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EIA Chief: Boundless Natural Gas, Boundless Opportunities
Despite stockpiles imploding and prices exploding in the short-term, The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has predicted that natural gas production in the US will continue to grow at an impressive pace. Right now output is close to 70 billion cubic feet a day and is expected to reach over 100 billion cubic feet per day by 2040. The trend is likely to continue without hitting a geologic “peak”, and along with this trend will come new marketing opportunities for America. The following exclusive interview with OilPrice.com answsers some of the bigger questions...
In an exclusive interview with Oilprice.com, EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski discusses:
• What’s at stake in lifting the US crude export ban
• Whether lifting the ban is inevitable
• Why energy-related CO2 emissions will likely climb this year
• What we can expect from US coal output through 2014
• Why US natural gas production will continue to grow strongly
• Where we can expect (unexpectedly) new production to come from
• Why Alaska just might surprise us
• Where the biggest new shale opportunities lie
• How production increases might come from ‘non-shale’ formations
• The potential for Colombian shale
• What to expect from Mexico’s reforms
• What the Panama Canal expansion really means
• Why we will see new marketing opportunities for the US
Interview by James Stafford of Oilprice.com
Oilprice.com: US mainstream media are heralding the debate over lifting the US crude oil export ban as potentially one of the most critical for this year. While most agree this is not likely to happen anytime soon, is it an eventuality?
Adam Sieminski: When I first took office at the EIA, I said that light sweet crude oil production was growing very rapidly, and that it would ultimately have a number of impacts on the energy infrastructure in the US; for instance, that we would see changes in things like movement of oil by rail. We would see changes in refinery configurations designed to deal with light sweet crude. The Gulf Coast refineries in the US over the past decade were upgraded to run heavy sour imports, and so there are issues with the ability of refineries in the US to handle rapid increases in light sweet crude oil production.
I noted at the time that at some point, policymakers were going to be confronted with all of these changes resulting from the enormous shift in thinking about US production growth. Five or 10 years ago, everybody thought that US oil production would just go down, and demand would always go up. Now we have in the EIA’s forecast over the next five years very strong growth in crude oil production and weak growth—if not negative trends—going on in gasoline and liquid fuels demand. This creates an interesting atmosphere.
Is lifting the crude export ban inevitable? I’m not sure that anything is inevitable. Certainly what I’ve learned in the last five years is that the inevitable declines in production and growth in demand didn’t come true.
Oilprice.com: What are the congressional hurdles faced here?
Adam Sieminski: I don’t know that there’s a hurdle. That’s a question that’s going to be dealt with by policymakers. Energy policy issues generally tend to involve environmental concerns, national security concerns, and economic concerns.
The biggest hurdle that congress faces is just having good information on future trends in supply and demand, refinery configurations and pipeline and railroad transportation infrastructure.
Oilprice.com: What would be the consequences of lifting this ban, for the industry, for refiners, for consumers?
Adam Sieminski: Well, that’s going to be part of the debate. I don’t have the answer to that, and I doubt that anybody at this point has the complete answer to that question. What is the economic impact? Does it increase jobs or not? What is the environmental impact of producing, moving and refining the crude oil? What are the national security implications? Is it better to keep the oil here, or to move it into global markets where it might have an ameliorating effect on volatility? There are a lot of questions, so I’m not going to try to pre-judge that debate.
Oilprice.com: The EIA has noted that after two years of declining production, US coal output is expected to increase in 2014, forecast to rise almost 4%, as higher natural gas prices make coal more competitive for power generation. At the same time, there is concern about the EPA’s proposed new carbon emissions standards for power plants, which would make it impossible for new coal-fired plants to be built without the implementation of carbon capture and sequestration technology, or “clean-coal” tech. Is this a feasible strategy in your opinion?
Adam Sieminski: Well, the facts as you laid them out are certainly what the EIA is looking at. Natural gas prices have gone up, so in 2013, we already saw some recovery in coal at electric utilities. As a consequence, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions actually climbed in 2013 and probably are going to do so again in 2014 for the reasons that you stated.
Longer term, even without changes by the Environmental Protection Agency, there’ll be coal retirements, and the amount of coal being burned in the US will eventually come below the amount of electricity being generated by natural gas. So sometime after the year 2030, we will have more electricity in the US being produced from natural gas than from coal.
Oilprice.com: What can we expect from US onshore natural gas production over the next two years; over the next five years? And where will production increases offset declines?
Adam Sieminski: Well, the EIA has been pretty clear on this in our Annual Energy Outlook Reference case for 2014, which we published in mid-December. We reiterated what we said the previous year: natural gas production in the US is going to continue to grow very strongly. We are close to 70 billion cubic feet a day of output now. That number will be over 100 billion cubic feet a day by 2040. Shale gas will be easily 50% or more of production by 2040.
We also see increases in natural gas production from geologic formations that we don’t consider to be shale gas. We think that there might also be some production, believe it or not, from Alaska, because the economics ultimately will favor construction of an LNG facility in Alaska that would allow production from the associated gas in the North Slope of Alaska.
Just in the last five years, we’ve seen natural gas production in the US from shale go from about five billion cubic feet a day to nearly 30 billion cubic feet a day--a huge increase. A lot of that is coming from places like the Haynesville—and more recently the Marcellus in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In our view, those production trends are going to continue without the likelihood of running into a plateau from a geologic standpoint.
Oilprice.com: How do you see future extraction, development and commercialization of oil and gas resources in the Americas playing out over the next 5-10 years?
Adam Sieminski: Well, the big new opportunities, I think--certainly in the US and Canada--lie in the development of shale resources. There are oil and gas shale resources in places like Argentina, Mexico, Columbia, and elsewhere across the Americas. Whether or not the very rapid development of shale resources in the US can be duplicated in a lot of other countries—even in the Americas—remains to be seen. Certainly there has been some interesting progress in developing shale resources in Canada and Argentina.
I’ve been hearing from many people that they’re quite hopeful there will be developments in shale in Colombia, and given the constitutional changes that have now been agreed in Mexico, that opens up an opportunity for Mexico to step into this area.
One of the things that is happening is the increase in oil production in the US and the fact that we have very sophisticated refineries with very strong technology, while relatively low natural gas prices are allowing us to run our refineries at higher utilization rates and dispose of surplus products—by exporting petroleum products like gasoline and diesel fuel—into Latin America and Canada.
In a sense, this creates a manufacturing opportunity for the US to take a raw material, process it, and sell it abroad. It also fits in pretty well with the fact that a number of countries in Latin America have had difficulty in building and upgrading their own refineries. So it’s opened up a marketing opportunity for the United States to take advantage of.
Oilprice.com: What can we expect from Mexico’s recently adopted energy reforms and what regional effect could this have?
Adam Sieminski: Well the Mexican government and Pemex, the state oil company, are very excited about the opportunities they see for Mexico to increase its production and to take advantage of some of the new technologies that are available through cooperation with non-Mexican companies. They believe that it is going to be instrumental in reversing some of the difficulties they’ve had in oil production and natural gas production.
It certainly looks to the EIA as something that we’re going to have to watch very carefully when considering the longer-term outlook for Mexican energy production.
We actually bumped up the Mexican numbers because of the opportunities we think will be created by constitutional reform there. If the implementation of that proceeds along the lines that the Mexicans are considering, I think we’ll probably have to look at it again.
Oilprice.com: In its latest report, the EIA notes that the Americas accounted for 20% of global natural gas trade, and while 80% of that was via pipeline, the rest was traded as LNG. How do you see this proportion changing over the next 5-10 years?
Adam Sieminski: Well, I suspect that we’re going to see more of both. Our longer-term outlook shows US pipeline exports of natural gas to Mexico going up, and we also see LNG exports from the United States increasing. We’re not responsible for permitting. What we try to do is look at the economics. We run our national energy modeling system to basically say, “What would the economics do if you let them run?” And that shows we’re likely to see increases in exports of both LNG and pipeline gas.
Interestingly, the model also says that there’s plenty of production to do that and still allow demand in the US to go up considerably. We’re seeing demand increases in natural gas use by refineries; it’s a big refinery fuel. And in the industrial sector, we see significant gains in natural gas consumption occurring in areas like bulk chemicals, food processing, and elsewhere. And then the biggest increases in natural gas may come from electric utilities, which will likely be using more natural gas relative to coal to provide electricity growth in the United States.
Oilprice.com: Is the US Department of Energy moving too quickly or too slowly to approve LNG exports to non-FTA countries?
Adam Sieminski: I think that the Department of Energy’s Department of Fossil Energy, which is responsible for permits, is moving exactly the way it should under the law to make the kinds of findings necessary from a legal standpoint. I wouldn’t characterize it as too fast or too slow. I would say that from what I can see, it’s just right given the legal framework.
Oilprice.com: When could we expect the US to become a net gas exporter?
Adam Sieminski: The EIA’s forecast is that the US will become a net exporter of natural gas before the end of this decade.
We’re already a net exporter of coal. In terms of electricity, most of our trade is with Canada, and that never really seems to have been much of an issue. The US is also a net exporter of petroleum products, so we now export more gasoline and diesel fuel than we import. We import a lot of oil products, particularly into the East and West Coasts. But we are a big exporter, mostly from the Gulf Coast, with the increase in refinery utilization down there. The overall picture now is one in which the US trade deficit is being reduced by growing oil and petroleum product exports.
The only big outstanding question is: could the US potentially be a net exporter of crude oil? In the EIA’s Reference case forecast, that doesn’t seem likely. Despite the fact that our production is rising while demand is falling, we’re still importing about five million barrels a day net of of crude oil and products. It doesn’t seem likely that net importsd are going to go to zero--at least not given the facts as we currently see them. It’s possible, in a high petroleum resources case combined with a technology and policy-driven low demand case, but not probable.
One thing you want to keep in mind is what it would mean, exactly, if the US were completely self-sufficient in energy. Some people like to use the phrase, “energy independence.” We would still be part of a global trading system in energy, and particularly petroleum products and crude oil. And if oil prices go up globally, they’re going to go up in the United States. If there’s a geopolitical problem somewhere or a weather problem somewhere—anything—the US would be impacted just as it has always been. The US has a lot of interest in what’s going on around the world, in the Middle East and elsewhere, regardless of whether it is independent or self-sufficient in fuels. Those political and economic interests will remain whether we become an exporter or not.
Oilprice.com: What role will the expansion of the Panama Canal play in this?
Adam Sieminski: What they’re doing is widening the Panama Canal. They’ll make the Canal itself wider and the locks longer, and the net result will be the potential to save in transportation costs through the use of larger oil tankers and LNG tankers. This offers an opportunity to reduce the costs associated with global trade. It is something that I know Panama and all of the customers who use the Panama Canal are very interested in seeing happen. There have been some cost and labor issues, but I’m sure those will be resolved and this expansion will eventually be completed. When that happens, it’s going to reduce the cost of moving goods back and forth between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and that’s going to apply particularly to things like liquefied natural gas and oil.
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Boundless if we keep fracking and fucking up our water tables.
Exxon CEO Joins Lawsuit Against Fracking Project Because It Will Devalue His $5 Million Property
Listen carefully! Natural gas will end up killing us all. Bitches.
how much potable water will be left when we are done fracking the shit out of this country?
can we use contaminated water on our crops since we cant drink it?
just because humans will no longer be able to safely drink the water, does that mean we cant feed it to our cattle?
don't we want to eventually eat the crops & cattle?
Step away from the Koolaid bowl. Turn off the Matt Damon movie.
Fracking DOES NOT contaminate the water table. Fracking wells are encased in a double concrete plus single steel casing that penetrates several hundred feet below the aquifer, which usually ends at about 300 feed below the surface. Then, the well continues down several THOUSAND feet (the shallowest wells are between 4K and 6K feet) to where the hydrocarbons lie encased in the shale, before the well turns horizontal. The fracking water (not toxic, by the way) is recovered in pools above ground, and controlled in various ways - one of which is reuse. There is almost a zero probability that any of this work will contaminate the water aquifer.
All of this information is easily accessible. There is no reason for this Hollywood-dramatized paranoia about "dangerous fracking water" to cause any sensible person concern.
...and cue the down-arrows from ignoramuses who believe everything Al Gore and Matt Damon tell them.
Because guys like Exxon would never lie to us...
About something like this, it would be almost impossible to lie, as the industry is so heavily regulated by the States that any lie would immediately be exposed.
By the way, big names like Exxon aren't usually doing the drilling. E&Ps like Chesepeake, Halliburton, Cudd, etc. do the fracking, then sell the products to the Exxons and Shells, who are more into refining and distribution.
You need to do some reading.
as the industry is so heavily regulated by the States that any lie would immediately be exposed.
Like the banks are so heavily regulated and their lies were exposed right away? uh huh. Find another justification, this one doesn't hold water.
KrispyKreem's sales man
You're making the mistake of comparing apples to oranges. Unlike the banking & investment sectors, which are regulated at the Federal level, Oil & Gas exploration and production are regulated by the States. This is an enormous difference! State governments are, in generality, much more responsive to activities going on in their own backyards - think decentralization. The E&P companies, in most states, are subjected to high scrutiny. This is completely unlike the banking sector.
Of course everyone is missing the real problem. Citi research stated in their 2013 report that the annual decline rate for the US natgas industry is 24%. Which means the shale gas industry has to replace nearly 100% of all production in 4 years.
Fracking is the least of our troubles . Four of the shales gas fields have peaked and are in decline. Watch for serious trouble in the US natgas industry in the next few years
The EIA will have to pull their foot out of their mouth when US natgas production peaks decades sooner than they have forecasted.
This must be why there is a shitload of new frack wells being drilled this year. My company supplies proppant sand to the E&Ps, and we've been slammed with orders since mid-December. It's not predicted to slack off throughout 2014 (and that's about as far out as we dare predict, given the turbulence).
It's my growing concern that this shale play will be a proverbial "flash in the pan" that, as you put it, will peak decades sooner than forecast.
Then what?
More exploding wind turbines?
Ah... Full disclosure at last...You should have said you were simply talking your book...
Thats ok, you gotta put food on the table. But it also means that you cannot be counted upon for any objective viewpoint...
Flak.... who are you referring to? If you are talking about my book.... you must mean the data. Decline rates and simple math do not lie.
I am referring to someone just admitting that their toast is buttered by the fracking industry...
Not sure how you missed who I was replying to...
Ugh. More ad hominem. I wish logic and reasoning were still taught in school.
OK, here's a free lesson: Go to Wikipedia and search for "logic fallacies." Read it all. Take your time. Pay particular attention to the discussion on how attacking a character flaw or the objectivity of an argument's apologist, rather than the argument itself, is one the lowest, most embarassing forms of argumentation, and brands you a blithe idiot for engaging in such.
Then, come back and, if you have a reasoned critique of my central argument, present it. Until then, please do not post on Zerohedge.
You apparently have no idea what ad hominem means...
Assume you were judge hear a fracking related case involving company which you held a substantial position in...
You would recuse yourself if you had any integrity...
Likewise, your opinion about fracking cannot be objective if you clearly have vested interests...
Sorry...
You are so stupid I cannot believe your brain has the wherewithal to keep telling your heart to beat once per second.
I'm NOT a JUDGE in a fracking case. I'm not even a JUROR.
I may be a WITNESS, though.
Am I getting through to you at all?
I don't know whether to laugh or cry...
Do you even think about what you post?
http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/engineering/hydraulic-fracturing
but of course, the Exxon CEO gets real NIMBY about things like that
http://rt.com/usa/exxon-ceo-fracking-lawsuit-180/
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230489970457939118146...
----
BTW, Exxon spent $2,000,000 on a pro fracking ad campaign
http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20130330/NEWS11/303300030/Exxon-Mob...
Ironically, Mann's orginal hockey stick paper cost at most 1/10 of that to fund it. Why couldnt they find some one competent to show AGW is the wrong conclusion if they are willing to throw that cash around???
Do you?
Of course Exxon will spend money advertising the benefits of fracking. Of course they have a page on their URL addressing the public concerns regarding the practice. Of course they get sued a lot. You have not refuted anything in my earlier posts.
He's the king of Alinsky tactics.
Demonize then change the subject
Leave the troll alone
I've noticed.
However, false information regarding fracking is so ubiquitous today that I think even when an increcible (as in "not credible") troll like flak mouths off about it, somebody should correct the record.
Yep, and you can count on the API for most of it...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/epa-official-links-fracking-and-d...
Ooops...
The Wasthington Post should have done their homework a little better. The Dimock, PA case got a lot of press; but the fracking-related methane contamination of the water supply was ultimately unsubstantiated. Turns out the methane levels in that region had always been elevated - even before the residents welcomed the Cabot company to town. Then, a few residents decided to file a get-rich-quick class action lawsuit against Cabot, claiming it was all their fault. The lawsuit was not successful.
Pimping for your company is ok though...
\facepalm
You're an idiot. Go read about logical fallacies.
Why is that I can spot and call out all the bullshitters here whereas clowns like you are always reduced to slurs and slanders...
As for the Exxon reference, you must have a reading comprehension problem...
And your buddy seems to have forgotten that Exxon dropped a whole bunch of cash on XTO energy ($41 billion) in part to acquire proprietary fracking technology...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/exxon-mobil-to-buy-xto-energy-in-41-bil...
http://xtoenergy.com/index.html
Go away, we all know who the real troll is...
@thatthingcanfly
+1. We need energy and we need money to pay off the national debt which we could get by utiziling our assets. Fracking in PA replaced the amount of water that was used by the steel industry and we didn't run out of water from that. On top of that lack of energy also pushes up the prices of the other things we need like food.
And...
"Currently, a handful of facilities in Pennsylvania are approved to treat the wastewater. More plants, purpose-built for the task, are planned. In the meantime, most companies now recycle this water to drill their next well."
Federal Assets Above and Below Ground"The exact size of the loot? It totals $128 trillion in recoverable oil and natural gas, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research (IER). To put that $128 trillion sum in perspective, we could use a mere 13 percent of it to pay off the entire US national debt. Indeed, that $128 trillion is almost 35 times greater than federal expenditures for fiscal year 2014, and more than seven times the annual US GDP.
The people claiming it will contaminate all the water also seem to believe in gloBULL warming and think fracking sand is so harmful to us all.
It's doubtful however that any amount of common sense will be used by these types of people.
"One aspect of liberalism with which I am now very familiar is political correctness. I didn’t understand it at the time, not until I stepped outside the cultism of it and looked in from a wiser place. It always bothered me, but I couldn’t quite grasp why until later. Then, it hit me like a revelation. Political correctness was not a political ideology. No, it was a religion, a full-fledged spiritual con, a New Age ghetto of frothing mishmash that is sociological voodoo. And the leftists were eating it up like steak night at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
These people were rationally retarded. Every idea they proposed they merely parroted from books and articles they had read. They were like malfunctioning automatons trapped in a cycle of discontented social criticism. Their desperation to invent meaning in the midst of their irrelevant lives made me feel ill. If they could not find a legitimate cause to champion, they would create one out of thin air and defend it relentlessly, regardless of how shallow it truly was."
You lost all credibility when you said "pay off the debt"....
National debts are never paid off. They are only defaulted on...
He didn't lose "all" credibility, you blithe idiot. Though he may have one thing wrong.
There are two obvious ways out of our current debt crisis. 1: Default. 2) Inflate the debt away = hyperinflation.
If you think that he only got one thing wrong, you are in clearly way over your head...
You speak in absolutes: He lost ALL credibility. I'm in WAY over my head. Blah blah blah.
This makes you look like a fool.
And you still refuse to address the central argument.
I'd recommend you read James Burnham's 1964 "The Suicide of the West." In it, he observes that liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide. Once one grasps this concept, all the seemingly incoherent positions taken by liberals begin to make sense.
For example, the liberal position in favor of unrestricted abortion "rights," which result in the deaths of 1.3MM of our most innocent people in the US each year seems inconsistent with the liberal opposition to capital punishment for our worst-of-the-worst guilty felons. But if the goal is the death of the West, these diametrically opposed positions suddenly seem completely coherent.
I'd also recommend subscribing to Chronicles Magazine out of Rockford IL. These guys are the real deal paleoconservatives. Thomas Fleming is one of the most brilliant (and underrated) thinkers of our time.
Why don't you stick to the Fox News website boards, I am sure that you will enjoy that echochamber more than here where shills, neocons and thier ilk will get called out...
Toodles...
More ad hominem. You refuse to address the central argument.
For the third time, go read up on logical fallacies. You are making a fool of yourself.
Yeh, I have foolishly wasted far too much time bandying words with someone that can't realize or understand that he is simply pimping his position....
You Randian objectivists are too stupid to live. You ACTUALLY think that because I'm employed in a particular sector, anything I say regarding that sector must, ipso facto, be treated as suspicious. This is a logical fallacy - one Queen Ayn never understood.
God damnit The Vineyard, your gibberish blog doesn't even mention natural gas, I went through the whole fucking thing searching for a natural gas reference but no, not one. Some Dragon Lady gets a starring role and whatever you've watched on TV seems to be about all that's on there. Honestly, it reads like the output of an experiment in AI.
"Anyway, I've shot my load. My mind is blank." - April 10, 2013
Yeah, that about sums it up for me. Please stop spamming.
"Supernatural might be the dumbest show on television. Nevertheless, I love it."
No shit, Supernatural accounts for about 99% of the instances of the word "natural" on your blog. Not one single fucking mention of natural gas though.
"Zerohedge: My favorite idolaters" - Sunday, December 30, 2012
idolaters? I don't even want to know.
Your nuts !
No, MY nuts!
Context is important with nuts on the table
I swing back and forth between stark raving anger and bemused bewilderment that these so called experts start spouting off about boundless anything.
But if true.....when nat gas is "boundless" the price will drop to a point that margins are compressed and the market collapses.
If not "boundless" then the price rises and negates any savings over coal.
But in order to make it "boundless" you have to destroy the water tables and create earthquakes.....not to mention where are you going to store the toxic sludge to get at those "boundless" stores. Plus flaring off excess the more "boundless" it gets because you've run out of storage.
<sigh> we really are in the insane asylum.
This sums it up better than anything I have ever read showing the complete fucking disconect between Economists and reality...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/
Here's my favourite description of economists (move your cursor over the canvas):
http://www.andyfoulds.co.uk/amusement/economists.htm
Hilarious...
Is that David Rosenberg??
you don't really think the recent price spike in nutural gas has anything to do with supply/demand, do you?
In March, yes, but the H/J is out to a $1.20, so NG still looks cheap. Summer 2015 is still trading below $4.00.
we are losing 30% flareing it off because theres no infrastucture to move it. all the infrastructure in the gulf was designed to bring it in. but they have reversed it to ship it out and it wasnt designed to do that.petro$ curse
Useless, infuriating, ass-covering interview. He equivocates, parrots fuzzy perceptual myth-muddles and answers questions with questions. There are hard realities facing us. We need direct answers to tough questions now. My own contacts in the Canadian oil and gas industry are very concerned. The toughtest part is cutting through lies.
"In terms of electricity, most of our trade is with Canada, and that never really seems to have been much of an issue."
OMFG.
This guy wouldn't say 'shit' if he had a mouthful.
Here is everything you need to know about "boundless" when it comes to fossil fuels in two pictures.
Before......when it kinda was "boundless"
http://www.tylertexasonline.com/images/postcards/east-texas-oil-field.jpg
Now....from our friends in Canada.....
http://www.awarmerworld.com/images/tar-in-hand.jpg
Nuff sed
Earl Campbell of Tyler, TX was the first Tyler:
The Tyler Rose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=844E6mpqjIU
This message was bought for you by your friends at the NSA.
"brought to you"
All this is the result of our belief that "politics" is a system and respectable to boot.
Politics is the depravity of human morality and ethics which leads to theft, murder, genocide, racketeering, and socio-economic debauchery, at the individual level. Politics is feudalistic crime consensualized to social acceptance. Politics is a crime scene.
Terrorism is the tool of politics.
Now "Polularist Politics" is merely the licensing of human devolution and pure evil.
Expect this trend to continue, until the end.
Your embrace of this Politics causes you to say thank you when "they" execute you and your family.
Ho hum
agreed, and without 'politics' you simply get conquest.
hey, i love ghenghis khan as well. but if you are against 'politics' , what are your preferred alternatives? at least be honest about what you prefer.
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. There are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others … the “economic means” … and the “political means.”
The state is an organization of the political means. No state, therefore, can come into being until the economic means has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery. — Franz Oppenheimer, The State
Politics is politics, in other words, conquest (and subjugation) being the essence of it no matter what form it takes. Enslave millions kidnapped from another continent, providing for the legaity of it in your "constitution," exterminate the native inhabitants; propagandize your "citizens" into sending their fathers, husbands, and sons to fight and die in endless foreign wars; indoctrinate the masses into pledging allegiance to an "invisible" nation that was founded on the exact opposite principle; con them out of their sustenance at every turn, with a gun at their head if they resist . . . it's all one big organized crime against humanity. And the only way to stop it is to Just Say No to it.
Fortunately, the possibility of doing so is becoming more probable every day, as technology begins to serve the interests of society more than those of the state, the time not long off when the latter will simply not have the power, regardless of its military might, to continue its global crime spree.
And off it will go into the dustbin of history, not with a bang but with a whimper.
"Terrorism is the tool of politics."
Terrorism is the main tool of US politics.
I smell unicorn farts.
And funny, they smell just like natural gas.
Hahaha! You're so funny, akak! Unicorn farts don't smell like nuthin', cuz I knows it. Natural gas, on the other hand, don't smelt like nuthin' either, 'less it's got Mercaptan! Then it smells like wet ass.
I once had the joy of having to analyze an unknown (to me) sample of organic liquid which I later discovered was pure ethanedithiol, the substance which is used to "aromatize" natural gas. Well, in the course of my pipetting a small sample from the bottle I splashed a miniscule droplet (and I do mean miniscule --- on the order of 20-30 microliters) onto my shirt, and HOLY FUCK DID IT STINK!!!!! Yes, yes, "just like skunk", only this was the PURE compound! I had to immediately go home, pitch the shirt and T-shirt out into the woods behind my house (because there was no fucking way I was going to let it inside!), take a shower, realize that the stink was still there, take ANOTHER shower, drive back to work with the windows down (and this was in the sub-freezing winter) because the stench was still in my car, and finish up my work before going home and taking ANOTHER shower. I was never able to get the stink out of my original shirt (a favorite flannel shirt of mine), and had to leave it outside until trash pickup day.
So yeah, mercaptans are nothing to mess around with. Nor skunks, for that matter.
(Although later I did have a pet skunk, and he was a hoot!)
You have an exciting job, Akak!
Are you sure that sample wasn't squeezed out of young Barry Soetero's undershorts?
This is a real comedy circus. Here we have the EIA forecasting strong energy resources, while at the same time saying "we don't do the permitting", meaning the EPA.
Which degrades into "The biggest hurdle that congress faces is just having good information on future trends in supply and demand, refinery configurations and pipeline and railroad transportation infrastructure."
Which really means is yes, we know there is plenty of energy, but nobody knows if we can really use it in any meaningful way because of all the regulations.
Meanwhile, we are all fucked up the ass by higher energy prices.
"water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink".
So very much to address in this silly interview. I'll just start like so:
So . . . he notes that the EIA was projecting oil production decline in 2006 or so, and he punches the air and says "and that has been wrong!!!"
Then he says the EIA is projecting enormous gains in oil and gas production out to 2040, and somehow decides that there is no history of being wrong. The projections were already wrong once. Why celebrate what they say now? Because you like what they say?
These clowns are nuts! Cost efficiencies at "state of the art refineries", allow lower costs for refined products?
Are you fucking kidding me? CL was $103.00 bbl last week and you assholes have the audacity to talk about exporting diesel and gasoline, because of lower refining costs and cheap Nat Gas?
For the record:
~"The "newest" refinery in the United States began operating in 2008 in Douglas, Wyoming. However, the newest refinery with atmospheric distillation capacity greater than 100,000 barrels per day began operating in 1977 in Garyville, Louisiana."~
1977?!? And you wonder why gasoline is over $3/gal?
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=29&t=6
Listen carefully, this is not the first time I have posted this:
This is a chart showing refining capacity going back to 1985 (all data)
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MOCLEUS2&f=M
Notice that refining capacity is now close to all time highs and roughly 15% greater than in 1985
This is chart showing US oil production going back to 1920
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=M
Notice that at no point does the US have less than 5,000,000 bpd excess refining capacity compared to production...
In fact the US now has twice as much refining capacity as production...
===========
So please don't ever use that fucking lame argument to explain the price of gas in the US....
You only look stupid at worst, ignorant at best... Count on it....
using data to solve a debate??? Asshole. You are supposed to use anectdotal evidence and simply talk out yer ass. What sort of sick pleasure do you get by providing facts at a BS party w/ the EIA and oilprice.com???
You are definitely not a real patriot.
Re: Using data, yeah, I'm bad that way, next time I should simply make shit up to support my position...
We wait for the AGW threads to see that from you ;)
“We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.”
Building science via consensus instead of first principles tends towards conflation of correlation and causation. Especially when you already know the answer even before you begin ;)
LOL, now that's what is known as hard core trolling...
Flak, you forgot (and this is giving you the benefit of a strong doubt) to consider crude imports.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCRIMUS2&f=W
When one adds US Crude Production to US imports, he finds that US refining capacity is pretty much in line with that. There is not a 5 MBPD excess refinery capacity.
Correct, it is roughly in line with that, which not an accident...
And it has little to do with the argument that the "lack of US refinining capacity" is a cause for the high price of gasoline which was the posters original contention...
So given that the US if currently re-exporting refined products using imported oil, you could argue that US has if anything, a modest excess of capacity...
Yes, I suppose you could argue that... now.
At the time these refineries were built, there was sufficient domestic demand. Now, with 23% unemployment (shadowstats), demand is down, and we can export the excess. But you're correct in stating that none of this explains the "high" cost of gasoline domestically.
I put "high" in parentheses because this measure is subjective to the currency you use. In gold and silver, the cost of a gallon of gasoline has changed little over the past 50 years. Goes a long way towards demonstrating the calamitous effect of persistent currency inflation. It's not that gasoline is expensive, it's that dollars are cheap!
News Flash!!!
Eyewitnesses described a large, corpulent woman, dressed in red from head to toe (including a tiara), topping off her CNG-compatible Escalade with $1.50/gal.(equivalent) retail Compressed Natural Gas in Oklahoma today,
"She was very regal looking ... sorta 'queenly', ya might say" voiced one excited onlooker.
As the large woman pulled away, she waved and called out to Flak and the Gang in a curious Texan/British accent, "Pip pip, y'all ... I'll be back in 30/40 years ... mebbee."
"Eyewitnesses described a large, corpulent woman, dressed in red from head to toe (including a tiara), topping off her CNG-compatible Escalade with $1.50/gal."
FYI:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9506 "The Red Queen"
Steven Kolpits Presentation: Major Oil Companies cutting capex and selling assets: (Insufficient prices to support new production to offset declines)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLCsMRr7hAg
Don't give them a bullshit you tube link
here is the real link and the slides as well...
http://energypolicy.columbia.edu/events-calendar/global-oil-market-forec...
Top shelf presentation....
BRAVO!
The best link from this sight in months!
Thank you Flak!
Yeah, that was a damn good presentation. Thanks also from me.
That was good. Goes a long way toward explaining the boom in non-convential oil plays we're seeing now.
All hail the GOD of infinite growth by decree.
I wonder why there isn't a fracking boom everywhere in the world? could it be that the U.S. and it's reserve currency status is the only place that this magical technology is economically viable? Nah, the U.S. is just exceptionally smarter.
Hey, deflator, I'd put my money on the U.S. being exceptionally 'stupider' in the collective sense ... and putting aside the whole reserve currency stuff for the moment ... fact is you WILL see very shortly successful shale oil and gas extraction on a global scale way sooner rather than later.
Small Canadian company, Madalena, has just cracked the code down in the Dead Cow play in Argentina. In barely two years time, that play has seen its first successful well - producing over 250bbl/day - to now having successful horizontals that are producing IP's of near 3,000/day.
The Chinese have invested tens of billions of that reserve currency (USD) in the exploration and production of US shale plays, mostly as Joint Ventures (ie putting up the operating capital) in an intense, ongoing effort to obtain as much technical know-how as possible so they can apply said expertise to extract their own vast shale resources
(WAY more the the US', BTW).
Australia is doing likewise, on a smaller scale, for the same purpose.
Lottsa hydrocarbons in play world wide due in no small part to the efforts of people like George Mitchell (son of an immigrant Greek goat-herder), Harold Hamm - the youngest of 13 kids born to a dirt poor Oklahoma sharecropper ... he would occasionally start his school year near Christmas time as he had to help his family pick crops, Mark Papa of EOG who extended a firm, company-wide ethos of integrity that started from the top.
Love it/hate it, fact is we will be living in a nat gas abundant environment for the forseeable future.
"Extracting the deeply buried spoils is complicated, costly work. Jorge Ferioli of the World Energy Council, an industry research group, estimates that developing Vaca Muerta will require $68 billion-89 billion."
You do realize that's for a top side estimate of 16 billion barrels? That's a bit more than 2 years of global consumption, even if you got it all out. And nobody is going to put up $68 billion anymore. This is the core reality of what Total CEO said 3 weeks ago. "No more expensive exploration plays. No one can make money on this. We, the industry, spent $40 billion from 1995 to 2005 and got 3 million bpd for it. Since 2005 the industry has spent $350 billion and seen only about 0.5 million bpd for it. No more. This ends now."
Yep. We can have loads of energy in the ground, plenty to power the world economy, but if production EROEI is < 1 or it costs more than the market can bear then we don't have it.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
We can make the point over and over again but some people just can't be reached in advance of brutal reality reaming them when it's far too late.
Wow, 3000 bpd!
Peak oil must be wrong....
Oilprice.com is a CNBC Partner Site.
"U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)"
Did George Orwell nam this agency?! I would also bet that like at the BLS, Winston Smith works there as well.
"Have you lost your mind or met my guillotine?!"
the beautiful part about rising gas prices in a stagflationary economy is people are slowly incentivized to move out of the subrubs and rural areas.
while many people recognize american style 'sprawl' as destructive to the environment, they resent the crushing rise in housing and rent prices driven by people being forced into higher density living.
property owners in cities get a win win, they sell or rent to the hard workers below them and use their capital elsewhere, capturing the profit from what would have otherwise been spent on expensive gasoline used for people to travel inordinate distances in the sprawled suburbs and rural parts.
the oligarchs and corporations of course, just buy up the cheap land in the rural areas for farmland or other industrial use or as playgrounds.
long term---this works and is sustainable. no one ever said cheap gas would last forever.
"the beautiful part about rising gas prices in a stagflationary economy is people are slowly incentivized to move out of the subrubs and rural areas. "
Nope, This page shows that people are moving to less populated states from populated states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_growth_rate
People are moving away from the Cities and the Burbs because there are no jobs available. Cities and the Burbs have no resources, as they are net importers for just about everything. Energy Food, manufactured good all originate from rural regions. FWIW: I am moving away from an urban region to a rural region. For the fraction of the cost of a tiny apartment in a major US city I can purchase 100+ acres that can provide me with food and energy. Cities will become decrept and expensive places. Cites are the worse since the only can offer paper pushing jobs, or very low wage jobs (retail, food services, etc). Paper pushing jobs and even food services are disappearing as automation takes over, or jobs are outsourced overseas. I don't there is a single middle class worker that isn't worked about being downsized, outsource, obselence, or eleminated because of computer automation.
"long term---this works and is sustainable."
Unsustainable. Cities depend of cheap energy to support there very large populations as everything they need must be imported from thousands of miles away.
"property owners in cities get a win win"
I don't think so. People need to have jobs pay rent. City Landlords will find increasing difficult as local gov't raise property taxes to pay for gov't services as well as pay for gov't worker (unfunded) pensions. Rent controls will also be popular by the voters squeezing any hope for profit margins.
FWIW: Cities will become very unpleasant places to live in the not too distant future. Those that control the resources in the rural areas will likely to suffer the least as the energy crunch, debt crisis unfolds. Before cheap energy was abundant the majority of the US population lived in rural areas. It will revert back that way as energy becomes expensive again.
Looks like we have another peak oil nutter that doesn’t understand the petro-dollar reserve currency status. Just wait till the Natural Gas thing fizzles. These same fucks will begin promoting hydrogen. After a couple of Zeppelin car explosion’s, we’ll be back to no oil peak burdens.
Let me make a wild ass guess.. A new auto mandate in 2016 will require all car manufactures to meet new Natgas regulations. If you fail on diesel, you move back to gasoline. When the ATM housing market craters, you start pimping coal burning alternative vehicles. When the coal burning electric cars begin to combust into flames, we need to explore Natural Gas options.
/hahahahhaa
Growth at an impressive pace?
From 70 to 100 in 26 years is just an increase of 1.4% per year. Even if energy efficiency improvment of 1% per year is taken into account, it's still below the growth target of most economists and politicians.
Details...
Pay no attention...
Why don’t I just put you into a crib with the rest of the thieves to fight over the currency status in controlling oil & special mineral interests.
We can all place bets on who will finally clutch the baby rattler. Puppets & Muppets will kill to obtain a pre-told life status. These people are sickening. The joke is they are buying debt and think they’re rich. Quite the opposite, just suckers caught up in the Despotism Ponzi scheme.
Boom/Bust.
More of the age old game.
"...this creates a manufacturing opportunity for the US to take a raw material, process it, and sell it abroad."
And when in short 10-15 years we completely run out of domestic petroleum, we'll be forced to import more oil yet again! That is if (Big IF here) the Arabs and Putin will sell us their oil in exchange for the green pieces of paper featuring dead people.
There's absolutely no long-term thinking inthe USA. For public corporations it's 1 quarter, for the Congress - 2 years election cycle. Sell our own resources now, make 0.1% mega-rich, get campaign kick-backs.... and in 10 years gasoline will be $15 and everyone except said 0.1% and the Congressmen will be f*&^ed. We've been there before.
Unless, of course, by then everyone will be carrying pocket-sized nuclear reactors or something similar....
Maybe St. Elon (Musk) will save us with electric cars and solar panels...
Jack Lew Does a West Coast Crony Sit Down with Al Gore
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/jack-lew-does-west-coast-cr...
On his way to Australia for a G-20 meeting, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew stopped off in San Francisco and held a private meeting with the West Coast "business leaders." EPJ has obtained a list of the attendees:
Al Gore KPCB
Brett Kopf Remind101
Dan’l Lewin Microsoft
Dave Morin Path
Drew Houston Dropbox
Halle Tecco Rock Health
John Doerr KPCB
Kate Mitchell Scale Venture Partners
Max Ventilla AltSchool
Megan Quinn KPCB
Mike Abbott KPCB
Weili Dai Marvel Semiconductor
Mike Lee MyFitnessPal
Wally Adeyemo Staffer
Victoria Esser Staffer
The irony of a "boom" involving a desperate, expensive, dirty process to retrieve the "bountiful" table scraps of earths carbon based energy sources. Aint nothin bountiful anymore except for the hot air spewing forth from govt and corporate shills
Wind turbine catches fire in Benton County
http://wlfi.com/2014/02/21/wind-turbine-catches-fire-in-benton-county/
BENTON COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) – A wind turbine in Fowler catches fire in Benton County Friday morning. Witnesses report seeing the turbine shooting flames and sparks from its motor.
The turbine is just off U.S. 52 and County Road 100 South in Benton County. At 6:30 a.m., the Fowler Fire Department dispatched a crew to create a perimeter around the tower.
BP Wind Energy owns the turbine. Fowler Fire Chief Bill Burton said BP told him, whenever this happens, crews should secure the area and not attempt to put the fire out. He said this is something crews are prepared for, but never thought they would see.
——————–
This is the same farm that is suing a utility over a PPA.
http://www.newsbug.info/williamsport_review_republican/article_53dc4d8a-722d-11e3-97c2-0019bb2963f4.html
https://bangordailynews.com/2013/04/23/news/mid-maine/regulators-advocat...
A fire destroyed a multimillion-dollar wind turbine at the Kibby Mountain wind farm in northern Franklin County, which has generated concern about the safety and reliability of turbines, and the process by which these fires are reported to government officials and the public.
Companies that operate wind farms in Maine are not currently required to report turbine fires to any state agency.
http://www.epaw.org/multimedia.php?lang=en&article=a19
-----------
This was a horrible incident and includes a video.
Compilation of turbine issues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr3z_7iQ35s#t=260
Wow, that wind sure is dangerous...
How about the 82,000 ton fly ash spill into the Dan River....
http://www.gastongazette.com/spotlight/duke-energy-coal-ash-spill-renews...
combined with clear conflicts of interest and corruption on the part of the NC govenor (after all he only worked for Duke for 28 years)...
http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/02/duke-energys-inside-connections-t...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/06/coal-ash-is-s...
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/15/maddow-toxic-spill-exposes-nc-tea-...
And of course there is the Elk River chemical spill that affected at least 300,000 people across 9 counties...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/us/west-virginia-chemical-spill.html?_r=0
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/us/west-virigina-chemical-contamination/
You know the place, the one that was last inspected in 1991...
----------------
And this is only the past month, do you we need to go further back?
"You know the place, the one that was last inspected in 1991..."
Good gravy man, don't tell me that crony green laws and the heavy hand of a well tuned regulatory DOE bureaucracy is going to stop favoritism.
Its like LightSquared, BrightSource, Solyndra, Fisker etal never existed! ;-)
You forgot Range Fuels.... (Your Fox news talking points never mention the Republican Admin fiascos, wonder why?)
Anyway, your post was pretty fucking lame and irrelevant, even for you. And I am no mood to fuck around with your circle-jerk sophistries and strawmen today...
lol...oh, I haven't forgot fucking switch grass...no, I'm an equal opportunity offender of all this bullshit.
And the feeling is mutual with me dickin around with you today.
http://msbusiness.com/businessblog/2011/12/05/vinod-khoslas-range-fuels-...
Range Fuels received a $76 million federal loan from the George W. Bush administration in 2007 and another $80 million from the Obama administration in 2009.
Both sides of the aisle are involved.
That was exactly my point, both sides...
Now, lets add up the total DOE loan guarentees and the like over the past 10 years to renewable energy startups and whatnot. Now lets compare the profits of Big Oil and GE over the same time, taking into account the total amount of corporate income tax paid...
You know how to google, so I am sure you can get the answer pretty quickly...
So, just who is get the bigger handout?
BTW, Range fuels got a total of $350 million in support...
------
When all the shell and shelf LLC's etc. are factored in (among other things), the numbers are quite staggering. And yes, you do mention 58 firms that are still in the game. I am quite comforted in knowing that after over 2 decades of actual work in the field and research, and knowing the players, (I am published too), that that may soon not be the case...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/shaw-joins-kkr-buying-cleaner-e...
Hedge funds and private equity firms from D.E. Shaw & Co. to KKR & Co. (KKR) are ramping up their investments in renewable energy projects.
D.E. Shaw, the $30 billion hedge fund manager, bought stakes in five California solar plants in July and is co-developing a wind farm off Rhode Island’s coast. KKR has completed five clean-energy deals in three years, and Altus Power America Management LLC announced a joint venture Feb. 4 to develop $150 million of commercial solar projects.
What’s driving this are projections of stable yields of 8 percent to 10 percent in the next few years -- better than most corporate bonds. Wind farms and industrial-scale solar plants typically have decades-long deals, known as power-purchase agreements, to sell electricity to utilities. D.E. Shaw is betting those contracts make renewable energy as safe and reliable as, say, conventional utility bonds have always been regarded, said Bryan Martin, a managing director at the New York-based firm.
Only a minority of investors understand that such contracts with investment-grade utilities or cities “are capable of providing a steady income stream comparable to high-quality corporate bonds,” Martin said by e-mail.
Investment-grade corporate bonds returned an annualized 5.8 percent since the end of 2010 through Feb. 14 of this year, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. Corporate Index.
David E. Shaw, a researcher in computational biochemistry who founded the firm bearing his name in 1988, was appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by Bill Clinton and later by Barack Obama.
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20140220/NEWS02/140229973
MANCHESTER — An effort by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to levy $8.75 million in fines against Manchester’s energy consultant is moving to federal court, with a jury trial requested by FERC lawyers.
The fines against Competitive Energy Services of Maine, which arranges energy purchase deals for the city of Manchester, were first announced in July of 2012.
The parties have been unable to settle the case, and in December FERC lawyers petitioned the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts for a jury trial affirming the civil penalties against CES and its owner, Richard Silkman.
Silkman is accused of colluding with large-scale energy users in Maine to overstate their baseline energy use so as to qualify for incentives designed to encourage conservation during periods of peak use, making it appear that the users were conserving power when they weren’t.
Silkman has denied the charges and his attorneys are attempting to have them dismissed, claiming that the statute of limitations has expired and that FERC’s anti-manipulation statute does not apply to consultants...
---------
FERC/CES
http://www.cov.com/files/Publication/cfeffdbb-2b1a-461e-8817-15c824ed38df/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/f3f4a12a-4c70-4b7f-83ba-23fea2a4e52a/FERC_Imposes_Civil_Penalties_for_Demand_Response_Manipulation.pdfhttp://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/02/17/freedom-wind-developers-subject-of-federal-investigation/
[snip]
Competitive Energy Services of Portland, the original parent company of the Beaver Ridge Wind development, and Richard Silkman, a co-managing partner of CES, are each named in separate staff notices of alleged violations released Jan. 25, by FERC.
http://www.energymaine.com/mrepress/pressRelease.asp
[snip]
Competitive Energy Services, LLC ("CES"), of Portland, Maine, announced today that it is now selling "Green Power" to Maine residential and small businesses consumers. The product is being sold through Maine Renewable Energy ("MRE"), an affiliate of Competitive Energy Services and in partnership with Maine Interfaith Power and Light ("MeIPL").
Richard Silkman, Managing Partner of Competitive Energy Services, said, "Today, we are helping to bring the promise of competitive electricity markets to Maine homes and small businesses by offering Mainers a choice of where their electricity comes from. Our product is 100% renewable and 100% generated within the State of Maine.
I've got a hunting & fishing shack on a 4 acre woodlot about an hour from my house. No electricity, no running water, no gas. It's got a little woodstove for heat. The woodlot is long and narrow like a football field, with the cabin & driveway at one skinny end by the road.
A big red oak downfall just behind the cabin provided firewood for three years. I'd chainsaw off a couple hunks, split them up, and carry the cordwood into the cabin. It was good exercise and made it all the more satisfying to sit in a nice warm cabin on a cold Fall night, drinking whiskey and kicking back. Now it's all used up.
There's a similar-sized oak deadfall at the far end of the property - enough fuel for another three years. So I've still got plenty of fuel but it's harder to get at. The only way to get the wood is to load my saw & gas can into a wheelbarrow, push it 1/4 mile through the woods, saw off a couple hunks, load them in the wheelbarrow with the saw & gas can, and push it back 1/4 mile through the woods to the cabin. Then I can split it up and burn it.
Much more time & effort spent procuring fuel. Much less time for kicking back drinking whiskey. My back hurts. That's how it is when the easy resources run out and you have to go after the harder-to-get stuff.
While I get your point, if you cut a smaller one down by the cabin it'd be seasoned by next year. It sounds like the problem is proximity to the cabin and your preference for trees that have reached their "natural expiration date".
Not a lack of trees, just sayin ;-)
True.
BUT, the easier it is to get the wood, the more of it you will be inclined to use....untill the gettin' of it gets tougher.
"Now its all used up" There's no excuse for running out of good whisky tippy, none at all !!!
I just wonder how long the 19th century is going to last.
As long as your back lasts and then it is time to give your cabin to your children---- but will the trees still be there ?u
Note to Barry
IF you have so much natural gas why don't you work towards changing the American fleet of transport trucks, and busses over from diesel? You could probably leave the middle east, let them settle their own shit. Not to mention the improvement in your "carbon footprint" You could put a large dent in your fight against AlGonoria's climate change.
But hey peace is a four letter word in the military industrial complex. Not only would your "concern" (read bullshit) over climate be helped if not solved your budget deficit and trade deficit would both drop. (smaller military expenses and buying energy domestically)
You could probably get rid of home land security too if you stopped raining missiles on wedding parties. Another pretty large line item I would think.
Then all of those people previously employed by you could find new careers in the private sector which would be growing because with smaller deficits and trade imbalances there would be more main street money kicking around. Even your banker buddies would like that. More for them to grasp their gollum like claw around.
Because the US is still a net importer of NG...
And no one having to make any real serious decisions thinks NG is any kind of long term solution...