the bakken fields have been underreported. ideally this energy independence will mean that the middle east will have to get real jobs, and will no longer be a geopolitical time bomb.
Tag: peakoil
Synthetic culture
wherein we learn whether you can wish culture into existence. my prediction: no.
Qatar Purchases Cézanne’s The Card Players for More Than $250M, Highest Price Ever for a Work of Art. With this landmark score, the tiny, oil-rich nation joins a massively exclusive club: only 5 Card Players exist, and the other 4 are in world-class collections such as the Musée d’Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The purchase is just the latest bid in Qatar’s effort to become an international intellectual hub.
Mexican gulf bleed-out?
a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making,” “fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway”. 2B barrels of oil could leak into the Gulf before the reservoir has fully depleted itself.
Obama Car Nonsense
Obama emphasized his administration’s commitment to keeping the domestic auto industry afloat, while offering only a passing mention to the nation’s mass transit systems.
eh? obama disillusions me more every day.
GM sells 6 cars
GM said sales dropped 41%
excellent
Oil Declines
The upcoming IEA World Energy Report will say that global oil supplies are falling faster than expected, and massive investments are required just to (almost) stand still. Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1%
Pentagon uses 395K Barrels / Day
Here is our current defense posture, We are borrowing money from China to fund our defense budgets to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to fund our military to protect us from China and the Persian Gulf. It is an insidious vulnerability.
BMI Yield
Airlines have been able to remove ovens, trash compactors, or even entire galleys, due to the elimination of hot meals on selected flights; others are using lighter seats; they have also removed magazine racks and replaced hard cabin dividers with curtains
the most obvious source of savings is still politically incorrect. but not for long. BMI yield management here we come.
Real cost of going to work
Prestige office space that gives the right impression – 100 m2 plus use of meeting rooms – $48000 Time taken in meetings to talk about minutiae (15 hours a week for 40 min. for 40 weeks at $60 an hour gross) $36000.
Repurposed Freeways
I don’t know if it’s the $5/gallon gas prices, but freeway life here in southern California has become more surreal of late. Granted, traffic volumes are down, at least a little, so freeways are no longer in that perpetual state of criticality where a butterfly crossing through the 3 lane causes a 6 km backup. Yesterday I saw no less than 3 warnings about people walking on the I-5 freeway — which is a 10-lane high-speed monstrosity — and just now I saw this in a live CHP incident report near me here in La Jolla. Someone is bicycling in the dark in the fast lane of a freeway? Dear God, people. I know gas prices are high, but this is getting deranged.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 