By Elaine Meinel Supkis
Bush decided it was pointless to replace the oil we ran down this winter. I always thought the SPR was a stupid concept, pumping oil out of the ground only to put it back into the ground again! If we are having "hard times," the plan should be rationed fuel, not pumping in and out, oil that shouldn't be pumped in the first place. A top scientist claims we hit the Hubbert Oil Peak mid December last year. I agree.
Congress is requiring the Bush administration to add almost 300 million barrels to the U.S. emergency oil stockpile, but the White House on Monday did not seek money to buy the crude in its proposed budget for the 2007 spending year sent to Congress.I got this from From the Wilderness.com.They keep up with all the updates concerning the Hubbert Oil Peak. From Princeton, Prof. Deffeyes:In sweeping energy legislation signed into law last year, Congress required the administration to boost capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1 billion barrels from its current 727 million barrels.
In the January 2004 Current Events on this web site, I predicted that world oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2005. In hindsight, that prediction was in error by three weeks. An update using the 2005 data shows that we passed the peak on December 16, 2005.He goes on to note that Saudi Arabia keeps claiming they will up their oil pumping again and again with great fan fare which is then echoed stupidly here in America on TV only the rate of pumping has gone DOWN the last two years there.
No you should know why prices are so high and not coming down! All it took was Saudi Arabia losing 2% of their capacity to change the world from an oil glut situation to an oil deficit situation. The North Sea oil wells are running out rapidly. Over 600 men have died over the years, providing this oil for the rigs have a tendency to collapse when under stressful storms, they blow up or the helicopters transporting people crash, etc. Like coal, the oil we consume often is mixed with blood, metaphorically speaking.
Actually, the oil flowing out of the Middle East swims in oceans of blood and pain!
So what are the policy implications? Numerous critics are claiming that the present world economic situation is a house of cards: built on trade deficits, housing price bubbles, and barely-adequate natural gas supplies. Pulling any one card out from the bottom of the pile might collapse the whole structure.Of course. The Punch and Judy show we watched in DC today on nearly every front including the "I shot the Lawyer but not the trial judge" Cheney was whimsical and unedifying. No one talked about anything important. Everyone patted each other on the back and assured each other, all was well, there is nothing a little tweeking and of course, with solemn faces, promises to stay within some sort of budget, this is so sad.
I was in despair for the last 30 years as Americans raced after the will-o-whisp of easy money, easy living when we should have been ants, preparing for winter, working hard. Look around where you live. Are your winter windows facing south? Are the walls more than 8" thick with insulation (hint, the number of houses with that is slightly above zero)? Can you walk to work? Room for a veggie garden and some chickens? If the public wells stop pumping, do you have water?
So many things to consider.
America gambled. We hoped to reel in a big fish, Iraq, and claim all that oil for ourselves so we could sell it and make a lot of money from the Europeans. This is rapidly slipping through our fingers. And our naked attempt at repeating this with Iran has been firmly squelched as of today by the Chinese. Going into that country=World War Three and we won't win it, either.
Bush got away with killing New Orleans. Some people were yelling at Chertoff, Bush's foreigner executioner, the skull faced man who presided over the doom of so many innocent civilians. From Associated Press:
Acknowledging delayed aid and fumbled coordination, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday the federal response to Hurricane Katrina fell far short of providing immediate help to the Gulf Coast that could have saved lives.Within about two days BEFORE the hurricane, I thought of a zillion things Chertoff could have done and I yelled about it all here on my own blog. This psychopath needed months of people yelling at him to think up some of the things he should have done spontaneously and instantly. So, Congress is yelling at him today but no one is firing him. He still is in charge of eliminating us. I cannot fathom why the vast majority of Americans aren't really scared by this! What if the New Madrid Fault blows again? This is going to happen, sooner or later! What if California finally releases all that pent up pressure from the Pacific plate? Will happen, the only question is , this year or in five years?Chertoff's Senate testimony came the same day a House panel released a scathing report concluding that deaths, damage and suffering could have been decreased if the White House and federal, state and local officials had responded more urgently to Katrina.
"There are many lapses that occurred, and I've certainly spent a lot of time personally, probably since last fall, thinking about things that might have been done differently," Chertoff told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the Aug. 29 storm.
In the old days, Chertoff would have been long gone. Why the lassitude these days? One by one, "excess" cities will be removed and not replaced. The refugees will scurry about, seeking shelter, note how little interest there is in the fact that many were evicted from hotels today, survivors of the hurricanes this year? The news of the lack of interest in recharging the oil pumped out of the strategic reserves is proof our ruling class feels they must hide things from the masses. So they report it on the back pages and hope the readers or watchers only note the glitzy, loud, persistant commercials. Buy useless or hopeless junk! Buy now!
China Quickly Closing Deal With Iran---Will Develop Oil Fields
By Elaine Meinel Supkis
As expected, China takes the initiative and forges more deals with Iran. Europe, who buys a lot of Iranian oil, played hardball with the Iranians at the behest of the American imperial planners who think diplomacy with a nail studded club is the way to prepare for the downside of the Hubbert Oil Peak. A big problem: China has nukes and rockets. We keep forgetting this fact.
China is hastening to complete a deal worth as much as $100 billion that would allow a Chinese state-owned energy firm to take a leading role in developing a vast oil field in Iran, complicating the Bush administration's efforts to isolate the Middle Eastern nation and roll back its nuclear development plans, according to published reports.By "isolating" Iran, they made it ludicrously easy for the Chinese to fill the vacuum. No competition! Ideal conditions for making a deal.The completion of the agreement would advance China's global quest for new stocks of energy. It could also undermine U.S. and European initiatives to halt Tehran's nuclear plans, possibly generating friction in Beijing's relations with outside powers.
Of course, we could break this deal the Hitlerian way: by attacking the Iranians. Hitler always complained about how everyone was hemming in Germany and interfering with Germany and all he wanted was some Lebensraum and security. This involved killing millions of people and putting the rest in chains but then, what can we say? We are the same.
Why Europe went along with this farce puzzles me. Are they that stupid? The entire reason why Iran turned hard edged was because the USA invaded Iraq and openly talked from day one of "the Axis of Evil" that was Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iran and Iraq hated each other's guts so why they were lumped together, we would have to ask AIPAC, the Israeli lobbying group that owns much of our political system.
The arrest of the traitor, Franklin, who was feeding top secret military information to AIPAC, stopped some of this conspiracy. He handed over papers concerning Iran. Valarie Plame was working the Iranian angle, too. This is all so typically messy.
One other nation interested in knocking Iran down is Saudi Arabia. They are actively encouraging this and they are one of several key countries buying our mountain of debts. This is why Iran is playing a smart game, just like Putin. By defying Europe and America, they are triangulating, forcing Russia and China to finally move in the open and choose sides and of course, they have to side with Iran because to do otherwise would be suicidal.
An iron rule of history is, any empire that takes over the planet instantly causes all potential rivals to side with each other so they can remove the new rulers.
Bears romped through energy stocks this month, trouncing share prices and raising questions about whether the outsized earnings that made Big Oil the star of the 2005 market have run their course.Isn't it pitiful, our oil prices are totally weather dependent? Right now, Wall Street is betting against a war with Iran. They know we can't afford it so they are ignoring Bush and the neo cons yelling for war.
But investors who bow out of the sector might just rue the day they did."The momentum investors are out of the stocks because of the drop in energy prices. But the fundamentals of the sector are still very robust," said Art Smith, an industry analyst at John S. Herold in Houston. "We've seen corrections before. This is just another one."
Crude oil futures for March delivery closed at $59.88 a barrel in New York on Friday -- a 12% downturn so far this month. A mild winter and bulging fuel stockpiles are the main culprits, spoiling big bets last fall that energy prices could only go up in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
And I think they are wrong. Bush, unlike Wall Street, sees the hard core figures. He and his oily friends in Saudi Arabia know the Ghawar fields are in trouble. He also knows the next hurricane season just might dwarf the last season. He is willing to force world oil prices back up if this means we take all the Middle East and make it our bitch to use as we will. For we have to have something to sell to China!
And China needs this oil so we need to be the agents pumping it and transporting it to China. And China is determined to not let this happen, no way they want us to have a grip on their necks. They aren't that dumb.
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Africa's Poor Get No Benefits From Oil We Pump Out
By Elaine Meinel Supkis
Nigerian citizens attack another oil rig. Chad, another forgotten African oil country, can't seem to get any of that oil wealth to the people there, either, and also has insurrections and riots. Ditto Iraq, for that matter. Meanwhile, we scream about Venezuela sharing the oil wealth successfully with the lower classes there! Go figure.
Nine foreign oil workers have been seized by armed militants from a barge in Nigeria's Niger Delta.Geeze, you would think this would make headlines in America! Yup. Nope.
The group, including three Americans, two Thais, two Egyptians, a Briton and a Filipino, were on a pipelaying barge.A Shell facility near the Forcados export terminal was also set on fire, although the blaze was extinguished.
The attacks come a day after a militant commander told the BBC his group was declaring "total war" on all foreign oil interests in the Delta.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta gave oil companies and their employees until midnight on Friday night to leave the region.
I have watched with fascination as this rebellion unfolds. The USA corporations work hand in hand with the despots ruling Nigeria. Between them, they have turned the country into a wasteland. This is their plan for America. Let everything rot, loot the people and steal as much of the resources as possible and leave it a total mess. This is why we have to shut down K Street and I am happy Cheney is taking a forwards approach to all this by shooting a lobbyist. Heh. Power to the people, Cheney!
Such is reality under a World Bank-supported program that was supposed to harness this impoverished African nation's oil wealth for the benefit of its poorest citizens. A $4.2 billion oil pipeline has generated $399 million for Chad since mid-2004, but the spending of the money has been seriously marred by mismanagement, graft and, most recently, the government's decision that a hefty share can be used to fight a rebellion.OK, the money goes only to the rich and politicians and tools of the corporate state, they cut back services to the poor and the middle class, they tax only the lowest levels of society, they drive the country very deeply into debt and then tell the poor people there, all the money from their resources have to pay off these stupid loans, and what country are we talking about, anyway?And now the approach, once envisioned as a model for the development of other African countries, seems to be on the verge of collapse. In recent weeks, Chad seriously weakened a law that dedicated most of its oil revenue to reducing poverty and reneged on its deal with the World Bank. In response, the bank suspended all its loans to the country.
What is happening in Chad, a Central African country twice the size of France, is an important test of the idea that international institutions like the World Bank can influence governments of poor countries to spend newly tapped riches on their people instead of using the money to further entrench themselves in power.
The USA! Whoopee! Please, dear readers, attend carefully. WE ARE CHAD. The New York Times and all the other American corporate tool media are very careful to call the properly elected President of Venezuela "a regime" as if he took over the way all our tools take over: violently, using the CIA and American military! His election was much fairer than our own twisted elections! Do we call Bush's rule a "regime"?
Well, bloggers do! But the media, no! And why do they hate the freely elected President of Venezuela so much?
He is sharing the oil wealth and not driving his country into bankruptcy! Gads! Chavez, could you run for office here? Pretty please?
High-level talks in Paris to resolve the crisis with Chad ended inconclusively this month, though World Bank officials still hope for a settlement that preserves the government's promise to use its oil money to build schools, clinics and roads rather than to support an army that has recently experienced a rash of defections among rebellious officers.Isn't it just an odd coincidence that the World Bank is being run by an American war criminal who helped launch a dirty war for oil in Iraq? This pious fool is concerned about using oil money to build schools?As a rising tide of oil money flows to poor African countries in the coming years, the bank will have little choice but to grapple with its role.
"It's not clear at all how to get your hands around it," said Paul D. Wolfowitz, who became president of the bank last summer. "But I think to stand back and say the whole thing is a dirty business and we in the World Bank don't want to have anything to do with it is very shortsighted."
Maybe he could visit Texas and explain this to them! Hahaha. Texas schools=bottom of the barrel. Ditto oil exporting Louisiana! Third world conditions mirroring Africa's suffering! How about visiting Venezuela and seeing how real democracy works, Wolfie?
Or, for that matter, visit Iran. Of course, we hate both countries. We want them to be helpless and stupid, run by corrupt tools, traitors working for Shell Oil or Exxon.
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Bush Announces Magic Energy Source In Colorado
By Elaine Meinel Supkis
We have noticed this for years, whenever Bush appears at any factory to announce a break through or success, it then closes, goes bankrupt or fires much of the staff. Once again, he did this at a lab which does energy research. 22 scientists fired the week he comes to boast about them.
Saying the nation is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that would "startle" most Americans, President Bush on Monday outlined his energy proposals to help wean the country off foreign oil.And who was "startled"? The people at this lab!
The senior biochemical engineer had worked for the laboratory for 22 years, converting biomass, such as trees, into fuels and chemicals, such as ethanol. His computer was disabled and his phone turned off; a manager escorted him out of the building at 3 p.m. "How do you expect, after 22 years, to wrap everything up in a few hours?" Mohagheghi said, adding that he lost his job and some dignity that day. "I didn't deserve to be treated this way," he said.Just like NASA, Bush announces a huge new initiative and then cuts the budget and staff. Now the Mars merry-go-round is flatter than the Texas Panhandle and of course, Bush knows the energy research using biofuels is a waste of time and effort. But to keep the wolf from his political door, he has to pretend we will all grow a megamillion acres of "sawgrass" which will magically fuel our vehicles! Here is Bush, again:The layoffs came after President Bush's State of the Union address Jan. 31 sparked optimism at NREL. The president said Americans were addicted to oil, and he vowed funding for renewable energy research. Bush plans to visit NREL on Tuesday to reinforce his dedication to renewable energy.
"Our nation is on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people," Bush said. "We're on the edge of some amazing breakthroughs — breakthroughs all aimed at enhancing our national security and our economic security and the quality of life of the folks who live here in the United States."These pitiful programs are breakthroughs? Shows exactly how badly things will be going in the future.
If the only thing we grew was this weed, after growing, harvesting and processing the entire crop, we will be able to fuel less than 3% of our fleet of cars and trucks! Corn has lots of energy stored in it which is why I feed it to my horse, Sparky, in winter. Gives him a lot of pep. Neigggh.
But growing it uses lots of fossil fuels. This is why they concocted the fantasy of running America's giant fleet of giant vehicles on sawgrass which has very little caloric value and trust me, this means very few calories per lb to be turned into instant fossil fuel! The laws of conservation of energy can't be tipped over like the fantasy of tipping over cows (which is nearly impossible unless one is the Hulk and even then, a dicey matter!).
Trees have tremendous caloric values when you burn them because they store many years of sunlight and water within themselves and when burned or processed, all this energy is released. Sawgrass grows where the soil is poor and it is a poor grass, my cattle or horse would starve to death if all they ate were this poor sustitute.
The whole sawgrass mantra is to do the old bait and switch. Namely, we are supposed to take the bait and they switch us onto the track called "to be eliminated or enslaved". If we are serious about cutting back buying fossil fuels then we should be seeing severe building codes whereby only houses like mine are built in the Northeast, for example, namely facing the winter sun to catch the natural heat and to cope with the severe west winds which are the primary winds in winter, etc. But of course, there is no call for this nor for downsizing our gargantuan vehicles (and our gargantuan bodies!).
No one wants to hear that our way of living must and will end. America just went through one of its biggest building booms in our history and 99% of what was built is nearly useless in the future. This sad state of affairs will become all to obvious in the not too distant future.
But then, I say this all the time. Bush is lying to us, watch what he does, not what he says and obviously, he agrees with me about this biofuel garbage. He just doesn't want any of us to know this.
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