The Winter of Our Discontent
Read all, but:
The Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse for the biggest increase in military spending and police power since WWII.
Now it is using the market correction (caused largely by its own interventions in the credit industry) to expand state power in the financial area. Half of all Americans pay their mortgages, directly or indirectly, to the federal government. Most older Americans depend, in whole or in part, on money from the government to live. Now, Americans depend on the government to keep house prices up - by subsidizing demand for mortgage backed securities - and to keep up stock and bond prices too - by buying up Wall Street's mistakes. Homeowners want protection from their own bad judgment. Investors want protection from Mr. Market. The old want free medicine. The young want free schooling. The unemployed want jobs and money. The rich want politicians in their pockets. The poor want the rich's money. Investors, homeowners, pensioners - is there anyone left in America who isn't trying to pick someone else's pocket?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
One world? Obama's on a different planet - Los Angeles Times
One world? Obama's on a different planet - Los Angeles Times
These troubling comments were not widely reported in the generally adulatory media coverage given the speech, but they nonetheless deserve intense scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether these glimpses into Obama's thinking will have any impact on the presidential campaign, but clearly they were not casual remarks. This speech, intended to generate the enormous publicity it in fact received, reflects his campaign's carefully calibrated political thinking. Accordingly, there should be no evading the implications of his statements. Consider just the following two examples.
First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."
Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik -- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.
But there are larger implications to Obama's rediscovery of the "one world" concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War's realities.
The successes Obama refers to in his speech -- the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism -- were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by "one-worldism." Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.
Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn't see all these "walls" as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that "walls" exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.
Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side -- our side -- defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively "tearing down walls" with our adversaries.
Throughout the Berlin speech, there were numerous policy pronouncements, all of them hazy and nonspecific, none of them new or different than what Obama has already said during the long American campaign. But the Berlin framework in which he wrapped these ideas for the first time is truly radical for a prospective American president. That he picked a foreign audience is perhaps not surprising, because they could be expected to welcome a less-assertive American view of its role in the world, at least at first glance. Even anti-American Europeans, however, are likely to regret a United States that sees itself as just one more nation in a "united" world.
The best we can hope for is that Obama's rhetoric was simply that, pandering to the audience before him, as politicians so often do. We shall see if this rhetoric follows him back to America, either because he continues to use it or because Sen. John McCain asks voters if this is really what they want from their next president.
John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option."
One world? Obama's on a different planet
The senator's Berlin speech was radical and naive.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA said in an interview the day after his Berlin speech that it "allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer."
If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was
substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was
These troubling comments were not widely reported in the generally adulatory media coverage given the speech, but they nonetheless deserve intense scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether these glimpses into Obama's thinking will have any impact on the presidential campaign, but clearly they were not casual remarks. This speech, intended to generate the enormous publicity it in fact received, reflects his campaign's carefully calibrated political thinking. Accordingly, there should be no evading the implications of his statements. Consider just the following two examples.
First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."
Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik -- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.
But there are larger implications to Obama's rediscovery of the "one world" concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War's realities.
The successes Obama refers to in his speech -- the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism -- were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by "one-worldism." Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.
Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn't see all these "walls" as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that "walls" exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.
Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side -- our side -- defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively "tearing down walls" with our adversaries.
Throughout the Berlin speech, there were numerous policy pronouncements, all of them hazy and nonspecific, none of them new or different than what Obama has already said during the long American campaign. But the Berlin framework in which he wrapped these ideas for the first time is truly radical for a prospective American president. That he picked a foreign audience is perhaps not surprising, because they could be expected to welcome a less-assertive American view of its role in the world, at least at first glance. Even anti-American Europeans, however, are likely to regret a United States that sees itself as just one more nation in a "united" world.
The best we can hope for is that Obama's rhetoric was simply that, pandering to the audience before him, as politicians so often do. We shall see if this rhetoric follows him back to America, either because he continues to use it or because Sen. John McCain asks voters if this is really what they want from their next president.
John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option."
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
R-Squared Energy Blog
R-Squared Energy Blog
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2008/07/lets-talk-about-personal-finance.html
My 9th grade algebra teacher, Mr. Moore, taught us about compound interest. This was one of the most amazing discoveries of my life up to that point, and a definite life-changing event. If I only saved $2 a day, and averaged a paltry 5% of interest, I could accumulate $130,000 by the time I turned 60.
Not a fortune, but then again I am only saving $2 a day and only getting 5%. If somehow I could manage a 10% return, then my $2 a day ended up being $600,000 by the time I turned 60. And if I could manage some real savings - say $100 a month, or $3.33 a day (at the time I was making about $200 a month) - then I would have a million dollars when I turned 60. For the first time in my life, I could see a path to my goal that didn't involve winning the lottery, or otherwise striking it lucky on some long shot.
The power of compound interest has been at the core of my financial planning since that school day in 1981. I knew the ingredients to wealth: 1). Live below your means, so you can save some money. 2). Save the money in a "do not touch" account; 3). Maximize your long-term returns.
Second, I decided that I would never again invest in things that I didn't understand. I still can't tell you exactly what JDS Uniphase does. Something with the Internet. But I don't understand the field well enough to distinguish the pretenders from the contenders.
Third, I vowed that I would always understand the risks. I shun investments that I deem as high-risk, even though I may be giving up substantial rewards. Moderate returns for moderate risk have been better for me than high returns that go along with extreme volatility and an occasional disastrous year.
Finally, I decided to invest only for the long-term. No more market-timing for me. I would evaluate a company based on the fundamentals and my expectations of where trends were heading (e.g., the health care sector looks good as the Baby Boomers age) and invest accordingly.
Those principles have guided my financial planning since then. I have not had a down year since 2000. In hindsight, as a result of my strategic error with the tech stocks, I developed a sound financial plan that has been very good to me. I am probably better off now than had I not taken such big losses in 1999-2000 because of the way it caused me to change the way I invested.
Financial Rules That I Live By
Here are some of the rules I live by:
1. Live within my means. That means that I don't typically make purchases on credit that would take time to pay off. If that means I drive a crappy car - and I have driven crappy cars before - then that's what I do.
2. No credit card debt. While in some cases it may make sense to carry credit card debt (e.g., you got 0% interest for six months), you have to be disciplined. You never want to carry a balance with a > 10% interest rate. You will have a tough time keeping your head above water.
3. Save a minimum of 10% of my income. Over the years, that has probably been closer to 30% for me. I have always maxed out my 401K every year that I worked. I maxed out IRAs, Health Savings Accounts, and Education Savings accounts. Saving that money pre-tax has the added advantage that money that would have gone toward taxes is now accumulating returns.
4. Do my own taxes. Doing your own taxes can give you a lot of insight into how to manage your finances in a way to minimize the take of the tax man. Study all of those deductions, and make sure you are taking the ones you are entitled to take. For most people, doing your own taxes should not be that difficult. Take last year's tax return and start from there. If you get stuck, the IRS has various hotlines to help you out. Even if you can't complete it by yourself, you will learn something by going through the process.
5. Invest in things I understand. For me, that's primarily energy-related, but I also invest in sectors (like health care) that I think are well-positioned for the future.
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2008/07/lets-talk-about-personal-finance.html
My 9th grade algebra teacher, Mr. Moore, taught us about compound interest. This was one of the most amazing discoveries of my life up to that point, and a definite life-changing event. If I only saved $2 a day, and averaged a paltry 5% of interest, I could accumulate $130,000 by the time I turned 60.
Not a fortune, but then again I am only saving $2 a day and only getting 5%. If somehow I could manage a 10% return, then my $2 a day ended up being $600,000 by the time I turned 60. And if I could manage some real savings - say $100 a month, or $3.33 a day (at the time I was making about $200 a month) - then I would have a million dollars when I turned 60. For the first time in my life, I could see a path to my goal that didn't involve winning the lottery, or otherwise striking it lucky on some long shot.
The power of compound interest has been at the core of my financial planning since that school day in 1981. I knew the ingredients to wealth: 1). Live below your means, so you can save some money. 2). Save the money in a "do not touch" account; 3). Maximize your long-term returns.
Second, I decided that I would never again invest in things that I didn't understand. I still can't tell you exactly what JDS Uniphase does. Something with the Internet. But I don't understand the field well enough to distinguish the pretenders from the contenders.
Third, I vowed that I would always understand the risks. I shun investments that I deem as high-risk, even though I may be giving up substantial rewards. Moderate returns for moderate risk have been better for me than high returns that go along with extreme volatility and an occasional disastrous year.
Finally, I decided to invest only for the long-term. No more market-timing for me. I would evaluate a company based on the fundamentals and my expectations of where trends were heading (e.g., the health care sector looks good as the Baby Boomers age) and invest accordingly.
Those principles have guided my financial planning since then. I have not had a down year since 2000. In hindsight, as a result of my strategic error with the tech stocks, I developed a sound financial plan that has been very good to me. I am probably better off now than had I not taken such big losses in 1999-2000 because of the way it caused me to change the way I invested.
Financial Rules That I Live By
Here are some of the rules I live by:
1. Live within my means. That means that I don't typically make purchases on credit that would take time to pay off. If that means I drive a crappy car - and I have driven crappy cars before - then that's what I do.
2. No credit card debt. While in some cases it may make sense to carry credit card debt (e.g., you got 0% interest for six months), you have to be disciplined. You never want to carry a balance with a > 10% interest rate. You will have a tough time keeping your head above water.
3. Save a minimum of 10% of my income. Over the years, that has probably been closer to 30% for me. I have always maxed out my 401K every year that I worked. I maxed out IRAs, Health Savings Accounts, and Education Savings accounts. Saving that money pre-tax has the added advantage that money that would have gone toward taxes is now accumulating returns.
4. Do my own taxes. Doing your own taxes can give you a lot of insight into how to manage your finances in a way to minimize the take of the tax man. Study all of those deductions, and make sure you are taking the ones you are entitled to take. For most people, doing your own taxes should not be that difficult. Take last year's tax return and start from there. If you get stuck, the IRS has various hotlines to help you out. Even if you can't complete it by yourself, you will learn something by going through the process.
5. Invest in things I understand. For me, that's primarily energy-related, but I also invest in sectors (like health care) that I think are well-positioned for the future.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Articles of Health: Germs Do Not Cause Disease, Dis-Ease or Infection
Articles of Health: Germs Do Not Cause Disease, Dis-Ease or Infection: "Germs Do Not Cause Disease, Dis-Ease or Infection
Over the last 25 years I have been researching"
Over the last 25 years I have been researching"
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Grouchy Old Cripple: Still More On Oil
Grouchy Old Cripple: Still More On Oil
Before we look at it, let's review the Dimocrats' plan.
1. No new drilling.
2. No nuclear power plants.
3. No new coal fired plants.
4. Conservation.
We can't conserve our way out of this.
5. Sue OPEC
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's a post for another day.
6. Alternate energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels.
That biofuel thing is really working out, especially with the floods in the Midwest. Some even say that the additional fields cleared for corn planting exacerbated the flood. Corn based ethanol is a deadend and a waste of money. It should be scrapped immediately.
Just an observation on wind power. Last summer I was driving through Palm Springs. It was 115 degrees and the wind was blowing. There were wind turbines all over the place. Hardly any of them were being used. WTF? There had to be a lot of air conditioners going full blast. Were those few wind turbines providing power or was it coming from an evil nuke or coal fired plant? Every time I've passed a wind farm in California most of the turbines were not being used. This was the same time that California was going through brownouts. 'Splain this wind power solution to me again.
6. Poof! PFM!
That's the most important part of their plan.
So what does Jay have to say about drilling.
Would opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other coastal areas to oil drilling have any effect on gasoline prices, as many politicians claim? No, it would not.
OK. Why not?
Let's take ANWR as an example. Many Americans would be surprised to learn that oil produced in ANWR would be sold to Americans at whatever the global price for oil happened to be. There's no "hometown discount" —- U.S. consumers would pay 100 percent of the global price for ANWR oil, just as we do now for oil produced from Alaska, Texas or the Gulf of Mexico.That's because all oil produced in this country goes into the world oil market. All oil sold in this country is bought off the world oil market. So there's only one way that opening ANWR and other areas could lower the price of gasoline here in the United States: It would have to put enough "new oil" on the global market to drive down the price of oil worldwide.
There's supposed to be an awful lot of oil in ANWR.
Furthermore, the EIA predicts that as ANWR oil came on the world market, OPEC would simply reduce its production, thus keeping the global oil supply —- and the global price —- unchanged. So in the end, drilling in the wildlife refuge and offshore areas would have little or no impact on oil prices.
That would mean that we would be sending less of our dollars to the oil ticks in the Middle East. Isn't that a worthwhile goal? Isn't energy independence a worthwhile goal? If we had energy independence we could tell all of the Islamic countries to fuck off.
It sure is a better plan than Poof! PFM!
So what's the solution? There isn't one. The higher gasoline prices we see today are probably permanent and may go higher still. Some energy analysts even believe that world oil production is now peaking and will begin to decline just as global demand has begun to soar. If so, today's historically high petroleum prices will seem like a bargain by 2018.
And the Dimocrats will still be blocking drilling in ANWR and off the coast and waiting for Poof! PFM!
Major automakers understand that a fundamental change is under way —- they're closing plants that make SUVs and pickup trucks and focusing instead on high-mileage cars. And there is strong if early evidence that Americans are making changes in their daily lives that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.
$4 per gallon of gas will do that.
In response to $4 gasoline, for example, we have begun driving fewer miles and turning more often to mass transit. For the first time in history, the number of miles driven on U.S. highways has begun to decline.
Ahhh! Mass transit. A liberal's wet dream.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, Americans drove 11 billion miles fewer in March than they did in March 2007, a decrease of 4.3 percent. (In Georgia, the decline was even sharper, with travel falling 5.8 percent.) At 25 miles per gallon, that means gasoline consumption nationwide dropped 440 million gallons in March.
Hope the folks getting off the highways are those slow buttheads driving in the left lane.
And in the first three months of 2008, transit ridership increased 3.3 percent, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Ohhh! I bet Jay had a tingle go up his leg as he was writing that last sentence.
And now he gets to write joyous things for a liberal.
There are no "outs" —- building more refineries or opening new areas to oil drilling cannot alter the global nature of the changes now under way. Overall, an economy and lifestyle built on cheap oil will be forced to undergo wrenching changes in a fairly short period of time.
And those changes are.....?
In suburban areas, sprawling development patterns will become the real estate version of the Hummer, both relics of an age of cheap energy. The same is true of transportation solutions built around such ideas as double-decking highways.
That dreaded sprawl that liberals hate so much. They think everyone should live in the cities and not on 1/2 acre lots in the suburbs. They love high gas prices 'cause it makes people use mass transit and live in dinky little houses, condos, and apartments in the city. Suburbs are eeee-vil. They're almost as eeee-vil as oil companies and highly paid CEOs.
Rail will become a more economically viable means of moving goods as well as people, the airline industry will contract, and given the importance of oil as an agricultural "input" —- it is used for everything from fertilizer and pesticides to running tractors —- food prices are likely to stay high as well.
Trains good. Actually I like trains. I wouldn't mind seeing high speed passenger rail. If the trip is under a thousand miles I usually drive to avoid the airport hassles and riding in a flying bus. A high speed train would be just the ticket. More legroom. Of course, it would have to be gummint subsidized and the liberals would love that.
Overall, the fundamental forces of supply and demand now in play are simply too powerful to be denied. Until alternative energy sources are developed and scaled up, adaptation, not denial, will be the only rational course.
Holy crap! A liberal talking about supply and demand! Will wonders never cease?
Here's my plan:
1. Drill everywhere.
2. Start extracting oil from shale. At the current price of oil it is now economically viable.
3. Coal liquification. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal.
4. Conserve energy. Yeah. I believe conservation should be a part of a comprehensive energy plan.
5. Build more nuclear and coal fired plants. We're gonna need all the electricity we can get if we go electric cars or hydrogen cars.
6. Continue work on solar power. Right now it is not a viable option.
7. Scrap ethanol from corn.
8. Poof PFM! is not an option.
We are Americans. We can do anything. Unfortunately, we have two Dimocrats running for president and neither of them is willing to do what it takes to make us energy independent.
We're doomed!
Friday, June 20, 2008
Doctrine Embraced by the Heart � Already Not Yet
Doctrine Embraced by the Heart � Already Not Yet: "Doctrine Embraced by the Heart
Posted on June 18, 2008 by Peter Cockrell
“When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth—when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us—when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts—when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for—then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.”
-John Owen, The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated [1655]"
Posted on June 18, 2008 by Peter Cockrell
“When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth—when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us—when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts—when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for—then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.”
-John Owen, The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated [1655]"
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Language Matters: Taking Centre Stage
Language Matters: Taking Centre Stage
AlbetA'S FIRST BIG WELL. bop
AlbetA'S FIRST BIG WELL. bop
Taking Centre Stage
This article appears in the June 2008 Issue of Oilweek magazine.By Peter McKenzie-Brown
At 10 o’clock in the morning of February 13, 1947, a group of dignitaries welcomed in the Canadian oil industry’s modern era. On that day Imperial Oil brought in its Leduc #1 discovery with fanfare, but the event was primarily of local interest. Internationally, only the American oil press paid heed.
The event that brought Alberta’s potential to the attention of the world came a year later. The occasion was the storied blowout at Atlantic Leduc #3. Here is the tale of that extraordinary event as seen through the eyes of Hugh Leiper – the last surviving crewman on the well. Twenty years old and at the beginning of a long and successful career, Leiper was derrickman on the rig as the adventure started.
His father worked in the small refinery at Turner Valley, which hosted Canada’s first major oilfield, so Leiper had lived with the industry from childhood. When the Second World War ended, the Turner Valley field was essentially dead from overproduction. “It had been ruined during the war,” says Leiper. “Jobs in drilling were not plentiful, to say the least. There were two rigs working in Wainright, one or two in Taber, Cantex had two working for California Standard and that was about the extent of the drilling industry at that time. Imperial had a rig of its own, the one they used at Leduc.”
After a year at Calgary’s Mount Royal College, Leiper couldn’t afford to continue studying petroleum technology. He signed on as a roughneck with Cantex in 1946 and moved to a new contractor, General Petroleums, a year later. “We were pretty lucky. We lived in camps. We were getting six bucks a day, but they deducted $1.50 for room and board. The steam rigs we used were cheap to operate; all you needed was water and fuel. But they were hard to tear down and move, and by 1949 they were gone. The new power rigs were faster and more portable.”
As drilling contractor, General Petroleums had already drilled two good wells on a quarter section of John Rebus’s 320-acre farm. Rebus owned freehold oil and gas rights, and fabled Calgary oilman Frank McMahon had snapped up that quarter section for Atlantic Oil Company, which he had founded.
The first two wells – wells that would take 4-5 days to drill today – had each taken a month of drilling. Rather than tear down the steam-powered rig to get ready for #3, Leiper says, “We bolted two huge steel beams across the bottom frame of the substructure, then used hydraulic jacks to put the end of each beam on an athey wagon. Athey wagons were steel contraptions, each with a pair of caterpillar tracks, but with no power. Then we hooked on a cat and lugged the whole rig, completely intact, over to the new location. I’d say that rig weighed 50 ton.”
“We had an old blowout preventer but they were usually clogged with mud and crud,” he says. “We really just put them on for show, and sometimes didn’t put them on at all. They were a joke, but I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Drilling began, but “we pretty soon lost circulation in the well. We pumped down straw, wire mesh, golf balls, chicken feathers – I can still smell those chicken feathers -- and anything else we could to try to regain circulation. Nothing worked.”
One evening Leiper was in the cookhouse listening to an argument among the engineers. Some of them “wanted to drill dry – just pump clear water down past the drill bit. The cuttings would theoretically seal off the lost circulation zone.” After fierce arguments, the dry drillers won the day, and disaster loomed.
It was 3 am, March 8th, 1948. Leiper continues, “A fellow named Cliff Covey and I were in the cellar under the rig thawing out a line that was frozen solid. Then suddenly the mud started flowing up. There was a blurp of mud over the drilling nipple, and I said to Covey ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ We ran west under the rig and a huge master bushing (a rotary table) weighing several hundred pounds went up through the rig and into the air and landed just 20 feet ahead of us.
“There it was. What an awesome sight, the roar of this thing. You couldn’t talk to each other because of the noise. The rig was winterized as they called it in those days – boarded in with tin. The well was blowing huge chunks of shale and they were penetrating that tin just like you’d taken an AK-47 and opened up on it.
“The driller was a guy named Bill Murray, a very capable driller. He dispatched a couple of people to run down as fast as they could to the boiler house and tell them to shut the fire off. Then he and I ran up to the derrick floor and we raised the string of drill pipe as high as we could, chained down the brake on the draw works, and got off the rig.
“The crown of the rig was more than 150 feet off the ground, and when daylight came we could see what we were dealing with. Oil was blowing over the crown. It seems like lunacy today, but we put up some windsocks. We wanted to know when it was safe to fire up the boilers to pump weighted mud into the well. We were wading in oil up to our bellybuttons, carrying these sacks for the drilling mud.”
“This went on for three days,” he says. Then, suddenly, “the flow subsided. It must have got plugged up a bit, naturally.” The crew got the primitive blowout preventer functioning, and things appeared to be looking up. “I’m running one of the steam pumps, and the mud gauge is going down. It looked like we were winning. Then someone came up to me and said ‘I just come by some seismic shot holes on the road and I saw oil and gas coming out of them.’ That’s when it started. That’s when she started cratering, and it gradually got worse and worse.”
“There was two to three feet of snow in the field, and we needed to get water to the rig, we had to get a line strung up to the well to continue killing it. We started setting up a line using five-inch drill pipe in 45-foot lengths, and we were using bull chains to cinch up these thick-walled pipes.”
“I saw Cliff Covey go walking by, and I wondered what he was doing, going back to the rig. Then I saw him waving his arms for us to come. Well, he was just off the farm, and he had gone into an outdoor privy, lit a cigarette and thrown the match down the hole and caught the toilet on fire. We didn’t have anything to fight fire with. We got some gunny sacks and some little hand fire extinguishers from the pumpers. The flames had gone from the toilet to the sump. We’d swat out a bit of fire here and it would jump over there. None of us should have even been in there. It was lunacy. But we were young and didn’t realize the consequences, and eventually we got it out. We always called him Shithouse Covey after that.
“We decided to do a huge cement job on that well. We got 10,000 sacks of cement, put it into the hopper and pumped it down the well. Didn’t fizz a bit on that hole, not one damned bit. It was an awesome sight. The derrick, the equipment, everything but the boilers was collapsing into the crater.”
Eventually, command of the control operation went to Imperial Oil, although Leiper worked at the site until the end, for General Petroleums. “We didn’t get any danger pay,” he recalls. “The Imperial Oil guys got danger pay – they were a mile and a half away at the river. We didn’t get any, and we were right at ground zero.”
Imperial decided to drill two relief wells, but “one of those holes was plagued with fishing jobs and every other problem you can imagine. Then, in early September, the well caught fire. But we had finished a new water line from the North Saskatchewan River to the operations area, and we pumped huge amounts of river water down the relief wells. Finally, I think it was on September 8th, the well came under control. It just went quiet.”
It took six months, two relief wells and the injection of some 700,000 barrels of river water to bring Atlantic #3 under control. As part of the crude oil recovery effort, trucks sucked more than two million barrels of oil from ditches and gathering pools in the area. Oilman Frank McMahon quipped that the well was “producing through a 40-acre choke.”
The size of the blowout and the cleanup operation created a legend. The whole world knew from newsreels and photo features about it. The words “oil” and “Alberta” had become inseparable.
From a technical perspective, much good came from this disaster. Most importantly, the blowout led to new regulation. “I didn’t see any Oil and Gas Conservation Board (ERCB) people in the area when we were fighting that well,” says Leiper. But after the event the board held a public hearing, and later instituted two important regulations.
The first had to do with surface pipe. The well had been cemented to a shallow shale formation which didn’t have a chance of containing the monster reservoir pressures it encountered. Under the new regulations, drillers had to install adequate surface pipe, and it had to be cemented into a “geologically competent formation” – one that would hold in the event of a blowout.
The second had to do with blowout preventers. After Atlantic #3, BOPs had to be adequate, and there had to be two of them, so you had a backup. This was costly to the industry. “The substructure had to be a lot higher after that, so you could fit all this equipment in the cellar,” Leiper observes. “But this changed the whole complexion of the industry. After #3 there was public regulation of the drilling sector. Prior to that, you were on your own.”
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Land of Black Gold: Please God, give us one last shale boom.
Land of Black Gold: Please God, give us one last shale boom.
Please God, give us one last shale boom.
We promise not to miss it this time.
Bakken: CLR, EOG, HES, ERF, WLL, MRO, NOG.
Haynesville: CHK, GDP, HK, GMXR, PVA.
Marcellus: CHK, ATLS, RRC, ATN.
Others: XCO, SM, BEXP, CRK, EAC, XTO.
Service: HP, CRR, WFT, etc.
Bloomberg: Dakota Oil Fields of Saudi-Sized Reserves Make Farmers Drillers.
Quotes:
His new wealth springs from the Bakken formation, a sprawling deposit of high-quality crude beneath the durum wheat fields of North Dakota, Montana and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Bakken may give the U.S. -- the world's biggest importer of oil -- a new domestic energy source at a time when demand from China and India is ratcheting up the global competition for supplies and propelling average U.S. gasoline prices to almost $4 a gallon.
And unlike the tar from Canada's oil sands, Bakken crude needs little refining. Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin, honey-colored film along the sides. It's light - -almost like gasoline -- and sweet, meaning it's low in sulfur.
Best of all, the Bakken could be huge. The U.S. Geological Survey's Leigh Price, a Denver geochemist who died of a heart attack in 2000, estimated that the Bakken might hold a whopping 413 billion barrels. If so, it would dwarf Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the world's biggest field, which has produced about 55 billion barrels.
Thin Deposit
The challenge is getting the oil out. Bakken crude is locked 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) underground in a layer of dolomite, a dense mineral that doesn't surrender oil the way more-porous limestone does. The dolomite band is narrow, too, averaging just 22 feet (7 meters) in North Dakota.
The USGS said in April that the Bakken holds as much as 4.3 billion barrels that can be recovered using today's engineering techniques. That's a fraction of the oil that Price said should be there, but it's still the largest accumulation of crude in the 48 contiguous U.S. states. North Dakota, where Bakken exploration is most intense now, won't become Saudi Arabia unless technology improves.
``The Bakken is the biggest thing in oil in the lower 48 right now,'' says Jim Jarrell, president of Ross Smith Energy Group Ltd., a research firm in Calgary. ``And among the least understood.''
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Moonbattery: Ambitious, Arrogant, and Unscrupulous
Moonbattery: Ambitious, Arrogant, and Unscrupulous
Environmental
Environmental
Ambitious, Arrogant, and Unscrupulous
Charles Krauthammer quotes Czech President Vaclav Klaus:
The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.
Ambitious, arrogant, and unscrupulous — that certainly sums up global warming hoaxers, as Krauthammer confirms:
If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming — infinitely more untested, complex and speculative — is a closed issue.
But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.
For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class — social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies — arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).
Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.
Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but — even better — in the name of Earth itself.
Environmentalism is not about the environment. If the hoaxers really believed that CO2 is harmful, they would be pushing nuclear energy. Profiteers like Al Gore are in it for the money. As for bureaucrats and their lieutenants in the media: the global warming lie promises to deliver absolute power, just as communism did for Stalin and Mao.
Vinegar and Honey: Just Words?
Vinegar and Honey: Just Words?
Have you read any good books, lately? May I suggest a couple that have some pretty enlightening information in them? I wouldn't suggest going out and buying them--the author is probably already pretty well-set--but they are available at your local library.
The books I am suggesting are, "Dreams Of My Father" and "The Audacity Of Hope" by Barack Obama. I find it fascinating how much you can find out about a person in his written word--especially when his words are directed toward one particular group of people, or maybe, those who have the same ideology, whomever they may be.
Who knew, when he wrote them, that they would be read by such a diverse group, many of whom feel quite resentful at the philosophy of a man well on his way to becoming the President, and leader of our country?
Here are a few quotes from the two books:
Dreams Of My Father
"The person who made me proudest of all, though, was [half brother] Roy .. He converted to Islam."
"never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself.."
"The emotion between the races could never be pure..... the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart."
"There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs.
"It remained necessary to prove which side you were on,to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names"
"I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race."
"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."
"That hate hadn't gone away," he wrote, blaming "white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives."
The Audacity Of Hope
"Lolo (Obama's step father) followed a brand of Islam ...."I looked to Lolo for guidance."
"We are no longer just a Christian nation," "We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."
"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
After reading the words, and sensing the passion found in his books, one has to wonder if he will be President of all the People...or just a chosen group, or groups. After all, his words speak for themselves.
"Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions."
~David Hume 1711-1776
Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Have you read any good books, lately? May I suggest a couple that have some pretty enlightening information in them? I wouldn't suggest going out and buying them--the author is probably already pretty well-set--but they are available at your local library.
The books I am suggesting are, "Dreams Of My Father" and "The Audacity Of Hope" by Barack Obama. I find it fascinating how much you can find out about a person in his written word--especially when his words are directed toward one particular group of people, or maybe, those who have the same ideology, whomever they may be.
Who knew, when he wrote them, that they would be read by such a diverse group, many of whom feel quite resentful at the philosophy of a man well on his way to becoming the President, and leader of our country?
Here are a few quotes from the two books:
Dreams Of My Father
"The person who made me proudest of all, though, was [half brother] Roy .. He converted to Islam."
"never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself.."
"The emotion between the races could never be pure..... the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart."
"There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs.
"It remained necessary to prove which side you were on,to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names"
"I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race."
"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."
"That hate hadn't gone away," he wrote, blaming "white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives."
The Audacity Of Hope
"Lolo (Obama's step father) followed a brand of Islam ...."I looked to Lolo for guidance."
"We are no longer just a Christian nation," "We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."
"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
After reading the words, and sensing the passion found in his books, one has to wonder if he will be President of all the People...or just a chosen group, or groups. After all, his words speak for themselves.
"Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions."
~David Hume 1711-1776
Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Saturday, May 10, 2008
321energy :: Gasoline, Diesel, and Oil :: Adam Hamilton
321energy :: Gasoline, Diesel, and Oil :: Adam Hamilton
Excellent piece on refining/Gas Crude/ Diesel interaction on prices
Excellent piece on refining/Gas Crude/ Diesel interaction on prices
Friday, April 25, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
ArthurDeVany.com � Important Things
ArthurDeVany.com � Important Things
Not only does each member of Congress control an average of $5 billion of spending per year, more than Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, she/he also has the power to compel us to act in ways that a corporation cannot. They have to sell something we choose to buy.
Not only does each member of Congress control an average of $5 billion of spending per year, more than Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, she/he also has the power to compel us to act in ways that a corporation cannot. They have to sell something we choose to buy.
Vinegar and Honey: A "Green" House
Vinegar and Honey: A "Green" House
George Bushes house at Crawford.
George Bushes house at Crawford.
Bloomberg.com: Energy
Bloomberg.com: Energy
China, India, Russia and the Middle East for the first time will consume more crude oil than the U.S., burning 20.67 million barrels a day this year, an increase of 4.4 percent, according to the International Energy Agency in Paris. U.S. demand will contract 2 percent to 20.38 million barrels daily, the IEA says.
Economic growth of more than 8 percent in China and India, coupled with increasing car ownership among the countries' combined populations of 2.45 billion people, will more than compensate for falling U.S. demand. Oil use worldwide will increase 2 percent this year because of growth in emerging markets, the Paris-based IEA says.
``Does the U.S. matter anymore?'' said Mike Wittner, head of oil research at Societe Generale SA in London. ``Has the U.S. mattered for the last few years? It is debatable. As far as the oil market is concerned, demand growth is going to be continued to be driven by China and the Middle East.''
Monday, April 21, 2008
Amazon.com: The Lives of Others: Martina Gedeck,Ulrich M�he,Sebastian Koch,Ulrich Tukur,Thomas Thieme,Hans-Uwe Bauer,Volkmar Kleinert,Matthias Brenner
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Iran Thumbs Nose At West Over Oil Demands - Forbes.com
Iran Thumbs Nose At West Over Oil Demands - Forbes.com
Iran Thumbs Nose At West Over Oil Demands
James McKeigue, 04.16.08, 4:06 PM ET
LONDON - Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari taunted America and Britain after the two countries appealed for OPEC to increase supply.
"Why should OPEC try to lower prices? ... Let America and Britain continue demanding," the controversial minister said to journalists outside a conference in Tehran on Wednesday.
His comments came on a day when crude oil futures advanced to yet another high, breaking $115 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling at a record $114.93.
America has tried to isolate Iran by imposing tough sanctions that hamper its oil industry. It is now asking the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, in which Iran is the second-biggest producer, to raise output. It is an irony that cannot be lost on Nozari, though he claimed at the conference that other foreign states were willing to invest in Iran. (See: "Iran's Deal Is A Gas For Malaysia's SKS")
His hard-line stance is echoed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly called for OPEC to stop pricing its oil in dollars and list its products in a basket of currencies. (See: " Black Gold Back In Sight")
America does have allies in OPEC, chiefly the Saudis, but the organization's rhetoric has not changed in the face of a doubling in oil prices since early 2007. Even last month's state visit by George Bush to Saudi Arabia could not persuade OPEC to change its tune.
"Oil supply to the market is enough, and high oil prices are not due to a shortage of crude but rather it is because of the decrease in the dollar's value, shortage of refinery capacity and some political tensions in the world," said OPEC's secretary general, Abdullah Al-Badri.
It is certainly true that the weak dollar makes traders seek shelter in commodities.
"The dollar continues to weaken, and that suggests there might be a little more capital going into the commodities market," said Simon Wardell, an energy analyst with Global Insight. He did not believe that the supply-demand balance had fundamentally changed lately, and thinks prices will likely fall back with demand later this year. (See: " Oil Rises On Dollar's Slide")
As for Nozari, he does not restrict his battles to Western oil consumers. On Wednesday, he poured fuel on the flames of a long-running dispute with Crescent Petroleum of the United Arab Emirates, saying that it would have to pay the price he sets for a new gas deal.
Iran Thumbs Nose At West Over Oil Demands
James McKeigue, 04.16.08, 4:06 PM ET
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"Why should OPEC try to lower prices? ... Let America and Britain continue demanding," the controversial minister said to journalists outside a conference in Tehran on Wednesday.
His comments came on a day when crude oil futures advanced to yet another high, breaking $115 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling at a record $114.93.
America has tried to isolate Iran by imposing tough sanctions that hamper its oil industry. It is now asking the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, in which Iran is the second-biggest producer, to raise output. It is an irony that cannot be lost on Nozari, though he claimed at the conference that other foreign states were willing to invest in Iran. (See: "Iran's Deal Is A Gas For Malaysia's SKS")
His hard-line stance is echoed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly called for OPEC to stop pricing its oil in dollars and list its products in a basket of currencies. (See: " Black Gold Back In Sight")
America does have allies in OPEC, chiefly the Saudis, but the organization's rhetoric has not changed in the face of a doubling in oil prices since early 2007. Even last month's state visit by George Bush to Saudi Arabia could not persuade OPEC to change its tune.
"Oil supply to the market is enough, and high oil prices are not due to a shortage of crude but rather it is because of the decrease in the dollar's value, shortage of refinery capacity and some political tensions in the world," said OPEC's secretary general, Abdullah Al-Badri.
It is certainly true that the weak dollar makes traders seek shelter in commodities.
"The dollar continues to weaken, and that suggests there might be a little more capital going into the commodities market," said Simon Wardell, an energy analyst with Global Insight. He did not believe that the supply-demand balance had fundamentally changed lately, and thinks prices will likely fall back with demand later this year. (See: " Oil Rises On Dollar's Slide")
As for Nozari, he does not restrict his battles to Western oil consumers. On Wednesday, he poured fuel on the flames of a long-running dispute with Crescent Petroleum of the United Arab Emirates, saying that it would have to pay the price he sets for a new gas deal.
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