Can A 'Shadow OPEC' of 'Global Guerrillas' Set Global Oil Prices?
Posted by Prof. Goose on June 18, 2008 - 10:15am
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: 4gw, 5gw, disruption, global guerrillas, iran, iraq, light sweet crude, nigeria, opec, shadow opec, terrorism [list all tags]
This is a guest post by John Robb. John is an author, an entrepreneur, a blogger at Global Guerrillas, and a former USAF pilot in special operations. His book, Brave New War was published in April 2007 by Wiley, which can be purchased here. The book apparently is influential, since Robb was named one of the "Best and Brightest" by Esquire Magazine and invited to speak at a plethora of venues (the DoD, CIA, NSA, NIC, Highlands Forum, Center for Biosecurity, and many more). The book is also being used in universities from the Naval Post Graduate School to Johns Hopkins.
The run-up in oil prices over the last four years is usually framed, likely correctly, as a combination of torrential demand from developing countries (China and India), speculation, and peak supply. Other analysis indicates that production is also being damaged due to NOC mismanagement, political instability, and rapid increases in domestic consumption within oil exporting countries.
However, the rapidity and volatility of current oil prices may be due to a more narrow set of factors surrounding the production of light sweet crude: the comparative quality and scarcity of light sweet crude, world demand, and guerrilla systems disruption.
The Basics
1) Light sweet crude is at the top of the oil quality pyramid. Current excess production capacity, the bulk of new production slated to come online, and the vast majority projected reserves are from the lower strata in the pyramid.
2) The world demands light sweet crude -- this demand is structural (not easily shifted) since most of the current infrastructure is built to process light sweet. As a result, it trades at a significant premium to heavy crude. This puts oil producers in a difficult bind: increased production of heavy crude without a corresponding increase in infrastructure to process it will result in a rapid collapse of prices for heavy crude. Therefore, heavy crude is kept in the ground until prices/infrastructure can support it.
3) Guerrilla systems disruption. Much of our global production of light sweet crude is located in countries where small bands of guerrillas, loosely organized within what's called an open source insurgency, have been disrupting production and preventing investment. The cumulative impact of this activity may constitute a "Shadow OPEC" (akin to the impact of thousands of ants vs. that of an elephant). Let's look at this in detail.
A Concentration of Disruption
The war in Iraq has proven to be a proving ground for the strategies and tactics of 21st Century warfare, much like the Spanish Civil War was for WW2. Unfortunately, the bulk of the improvement has been in how small groups of guerrillas/terrorists can defeat a nation-state. Of particular note has been the increasing use of sabotage and targeted violence to induce systemic failures in critical infrastructure. These use of these methods have been concentrated in many of the states that produce light sweet crude.
1) Iraq. Ongoing disruption of critical oil infrastructure has kept Iraqi oil production below pre-war production levels. It has also kept new investment (from global sources) that is necessary to repair existing infrastructure, let alone expand it, away.
2) Nigeria. Disruption of Nigerian production has radically reduced production (600 - 800,000 barrels a day) already and it is growing.
3) Others. Attacks on oil workers in Algeria may indicate the potential of guerrilla tactics to the new model. Attacks on natural gas infrastructure in Mexico last fall and its ongoing guerrilla war may translate into new disruption this year. Venezuela is in an ongoing crisis and may succumb to guerrilla warfare that disrupts production in the next couple of years.
A Shadow OPEC
So, given production limitations and strong/concentrated demand, even small disruptions by guerrilla groups on light sweet crude production is likely to have a direct influence on global oil pricing (in contrast, disruptions aimed at heavy crude production should have little impact on global pricing). Further, there are already active groups in many of the most critical production areas.
Fortunately, from the demonstrated behavior of these groups it doesn't appear that guerrilla/terrorist groups have fully grasped their potential market power with small attacks (despite aspirational pronouncements from al Qaeda and large scale attacks in 2005/2006). Once they do, as bad as disruption is today, it could get MUCH worse.
Why? A direct connection to scalable profits.
Most guerrillas/terrorists are highly entrepreneurial. They participate in everything from land scams to protection money to smuggling to kidnapping. Further, many guerrilla groups already directly profit from the sale of bunkered/smuggled oil to international markets (already worth billions). While higher global prices improve the returns from that activity, so much more money could be made through connections to financial partners able to profit from price movements on international markets. These profits would be nearly impossible to trace.
As we saw with e-mail spam/phishing, even the faintest whiff of profits can turn a loose collection of individuals/groups into a torrential crime-fueled marketplace generated billions and attracting tens of thousands of participants. Are we about to see the same occur with oil?
'Jomo Gbomo' is only an e-mail away....
"If a man's trust is in a robot that will go around the earth of its own volition and utterly destroy even the largest cities on impact, he is still pitiably vulnerable to the enemy who appears on his doorstep, equipped and willing to cut his throat with a penknife, or beat him to death with a cobblestone. It is well to remember two things: no weapon is absolute, and the second of even greater importance--no weapon, whose potential is once recognized as any degree of value, ever becomes obsolete."--J. M. Cameron
"For the wealthy nation, the probablility of loss exceeds the possibility of gain and dictates its role as defender. The unburdened opponent, enjoying the prospect of gain for comparatively insignificnt loss, retains the initiative. He may endlessly alternate threat of action with pretense of compromise and continue nowise in danger of diminishment. When the utmost possible gain is achieved in this way, he may still attack at his own discretion."--J.M. Cameron
"[The French army in Vietnam] suffers from the considerable disadvantage attaching to those who seek to protect and preserve rather than simply destroy. It is much easier to cut a railway line or blow up a bridge than to protect them from destruction."--Gen. G.J.M Chassin
Peaks happen, even in politically stable areas, where private companies developed the oil fields, using the best available technology, with virtually no restrictions on drilling
Based on the logistic HL model, Mexico started declining at about the same stage of production at which the North Sea started declining. The ongoing slide in production and net exports from Venezuela preceded Chavez coming to power, although Chavez certainly has not helped matters. The US invasion of Iraq has certainly not helped matters there, and Nigeria certainly has problems with guerrilla activity.
However, peaks happen, even in the best of circumstances, and the peaks occur because we tend to find the big fields first, and we then can't fully offset the declines from the older, larger oil fields. If Ghawar is in decline, which I believe it is, every oil field in the world which has ever produced one mbpd or more of crude oil is presently in decline.
If we use ExxonMobil's upper end estimate for the decline rate from existing wells worldwide (-6%/year), which is the midpoint for many estimates, the world needs, from 2005 to 2017, about 37 mbpd of new crude oil production--just to maintain flat production.
Geological peaking happens without regard to geopolitical issues, but I think the relevance of this Shadow-OPEC concept is twofold:
1) geological peaking transforms what would be a negative geopolitical feedback-loop into a positive feedback-loop (if they could, producers would just produce elsewhere when geopolitical troubles pop up); and
2) these geopolitical feedback-loops have the potential to dramatically accelerate geologically-driven declines.
Jeff, this comment by John Robb seems a recapitulation of comments you have made in the past vis a vis your construct of RHISOME. I would hope you could amplify your comments on John's work, you know Jeff: contrast and compare....
Probably more accurate to say that John Robb's writings have been a significant influence in my formulation of rhizome. I would contrast "rhizome" as a theory of organization with Robb's "Global Guerrillas" concept as a geopolitical phenomenon that involves some of the same organizational principles at its core.
Jeff,
I am a huge fan of your rhizome networks idea, I think trying to do build wind, solar and geothermal is ridiculous if we are not planning to end the growth paradigm. Do you have a link to any of your papers explaining what sufficient negative feedbacks you would need in place to keep it resorting to increasing hierarchy?
Thanks,
Crews
The link above (here) probably has most of my writing on buffering these positive feedback-loops, though I haven't done a good job of framing the issue that way--something I plan to work on. I think one key is the development of localized/individualized self-sufficiency (at least in key areas), but I've certainly drawn a lot of criticism with that argument (particularly the placing the situs of self-sufficiency at the individual/family level instead of the community/national level). I stand by the theory, though.
Interestingly, John Robb has also addressed buffering these positive feedback-loops. See his posts on his concept of Resilient Community. Robb places the situs of self-sufficiency at the community level, and adds some interesting notions of platform engineering, distributed manufacturing, etc.
2) these geopolitical feedback-loops have the potential to dramatically accelerate geologically-driven declines.
I agree, but not about just or precisely THESE geo-political feedback loops. War is part of a geopolitical feedback loop, and this is certainly going to directly hasten decline and the effects of decline.
Our only hope as a species is to get ahead of the decline, i.e. decrease our consumption of non-renewables ahead of decline rates. War and the threat of war is the chief impediment to any such program.
I have mentioned before the only way to solve this problem is for the oil rich countries to share the wealth with ALL their people by creating large publicworks projects like we did in the drepression.
That's what I'm worried about. Any time they want the Saudi government clique can send all the migrant workers home and the resulting demand for labor will make everybody in Saudi Arabia middle class and happy.
But what happens to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Yemen, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Phillipines if that were to happen? Those people will starve. India and Pakistan are known to have nuclear weapons. The other countries are reticent about their capabilities.
These sort of vulnerabilities are inevitable with tight supplies at peak, and are a product of it.
In the past, a disruption in one place would be countered by production increases in another, often almost seamlessly.
A stretched fabric tears more easily.
A stretched fabric tears more easily. -DaveMart
Excellent.
As a corollary, there is no particular need to trace the precise origin or history of a given tear once we understand that the whole suit of clothes is coming apart.
I've described the US economy as a guy with terminal cancer and a bad heart condition, who is shot while being run down by an 18 wheeler. What killed him first? Does it matter?
I'm just curious: how does the (apparent) current demand destruction compare with that of the 1980's? Which sectors cut back then and which are cutting back now? Any data out there?
Would be interesting to see how these affected oil prices.
The opening of energy futures markets in UAE and Iran are notable with regard to the ability to financially exploit an attack on oil infrastructure. Futures & options markets in the Middle East will potentially make it easier for states to financially play their own actions (e.g. Iran could play their own interaction with the IAEA on their own oil bourse) and may make the links between attackers and speculator less transparent, making it more difficult to uncover the connections between attack and speculator than if the transaction was on NYMEX or ICE.
About oil prices.
While oil may not be coming out of the ground quite as fast as demand requires, the main reason for the rapid rise in prices is another: there are way too many dollars around (aka debt and monetized assets) and oil prices finally caught up to this reality. As Milton Friedman said: "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".
As such, the real "oil terrorists" are the banking and monetary system, in the classical sense and the newer, "shadow" version. You cannot flood the world with "funny money" and expect cheap oil - or cheap anything, for that matter.
In support of your position, as the US debt increased by an average of 1/2 a trillion a year (5.4 trillion in 2000 and now 9.4 trillion almost 8 years later = 1/2 trillion more debt per year) the value of the Dollar has plummeted in comparison to the Euro. If the Dollar has maintained its value in relation to the Euro, the price of a barrel of oil would be 72 dollars, and the price at the pump would be approx. 2.50 a gallon.
What we heard at the time was the argument that the debt increase was a small percentage of GDP, and any argument against this minor increase in debt was purely political. Well, here we are just 8 years later with a dollar that's worth so much less in comparison to foreign currencies that we are paying the price at the pump, the grocery store and everywhere else.
So the next time someone makes the argument that deficits don't matter (Cheney), the public should be up in arms. Giving away three huge tax cuts to the super wealthy at the expense of the currency due to increased long term debt, is a foolhearty policy.
Not to negate Peak Oil, which is real and will continue to be a problem, but monetary policies in this case where such a big factor in the price for fuel, that we must be vigilant against Administrations that only consider short term benefits for their base.
Right now it can only be counted as a good thing for the price of oil to continue rising at a rate sufficient to alarm people everywhere, yet preferably not quite at a rate which induces great numbers of them to panic.
Our only (perhaps forlorn) hope of avoiding overwhelming chaos over the next several decades is for people around the globe to become sufficiently worried that they start working together, pro-actively, to reorganize for some kind of minimalist survival until the population slowly begins to drop by way of reasonably acceptable forms of attrition.
We now need to reach the mentality of a Battle of Britain. Every minute we waste accumulating short-lived status and wealth brings us closer to the worst imaginable scenarios of human destruction.
There is a big hole in the inflation argument. If you adjust the current price for inflation and say that oil should be at $72 inflation adjusted, then you also need to inflation adjust incomes, which no one ever does.
In other words, if oil were at $72 you would also have fewer dollars with which to buy your fuel, so the $72 oil would be just as dear as $135 oil. Assuming, of course, that your income has at least kept up with inflation. If not, you're declining income is a bigger problem than rising fuel costs.
Its the same silly arugment people make when they say, "remember when gas was 25 cents a gallon!" Yeah, I do, but I was only making $2.50 an hour at the time!
I would be happy to be making 90,000$ per year in my present postition. Count me in!
I'm not sure I understand that argument. If inflation is a "monetary" phenomenon I would expect that the destruction of credit markets, and the evaporation of wealth--both on the consumer and the financial end would lead to something "other than inflation" [don't speak the "d" word].
The banking and monetary authorities are fighting deflation as hard as they can. Just look at what the Fed alone has done to avert it. There has been very little outright debt destruction so far - that's the point.
If you accept Friedman's remark then you also have to realize that not all price increases are inflation. Any price increase that is out of bounds (as the oil runup has been) cannot be explained by inflation. It has to be explained by market forces i.e. reduced supply or increased demand.
--
JimFive
Thought experiment: The Fed decides to reduce total money supply by 10% tomorrow. What do you think oil prices would do?
Hellasious,
Oil prices would not decrease 10% and stay there, which is what you are implying. They would decrease some percentage of that 10% and remain volatile. Since the volatility in the past few weeks has been on the order of 5% per day it is unlikely that we would be able to measure the real effect of that change.
Some amount of oil price changes can be explained by a weak dollar (again, not necessarily caused by inflation). Some amount of the oil price changes can be explained by monetary policy (basically inflation). But primarily oil prices can only be explained by market forces. Supply not keeping pace with demand.
My point is that if you use the definition of inflation that Friedman is using, "expansion of the money supply" then you cannot call all price increases "inflation". You also cannot then measure inflation by those price increases. Doing so is a form of the fallacy of ambiguity. As I said in my previous post.
Finally, There has been some amount of destruction of the money supply due to foreclosed loans (Paid off loans also destroy money, but that is scheduled). The Fed, as you have noted has tried very hard to offset that destruction by lowering interest rates. That gives us three possibilities:
1. The money supply has shrunk by some amount
2. The money supply has remained roughly the same
3. The money supply has grown by some amount
In both 1 and 2 we would expect there to be no or downward pressure on the price of oil. In the case of 3 we are assuming that the work of the Fed has been more than successful in offsetting the destruction due to the housing "crisis" that it pushed oil prices through the roof, but yet is somehow still more concerned about a lack of available credit than it is about inflation. That seems to me to be an unsupportable position.
--
JimFive
Another take on the Iraq situation, is from:
Oil “Price Rise” Factor in the Iraq War - A macroeconomic assessment (PDF warning)
So, it's not the guerilla attacks or sabotage by those pesky Iraqi terrorists that is driving down oil production and up the price - it is the fact that US invaded the country to begin with.
Now, I don't personally subscribe to the above thesis, but it is much better argued than the terrorist blame. It is historically a more coherent argument, imho. Although I believe the majority of the price rise is from something else (why else would I be here?), but putting Iraq offline and activating a huge oil slurping military machinery surely didn't help.
As for the "choke points are vulnerable, easily attacked and can be leveraged to deal a price hike" argument, it is of course causally obvious.
However, I am afraid that it will be used increasingly to explain and to justify extended military presence, actions and illegal wars anywhere desired, while at the same time conveniently ignoring the multi-studied fact that aforementioned operations have increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks - not reduced them. It's as if the US wants more terrorists attacks on oil infrastructure and wherever, not less. The mind boggles.
I'm beginning to turn towards the opinion that US help put itself and the rest of the world in this mess with the willing accomplices of several OECD countries. However, I don't see US pulling us out of this. War consumes more oil, not less. Unfortunately, if the only effective tool one thinks one has is military-navy-airforce, then all the problems start to look like wars.
To me that is not a very encouraging sign.
I sincerely hope I'll be proved wrong by the next administration to come and the ingenious scientists, enterpreneurs, politicians and ordinary people of USA.
But please forgive me, if I remain skeptical due to the overwhelming evidence from history of US military actions.
The problem of how to deal with the terrorists in a "Commercially
sound" way has to be to find what they most would not like to lose.
If they are Islamic terrorists that are in the extremist camp would
they be horrified if Mecca disappeared ?
If they are more politically orintated would the loss of their
political masters be more effective, or the cripling of the economy
of the country of their political masters be equally horrifying ?
There is a new form of warfare now appearing and the countries that
allow the terrorists to operate freely must expect to receive the
sort of attention that they could have expected in previous types of
warfare.
The rules of this new warfare are incomplete hence the problems with
Guentamo Bay. The trendies will not like this particular trend but
they have no say it is being imposed on them.
That whole text reads like a psy-op brainwash text from a military insider.
I'll try to do a tongue-in-cheek military mumbo-jumbo to plain english translation:
'terrorist' = aka person we want to destroy
'commercially sound' = effective killing
'islamic terrorists' = those who have the oil
'extremist' = people who have guns and are not police/military/intelligence service/blackwater
'political masters' = guys who oppose our ideology
'new form of warfare' = guys, our powers are shrinking, what should we do? Invent a new enemy!
'countries that allow terrorists' = those who have worthy natural resources or are geographically in a convenient spot
'warfare' = killing, let's not talk about economic warfare, which we ourselves engage in
'rules are incomplete' = we can do what we want, even repel human rights, Geneva convention, anything! Hey, let's do it guys!
Now, this is not an attack against you Bazz, I'm just using the above text as an example, because I think it's littered with concept and words brandied around so much these days. The agenda behind them is so obvious, it's like reading an open book.
Now, let's look at some real world statistics and not scare-mongering military speech by for paid ideologically driven brain washers.
Within EU there were 498 "terrorist attacks"* in 2006. One of these was done by what was labeled as an islamist. The rest were done by (Catholic and other Christian-Sect) separatists, right wing and left wing fringe.
One 'extreme islamist terrorist' attack. One. Repeat that. One.
In USA? Zero.
Now, should we talk about the thing that is really happening: Christian and atheist terrorists! People of devoted Christian faith or lack of it, who constitute more than 99% of the terrorism found in statistics. Or regional separatists. Or racist right wing groups? Or leftie-anarchos?
Where is this horrible islamist terrorism boom that everybody is talking about?
Ah, in the occupied/opressed countries of course. The people of Afghanistan, Iraq are of course not 'freedom fighters' 'opposing' a 'foreign occupation' of an 'illegal war' - to use the parlance of patriotic militaristic speech when talking about our side. They are just 'terrorists'. And terrorists are baaaaad. They need to be 'brought justice to' as well as everybody who 'harbors' them.
Islamic terrorism surely doesn't show up in any of the non-military statistics that I read as more than a statistical blip. Sure, it exists, but is it this world gripping powerful force that is about to kill us all?
Hardly.
It mostly appears to exist in the western military ideology and especially the fear mongering propaganda. Conveniently for them, they themselves feed it, through psyop and actual military operations. I'm sure the multiplication of their budgets doesn't hurt them.
BTW, the above data is straight from TE-SAT EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2007 (Europol).
* Terrorist attack is quite loosely defined and sometimes throwing a cake on somebody's face is deemed a terrorist attack in this day and age.
PS TO any American reading this, who thinks I'm insane, consider reading a NON-American news source (pref. also non-UK) for 6 months while watching no US television and reading no US newspapers (the same for radio/net/etc newsfeeds). You'll be amazed as to what kind of a world view can exist, which is at least equally correct than the one given by US MSM.
Interesting article
Whereas most previous guerrila wars were for national liberation, you are saying this now becomes "for profit"
This is similar to the guerrilla/ drug lords in Columbia morphing from freedom fighter to mercenary - except here the stakes are much higher.
wins and losses in the drug wars make the back pages of the paper.
wins and losses here will make headlines
However, this will really just be "business as usual" for western style (US) capitalism in the oil market:
1. The first phase was to undercut the local govt and install a puppet who was a US friend
2 the second phase was the popular revolt against the puppet, and rise of a popular leader, who, however, would still sell his oil on the open market
3 the third phase will be guerilla take over and holding oil for "ransom" - but at the end of the day, the ransom (cash) will be paid for the oil, at market rates, or the guerillas will lose their own local support
cash is king - can't be worse than who it goes to now
On several threads, Robert Rapier has said, if I remember correctly, that most refineries can handle heavy crude, they just don't get as much of the desirable product from it unless they have installed cokers. This makes me wonder if the assertion that "refineries cannot handle the available heavy crude" is valid. Is Robert around to comment on this?
Here's what I know about heavy oil refining. About 4-6 years ago there was a big push to modify existing equipment to handle heavy oil from both Canada and Venezuela. I know of at least 6 major refineries that made the upgrade and most were in midwest. Louisiana and Texas has some existing capacity for HO. As I recall, it generally took about two years to complete the upgrade (or downgrade, if you will) after obtaining necessary permitting which is the major hurdle.
From what I gather making the change is not big deal, but increased sulfur emissions is huge political problem. Environmentalists tried tried to stop most upgrades and succeeded with a few.
This is pretty bad. Does it occur to Mr Robb that the any of the groups attacking oil production and transport facilities might think, since they are operating in their own countries for the most part, that they have a greater right to the oil than the US and Europe? In the old days, when people rose up in resistance to invasion of their countries, it was called resistance, not terrorism? How would Mr Robb classify the US founding fathers' war of independence, who had a far, far weaker case than Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries have against US invaders? I mean Britain wasn't dropping DU on us, and it hadn't killed a million of our citizens and hadn't displaced millions more. The issue was taxation without representation. You have have got to be kidding!
I won't even get into the profiteering. Halliburton and the likes are but the tip of the iceberg. To condemn the various resistance groups for profiteering is like Jack-the-Ripper reprimanding someone for not holding the door for a lady.
The peak oil issue can cut two ways: it can be taken, in conjunction with the general ecological crisis, as a clear sign that nations and humanity have to start cooperating in totally re-adjusting our relationship to the planet so we can all survive -- or -- it can be taken as sign that it's time for all-out war to monopolize the remaining resources. So I suppose it's inevitable that such view's as Mr Robb's would make their appearance here.
Oh, and I forgot to add, who is trying to sabotage the proposed gas pipeline from Iran to India thru Pakistan? Guerrilla/terrorists?
I am not making a value judgement here. The post is a description of an evolving dynamic that may influence the price of oil. I'm non-political.
I'm non-political.
It's not reflected in your terminology or what you choose to focus on. You talk about the "guerilla/terrorists" outside the context of what the empire has been doing. That's not non-political. If you discuss a murder and ONLY describe the victim's actions e.g. scratching the face of her attacker, that's not neutral.
Actually, my main focus is on how warfare is evolving and most effective innovations are being pioneered by individuals/small groups. Hence the tendency to talk about guerrillas at the expense of states.
Here's a backgrounder article on some of my work from a couple of years ago:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/103/essay-security.html
Hi John,
I would guess the reason "most effective innovations are being pioneered by individuals/small groups" is that most fighting is between nations and individuals/small groups? In WW2 there was considerable innovation between nations.
In the same way that the size of the participants is asymetric most often what one side is prepared to do is also asymetric, e.g. suicide bombs, genocide... Generally genocide is not seen as an acceptable response unlike say Saddam, Chemical Ali. I imagine that it would be easier say for the US to completely kill everybody in a location than try to police/pacify that area. For the avoidance of any doubt I am not promoting that, or as the politicans would say I cannot foresee any situation whereby I would support that approach!
I am with davebygolly, SamU, and others pointing out the flaws here...
One reason I am a fan of TOD is that it focuses on evidence and rarely puts out sloppy, politically edged punditry like this. This article is a fairly transparent transferring of a hawkish military agenda onto the oil-price topic, and that's about all it contributes. The comment about Venezuela is particularly betraying; Venezuela is not "an ongoing crisis" to anyone except those who are out to get Chavez. That it may "succumb to guerilla warfare" sounds more like a threat (remember the Contras?) than a prediction. Such a thing is equally (un)likely to happen in Saudi or Iran.
Ultimately, Robb offers no evidence that thousands of disparate groups around the world could or would coordinate their actions as a "Shadow OPEC" in a coherent enough manner to play the market. That is merely an idea, an apocalyptic vision, for use in fearmongering.
If Robert (or anyone) comes along and pokes holes in his assertions about light vs heavy crude, I'll be confirmed in my opinion that this is just fluff. I hope not to see too many more distractions like this at TOD...there's plenty of other places (from all sides) to get this sort of thing if you want it.