day but I'll stop unless you want more detail.

There are huge problems with producing oil from oil shale or tar sands. It takes 5 barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil. Also it takes massive amounts of electricity to heat the shale to 570 degrees in production. Water is not too abundant in some of the areas you describe. Also, oil produced from shale burns dirtier and puts more carbon dioxide into the air than regular oil.

[Andoman]

Skier, on Sep 12 2008, 04:38 PM, said:

There are huge problems with producing oil from oil shale or tar sands. It takes 5 barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil. Also it takes massive amounts of electricity to heat the shale to 570 degrees in production. Water is not too abundant in some of the areas you describe. Also, oil produced from shale burns dirtier and puts more carbon dioxide into the air than regular oil.

I'm not writing this to "attack" or come across as an asshole, I just want to educate anyone that asks me about this stuff so some of these messed up rumors stop rolling around the populous. I actual have enjoyed most (if not all) of the conversations I've had with people on this board, you really seem like a lively group of good people. But for you info before you write me off as an ass, I started working in the asphalt industry fresh out of high school, during college (the professor I worked for in the labs was the head geologist for shell oil and all around good guy), tried to get out for a few years and money dragged me kicking and screaming back in, but regardless I have a lot of experience in the oil industry.

The "tar sands" (it's natural asphalt not tar) don't have to be heated to more than 250 to 300 degrees (400 max for really really heavy crude), when you get to 570 degrees your above the flash point of crude and that would be a bad thing. However, no matter where the crude comes from you have heat the crude to break it into your different grades of fuel so that is a very moot point. As for water that may be but 5 barrels of water per barrel of crude is worth it to me, if you don't like water being used for anything but drinking then we should all switch to dry toilets and outlaw irrigation systems (i've used dry toilets, not fun). Don't listen to the people spouting the dirty fuel thing. It doesn't burn dirtier, it's just broken down into heavier fuels instead of just gasoline and lighter end products like light sweet crudes are. However, with the new refinery upgrades the new coker / cracking units these "heavy ends" can be reduced to just about nothing. <- This is the reason asphalt (my industry), plastics, paraffin wax, paints, and latex are getting more expensive. The refineries are re-refining the petroleum's heavy ends until there is severe shortages on these products, therefore, raising the prices all around and screwing everyone.

I don't defend the oil industry, but they're a necessary evil like Emax said on his blog we'll never run out of oil it will eventually just get too expensive and something cheaper will come along. However, the bastards will continue to make the same margins on every ounce of oil sold until they can't sell it anymore. I don't predict any mad max style world, or I wouldn't of had any children. i'll stop now.

[Andoman]

Emax, on Sep 12 2008, 04:23 PM, said:

Yuh think ??

kinda sometimes but I try to stop by 5:00 on friday's

[poloxskier]

k2skier, on Sep 12 2008, 07:54 AM, said:

Ignorance is not calling someone a name, it is used to show a lack of knowledge on the subject.
I do not speak in total bullshit.

ignorance
Noun
lack of knowledge or education
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

Im glad you found the correct definition, now stop using the word to attack educated people who disagree with you.
You are entitled to you own political views but when you call someone ignorant because they don't share your political views, it shows the extent of your own ignorance.

This post has been edited by poloxskier: 14 September 2008 - 07:20 AM

[cjb]

The other factor not mentioned yet is the market side of expanding drilling for our oil. Once the current producers see that we are serious about domestic drilling then they will up their production to make more money sooner, (knowing that supply will be substantially increased when we get our wells on-line) and prices would continue to drop. Right now U.S. environmentalists are OPEC's best friend. I believe that is what is happening with Saudi Arabia walking out on OPEC, they know that their days are numbered and within a couple of decades oil will be almost an irrelevant commodity. They know that the technology to put them out of business is coming and that they better make their money now.

As for for the speculators-that is a good thing, the run up in prices due to exaggerated fears of supply problems and the over ambitious bidding done by them brought the 'oil shortage' to the public eye in a way that no BS Al Gore movie, or hypocritical hollywood star could ever do. It made people actually change their ways and reduce oil consumption, and it worked exactly as the free market should.

[LuvPow]

And what about all these "Bail-outs"? We are going even deeper in the hole with this... next it will be Detrioit and auto industry because US car makers let Japanese out pace them in every way.. the airlines, all behind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.... enough already. I believe the bail outs need to stop.

[k2skier]

The mortgage crisis. Very good points. How did the federal kicker check help everyone else out? Mine went to pay my taxes, what a joke the kicker check was, a typical Conservative delusion. Pay close attention to the last line.

http://www.thenation.../20080922/stone


A Conservative Confidence Game
By Deborah Stone

Leave it to Fannie and Freddie to do for American politics what reasoned argument failed to do--strip the clothes off the Emperor of Markets. The fuss over whether government should rescue naughty shareholders was merely a distraction. What this latest financial crisis revealed is that "the government" and "the market" are not two distinct and separate parts of the country. They work together and need each other.

Ever since Ronald Reagan declared in his first inaugural address that "in the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," conservatives have been steadily privatizing government functions on the theory that free markets can do everything better. Education, medicine, criminal justice, social services, building and maintaining roads and bridges, supporting an army at war--you name it, it has all been contracted out to allegedly more efficient and innovative private enterprise.

Self-interest, profits and free markets, we have been promised, are the great social engines. Now, as the American housing market collapses and the world trembles before our mistakes, those profit-driven, supposedly self-correcting and perfectly efficient engines are turning against us like Frankenstein. Why did anybody ever believe that CEOs and shareholders whose every incentive leads them to seek greater profits would care about anything else, such as their purported government mission to foster homeownership and stable communities?

Maybe this is the ultimate lesson in why the Republican strategy of privatization and deregulation doesn't work. Markets depend on confidence--confidence that somebody stands behind the currency of exchange, confidence that somebody will hold buyers and sellers to their promises, and above all, confidence that if banks and big businesses crash, somebody will step in to help all the little people who might be wiped out with them.

It's telling that the very officials who have been dead-set against regulation and bailouts justify the new government plan as necessary to restore confidence. The markets are perfectly healthy, they kept saying, but the public's confidence is faltering. On July 17, just after the big bailout was proposed, Fannie Mae's CEO, Daniel Mudd, told Newshour's Judy Woodruff, "Fannie Mae is very financially sound. We have . . . more capital than we've had at any point in our history." If your capitalization is as strong as you say, asked Woodruff, why do you need this Treasury plan to help you out? "All the capital markets, the lending markets, are really built on confidence," Mudd replied. "Confidence has gotten jittery over the past quarter or so." It's important, he continued, "that there be a strong backstop (Mudd never uttered the words "bailout" or "rescue") in case that kind of lack of confidence and that kind of jitteriness continued for too long."

With the bailout, these officials admitted what Reagan and all the government denigrators denied. Only government can provide the rock-solid confidence that markets and communities need to function.

Libertarians warn that what the government gives, the government can take away. But the same is true of markets. Employers can take away your job or your health insurance and pension. Big companies can take away the lifeblood of a community, as when Maytag closed in Iowa. Big chain stores can take away the livelihoods of small independent business owners and their employees, not to mention the rental income of commercial landlords, the vibrancy of downtowns, and the tax revenues of local government.

Who's taking away people's homes right now in the foreclosure frenzy? Not government. Well, not unless we remember that government could have done a better job reining in mortgage lenders and Fannie and Freddie. If indeed government is responsible for this mess, its fault was inaction. Finally, in the present crisis, government sees itself once again as the solution.

But restrain your hopes, because here's how Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson conceived the bailout. It would arm him, he told Congressional leaders, "with a bazooka in my pocket to pull out when we need to it to shoot down." Excuse me? The top official of the U.S. economy thinks he's a guerrilla armed only with a bazooka? Please, sir, it's time to step into uniform and use your authority and modern regulatory tools to build a strong mortgage system instead of waiting to take pot shots at misguided missiles.

No, government is not the problem. Leadership is.

[k2skier]

cjb, on Sep 14 2008, 08:48 AM, said:

As for for the speculators-that is a good thing, the run up in prices due to exaggerated fears of supply problems and the over ambitious bidding done by them brought the 'oil shortage' to the public eye in a way that no BS Al Gore movie, or hypocritical hollywood star could ever do. It made people actually change their ways and reduce oil consumption, and it worked exactly as the free market should.

The only thing it accomplished was to put the USA into a recession and make Bush and his cronies rich.

Add; yes it has help the gas guzzling US cars take a back seat to a more practical cars, and reduced our consumption by about 5%, at too great a cost to our economy though. Hopefully the next pres will have enough balls to impose better fuel mileage standards, so we might be able to sell US cars in other countries.

This post has been edited by k2skier: 14 September 2008 - 03:59 PM

[Andoman]

LuvPow, on Sep 14 2008, 01:33 PM, said:

And what about all these "Bail-outs"? We are going even deeper in the hole with this... next it will be Detrioit and auto industry because US car makers let Japanese out pace them in every way.. the airlines, all behind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.... enough already. I believe the bail outs need to stop.

You have to remember that the Japanese automotive industry is a quasi governmental industry, the Japanese government loans these companies billions of dollars with a zero percent interest rate. So every time we make up regulations and expect these companies to comply within 5 or 10 years it costs them billions of dollars to develop this new tech. I also think we should apply tariffs on the incoming Japanese automobiles because they continue to impose these taxes on our products over there. With a level playing field I think our automotive industry would continue to dominate, but if they have to compete against companies with a bottomless pocketbook supplied by the local government then they don't have a chance.

[skiersage]

Another funny video:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Q_xQdynFVLg

[cjb]

[quote name='k2skier' date='Sep 14 2008, 10:58 AM' post='78125']
The only thing it accomplished was to put the USA into a recession and make Bush and his cronies rich.

quote]

The true definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, we have yet to have one. Of course the truth has little to do with most of your ranting.

[cjb]

k2skier, on Sep 14 2008, 10:55 AM, said:

http://www.thenation.../20080922/stone


Education, medicine, criminal justice, social services, building and maintaining roads and bridges, you name it, it has all been contracted out to allegedly more efficient and innovative private enterprise.

Every one of these things has seen MORE government involvement: (and not coincidentally are pretty much all failures)
Public school spending is much more than what is was PER STUDENT in the 60's and 70's and failing more than ever.
Medicare and Bush's drug plan have added billions to medical spending,
criminal justice ? this I believe is entirely gov't, although I won't claim to know much about it.
social services: the goverment has been raising huge portions of the last two generations through welfare, and other programs, unemployment was up last month mostly because benefit times were extended enocuraging people to not work or wait longer before looking for work.

As for infrastructure I believe that should (like most items fall to the state) that would allow for more involvement from the public in the immediate area.
The federal govt should be involved in pretty much one thing-protecting our borders, rights, and interests.

[k2skier]

So there is no sign of a recession? Then are we in a false recession? Right now we are as close to any recession without "technically" being in a "true definition of a recession", but things sure very tough for most Americans, it sure feels like a recession for most of us.

You must make enough money to be above the pinch of most folks then.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/200...he-us-in-a.html
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economis...-recession.html
http://economyincris...CFRpciAodpH3KWA
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/0...rds_feldst.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/01/22/...cussions-begin/
http://www.voanews.c...09-14-voa17.cfm
http://economics.about.com/cs/businesscycl...depressions.htm

Where is my ranting?
I stated that the kicker check was a joke, and it hurt the economy more than helped it and I posted an article about what Reganomics had done to hurt the US more than help it. Republicans have had control of the White House 20 out of the last 28 years and look where we are today, history speaks for itself. I also believe that we have to have an uprising of an independent political party to be able to cross the traditional party lines and do what right and use common sense, not what the lobbyist force them politicians to do.

In a nut shell; the US is hurting big time and Republicans just don't have a clue any more, they've had 8 years, and the only great thing accomplished is a RECORD BUDGET DEFICIT.

[cjb]

k2skier, on Sep 14 2008, 10:58 AM, said:

The only thing it accomplished was to put the USA into a recession and make Bush and his cronies rich.

Untrue statements + personal attacks insinuating that Bush has some devious plan to make himself and his 'cronies' rich regardless of any other effects = ranting

It is not the amount of money I make, it is the ability to make smart enough decisions with that money, and to take responsibility for those decisions. Now if only I could keep more of that money to work with, instead of the government stealing it to give out to someone that is too lazy to earn or manage their own money.

[k2skier]

cjb, on Sep 15 2008, 11:58 AM, said:

Untrue statements + personal attacks insinuating that Bush has some devious plan to make himself and his 'cronies' rich regardless of any other effects = rantingThat's your opinion not fact.

It is not the amount of money I make, it is the ability to make smart enough decisions with that money, and to take responsibility for those decisions. Now if only I could keep more of that money to work with, instead of the government stealing it to give out to someone that is too lazy to earn or manage their own money.As do I.

I have owned my own business since 1985 (mechanical repairs on boats and lawn and garden equipment) and have run it by myself since 1994, and the last 3 years have been the worst profit years ever.

You should read the book by Craig Unger; House of Bush House of Saud, it will open your eyes on what criminal activities Bush and his cronies have committed.

Another interesting read is a book by Robert Baer; Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.