President Obama supports offshore drilling; but not in the U.S. of course. Instead he's loaning a couple of billion dollars of your tax money to Petrobras to drill off the coast of Brazil. At the same time he supports so called environmentalists who use all manner of legal maneuvering to make it impossible for oil and gas companies to drill off the coast of this country.
This makes not one lick of sense in any dimension.
Since our government is running a deficit it must borrow money by selling bonds in order to loan this money out. So our government is borrowing money from China and others in order to lend the money to an oil company owned and run by the Brazilian government.
And, on another level, Petrobras must be the only oil company in the world that can't make enough money to do its own drilling. Which says something about just how inefficient government run businesses can be.
The Wall Street Journal has the whole story at the link below. I've quoted some of it below.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html
Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
The Wall Street Journal - 8/18/09
You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.
But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.
The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.
This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.
Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Where's the outpouring of sympathy?
While driving back from our Rumba lesson Linda and I noticed that gas prices at WAWA are down to $2.97 per gallon. A couple of months ago the prices were up at near $4.00 per gallon.
So the oil companies have suffered a 33% decline in the amount they're getting for their gasoline!
Yet I haven't heard a word of sympathy from all of the politicians and commentators who were screaming for mobs to lynch the oil executives only a few months ago when prices rose.
If a rise in gas prices is evil price gouging, why isn't a huge fall in gas prices a tragedy for the poor oil companies?
So the oil companies have suffered a 33% decline in the amount they're getting for their gasoline!
Yet I haven't heard a word of sympathy from all of the politicians and commentators who were screaming for mobs to lynch the oil executives only a few months ago when prices rose.
If a rise in gas prices is evil price gouging, why isn't a huge fall in gas prices a tragedy for the poor oil companies?
Thursday, August 14, 2008
It's August - time for a game of Risk
Back in the old days before air conditioning and these new fangled computer things were all the rage the middle of August was prime time for long games of Pinochle, Risk, Stratego or Monopoly on the picnic table out under the apple tree. If Carl S came over we always played pinochle but otherwise the board games were the favorites. And Risk was the favorite among the board games, which was fortunate because most of us learned a lot more about world geography from Risk than we learned from Sister Mary Stickwielder.
We learned, for instance, that Australia was the best continent to control because there was only the one entry point from Siam to Indonesia. The player who ended up in control of Australia after the initial war of all against all was almost always the eventual winner if he controlled himself and simply patiently built up a super massive army in Siam, fighting only enough to conquer either China or India each turn to get a risk card and then leaving one sacrificial army in that country for another player to take to get his risk card.
While the struggle for Australia was going on another struggle would be going on for South America, which was the consolation prize since it had only two entry points to defend.
The two or three or four players who found themselves driven out of both Australia and South America had to fight and exhaust themselves uselessly over North America, impossible to defend with its three entry points. Or else they had to retreat to the out of the way places like Siberia and Yakutsk or South Africa and Madagascar to play a waiting game of slowly building ever larger armies defending useless territories that no one else would have reason to attack.
Then things would settle down to a war of nerves as armies piled ever higher and the players with Australia and South America began slow inevitable expansions, conquering one country at a time until the stalemate cracked open when one of them decided he had the means to try to take and hold North America, or Asia or Africa. That's when Ukraine and Middle East started to come into play. Ukraine was key to holding Europe or defending Asia while Middle East was key to holding Asia or Defending Europe. Many more Risk armies fought and died in Ukraine and Middle East than ever died in any ten of the other countries on the board except on those rare and usually insane occasions when someone decided to try to crack Australia with a massive death or glory attack involving all his forces. But usually it came down to Ukraine or the Middle East as either the tinderbox or the site of the armageddon battle that had to happen before it was time for lunch or supper.
Just like now, only in the real world, for yesterday Ukraine told the Russkis that it would not permit the Russian fleet at Sebastopol to leave port to attack Georgia, a country so small that it isn't even on the Risk map. Georgia is an undefined part of either Ukraine or Middle East depending on how you squint your eyes when you look at the Risk map. Even on the real world map Georgia is so tiny a country that its hard to find. A little tiny sliver South of Russia, East of Azerbaijan and North of Turkey and Armenia, a sliver that is drawn differently on different maps depending on the date they were drawn.
The Russians have been slyly and more or less quietly taking over a couple of parts of Georgia for the past ten years. The parts the Russkis have been taking over are Ossetia and Abkhazia, slivers so small that they're hard to find even on real world maps unless you blow them up real big. Blow them up with a magnifying glass I mean, not blow them up with the hydrogen bomb or two that would easily suffice for either of them.
Well, for the past couple of months the Russkis have been secretly building up a little pile of armies near Georgia, and all the while they have been patiently giving the Ossetians some surplus guns and rockets and stuff to shoot at the Georgians with. This finally got to be like way too much for the Georgians, so they decided to kick some serious Ossetian ass with a little pile of armies that they have been patiently building up.
So that brought us up to 8/8/08, a day so auspicious to the Chinese that they moved the start of the Olympics to coincide with it. Well, it turned out that 8/8/08 was also special for the Russkis, for that was the day, when the whole world was looking at folks singing and dancing and swimming and acrobatting and such in China, when they decided to start their pile of armies toward where it could kick some serious Georgian ass, something they proceeded to do while the smiling president of the Russkis was the Olympic swimmers along with the smiling president of the North Americans and the smiling presidents of the Australians and the Africans and the Europeans.
Now you can imagine the history and state of the game. Russkis tickle Ossetians. Ossetians kick Georgian ass. Georgians kick Ossetian ass with their little pile of armies. Russians kick Georgian ass with their bigger pile of armies. Ukrainians, who have a pretty big little pile of armies of their own, warn Russians that they will not permit Russia to kick Georgian ass with their navy. And the Ukrainians can do this because the Russian navy in the Black Sea is all based at a port which is sort of controlled by Ukraine. Who thinks that kind of shit up? The designers of the Risk game would never have been so stupid or careless as to put one country's navy port in a whole other country, if there were navies in the Risk Game that is.
So, it's mid August and the great Risk game is underway just like in the old days. No one knows whether the Russians will be a bit peeved and decide to kick serious Ukrainian ass with the moderately big pile of armies that they haven't been using to "adjust" the set of Georgian buttocks. And no one knows whether the folks who have a middle sized pile of armies in Europe or the folks who have a big pile of armies in North America will decide whether now is the time to risk it all.
And don't even think about what the folks who have the great big pile of armies in China are thinking after seeing the Russkis do a great big number two all over the Olympic moment they've been looking forward to for ten years. Even like a million years ago the Greeks were courteous enough to kick no ass and do no number twos on one another during the Olympics. "Thou shalt kick no ass during the Olympics" is like one of the oldest international laws ever invented, right after "Thou shalt not bogart another king's main squeeze until after you stick a sword in his gut" and "Thou shalt not make like mincemeat out of another king's ambassadors and then get cute and send them back to him baked in a pie."
But I have digressed. We were talking about Ukraine and Middle East and Ural and Afghanistan on the Risk board, the equivalents of Ukraine and Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia and Azerbaijan and Russia and Turkey and Iran and Iraq and a whole bunch of other little countries on the world map with all its pretty colors and neat borders.
Did I mention that after August comes the Fall and then the cold Winter. And a middle sized oil pipeline goes through Georgia while a lot of big honking oil and gas pipelines go through Ukraine. Oh, and did I also mention that Risk was a great game for it's day but it was already out of date even in the 1950's and 1960's. By then an even better game had been invented, a game that Matthew Broderick selected when he hacked into the big defense computer during that movie, a game called Global Thermonuclear War.
But surely nobody in the real world would play that game. We're far too civilized in this day and age for war games in the real world.
We learned, for instance, that Australia was the best continent to control because there was only the one entry point from Siam to Indonesia. The player who ended up in control of Australia after the initial war of all against all was almost always the eventual winner if he controlled himself and simply patiently built up a super massive army in Siam, fighting only enough to conquer either China or India each turn to get a risk card and then leaving one sacrificial army in that country for another player to take to get his risk card.
While the struggle for Australia was going on another struggle would be going on for South America, which was the consolation prize since it had only two entry points to defend.
The two or three or four players who found themselves driven out of both Australia and South America had to fight and exhaust themselves uselessly over North America, impossible to defend with its three entry points. Or else they had to retreat to the out of the way places like Siberia and Yakutsk or South Africa and Madagascar to play a waiting game of slowly building ever larger armies defending useless territories that no one else would have reason to attack.
Then things would settle down to a war of nerves as armies piled ever higher and the players with Australia and South America began slow inevitable expansions, conquering one country at a time until the stalemate cracked open when one of them decided he had the means to try to take and hold North America, or Asia or Africa. That's when Ukraine and Middle East started to come into play. Ukraine was key to holding Europe or defending Asia while Middle East was key to holding Asia or Defending Europe. Many more Risk armies fought and died in Ukraine and Middle East than ever died in any ten of the other countries on the board except on those rare and usually insane occasions when someone decided to try to crack Australia with a massive death or glory attack involving all his forces. But usually it came down to Ukraine or the Middle East as either the tinderbox or the site of the armageddon battle that had to happen before it was time for lunch or supper.
Just like now, only in the real world, for yesterday Ukraine told the Russkis that it would not permit the Russian fleet at Sebastopol to leave port to attack Georgia, a country so small that it isn't even on the Risk map. Georgia is an undefined part of either Ukraine or Middle East depending on how you squint your eyes when you look at the Risk map. Even on the real world map Georgia is so tiny a country that its hard to find. A little tiny sliver South of Russia, East of Azerbaijan and North of Turkey and Armenia, a sliver that is drawn differently on different maps depending on the date they were drawn.
The Russians have been slyly and more or less quietly taking over a couple of parts of Georgia for the past ten years. The parts the Russkis have been taking over are Ossetia and Abkhazia, slivers so small that they're hard to find even on real world maps unless you blow them up real big. Blow them up with a magnifying glass I mean, not blow them up with the hydrogen bomb or two that would easily suffice for either of them.
Well, for the past couple of months the Russkis have been secretly building up a little pile of armies near Georgia, and all the while they have been patiently giving the Ossetians some surplus guns and rockets and stuff to shoot at the Georgians with. This finally got to be like way too much for the Georgians, so they decided to kick some serious Ossetian ass with a little pile of armies that they have been patiently building up.
So that brought us up to 8/8/08, a day so auspicious to the Chinese that they moved the start of the Olympics to coincide with it. Well, it turned out that 8/8/08 was also special for the Russkis, for that was the day, when the whole world was looking at folks singing and dancing and swimming and acrobatting and such in China, when they decided to start their pile of armies toward where it could kick some serious Georgian ass, something they proceeded to do while the smiling president of the Russkis was the Olympic swimmers along with the smiling president of the North Americans and the smiling presidents of the Australians and the Africans and the Europeans.
Now you can imagine the history and state of the game. Russkis tickle Ossetians. Ossetians kick Georgian ass. Georgians kick Ossetian ass with their little pile of armies. Russians kick Georgian ass with their bigger pile of armies. Ukrainians, who have a pretty big little pile of armies of their own, warn Russians that they will not permit Russia to kick Georgian ass with their navy. And the Ukrainians can do this because the Russian navy in the Black Sea is all based at a port which is sort of controlled by Ukraine. Who thinks that kind of shit up? The designers of the Risk game would never have been so stupid or careless as to put one country's navy port in a whole other country, if there were navies in the Risk Game that is.
So, it's mid August and the great Risk game is underway just like in the old days. No one knows whether the Russians will be a bit peeved and decide to kick serious Ukrainian ass with the moderately big pile of armies that they haven't been using to "adjust" the set of Georgian buttocks. And no one knows whether the folks who have a middle sized pile of armies in Europe or the folks who have a big pile of armies in North America will decide whether now is the time to risk it all.
And don't even think about what the folks who have the great big pile of armies in China are thinking after seeing the Russkis do a great big number two all over the Olympic moment they've been looking forward to for ten years. Even like a million years ago the Greeks were courteous enough to kick no ass and do no number twos on one another during the Olympics. "Thou shalt kick no ass during the Olympics" is like one of the oldest international laws ever invented, right after "Thou shalt not bogart another king's main squeeze until after you stick a sword in his gut" and "Thou shalt not make like mincemeat out of another king's ambassadors and then get cute and send them back to him baked in a pie."
But I have digressed. We were talking about Ukraine and Middle East and Ural and Afghanistan on the Risk board, the equivalents of Ukraine and Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia and Azerbaijan and Russia and Turkey and Iran and Iraq and a whole bunch of other little countries on the world map with all its pretty colors and neat borders.
Did I mention that after August comes the Fall and then the cold Winter. And a middle sized oil pipeline goes through Georgia while a lot of big honking oil and gas pipelines go through Ukraine. Oh, and did I also mention that Risk was a great game for it's day but it was already out of date even in the 1950's and 1960's. By then an even better game had been invented, a game that Matthew Broderick selected when he hacked into the big defense computer during that movie, a game called Global Thermonuclear War.
But surely nobody in the real world would play that game. We're far too civilized in this day and age for war games in the real world.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Liars and takers and hypocrites, Oh my!
Deroy Murdock over at National Review (link below) has a good column on offshore drilling for oil. He makes a lot of sense throughout but the quote that really got me to thinking was
"Currently mired in red tape, Chevron’s Destin Dome field off Florida could produce within
four years. Southern California deposits could yield within five to ten years. Besides, as
Confucius said: “The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now.”"
With gas prices up near four dollars a gallon even Barack Obama is now saying that maybe he would consider letting the oil companies drill off the coasts as long as he also gets plenty of money to spread around to the folks who are researching energy sources too improbable to attract private investment. Obama is lying through his teeth of course. He has no more desire for the production of more oil than his supporters at Greenpeace and MoveOn.org do. Obama and his envirolooney supporters want energy prices high, they even want them higher than they are now. Ten dollars a gallon for gas would suit him and them fine - but not if it's going to cost him the election. So he's lying about this the same way he lied about sitting in that racist church for 20 years without ever once listening to a sermon.
But this is not to say that Obama is the only one lying about offshore drilling. President Bush is doing some mighty outrageous lying himself, and he's also doing some unbelievably hypocritical complaining about congress. President Bush has had seven years in office to do something about pressuring congress to allow offshore drilling and to allow drilling up in Alaska but he has done precisely nothing. Why he has done nothing is a very good question. The best explanation I can come up with is that he wanted oil prices higher than they were a few years ago because he was taking big satchels full of cash from his ten gallon hat wearing Texas oil buddies and taking even bigger satchels of cash from his keffiyeh wearing Saudi oil buddies. But I may be wrong. Whatever - the simple fact is that he has done nothing, nothing, about encouraging the development of new supplies of oil in this country until this year. If he had done something some of that oil might be flowing right now. He may want to allow drilling now, but he didn't want to allow drilling then when he could have made a difference.
As for John McCain, I'm not so sure he's a liar on this particular issue even though I think he's a world class in our faces liar on the immigration issue. But he certainly is being a major league hypocrite when he talks about offshore drilling now. He's been in the Senate for a couple of decades, but never before has he pushed hard for drilling offshore and in Alaska. Yet he's supposed to be a maverick with exceptionally well developed cojones according to both the English and the Spanish language media and he's certainly no coward. So I doubt he would have been quiet about the utter stupidity of not letting companies drill where the oil is if he really wanted to fight over the issue. He was, for instance, quite willing to put his cojones in a wringer big time when he fought very hard to keep the borders unguarded and to give amnesty, free education, free health care, welfare and citizenship to however many millions and tens of millions of people who can manage to sneak into the country.
All that said, Deroy Murdock is right in most of what he wrote, and Confucius was certainly right when he wrote that, "The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now.”
We need to do research on other forms of energy production, but we also need to recognize that it's going to be decades before we are able to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. So it's going to gag me big time but I may end up having to vote for McCain despite how angry he has me about illegal immigration. At least he hasn't been actively fighting against drilling for new oil all these years, as Obama and the Democrats have, and at least he understands that having gas and heating oil run up to ten dollar a gallon in the next few years would not be a good thing, as Obama and the Democrats in congress don't.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTA1MTBlMjdhMjM4NWU4NDczN2IxM2RkNGExNWRjMDM=
"Currently mired in red tape, Chevron’s Destin Dome field off Florida could produce within
four years. Southern California deposits could yield within five to ten years. Besides, as
Confucius said: “The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now.”"
With gas prices up near four dollars a gallon even Barack Obama is now saying that maybe he would consider letting the oil companies drill off the coasts as long as he also gets plenty of money to spread around to the folks who are researching energy sources too improbable to attract private investment. Obama is lying through his teeth of course. He has no more desire for the production of more oil than his supporters at Greenpeace and MoveOn.org do. Obama and his envirolooney supporters want energy prices high, they even want them higher than they are now. Ten dollars a gallon for gas would suit him and them fine - but not if it's going to cost him the election. So he's lying about this the same way he lied about sitting in that racist church for 20 years without ever once listening to a sermon.
But this is not to say that Obama is the only one lying about offshore drilling. President Bush is doing some mighty outrageous lying himself, and he's also doing some unbelievably hypocritical complaining about congress. President Bush has had seven years in office to do something about pressuring congress to allow offshore drilling and to allow drilling up in Alaska but he has done precisely nothing. Why he has done nothing is a very good question. The best explanation I can come up with is that he wanted oil prices higher than they were a few years ago because he was taking big satchels full of cash from his ten gallon hat wearing Texas oil buddies and taking even bigger satchels of cash from his keffiyeh wearing Saudi oil buddies. But I may be wrong. Whatever - the simple fact is that he has done nothing, nothing, about encouraging the development of new supplies of oil in this country until this year. If he had done something some of that oil might be flowing right now. He may want to allow drilling now, but he didn't want to allow drilling then when he could have made a difference.
As for John McCain, I'm not so sure he's a liar on this particular issue even though I think he's a world class in our faces liar on the immigration issue. But he certainly is being a major league hypocrite when he talks about offshore drilling now. He's been in the Senate for a couple of decades, but never before has he pushed hard for drilling offshore and in Alaska. Yet he's supposed to be a maverick with exceptionally well developed cojones according to both the English and the Spanish language media and he's certainly no coward. So I doubt he would have been quiet about the utter stupidity of not letting companies drill where the oil is if he really wanted to fight over the issue. He was, for instance, quite willing to put his cojones in a wringer big time when he fought very hard to keep the borders unguarded and to give amnesty, free education, free health care, welfare and citizenship to however many millions and tens of millions of people who can manage to sneak into the country.
All that said, Deroy Murdock is right in most of what he wrote, and Confucius was certainly right when he wrote that, "The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now.”
We need to do research on other forms of energy production, but we also need to recognize that it's going to be decades before we are able to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. So it's going to gag me big time but I may end up having to vote for McCain despite how angry he has me about illegal immigration. At least he hasn't been actively fighting against drilling for new oil all these years, as Obama and the Democrats have, and at least he understands that having gas and heating oil run up to ten dollar a gallon in the next few years would not be a good thing, as Obama and the Democrats in congress don't.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTA1MTBlMjdhMjM4NWU4NDczN2IxM2RkNGExNWRjMDM=
Thursday, July 17, 2008
I hope you're enjoying $4.00 Gasoline
I can't understand the talk about why we shouldn't permit drilling for new oil in Alaska and off the coasts because "it will take years to get to market." The very same folks making that argument are also arguing for massive government investments in alternative energy schemes (like wind and solar and tides and such) that will also take years and even decades to get to market.
It's not that I'm against wind and solar and tidal power, it's just that we know oil companies can find and develop oil fields, but we don't yet know how fast those alternative schemes can get off the ground and actually start producing significant energy. Solar power, for instance, still produces less than 1% of US energy needs, and the government has been "investing" in it since Jimmy Carter declared a crash program in 1970 or so.
Jimmy Carter also declared a crash government program to develop fusion power back in 1970 or so, but the believers in big government programs want to forget about that because the net result has been no energy at all.
There are a lot of dim bulbs in the Democratic Party who are addicted to pandering to the Al Gore wing of the so-called environmental movement which really wants us to freeze in the dark for our sins. Having prevented drilling in Alaska and offshore for the past 30 years they now want us to buy an argument that we shouldn't drill because it will take too long to get the oil to market.
Not that the guilt is all on one side here. Much to their shame the Republican Party has allowed this situation to continue to develop while it has held power over for the last 8 years. Republicans are now feeling good about President Bush who the other day lifted the executive order which prevents offshore drilling. But why didn't he do that on his first or his second or his six-hundredth day in office. It's true that the lifting of the executive order is not enough, Congress still has to act to lift the congressional ban on offshore drilling; but why didn't President Bush hold their feet to the fire sooner?
It's not that I'm against wind and solar and tidal power, it's just that we know oil companies can find and develop oil fields, but we don't yet know how fast those alternative schemes can get off the ground and actually start producing significant energy. Solar power, for instance, still produces less than 1% of US energy needs, and the government has been "investing" in it since Jimmy Carter declared a crash program in 1970 or so.
Jimmy Carter also declared a crash government program to develop fusion power back in 1970 or so, but the believers in big government programs want to forget about that because the net result has been no energy at all.
There are a lot of dim bulbs in the Democratic Party who are addicted to pandering to the Al Gore wing of the so-called environmental movement which really wants us to freeze in the dark for our sins. Having prevented drilling in Alaska and offshore for the past 30 years they now want us to buy an argument that we shouldn't drill because it will take too long to get the oil to market.
Not that the guilt is all on one side here. Much to their shame the Republican Party has allowed this situation to continue to develop while it has held power over for the last 8 years. Republicans are now feeling good about President Bush who the other day lifted the executive order which prevents offshore drilling. But why didn't he do that on his first or his second or his six-hundredth day in office. It's true that the lifting of the executive order is not enough, Congress still has to act to lift the congressional ban on offshore drilling; but why didn't President Bush hold their feet to the fire sooner?
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