 | Report: Brazilian Ethanol is Sustainable | The Oil Drum | The St Louis Renewable Energy Conference - Day 1 |  |
DrumBeat: October 12, 2006
Posted by threadbot on October 12, 2006 - 9:17am
Topic: Miscellaneous
China's Nine-Month Oil Imports Rise as Demand Climbs
China imported 16 percent more crude oil in the first nine months of 2006 than a year earlier to meet rising energy demand in the world's fastest-growing major economy.
Some of it went into their SPR: China reportedly puts 3 mln barrels of Russian crude in reserve
China has put 3 million barrels of Russian crude into its strategic oil reserve since August, the Shanghai Securities News reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources at China Petrochemical Corp., better known as Sinopec Group.The amount of Russian crude used so far in the reserve at Zhenhai in the eastern province of Zhejiang is equivalent to almost 10% of its total capacity, the report said.
It added that the type of Russian crude imported for the reserve was Urals, which is a medium sour blend.
Professor Albert Kwong, an executive, professor and lecturer in the Chinese oil industry, has put certain numbers together. "China has five times the population of the United States. The United States uses five times the amount of oil, per capital, as the Chinese."Here is the challenging part: "The Chinese want to be just like the Americans."
Oil prices slip further below $58/barrel
Oil prices slipped Thursday after settling at their lowest level this year in the previous session as markets awaited the release of a weekly U.S. petroleum supply snapshot.
Hard Math in Oil Cuts Splits OPEC: Once again, OPEC is finding that it is much easier to agree when prices rise than when they fall.
James Howard Kunstler: Peak oil and tradable paper currencies
Where finance is concerned, the basic implication of peak oil is pretty stark: an end to industrial expansion (i.e. "growth"). All the alternatives to oil will not keep the industrial economies expanding - they can only slow down a contraction, and only marginally so. The trouble with this picture is that finance is a system that uses paper markers to represent the hope and expectation for the expansion of wealth. These markers are currencies, stocks, bonds, option contracts, derivatives plays, and other certificates that are traded in open markets. If there is no longer any hope of increased wealth in the world, then all those tradable paper markers become losers. Their value unwinds and imagined piles of wealth evaporate into thin air.
Pipeline trouble continues to rattle BP
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - America’s largest oil field will produce very few barrels over the next several days as operator BP scrambles to fix an electrical problem.
Energy expert David Hughes talks about peak oil, natural gas, Canada's role in the production of hydrocarbons, and the ASPO-USA 2006 Boston World Oil Conference, "Time for Action: A Midnight Ride for Peak Oil," scheduled for October 26-27, 2006, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tom Whipple on The Peak Oil Crisis: Turning Points
High oil prices clip travellers' wings
High oil prices have forced Australians to change their transport plans in the air as well as on the ground. They are taking fewer plane trips because of fuel surcharges imposed by airlines.
France Ends Nuclear Energy Reports; traders, environmentalists see "step backward."
Pakistan: Power cut mars Eid shopping
KARACHI: Power outage occurred in many shopping areas and bazaars causing huge losses of small traders during the peak season of Eid Shopping....President of the Zanaib Market Association Abdul Samad Khan said the prolonged outage of electricity forced traders to stage violent protest yesterday. He added that the concerned authority should correct this problem before Ramadan.
Australia considers nuclear fusion as energy solution
We need the energy to break out of our fossilised ways
The other day I found myself on the M25. In, of course, a traffic jam. There was a traffic queue on the other side of the motorway too, pointing in the other direction and not really going anywhere either. I had a sudden insight at that moment: in 50 years' time, this scene - of fossil fuel-driven cars and trucks stuck stationary on this motorway - won't happen. There won't be that many vehicles with that fuel.
Russians may stop paying debts if oil bonanza ends
Russian banks could be saddled with millions of dollars in bad loans if a drop in oil prices hits the incomes of middle class Russians who have been gorging on a glut of consumer credit.
U.K.: Levy on new houses could revive 1960s railway links
Rail lines that closed 40 years ago could be reopened under plans by which developers pay for new tracks in return for planning permission to build thousands of homes.British Rail shut a third of the network in the 1960s, claiming that it could not compete with the growth in car ownership. But road congestion has become so severe that local authorities are seeking to restore dozens of lines that last carried trains in the age of steam.
All kidnapped workers released in Nigeria
Pumpkin Power Dawns for African Cell Phone Networks
 |
Palm and pumpkin seed oil could soon be generating electricity to help power cell phone networks across Africa under a plan to replace fossil fuels with sustainable biofuels made from crops grown by local farmers. |
[Update by Leanan on 10/12/06 at 10:31 AM EDT]
Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the Week Ending October 6, 2006: U.S. crude stocks soar 2.4 million barrels, beat expectations. Distillates down 1.6 million, gasoline rises below forecasts.
As for the Weekly Inventory...China's been filling their SPR since August, so I don't think we'll see any big change in the numbers for last week.
by Tom Standing
Commentary: Massive Development Pushes Mexico's Cantarell to Record Production - But How Long Will it Last? (Part 1 Of 4)
http://www.energybulletin.net/21299.html
Yesterday we spent too much time on the degree to which soicety is now, and in future needs be, "industrial."
Today I'll only note the passing irony that wordsmiths like Kunstler are not "industrial" and don't count, by his own measure, toward "growth."
(I don't actually know if programmers like me are "industrial" by modern measure, or if our bit patterns are "industrial output." I'd guess we are service, like the graphic artist who sits next to me.)
Best Wishes.
Teen pays siblings' college fees by selling virtual weapons
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro ...
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
The activity never determined whether there was a sweatshop. It was the oversight and the framework. Sewing is the classic example: sometimes hobby, sometimes career, sometimes example of sweatshop victimization.
Pushing bits is similar ... as seen when people here push bits onto TOD comment threads. Maybe there is a sweatshop somewhere were kids are made to pump up comment volume (or tediously create hand-made spam).
TOD is a place where commens like that are not uncommon ... noble forum or buglight, only our grandchildren will know for sure.
Lineage II was a Korean MMORPG that had a decently sized US market. They already had segregated Korean servers {which blanket-blocked Chinese IPs). Over the first year, the adena farmers (common label: $currency farmers) went from highly visible annoyance to a powerful force on the server, with probably around 20-30% of of player hours. Getting money in the game was an unusually tedious exercise, so there was a major market.
It destroyed the game for a lot of people - I've always wondered what it would have been like without them. They generally didn't speak english, didn't participate in the social aspects of the game (in a game about blood oaths, not good), and stayed at a low level to farm easy spawns, killing anyone that got in their way. Then, when the game mechanics changed and higher level players became more valued, the 24-7 farmer contingent became the vast majority of the high level players overnight. When inflation(always present in fake game economies) killed some of their income, they became contract mercenaries, a major token in the political struggles ingame.
It's not really a sweatshop. South Korean or Hong Kong pit bosses market and sell the work of numerous Chinese people working out of internet cafes. I've met people working 3 ppl to an 8 hour shift and 2 ppl to 12 hour shifts, for around $5/day. In games that are well-suited to scripting, they'll likely hire locally and equip them with the gear, botting programs, etc, but for most games, it's a completely virtual relationship that's performance based (I'll order 100k adena from you a day for $7). The pit bosses handle the web orders, the delivery, the ads (of which gaming sites that use google ads are frustrated at), and the pay. I knew one pit boss that was pulling in $20k/month, I knew farmers who had to camp that spawn in order to feed their family, I knew teen farmers that basically lived in internet cafes, living comfortably, playing socially as well as professionally, and not taking significant income out (one aspect of sweatshop / company town work).
But physically, most of the workers were never under any more compulsion than you can be sitting in an internet cafe, working on a cash-up-front basis for someone in another country to export to still another country.
The guy that represents WindArt the people that made Entorpia Universe, are making a virtual world that can be related to the real one with money. Seems they can buy in game things with real world funds, and then grow the money and push it back out into the real world. I'll have to look it up later, but seems to me the "World Tax Police" are going to be hunting some heads soon. The kid made 36k and spent 12k to send his siblings off to school. The IRS will be thinking about how they can get ahold of the taxes off that money I am sure.
I have played several Online Games that if you had Characters that you wanted to sell for real world doallars you could. Though the one I play the most now, Runescape, Has put it into their rules that you CAN NOT sell items or characters for real world cash, if you are caught they can wipe your account. But I do know of people that trade in game gold for out of game cash, its a bit out of the way, and not on e.bay because of the data miners getting ahold of the information and Jagex the owner of Runescape deleting you.
Seems that WindArt is fostering real world cash for in game items and economies. They have taken the gaming world one step further. They hope to get bigger and bigger.
In the Peak Oil future, I could see people using this as a method of not having to leave their homes. Virtual world commerse on a real world scale.
By the way, just in case some of you didn't notice, Jim Kunstler did drop by and leave a comment in the Brazilian ethanol thread yesterday. He posts here every great once in a while.
Regarding the news above that China wants to be like the U.S., I think the comments Jim made about China in The Long Emergency are spot on. China will never rise to our standard of energy consumption, because the energy just isn't there.
That's sad from our (rich nation) perspective, but it leads to hard questions. We may like to pay our mailmen good money, and good retirement, to walk with a sack over their shoulder ... but what is really fair when there are 5 billion people who would risk their lives to reach that job, and do it for half the price?
I think it's apparent that past legal/trade frameworks essentially enforced a labor shortage in the US. When you remove the barrier, a US worker becomes a world worker.
I've sort of felt that certain if/when conditions might hold. If the lax energy response becomes painful, the US population will demand greater national action. If the continued decline in realy wages become sufficiently painful ...
It is kind of amazing though that the "lower taxes" meme has worked the way it has, for the rich. I think we agree (IIRC) that the middle classes see themselves as rich and don't fight these things. So far the slow squeeze in middle class income hasn't changed that outlook. Or housing prices provided an offset, or whatever ...
If that ever changes, the spit is really going to hit the fan.
Still, another four hundred million relatively affluent people will really make an impact on energy use.
When JHK talks about the 'industrial city' with 'industrial processes' that people fled from, I think he refers to the large, manufacturing and processing plants that sprung up in the late 19th century as part of the industrial revolution. However, I think his message goes deeper when he talks about 'industrial society'. I have always interpreted this to mean the general trend toward mega-sizing, consolidation, and de-localization (if you will).
Being industrious is generally a good thing, meaning you get a lot done, you keep busy. This became more exclusively associated with making a lot of things. Same way being productive went from doing useful things to almost exclusively making a lot of things efficiently (with he least amount of labor generally since this has been the most expensive input). But it is really the super-sizing and single minded purposefulness (production uber alles) of the institutions that have evolved that are the problem.
When you are local, and do and produce things for your local community, you inevitably care more about how you do things, how you treat your customers (now we have consumers), and also generally what your relationships are with your fellow doers and producers. When I hear JHK talk about the destruction of these local interrelationships, I also think of the many other systems he talks about. So in addition to the mega-sizing of manufacturing, we have the mega-sizing of agriculture, retailing, entertainment, all the way down to the physical realization of communities and mega-sizing of blocks, and buildings.
I'm not sure where software development and the movement of bits around the internet fits into this exactly. But as far as information, such as news, I would say it applies as well. Industrial news is mass-produced, non-local, and is made with a single-minded purpose etc.
"The passing irony that wordsmiths like
Kunstler."
This is the pot calling the kettle black.
See Wikipedia-Disinformation
- he didn't say that. He said "industrial expansion". That's "growth" by definition. And I think he really "gets" the link between the endless paper deals and the expectation of growth in real industry. Once this expectation fades, all hell breaks loose. When the "playas" take their toys and go home, as they did in 1929, we'll find out again that the economic system we've set up is not working in "our" (the average person's) favor.
To say "industrial expansion" is growth "by definition" goes at odds with some of that.
The lost production numbers are essentially the same as this past summer, after all.
Yes, yes, market psychology - after all, the 'market' wants certain outcomes in the American elections, doesn't it? And these expectations are normally found in prices - Dow up/down based on election winners/losers is boilerplate reporting, after all.
As I wrote a few days ago, it is fascinating to watch what used to be absolutely standard 'market' behavior be turned on its head. Gasoline prices used to jump on bad news/increases in the price of crude, and slowly settle afterwards - a rock bottom feature of the market everywhere has noted.
Now, the price of gasoline continues to slide, regardless. Hmmm. I am sure it is all very explainable - assuming any explanation is required.
And yes, it is quite possible that gasoline was over-priced over the last period of time, and the current price reflects something resembling a 'real' price, based on market factors.
Which again, just happen to be all so often psychological - the same as Saudi Arabia not cutting oil shipments is a reason to think that a declining OPEC might just be bluffing. But in the past, the Saudi method of indicating its market position was raising output, thus hurting anyone who cut production by taking their market share also.
But these days, the market feels that Saudi Arabia merely meeting its contracts for next month is a reason to push prices down further. http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/061006/markets_oil.html?.v=3
Psychology seems to be everything, somehow.
Except that the North Slope will be delivering ca 300,000 barrels a day less for the next several days. That seems to be reality - assuming they don't have any unanticipated problems - like shaking, which was in an article I can no longer find a link to - it seems as if as the pipeline 'empties' down slopes, it creates shaking in the structure - and this could be something to watch for as a problem in the future, much like the bacterial corrosion, since the pipeline was not designed with such lowered volumes in mind.
Depletion has a lot of unintended effects. Lucky that according to the experts, depletion is a local problem.
Notice this doomers!! Non OPEC oil is expected to grow by about 1.7 million bpd next year. Growth is happening from some surprising areas around the world. Perhaps this is why OPEC is cutting production: the market doesnt want their sour heavy crude. Someone better tell the masses what westexas knows...
And as was reported in a previous article, Q3 2006 production was up to 85.4 million bpd globally, the DIP IS OVER!!! I guess peak oil wont be occurring for some time yet.
Don't know if you noticed, but HGor just gave us, inadvertently I'm sure, confirmation of the fact that that the Saudi claim earlier this year, that the non-OPEC oil bonanza would force Saudi oil off the market, is just not true.
Remember, OPEC will go from 29.86mbd to 26.97mbd, right? 2.89mbd less in 2007.
Yes there's the Iraq confusion. But still, 1.4 mbd ain't nearly enough to make up for the difference. OPEC said this week the 1mbd cut would be the first of a series.
I know they invented calculus, and they're trying to confuse me, and I'm easily confused, but they'll have to try harder.
And as per non-OPEC, we're counting down the days till Angola slips into Nigeria MEND like trouble. If anything, the Angolans see even less profits from their oil than Nigerians do.