In most states, this isn't even an issue. But here in New Jersey, there is still no self-serve gasoline.
In the late 1970's, during the second Arab oil embargo, I started working weekends at the Exxon gas station right across the highway from what was then the GM plant in Linden, New Jersey. This assured me of a regular supply of gasoline. Even now, I sometimes pump my own gas at my local station. They know me, they work on my car, they know I used to work at a gas station in my young years, and they know that I know what I'm doing.
Major banks warned on Thursday an output loss from another oil producer after Libya would lead to global shortages and demand rationing and said OPEC needs to act quickly as the oil rally could derail economic recovery.
Goldman Sachs issued a note saying the world would not be able to cope with another Libya-style oil production outage as Brent oil prices rallied by over $8.50 a barrel to near $120 a barrel. Italian oil firm ENI, a key Libyan oil player, said the OPEC member had lost three quarters of its production.
"This makes the risks now associated with further contagion much higher than they were several days ago as further disruptions could now create severe shortages in global oil markets that would require substantial demand rationing," Goldman Sachs analyst Jeffrey Currie said.
Barclays Capital and Citi said it saw no downward pressure on prices until more oil comes to the market.
"Unless we see an explicit move from ... producer countries, i.e. Saudi Arabia, I don't think there is necessarily going to be any downward pressure on (oil) prices," said BarCap analyst Amrita Sen.
Mark Fletcher from Citi agreed that OPEC leader Saudi Arabia needed to take action within weeks. "To date we have had a lot of words from Saudi Arabia ... but they haven't done anything yet and we need to see that action."
Now granted, this is Goldman Sachs and Citibank, two of the most companies that got us into this financial mess...and their executives are no doubt rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect. But for those too young to remember the oil shocks of the 1970's, who are used to driving SUVs and spending 40 bucks to fill up the tank, this is what it looked like:
The dollar-a-gallon gasoline that resulted from those oil shocks took us into a bad recession. Imagine what five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline will do right now.
Further to our report last week Halliburton has confirmed that it has been awarded a letter of intent by Shell Iraq Petroleum Development B.V. for the development of the Majnoon field in Southern Iraq.
Dow Jones suggests the contract for the 15 wells could be worth $150m.
The giant Majnoon field is one of the world’s largest oilfields. The letter of intent provides that Halliburton will serve as project manager for the development work, in affiliation with Nabors Drilling and Iraq Drilling Company (IDC). The contract is still subject to final approval by the appropriate Iraqi authorities.
Shell is lead operator and holds a 45 percent share, partner Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) holds 30 percent and the Iraqi state holds 25 percent of the participating interests in all licenses. Shell has announced that the consortium intends to increase production from the current ~45,000 barrels of oil per day to a targeted production plateau of 1.8 million barrels of oil per day.
“Halliburton has made a sizeable investment in Iraq and we look forward to providing services to Shell and the consortium in order to increase production at this historic oil field,” said Dave Lesar, Halliburton’s Chairman, President and CEO. “We have in place the technology, equipment and personnel to ensure that we deliver the solutions that will help our customers in this region to meet their production goals.”
Halliburton has been active in the Middle East since 1946. Currently, Halliburton has more than 4,000 employees in the Middle East, and construction on phase I of Halliburton’s 400-man base in Burjisia, Iraq is complete.
The Obama administration said on Monday that it remains "premature" to rule out including additional offshore drilling as part of comprehensive energy legislation, even as Senate Democrats warn that such a provision would make the bill "dead on arrival."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the president will determine whether to stay with or abandon his call for additional drilling off various parts of the coast once he gets the findings of an investigation into the massive oil spill in the Gulf.
"The president was specific in ordering [Department of Interior] Secretary [Ken] Salazar to look at all the possible aspects of what could go wrong in this instance [and] to report back to him in that thirty day period," Gibbs said in response to a question from the Huffington Post. "This is an administration that is going to take any information we can get from that and have that dictate our decision making going forward. I think it would be premature to get too far ahead of where Secretary Salazar's investigation is."
While the White House declines to fully abandon offshore drilling in light of the current spill, others in the Senate are ramping up their opposition. On Friday, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.) said any energy bill that included such exploration in its legislative language would be "dead on arrival" in the Senate. His office went even further, speculating that larger energy bill itself was now all but impassable in the Senate.
"It's dead on arrival if it contains oil drilling," an aide said, "if it doesn't have offshore drilling then you don't have Republicans."
So fucking what? It won't have Republicans anyway. How the hell many times does this guy have to get burned before he stops this nonsense? Yes, David Broder wants bipartisanship. Who the hell cares what Broder thinks. The Republicans are already trying to hang this oil spill around Obama's neck, and they'll do it even if they are shouting "Drill Baby Drill" on the Senate floor.
We've all had those friends that I call "psychic vampires." They're the ones who keep making the same mistake over and over again and expect you to either bail them out, or loan them money, or just be there and listen to them crying about the one who done them wrong. They won't take responsibility for their own role in their misfortunes, they just expect you to always be there -- the good, loyal friend. I don't know about you, but there comes a point where I jettison self-destructive people like this from my life, because they just sap too much life force from you.
It seems we now have a Democratic President who's like this.
An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history, drilling experts said Thursday.
The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn't begun.
In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn't known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.
Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant.
Concerns about the cementing process—and about whether rigs have enough safeguards to prevent blowouts—raise questions about whether the industry can safely drill in deep water and whether regulators are up to the task of monitoring them.
The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week. The disaster, which killed 11, has left a gusher of oil streaming into the Gulf from a mile under the surface.
Federal officials declined to comment on their investigation, and Halliburton didn't respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal.
According to Transocean Ltd., the operator of the drilling rig, Halliburton had finished cementing the 18,000-foot well shortly before the explosion. Houston-based Halliburton is the largest company in the global cementing business, which accounted for $1.7 billion, or about 11%, of the company's revenue in 2009, according to consultant Spears & Associates.
The failed blowout valve? It was manufactured by Cameron International. One look at Cameron's board should tell you all you need to know. They're all Bush/Cheney contractor cronies, here and around the world.
Hours before the spill started washing ashore in Louisiana late Thursday, members of Congress issued new calls for Obama to abandon his plans for expanded offshore drilling, and White House officials conceded that the spreading oil slick could cause the president to rethink his position. "We need to figure out what happened," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "Would a finding of something possibly affect that? Of course."
The outlook in the Gulf of Mexico remained bleak in the wake of the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and killed 11 workers. A change in the weather and choppy waters prevented a second burn of oil at sea and slowed efforts by a flotilla of ships to skim the oily mixture from the surface of the gulf, federal officials said. Continuing efforts to use remote-controlled robotic submarines to activate a malfunctioning blowout preventer lying on the sea floor in 5,000 feet of water failed.
State lawmakers expressed growing concern about whether the federal government and corporate officials are reacting with the speed and resources required to avert an environmental and fishing industry disaster.
Citing memories of the faltering federal response to Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago, Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, told the House chamber that he was "in deep concern about the lackadaisical response we have gotten on the oil spill containment."
After participating in a conference call with officials from the state and BP, Jones said he was distressed about what appeared to be a lack of plans and preparation for containment to prevent the oil from coming ashore. He said the officials have a clean-up policy, but not a prevention policy.
"I would ask the president to send all he can now," said Jones, who was an aide to Gov. Kathleen Blanco during the Katrina response. "We need the facts, we need the A-team here."
Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said the response is the largest oil spill containment operation in history, with more than 1,000 workers and 76 vessels.
Suttles said workers have been placing containment booms to protect Louisiana's coastline for the past four or five days. He said 34 miles of booms were in place Thursday afternoon, with nearly 60 more miles of boom on hand.
He said workers are poised to deploy underwater dispersants to try to break up the spill before it reaches the water's surface, a new method that has never been used in the United States.
[snip]
n the meantime, BP has assembled spill experts from several major oil companies to brainstorm ways to stop the leak. The company has also asked for military technology, including better underwater imaging equipment and robotic submarines.
"We're going to turn over every single stone until we get this thing stopped," Suttles said. All clean-up costs will be paid by BP, formerly British Petroleum, which saw its stock price plunge more than 8 percent Thursday.
The Department of Interior announced it will send teams to conduct safety inspections on all oil rigs and platforms in the Gulf. Three similar inspections on the Deepwater Horizon this year, including one days before the explosion, found nothing amiss.
State Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham said the agency has biologists at the projected impact points along the coast to monitor the situation. He said bird nesting grounds and other wildlife habitats are in danger in the Breton Sound area.
With oil predicted to reach Pass a Loutre on Thursday night, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said he would declare a state of emergency. He said predictions are that the oil could reach marshes as far inland as Fort Jackson in four days.
The Obama Administration had damn well better get this one right, even if there's nothing that realistically can be done. Because the Republicans are going to be all over them on this, even though there is video of these guys saying "Drill, baby drill!" all over the place. There's no doubt that Obama is going to have to play defense on this, because the fact of the matter is that there are hundreds of gallons of oil out there and they have to go SOMEWHERE -- and he has just advocated for MORE drilling in a sop to Republicans who are already circling him like hyenas around a lion cub, ready to gnaw his bones. And they don't care that they are the tools of the oil industry. Remember, all they have to do is paint Barack Obama as The Guy Who Wrecked New Orleans. They get redemption for George W. Bush (a meme which media whores like Scarborough and Matthews and Snuffleupagus and Gregory will be only too happy to foster) and they get the even more oil-slicked Sarah Palin closer to the White House to feed their sexual fantasies.
So the Democrats had better find their rhetorical balls. Now. And they'd better stop trying to play ball with Republicans. Because if they don't, well, Goddess help us all.
When is Barack Obama going to learn that they are going to call him a Muslim terrorist socialist antichrist even if he does things like this:
The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.
The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.
Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.
The environmentally sensitive Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected and no drilling would be allowed under the plan, officials said. But large tracts in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska — nearly 130 million acres — would be eligible for exploration and drilling after extensive studies.
The proposal is to be announced by President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Wednesday, but administration officials agreed to preview the details on the condition that they not be identified.
The proposal is intended to reduce dependence on oil imports, generate revenue from the sale of offshore leases and help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation.
Yup, that's vintage Obama -- try to cut the baby in half in the hope of getting bipartisan support for something Republicans will never, ever go for. If he still thinks Republicans will go for any effort to combat climate change (when they don't believe we have any part to play in it) after the health care near-debacle, I don't know what's going to convince him that these people will not work with him under ANY circumstances.
Then there's the delusion this will create that we don't have to worry about oil because we can pump our way to the return of cheap gas and Hummers. Meanwhile, here in New Jersey, we have had three major storms in six weeks -- one blizzard that left us with up to 20 inches of snow, a late-winter near-hurricane that brought us 70mph winds and up to 6" of rain in two days (and toppled my giant blue spruce tree in the front yard), and another one this week that brought up to another 5" of rain. But no, climate change has nothing to do with that either.
The only comfort that I take in this is that it's the states who chanted "Drill baby drill" during the 2008 election campaign who will find oil globs washing up on their beaches.
Ceasefire, Georgia;.... and as today goes on we may see more response to that report on the ground, but according to Mick Ware, don't be so sure. Ware, reporting as usual for CNN, after his fantastic reporting in Iraq, is once again on the front lines, this time in Georgia: that fly swat, fool hardy, leap towards democracy, (the fools being anyone that believes Bush's swagger and promises of support in this when we can barely hold our-own-selves up militarily or diplomatically.)
Yesterday, Ware appeared on the front lines of this war, which appear different than what we are used to seeing of war front lines, reporting that Russian forces have cut off the main access points for humanitarian aide; access points that our boy Bush has warned them again and again to keep open....not that Russia's mini-me President, Medvedev, the mouthpiece of Vlad (whose trusty, soulful eyes have held Bush enthralled for years,) is taking advice from Bush, or is in any way swayed by America's maimed diplomatic powers, or even the threat of an impending return to the Cold War. It all appears pretty calm except for the occasional flare here and there of violence. Of course the Russians are in control here and only real diplomacy and pressure from NATO will make any sort of stand down real.
Bush, on his way to that tumble weed vacation-land, again spoke of freedom, US support, and how the use of this kind of force is unacceptable in the 21st Century...yeah...uh-huh.... As Jill Brilliant would say, "pot, meet kettle." The US may be sending some food, but it seems that the rest of our support amounts to empty promises of an army spread too thin, and a lame duck that no one takes seriously anymore; The US Navy? Where? Not so much...sorry for the false alarm!....Off to clear some brush! Hi-ho! By the end of his time in office, Bush will have spent 499 days on vacation, give or take the few days that he has cut in order to egg on the break-away republic's war, and run the other wars that hes got going, into the ground. He is not much for cutting vacations short, as we learned during Hurricane Katrina.
If Bush in any way grasped the seriousness of his lack of diplomatic prowess and the rumblings of another cold war heading this way, he would surely stay at his post. But, just like everything else, he shows his lack of concern and interest, much less focus, by picking up that damned stiff, expressionless dog and heading down towards hell-country to bake his brain clearing brush or whatever it is he does down there.
Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, (who appears in producer Lauren's pretty damned funny of you're a politic's geek, McCain Mispronunciation Guide, reposted on Seder's blog here,) yesterday spoke at a podium next to Condeleeza Rice at a different podium, about this conflict being about "looking evil in the eye...", which brings to mind the infamous meeting of Vlad and Bush in 2001, who was heard to exclaim:
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.
"I was able to get a sense of his soul."
And seemingly, as the years have gone by, that feeling has grown; until it stopped growing, that is, and Vlad backed away, and Bush, instructed no doubt by teh Jesus to spread democracy, decided to say fuck it to his supposed ideals of maintaining the end of the cold war, and push ahead with his democratize-the-world stance, even as our frail democracy cracks under the stress of deregulation in the age of fascism and greed. Not that our current brand of deregulated, executive-has-the-power, check-and-balances be damned, democracy should be recommended to any state
And there is Russia specialist Condi Rice, stiff as Barney the dog under Bush's arm, standing proudly at the podium, knowing that this thing is rigged; the fix is in. This isn't about bullying and democracy; its about bullying and world dominance with oil and passageways, and time ticking away in which to move the chess pieces to their proper places. Condi is one cool character, and her cold repetition of the talking points on this thing doesn't help matters when you stand her next to a passionate, if less than circumspect man, who is merely trying to lead his country away from a looming beast that is not goign to be stopped right now. Of course, e is probably dirty too...who isnt these days? Thank God no one is paying attention!
Vlad's soul, sure.... Only perhaps the most truly soulless sociopath can see into the soul of another of his ilk. And regarding the lie of democracy that has been used on more than one war in my time, I suppose I don't have to go into my usual rant here about how democracy is an evolution that comes about naturally due to the desires of a population hungry enough to fight, die, and/or travel across oceans in the bellies of ships, for it. I suppose I don't have to mention that even the slightest push of encouragement, or shove from a nation that might like to have some hand in those particular oil pipelines, can be not only conflict of interest but deadly. We have lost our bargaining power in the diplomatic world, and surely no Georgian force will win a war with Russia without the nukes of the USA behind it. And, of course, ultimately, oil itself is not even whats going on here.
The issue of theoil flowing through Georgia is important, not in the amount of oil, because it supplies only 1% of the global annual demand, but more because of the power that it represents as an independent conduit or pipeline, and its ability to effect dependence on Russian and Middle Eastern supplies. Georgia has no oil of it's own, but rather, since the 1990's has served as a conduit for oil that is pumped from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, providing the only possible pathway without passing through Russia or Iran.
The pipeline is a central element in Georgia's independence from Russia. In the words of Georgia's President Saakashvili, “All strategic contracts in Georgia, especially the contract for the Caspian pipeline, are a matter of survival for the Georgian state.” Saakashvili's miscalculation was to assume that Western reliance on Caspian oil would translate into material support against Russian aggression.
Miscalculation indeed; it depends on what you think material support means. Immaterial support is sure popping up all over the place in terms of bravado and all, and it looks like our relationship with Russia, such as it is, is at stake. But can we really afford to get into this now, what with our weakened state and the fact that we have done little to nothing to reduce our dependence on oil?
Worse than that is that if you scratch the surface, as our good friends at They Gave Us a Republic have been doing daily on this story, you find some pretty scary things in the background: The US and Poland have signed a deal that enables the US to put a missile interceptor base on it's land, thus enabling the protection of the often bombed pipeline. Poland is now in the sights of Russia....mistake!
Further, Ian Welsh over at Firedoglake, has an interesting piece here that explains why Russia may well be setting up a number of these "wars of reunification," having to do with the Ukraine's rising power and the loss of particular strategic sites looming. The Ukraine has been pushing to join NATO, and that is something that Russia is dead set against. The time frame in which Russia might regain not only the strategic sites, but put down breakaways and Ukraine, is growing smaller because America may well get out of Iraq and finish in Afghanistan in the forseeable future, and thus be available to actually help the Ukraine and these breakaway states. Sean-Paul at the Agonist reiterates what Ian says and also adds that Russia will go to any lengths to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, with the power that implies.
Today, in light of the ceasefire, Mick Ware appeared again and again, in front of new rubble, discussing how the Russians are digging in rather than pulling back, and Reuters noted that just prior to the ceasefire, 5 were killed in Gori, a front in the dispute, including journalists, who have been seemingly targeted trying to cross the border into this front-line city. I trust Ware and his punch drunk, breathless reporting; he has never steered me wrong, and he drives the wingnuts crazy!
John Cole at Balloon Juice noted that in all of the craziness, at least the US was able to provide some sorta humanitarian aide, after foolishly egging this thing on from the sidelines. He provides a rather more concise view of the happenings over there than my drifting ramblings, and he also knows teh PhotoShoppe as is evidenced thusly:
you gotta love it!! God Bless America!...damn the torpedoes!
Today's honoree: Barack Obama, for hitting John McCain hard on energy. (See? We may gripe when he lets the Republicans pummel him without fighting back, but we believe in rewarding good behavior.)
Money quote:
Now, yesterday, Senator McCain started running a TV ad saying that Washington is broken. No kidding. It only took Senator McCain those 26 years in Washington to figure that out. But here’s the thing, Elkhart. I’m having a little trouble squaring that statement with Senator McCain’s declaration a few months ago that we’ve made “great progress economically” over the past eight years. Or his boast that he’s voted with President Bush over 90% of the time. Or his assertion that overall, the American people are better off now than they were when George W. Bush came into office.
You know from your own lives that we’re not better off than we were eight years ago. Back then, you were paying about $1.50 for gas. Today, you’re paying around $4 a gallon. Back then, you were paying $875 a year on electric bills. Today, you’re paying more than $1,100. Back then, you were paying about $900 for heating oil to get you through the winter. This winter, you’re likely to pay nearly $2,500.
This didn’t happen by accident. It happened because for too long, we haven’t had a real energy plan in this country. We’ve had an oil company plan. We’ve had a gas company plan. But we haven’t had a plan that made sense for the American people.
So if Senator McCain wants to talk about why Washington is broken, that’s a debate I’m happy to have. Because Senator McCain’s energy plan reads like an early Christmas list for oil and gas lobbyists. And it’s no wonder – because many of his top advisors are former oil and gas lobbyists.
Instead of offering a plan with significant investments in alternative energy, he’s offering a gas tax gimmick that will pad oil company profits and save you – at most – a quarter and a nickel a day over the course of an entire summer. That’s why Washington is broken.
Instead of supporting my plan to use the windfall profits of oil companies to help you pay rising costs, he’s offering $4 billion more in tax breaks to oil companies like Exxon that just made the largest quarterly profit in the history of the United States of America. That’s why Washington is broken.
Instead of offering a comprehensive plan that will lower gas prices, the centerpiece of his entire energy plan is more drilling. It’s a proposal that won’t yield a drop of oil for at least seven years, but it’s produced a gusher for Senator McCain. Because after he announced his drilling proposal to a room full of oil executives, the industry ponied up nearly a million dollars in contributions. That’s the kind of special interest-driven politics that’s stopped us from solving our energy crisis. And that’s why Washington is broken.
So I know Senator McCain likes to call himself a maverick – and the fact is, there are times when he’s shown independence from his party in the past. But the price he paid for his party’s nomination was to reverse himself on position after position, and now he embraces the failed Bush policies and politics that helped break Washington in the first place – and that doesn’t exactly meet my definition of a maverick.
Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.
Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.
Exxon Mobil Corp. posted a 14% rise in second-quarter net income, boosted by high oil prices, but results were tarnished by falling production figures that worried investors.
Exxon Mobil's profit of $11.68 billion, or $2.22 a share, up from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, a year earlier, wasn't enough to distract investors from a 7.8% drop in its production of oil and natural gas. The earnings also missed Wall Street expectations of $2.52 a share, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
So...profits are way up, but production is down. Gee. ya think there's a connection?
Side note: I had a little bit of fun today. After years of being tailgated and bullied by Hummer drivers, I had a bit of revenge today. I pulled up to my neighborhood station, right behind some over-made-up McMansionite in a red Hummer. Not an H2 or an H3, but the original Hummer. You know, the one that gets around 8-10 miles per gallon. In New Jersey we don't have self-serve gas, but since I know the station, they know me, and they know that when I was in my 20's I used to work at a gas station on weekends, they let me pump it myself. I pumped $22.50 worth of regular into my Honda Civic and pulled a twenty and a five from my wallet, along with two quarters. She was watching me in her side-view mirror; presumably feeling infinitely superior to me in her Big Red Hummer and her makeup and her Botox and her skinniness. I waved the twenty and the five at her and smiled, then gave the bills to the kid working the pumps, who looked like he was going to bust a gut trying not to laugh. I gave the money to the kid, who handed me three singles, which I promptly waved at Miss Botoxia of 2002, smiling again. I got into the car, backed up, and passed her on the other side of the pumps, waving again for good measure as the price ticked upwards towards the $100 mark.
All by itself, that made it a good day. These days, I take what amusement I can get.
Ship traffic on the lower Mississippi River stopped Wednesday as an oil spill from an early morning accident between a tanker and a barge closed a 47-mile stretch of the nation's major waterway.
The closure is likely to go on for days while remediation teams rush to clean the heavy slick of tar that is drifting southward, shutting access to all of the facilities of the Port of New Orleans.
"They say it's going to be closed for days but not weeks. It looks like a fairly extended closure, but we don't have any specifics yet," said Chris Bonura, a spokesman for the port.
The port loses about $100,000 in revenue each day it is closed, and that does not include the losses to terminal operators, stevedores, tug boat operators and other private businesses.
[snip]
Wednesday's accident closed the river from mile 50 at Venice to mile 97 at New Orleans, and its consequences for river traffic will likely reverberate far more than when the Zim Mexico III container ship slammed into a supply boat at the mouth of the Mississippi in February 2004 and closed the river for five days.
That incident took place below the Port of New Orleans, and the port remained open in its immediate aftermath. Only ships that needed to sail to or from the Gulf of Mexico were affected, and some of those vessels were able to reach open water by traveling down the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, or MR-GO.
But this time, Bonura said, the closure extends to the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, a channel that connects the river with the MR-GO. Ships can't get to the gulf outlet, and even if they could, they wouldn't be able to sail through it. Hurricane Katrina dragged silt into the waterway, and its entrance is now only 13 feet deep.
"There's just not a lot of alternatives out there right now," Bonura said.
The river could reopen gradually, as it did after Katrina, Bonura said. The Coast Guard will probably work as fast as it can to push the oil to one side and partially reopen the river, but one lane open may mean travel in one direction at a time.
The impasse at New Orleans also affected other ports in and above the slick. The St. Bernard Port, Harbor and Terminal District, which handles about 260 calls a year from ships carrying bulk and break-bulk cargo such as fertilizer, sand, iron ore, plywood, steel, metals, was shut in by the spill.
"There's no traffic moving in or out of our port," said Bobby Scafidel, its executive director.
Wouldn't be prudent, would it, to extol the virtues and cleanliness of oil drilling while there are almost 10,000 barrels of fuel oil spilt in the Mississippi River.
Largest is nearly 4 million gallons, most big ones are on Mississippi River
By Miguel Llanos Reporter MSNBC updated 8:14 a.m. ET, Mon., Sept. 19, 2005
More than 500 specialists are working to clean up 44 oil spills ranging from several hundred gallons to nearly 4 million gallons, the U.S. Coast Guard said in an assessment that goes far beyond initial reports of just two significant spills.
The report comes nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and reflects the fact that the Coast Guard and other agencies are able to only now tackle environmental problems since the search and rescue effort is winding down.
The Coast Guard estimates more than 7 million gallons of oil were spilled from industrial plants, storage depots and other facilities around southeast Louisiana.
John "Nipper" McCain, at a Town Hall Meeting in Rochester, New Hampshire today:
Yes, you heard correctly:
Now I'd like to mention offshore drilling if I could. My friends, we have to drill offshore. We have to drill. The oil executives say within a couple of years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it?
Well gee whiz, if the oil executives say so, it must be true.
Just what we need...another president in the pocket of the oil industry.
(OK, so I don't do it as well as Driftglass. So sue me.)
After all, what's more American than throwing some burgers on the grill, drinking a Bud, watching a baseball game on TV, and praying to Jeebus for cheap gasoline:
The Pray at the Pump Movement, founded by Rocky Twyman, has been holding prayer vigils at gas stations across the country. On Monday, Twyman decided to take his movement from Exxon and Shell stations straight to the steps of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., hoping to encourage the oil-rich country to raise the amount of barrels they release each day from 200,000 to 1.2 million.
Twyman, who is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, spent the afternoon outside of the embassy praying and asking passersby to sign his petition for the release of more oil, which he hopes to deliver to the Saudi oil minister.
"Our people are really suffering through this crisis," Twyman told Cybercast News Service. "We need the Saudis to release at least 1.2 [million] barrels of oil per day for about the next six months until we can get everything settled in America ... (I)f they can just do that for us, than this will help us get through this crisis."
Does anyone else find the notion of praying to God for cheap oil to be delivered from a Muslim country absolutely hilarious? Did Jesus really die on the cross so that people could drive Hummers? [Insert your own "family values" politician sex joke here.]
Now if you'll excuse me; I know I left that icepick around there somewhere. My forehead really needs it.
For 20 years, I've been saying that the Bush family regards the entire country as their own private fiefdom, to plunder as they please and parcel out to their friends.
I was wrong.
They regard the entire WORLD as their own private fiefdom, to plunder as they please and parcel out to their friends.
How twisted do you have to be to send 160,000 American kids to die or be wounded and scarred for life....for THIS:
United States policy is to warn companies that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law and to strengthen Iraq’s central government. The Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, infuriated Iraqi officials. But State Department officials did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it, the documents show.
The company, Hunt Oil of Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.
In an e-mail message released by the Congressional committee, a State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.”
There are no words to describe how evil these people are.
Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.
The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.
But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”
Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.
Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.
According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.
All involve two types of solar plants, concentrating and photovoltaic. Concentrating solar plants use mirrors to direct sunlight toward a synthetic fluid, which powers a steam turbine that produces electricity. Photovoltaic plants use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy.
Much progress has been made in the development of both types of solar technology in the last few years. Photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent in 2007 compared with 2006. Eleven concentrating solar plants are operational in the United States, and 20 are in various stages of planning or permitting, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation and wildlife. In California, for example, solar developers often hire environmental experts to assess the effects of construction on the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.
Since when do they give a flying fuck about native vegetation and wildlife? They want to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife refuge, with idiotic wingnut Congresswomen claiming that the caribou will belly up to the nice warm pipes to have their Starbucks. You think I'm joking?
This Administration is going to do everything it can, via squeezing Americans at the gas pumps, to get its way on oil drilling, the better to enrich the Bush and Cheney families and their cronies and friends in the oil industry. Meanwhile, a young industry that promises a renewable source of fuel is subject to a freeze while the federal government drags its feet on environmental impact studies that it doesn't find necessary while drilling for poison.
And with John McCain, we get even more of this insanity.
Just as DINO Joe Lieberman (D-CT,) is clearly not gonna support his party's candidate for President; neither will he be supporting democratic congressional candidate, Jim Himes, to replace Congressman Chris Shays (R-CT.)
Best buddies, Shays and Lieberman, have visited Iraq together some 20 times, and held tight to their shared rosy, pro-war stance until just before the '06 elections, when they both began to waffle and turn, only to change back once they assured themselves that their positions were safe...if only temporarily. They are sharing chairmanship of McCain's presidential campaign's CT "leadership team," and from the way that the two of them have been acting, they expect positions in the McCain cabinet. Its too bad that CT voters were so short sighted, misled, and plain old terrified of the unknown, to vote these guys out. Its too bad also that the two of these crony's can hold hands while saluting their leader, in the name of bipartisanship, which is really just shared neocon vision by any other name. They are sure of the fact that we will be "victorious" in Iraq (which means...what?) and don't care how long it takes or how many die. Lip service paid to bringing troops home is just that; lip service. But what is going on is more insidious than just one turncoat and his brown-nose buddy; its about the movement to actually take over the country while we all slumber in our denial. Scared of the "terra," and worried of "losing" or this idea of "cut and run," I doubt that most people could explain what any of that means in real terms or what we are doing there int eh first place. They can, however, explain how hard day to day life has become in this country and most of what people talk about having changed can be attributed directly to this administration and this war.
The Stamford Advocate, my local paper, today had a great letter about Christopher Shays and his praise of the new big oil deals, by one Scott Kimmitch. What struck me was not the facts about Shays and how dirty he is, because its clear or not to the individuals in this state who likely like Shays because of his manner or his smooth lies, but his clear definition of fascism, which is something that every person in this country needs to understand:
Handing out no-bid contracts to big oil companies headquartered in the two countries whose leaders conspired to mislead their peoples into a criminal war sends the wrong message to the world, particularly if you understand the word "fascist." Fascism is the seamless merger of corporations with national leadership, producing a belligerent nationalism accompanied by suppression of citizens' rights.
Fascism happens when the corporations call the shots and the government connives to let them do it. Why not let oil companies around the world submit bids to Maliki's government and let it work the way private enterprise is supposed to work? Why let our government put pressure on Iraq in the name of corporate favorites?
I actually read this at the local firehouse while a bunch of the guys were taking a CPR refresher exam, and I managed to find a highlighter and highlight it, leaving it on the desk so that they would find and read it. Alot of them are not going to vote because they feel so burned by the system, and lied to by their party. I can only quote facts, because the emotional part is tied up in some of their own service in Viet Nam, and having to face what that war was for...and really, the facts are what you need if you're anyone who cares about the lives of soldiers and the future of the young people of this country.
So this is what its come to. Even if much of this were only partly true, it would be worth taking a good hard look at. You can say that we don't have a Hitler leading that march, and maybe Bush is in his lame term, but that doesn't mean that a Hitler doesn't appear out of this...a deranged and mentally damaged man who's got a clearer and better plan for the victory of the country...someone like McCain, if he weren't so bat-shit crazy...or, maybe somebody pulling a McCain's puppet strings as if he were say, a George W. with a Cheney behind him... I-m not saying that McCain has a chance, because I don't think that he does, but if it all works out, we will have spent 8 years as close as any of us should ever be to fascist rule. This is what I call a close call...and if the republicans were somehow able to pull a reasonable candidate out of their asses we would be in shit trouble, because Americans are uneducated and complacent.
To reiterate: American big oil corporations being able to take back Iraq (...help them with their oil problem, perhaps?) is not what we went there for. We were gonna help them run the oil for the people and then the rebuilding and the war would pay for itself...remember? For the American Government to allow our big oil corporations in there no-bid, without a parliamentary decision on how they want to structure this deal is to go back to the days before Saddam Hussein kicked out the western players and nationalized the country's oil. For the US to put in place the exact same players from the deal before the nationalization has a damning sort of scent to it...like, we went in there to spread democracy? Capitalism? And now they want us to believe that the Iraqis "need" western modernization and expertise in order to make money on their oil? (Like they need sustained electricity still, and buildings without failing plumbing systems, because our private corporations are so, so, great at building infrastructure!) They couldn't ask anyone else who is maybe less conflicted in their interest? Forget those other countries who were shut out of the bidding...This is OUR corporate oil...maybe we'll get a little trickle down from it...in theory, we could; but in truth we won't...And don't expect the Iraqi people to benefit from this either.
So, this is the face of fascism, and it really makes me sick. I'm sure that the Rovian machine can drum up enough outrage and anger to make half of all Americans believe that our corporations deserve this because we've done so much "work" over there, but lets not forget that we broke it...we bought it...and its ours to fix, not gut of its natural resources. And with such an unstable leadership there, I can imagine that the contracts will be long... So, did we go there for oil? Yeah...we did. And Chris Shays, my Congressman, is PROUD of the American oil companies that will put themselves in danger's way (but, oh, is it lucrative!...yes it is...) It will take another strongman dictator to nationalize the oil again...till then, I wonder how much of that profit is gonna go to rebuilding the country? How much of it is gonna go to huge bonuses for CEO's and other players? And will the price of oil drop substantially again? Why should it? Mission accomplished!
Well, now we know for certain what over 4000 American kids died for and tens of thousands more gave their body parts and their very sanity for (not that there was ever any doubt in my mind, but too many refused to believe it):
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
And they said "No war for oil!" was just a protest slogan.
Last night I posted my favorite clip from Blazing Saddles, and it's tempting to post it again today, but I'm not going to. Because while it's a lot more fun to ridicule people who keep voting for people who screw them over every time as idiots, this year the stakes are so high that we need to find out WHY they keep doing this, and what we can do to reach them -- because they are bearing the brunt of the deliberate strategy of the Bush Administration's and the petroleum industry cabal of producers and traders to turn this country into a land of the disgustingly rich and the grindingly poor:
Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets.
Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to work. Some are switching jobs for shorter commutes.
People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together gas money.
The disparity between rural America and the rest of the country is a matter of simple home economics. Nationwide, Americans are now spending about 4 percent of their take-home income on gasoline. By contrast, in some counties in the Mississippi Delta, that figure has surpassed 13 percent.
As a result, gasoline expenses are rivaling what families spend on food and housing.
“This crisis really impacts those who are at the economic margins of society, mostly in the rural areas and particularly parts of the Southeast,” said Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at the Oil Price Information Service, a fuel analysis firm. “These are people who have to decide between food and transportation.”
A survey by Mr. Rozell’s firm late last month found that the gasoline crisis is taking the highest toll, as a percentage of income, on people in rural areas of the South, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota.
With the exception of rural Maine, the Northeast appears least affected by gasoline prices because people there make more money and drive shorter distances, or they take a bus or train to work.
But across Mississippi and the rural South, little public transit is available and people have no choice but to drive to work. Since jobs are scarce, commutes are frequently 20 miles or more. Many of the vehicles on the roads here are old rundown trucks, some getting 10 or fewer miles to the gallon.
The survey showed that of the 13 counties where people spent 13 percent or more of their family income on gasoline, 5 were located in Mississippi, 4 were in Alabama, 3 were in Kentucky and 1 was in West Virginia.
How about that -- the counties where people spend over 10% of their income now on gasoline are located in the most reliable Republican-voting states in the country. You wonder why they keep doing it. And it's the job of the Democratic Party to find out why -- and convince them that while changing the way they've always voted may seem scary, their future under John McCain is going to be far worse than anything they can imagine under Barack Obama.
Yes, my friends (/McCain), despite the huge profits made by oil companies in the first quarter, the fact that you're paying almost four bucks a gallon for gasoline isn't at all they're fault. No sirree, they are victims just as much as you are:
The American Petroleum Institute, the industry's main lobby, has embarked on a multiyear, multimedia, multimillion-dollar campaign, which includes advertising in the nation's largest newspapers, news conferences in many state capitals and trips for bloggers out to drilling platforms at sea.
The intended audience is elected officials and the public, with an emphasis on the latter. The industry is trying to convince voters -- who, in turn, will make the case to their members of Congress -- that rising energy prices are not the producers' fault and that government efforts to punish the industry, especially with higher taxes, would only make pricing problems worse.
"We decided that if we didn't do something to help people understand the basics of our industry, we'd be on the losing end as far as the eye could see," said Red Cavaney, the institute's president.
Despite the efforts, Democratic congressional leaders this week again proposed an energy plan that would strip oil companies of billions of dollars of tax breaks and impose a tax on windfall profits. Also, the Democratic presidential candidates routinely pronounce "big oil" as if it were a one-word epithet, said former Oklahoma senator Don Nickles, an energy lobbyist.
Still, the oil lobby thinks it has made significant progress with consumers and will make even more as it continues to spend heavily on public relations. Allied industry groups such as coal and natural gas are also increasing their efforts to curry favor with the public, hoping to improve citizens' sometimes poor opinion of them.
Oil company profits have soared lately, bolstered by record crude oil prices. This month, Exxon Mobil reported a first-quarter profit of $10.89 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago, which provoked new congressional complaints. Shell and BP also posted sharp quarterly profit increases. Gasoline prices, meanwhile, have risen to a national record of nearly $3.65 a gallon, and crude oil has hit a new peak of nearly $124 a barrel.
Cavaney will not disclose how much his institute is spending on its campaign, except to say that it is less than $100 million a year, which was roughly the size of the "Got Milk?" ad blitz that featured famous people with milk mustaches.
The price tag for issue-oriented campaigns that lobbies routinely sponsor is huge, said Bill Replogle, an advertising executive at Qorvis Communications.
"A typical issues ad-spend in D.C. might be $2 million to $3 million for a significant campaign," he said. "This dwarfs that, and many national ad buys."
The oil and gas industry has long been considered a powerhouse in Washington, thanks to its big spending inside the Beltway and quietly extensive ties to influential lawmakers from the oil patch. The industry is the third-largest campaign contributor among major industry groups and the fourth-largest buyer of lobbying services, according to the nonpartisan CQ MoneyLine.
If in fact the oil lobby has made "significant progress" with consumers, then Americans really are idiots, and it's no wonder we're in this mess. Note that the article doesn't say that oil company REVENUES have soared, it's PROFITS. But no, they are hapless victims of forces beyond their control.
If we're going to do anything about the energy crisis (and despite the fact that we aren't waiting in line for gasoline, we ARE in a crisis) during the very small window that remains, we're going to have to realize that NO ONE is a hapless victim here. Petroleum companies and the speculators who drive up the price even more quickly than supplies would indicate are obvious villains, but everyone who has spent the last ten years driving a gas-guzzler, every developer who built sprawling developments of air-conditioned houses in blisteringly hot sections of the country, a government that has stripped away most incentives for alternative energy (starting with Ronald Reagan), the United States Supreme Court for naming an oil man to the White House instead of the global warming-aware actual winner of the 2000 election -- are all to blame.
And if we as a country are going to fall for the claims the oil companies are making in their advertising, then we deserve the bleak world we're facing when the taps dry up.
