Offshore Drilling OR North Dakota

Uff da!

Landowners in western North Dakota have a much better chance of striking it rich from oil than they do playing the lottery, say the Stohlers. Some of their neighbors in the town of about 120, from bar tenders to Tupperware salespeople, have become "overnight millionaires" from oil royalty payments.

"It's the easiest money we've ever made," said Lorene Stohler, who worked for decades as a sales clerk at a small department store.

State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells.

The drilling frenzy has led companies to search for oil using horizontal drilling beneath Parshall, a town of about 980 in Mountrail County, and under Lake Sakakawea, 180-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River.

"I have heard, anecdotally, that there is a millionaire a day being created in North Dakota," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council.

Kathy Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said the number of "income millionaires" in North Dakota is rising.

The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, Strombeck said. The 2007 numbers won't be known until October, she said.

Well that's great. But remember. The United States consumes about twenty million barrels of oil per day. So we're not even up to a week's worth of oil coming out of North Dakota. But it's a start, isn't it? Especially if some of those millionaires get wise and invest in wind and solar technology for their new abodes.

--WS

Let's talk about off-shore drilling for a minute

When McCain flip-flopped on off-shore oil drilling last week, my mom called me. "Wet Start just lost even his republican support in California," she said before I had 'hello' out of my mouth. "He wants more off-shore drilling, and California is still pissed over the Santa Barbara spill that happened forty years ago. San Diego is going to Bob Barr." She was engaging in a bit of hyperbole of course - but now you know that I come by my passion for politics honestly.

In January 1969, a gas blowout occurred beneath a Union Oil drilling platform located about six miles off shore from Santa Barbara. Over the next eleven days, 200,000 gallons of crude oil would bubble to the surface, and the slick would eventually cover 800 square miles of ocean and affect 35 miles of coastline. Shore birds such as plovers and willets fled the area, but diving birds became oil-soaked and many died.

Nearly 3700 birds were estimated to have perished because of contact with oil. Aerial surveys a year later found only 200 grebes in an area that had
previously drawn 4000 to 7000.

Marine mammals were poisoned. For weeks the tides brought in the corpses of seals and dolphins, and gray whales who traversed the channel as part of their regular migratory route to their calving grounds in the warm waters off the Baja peninsula avoided the area.

The spill was such an ecological disaster that the very first Earth Day grew out of it a year later.


My Mom wasn't the only one who remembered the Santa Barbara spill.

To the West, drilling rigs also operate off the Pacific shoreline near Santa Barbara, Calif., but to many residents, they are vile reminders of a 1969 blowout on an offshore rig that spewed a giant oil slick into the Pacific. The ecological disaster contributed to the creation of Earth Day the following year.

"It still has an impact on our consciousness," says Linda Krop, an environmental attorney in Santa Barbara. "You don't see oil on the beach any more but it's very high in people's awareness and their concern about any more development."

The experiences in California and the Gulf Coast states offer contrasting case studies as $4-a-gallon gasoline accelerates calls for vastly expanded offshore drilling to boost U.S. oil and gas supplies. Offshore drilling is currently permitted off four Gulf Coast states, Alaska and a sliver of California but is banned elsewhere in the United States.

President Bush and presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain reopened the national debate over offshore drilling last week by calling on Congress to lift the ban that prohibits new oil and gas production off most of the East and West coasts and a section of the Gulf Coast below Florida.

The proposals generated a fierce push-back from many Democrats and environmental groups, who accused Bush and McCain of being in the pockets of Big Oil.

McCain's rival, Sen. Barack Obama, noted Friday in Jacksonville that McCain had once favored the ban and charged McCain with violating the "bipartisan consensus" that had protected Florida's coastline for decades.

"The politics may have changed, but the facts haven't," Obama said. "Offshore drilling would not lower gas prices today, it would not lower gas prices next year and it would not lower gas prices five years from now.''

It certainly puts politicians on the horns of a dilemma - especially those who have been playing the game for a while now, and who chose to ignore the pleading of people like me, beseeching them to deal with the problem of peak oil before it dealt with us.

Simply put - we can't drill our way out of the trouble we are in. It would take a decade for the remaining hard-to-get-at oil fields to bring products to market. I am of the opinion that we would be better off enacting conservation measures in the near term and working on alternative energy sources in the long term, because you don't get out of trouble by applying more of the same thinking that got you into trouble to begin with.

We have the technology to mass produce Hydrogen fuel cells and battery capacity is coming along nicely after several years of being stuck at the Lithium ion stage. All over the west, wind turbines are replacing oil rigs, and those rigs stand silent and rusting over stripper wells across the land.

I listen to politicians yammer on and on about stop-gap measures that would have little or no impact on the price Americans pay at the pump and I shake my head in disbelief.

Until someone takes the bold step of acknowledging that Peak Oil not only exists, but Hubbert was an optimist and we are on the downhill side of the bell curve of production, all of their pissing and moaning amounts to just that...pissing and moaning and it's all for naught.

GM forced by consumer demand to finally get a clue

In all fairness, it isn't just the auto makers who are at fault - responsibility is shared with a stupid and self-centered American public - but they sure didn't plan for the energy economy that we have known was coming since 1956. (I haven't been mocked for espousing peak oil lately, mostly because every fucking thing I have been predicting since I learned about the subject from a science teacher in 8th grade and spent my summer in the library learning about it - has born out, right down to air lines limiting the number of bags a passenger can bring aboard for free.)

I am one of those cranks who has spent the last 25 years screaming that Hubbert was an optimist, and by the way, a double whammy (the nexus of climate change and peak oil) was coming down the pike. (Sorry for the mini-rant, but the "I-told-you-so's" are getting harder to stifle.)

Driven by abrupt changes in consumer demands, GM is closing four manufacturing facilities that manufacture pickup trucks and SUVs, and are considering dumping the Hummer line entirely.

The moves, announced Tuesday by the company chairman G. Richard Wagoner Jr., will slash 500,000 units from the automaker’s overall production, and pave the way for increased investment in smaller cars and passenger vehicles.

Mr. Wagoner said that rising gasoline prices had forced a “structural shift” by American consumers away from truck-based vehicles built by G.M.

“These prices are changing consumer behavior and changing it rapidly,” Mr. Wagoner said at a briefing before G.M.’s annual meeting in Wilmington, Del. “We don’t believe it’s a spike or a temporary shift. We believe it is, by and large, permanent.”

Previously GM had announced that shifts were being cut back on two other truck lines. Wagoner refused to comment on whether workers would be relocated, but did say that it would be "unlikely" that the facilities would reopen manufacturing other products.

Now I am no econ wizard, but I'm good at interpreting data. And if I were going to make any guesses, I would guess that this signals a sea change at GM. I would also guess that the only reason for abandoning existing infrastructure is a decision to take the road less traveled, and the existing facilities are so inadequate that starting from scratch would be the better bargain on aggregate.

If Detroit accepts that the salad days are over, then the salad days are over. That is reality. And you know what us peak-oil cranks say about reality...If you don't deal with it, it will deal with you.

Is the World Really Running Out of Oil?

Stories like this break your heart. It's a good idea to be "self-sufficient." It's another thing to be stampeded into that kind of a lifestyle out of fear and ignorance.

A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.

That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.

Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.

"I was panic-stricken," the 50-year-old recalled, her voice shaking. "Devastated. Depressed. Afraid. Vulnerable. Weak. Alone. Just terrible."

Convinced the planet's oil supply is dwindling and the world's economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn't prepare.

[SNIP]

The couple have gotten rid of their TV and instead have been reading dusty old books published in their grandparents' era, books that explain the simpler lifestyle they are trying to revive. Lynn-Marie has been teaching herself how to make soap. Her husband, concerned about one day being unable to get medications, has been training to become an herbalist.

By 2012, they expect to power their property with solar panels, and produce their own meat, milk and vegetables. When things start to fall apart, they expect their children and grandchildren will come back home and help them work the land. She envisions a day when the family may have to decide whether to turn needy people away from their door.

"People will be unprepared," she said. "And we can imagine marauding hordes."

So can Peter Laskowski. Living in a woodsy area outside of Montpelier, Vt., the 57-year-old retiree has become the local constable and a deputy sheriff for his county, as well as an emergency medical technician.

"I decided there was nothing like getting the training myself to deal with insurrections, if that's a possibility," said the former executive recruiter.

Do we really need to talk about turning away the needy and insurrection?

My favorite part of all of that is the part about "the stockpiling of guns" because that's exactly what we need to do whenever there is a crisis--succumb to fear and arm ourselves to the teeth so that every single desperate, uninformed person has a gun readily available for use without thinking.


One should always be armed in some way with a firearm. If a person feels the need to "stockpile" a gun, they don't know much about guns in the first place. Repeatedly firing a gun until it wears out, forcing someone to go their reserve gun, and then replacing that when it wears out is the scenario envisioned by the gun stockpiler. Having extra barrels helps. A supply of several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition is always a good thing as well. One can never run out of bullets when defending their home against whatever has forced them to wear out several guns.

The problem with that scenario is this--if you are firing your gun so much that it "wears out" and forces you to go to one of the guns you have "stockpiled" then you aren't in a bad situation. You are in a shooting gallery, and nothing--no amount of preparation and no amount of personal armament--is going to save you.

Instead of stockpiling guns, have a reliable firearm handy that you can use. Ensure you have enough ammunition. Enough means what it really should mean--about three or four hundred rounds is probably enough, but you can be the judge of that. If you are arming yourself for the apocalypse, or the First Battle of the Somme, then the apocalypse and the German machine gunners are going to find you.

We need to have faith in technology and the free market. Technology has gotten us out of plenty of "shortages" of oil. During World War I, it was theorized that the United States had pumped all of the oil it was ever going to pump and that we had arrived at a "peak oil" moment. Since then, we have been through countless panics and scares.

The world is not running out of oil, but it is getting more expensive to pull it out of the ground. We are not running out of it, at least not for another hundred years, if then. We need to cut our dependence on it, and make it last longer but we're not running out of it. Or natural gas. Or hydrogen. Or nitrogen. Everything has a finite supply, but we're not going to run out of these things. The world is also not running out of wind or solar or hydroelectric power. We need better technology to take advantage of these technologies to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and eliminate them altogether to slow down or reverse, if possible, global warming.

We can, calmly and rationally, work our way out of this mess. We don't need fear. We need heavy investment in technology and education. We don't need wars for scarce resources. We need a smarter way of getting what we have to work more efficiently.

For an old woman to live in fear right now is sad, however. A sad indication of just how uninformed people are, and of how a simple issue can be demagogued to death. There is "too much information" out there. Too many people screaming and getting hysterical. The world isn't going to hell in a handbasket nearly as fast as we think it is. But if we're smart, we can do things--reasonable things--to make the trip in that handbasket fairly pleasant.

Say Hello To a $5 Gallon of Gas

MSNBC.COM - BREAKING NEWS: White House says Saudi Arabia does not see a reason to increase oil production

Translation: The President has no powers of persuasion, nor does he have any influence with a country that has been aligned with his family for decades.

Closing in on a hundred dollars a barrel

Wow. We are going to see hundred-dollar per barrel oil. Maybe today, maybe next week, maybe it will take longer. But I would bet a hundred bucks that we will definitely see it by year end. The dollar is simply too weak to manipulate the markets to prevent it. I'm no econ wizard (I don't even balance my own checkbook, I have a banker I went to high school with do that for me) but Bernanke at the Fed is unnerving. Hell, it scares me spitless. The best analogy I can conjure - It's like a counterfeiter has authentic plates & linen paper, and access to a quality press...But I digress, as is my wont...

Light sweet crude traded at $96.24/bbl. on Thursday, the highest price oil has ever realized.

I've said it before, and I will say it again...we are witnessing a realignment of world economic and political power, it is realigning along an energy axis, and future historians are going to write about the time in which we live as the "Emergence of the Resource Wars."

If we don't get a handle on this stuff, and do so double-time, the future is bleak. If you like the oil wars, you are gonna love the pending water wars.

There is a new reality in town. The countries producing energy are sitting in what is commonly known as "the catbirds seat." But the US? Not so much. The oil-rich countries, like Russia and Iran, are not going to be cowed by Yankee bluster any more. They have oil, and the emerging Asian economies have an insatiable appetite for the sticky black stuff, and the odorless clear stuff - and the ability to pay for it. The desperation of the Bush Administration as the reality about Iran sets in is growing palpable.

The Bush administration is desperate to stop the long-planned India-Pakistan-I ran (IPI) Pipeline, which will deliver Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to the subcontinent. The U.S. would much prefer that India satisfy their energy needs with nuclear energy via a deal with the United States that has been stalled. Never mind that Indo-Persian relations are over 2000 years old, that Persian was the language of literature and government on the subcontinent until the 1800's. (But these jokers have no use for history, sociology nor anthropology.)

The United States seems bent on clinging to obsolete modes of thinking. It simply makes no sense to invest all of our blood and treasure into securing what's left of a sdwindling resource. Which, by the way, is so chemically unique and versatile, that I am nonplussed that it is simply burned for fuel! Of course, I understand why...it's greed. If you make electric cars that don't burn petrol, every soccer mom in America wouldn't be forking over a hundred bucks a week to Big Oil. It's drug-dealer economics - get 'em addicted and they keep coming back, until they are either dead or desperate enough to go through the pain and agony of cold-turkey withdrawal.

If we were serious about taking concrete steps to counter the coming energy crisis, we wouldn't be fighting a war for oil (and Hubbert, by the way, was an optimist) we would be undertaking a Manhattan Project for energy independence.

Some things are too important to be left to private industry, and responsible energy policy is one of them. Private industry is profit driven. Period. If there is no maximized profit motive, there is no reason to pursue a particular path. It is in the interest of big energy that we remain beholden and dependent upon their products. Thats econ 101.

We should have been working on these problems for the last 30 years, but instead the decision was made to fiddle while Rome burned, the problems could be punted to the next generation. And those of us who were agitating for responsible energy policy were dismissed as cranks, spoil-sports, worry-warts, and Nervous Nellies.

Well, we got the last laugh - except there is no humor in this situation. It's time to deal with reality, because reality is not going to have any qualms about dealing with us.