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198 comments on DrumBeat: November 17, 2006

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LevinK on November 17, 2006 - 10:38am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
WOW. This thing is big. 1.5 mln bpd just seem to be missing, and nobody cares??

Let me speculate a little bit. Since I am from Eastern Europe, I've seen this many times and I think I know what it is. 1.5 mln bpd missing? What's the problem really? These countries are full of people officially earning $200/month who are driving BMW's to their cottages. Most likely this oil is simply stolen or unaccounted one way or the other - somewhere down the pipeline some people are earning good money to shut their eyes for the oil which is being sent with overnight trains to China or Kazahstan (to be reexported within some very clever and tricky schema) or, in a refined form is simply drained down who knows where by who knows whom. Now if you think that such a yelling discrepancy should be ringing someones bells you would be wrong again. Even those that are not corrupted at the upper level know everything about it and also know they can not possibly fight it.

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oldhippie on November 17, 2006 - 6:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
LevinK
I like your hypothesis. It feels good. It's appealing in many ways. It fits much of what I know about how the world works.
Problem is without a serious prosecutorial investigation it's only a hunch. No way to verify. We may never know.
But I do trust the Oily One to keep on top of this.
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Oil CEO on November 17, 2006 - 6:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I say this because you have been extremely correct about a bunch of things lately. I actually trust you. Which is a really scary concept we should probably not delve into at this point.

I don't even have any hunches. I just don't know. I presented data that was freely available. According to what I saw, there are no "missing barrels" - I mean within a certain believable margin of error. I just presented what I thought was a missing  "buffer of credibility." Clearly certain people never looked at the actual data. Those certain people will have to come forth and clear their names. Then they will have have to clear mine. I realize it will be painful. I can guarrantee the alternatives will be worse.

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GreyZone on November 17, 2006 - 9:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think the missing barrels LevinK sees are because he failed to add in exported products, which are refined products. Add the 3 numbers together - internal consumption, exported crude, and exported products - and they come very close to the daily production. Any discrepancy is, as Oil CEO said, within a reasonable margin of error for those numbers.
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oldhippie on November 18, 2006 - 3:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'm not at all sure what it is I've been correct about lately, but count me out on this one. I just like Levin's hunch.

I can pipe in that when you've got a big enough chart it is just not going to justify and balance in all directions and little errors will echo.
This looks like it could be bigger than that but...

The big commodities in world trade are guns, drugs, oil, and coffee. I don't even think the coffee numbers are always believable.

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RussFag on November 17, 2006 - 7:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Stealing of oil and oil products from the pipeline system is a large criminal business in Russia: not so long ago there was a whole illegal fleet of small primitive distilleries in the south of Russia - Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan. (Though after the war the majority of them were eliminated.)
But stealing is a constant. It can't alter the volume of export, at least not in millions of barrels.
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198 comments on DrumBeat: November 17, 2006

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