Shorter Krugman: $15B Big Dig was worth it because it saved me $5 in cab fare. #rsrh

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Steve Maley

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/infrastructure-spending-yields-results/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

“The Big Dig is often treated as a cautionary tale of delays and cost overruns, and I have no idea how the cost-benefit analysis looks in retrospect. And I’m in general skeptical about highway expansions. But there sure have been benefits; and would the money really have yielded a higher social return if it had been used to reduce budget deficits, and thereby make more funds available for the housing bubble?”

Messrs. Dodd, Frank and other nitwits in the Congress pushed banks to lend money who had neither the ability nor the willingness to repay it. That caused the housing bubble. Let’s not pretend that the only alternatives for the money were to either piss it away on FNMA loans or to piss it on a poorly-managed infrastructure program in Boston.

The answer to your rhetorical question, Dr. Krugman, is No. It would have been better not to take the money from the taxpayer in the first place.

“Conscience of a Liberal”, my ass.

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One picture explains why natural gas is trading at a 10 year low price.

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Steve Maley

http://ir.eia.gov/ngs/ngs.html

Natural gas storage smooths out the supply picture. Gas is not needed for space heating in summer, so excess production can be stored underground (in salt caverns or depleted reservoirs). Storage is then “drawn down” in wintertime when space heating demand may outstrip deliverability from producing fields.

Now, there’s lots of excess gas. Storage didn’t draw down much due to a warm winter in the Lower 48. Sets a stage for a grim summertime if you’re a producer. If you’re a consumer, however, it’s a Blue Light Special.

Posted in Energy | 1 Comment

The polite term for this is ‘fencing’

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Steve Maley

Argentina is already looking for a buyer for the half of YPF that they just stole from Repsol.

Argentina Seeks Partner for YPF to Invest $10B

The Argentine government is looking to seduce major international oil companies to invest some EUR8 billion, or about $10 billion, in the country’s energy sector with YPF SA, just days after it moved to nationalize YPF, the Argentine unit of Spanish oil company Repsol YPF SA, reports Expansion in its Thursday Internet edition.

The investment won’t have to necessarily entail the purchase of YPF shares, but there could be alliances for specific projects or the creation of a joint venture, the newspaper says.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, known as Sinopec, and CNOOC Ltd. are the main candidates, the paper adds.

Recent press reports said that Sinopec had already reached a nonbinding agreement with Repsol to purchase a controlling stake in YPF before Argentina moved ahead with its nationalization plans.

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LA Dems Strip Obama Challenger’s Delegates on Technicality

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Steve Maley

In the March 24 presidential primary, Democratic challenger John Wolfe, Jr. scored 17,804 votes. Wolfe is a lawyer from Chattanooga, TN and a virtual unknown in Louisiana. Party rules award delegates to the national convention for any candidate whose vote exceeds 15% in a congressional district. Wolfe racked up almost 19.6% in the 1st District, 17.2% in the 3rd and 22.0% in my district, the 7th.

That’s a minimum of three delegates, right there. Congratula… oooh, not so fast.

Louisiana Democratic Party denies 3 delegates to fringe candidate

“Mr. Wolfe is not eligible for any delegates in the state of Louisiana as he failed to comply with the Louisiana delegate selection plan,” said James Hallinan, director of communications and research for the state party. “Mr. Wolfe violated rule 2B in the delegate selection plan by failing to certify an authorized representative for his campaign in Louisiana to the Louisiana Democratic Party by the deadline of December 9, 2011. Continue reading →

Posted in Louisiana, Politics | Leave a comment

Feds say natural seep is likely source of Gulf oil sheen. #rsrh

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Steve Maley

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/04/13/feds-say-natural-seep-is-likely-source-of-gulf-oil-sheen/

Naturally seeping oil from the seafloor is the likely culprit behind a 10-mile sheen discovered in the central Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, federal officials said Friday.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in a statement that the agency was working to confirm the natural seafloor seep was the source of the sheen, after it was spotted by a remotely operated vehicle deployed by Shell Oil Co.

Shell operates two deep-water projects near the sheen, located about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans and 56 miles off the Venice, La., coast.

“The remotely operated vehicle was able to investigate a known natural seafloor seep as the likely source of the sheen using information from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that identifies where natural seeps are known to be located,” said BSEE spokeswoman Eileen Angelico. “Initial reports from Shell show that the seep is currently releasing oil and natural gas.”

Of course, Shell had to deploy the ROV and chase down the seep – at what cost? For six barrels?

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A Little Perspective, Please.

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Steve Maley

Exxon’s top exec got a 17pct. pay raise in 2011

Exxon Mobil gave its top executive a 17 percent increase in compensation last year, as the oil giant posted one of its most profitable years on record.

Rex Tillerson, 60, received a pay package worth $25.2 million, up from $21.5 million in 2010, according to an AP analysis of a regulatory filing on Thursday.

Tillerson received an annual salary of $2.4 million, a bonus of $4.4 million and stock awards worth $17.9 million. He also received $519,230 in miscellaneous compensation including life insurance, personal security, personal use of company aircraft, and financial planning.

Tillerson owns 1.743 million shares of XOM stock worth $145 million, or 0.037% of the company. (Most of the stock of the Big Oil companies is owned not by their managers but by pension funds, mutual funds, and individual investors.)

For comparison, here are the latest available annual compensation numbers for the CEOs of XOM’s competition:

Outrageous!

But consider that each of these gentlemen has been successful in rising to the peak of the pyramid in the largest and most complex enterprises in the history of capitalism.

Then consider this: Continue reading →

Posted in Economy, Energy | 2 Comments

WSJ: New Life for the Gulf’s ‘Dead Sea’. #rsrh | But the rigs in the pic are stacked…

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Steve Maley

…”stacked” as in “not currently working”.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304072004577326284166231336.html

Link may require subscription/prescription.

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Why Obama deserves little credit for U.S. oil and gas boom. #rsrh

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Steve Maley

Energy Fact of the Week: Why Obama deserves little credit for U.S. oil and gas boom

From Steven F. Hayward at the American Enterprise Institute

Oil:

Gas:

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Taunting

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Steve Maley

http://v.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2333djd0n1qab97k_r1.mov

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Fracking is Blamed for … Well, Everything, Really.

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Steve Maley

Blaming natural phenomena on fracking is this year’s fad, reminiscent of the mood ring, the pet rock or Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Item 1. Vice-President of the United States Joe Biden may not know what hydrofracking is, but he does know that it sounds plenty scary.

“… There’s a thing called fracking. They’ve got to go crack the rock in order to get [oil and gas] out. You can environmentally do that well or you can environmentally do that poorly,” the vice president said.

“If you do it poorly, you use up the water aquifer. [Huh?! – Ed.] You can create, in some cases the argument is, earthquakes,” he concluded.

Mr. Biden was referring to a string of minor tremors over the past year in the Youngstown, Ohio, area, including a 4.0 quake that shook the city on New Year’s Eve.

But state officials have confirmed that the temblors were the result of a wastewater-disposal well, not fracking itself.

As I commented at the time, the problem here is not that frack fluid is being injected. Mother Gaia is indifferent to whether the fluid is frack water, bong water or mother’s milk. Fracking is not the culprit; if you inject lots of fluid into an existing fault zone, that may create a problem, but its a problem best addressed by state authorities. They are in a much better position to appreciate local geomechanics than is a Federal agency like the EPA.

The evidence here reveals one thing that is definitely caused by hydraulic fracturing: Vice-Presidential confusion.

Item 2. Is hydrofracking causing the mysterious Clintonville (WI) booms? Continue reading →

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