Frickin' frackin'

Oops!

I don't think many people understand where oil, or as we here in Texas call it, "awl", comes from, or what we have to do to extract it. Here's the short version....I do have a point here, bear with me:

Oil comes from living things like plants and algae that die and settle into lake and ocean beds, then over time are covered up by thick layers of sediment (think: silt).  Over millions of years these deposits rot and pressure builds as it "ferments" deep underground.

Contrary to popular mis-information, oil deposits are not big underground lakes of black goo.  Oil is trapped in certain types of porous rock (imagine a sponge holding water) and is usually held in place by layers of heavy less-porous rock on top of it. 

When drill pipe punctures the less-porous rock and gets into the oil saturated porous rock below, the intense built-up pressure of all those rotting fossils is released and sends it gushing back up the pipe. 

But after a while the oil's pressure bleeds off and the oil stops flowing upward naturally.  Picture shaking up a bottle of Coke, then popping the bottle cap.  The Coke fizzes straight up and out the top, right?  But after a few seconds the pressure is gone and the rest of the Coke is just sitting there in the bottle.  You have to suck it out with a straw.  That's essentially what an oil "pump jack" does....it sucks the oil out after the natural pressure drops. 

For all this to work you have to drill down directly over the "reservoir" of oil-saturated porous rock.  Drill a bit too far one way or the other and you get nothing....a "dry hole" they call it. 

Enter hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking".  Today fracking is the method we're using to dramatically increase our oil production.  It involves drilling a hole straight down through the less-porous rock layers and the water table (aquifer), then turning 90 degrees (known as horizontal drilling) and running another 5,000 to 10,000 feet.  Then a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand is injected under extreme pressure down the pipe. The pressure cracks the rock in millions of places, the sand fills the cracks and keeps them open, and the otherwise trapped oil can then escape back up.

Fracking can be a good thing.  Too much of the world's oil is concentrated in places that are not friendly to us.  They will sell us their oil, but if we piss them off they can jack the price up as punishment, or even cut us off entirely.  We need to produce oil here where we can be the masters of our own destiny. I get that.

BUT....

Coming back to that photo on top....it has become apparent that fracking is causing increasingly serious earthquakes. It shows what can happen when intense fracking builds up too much pressure, and/or when the horizontal drilling crosses a geologic fault line.  It can mess up the natural underground geology.  That photo of earthquake damage was taken in South Coffeyville, Oklahoma (NE of Oklahoma City) just a few days ago.  We have small 'quakes register here in my area, too, but they're nothing like that!  So far.

Who's going to pay to fix those streets?  Who's going to pay to fix homes that have foundation damage due to these man-made earthquakes?  It won't be the oil companies, you can be sure.  That's because, like the tobacco industry of decades ago, they deny everything.  They deny that their fracking has anything to do with earthquakes.  "We didn't do it, nobody saw us, you can't prove a thing" they say.  And of course their bought-and-paid-for state oil regulators agree with them.  *wink*

We're walking a tightrope:  Yes, we need the oil.  We need to, by fracking or some other means, get as much oil out of the ground as we can while not destroying everything nearby in the process.  But in many places the public water supply is becoming contaminated (just a coincidence they say) and all that sloppy fracking stuff that the earth regurgitates back up has to be recovered and stored someplace, too.  The process is simply not sustainable long term.

IMO our biggest mistake was not launching an all-out Manhattan-Project-style effort 50 years ago to develop an alternative to our oil addiction.  We're working in that direction now, but it will take decades to make a substantial difference.  In the meantime we're probably just stuck with frickin' frackin'.  We're damned if we do, and damned if we don't.  *sigh*

S

Me? I thought YOU were driving?

Here I am once again with your weekly dose of boredom, unless you're a geopolitical junkie like me. Then you might find this interesting....scary even.  Based on all I've seen, heard, and read, we're on the very edge of a perfect storm, and not a good one.

Over the next few years things are going to happen all around the globe that could change us dramatically.  I base this on my world-wide reputation as a preeminent....OK, I couldn't sleep, so it was post this Stephen King-like horror story or eat ice cream.

Our world is now more inter-dependent than ever.  What happens in Vegas, or Beijing, or Tehran doesn't stay there anymore.  Here's what we could soon be seeing:

1.  The Mid East is in mid-collapse....fact.  Iraq, Syria, and a few other so called "sovereign nations" *snort* in the region will never be reconstructed.  They are fragmented beyond repair.  A working alliance is developing between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey (all predominately Sunni Muslim) as well as....shhhh....Israel.  Their goal is to counter, take down even, Shia Muslim Iran.  Except Iran soon might have nukes, and may or may not be afraid to use them.  *gulp*
  
When the implosion finally comes, in whatever form it comes, some of us might be giddy happy....until we realize the real world consequences.  The global oil supply will be forever changed, and radical Muslims will scurry from there like rats fleeing a flooded sewer.  

As Europe gets 70-80% (?) of their energy from Russia and the Mid East combined (more on Russia later), they will be devastated.  The US, thanks to its newly energized oil production (fracking), will be somewhat spared....until the Europeans start bidding up the price of the rest of the world's oil.  Then it will impact us here, too.  We currently think we're swimming in oil world-wide, but if production tanks in the Mid East, that changes big time!  (You might think twice about the long-term wisdom of buying that giant gas guzzling truck/SUV.)

2.  Europe is screwed.  REALLY screwed!  In addition to their energy dilemma, the European Union (EU) is in its death throe.  The Euro as a monetary unit is not long for this world.  It is fatally flawed.  A common currency where each Euro zone country is counting on the others collectively to bail them out in a pinch (see Greece), yet has no say in how their errant cousins spend their money, is crazy.  If one stumbles, the others can motor along just fine, but if several go over the edge at the same time....YIKES!  (Would you give your kid a credit card, and guarantee their debts, with no strings attached?)

The wealthy northern Europeans resent the spendthrift southern Europeans, and if / when their economies hit the fan, it will be taps for the EU.  And the Biggest Loser will be Germany, and Germany pulls Europe's strings.  Dependent on others for most of their energy, and with 50% of their GNP derived from high-value exports, Germany will take a huge hit.  Europe will be "every man for himself", and we've seen how that often turns out.  

And do I even have to mention what is likely to happen when the social cost of taking in a million or more Middle Eastern refugees becomes apparent?  And since the Europeans have a rather dismal record of assimilating immigrants from other cultures, these new arrivals are likely to become restive and even violent, egged on by the embedded Muslim extremists / terrorists streaming in, too.  (But give the Europeans credit....most have their hearts in the right place at least.)

3.  China will wonder what hit them, too.  China's huge appetite for energy will see them dramatically retrench when the oil market wretches.  We tend to think of China as an economic behemoth, and it sorta is, but it's also a house of cards.  Their "stock market" is laughable.  It is HUGELY overvalued.  

Most of their companies (literally) are money losers kept afloat by their Sugar Daddy government, yet have P/E multiples in the stratosphere.  The Chinese right now are burning through their vault-full of surplus cash at an alarming rate, trying to buy time until they can fix things.  Which are they going to run out of first....time, or cash?  The ripples spreading out around the globe due to a stumbling China will be tough to contain.

And there are really two (Mainland) China's:  The industrial, gleaming, new, prosperous coastal China, and the still relatively backward interior.  The former gets much more generous treatment from their government, while their country cousins get short changed.  How long do you think THAT inequality will last when faced with a substantial economic meltdown?  Ouch!

4.  Russia....they're in denial.  They (their leadership at least) still like to think of themselves as a world power, but they aren't.  They're broke, and their economy is pretty much a one-trick pony (oil & gas).  If the collapse of the Mid East makes Russian oil suddenly more valuable....here's the scary part....they could be even MORE delusional.  The drunk bull will once again be stumbling around in the china closet.  And if they, for whatever reason, remain economically sickly, remember the old saying...."desperate people do desperate things."  Don't take your eye off them!

5.  South/Latin America is constantly on the verge of breaking out, but whenever they get close, they shoot themselves in the foot. There is no sign of anything changing there any time soon.  Same old same old.

6.  Africa is still resource rich....and still (likely forever?) dysfunctional.  No change there, either.

7.  North America (which includes the USA, for those who are geographically challenged :) will come through in much better shape, though we're not invulnerable.  We're both envied and scorned now for our often excessive / bully ways, and we will be even more so if we keep to our "my way or the highway" Tea Party / conservative attitude.  I am heartened, though, by the fact that many of our current crop of political candidates, D & R alike, are NOT the same old party hacks that we keep recycling, but genuinely new faces, even if one is Donald Trump's.  :)

We are much more energy sufficient than we were just a decade ago, yet if the rest of the world retrenches due to a Mid East in permanent collapse, we'll have foreigners wanting to buy OUR oil at prices that will hit us consumers hard in our wallets.  And with the world in a prolonged economic squeeze, we'll have fewer markets for our super-productive businesses to sell to.  We simply can't consume internally all we are capable of producing.  We'll likely see business closures, rising unemployment, and maybe even social unrest.  Then throw in a stagnant middle class, deteriorating race relations, etc....

8.  The environment is a changing.  We can argue about whether this change is man-made or just nature's natural cycle, but regardless, it's changing.  Colder winters, hotter summers, more severe droughts and floods....Mother Nature is pissed!  Her PMS may well change world-wide agricultural patterns.  Remember, hungry people are dangerous people.

When you put all the jigsaw puzzle pieces together, this is the picture on the box top.  If this scenario is correct, or even partially correct, we could be in for a rough ride.  Even if we get our house in order, we can still be blindsided by others around the world who are likely to be fighting for their lives.  Sometimes it seems like "globalism" is coming full circle to bite us, huh?

And if this scenario proves NOT to be correct, then it means all those think tanks, fancy-pants PhD analysts, and other assorted soothsayers I subscribe to were full of crap, so never mind.  ;)

S 

FOR SALE: Iraqi Army rifles....

....never fired....only dropped once.
 

 

The pride of the 10th Annual Baghdad Jaycees Goat Roast and Labor Day Parade has proven they aren't worth a damn when it comes to defending their country.

Observations of a non-military man:  What is it about middle eastern / Arab armies that makes them such lousy soldiers?  I've read that the Egyptian Army fought fairly well at the opening of the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973, but other than that they seem to fold up like a card table when faced with anyone actually shooting at them. Snappy parade performers, lousy fighters.

After investing a decade of our time, thousands of American lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars helping get Iraq to the point they can become a self-sufficient, stable, law-abiding citizen of the world, it seems they can't even stand up to the first hint of determined opposition they faced.

Shades of the Fall of Saigon!  Al Qaeda affiliated rebels have seized control of the northern city of Mosul while the Iraqi Army was loading up and making a run for it.  

Now the insurgents are even in control of a formidable armored force left by the Americans for and now abandoned by the Iraqis.  Emboldened, the insurgents are now marching towards Baghdad while the Iraqi Army is melting away.

It's a sad situation.  On the one hand I feel sorry for all the downtrodden in the region, all the women who are treated little better than cattle, the little girls who are denied an education, etc, but the bottom line is it seems beyond our ability, anyone's ability, to bring them into the 21st 20th 19th Century.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the rest are simply from a different branch of the Homo Sapien family tree.  Our values are irreconcilable, our brains wired differently.  We can build them all the sewer treatment plants they could possibly use, but they're still gonna crap on the sidewalk.  The only reason we have anything to do with them at all is because of a freak of geography....they're sitting atop an ocean of oil.

I say we learn to live without their black gold, keep far, far away from them all, and let them stew in their own juices.  F___ 'em.

S

At my offensive best....

After reading the "world news" section of the paper this morning (every morning, actually) I once again have to ask myself, what good thing does Islam bring to the world table?  "Militant Islamists attack a mall in Kenya, blow up a church in Pakistan....Iraq, Afghanistan (all the little 'stans' actually), Syria, Libya, Somalia, Mali, kill, kill, kill..."  If they have a dominant Muslim population (with a few possible exceptions such as secular Turkey), they're up to no good.  No?  Show me otherwise.

"Oh, but those are just the militants.  Most aren't like that at all."  Really?  Polls I've seen taken in virtually all Muslim countries show the general population, while not actually taking up arms against the Infidels, expresses overwhelming sympathy for the militants.  Face it.  They simply don't like us.  Round peg, square hole.  Not gonna work.

As I remember from my studies as a child there was a time centuries ago when Muslim countries were leaders in math, science, philosophy, culture, etc.  So what happened?  They don't seem to be leaders in much of anything these days except Jihad.  Why do we have to have relations with them?  For oil?  Sure, I get that.  But we can do business with them without having to otherwise interact with them, can't we?

Seems to me they need our (the civilized world's) cash as much as we need their oil.  "Fill up the tanker, here's your money....see 'ya."  "We want to send our students to your country."  No.  "We want some of your foreign aid to build..."  No.  Any American travels there of his own free will and finds himself threatened with headlessness....too bad.

We constantly hear that isolation is bad.  How so?  If we want to live peacefully and prosperously by ourselves here (in the West), and they choose to live in ignorant squalor there, how is that bad?  Wouldn't we both be getting what we want?

I can see the desirability of globalisation when it comes to interacting with others of similar values.  But it doesn't seem to me we share many values with the Muslim world.  Lets all sacrifice some, put our heads together and find an alternative to their oil stranglehold, and then split the sheets and move forward.  And they can move backwards.  And if a phone rings here from their area code, don't answer it.  

Live and let live, I say.

OK, skewer me.

S

What's wrong with those crazy people?

What is it about Islam that makes their believer's minds short circuit?  Whether North African, Somali, Arab, Persian, Pakistani or even a Muslim American military doctor at Ft. Hood, TX, their minds often just seem to reject logical thought processes.  I've looked at it from every angle I can think of and the only common denominator seems to be their Islamic faith.

They just don't seem happy unless they're fighting each other or their neighbor.  "You covet my camel, you see my wife's big toe....I KILL YOU!"  A daughter somehow learns to read and write....heads roll, literally.  Want a job?  "I have a job.  I make bombs."

Now I'm wondering if being around them for all these years during this Age of Oil hasn't infected / affected our Western thought processes, too?  We somehow think they want American-style freedom and democracy.  We've set them up time and again, and they've squandered it every time.  Why can't we take a hint?

It seems to me our "problem" is we're a compassionate people.  We see pain and suffering and we want to help.  That's a good thing and I'm glad we're that way.  But to help someone they have to WANT to be helped.  I'm sure many Muslims do, but far too many others, perhaps even a majority, seem to want nothing more than to return to the 16th Century.  

Now the civil war in Syria has turned even nastier and we want to go and kick some bad-guy ass.  Look around, Washington....we're up to our eyeballs in Muslim dung now!  Lobbing a few cruise missiles into Syria might make us feel better, make us feel like we're doing something to help, but that's delusional.  

Why don't we just build a bonfire on the Washington Mall and shovel in a few billion dollars worth of greenbacks?  We could close the ceremony with a rousing chorus of Kum Ba Yah, too.  Yeah, that'll show 'em!

We need to face facts:  Nothing we can do is going to civilize them.  We need to treat them like our old, weird uncle we see at the family reunion once a year....say "hi", send them a Christmas card (they'll love that!), and then stay as far from them as possible.  We want to buy their oil, they need the money; that's business.  Otherwise, leave them alone to re-arrange their own rocks.

S

The world's most dysfunctional people!

I'm so sick and tired....have been for years....of opening the paper every morning and reading about one crisis after another in the Middle East.  If they're not killing each other, they're blowing something up.  I swear, those people could fuck up a one car funeral procession!

I understand the hazards of drilling for more oil domestically, and building more wind farms on the prairie, and producing more energy via nuclear plants, etc, but damn, we REALLY need to do whatever it takes to be energy self-sufficient so we can cut ties with the Middle East.  

I know that developing their oil industry a century ago seemed like a good idea at the time, but I don't think we understood what ignorant barbarians we were dealing with.  This has turned out to be yet another example of unintended consequences.  Ours has proven to be a marriage made in hell!

There are many parts of the world that we barely recognize....we send them old reruns of Dallas and The Three Stooges, and they send us produce and flowers.  Honestly, if the Middle East didn't have oil, would we give them the time of day?  We need to make them one of "those parts of the world".

It seems like half our diplomatic corps is engaged one way or another in trying to arrange peace between Israel, the Palestinians, the Shiites, the Sunnis, and all the rest of those obscure rock-chuckin' tribes.  They've been at each other's throats for centuries.  I doubt they're gonna sit down now and happily break bread together just because we ask them to.

I say we need to conserve as much as we can and to rely on ourselves and our dependable allies for our energy needs. Then we can tell the Middle East to go play grenade-toss with each other.  We, and our checkbook, are outta here!

S

Drill, baby, drill...

I get so sick of opening the news every morning and seeing almost every world news article datelined Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the PLO, etc.  They're nuts!  I think the Brits opened a can of worms a hundred years ago when they found oil in the mid-east and began transitioning the industrial revolution from coal to oil.  (Well....it's a tough call.  Coal is pretty nasty stuff.)


I'm encouraged that we're making real progress, although almost accidentally, towards energy independence.  It comes with strings attached, and we'll have to be very careful extracting it, but it'll be worth it to be able to thumb our noses at that region.  Shame we didn't take all that money that we've dumped into that black hole over the years and instead used it to develop a way to burn political promises or manure (same thing) or cat hair balls.


They can Shiite all over each other for all I care. 


S

The REAL Rick Perry

Now that Texas' Governor Rick Perry has announced his candidacy for president I'm sure the airwaves will be inundated with misinformed 30-second sound bites about our esteemed governor.  Let me tell you a few things you're probably not going to hear about Mr. Perry from his supporters.


First and foremost he's an opportunist.  He is quick to jump on what the prevailing poll sentiment says is currently popular....until the poll numbers change next week.  He's masterfully played up his reputation for fiscal conservatism to the Tea Party-ers, although his 10-year record as governor doesn't match his rhetoric.  When he became governor in 2000 Texas state debt was just over $13B ($16B in 2011 dollars allowing for inflation).  Today it's over $35B.  Ouch!


He'll tell you that under his leadership Texas' economy has thrived, and that 40% +/- of all jobs created in the US in the past several years have been in Texas.  True, BUT he doesn't tell you that the vast majority of those jobs are low-paying with few if any benefits.


So why have we thrived?  We're sitting on an ocean of oil and natural gas, and with crude prices around $100 a barrel, it would be hard NOT to thrive.  Remember NAFTA....the North American Free Trade Agreement?  It opened up a torrent of cheap imports from south of the Rio Grande border, and those imports are shipped straight up the middle of Texas to points north, which means jobs.  It's simple geography.  (And remember, NAFTA predated Rick Perry's governorship by a decade.)  Rick Perry has simply been at the right place at the right time.  


Remember all the fuss over the abuse of Eminent Domain, the legal tool used to take people's property if it's for the "public good" (such as for a school)?  Perry gets really bent-out-of-shape over that one....never mind that he once proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor, a half-mile-wide strip of confiscated land all the way from Mexico to Oklahoma and beyond that was going to be developed for highway/rail/data transmission, the rights to do so sold to a private (and foreign at that) FOR-PROFIT group.  Seems he overstepped his bounds on that one and was slapped down by the people when they found out about it.


Perry likes to tell the story of how he got in Barack Obama's face saying, "if you can't police our borders, WE can" (or something close).  Lots of talk, very little action.  Why?  Cheap labor fuels all those new low-paying jobs he's so proud of.  Business interests bluster a lot, but deep down they LOVE all that cheap labor.  REAL immigration reform isn't going to happen if Perry is elected president.  (Sorry Tea Party.)


His supporters will point out that he'll be a powerful national candidate because he's a prodigious fund-raiser.  Or to put it another way, he's never met a PAC (political action committee) he didn't like.  (See "Trans-Texas Corridor" above.)  He once proposed that it be mandatory that all little girls be vaccinated against PVM (a virus linked to cervical cancer).  Conservatives objected loudly about the intrusion on people's parental rights and he backed down.  Oh....and it was discovered that Perry's former Chief-of-Staff was then actively lobbying for his new employer Merck (pharmaceutical), the ONLY maker of an approved PVM vaccine at the time. *cha-ching*


He is a master practitioner of patronage, too.  After 10 years in office he has packed every department, commission, committee, college Board of Regents....even 6 of our 9 Supreme Court justices.  The size of our state government has grown MUCH faster than our increase in population would suggest it should.  So much for "smaller government".   (I guess the Tea Party missed that.)


So don't we here in Texas love him?  I mean, we've elected him governor 3 times.  Um...news flash:  Anyone running for statewide office in Texas with an "R" beside their name is pretty much a shoe-in.


So should you vote for him?  I dunno.  That's your choice.  He's a snake, a worm, a liar, or as those types are commonly  called today, a "politician".  Is he any better or worse than any of the rest?  Probably not.  But if you do vote for him, don't expect him to be a pure ideological standard bearer adoring supporters can rally around.  Best case he might be the least objectionable.  Worst case....?  Just go in with your eyes wide open, and don't turn your back on him.


On a positive note, he does have that most essential presidential qualification of all:  good hair.  ;)


S