Category Archives: Speculators

James Howard Kunsler – Say what you like but his writing is pretty good

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OK OK so he got Y@K (oh Y2K) wrong, he is an apoplectic apocalypse dude where everything turns out badly, and he is probably anti-arabic. Nonetheles he writes with a cogent powerful logic. I wish that he had a little bit better appreciation for the power of the Sun however.

This just hot off the presses and then more about him:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50173

Energy Bulletin now includes multimedia and other new features

Published Sep 21 2009 by kunstler.com blog, Archived Sep 21 2009

Original Sin

by James Howard Kunstler

In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.

It’s odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account (“Eight Days,” in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all — namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.

It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to grips with that underlying catastrophe that prolongs the resolution of the still-florid banking crisis — since the federal government is doing everything possible to prop up the failed capital equation of terminal suburbia, and to deny the obsolescence of that version of the American Dream and all the mechanisms for delivering it.

The suburban project was not a conspiracy by the likes of Robert Moses, Walt Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright, and President Eisenhower to produce a living arrangement with no future. It was the emergent, self-organizing result of special circumstances in a particular time and place: post World War Two America, with an immense supply of cheap oil, cheap land, and the industrial capacity to churn out all the necessary components for a car-dependent development pattern. Suburbia was spawned out of a couple of persistent themes in American cultural history: 1.) that cities and city life were no good; 2.) and that the romance of settling the wilderness could be reenacted, at great profit, in all that space beyond the towns and cities. It would be silly to deny the appeal of this arrangement at its inception. By the end of WW II, city life in the popular imagination was reduced to one potently awful image: Ralph Kramden’s apartment in “The Honeymooners” TV show.

blog_honeymooners.jpg

There had to be something better than that. Suburbia was engineered as the antidote to the Kramden’s apartment: country-living-for-everybody. The evacuation of the cities to the new outlands proceeded as relentlessly as the landings at Normandy. It wasn’t until the program was well underway that the self-destructive essence of it became obvious — that every new housing subdivision killed the original rural character of the land, with the result that suburban life quickly became a cartoon of country living in a cartoon of a country house in a cartoon of the country. With additional layer-on-layer of, first, the shopping in the form of highway strips, then malls, along with the office “parks,” these places elaborated themselves into a kind of cancer-of-the-landscape, a chronic and expensive condition that Americans had no choice but to live with, because of the monumental investments they had already made in it. The discontents it produced lent it to psychological depression and dark humor, just as chronic illness does. But we were stuck with it.

Meanwhile, all the machinery of culture and politics made it impossible to construct anything differently. The exquisitely fine-tuned planning-and-zoning codes generated by the thousands of town boards mandated a suburban outcome everywhere — with plenty of help from the DOT traffic engineers, the fire marshals, and the even the mandarins of academia who trained all these professionals. As a natural consequence of all this, the disinvestment in cities — especially the older cities of the industrial heartland — continued remorsely until it seemed as if the Second World War had taken place in St. Louis and Cleveland.

This mode of behavior persisted through the first, short-lived oil scarcity tremors of the 1970s. It was so completely embedded in the popular imagination that it had become the baseline American identity. The suburban project caught a second wind in the 1990s, when the last great non-OPEC oil fields of the North Sea, Alaska, and Siberia nullified the grip of the Islamic cartel for while, and sent the price of oil down to $11-a-barrel. Ironically, it was during those years that the warnings of “peak oil” first circulated beyond the geology offices, and it was clear to anyone who reflected on the connections that the project of suburbia was doomed.

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He goes on to point out that there is no economy LEFT in the US anymore. Besides food, which has been corporatized there is nothing left in the US to make money with. The manufacturing  jobs were sent overseas.

For more about Kunsler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Howard_Kunstler

Background

Kunstler was born in New York City to Jewish parents,[1] who divorced when he was eight.[2] His father was a middleman in the diamond trade.[1] Kunstler spent most of his childhood with his mother and stepfather, a publicist for Broadway shows.[1] While spending summers at a boys’ camp in New Hampshire, he became acquainted with the small town ethos that would later permeate many of his works. In 1966 he graduated from New York City’s High School of Music & Art, and then attended the State University of New York at Brockport where he majored in Theater.

After college Kunstler worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone. In 1975, he began writing books and lecturing full-time. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and was formerly married to the children’s author Jennifer Armstrong.

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You can find out more than you ever really cared to at:

http://kunstler.com/blog/

Interestingly here is the part that Energy Bulletins left out…I wonder why?

Clusterfuck Nation
Comment on Current Events by the Author of “The Long Emergency”

By James Howard Kunstler
on September 21, 2009 6:34 AM


In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.
 It’s odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account (“Eight Days,” in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all — namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.
It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to grips with that underlying catastrophe that prolongs the resolution of the still-florid banking crisis — since the federal government is doing everything possible to prop up the failed capital equation of terminal suburbia, and to deny the obsolescence of that version of the American Dream and all the mechanisms for delivering it.
The suburban project was not a conspiracy

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Levittown will have killed us..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York

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Oil Celebrates 150 Years Of Commercial Production – But it doesn’t look older than when it was 10

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( It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyDie_4dOdU -)

Why is Oil so old and yet it acts like a little child…We start this post with video from the Energy Citizens protest against Cap and Trade…I have a sense of humor but this is just childishly bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMhNZB3Vndw

Courtesy of Wes King

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4s0nzsU1Wg&feature=related )

But I digress here are some really useful Stats about OIL I bet you never knew:

http://www.yelp.com/topic/los-angeles-10-facts-about-oil-and-gas-not-the-kind-that-comes-out-of-your-arse

10 Facts About Oil and Gas… not the kind that comes out of your arse….

Photo of ART L.

08/02/2008 ART “The Permaculturalist” L. says:

http://www.edf.org/art…

With gas prices skyrocketing, public transit ridership is at an all time high. Instead of cutting back on public transportation services, we should be reforming our national transportation system to create more affordable travel options for the whole country.

Check out our 10 Facts About Oil and Gas to learn more.

96 Percent of the world’s transportation energy currently supplied by oil.
$75
Cost of barrel of oil on July 18th, 2007.

$131
Cost of barrel of oil on July 18th, 2008.

9.6 billion
Number of fewer miles Americans drove in May 2008 compared to May 2007.

10.3 billion
Number of trips taken via the U.S. public transportation system in 2007, the highest in 50 years.

44
Percent increase in price of diesel fuel paid by public transit agencies.

20
Percent of America’s public transit agencies that are cutting services due to budget constraints.

46
Percent of population that has no access to public transit.

$6,251
Amount the average two-worker household saves annually by taking public transportation instead of driving a car.

2030
Year by which lifting the ban on offshore drilling may start to impact the price of gas

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm63_M_4BF0&feature=related )

But if you want to see how Oil both behaves childishly and causes trouble all over the world, here is Greg Palasts take on it…

http://www.gregpalast.com/the-best-thing-in-the-world-for-big-oil/

The Best Thing in The World for Big Oil”

…Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Palast on why Saddam had to go.

“This war in Iraq has been the best thing in the world for Big Oil and OPEC. They’ve made the largest profits in the history of the world. The interesting thing about your book is you show how it was all planned from the beginning. The story is like a spy thriller.” — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Listen to RFK and Greg Palast on Iraq, a 20-minute conversation about blood and oil for ‘Ring of Fire’ from Air America.

The following is part of the story referenced in their discussion:

THE JERK: WHY SADDAM HAD TO GO

by Greg Palast
Excerpt from ‘Armed Madhouse‘

The 323-page multi-volume “Options for Iraqi Oil” begins with the expected dungeons-and-dragons warning:

The report is submitted on the understanding that [the State Department] will maintain the contents confidential.

For two years, the State Department (and Defense and the White House) denied there were secret plans for Iraq’s oil. They told us so in writing. That was the first indication the plan existed. Proving that, and getting a copy, became the near-to-pathologic obsession of our team.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqCtbEGcBBA&feature=related )
Cutting to the Chase several paragraph’s down the page and much intrigue and much spilled ink:

In the sanitary words of the Council on Foreign Relations’ report (written up by Jaffe herself), Saddam’s problem was that he was a “swinger”:

Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability
to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential in-
fluence over the price of oil. Iraq has become a key
“swing” producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S.
government.

Now hold on a minute: Why is our government in a “difficult” position if Iraq is a “swing producer” of oil?

The answer was that Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week, without notice, the man in the moustache suddenly announces he’s going to “support the Palestinian intifada” and cuts off all oil shipments. The result: Worldwide oil prices jump up. The next week, Saddam forgets about the Palestinians and pumps to the maximum allowed under the Oil-for-Food Program. The result: Oil prices suddenly dive-bomb. Up, down, up, down. Saddam was out of control.

“Control is what it’s all about,” one oilman told me. “It’s not about getting the oil, it’s about controlling oil’s price.”

So, within days of Bush’s election in November 2000, the James Baker Institute issued this warning:

In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected
events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived
supply risks. Such a market increases the potential lever-
age of an otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq…

I met with Falah Aljibury, an advisor to Goldman Sachs, the Baker/CFR group and, I discovered, host to the State Department’s invasion planning meetings in February 2001. The Iraqi-born industry man put it this way: “Iraq is not stable, a wild card.” Saddam cuts production, or suddenly boosts it, playing games with the U.N. over the Oil-for-Food Program. The tinpot despot was, almost alone, setting the weekly world price of oil and Big Oil did not care for that. In the CFR’s sober language:

Saddam is a “destabilizing influence… to the flow of oil
to international markets from the Middle East.”

With Saddam out of control, jerking markets up and down, the price of controlling the price was getting just too high. Saddam drove the oil boys bonkers. For example, Saddam’s games pushed the State Department, disastrously, to launch, in April 2002, a coup d’etat in Venezuela.

This could not stand. Saddam delighted in playing cat-and-mouse with the USA and our oil majors. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t playing with mice, but a much bigger and unforgiving breed of roden

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The original is not so bad either

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbsHOQmKhps )
I mean if you really want to set the world on fire:

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/discovery-news-2009-cool-jobs-burn-boss.html

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He Was Shootin At Some Food And Up Came Some Bubbling Crude

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkOGM6gHvao

Oil that is, Texas Gold….Hmmm maybe like population bustin, human cancer makin, pollutin the atmosphere…dead plants and animals from the past black gunk.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/after-150-years-whither-oil/

2009-08-27 T00:52:03-04:00″ Updated: 12:52 am

After 150 Years, Whither Oil?

By Jad Mouawad

Drake Well

The Associated Press A replica of the well and tower stand over the site in Titusville, Pa., where Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in 1859.

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the first oil well drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania by “Colonel” Edwin Drake. The commodity would prove essential to the development of modern societies, enabling communications, travel and trade on a global scale.

But its central role is now facing unprecedented challenges.

Governments are concerned about the need for energy security and reliable supplies. The threat of climate change requires shifting away from fossil fuels that currently dominate the world’s energy mix. And fears of “peak oil” — the notion that half the world’s reserves have been pumped and that global production is now on a slow path of decline — have gained followers as prices have soared.

How much longer will the “Oil Age” last?

In our own opinion page on Monday, Michael Lynch, an oil consultant, suggested that the notion of peak oil amounted to uninformed fear-mongering, and that it ignored the realities of the modern oil industry. The bottom line, Mr. Lynch argued, is that the world is not about to run out of oil and that new exploration and drilling technologies continue to expand the pool of global reserves

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http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=20230

 

Insights:  Energy and Environment

150 Years of Commercial Petroleum

One hundred and fifty years since the discovery of oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, it is time to reflect on what are the next steps towards energy independence.

 

 

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

by Gal Luft

One hundred and fifty years ago, give or take a few days, in the sleepy lumber town of Titusville, Pa., “Colonel” Edwin Drake was persistently hammering a pipe into the ground in search of a replacement for depleting whale oil as a fuel for lamps. At a depth of 69 feet below ground he finally struck oil, and the world changed forever. Over a century and a half his 25 barrels per day well would give rise to a global industry of 85 million barrels per day, making oil the world’s most strategic commodity, one that supplies 40 percent of the world’s energy.

Just like in Drake’s own life — he died two decades later penniless — oil has been both a curse and a blessing for humanity. It has been a driver of seminal events and a backdrop behind great powers’ foreign policy. During World War I, “the Allies had floated to victory upon a wave of oil,” as the British statesman Lord Curzon noted. The post-war contention between Turkey and Britain in the early 1920s over Iraq’s oil-rich Mosul, Imperial Japan’s expansionist policy of the 1930s that led to a four-year war in the Pacific, Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Russia, America’s repeated military interventions in the Middle East and the “New Great Game” currently taking place in Central Asia have all been tied to oil dependence.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203706604574370511700484236.html

Why Oil Still Has a Future

By DANIEL YERGIN

( :} This is an excerpt from a much longer piece…the first paragraph was …titusville blah blah)

Why this debate about the single most important source of energy—and a very convenient one—that provides 40% of the world’s total energy? There are the traditional concerns—energy security, diversification, political risk, and the potential for conflict among nations over resources. The huge shifts in global income flows raise anxieties about the possible impact on the global balance of power. Some worry that physical supply will run out, although examination of the world’s resource base—including a new analysis of over 800 oil fields—shows ample physical resources below ground. The politics above ground is a separate question.

But two new factors are now fueling the debate. One is the way in which oil has taken on a second identity. It is no longer only a physical commodity. It has also become a financial asset, along with stocks, bonds, currencies and the rest of the world’s financial portfolio. The resulting price volatility—from less than $40 in 2004, to as high as $147.27 in July 2008, back down to $32.40 in December 2008, and now back over $70—has enormous consequences, and not only at the gas station and in terms of public anger. It makes it much more difficult to plan future energy investments, whether in oil and gas or in renewable and alternative fuels. And it can have enormous economic impact; Detroit was sent reeling by what happened at the gas pump in 2007 and 2008 even before the credit crisis. Such volatility can fuel future recessions and inflation

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Happy Birthday To Oil, Happy Birthday To Oil, Happy Birthday To OOOOOOil

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Happy birthday to you…You belooooong in a zoo. Actually you made Zoos absolutely necessary as ARKS for the species that our use of oil has driven either to extinction or near extinction.

 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/oilat150/

Wired Science News for Your Neurons

Happy 150th, Oil! So Long, and Thanks for Modern Civilization

 

  • By Alexis Madrigal Email Author
  • August 27, 2009  |
  • 2:39 pm  |
  • Categories: Energy

shootingthewell

One hundred and fifty years ago on Aug. 27, Colonel Edwin L. Drake sunk the very first commercial well that produced flowing petroleum.

The discovery that large amounts of oil could be found underground marked the beginning of a time during which this convenient fossil fuel became America’s dominant energy source.

But what began 150 years ago won’t last another 150 years — or even another 50. The era of cheap oil is ending, and with another energy transition upon us, we’ve got to scavenge all the lessons we can from its remarkable history.

“I would see this as less of an anniversary to note for celebration and more of an anniversary to note how far we’ve come and the serious moment that we’re at right now,” said Brian Black, an energy historian at Pennsylvania State University and and author of the book Petrolia. “Energy transitions happen and I argue that we’re in one right now and that we need to aggressively look to the future to what’s going to happen after petroleum.”

When Drake and others sunk their wells, there were no cars, no plastics, no chemical industry. Water power was the dominant industrial energy source. Steam engines burning coal were on the rise, but the nation’s energy system — unlike Great Britain’s — still used fossil fuels sparingly. The original role for oil was as an illuminant, not a motor fuel, which would come decades later.

Before the 1860s, petroleum was a well-known curiosity. People collected it with blankets or skimmed it off naturally occurring oil seeps. Occasionally they drank some of it as a medicine or rubbed it on aching joints.

Some people had the bright idea of distilling it to make fuel for lamps, but it was easier to get lamp fuel from pig fat or whale oil or converted coal. Without a steady supply, there was no point in developing a whole system and infrastructure dedicated to petroleum.

Nonetheless, some Yankee capitalists from Connecticut were convinced that oil could be found in the ground and exploited. They recruited “Colonel” Edwin Drake, who was not a Colonel at all, mostly because he was charming and unemployed. He, in turn, found someone skilled in the art of drilling, or what passed for it in those days.

Drake and his sidekick “Uncle Billy” Smith started looking underground for oil in the spring of ‘59. They used a heavy metal tip attached to a rope, sending it plummeting down the borehole like a ram to break up the rock. It was slow going.

On Aug. 27, 1859, at 69 feet of depth, Drake and Smith hit oil. It was a big deal, but the Civil War stalled the immediate development of the rock oil industry.

“When the discovery happened, the few people who were there and not involved in the war, went around and bought all the property they could and had outside investors come in,” Black said. “But the real heyday of the development happened from 1864-1870. It’s that 11-year period when the little river valley was the world’s leading supplier of oil.”

derrickforest

The “little river valley” in western Pennsylvania earned the nickname Petrolia. Centered in the Oil Creek valley about one hundred miles north of Pittsburgh, the wells of Pithole, Titusville and Oil City pumped 56 million barrels of oil out of the ground from 1859 to 1873.

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Though there is some question about whether it was the first well in the world or even in the US:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=whither-the-oil-age-150-years-of-bl-2009-08-27 

And let's get the record straight. The Drake well was not
the first oil well in the U.S. Historical geologic research data
my father paid for circa 1979 pegged a well outside Oneida Tenn.
as the first producing oil well in the U.S. It preceeded the
Drake Well by a couple of decades or more (I believe the well
was struck around 1819 but I am going from memory as I read the survey
a long time ago). Unfortunately it was deep in mountainous terrain
making it nearly impossible to commercialize. Plus there wasn't
much of a use for oil yet. The well was accidental - they were actually
after water. The survey mentioned the Drake well as being considered
the first viable commerical well. But the Drake well definitely was
not the first oil well in the U.S. Dad commissioned the survey because
of a good oil producing lease on the mountain that over looks
Huntsville Tenn. In fact, the land was leased from Bobby York - one of
the grandsons of Alvin York. Yes, that Alvin York, a.k.a. "Seargent York"
 of WWI fame.

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Even then there were people who thought that the mass consumption of oil would cause big problems:

http://www.enotes.com/earth-science/arrhenius-svante-august

Arrhenius, Svante August (1859-1927)

Swedish chemist

Svante August Arrhenius was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on the theory of electrolytic dissociation, a theory that had won the lowest possible passing grade for his Ph.D. two decades earlier. Arrhenius’s work with chemistry was often closely tied to the science of physics, so much so that the Nobel committee was not sure in which of the two fields to make the 1903 award. In fact, Arrhenius is regarded as one of the founders of physical chemistry—the field of science in which physical laws are used to explain chemical phenomena. In the last decades of his life Arrhenius became interested in theories of the origin of life on Earth, arguing that life had arrived on our planet by means of spores blown through space from other inhabited worlds. He was also one of the first scientists to study the heat-trapping ability of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in a phenomenon now known as the greenhouse effect.

Arrhenius was born on February 19, 1859, in Vik (also known as Wik or Wijk), in the district of Kalmar, Sweden. His mother was the former Carolina Thunberg, and his father was Svante Gustaf Arrhenius, a land surveyor and overseer at the castle of Vik on Lake Mälaren, near Uppsala. Young Svante gave evidence of his intellectual brilliance at an early age. He taught himself to read by the age of three and learned to do arithmetic by watching his father keep books for the estate of which he was in charge. Arrhenius began school at the age of eight, when he entered the fifth-grade class at the Cathedral School in Uppsala. After graduating in 1876, Arrhenius enrolled at the University of Uppsala.

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Yahoo Attacks The Illinois State Fair – Well not really but my Yahoo account was attacked

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The reason this Post is so late in the day is because I opened my web browser today and it showed that I had 35 messages waiting for me. Someone had unleashed a worm on my address book and it was busy sending all my friends spam. Some of it dangerous spam. I was mortified. I spent over 2 hours checking to make sure it was originating on my computer. People sent some of it back to me so I could see what the heck was spewing out of my account. Then in consultation with my computer expert Afredo I determined that just changing my email password could halt the attack…So I did and it ended. I had to blow off lunch with David Lasley, Dave Fuchs and the Sangamon County Democrats just to get to here…Damnit.

There were some things that I saw at the Illinois State Fair that I did not really care for. One of those things was the prominence of Biofuel in both of  Governor Pat Quinn’s tents. We all know that biofuel, especially ones made from foods, distract people from getting rid of the internal combustion engine. It also drives up food prices so this:

fairs4.jpg

and this:

fairs81.jpg

were NOT appreciated.

Though the latest craze in biofuels is watermellons that are farm waste:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/26/watermelon-fuel.html

Watermelon Juice: The New Fuel?

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Fill 'er Up

Fill ‘er Up | Discovery News Video

Aug. 26, 2009 — A staple of backyard barbecues and summer time snacks, watermelon is also a promising new source of renewable energy.

According to a new study, leftover watermelons from farms’ harvests could be converted into up to 9.4 million liters (2.5 million gallons) of clean, renewable ethanol fuel every year destined for your car, truck, or airplane’s gas tank.

Agriculturally, watermelon is a peculiar fruit — each year farmers across the country leave between 20 and 40 percent of their crop to rot on the ground. These are the ugly ducklings of the lot; though perfectly fine on the inside, the misshapen or blemished melons simply won’t sell at the grocery store.

“If a crow lands on a melon, takes two pecks at the rind, and then flies away, it’s no good,” Wayne Fish of the United States Department of Agriculture in Lane, Oklahoma said. “I had farmers telling me, ‘I’m leaving one-fifth of my melons on the land. Is there anything I can do with them?'”

Across the United States, he estimated that 360,000 tons of watermelons spoil in fields every year.

Some local growers wondered whether the waste melons could be turned into ethanol, the clean-burning fuel derived from plant sugars. In a series of new experiments published yesterday in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, Fish and a team of researchers showed that they can.

What’s more, watermelon juice may turn out to be the perfect way to optimize industrial-scale production of ethanol from corn, molasses and sugar cane.

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Then there was this. What the hell. This causes Earth Quakes in Texas yet it makes it to the State Fair?

fairs2.jpg

Fracking is Coming to Decatur. People better get ready for it:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526233,00.html

Drilling Eyed as Possible Culprit Behind Texas Earthquakes

Sunday, June 14, 2009

CLEBURNE, Texas  —  The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town’s 140-year history — but not the last.

There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving.

The council’s solution was to hire a geology consultant to try to answer the question on everyone’s mind: Is natural gas drilling — which began in earnest here in 2001 and has brought great prosperity to Cleburne and other towns across North Texas — causing the quakes?

“I think John Q. Public thinks there is a correlation with drilling,” Mayor Ted Reynolds said. “We haven’t had a quake in recorded history, and all the sudden you drill and there are earthquakes.”

At issue is a drilling practice called “fracking,” in which water is injected into the ground at high pressure to fracture the layers of shale and release natural gas trapped in the rock.

There is no consensus among scientists about whether the practice is contributing to the quakes. But such seismic activity was once rare in Texas and seems to be increasing lately, lending support to the theory that drilling is having a destabilizing effect.

On May 16, three small quakes shook Bedford, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth. Two small earthquakes hit nearby Grand Prairie and Irving on Oct. 31, and again on Nov. 1.

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Global Warming And Now Climate Change – The real term is Global Atmospheric Destabilization and Weather Unpredictability Effects

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edit – Oh shoot I forgot it was jam band friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBAasek8NR4

One of the stupid things that I hate the most is the phrase “Global Warming”. It is inaccurate, misleading and a bad marketing ploy by the environmental movement. The realization that something was going very wrong with the planet’s atmosphere really dawned on the Earth Sciences people in the 1970s. Up until then the weather broadly read as global climate had behaved pretty predictably. If there was a lot of volcanic activity the earth cooled. If there was very little sunspot activity the earth cooled. If both happened at the same time well a “tipping point” was reached and an Ice Age was formed.

http://www.iceagemovie.com/

But then something happened that was totally unknown. Sunspot activity (sunspot activity is near zero now – watch out) and volcanism pointed towards a cooling period like during the 1400s (commonly called a “little ice age” when crops failed and the black plague ravaged Europe).  But that did not happen. The world kept warming and scientists scrambled to find the causes. We now know that this continued warming trend was caused by greenhouse gases and the effects have gotten worse. My pet bitch here is that when we realized that the climate was being warmed and that the weather would become unpredictable the “leading lights” in the environmental movement declared that we had to have a simple title for the effect or “people” wouldn’t be able to understand it. The effects were too complex. Now in fact in, no sense recognizing their mistake, they call it Climate Change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

In this divide and conquer world that left the capitalist to stir up pseudo controversies about warming or change without even beginning to address the real problem which is Food and population migrations due to Weather Catastrophes.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmxNpF44n0&feature=related )

So when you see things like:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6554936.html

Texas’ hardest-hit drought area grows

© 2009 The Associated Press

July 30, 2009, 3:02PM

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1auRCameVY&feature=related )

DALLAS — There’s less drought in Texas, but the areas where conditions are worst actually expanded.

The federal drought monitor map released Thursday shows 61 percent of the nation’s most drought-stricken state is under some form of drought. That’s down from about 68 percent last week and 86 percent a year ago.

About 19 percent of Texas is under the most severe level of drought, up slightly from last week and way up from about 3 percent a year ago.

Nearly 25 percent of Texas is under the worst two categories of drought, mostly in south-central Texas

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or

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvp25jA_02jSEcqpsAXUp2_a-NRgD99OGNEG0

Seattle breaks temp record as heat wave continues

By PHUONG LE and RYAN KOST (AP) – 1 day ago

(  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MltrnVOG2s&feature=related )

SEATTLE — Northwesterners more accustomed to rain and cooler climate sought refuge from a heat wave Wednesday, as Seattle recorded the hottest temperature in its history and Portland fell just 1 degree short of its own record-breaker.

The National Weather Service in Seattle recorded 103 degrees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, breaking a previous record of 100 degrees, set in downtown Seattle in 1941 and repeated at the airport in 1994.

Jay Albrecht, a Seattle meteorologist with the service, said it’s the hottest it has been in Seattle since records dating to 1891.

In Oregon, heat records were set in cities across the western half of the state, with Portland topping out at 106 degrees, breaking the old record of 100 for the day but falling 1 degree shy of its all-time record of 107. Portland most recently hit the 107 mark in 1981.

Oregon weather data goes back to the 1850s, although meteorologist Charles Dalton said the 107-degree mark, recorded at the Portland airport, reflects records kept at that site since 1941.

Meteorologist Doug McDonnal in Seattle said the stretch of hot weather has lasted longer than usual. Wednesday was the fifth consecutive day above 85 degrees for Seattle, he said.

Throughout the region, shade, icy treats, ice-cold water, air conditioning units and fans were in high demand.

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or

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/chicago.coldest.july.2.1103959.html

Jul 28, 2009 5:55 am US/Central

Chicago Sees Coldest July In 67 Years

Average Temperature Only 68.9 Degrees

(  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyyDyraBnOU&feature=related )

CHICAGO (CBS)
Have you left your air conditioner in the closet this summer, and worn long pants more often than shorts? If so, you may not be surprised to find out that Chicago is seeing its coldest July in more than 65 years.
The National Weather Service says 2009 has seen the coldest July since the official recording station was moved away from the lakefront in 1942. The average temperature this month in Chicago has been a mere 68.9 degrees.

Even in the years before 1942, when the National Weather Service recorded temperatures at the cooler lakefront, there are only three years that had colder Julys through the 26th.

There have also been far more days than usual with high temperatures less than 80 degrees this year. In 2009, there were 13 days where the temperature did not exceed 80 degrees. Only three Julys in the past 67 years have had more days in Chicago with highs less than 80 – there were 18 such days in 1992, and 14 in 1996 and 2000.

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IN THE SAME YEAR (sorry) then you are seeing the beginnings of something unpleasant. Farmers depend on predictability to farm. No farming no food, no food no us. Now that is a pretty simple concept to understand…Global warming however IS an inconvenient truth.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRRZzQQ6POE&feature=related )

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Bataan Death March Repeated – How desperate is the Nuclear Power Industry to be reborn

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There is a movement afoot in the Philippines to actually fuel a long abandoned Nuclear power plant. It was built but never fueled because nuclear power makes no economic sense. The fuel is too expensive, and creating the fuel is so lethal as to be largely unthinkable. But in this particular case…much like the nukes in California built on earthquake fault zones…the Philippines in general is sooooo close to the water table as to invite the China Syndrome. For those that relate that to a mildly entertaining and scary movie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FxtBJ59Jm8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnDBXGb6Nn8

The reality of the China Syndrome was suppressed at Three Mile Island where at least a 1,000 people died and 1,000s more were sickened in a 5 state region in New England:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmmdh8Xlbvg&feature=related

It was never confronted at Chernobyl where 10s of 1,000s died and 100s of 1000s of people were sickened worldwide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=101OEaksU0s&feature=related

Where unbelievably 3 Nuclear Reactors still operate today…next to a Lake..

So why intheworld would you want to fuel a reactor built in 1976 on an island near the sea in a tropical jungle? Because it cost 2.6 billion $$$ to build (thanks Ferdinand Marco…where do you think his wife got those shoes) and which is still costing the people of the Philippines 155,000 $$$ a day. As the song says, Money Money Money:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCkOmcIl79s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O8gTib5rnw

But let’s start at the beginning, I was 22 in 1976 and working at Powerton, a Com Ed coal fired powerplant in Pekin, IL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant, completed but never fueled, on Bataan Peninsula, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Manila in the Philippines. It is located on a 3.57 square kilometer government reservation at Napot Point in Morong, Bataan. It was the Philippines’ only attempt at building a nuclear power plant.

[edit] History

The Philippine nuclear program started in 1958 with the creation of the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) under Republic Act 2067.[1]

Under a regime of martial law, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in July 1973 announced the decision to build a nuclear power plant.[1] This was in response to the 1973 oil crisis, as the Middle East oil embargo had put a heavy strain on the Philippine economy, and Marcos believed nuclear power to be the solution to meeting the country’s energy demands and decreasing dependence on imported oil.[2]

Construction on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant began in 1976. Following the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States, construction on the BNPP was stopped, and a subsequent safety inquiry into the plant revealed over 4,000 defects.[1] Among the issues raised was that it was built near major earthquake fault lines and close to the then dormant Pinatubo volcano.[2]

By 1984, when the BNPP was nearly complete, its cost had reached $2.3 billion.[2] A Westinghouse light water reactor, it was designed to produce 621 megawatts of electricity.[2]

Marcos was overthrown by the People Power Revolution in 1986. Days after the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the succeeding administration of President Corazon Aquino decided not to operate the plant.[1][3] Among other considerations taken were the strong opposition from Bataan residents and Philippine citizens.[1][3]

The government sued Westinghouse for overpricing and bribery but was ultimately rejected by a United States court.[4]

Debt repayment on the plant became the country’s biggest single obligation, and while successive governments have looked at several proposals to convert the plant into an oil, coal, or gas-fired power station, but all have been deemed less economically attractive in the long term than the construction of new power stations.[2]

Despite never having been commissioned, the plant has remained intact, including the nuclear reactor, and has continued to be maintained.[2] The Philippine government completed paying off its obligations on the plant in April 2007, more than 30 years after construction began.[2]

On January 29, 2008, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes announced that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 8-man team led by Akira Omoto inspected the mothballed Bataan Nuclear power station on rehabilitation prospects. In preparing their report, the IAEA made two primary recommendations. First, the power plant’s status must be thoroughly evaluated by technical inspections and economic evaluations conducted by a committed group of nuclear power experts with experience in preservation management. Second, the IAEA mission advised the Philippines Government on the general requirements for starting its nuclear power programme, stressing that the proper infrastructure, safety standards, and knowledge be implemented.[5] The IAEA’s role did not extend to assessing whether the power plant is usable or not, or how much the plant may cost to rehabilitate.
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What a bad idea.

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Why Is Exelon Going Solar – Could it be that the Nuclear business is about to go South?

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4

I find it interesting that Three Mile Island just refuses to go away. 30 years later all the damage that happened and the deaths (yes deaths) make Nuclear’s future in the North and West bleak. But those hicks (sorry) in the South well that is another matter. But first: The Improbable :-0

http://www.suntimes.com/business/1540009,CST-FIN-solar23.article

Exelon to build largest U.S. urban solar power

plant on Chicago’s South Side

ComEd parent looks to stimulus money for 10-megawatt photovoltaic building near 120th and Peoria in West Pullman

April 23, 2009

BY CHERYL V. JACKSON Staff Reporter

ComEd parent Exelon Corp. plans to build the nation’s largest urban solar power plant on the city’s South Side by year’s end.

The $60 million project is expected to create about 200 temporary construction jobs and 10 to 15 permanent positions at the plant. The project is contingent upon Exelon getting a federal loan guarantee for up to 80 percent of its cost under the federal stimulus package that is doling out money for green jobs and emissions reductions.

A view of a 39-acre plot on the South Side that will be covered in solar panels by Exelon.
(Scott Stewart/Sun-Times)

The planned 10-megawatt solar photovoltaic building would be at an industrial site near 120th and Peoria in the West Pullman neighborhood, Chicago-headquartered Exelon said Wednesday.

The plant’s 32,800 solar panels would convert the sun’s rays into enough electricity to meet the annual energy requirements of 1,200 to 1,500 homes. It would eliminate about 31.2 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions a year, the equivalent of taking more than 2,500 cars off the road or planting more than 3,200 acres of forest, Exelon said.

“This is exactly the type of shovel-ready, community-benefitting project that the Obama administration is touting,” said Thomas O’Neill, senior vice president for new business development at the company’s Exelon Generation.

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Did I mention that Mike Madigan might be looking at allowing the major utillities to get back into generation?

 

Madigan: Electric dereg law may need overhaul

Overhaul might protect consumers, House speaker says

By ADRIANA COLINDRES

THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

Posted Apr 15, 2009 @ 11:40 PM

Last update Apr 16, 2009 @ 06:36 AM

The 1997 law that restructured Illinois’ electric industry has failed to live up to its promise, and it may be time to consider an overhaul to protect consumers from volatile power prices, says House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, has filed a legislative resolution calling on the Illinois Power Agency to study whether to let utility companies regain the authority to run their own power-generating plants.

Such a move would reverse a key part of the 1997 law often referred to as “electric deregulation.” Under that law, utility companies such as Ameren Illinois and Commonwealth Edison stopped generating electricity and became power-delivery companies only. The companies’ power-generating arms were spun off into separate, unregulated entities.

The thinking at the time was that consumers would benefit because they’d be able to shop for power as they shop for other goods and services, looking for the best deal and saving money. But competition never developed in the residential market, and residential customers have seen their bills increase.

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That Mike he is always thinking of us. But this is what they are probably more worried about:

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A393821

 

New revelations about Three Mile Island

disaster raise doubts over nuclear plant safety

The truth behind the meltdown

22 APR 2009  •  by Sue Sturgis

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies.



Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa.
Photo courtesy of Dept. of Health and Human Services

It was April Fool’s Day, 1979—30 years ago this month—when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. Just four days earlier, in the early morning hours of March 28, a relatively minor problem in the plant’s Unit 2 reactor sparked a series of mishaps that led to the meltdown of almost half the uranium fuel and uncontrolled releases of radiation into the air and surrounding Susquehanna River.It was the single worst disaster ever to befall the U.S. nuclear power industry, and Thompson was hired as a health physics technician to go inside the plant and find out how dangerous the situation was. He spent 28 days monitoring radiation releases.

Today, his story about what he witnessed at Three Mile Island is being brought to the public in detail for the first time; and his version of what happened during that time, supported by a growing body of other scientific evidence, contradicts the official U.S. government story that the Three Mile Island accident posed no threat to the public.

“What happened at TMI was a whole lot worse than what has been reported,” Thompson told Facing South. “Hundreds of times worse.”

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All of these articles gooooooooooo on and on about the radioactive iodine that was released being huge, that the total amount of released material was larger yet (nobody mentions it but a lot of it went into the river) and that approximately 450 people died. So I am just going to stitch some articles together. You can read the whole thing if you want:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/03-9

That it happened on April Fools day means that there is a god.

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Anomalies abound

That a lot of people died because of what happened at Three Mile Island, as the Thompsons claim, is definitely not part of the official story. In fact, the commercial nuclear power industry and the government insist that despite the meltdown of almost half of the uranium fuel at TMI, there were only minimal releases of radiation to the environment that harmed no one.

For example, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying group for the U.S. nuclear industry, declares on its website that there have been “no public health or safety consequences from the TMI-2 accident.” The government’s position is the same, reflected in a fact sheet distributed today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency charged with overseeing the U.S. nuclear power industry: TMI, it says, “led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community.” [The watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert offers their take on the NRC factsheet here.]

Those upbeat claims are based on the findings of the Kemeny Commission, a panel assembled by President Jimmy Carter in April 1979 to investigate the TMI disaster. Using release figures presented by Metropolitan Edison and the NRC, the commission calculated that in the month following the disaster there were releases of up to 13 million curies of so-called “noble gases” — considered relatively harmless — but only 13 to 17 curies of iodine-131, a radioactive form of the element that at even moderate exposures causes thyroid cancer. (A curie is a measure of radioactivity, with 1 curie equal to the activity of one gram of radium. For help understanding these and other terms, see the glossary at the end of this piece.)

But the official story that there were no health impacts from the disaster doesn’t jibe with the experiences of people living near TMI. On the contrary, their stories suggest that area residents actually suffered exposure to levels of radiation high enough to cause acute effects — far more than the industry and the government has acknowledged.

Some of their disturbing experiences were collected in the book Three Mile Island: The People’s Testament, which is based on interviews with 250 area residents done between 1979 and 1988 by Katagiri Mitsuru and Aileen M. Smith.

It includes the story of Jean Trimmer, a farmer who lived in Lisburn, Pa. about 10 miles west of TMI. On the evening of March 30, 1979, Trimmer stepped outside on her front porch to fetch her cat when she was hit with a blast of heat and rain. Soon after, her skin became red and itchy as if badly sunburned, a condition known as erythema. About three weeks later, her hair turned white and began falling out. Not long after, she reported, her left kidney “just dried up and disappeared” — an occurrence so strange that her case was presented to a symposium of doctors at the nearby Hershey Medical Center. All of those symptoms are consistent with high-dose radiation exposure.

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But this has been going on for years…please ignore the nutball survivalist website. It is difficult to get Ken Briggs testimony online. Don’t forget we had Jimmie “the nuke” Carter as President>>>

Nuclear Power Plant Hazard Issues

Are you prepared for a nuclear power plant disaster?

3 March 2001, V3    by Kevin Briggs, Director, USDPI

Observations about the Three Mile Island Nuclear Disaster

“Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were hectic days in the emergency preparedness offices of the counties close to Three Mile Island. Officials labored first to prepare 10-mile evacuation plans and then ones covering areas out to 20 miles from the plant. {USDPI comment:  State and local governments, with support from the Federal government and utilities, currently develop plans that include a “plume emergency planning zone” with a radius of only 10 miles from each nuclear power plant. However, government officials recognize that in a catastrophic incident, a 20 mile evacuation radius akin to what was needed with the Chernobyl disaster may be more appropriate.} The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency recommended Friday morning that 10-mile plans be readied. The three counties closest to the nuclear plant already had plans to evacuate their residents — a total of about 25,000 living within 5 miles of the Island. A 10-mile evacuation had never been contemplated. For Kevin Molloy in Dauphin County, extending the evacuation zone meant the involvement of several hospitals — something he had not confronted earlier. There were no hospitals within 5 miles. Late Friday night, PEMA told county officials to develop 20-mile plans. Suddenly, six counties were involved in planning for the evacuation of 650,000 people, 13 hospitals, and a prison.”

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I quote this to say what should have happened immediately. Not 1 day later when the State was notified and not 3 days later when the Feds had been notified. By that time they knew that a good chunk of New York and Pennsylvania were involved so they DID NOTHING.

The damage was done pretty much in the first several hours of the crisis. There is this from 1979 and it is nasty:

http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2008/11/five-versions-of-truth-for-three-mile.html

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp18.html

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/index.html
Deaths after Three Mile Island accident (end of March 1979):

US Center for Health Statistics for Pennsylvania in May 1979. A SUMMARY

US Center for Health Statistics for Pennsylvania in May 1979 showed the following (per thousand live births): 147 infant deaths in February, 141 in March, 166 in April, 198 in May. At the same time the number of births had declined from 13,589 in March 1979 to 13,201 in May. For the United States as whole the rate of infant deaths per 1000 live births had declined 11 percent between March and May 1979…., “the Pennsylvania figures for March and May representing an increase of 57 deaths, which was more than three times the statistically expected normal fluctuation of about +/- 16, and thus unlikely to occur purely by chance in less than one in a thousand instances.”

The US Vital Statistics for Upstate New York in 1979. A SUMMARY

The US Vital Statistics for Upstate New York in 1979 (north, northwest, and northeast of Harrisburg some 100 to 200 miles away and in the direction the wind was blowing when the heaviest releases of radiation were occurring.) According to these studies of wind direction the expectation was that “The figures for the rest of the state outside of New York City should have gone up, while New York City should either have shown no change or an actual decline….the numbers showed: Between March and May, infant deaths outside New York City climbed an amazing 52 percent, by 63 deaths, from 121 to 184. For New York City during the same period the number declined from 166 to 129. Again, these changes were many times as large as normal fluctuations, and the number of births changed relatively little, or by less than 10 percent.

What about the data for Harrisburg? A SUMMARY.

“only Tokuhata had the data for the 5-mile and 10-mile zones around the plant, and there was no way that I would be able to obtain them…Warren L. Prelesnik, executive vice-president in charge of administration Harrisburg Hospital provided a list of the monthly infant deaths, fetal deaths, stillbirths, and live births in the Harrisburg Hospital for the previous two years. In February, March, and April of 1979, there had only been 1 infant death per month. But for each of the two months of May and June, there were 4. Effectively, since the number of births had not only remained nearly the same but had actually declined slightly, this was more than a fourfold increase in the mortality rate, or of the right magnitude required to fit the observed 50 percent rise in the more distant area of upstate New York. From an average of 5.7 per 1000 live births in the three months of February, March, and April — before the releases could have had an appreciable effect — the newborn mortality rate had risen to 24.1 for May and 26.0 for June, an unprecedented summer peak that did not occur the previous year. In fact, for May and June of 1978, there had been a total of only 3 infant deaths, while for the same period in 1979 after the accident, there had been 8.As some of my colleagues with whom I discussed these findings agreed, by themselves the Harrisburg Hospital numbers were of course small, and only marginally significant, representing only about one-third of all the births and deaths in Harrisburg. But taken together with the vastly more significant and independent numbers for all of Pennsylvania, upstate New York, New York City, New Jersey, Maryland, and Ohio, there was now a much greater degree of certainty: It would have been much too much of a coincidence — perhaps less than one in a million — for all these different numbers to show the pattern they did.

The time and cause of death due to radiation. What can be expected. SUMMARY

One of the remaining important questions that had to be checked, however, was the time and cause of death? if the excess deaths were connected with the radioactive iodine released from the plant, then they should be associated with underweight births or immaturity, since damage to the fetal thyroid would slow down the normal rapid growth and development of the baby in the last few months before birth. The development of the lungs, which have to be ready to begin breathing at the moment of birth, is one of the most critical phases of late fetal development. Any developmental slowdown would be most life-threatening if it led to the inability of the tiny air sacs in the lungs to inflate and start supplying the blood with oxygen. Failure of the lungs to function properly would therefore lead to immediate symptoms of respiratory distress, and if efforts to treat the baby should not succeed, it would die in a matter of minutes, hours, or days of respiratory insufficiency or hyaline membrane disease. Thus, one would not expect to find as large an increase in spontaneous miscarriages well before birth as newborn deaths within a short time after birth, since the lungs did not need to start functioning until the baby was born. Also, there should be no significant increase in gross congenital malformations a few months after the accident, since by the time the baby in the mother’s womb had reached the sixth or seventh month of development, all the major organs had already fully developed. Thus, only some six to seven months after the accident would one expect some increase in serious physical malformations, since these infants would have been exposed to radiation in the first three months of development of critical-organ formation.

data from the Harrisburg Hospital supported these expectations

State of Pennsylvania Health Department had discovered a rise in hypothyroidism among newborn babies in areas where the radioactive gases from Three Mile Island had been carried by the winds.

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Now aren’t you glad you know? More tomorrow on Nukes in the South.

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Is Capitalism An Illusion – Have we been deluded for the last 100 years?

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The American public has been told for 100 years that prices are controlled by supply and demand. What if that is not true? The implications for how we treat the rich are enormous. Yet the energy market, one of our largest ever, is pointing to the idea that there is no relation between supply and demand.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29495753/

Oil producers running out of storage space

Glut caused by world slowdown leaves the world awash in crude

NEW YORK – Supertankers that once raced around the world to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for oil are now parked offshore, fully loaded, anchors down, their crews killing time. In the United States, vast storage farms for oil are almost out of room.

As demand for crude has plummeted, the world suddenly finds itself awash in oil that has nowhere to go.

It’s been less than a year since oil prices hit record highs. But now producers and traders are struggling with the new reality: The world wants less oil, not more. And turning off the spigot is about as easy as turning around one of those tankers.

So oil companies and investors are stashing crude, waiting for demand to rise and the bear market to end so they can turn a profit later.

Meanwhile, oil-producing countries such as Iran have pumped millions of barrels of their own crude into idle tankers, effectively taking crude off the market to halt declining prices that are devastating their economies.

Traders have always played a game of store and sell, bringing oil to market when it can fetch the best price. They say this time is different because of how fast the bottom fell out of the oil market.

“Nobody expected this,” said Antoine Halff, an analyst with Newedge. “The majority of people out there thought the market would keep rising to $200, even $250, a barrel. They were tripping over each other to pick a higher forecast.”

Now the strategy is storage. Anyone who can buy cheap oil and store it might be able to sell it at a premium later, when the global economy ramps up again.

The oil tanks that surround Cushing, Okla., in a sprawling network that holds 10 percent of the nation’s oil, have been swelling for months. Exactly how close they are to full is a closely guarded secret, but analysts who cover the industry say Cushing is approaching capacity.

There are other storage tanks in the country with plenty of extra room to take on oil, but Cushing is the delivery point for the oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. So the closer Cushing gets to full, the lower the price of oil goes.

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YET the price of gasoline continues to go up…How is that possible? Prices in Springfield went from $1.75 to current price of $1.99 in a day. This article is a month old BUT:

 http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/16/news/economy/gasoline/index.htm

Gasoline prices continue to rise

Pump prices rose 20 cents since January; above $2 a gallon in three states.

 

By Kenneth Musante, CNNMoney.com staff writer

January 16, 2009: 2:55 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Average gasoline prices rose 1.7 cents Friday, according to a daily survey of gas station credit card swipes.

The price of gas rose to a national average of $1.816 a gallon from $1.799 a day earlier, according to motorist group AAA. Prices were higher than the $1.667 a gallon reported a month ago, but lower than the $3.044 a gallon gas was selling for on the same day last year.

Gas prices have risen for the past three days, according to AAA data, and are nearly 20 cents higher than they were on Jan. 1.

Gas prices initially rose last year, following a resurgence in the price of crude oil, gas’s main ingredient. But as concern about falling demand for oil sent crude prices down more than $6 a barrel this week, the drivers may be in for a decline in gas prices as well.

“The American consumer is still staying home,” said Geoff Sundstrom, fuel price analyst at AAA.

“There’s absolutely no reason why the price of gasoline should be as high as it is,” he said.

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No reason what so ever.

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Gasoline Prices Hit 4 $$$ A Gallon – We are all going to die

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OK I was wrong. I admit it so there. But I have to admit that I never thought the huge Oil Companies nor the Oil Producers nor the Huge Refiners would ever admit that there is absolutely no relationship between supply and demand either in the price of a barrel of oil, or in the price of gasoline, much less admit that there is no relationship BETWEEN THE TWO of them. But they did. So When I said that Oil would hit 120 or 130 $$$ per barrel next summer my thoughts were mainly on gasoline.  Yet in a world finally gone honest for reasons I do not understand…I must change my prediction about Oil and change it to Gasoline. Who knows what the price of Oil will be next Summer but I predict the Price of Gasoline will be over 3$$ a gallon, and easily could be around 4 $$$ a gallon. Boy would I love to be wrong. We should Tax Gasoline out of existence,

But enough about me:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29210445/

First heard here:

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=46258

Crude oil is getting cheaper — so why isn’t gas?

Energy market has turned upside-down amid U.S. recession

updated 4:50 p.m. CT, Sun., Feb. 15, 2009

NEW YORK – Crude oil prices have fallen to new lows for this year. So you’d think gas prices would sink right along with them.

Not so.

On Thursday, for example, crude oil closed just under $34 a barrel, its lowest point for 2009. But the national average price of a gallon of gas rose to $1.95 on the same day, its peak for the year. On Friday gas went a penny higher.

To drivers once again grimacing as they tank up, it sounds like a conspiracy. But it has more to do with an energy market turned upside-down that has left gas cut off from its usual economic moorings.

The price of gas is indeed tied to oil. It’s just a matter of which oil.

The benchmark for crude oil prices is West Texas Intermediate, drilled exactly where you would imagine. That’s the price, set at the New York Mercantile Exchange, that you see quoted on business channels and in the morning paper.

Right now, in an unusual market trend, West Texas crude is selling for much less than inferior grades of crude from other places around the world. A severe economic downturn has left U.S. storage facilities brimming with it, sending prices for the premium crude to five-year lows.

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Please read the entire article it is full of great information. If you ignore the idiocy above about “it depends on which oil you buy”, the fact is that oil storage is nearing its capacity because everyone is “saving” their oil “til the markets rise”. Yet at the same time there is this huge glut of oil, there is near scarcity and rising prices in gasoline. That is because the Refiners are not buying oil and restricting gasoline supplies to increase price. You then see the real wizard in the machine, or the magician behind the curtains, because as gas prices rise consumption already at market lows will fall further. The point: They can not raise gasoline prices fast enough to make money while they are concurrently scaring the bejeezes out of gasoline, diesel and kerasene (manly airlines and the airforce) users. Then there is the question of what to do with all that stored oil. More on that later! This in from Texas where they love their oil (that’s earl to you):

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2009/02/09/daily38.html

Friday, February 13, 2009

Gas prices rising throughout Texas

San Antonio Business Journal

The nation’s refiners are cutting back on the supply of gasoline in the market, leading to a steady increase in gasoline prices throughout the country, according to AAA Texas.

Retail prices nationwide are inching back toward the $2 mark. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline is now at $1.95.

In Texas, the average price of gas is currently $1.83 a gallon, an increase of nearly three cents over a week ago.

In San Antonio, average gas prices are also up three cents this week, to $1.80 a gallon.

“The higher gas prices come at a time when crude oil prices remain very sluggish and the Department of Energy and experts say supplies are abundant,” AAA Texas spokesman Dan Ronan says.

“Oil today has been trading on the NYMEX exchange around $35 a barrel, clearly in the lower range of the $30 to $50 pattern it’s been in for the past several weeks,” he says.

What’s driving higher retail gasoline prices are the reductions in capacity many refiners are taking to address a slow-down in demand for gasoline and the recession, Ronan says.

Americans currently are spending $671 million a day on gasoline. This is down from $1.12 billion spent daily on gasoline during January 2008.

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What set all this market transparency off (hahaha I never thought I would say that about an energy market) you might wonder? Well it has to be the speculators. I have always wondered about this concept “the smartest guys in the room”.  Echoed in the earlier movie, Wall Street, where Gecko says “Greed is Good”. Thieves are not very smart. Think about it. How smart do you have to be to take money from the weak and the helpless. I first heard this phrase applied to the “people” at Enron. But their business was just fraud…plain and simple. They did not make any money they just took other people’s money.  Even the Rich are starting to notice and they hardly ever do that:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gas-week-cents-2303144-county-prices

 

Monday, February 9, 2009

Slowly rising gasoline prices? Forget it

Prices at the pump not finished increasing.

By SERENA MARIA DANIELS

The Orange County Register

Comments 6 | Recommend 1

Orange County gas prices have jumped 10 cents in the past week, a reversal of the trend of slower, more gradual increases.

A gallon of regular unleaded goes for $2.17, up 10 cents since last week, and 27 cents higher than a month ago. Last week and the week previous, prices seemed to be leveling off at $2.07, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California and the Oil Price Information Service.

Prices are still 83 cents less than a year ago, and $2.43 cheaper than the June 19 record of $4.60.

In Los Angeles County, gas goes for $2.18, the Auto Club says.

Orangecountygasprices.com says that the cheapest gas in Orange County can be found for $1.98 at the 76 station at 1201 S. State College Blvd at Ball Road in Anaheim. The most expensive gas is at the Chevron at 26988 Ortega Highway at Del Obispo Street in San Juan Capistrano.

Contact the writer: 714-704-3795 or sdaniels@ocregister.com

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The smartest guys in the room got the ball rolling by creating the housing bubble. But when the big money pulled out of the market well before the crash it had to have “somewhere to go”. So the rocket scientists suggested commodities, in particular Oil. That destabilized what had been an incredibly stable market and the chicanery caused the weak regulatory system to collapse. The see-saws whipped the market and exposed the LIE that was the market justification. What are they going to do with all that oil? Pump it back into the ground, but more likely abandon it. Think about that?>! Yet some people want to live in the nicer world of the 1990s

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http://media.www.dailytoreador.com/media/storage/paper870/news/2009/01/09/News/Local.Gasoline.Prices.Rising.Crude.Oil.Prices.Falling-3582858.shtml

However, he said he would not speculate about the future prices of oil because it could turn into a “guessing game.”

Regular grade unleaded fuel in Amarillo sold for an average of $2.967 per gallon a year ago, according to AAA’s Web site. The same grade of gas was sold Thursday for $1.683 per gallon.

Peter Summers, an assistant professor in the Economics and Geography department, said he thinks most people are taking the increases “in stride.”

“As expensive as oil and gas got last summer, and to see such a huge reversal of that,” Summers said, “not many people were expecting it and maybe people got used to it.”

The increases could be affecting construction around campus, he said, because the increasing prices of petroleum could raise the price of asphalt.

Bolton said he does not feel like lower prices would be a long-term trend, but if prices could stabilize between $2 to $2.50 per gallon, people could afford gas and companies could still profit off gas sales.

The average price for regular grade unleaded fuel was $1.614 in the Austin-San Marcos area and $1.625 in the Dallas area. The national average for regular grade unleaded fuel was $1.762.

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