DrumBeat: January 19, 2008
Posted by Leanan on January 19, 2008 - 10:10am
Topic: Miscellaneous
'International Oil Companies Are the Real Dinosaurs'
In an exlusive SPIEGEL interview, OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem el-Badri discusses the dangers of a further dramatic rise in the oil price, the failures of multinational oil companies and considerations within the cartel of oil-exporting nations to trade in euros rather than dollars....SPIEGEL: Some experts doubt that OPEC can even expand production volume to a significant degree anymore. These specialists say that Saudi Arabia, for example -- the world's only oil superpower -- is already putting too much pressure on its oil fields today, and that the reserves are generally smaller than was previously assumed.
El-Badri : Don't worry, we still have capacity. We are currently able to increase production by 3.5 million barrels. And we have also invested up to 2012 in new projects at a total cost of $150 billion, which will give us additional capacity of 6 million barrels in four years. However, we have to know how high the demand for oil will be in the future, so that we can plan our investments accordingly.
SPIEGEL: You cannot deny that the reserves are finite. Have we already seen "peak oil" -- the maximum level of petroleum production that can be reached before reserves will inevitably begin to shrink?
India: 'Cooking without fire' contest today
Participants will have to prepare dishes under different categories without using any source of heat or prepared ingredients, according to a press release. The competition will begin at 10.30 a.m.A painting competition on conserving petroleum products for school students, in three different age groups, will be held at the same venue from 9.30 a.m.
Venezuela says refinery complex back to normal
Venezuela's largest refinery complex, the Cardon-Amuay plant, has resumed normal operations after two operational failures took units offline in recent weeks, the state oil company said in a statement on Saturday.
Record prices for grain from corn to rice have ignited food riots from Jakarta to Rome. In Pakistan, troops now guard wheat stocks. China and Russia have imposed price controls. Connect the dots and there's a need for a fix to a crisis that, strangely, isn't caused by smaller harvests.No, the main reasons for a long-term bubble in grain prices lie largely in a number of dubious human actions, related to heightened competition for grain as either fuel or feed.
One reason is an ill-conceived dash by both the United States and Europe to use grain and valuable farmland for biofuels, motivated more by powerful farm lobbies than concerns about global warming. (Telling factoid: To fill up the tank of one SUV with ethanol would require enough grain to feed one person for a year.)
Guangdong factories face power shortage
Rising fuel and other costs threaten earnings at thousands of factories that produce everything from toys to cars. Record oil prices and robust demand for other fossil fuels had left too many users chasing limited supplies of diesel, petroleum products and coal, Mr Yang said.
Pipeline Cements Russia’s Hold on Europe’s Gas Supply
SOFIA, Bulgaria — Russia strengthened its grip on Europe’s energy supplies on Friday as it signed a major gas deal with Bulgaria that analysts said would further undermine the European Union’s attempts to diversify its energy sources.Under the agreement, the $15 billion South Stream pipeline will be built under the Black Sea, allowing Russia to send natural gas directly to Europe through Bulgaria and bypassing Turkey, which has been a crucial transit route for Russia’s gas exports to European markets.
New North Dakota refinery would benefit state
During the last harvest season, a fuel shortage plagued many of our farmers. At that time, North Dakotans were paying the highest fuel prices in the continental United States. Another oil refinery here could have helped the situation.
EU pollution plan threatens million jobs
FRANKFURT: German industrialists estimate that one million jobs are threatened in Germany by European Union plans to fight global warming, a sector leader said on Friday in an interview."If the German government enacts its 2020 goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent, I estimate that one million jobs are threatened," Federation of German Industries (BDI) president Juergen Thumann told the daily Rheinische Post.
Norway Says Aims to Go Carbon Neutral by 2030
OSLO - Norway, which last year set what it called the world's most ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, said on Thursday it aimed to go "carbon neutral" in 2030, which is 20 years earlier than its previous target.
EPA turns over limited documents
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Invoking executive privilege, the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday refused to provide lawmakers with a full explanation of why it rejected California's greenhouse gas regulations.
Relief from utility bills gets a boost
Hoping to provide a shot in the arm for customers struggling to pay heating bills, the Bush administration this week released $450 million in emergency relief funds.
As oil production goes into decline, we must transform the way we move people and goods.
Newsflash: Of Horses and Carts, and the Ordering Thereof in Our Post-Peak Oil Epoch
Given the genuinely radical and dangerous implications of Peak Oil for said industrial complex and the overall corporate capitalist system, you can bet your bottom dollar that extremely great care and generous funding are going to be devoted to this emerging spin game.
Arguments Against Urban Sprawl
One study of an Ontario town found that for every dollar in development charges collected, a $1.40 in services were put in. Guess where the other 40 cents are coming from? From existing ratepayers, who are, in effect, subsidizing development. More growth means paying more in property taxes. In addition, our infrastructure system of highways and sprawling communities were built during that half-century period when oil was cheap. Oil has just broken through the $100 a barrel barrier. What happens to sprawling suburbia and the commuter lifestyle when oil reaches $200 a barrel and gas reaches $3 a litre? Clearly, urban sprawl is not economically sustainable.
Lawn to farm: Suburbia's silver lining
A century ago, almost 40 percent of the United States population worked on farms. But with industrialization, millions of farm folk, their labor cheapened, headed to the city for better wages. That tide continued until fewer than 2 million farmers -- less than 1 percent of the country's population -- remain today.Now, though, the seemingly limitless reserves of petroleum that fueled the past century's exodus from the farm are about half gone. From here on, fossil fuels -- and all the everyday essentials that depend on them, like transportation and food -- will grow increasingly costly.
Without some miraculous new energy source, muscle power could soon again be a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels for growing food. Blunt economic pragmatism seems set to out-shout nostalgia in the call to put more farmers on the land.
Pakistan: Textile fears $1b shortfall in exports
KARACHI - Pakistan’s textile industry has estimated a shortfall of around one billion dollars in its exports in the current financial year because of three major factors - cotton crisis, energy crisis and political chaos in the country.
Clooney invited to Nigeria by militants
Militants in Nigeria’s restive oil region today invited actor George Clooney to visit the area and asked for United Nations intervention in the conflict.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday designated Clooney as a UN “messenger of peace” to promote the UN’s activities, especially in its far-flung peacekeeping missions.
Turkey debates "reliability" of Iran gas
"It is true that Iran has the world's second largest natural gas reserves, but presently it lacks the capabilities for production, and Iran is itself dependent on gas from Turkmenistan," Turkish energy expert Faruk Demir said. "So for the time being, it is not a real alternative to Russian gas."
China Envoy Aims to Settle Gas Row Soon with Japan
China's ambassador to Japan said Friday he hoped the two countries would reach a deal to share long-disputed gas fields before President Hu Jintao visits Japan in a few months.Japan and China, two of the world's largest energy importers, have failed in 11 rounds of talks since 2004 to reach any breakthrough on sharing lucrative gas resources in the East China Sea.
Tribes worry oil pipeline might cross sites important to Indians
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) - A Rosebud Sioux Tribe representative says the Keystone crude oil pipeline could be located on cultural sites important to American Indians even though it would not cross reservations in South Dakota.Russell Eagle Bear says Indian leaders want to make sure all cultural properties are protected along the route. He says the project is moving "quite fast."
US energy sec urges OPEC to raise output at meeting
RIYADH - US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Saturday that Saudi Arabia should raise output to ease tightness in world oil supplies and that OPEC should up output at its February 1 meeting."I think it is possible for there to be an increase in supply over a period of time because there is a reserve," he told reporters, referring to Saudi Arabia. "I believe they have to alleviate this problem."
OPEC official says oil price not to blame for 'homemade' US crisis
Berlin - High world oil prices are not to blame for the economic crisis facing the United States, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem al-Badri said in an interview published in Germany Saturday. "If there is a recession, the oil price is not to blame," Badri told Der Spiegel newsmagazine.He blamed instead the subprime mortgage crisis, along with other financial market problems, insisting the US economic difficulties were "home-made."
UK: Inquiry demand after third energy price rise
British Gas said yesterday it was raising gas and electricity prices by 15% with immediate effect, meaning most of its 16 million customers will pay around £130 more over the coming year. The inflation-busting rise is expected to take customers' total spending on heating and lighting to more than £1,050 for the year - and add £1bn to British Gas coffers this year.The government was coming under renewed pressure last night to launch an investigation into the home energy market after Britain's biggest supplier became the third power firm to raise prices substantially. The move, which was blamed on higher wholesale costs, prompted consumer groups to demand a Competition Commission investigation into whether the big six power firms that dominate the market were acting in "tacit collusion".
Power cuts plague Iraq, hurt oil production
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Electricity cuts that blacked out Iraq's northern oilfields and main refinery this week were a timely reminder that its hopes of boosting oil production rest on something it does not have -- a dependable power supply.Iraq has managed to sustain production of around 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), but levels were close to 3 million bpd before the U.S.-led war on Iraq in March 2003.
Myanmar to liberalize fuel import
Myanmar is deliberating on liberalizing the import of fuel by allowing the private sector to undertake the business in a bid to increase production, the local weekly Myanmar Times reported in this week's issue.
OPEC says higher oil output not needed
BERLIN, Jan 19 (Reuters) - OPEC currently sees no need for an increase in oil output but is analysing the market every day, the organisation's Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel in an interview."We're carefully analysing the market day in, day out. If we reach the conclusion the fundamental data warrant an increase in production, then our oil ministers will not hesitate to decree this," he told the magazine in comments published on Saturday.
"But at present we see no need for this."
Peak Oil Passnotes: CERA's Silly Season
In the United Kingdom there is a time each year known as the ‘silly season’. It is when parliament has recessed so the poor downtrodden members of parliament can have their holidays. Back in the day before wall to wall 24-hour news channels sprayed our living rooms with infotainment people said the news was ‘sillier’ with items about skateboarding cats and so on.These days we should have an oil ‘silly season’ because surely this is what the ‘analysts’ at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) have come up with this week, silliness.
US Energy Secretary Bodman To Meet Saudi Oil Min Naimi Sat
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Saturday will meet with Saudi Arabia oil minister Ali Naimi, the U.S. Department of Energy said Friday.Bodman, who began a several-country tour across the Middle East earlier this week, will continue to urge the world's top crude supplier to invest in long- term petroleum production and will express concern about short-term supply shortages, Energy Department officials have said.
Oil Demand, the Climate and the Energy Ladder
Energy demand is expected to grow in coming decades. Jeroen van der Veer, 60, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, recently offered his views on the energy challenge facing the world and the challenge posed by global warming. He spoke of the need for governments to set limits on carbon emissions. He also lifted the veil on Shell’s latest long-term energy scenarios, titled Scramble and Blueprints, which he will make public next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Following are excerpts from the interview:Q. What are the main findings of Shell’s two scenarios?
A. Scramble is where key actors, like governments, make it their primary focus to do a good job for their own country. So they look after their self-interest and try to optimize within their own boundaries what they try to do. Blueprints is basically all the international initiatives, like Kyoto, like Bali, or like a future Copenhagen. They start very slowly but before not too long they become relatively successful. This is a model of international cooperation.
Argentina to impose sanctions against Shell
BUENOS AIRES, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Argentina is to impose sanctions against the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell for refusing to reduce the price of gasoline at the pump, Argentina's Interior Trade Department said Friday.Argentina claims that Shell has failed to comply with its Supplies Law, and said the state will slap a mortgage-type sanction on a Shell processing plant in the locality of Dock Sur, Avellanada, 10 km south of the capital Buenos Aires.
Gulf oil boom spills over to poorer lands
The Gulf oil boom is sending ripples across the Arab world as capital from the oil-rich states increasingly flows into less developed parts of the region.From Cairo to Casablanca, Gulf investment, in sectors ranging from real estate to financial services and telecommunications, has been attracted by a liberalisation of the economies and is helping drive faster growth rates.
Gulf companies that have matured at home have been scouting for acquisitions outside their markets.
Britain, China boost links on tackling climate change
SHANGHAI (AFP) - Britain and China are entering a new era of environmental cooperation and will lead the world in creating a sustainable future, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Saturday as he ended a two-day visit.Brown switched focus from Friday's emphasis on boosting trade ties with the world's fastest-growing economy by inspecting cutting-edge projects in Beijing and Shanghai that aim to radically slash China's greenhouse gas emissions.
India to stand up to Brown on climate change
"A strong bilateral relationship is of priority for both countries, for economic and commercial, historical and foreign policy reasons and the presence of a large community of Indian origin in Britain," Sarna said.But he warned that New Delhi had its own views on global warming -- a subject Brown has repeatedly promised to raise with his Indian host Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"India's emissions are far lower than many other countries," Sarna said referring to New Delhi's figure of four percent of the global carbon output.
Norwegian PM believes US will join climate pact
CAPE TOWN (AFP) - Growing concern in the United States on the dangers of greenhouse gases will lead Washington to ink a new global warming pact, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg predicted on Friday.
Hey, I need some help. I am trying to create a graph to explain EROI to my neighborhood board and similar and I need some feedback on my latest idea. What I am trying to do is use a Farm analogy to explain EROI. One bushel of seeds yielding greater and greater surplus back.
My reason for the Farm analogy is that it gives an intuitive model for what I feel are the two major points related to EROI:
1. That surpluses determine how many non farmers the economy can support (the size of the non-energy economy).
2. Show how EROI relates to prices. How high EROI sources have lower prices. How higher surpluses mean faster reinvestment.
I would appreciate any feedback on this idea. Or if you have a better suggestion, please offer it up. We need to find ways to get the word out and the subject is difficult to explain.
Here are the talking points to go with the slide that I hope this image conveys graphically:
Energy Return on Energy Invested is easier to understand when we look at the worlds oldest solar power plant: the farm.
* First Farmer sows 1 bushel and gets back one bushel surplus. Sustenance farming. Everyone is a farmer because there is no surplus to feed non-farmers.
* Second Farmer sows 1 bushel and gets back 30 bushel surplus. Surplus allows feeding non-farmers and towns and villages develop. Demographic transition from farms to industry begins.
* Third Farmer sows 1 bushel and gets back 100 bushel surplus. The huge surplus allows the feeding of giant cities. Only a small percentage of the population is needed to farm.
High Rates of Return on Investment allow a large population of non-farmers. What happens when the surplus goes away? Cities starve and return to towns.
Some economists claim that the oil industry is not important because it makes up such a small portion of the worlds economy. But this is exactly the opposite of the truth. It is the high rates of return that *allow* the industry to be a small portion of the overall economy.
Last points before moving on to real energy sources:
* Which farmer is going to earn more profits?
* Which farmer can undercut the others in price?
* Which farmer can expand their farm operation faster?
Great visual aid! Two things I noticed about it are:
1. You want to explain ERoEI, but in your description you loose the word "return" and switch to the word "surplus". That is somewhat confusing. Stick with "return" so your audience can focus on the lesson.
2. Then if you do use "return" in your description you should change you picture so that farmer #1 gets a return of TWO bags of grain for his investment of one. This means one to eat and one for next year's seed. When I first saw the picture the thing that popped to mind immediately was that farmer #1 was going to be one hungry guy if he only harvested one bag of grain for the bag he planted!
(You could add a little curved arrow showing that one bag of every farmer's harvest is recycled to seed for next year - but that may add more complexity than it is worth.)
Greg in MO
The ‘seeds’ don't really correspond very well to the idea of ‘energy invested’, which is in fact more the farmer’s work, of whatever kind. People think seeds are cheap and you just buy them in store (or whatever).
Anyway, if you want to go with that, it would be better to distinguish the ‘seed’ icon from the ‘wheat’ icon in some way (eg. seed icon is a bag, wheat icon is a picture of wheat, and as Greg said, etc.) as with just a quick distracted look, it looks like one bag of wheat can equal one or many more new bags, but how? And Greg is right, the word surplus has to go. It is not surplus (unless you define it very carefully), just return.
Thanks for the feedback!
Ok, I am going to change this slide to Seeds Returned on Seeds Invested. The goal here is NOT to accurately model farming energy inputs and outputs. The goal is to give people who might have done some home gardening a crutch to understand why low EROI energy sources are not going to replace high EROI sources.
Seeds Returned on Seeds Invested is about the only system I can think of that behaves even close to energy production. I gave a presentation just talking about the equation of Energy Out/Energy In, but they just didn't get it. The same questions about surpluses were asked multiple times, so I know the idea was not crossing. (I fully admit not being a gifted public speaker).
I will also change the "return" part of the image so that the surplus is separated from the seeds that will be recycled for the next years production. And I will add an extra bag of grain for the sustenance farmer, because your right, he would starve!
But you seem, from this, to be observant and a quick learner.
Good Luck !!
that makes sense...
I have made simpler schemes..or rather laid them out for others to do. For young teens, for ex. The way to do that, I thought, was to make the energy invested simply ‘work’, ‘effort’, ‘time spent’, which is an intuitive notion - some things are tough, take a lot of physical energy, take time, etc. in contrast to other things that are ‘easy’ appealing to everyday experience, such as (in my case) skimming down a hill on skis, vs. walking up the snowy hill. The stuff harvested (it could be diamonds, or tomatoes, or wheat) are just somehow ‘there’ or appear, ‘grow’ automatically, it is left in the shade. That is a materialist, physicalist approach that skips the ‘economy.’ The metaphor is then something like apples in a orchard (in a closed system), which require ever increasing physical /technological effort to keep the apples coming out to market, and those who harvest them alive.
Eve eating a Big Mac Instead? Heh ;)
Yes, that extra bag for the farmer can be related to WestTexas's Export Land Model.
The farmer and his family, and his livestock must be fed FIRST, before he takes any grain to market. Assume each human needs 9000 seeds a year to feed themselves. Each seed invested will yield ten at harvest ( EROEI=10 ).
The first farmer has poor soil, he eats 9000 seeds a year, and eventually has to sell his farm to pay back his debt.
He harvested nothing. He loses
The second farmer works all by himself.
Problem is he is so inefficient by himself he can only plant one thousand seeds, getting back ten thousand seeds. He eats nine thousand seeds just to survive and power his body. He saves the last thousand seeds for next year.
He slowly loses his farm to the tax man. Overhead kills him.
The third farmer has his family. All together, they can plant six thousand seeds because his wife offloaded all the cooking and washing chores, and left him and his three kids to concentrate on planting and harvest.
They reap sixty thousand seeds. They end up eating 45 thousand seeds. and they save six thousand seeds for next year. This leaves 9000 seeds. Enough to feed the tax man.
The fourth farmer has a family and horse. He nearly doubles his productivity because of the horse. He plants ten thousand seeds, and harvests one hundred thousand seeds.
His family eats 45,000 seeds, the horse eats 20,000 seeds, 10,000 seeds are saved for next year, leaving 25,000 seeds for market. He's feeding his family, his horse, his preacher, and the tax man.
The fifth farmer has a tractor. He plants 100,000 seeds, reaps a million.
His family eats 45,000 seeds. Another 45,000 seeds are sold to buy diesel for the tractor. 100,000 seeds are saved for next year. 10,000 seeds go for tax. 800,000 seeds are available to feed the townspeople. The farm feed itself and almost 90 townfolk.
Now, a problem comes. Fuel for the tractor is getting expensive. Instead of exchanging 45,000 seeds for fuel, its 100,000 seeds. Six less people get fed.
Then its 200,000 seeds for fuel, and sometimes can't get fuel at all. Half the crop is lost because its harvest time and the tractor won't run without fuel. His EROEI has dropped to 5.
His family still eats 45,000 seeds. 100,000 are still saved to plant next year, the farmer is still out 200,000 seeds sold for the diesel fuel he did get. Taxes still got 10,000 seeds. Out of his meager harvest of 500,000 seeds, 145,000 seeds are left. Enough for sixteen people - but 90 townfolk were counting on him. Seventy four people will not get fed.
Having seventy four heads around without something to put in their tummies is not a pretty sight. There is apt to be much physical argument concerning which tummy gets the remaining food. If they destroy the farmer's infrastructure in the melee, even more tummies will not get fed.
Anyway, thats my take on this whole thing.
Part of what you are saying here makes sense; the tech innovations in modern agribuiness has allowed many folks to do something besides farm. You can't have proffessions such as ad salesman, manicurists, etc. You would not have vast numbers of folks attending university to take up psych, soc, apperal merchandising, etc if tey had to grow enough food to feed themself.
There is simply NO WAY in the world that agriculture is going back in time. NONE.
I read JHK's book, "The Long Emergency" and while I agree with a lot of it, he got agriculture TOTALLY wrong, and here's some reasons his view of ag in the future is WAY off;
1) Using horses to farm takes WAY WAY TOO much land. In the horse ag days, it took one-third of all ag produce to feed the horses that did the production. TALK ABOUT EXPENSIVE fuel! In the horse days, the amount of acres it took to grow that fuel made ethanol look like a garden plot.
2) Modern farms today have 300 hp tractors pulling 60 ft wide airseeders operated with AUTOSTEER. (That's right, our tractors use gps to steer) At 6 mph, by 60 ft wide, wasting not a penny on overlap, it takes VERY LITTLE fuel to farm with.
3) My farm uses 4.23 gallons/acre, while IA State says it takes closer to 9 gallons per acre. COMPARE THAT TO HORSE farming on a EROEI basis.
4) According to IA State, the ave corn yield on IA farmland on a 10 year ave is 173.4 bu/acre. Using all BTUs from fuel, fert, and pesticides, that's a EROEI of about 13:1. That's better than the North Sea in it's hayday. Including equipment expense, labor, deprec, insurance, etc, the EROEI is still around 10:1.
5) There is 395,000 BTU's in a bushel of corn. If you don't like my figures, check them.
6) There will ALWAYS be SOME oil produced. Even 50 years from now the production will be at least 20 mbpd, I'm guessing worst case scenario. Where do you think those barrels will go?
I'm 100% convinced those few barrels will go to the guy who adds the MOST VALUE to them. Whomever can get the most EROEI out of them. It ain't the soccor mom. It ain't Joe Suburb. It ain't the engineer designing the next widget.
The FIRST barrel produced will go to herbicide/pesticide, because it adds SO MUCH value vs the BTU content of the herbicide. (One pint of roundup = 20,000 BTUs. This pint will EASILY add 50 bu/acre. 50 bu corn = almost 20 million BTUs. EROEI of Roundup/herbicide/pesticide = 1,000 to 1.)
Once all the globes pesticide needs are met, the next barrels will go powering tractors.
Nobody out there will be able to OUTBID a farmer for petro, because nobody adds as much value to a unit of petro.
I've spent lots of time looking at Peak Oil, and I'm convinced we are here, but there's a BIG MISSING SUBJECT on the conversation about the outcome of PO. That is;
Where will those precious few barrels of daily production go in 20 years? Who will get them? Who adds the most value to them?
I say its the highest bidder. That person is me.
I think it's possible. What happens if peak oil means we can no longer maintain the technology that currently supports modern agriculture? If, say, we can no longer afford to launch GPS satellites?
I posted an article a few weeks back about a farmer who bought a new half-million dollar combine every year. He had to, because it was worn out after a year's use. Is this really sustainable?
I hope it's agriculture, but I have a feeling the lucky winner will be the military.
I agree, though the farmer I think will be a close second.
It seems to me in history some nation-state used soldiers to farm fields at a certain point ?
I would agree with that. But I wonder if we all are still assume too many givens when seeing the future.
Most of what we talked about is the distribution of remaining supply to farmers, Mil. etc.
That assumes a supply chain functioning to a great degree.
If there is no coherent 'Safe" distribution system in the country, many assumptions need to be changed.
Visualize Mexico in 10-15 years. What do you see? A functioning supply chain/distribution system for distributing goods?
Maybe not so stable. Who will get the "Distribution" of the remaining gas there? The Farmers? The Millitary? Banditos?
Oh, factor in the idea that we are already seeing people steal copper phone,powerlines. In 10-15 years (after-during the Greater Depression) Copper lines between towns, cities on those 20 - 100 miles of empty road may be somewhat at risk. Certain things stop working after that happens.
Who will get the "Distribution" of the remaining gas there? The Farmers? The Millitary? Banditos?
In 20 years it may be hard to distinguish between those last 2 categories ;)
..and not to forget the fact that 'An army runs on its stomach..'
Will the Armed Forces start planting victory gardens around their bases?
Will the exorbitant expenditures to 'Rent-a-G.I., Rent-an-MP and Rent-a-potato peeler' (KBR, Bechtel, Halliburton, Blackwater, et al..) start facing demand-destruction as their poor return-on-investment becomes unsustainable?
Bob
(edited for word-choice..)
The army seems to favor cattle farming, rather than veggies. They tend to lease out grazing rights.
At the bluegrass army depot in Kentucky, the cattle also serve as a warning of nerve gas leakage.
During the Tokugawa period in Japan, Samurai protected the fields and farmers from other armed individuals in exchange for the necessities of life. The farmer and the Samurai existed in a symbiotic relationship. Far different from the exploitative fudalism of Western Europe. The Shogunate through the loyalties of the individual Samurai provided an organization capable of repeling larger threats. When the threat was dealt with, the Samurai returned to the farms they were the protectors for. The Samurai at all times recognized the interdependence between himself and the farmer.
Absolutely, Switzerland is a historical example, though the details of who exactly plowed what field and gathered what % of potatoes or beets is not something I would like to venture into. I guess even the ‘top’ historical studies can’t sort that one out.
Today’s reassuring mantra here - Switzerland has a conscription army - is that division of labor will work: men do the hard stuff, women all the rest. The men are ready to go, in 24 hours. The hard stuff could be anything. Digging ditches, planting, etc. All that dates from ww2, and even before, and is very folksy. By such myths do we live.
This letter, PDF, short, to the NY Times in 1915, gives a bit of the very outdated flavor which sorta continues today:
link
Leanan, in 20 years, or even today, the military are not 'adding the most value' to the FFs they are allocated. Besides, 'a military moves on its stomachs', as we all know, so feeding a military is a priority for it to continue to function. From the perspective of the US citizen/taxpayers the costs of the wars in Afganistan and Iraq have been socialized while any 'profits' have been funneled into corporations that are favored by the current administration...This is not a sustainable business model for an empire or any other form of governmemt that I am familiar with. There have been no real 'profits' if one considers that the ongoing wars are being funded by creating ever larger budget deficits. It is my opinion that these wars, and even more wars, cannot be continued because at some point the US military, industrial, congressional complex will bankrupt the US and cause a collapse of the US economy and government. This isnt the day of Alexander, where empires were created by vast well trained armies...now there is the nuclear weapons factor to consider. After the US economy collapses from mismanagement, incompetence, theft and unprofitable foreign wars I believe that there is a good chance that a significant portion of any FFs that the US still has access to will be used for agriculture and for bootstrapping manufacturing for products needed for US internal consumption; ie, medicines, alternate energy, ag distribution, etc. TPTB will stick with the current model untill it collapses, 'dancing with the one that brung 'em', and then we will see a much different US...sans empire and SUVs and with a reduced population. Unfortunately the 'ship' we are on is too big and has too much momentum to turn before hitting that iceburg ahead.
I suspect that in the days of Alexander and in the Roman Empire, the return on investment of military conquests had to be very real and in a fairly quick time. There was the immediate plunder that the troops could bring home, but more importantly there was the ongoing tax base to support the empire.
Now we have a different story where the waning supply of cheap fossil fuel is supporting war efforts that don't necessarily promise any return at all. In fact the wars the US is involved in promise to be a continuing drain barring the miracle that Iraq is stabilized and vast amounts of oil revenue are siphoned off.
Sigh.... oh for the good olde days :-(
Alexander was at the right place at the right time. Farm production had increased to a level where there was sufficient excess supply in all the regions that Alexander attacked. He swept through the regions, took the excess supply, cut off the leadership and replaced it with his own. The system kept functioning. Basically Alexander scooped up the over production to feed his Army with out too much destruction of the cultivation. Brilliant!
Yes, interesting that the same areas of the world have been in contention by the major players for so much of recorded history.
More recently Hitler achieved one objective (the oil fields around Ploesti) only to have the British bomb them from air fields on Malta and in Egypt. The British had major buildups in those areas primarily to protect the interests of, uhm, BP. Ghawar was first tapped in 1938 by Chevron...
Ironically, it may be argued that BP saved the world from fascism. Hitler decided that the Ploesti oil fields had to be secured by invading Greece before launching Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia. This delayed the launch of Barbarossa by some 6 weeks. It had been planned that the Slavs could be subdued before the Russian winter set in but the delay cost them.
The invasion of Greece also caused Rommel in North Africa to go short on supplies and replacements delaying his hoped for grasping of the Egyptian oil fields. When the German advance in Russia stalled in the Fall of 1941, at least partially due to long supply lines, attention was refocused on Rommel briefly. Some 22 U-Boats were diverted out of the Atlantic into the Med, essentially ending the supremacy of the British Navy in that area for nearly a year and enabling a re-supply effort to Rommel.
Rommel once again was able to pretty much push the British back at will, until El Alamein. At that point his supply lines were once again stretched to the limit and he was forced to deploy his vaunted Panzers in ways that conserved fuel, turning his tactical genius with mobile Panzers into stationary, defensive gun emplacements which the British could exploit.
Throughout the war the German machine depended on fuel for mobility and it of course faltered when supplies got tight. The resumption of the advance in Russia Spring 1942
saw a tougher fight put up by the Russians, although they were pushed back to Stalingrad. The stalling of the Russian front also allowed the U.S. time to pump a LOT of supplies into Russia via the Murmansk Run.
Sadly for Hitler, he ignored a primary teaching of Clausewitz, probably the most brilliant military German general of all time. He had already postulated the doctrine of the "diminishing strength of attack". According to this, every attack that does not lead immediately to peace is bound to grow weaker as it proceeds and at a certain point end up by turning into defense. Clausewitz called this moment the "culminating point".
Thank you BP, lol. If it hadn't been for the British forces present in North Africa defending their interests there, they would have been unable to threaten the Ploesti oil fields and Barbarossa would have begun on schedule, possibly knocking Russia out of the war. As it was, at one point Stalin was reported to be so desperate in meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt that it was evident that Russia was on the verge of collapse, Russian winter or no Russian winter.
More recently the ties between Britain and the the U.S. have been strengthened by the U.S. allowing BP to purchase several major U.S. oil companies, first Sohio, then Amoco and finally ARCO. No wonder that Blair has followed the U.S. lead so consistenly.
Sorry to get sidetracked, but just more oil trivia from the past, admittedly simplified. A take-away from all this maybe- Oil was always a primary strategic concern during WWII. To think that things might be different now in the midst of a new kind of war, with all the history from Alexander on, would be simplistic.
Here we are again, battling over the same reaches of real estate. The bridgeheads have been secured, the battle lines being drawn. Sigh...
i think amoco aquired/merged with sohio in '87, that was a remarriage of the former standard oil units. bp merged with amoco in 96 and bought arco in 2000.
It was BP that purchased Sohio. I was with Amoco at the time and thought nothing of it really. The Sohio name began to disappear on gas stations, terminals, refineries, etc.
In '89 Amoco told the employees that they had been working with consultants to try and get a glimpse of what the future held for the oil industry. The conclusion of several years study was that by the end of the century there would be only 4 or 5 big super majors after a wave of consolidation. The main reason- they would all have to bulk up in order to get big enough to afford to go deep-water and fight for the remaining oil. Amoco began looking...
In June 1999 the uhm, merger with BP was announced, they had been in talks for about a year. We were told there would be no changes in North American operations. I was in the Lubricants Business Unit at the time. It had just been sold to Chevron. BP turned out to not be happy about that, they wanted it.
We discovered later that top Amoco executives had been given, er, employment guarantees. Within a year it was announced that headquarters would be moved to London and that the 96 story Amoco building, affectionately known as 'Big Johns' erection' after CEO of the 70s John Swearingen, would be sold. AIG purchased it, wouldn't be surprised if they have been looking for a buyer lately, hehe.
I was lucky for a bit. A position was found for me back in headquarters once again in the wake of the sale of Lubes. But in Spring 2001 our entire group was severed. Hard to find seats for 5000 people in an office park in the burbs, lol.
It was also announced that most U.S. refineries were on the block. Mandan, ND was purchased by Tesoro, never heard what happened to Salt Lake and Yorktown,VA. Whiting and Texas City remained, the two largest. Amoco, er, BP Chemicals up for sale also. The Amoco name began to disappear on gas stations, terminals, refineries, etc.
Yea, it was called a merger. BP Amoco was supposed to be the name, for a time. Then a contest was announced to rename the company. Beyond Petroleum was the eventual winning candidate and consultants were hired to come up with a new logo, the ecological sunburst getting the nod eventually. The BP initials of course remain.
Funny how that worked out, hehe.
There was some resistance among the motoring public. Gasoline sales dipped. Amoco premium gasoline had garnered a reputation as being a very high quality gasoline. To this day BP stations now sell premium with the Amoco or BP Amoco name still on the pump, but normally only on premium.
ARCO was purchased late in 2000. By this time many high ex-Amoco execs had taken 20 and 30 million dollar buyouts.
If it looks like a buyout and smells like a buyout, well you decide. But yes, nice to see former Standard splinters re-united, will they get the rest also? One might even go the other way.
thank you for the insights. i remember in the '70's arco was at the top of their game, sometime in the 80's i think they lost their mojo. around the time they acquired the anaconda co and i think things went downhill from there.
in the '80's majors and notsomajors were buying businesses they probably had no business in. they called it diversification. mobil bought wards, i dont think that was a real wise move.
About Rommel. Romel was brilliant when he was reading the US army attache's daily reports on exactly where the British were, where they were going, and what they were going to do when they got there.
When we found out, Romel stopped being brilliant because he stopped getting reports.
WRT gps a farmer or group of farmers could set up low power synchronized transmitters to provide a more than adequate low cost substitute for sattelite based navigation. Aviation used such a system for over 50 before gps and these transmitters are still being used in the US and Europe. If as you suspect the military gets first dibs on whatever oil is left then they will certainly use a tiny fraction of their share to put up replacements as needed.
No other industry has the ability to be as self powered as agriculture. Using soybeans as part of a regular crop rotation plan means plenty of biodiesel will be available. Electric tractors using wind and solar are also possibilities.
RDF - radio direction finder
I had one on my kettenburg for sailing up and down the coast many moons ago.
Simple but effective.
not as pinpoint as gps even with several fixes.
Now a days I have heard of sending boats down the westcoast unmaned. just plot into gps, sinc with auto-pilot and drive down to intersept.
Oh yes, we can be that accurate.
What we do is modulate the carrier digitally with a pseudo-random number sequencer ( also known as a linear feedback shift register ). What this does is code the carrier with a mathematical "song", and like a song, you hear a few notes of it, and you know where you are in the song. Thats the beauty of the LFSR - if its a "N" bit, then by the time you get N bits, you know exactly where in the sequence you are, and can predict the next bit.
Now, being the carrier is digitally modulated, you can lock onto the "song" ( phaselock ), and look at the carrier.
The wave length of, say, a 900MHz carrier is around 13 inches. That is for every 13 inches you approach or retreat from the transmitter, you go through a complete cycle of carrier.
Ever sat in front of a TV with rabbit ears and noted you could shift in the couch the tiniest bit and cause the TV to misbehave? Its acting as a phase detector comparing the signal coming directly to its antenna, and the signal bouncing off of you. VHF Channel 3 is aroung 60 MHz.
Say you have four transmitters locked to each other and THEY are stationary. Each are sending a different "song", but all are locked on the same "beat".
On the tractor's receiver, it receives all the signals simultaneously. Each carrier is identified by the LFSR "music" encoded on it. At that point, one does phase analysis of the carriers, mixing them against each other adding known phase delay techniques to null them out.
By doing this, one can resolve one degree of phase shift, which is 0.036 inches.
This would use the same technology as cellphone towers use now. 900MHz is the cellphone band.
Although this does not tell you your ABSOLUTE position, you will have a fine RELATIVE position to the transmitters. If you know where the transmitters are, then you know where YOU are.
We have microprocessor capabilities to do this analysis on the fly using milliwatts of power.
I challenge the assertion that farmers will even use oil in their tractors in 20 years, or any significant amount of oil.
So what will farmers be using instead of oil? This should be interesting.
conservation
hybrid tractors
electric tractors