Josh Stanton at One Free Korea has a lengthy but superb summary of how the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Asia Subcommittee did something well, and demonstrated that the State Department is slow-walking the bipartisan North Korean Human Rights Act. Both the Pubs and Dems on the subcommittee treated the State Dept. Assistant Secretaries as piñatas, and deservedly so. Depressing but worthwhile read.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/03/2016 00:00 ||
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Last year, Texas lost more jobs in the oil and gas sector (about 100,000) than the number of jobs in the entire U.S. wind industry (88,000). Coal and oil bad. Wind good.
Oil prices are down about 50 percent since June 2014. And since early 2015, more than 40 Texas oil and gas companies have filed for bankruptcy, and some 75 others are on what consulting firm Deloitte calls its danger list. Low prices good, but not carbon dioxide from oil and gas.
Of course, no one in Washington is calling for subsidies to the oil and gas sector or worried about saving oil-patch jobs. By contrast, in December, Congress made sure to protect the wind industry by passing a five-year extension of the production-tax credit, a lucrative subsidy that pays wind-energy firms $23 for each megawatt-hour of electricity that they produce. That's about 100% of what I paid for hydro-power electricity in Idaho, 40 years ago, so it's a nice subsidy.
For some Easterners, hard times in Texas are cause for celebration. In mid-2015, when oil prices dropped under $60 per barrel amid layoffs in the oil and gas sector, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman crowed about news that the state's employment growth had fallen below the national average. The explanation, he said, was "all about hydrocarbons." Got yer own private windmill, do ya, Paul?
Krugman and others may delight in the misfortune of Texas's oil and gas producers, but they forget that the main reason oil prices have fallen so far, so fast, is due to ingenuity, much of it developed in Houston, Dallas and Midland. All on Obama's watch. Or more precisely, while he wasn't watching.
Technological innovation in everything from drill bits and mud pumps to seismic analysis and digitally controlled drilling rigs has unlocked galaxies of energy that have helped transform America into an energy superpower. The U.S. now has an energy-price advantage on commodities like natural gas, propane, ethane and even electricity over nearly every other country. That advantage is a direct result of the dynamism of the domestic oil and gas business, the epicenter of which remains in Texas. This is in the Dallas Morning News, not the New York Slimes...
Today's oil-price plunge is largely due to the shale revolution, which started in Texas and has made the U.S. the world's biggest oil and natural-gas producer, leading to record levels of oil in storage. Between 2009 and 2015, U.S. oil production grew by about 3.9 million barrels per day. And nearly 60 percent of that increase - some 2.3 million barrels per day - came from Texas.
Texas now accounts for about 37 percent of daily U.S. oil production and about 27 percent of all domestic natural gas output. Just like the good ol' days, when California produced a bunch of it, too. How's your production, Governor Brown?
The Lone Star State is once again exerting outsize influence on global prices, an echo of its storied past. But this time around the pace of development of new technologies suggests that we may be headed into a new era of higher oil production and lower prices, with Texas leading the way. A little bit of history about how one guy went broke drilling for oil, and then - (insert photo of gusher here)
In the late afternoon of Oct. 3, 1930, a gusher of sweet Texas crude blew out over the top of the wooden derrick and onto the nearby pine trees and red clay soil.
Joiner had discovered a gargantuan deposit. The East Texas Oil Field measured 45 miles north to south, from 5 to 12 miles east to west, and covered 140,000 acres, dwarfing anything that had come before. It contained more than 5.5 billion barrels of oil, about a third as much as all the crude produced in the United States up to that time. And the mineral rights to the East Texas Oil Field were highly diffused, with hundreds of individuals and companies owning parts of the land. Within a few months of Joiner's gusher, wells in East Texas were producing more than 1 million barrels of light-as-kerosene crude oil per day, half of America's total consumption. Everything's bigger in Texas!
Despite the low prices, Texas producers didn't want to reduce production. All were relying on an old English common law known as the "right of capture." On the surface, the wells were owned by different people. Below the surface, all were sucking oil out of the same reservoir. If they stopped drilling and producing, their neighbors could simply pump the oil out from beneath their land. Eventually, the State regulated production, and - to make a long story shorter - OPEC copied those Texas rules to limit production. OPEC had roots in Texas: Abdullah Tariki, the first Saudi educated at the University of Texas in Austin, did an internship at the Texas Railroad Commission. As Saudi Arabia's first oil minister, Tariki arranged a meeting in Cairo with ministers from Venezuela, Kuwait, Iran and Iraq that resulted in the formation of OPEC. Years later, when a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, asked Tariki what he had studied in Austin, Tariki replied, "the Texas Railroad Commission."
Many oil traders were betting that OPEC would cut production to help stabilize prices. Instead, Saudi Arabia, producer of about a third of all OPEC oil and the cartel's most powerful member, made clear that it would protect its market share, even if that meant lower prices. They don't get this supply-demand thing?
The Saudis' rationale was simple: If they cut production, the result would be higher prices, which, in turn, would stimulate more shale oil production in the U.S. (and probably more cheating by cartel members).
After OPEC decided to keep the oil taps open, prices dropped 7 percent and kept falling. Many sovereign producers, including Russia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, hope that lower prices will shut down U.S. shale oil production and reduce supply.
But that's unlikely to happen soon, thanks to American entrepreneurialism and ingenuity. U.S. drillers are making drilling faster and cheaper, resulting in more oil and gas production from fewer rigs. Domestic oil producers, particularly the ones in Texas, can survive drastically lower prices.
Today's oil market, then, looks remarkably like it did in 1931, before Gov. Sterling declared martial law in East Texas. A flood of Texas oil has overwhelmed the market. There are no brakes on supply, prices are weak and producers are acting on their own, hoping to sell as much oil as they can. What's old is new again - and Texas oil is, once again, in the spotlight. Read the rest of the history at the link - it's interesting.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/03/2016 00:00 ||
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#2
For some Easterners, hard times in Texas are cause for celebration. Do they feel the same way about the coal-producing areas? As they say: "Can't fix stupid." How do these Easterners think their food gets to them, how their buildings/homes are heated, where their electricity comes from? Maybe they should be shut off for awhile.
[Daily Caller] During an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s "Meet the Press" Sunday, the filmmaker said the establishment has abandoned voters and argued that they may vote for Donald Trump out of frustration.
"I don't think people do trust the Democrats anymore," Moore said. "How else does a socialist win 22 states?"
"I mean, in my state of Michigan, Bernie Sanders won. If Hillary Clinton and the Democrats had a tough time with him, that should have been the red flag to everybody that there is a mood out there where people are upset at the Democrats and the Republicans."
#7
Moore had a ah ha moment? He was a driving factor in causing it, pushing hate and division. This is a classic Trotsky moment where one discovers he IS the useful idiot.
Now patriots are going to have to drive this nation through the fourth turning and back into a constitutionally governed republic...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
10/03/2016 13:00 Comments ||
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#8
Mikey's upset with the Democrats because they want to ban triple cheeseburgers.
#11
Moore is trying to pull the Democrats further left (or build the foundation for a replacement part to the left of the Democrats) and sees this as the best time to start.
[Guardian] A newly published study from the University of Copenhagen has confirmed a link between hormonal contraceptives and depression. The largest of its kind, with one million Danish women between the ages of 15 and 34 tracked for a total of 13 years, it’s the kind of study that women such as me, who have experienced the side-effects of birth control-induced depression first hand, have been waiting for.
Researchers found that women taking the combined oral contraceptive were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression and those using progestin-only pills (also known as "the mini-pill") were 34% more likely. Teens were at the greatest risk of depression, with an 80% increase when taking the combined pill, and that risk is two-fold with the progestin-only pill. In addition, other hormone-based methods commonly offered to women seeking an alternative to the pill ‐ such as the hormonal IUS/coil, the patch and the ring ‐ were shown to increase depression at a rate much higher than either kind of oral contraceptives.
#1
Chemically altering the natural hormonal process has side effects? Who knew ?
I doubt big-Pharma will be pleased, but could we possibly extend the study to examine long-term socioeconomic, demographic, and cultural impacts as well ?
#3
I'd be interested to know if the pill itself caused the depression or if the body was depressed for failing to procreate. Subtle difference I know but still.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
OPEC had roots in Texas: Abdullah Tariki, the first Saudi educated at the University of Texas in Austin, did an internship at the Texas Railroad Commission. As Saudi Arabia's first oil minister, Tariki arranged a meeting in Cairo with ministers from Venezuela, Kuwait, Iran and Iraq that resulted in the formation of OPEC. Years later, when a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, asked Tariki what he had studied in Austin, Tariki replied, "the Texas Railroad Commission."
But that's unlikely to happen soon, thanks to American entrepreneurialism and ingenuity. U.S. drillers are making drilling faster and cheaper, resulting in more oil and gas production from fewer rigs. Domestic oil producers, particularly the ones in Texas, can survive drastically lower prices.
[Daily Caller] During an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s "Meet the Press" Sunday, the filmmaker said the establishment has abandoned voters and argued that they may vote for Donald Trump out of frustration.
