Please take the poll at the end, and please recommend if you find this diary of use. Also, the comments expand on some issues only touched on in the diary, such as alternative fuels like gasification, tar sands and oil shale.
Do you want to play thermonuclear war?
Gad, the following is long, but if you put the pieces together, you find that:
- We are past Peak Oil
- We are going to war with Iran for multiple reasons
- Those two things are not separate
- It's worse than you think ... Much worse.
- You MUST not agree with any of this, or they will come for you! (only slightly kidding).
The article on the flip.
Warning. Do not send this to Republicans. It will only confuse them and make them angry. Like trying to teach a pig to sing. Worse yet, their heads could explode, yielding yet another couple of thousand SuperFund sites (for which we now have no money.) The following in complicated and detailed. You should read it only if you care about your (possible, not certain) immediate future.
This missive starts off about oil, and ends with FEMA internment camps; the two are not as separate as you might think.
To make the oil situation somewhat understandable at a glance, perhaps this chart will do:
World Oil Balance, 1980-2000
As you see, above the 0 is the supply, and below the 0 is the demand.
But wait! Saudi Arabia, in April of 2004, suddenly expanded its estimate of reserves from 261B bbl of oil (Bbbl) to 1.2 Trillion (Tbbl)! Aren't we lucky?
(more in a moment on why S.A. estimates of reserves of 261 Bbbl is, to be nice, a bit rosy; meanwhile:)
Arabnews.com reported, in 2004, that Saudi Arabia said (keep in mind that this was just under 2 years ago):
"Saudi Arabia now has 1.2 trillion barrels of estimated reserve. This estimate is very conservative. Our analysis gives us reason to be very optimistic. We are continuing to discover new resources, and we are using new technologies to extract even more oil from existing reserves," the minister said.
The article went on to say: "Naimi said Saudi Arabia is committed to sustaining the average price of $25 per barrel set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. He said prices should never increase to more than $28 or drop under $22."
$28/bbl max?? Just 2 years ago?? My, how the time flies!
Why did S.A.'s reserves shoot up so much? In this next bit, be sure and plug the numbers into the bar chart and see what it looks like after being fixed with somewhat more realistic numbers.
From Gas And Oil.com: Oil reserves may be lower than producers claim is this:
"It was during this period that OPEC introduced the quota system and the same was linked directly to each country's reserves," Anantha-Nageswaran said.
This should have prompted these countries to inflate their reserves to grab a larger chunk of output quotas, he said. He questions the logic behind oil reserves jumping three to four times between 1988 and 1990.
For example, in 1987, Iran's reserves were 48.8 bn barrels. In 1988 they surged to 92.9 bn barrels and remained almost unchanged until 1998 when they dropped to 89.7 bn barrels. Likewise, Iraq's reserves shot up from 47.1 bn barrels in 1987 to 100 bn barrels in 1988.
In Saudi Arabia, the jump was from 170 bn barrels to 257.5 bn barrels from 1989 to 1990. For Venezuela, reserves soared from 25 bn barrels in 1987 to 56.3 bn barrels the next year. All this happened between 1987 and 1990.
Now we see why reserve estimates shot up; so that the country could pump more oil under the quota system. That would be called: greed. Let's add that up. Saudi Arabia (S.A.) 261-170 = 91 Bbbl missing.
Iran: 45.1 Bbbl missing. Venzuela: 31.3 Bbbl missing. Kuwait: 49 Bbbl missing. That's 125 BILLION barrels of oil missing. Over 10% of current estimates, and that's just for those countries. What Iraq? Another 46 Bbbl overestimate. That's 171 Bbbl. A few million barrels here and a few million barrels there, and you're talking Hubbert's Peak this year or next. Or, some would successfully argue, in the 1970's.
So, to return to the Saudi estimate, in April, 2004, that oil should not exceed $28/bbl, and this is January, 2006, and oil prices are.. um...
Energy stocks post big gains on crude spike, notes
$68.35/bbl closing on Friday.
Well, that's a bit higher than expected, isn't it? But not to worry; why would it go any higher?
The article above says, well, perhaps there could be a few more wrinkles:
U.S. and European Union leaders suspect Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, of seeking to build atomic bombs under the cloak of a civilian nuclear energy program. Analysts are concerned the dispute could lead to a disruption in Iran's crude exports.
And...
Adding to worries in the crude market, more than 220,000 barrels per day of oil have been shut in Nigeria due to civil unrest, and militants Friday warned they would soon resume attacks on oil producers in the country.
But Iraq will soon be producing lots, right? Wrong. Daily attacks are crippling output. Infrastructure is failing. Oil reserves are: guess what? Lower than thought.
An interesting footnote to the information that follows is what BushCo has been doing with our strategic oil reserve: Bush has been filling it at a prodigious rate. Wonder why??
United States Strategic Petroleum Reserves, 1977-2002.
Take a look at this chart:
(Major Crude Oil Reserves, 2003) will give you a bar-chart view of the major players. Just keep in mind that Kuwait's numbers are 50% lower than on this chart. You now have to wonder about the others.
Let's just take a look at Saudi Arabia's oil fields, shall we?
From al Jazeera: (Bank says Saudi's top field in decline), and we find that:
Speculation over the actual size of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves is reaching fever pitch as a major bank says the kingdom's - and the world's - biggest field, Gharwar, is in irreversible decline.
The Bank of Montreal's analyst Don Coxe, working from their Chicago office, is the first mainstream number-cruncher to say that Gharwar's days are fated.
Coxe uses the phrase "Hubbert's Peak" to describe the situation. This refers to the seminal geologist M King Hubbert, who predicted the unavoidable decline of oilfields back in the 1950s.
"The combination of the news that there's no new Saudi Light coming on stream for the next seven years plus the 27% projected decline from existing fields means Hubbert's Peak has arrived in Saudi Arabia," says Coxe, referring to data compiled by the International Energy Association's (IEA) August 2004 monthly report.
Further down, we find an analysis of why S.A. reserves are now at 261 Bbbl instead of the 170 Bbbl that they were in 1990:
This was in order to pump more oil as part of Opec's quota arrangement. The more reserves you claimed to have, the more money you made.
Saudi Arabia announced "a massive increase from 170 to 258gb in 1990. It had evidently decided to follow Kuwait's practice of reporting original, not remaining reserves," Campbell says.
Then, there is the following from the San Francisco Chronicle: Extent of global oil reserves a matter of some dispute
Further, the kingdom's national oil company, Saudi Aramco, treats most information about its wells as a state secret. Its reserves, officially pegged at 261.9 billion barrels, can't be independently verified. And Saudi Aramco hasn't significantly changed that number in 17 years, even though it has pumped 46 billion barrels in that time, Simmons said.
Well, it's not just countries that over-estimate reserves, is it? How about Shell having to lower reserve estimates by 20%? U.S. regulators may look into Shell's overstatement of oil reserves
Goldman Sachs - not a name you normally associate with fringe, "the sky is falling" groups, but you would be wrong; oh, so wrong.
Goldman's Murti Says `Peak Oil' Makes $105 Price Tame
We have hit peak, though BushCo will deny it even as the lights go out. Take a look at what the Energy Bulletin says:
Kunstler: Predictions for 2006
Regardless of what reserve numbers are correct, the fact is that we cannot recover all of them. In fact, only 45 to 75 percent of reserves are recoverable, as this article points out:
Staring down the barrel of a crisis
It is never economic to recover all the oil from a field. Saudi Aramco has claimed it can effectively recover some 75 per cent of the oil in Ghawar. Simmons says that in reserves of that type 45 per cent recovery is the world record.
Now, you've been hearing, if you've been listening, a lot of talk about the US planning a March attack on Iran. Hogwash? Er...
Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse
Several things are coming together. Iran's nuclear ambitions, Israeli skittishness, our need to secure oil supplies for the future, the threat to the dollar (and thus, threatening a depression that would make the Great Depression look like The Little Dimple.
From the article:
In essence, Iran is about to commit a far greater "offense" than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro for Iraq's oil exports in the fall of 2000. Beginning in March 2006, the Tehran government has plans to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect to international oil trades - using a euro-based international oil-trading mechanism.[7]
The proposed Iranian oil bourse signifies that without some sort of US intervention, the euro is going to establish a firm foothold in the international oil trade. Given U.S. debt levels and the stated neoconservative project of U.S. global domination, Tehran's objective constitutes an obvious encroachment on dollar supremacy in the crucial international oil market.
From the autumn of 2004 through August 2005, numerous leaks by concerned Pentagon employees have revealed that the neoconservatives in Washington are quietly - but actively - planning for a possible attack against Iran. In September 2004 Newsweek reported:
Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says. Some Bush advisers characterize the work as merely an effort to revise routine plans the Pentagon maintains for all contingencies in light of the Iraq war. More skittish bureaucrats say the updates are accompanied by a revived campaign by administration conservatives and neocons for more hard-line U.S. policies toward the countries...'
...administration hawks are pinning their hopes on regime change in Tehran - by covert means, preferably, but by force of arms if necessary. Papers on the idea have circulated inside the administration, mostly labeled "draft" or "working draft" to evade congressional subpoena powers and the Freedom of Information Act. Informed sources say the memos echo the administration's abortive Iraq strategy: oust the existing regime, swiftly install a pro-U.S. government in its place (extracting the new regime's promise to renounce any nuclear ambitions) and get out. This daredevil scheme horrifies U.S. military leaders, and there's no evidence that it has won any backers at the cabinet level.[8]
Indeed, there are good reasons for U.S. military commanders to be `horrified' at the prospects of attacking Iran. In the December 2004 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows reported that numerous high-level war-gaming sessions had recently been completed by Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who has run war games at the National War College for the past two decades.[9] Col. Gardiner summarized the outcome of these war games with this statement, "After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers: You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work." Despite Col. Gardiner's warnings, yet another story appeared in early 2005 that reiterated this administration's intentions towards Iran. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker included interviews with various high-level U.S. intelligence sources. Hersh wrote:
In my interviews [with former high-level intelligence officials], I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. Everyone is saying, `You can't be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,' the former [CIA] intelligence official told me. But the [Bush administration officials] say, `We've got some lessons learned - not militarily, but how we did it politically. We're not going to rely on agency pissants.' No loose ends, and that's why the C.I.A. is out of there.[10]
The most recent, and by far the most troubling, was an article in The American Conservative by intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi. His article, "In Case of Emergency, Nuke Iran," suggested the resurrection of active U.S. military planning against Iran - but with the shocking disclosure that in the event of another 9/11-type terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Vice President Dick Cheney's office wants the Pentagon to be prepared to launch a potential tactical nuclear attack on Iran - even if the Iranian government was not involved with any such terrorist attack against the U.S.:
The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing - that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack - but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.[11]
Why would the Vice President instruct the U.S. military to prepare plans for what could likely be an unprovoked nuclear attack against Iran? Setting aside the grave moral implications for a moment, it is remarkable to note that during the same week this "nuke Iran" article appeared, the Washington Post reported that the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of Iran's nuclear program revealed that, "Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years."[12]
This article carefully noted this assessment was a "consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, [and in] contrast with forceful public statements by the White House." The question remains, Why would the Vice President advocate a possible tactical nuclear attack against Iran in the event of another major terrorist attack against the U.S. - even if Tehran was innocent of involvement?
Perhaps one of the answers relates to the same obfuscated reasons why the U.S. launched an unprovoked invasion to topple the Iraq government - macroeconomics and the desperate desire to maintain U.S. economic supremacy. In essence, petrodollar hegemoy is eroding, which will ultimately force the U.S. to significantly change its current tax, debt, trade, and energy policies, all of which are severely unbalanced. World oil production is reportedly "flat out," and yet the neoconservatives are apparently willing to undertake huge strategic and tactical risks in the Persian Gulf. Why? Quite simply - their stated goal is U.S. global domination - at any cost.
If you think that this year is going to be `normal', I have some land in Florida you might be interested in.
Lastly, perhaps a multi-billionaire could convince me that all is not lost:
The Rainwater Prophecy
Who knows what will happen in the near - much less, the far - future. I sure don't. However, it is only a couple of months until March. If we do, indeed, attack Iran, then perhaps you should re-visit this diary.
Oh, yes. Did I mention that, should a war break out, DO NOT PROTEST! Do not say anything bad about Dear Leader. DO NOT CALL HIM CHIMP-BOY!! Do NOT make fun of his anti-depressant-induced jaw tic. Do NOT make fun of his wife! Do NOT call Barbara the Queen Bitch!
Why? Oh, just this.
Let's start with a sitting Congressman:
McDermott: MARTIAL LAW CONCERNS
And another: Congressman John Conyers, a real hero:
http://www.conyersblog.us/...
Let's move on to the AP:
Concentration Camps in Okanagon County?
From the Sydney (AU) Morning Herald:
Foundations are in place for martial law in the US
From the Idaho Observer newspaper, Dec. 2005:
The Harm Principle – FEMA Unmasked
How about PublicEye.org, founded in 1981?
The Rise of the National Security State: FEMA and the NSC
Miami Herald Article: (copy of it is on this site; original not on the Miami Herald site) SUNDAY JULY 5, 1987: Reagan's Capture of the Constitution (my title)
Or this one:
Yes, I know, this is a conspiracy site, but it puts it all together: http://www.geocities.com/...
Bush can detain anyone, forever; from the Washington Post:
U.S. Can Confine Citizens Without Charges, Court Rules
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't someone after you.
Larry Wilson
1-21-06