By the way, the empirical history of nationalized entities in terms of environmental impact and corruption is pretty dismal; basically, I think that the nationalized energy companies are preferable in those cases where doing nothing is better than doing something.
Could you expand on this? I mean, the empirical history of private resource extraction industries is pretty bad, as is the history of communist countries. Also, I don't understand anything after the semicolon.
Plus, Sudan and South Sudan are going to war over an oil field.
2: I saw Braveheart. That's a bad idea.
Yes, we can all agree that seeing Braveheart is a bad idea.
The last point is good for global warming in the short-term, since natural gas electricity produces about half the CO2 as equivalent coal.
Define short term. Almost all of the UK's "progress" on emissions has been down to the enforced switch to gas power generation, but that still took a couple of decades. Even with the political will to switch, which clearly isn't there, it would take a long time to switch the US over.
Also, bear in mind that while gas spot prices are low, that doesn't mean gas powered electricity is cheap. A lot of gas offtake agreements (including all of Gazprom's, I believe) are largely based on the price of oil.
Gas is so cheap that maybe it would make sense to leave some of it in the ground for a future date when it is not so cheap?
7: Afraid not. At least in this area, a lot of the Marcellus Shale leases are time-limited, so they're tracking to get it while they can.
Also, per NPR the other morning, there are non-methane products from gas wells that are themselves profitable, so just letting the 3 year leases go, because the methane barely covers the cost of the tracking, won't be happening.
By the way, the empirical history of nationalized entities in terms of environmental impact and corruption is pretty dismal
I guess, but compare to e.g. Shell in Nigeria? Pemex has been pretty awful, but, I dunno, is it significantly more corrupt than Doheny was before the industry was nationalized? Pwnd already, I see, but given the value of a substantial oil concession, there's essentially always going to be corruption and environmental damage, and I'm not sure that pumping out oil from an existing field is an area with lots of advantage for private enterprise.*
*You do need private enterprise for exploration, of course. A state run industry isn't going to develop the tar sands. Whether or not that's a good thing is, well.
I always recommend this book if you're looking for a nonfiction book that will give you lots of little tidbits of important knowledge.
But prices are going up. My house sits on top of an oilfield that I'd thought had been drained in about 1922, but apparently not -- they've started extracting again and it seems I might be entitled to a tiny royalty check. Whoohoo urban oil baron.
Meanwhile, the governor of Alaska is pushing really hard to cut taxes on oil production and the legislature is pushing back.
Has any oil company in the history of the industry been non-corrupt? Maybe Statoil?
1. the incomprehensible clause: The nationalized companies are much worse at energy production compared to the multinationals. When ineffectual is OK (as say Iran in Moussadegh's day), nationalization is fine, otherwise consumers pay more or have blackouts.
5. In my mind, short term is the next 50-100 years. The price drop for gas may not last. Long term salvation prospects to moderate coal consumption are I think from solar, progress chart
9.last Yes, informative, but the author is a shill for the multinationals. He's how I learned Goulbenkian's name.
Mostly I was struck by the coincidence (and I think it is a coincidence) that Argentina is nationalizing when gas is super-cheap. Also cheap gas just when Japan needs cheap power was a happy coincidence for that country. I don't have anything concise and definite to say, just noting that energy right now is less boring than last year.
Huh, Repsol hasn't even owned YPF for all that long. I wonder what the Spanish fallout will be.
I only tangentially follow the energy industry and almost nothing going on within it makes real sense to me.
I don't understand what is going to happen with Argentina. It can't borrow internationally because of the default. The nationalization will make it nearly impossible to sell assets internationally. Domestically, the Corralón and the pension nationalization have got to have an effect on private savings and investment. I don't understand how it can aggregate capital to extract the oil. Maybe that will be better, greenhouse-wise.
I was impressed how today's Washington Post editorial against the Argentinian oil de-privatization was making excuses for the lower-than-expected production Spanish company that had previously owned the franchise. The excuse was "government interference" in the form of preventing repatriation of profits and in capping domestic oil prices.
So, basically, the government of Argentina was in the wrong because it wanted too many of the benefits of Argentina oil production to go to Argentina.
Comments during the meeting I spent yesterday in suggest that the land of Borges and thin girls (other exports fail to come to mind) has pissed off the financial and industrial sectors even more than they may have expected.
There an argument that fracking is actually bad, from a greenhouse-gas perspective, since while burning the stuff only puts half as much CO2 in the atmosphere as thre energy-equivalent amount of coal, the extraction can leak enough methane to outweigh that. I don't know if the numbers totally support it, but it's depressing if true.
23:Fracking consumes fucking lakeloads of fresh water, as does shale oil. I can't believe we are doing this shit. From Wiki:
A distinction can be made between low-volume hydraulic fracturing used to stimulate high-permeability reservoirs, which may consume typically 20,000 to 80,000 US gallons (76,000 to 300,000 l; 17,000 to 67,000 imp gal) of fluid per well, with high-volume hydraulic fracturing, used in the completion of tight gas and shale gas wells; high-volume hydraulic fracturing can use as much as 2 to 3 million US gallons (7.6 to 11 Ml) of fluid per well.
There an argument that fracking is actually bad, from a greenhouse-gas perspective, since while burning the stuff only puts half as much CO2 in the atmosphere as thre energy-equivalent amount of coal, the extraction can leak enough methane to outweigh that. I don't know if the numbers totally support it, but it's depressing if true.
Figuring out where to set the balance between carbon dioxide and methane emissions is a tricky aspect of dealing with natural gas. They're usually compared based on global warming potential, by which measure methane is much worse over a given time horizon, but there's the complication that methane has much shorter persistence in the atmosphere (years as opposed to centuries).
Another issue is the risk that cheap gas can lead to an increase in net emissions through a shift from non-fossil power sources to gas. This is particularly likely in places that depend heavily on nuclear power, like New Jersey and Japan.
Well, sure, fracking seems to be terrible in all sorts of ways. The possibility that it's not even a net improvement over coal on the GHG front would be icing on that particular shitcake.
13
... Long term salvation prospects to moderate coal consumption are I think from solar ...
In my opinion there is very little chance solar will ever (well until all the cheap coal is burned) be cheap enough to displace all the coal being burned for power. Note even if it became cheap enough when it is sunny it isn't always sunny and there is no real good way to store electrical power. And just displacing some coal consumption does little good in the long run as it still all gets burned eventually.
And just displacing some coal consumption does little good in the long run as it still all gets burned eventually.
In environmentalism, staving off defeat is about as good a victory as it gets.
I'm not sure what you do, but I suggest that if you have a choice between continuing to do whatever it is you do and becoming a motivational speaker, you should probably keep with the former.
And just displacing some coal consumption does little good in the long run as it still all gets burned eventually.
This is why I just ate an entire box of cookies, rather than spreading my consumption out over a week or so.
29: Something in a van down by the river something.
The market for demotivational speaking is small and doesn't pay well.
If you could somehow selectively demotivate voters, you could probably earn a bunch of money.
I gotta think a month's worth of spewing natural gas into the North Sea isn't good for the greenhouse-gas situation either.
somehow selectively demotivate voters
Perhaps, this is already Halford's gig. He's got the entry level "unfogged" cell.
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Funny. Is Neoliberalism Fascism? FDL regular discovers Jodi Dean. There are like 3 actual leftists in America and Dean is the only one under 60.
No, it is not fascism. That kind of populism comes out of hell with socialism. We should be so lucky.
But also at FDL, and the reason tr'lld, an article on the politics of Fracking in Ohio
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If you could somehow selectively demotivate voters, you could probably earn a bunch of money.
a) The GOP pays an army of people to do this.
b) Alternatively, and somewhat more ethically, you could get motivational speakers to pay you to demotivate people from entering the motivational speaking game and competing with them.
Alternatively, and somewhat more ethically, you could get motivational speakers to pay you to demotivate people from entering the motivational speaking game and competing with them.
Or indeed pay you to go round giving demotivational speeches, thus creating a large number of demotivated people in need of the services of a motivational speaker. Like a cartel of glaziers paying someone to break windows.
You'd have to be careful not to be too good, or they'd lack the motivation to seek out a motivational speaker.
This is reminding me of the opening of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" where Deckard's wife is nagging him to dial himself a different mood on the mood-altering machine - he keeps refusing and eventually she says "Well, just dial #537: that induces the mood of wanting to dial a different mood".
Also, I think motivational speakers are generally not sought out by people; they are inflicted on people by the organisations that own the people. But I could be wrong.
41 certainly relfects my own experience of them. Do you know anyone who would claim or admit to having been motivated by a motivational speaker?
Motivational speakers in particular (dude at a podium) sure, but their epigones include a style of shitty advice column/broadcast that people love.
There are motivational self-help books that have thousands of positive reader reviews. Claim to have been motivated, I think lots of people would agree to that.
41: Really? I've never had a motivational speaker thrust on me by my corporate overlords, so my only experience of them is through telly and the occasional email spam, and the impression I get is that it's mostly guys like this giving seminars to gullible people and getting them to buy into their pyramid schemes.
Vaguely related to the mention of Japan in the OP, this is a neat story.
