Oil Free Economy

[BrooklynRider]

Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy

· 15-year limit set for switch to renewable energy
· Biofuels favoured over further nuclear power

John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday February 8, 2006
The Guardian


Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.
The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.

The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.

"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."

According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern that global oil supplies are peaking and will shortly dwindle, and that a global economic recession could result from high oil prices.

Ms Sahlin has described oil dependency as one of the greatest problems facing the world. "A Sweden free of fossil fuels would give us enormous advantages, not least by reducing the impact from fluctuations in oil prices," she said. "The price of oil has tripled since 1996."

A government official said: "We want to be both mentally and technically prepared for a world without oil. The plan is a response to global climate change, rising petroleum prices and warnings by some experts that the world may soon be running out of oil."

Sweden, which was badly hit by the oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat. A 1980 referendum decided that nuclear power should be phased out, but this has still not been finalised.

The decision to abandon oil puts Sweden at the top of the world green league table. Iceland hopes by 2050 to power all its cars and boats with hydrogen made from electricity drawn from renewable resources, and Brazil intends to power 80% of its transport fleet with ethanol derived mainly from sugar cane within five years.

Last week George Bush surprised analysts by saying that the US was addicted to oil and should greatly reduce imports from the Middle East. The US now plans a large increase in nuclear power.

The British government, which is committed to generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2012, last month launched an energy review which has a specific remit to consider a large increase in nuclear power. But a report by accountants Ernst & Young yesterday said that the UK was falling behind in its attempt to meet its renewables target.

"The UK has Europe's best wind, wave and tidal resources yet it continues to miss out on its economic potential," said Jonathan Johns, head of renewable energy at Ernst & Young.

Energy ministry officials in Sweden said they expected the oil committee to recommend further development of biofuels derived from its massive forests, and by expanding other renewable energies such as wind and wave power.

Sweden has a head start over most countries. In 2003, 26% of all the energy consumed came from renewable sources - the EU average is 6%. Only 32% of the energy came from oil - down from 77% in 1970.

The Swedish government is working with carmakers Saab and Volvo to develop cars and lorries that burn ethanol and other biofuels. Last year the Swedish energy agency said it planned to get the public sector to move out of oil. Its health and library services are being given grants to convert from oil use and homeowners are being encouraged with green taxes. The paper and pulp industries use bark to produce energy, and sawmills burn wood chips and sawdust to generate power.

[ablarc]

Well, it's great for Sweden, and it would be great for the U.S., but it doesn't do much to ease global warming.

[Edward]

What will happen in practice is that Sweden will start importing most of their energy from nuclear power stations of Finland, with biofuels just for show.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Well, it's great for Sweden, and it would be great for the U.S., but it doesn't do much to ease global warming.Biofuels would be used for vehicles. They release no net carbon-dioxide, the main factor in global warming, into the atmosphere.

[ablarc]

Biofuels would be used for vehicles. They release no net carbon-dioxide...
You sure about that? No CO2 when you burn alcohol?

[ZippyTheChimp]

The CO2 released is the same amount that is taken out of the atmosphere to grow the bio-mass.

[JMGarcia]

While I am all for virtually any and every energy replacement possible if it is renewable and environmentally friendly, there will be other reprecussions.

Huge populations in countries that export oil will face severe hardships and millions of premature deaths due to a rapid spiral down into grinding poverty without these revenues. What this means in terms of the spread and increase in virulence of islamic fascism in the middle east and Nigeria is nothing to take lightly. The social upheaval will be catastrophic.

[MrSpice]

I assume all Volvos will now be running on dog waste. Instead of picking after your dog, send it by FedEx to Sweden.

[ablarc]

The CO2 released is the same amount that is taken out of the atmosphere to grow the bio-mass.
It might be worth being a little analytical about this. Though what you say is true, that same amount of land growing some other (non-fuel) crop or left overgrown would also take CO2 out of the air...but without the burning that then puts it back.

A better way to reduce CO2 emissions is to stop building Suburbia.

[ZippyTheChimp]

You have to look at the entire cycle.

Consider the biomass to be the unused part of the plant material -what is not eaten.

What happens to it? It decomposes and releases all the CO2 that it removed from the air while it was growing. You don't have to burn it for the CO2 to release. Utilizing it as a fuel before it releases the CO2 means you are subtracting the CO2 that would have been released by burning gasoline.

Plants do not permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Rocks do that - well, not permanently.

[ablarc]

You have to look at the entire cycle.

Consider the biomass to be the unused part of the plant material -what is not eaten.

What happens to it? It decomposes and releases all the CO2 that it removed from the air while it was growing. You don't have to burn it for the CO2 to release. Utilizing it as a fuel before it releases the CO2 means you are subtracting the CO2 that would have been released by burning gasoline.

Plants do not permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Rocks do that - well, not permanently.
OK, I get it (shoulda known): so that means that pretty much all the CO2 surplus in the atmosphere comes from burning stuff we mine, i.e. oil and coal. If we stopped using fossil fuels we could have Suburbia without global warming.

Somebody ought to tell Kunstler. Or does he already know?

[ryan]

It's an important first step. There isn't really any current technology (save nuclear) that can replace oil entirely, but there really hasn't been any incentive to develop it. Personally I think we'll see a lot more nuclear before the next thing takes hold, but it's nice to be optimistic.

[lofter1]

Another better idea?? The "royalty-free oil" economy ...

U.S. Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=EDMUND L. ANDREWS&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=EDMUND L. ANDREWS&inline=nyt-per)
NY Times
Feb. 14, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/business/14oil.html?hp&ex=1139979600&en=2895b151845e0dd6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 — The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.

New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/02/13/business/oil.large.jpg

Administration officials say that the benefits are dictated by laws and regulations that date back to 1996, when energy prices were relatively low and Congress wanted to encourage more exploration and drilling in the high-cost, high-risk deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

"We need to remember the primary reason that incentives are given," said Johnnie M. Burton, director of the federal Minerals Management Service. "It's not to make more money, necessarily. It's to make more oil, more gas, because production of fuel for our nation is essential to our economy and essential to our people."

But what seemed like modest incentives 10 years ago have ballooned to levels that have alarmed even ardent supporters of the oil and gas industry, partly because of added sweeteners approved during the Clinton administration but also because of ambiguities in the law that energy companies have successfully exploited in court.

Short of imposing new taxes on the industry, there may be little Congress can do to reverse its earlier giveaways. The new projections come at a moment when President Bush and Republican leaders are on the defensive about record-high energy prices, soaring profits at major oil companies and big cuts in domestic spending.

Indeed, Mr. Bush and House Republicans are trying to kill a one-year, $5 billion windfall profits tax for oil companies that the Senate passed last fall.

Moreover, the projected largess could be just the start. Last week, Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development, a major industry player, began a brash but utterly serious court challenge that could, if it succeeds, cost the government another $28 billion in royalties over the next five years.

In what administration officials and industry executives alike view as a major test case, Kerr-McGee told the Interior Department last week that it planned to challenge one of the government's biggest limitations on royalty relief if it could not work out an acceptable deal in its favor. If Kerr-McGee is successful, administration projections indicate that about 80 percent of all oil and gas from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico would be royalty-free.

"It's one of the greatest train robberies in the history of the world," said Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who has fought royalty concessions on oil and gas for more than a decade. "It's the gift that keeps on giving."

Republican lawmakers are also concerned about how the royalty relief program is working out.

"I don't think there is a single member of Congress who thinks you should get royalty relief at $70 a barrel" for oil, said Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and chairman of the House Resources Committee.

"It was Congress's intent," Mr. Pombo said in an interview on Friday, "that if oil was at $10 a barrel, there should be royalty relief so companies could have some kind of incentive to invest capital. But at $70 a barrel, don't expect royalty relief."

Tina Kreisher, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said Monday that the giveaways might turn out to be less than the basic forecasts indicate because of "certain variables."

The government does not disclose how much individual companies benefit from the incentives, and most companies refuse to disclose either how much they pay in royalties or how much they are allowed to avoid.

But the benefits are almost entirely for gas and oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico.

The biggest producers include Shell, BP (http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=BP), Chevron (http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=CVX) and Exxon Mobil (http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=XOM) as well as smaller independent companies like Anadarko and Devon Energy (http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=DVN).

Executives at some companies, including Exxon Mobil, said they had already stopped claiming royalty relief because they knew market prices had exceeded the government's price triggers.

About one-quarter of all oil and gas produced in the United States comes from federal lands and federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

As it happens, oil and gas royalties to the government have climbed much more slowly than market prices over the last five years.

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=NYT) reported last month that one major reason for the lag appeared to be a widening gap between the average sales prices that companies are reporting to the government when paying royalties and average spot market prices on the open market.

Industry executives and administration officials contend that the disparity mainly reflects different rules for defining sales prices. Administration officials also contend that the disparity is illusory, because the government's annual statistics are muddled up with big corrections from previous years.

Both House and Senate lawmakers are now investigating the issue, as is the Government Accountability Office, Congress's watchdog arm.

But the much bigger issue for the years ahead is royalty relief for deepwater drilling.

The original law, known as the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, had bipartisan support and was intended to promote exploration and production in deep waters of the outer continental shelf.

At the time, oil and gas prices were comparatively low and few companies were interested in the high costs and high risks of drilling in water thousands of feet deep.

The law authorized the Interior Department, which leases out tens of millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico, to forgo its normal 12 percent royalty for much of the oil and gas produced in very deep waters.

Because it take years to explore and then build the huge offshore platforms, most of the oil and gas from the new leases is just beginning to flow.

The Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department, which oversees the leases and collects the royalties, estimates that the amount of royalty-free oil will quadruple by 2011, to 112 million barrels. The volume of royalty-free natural gas is expected to climb by almost half, to about 1.2 trillion cubic feet.

Based on the government's assumptions about future prices — that oil will hover at about $50 a barrel and natural gas will average about $7 per thousand cubic feet — the total value of the free oil and gas over the next five years would be about $65 billion and the forgone royalties would total more than $7 billion.

Administration officials say the issue is out of their hands, adding that they opposed provisions in last year's energy bill that added new royalty relief for deep drilling in shallow waters.

"We did not think we needed any more legislation, because we already have incentives, but we obviously did not prevail," said Ms. Burton, director of the Minerals Management Service.

But the Bush administration did not put up a big fight. It strongly supported the overall energy bill, and merely noted its opposition to additional royalty relief in its official statement on the bill.

By contrast, the White House bluntly promised to veto the Senate's $60 billion tax cut bill because it contained a one-year tax of $5 billion on profits of major oil companies.

The House and Senate have yet to agree on a final tax bill.

The big issue going forward is whether companies should be exempted from paying royalties even when energy prices are at historic highs.

In general, the Interior Department has always insisted that companies would not be entitled to royalty relief if market prices for oil and gas climbed above certain trigger points.

Those trigger points — currently about $35 a barrel for oil and $4 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas — have been exceeded for the last several years and are likely to stay that way for the rest of the decade.

So why is the amount of royalty-free gas and oil expected to double over the next five years?

The biggest reason is that the Clinton administration, apparently worried about the continued lack of interest in new drilling, waived the price triggers for all leases awarded in 1998 and 1999.

At the same time, many oil and gas companies contend that Congress never authorized the Interior Department to set price thresholds for any deepwater leases awarded between 1996 and 2000.

The dispute has been simmering for months, with some industry executives warning the Bush administration that they would sue the government if it tried to demand royalties.

Last week, the fight broke out into the open. The Interior Department announced that 41 oil companies had improperly claimed more than $500 million in royalty relief for 2004.

Most of the companies agreed to pay up in January, but Kerr-McGee said it would fight the issue in court.

The fight is not simply about one company. Interior officials said last week that Kerr-McGee presented itself in December as a "test case" for the entire industry. It also offered a "compromise," but Interior officials rejected it and issued a formal order in January demanding that Kerr-McGee pay its back royalties.

On Feb. 6, according to administration officials, Kerr-McGee formally notified the Minerals Management Service that it would challenge its order in court.

Industry lawyers contend they have a strong case, because Congress never mentioned price thresholds when it authorized royalty relief for all deepwater leases awarded from 1996 through 2000.

"Congress offered those deepwater leases with royalty relief as an incentive," said Jonathan Hunter, a lawyer in New Orleans who represented oil companies in a similar lawsuit two years ago that knocked out another major federal restriction on royalty relief.

"The M.M.S. only has the authority that Congress gives it," Mr. Hunter said. "The legislation said that royalty relief for these leases is automatic."

If that view prevails, the government said it would lose a total of nearly $35 billion in royalties to taxpayers by 2011 — about the same amount that Mr. Bush is proposing to cut from Medicare, Medicaid and child support enforcement programs over the same period.


Copyright 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[lofter1]

Did a Group Financed by Exxon Prompt IRS to Audit Greenpeace?

By STEVE STECKLOW
Wall Street Journal
March 21, 2006; Page A1

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114291044305003774-TOpAth_GWFzcGJaKzMWSR6ZEXqk_20060328.html?mod=blog s

Two and a half years ago, Public Interest Watch, a self-described watchdog of nonprofit groups, wrote to the Internal Revenue Service urging the agency to audit Greenpeace and accusing the environmental group of money laundering and other crimes.

Last September, the IRS began a months-long audit of the U.S. arm of Greenpeace, known for steering its boats in the way of whaling ships and oil tankers. This month, Greenpeace says, it received notice from the IRS that the group "continues to qualify for exemption from federal income tax" as a nonprofit entity.

Greenpeace says an IRS auditor told it that the PIW letter triggered the audit. The IRS won't say how it decided to audit Greenpeace.

What is clear is where PIW has gotten a lot of its funding: Exxon Mobil (http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=xom) Corp., the giant oil company that has long been a target of Greenpeace protests.

"I believe organizations should be scrutinized and audited, but I just don't believe you should get targeted because ... you're a critic of Exxon Mobil," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA, the U.S. affiliate of Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International.

Exxon Mobil confirmed that it has provided funds to PIW, but said that it wasn't aware of the IRS audit and that it played no role in initiating the audit. In an email, company spokesman Mark D. Boudreaux said: "PIW's stated mission of ensuring that charitable organizations spend donations in accordance with their charitable tax status is a laudable public policy goal."

Another spokesman, Russ Roberts, added: "It's hard for us to have sympathy for an organization that would complain that the IRS audited them." Exxon Mobil said it funds think tanks and other groups that agree with its positions on global warming and other issues.

Eric L. Smith, an IRS spokesman, said that under federal law, he can't discuss the Greenpeace case. He said a nonpartisan IRS panel of career professionals reviews allegations against nonprofit groups to determine whether an audit is warranted. Reviews of the agency's decision-making process, he said, "have tended to find as a general rule that we are fair and even-handed."

According to its Web site, PIW was founded in 2002 "in response to the growing misuse of charitable funds by nonprofit organizations and the lack of effort by government agencies to deal with the problem." Its motto: "Keeping an Eye on the Self-Appointed Guardians of the Public Interest."

It was founded by Michael J. Hardiman, a Washington-based lobbyist and public-relations consultant who previously worked for a Republican congressman. As a lobbyist, he has represented the American Conservative Union and the American Trucking Association, among other groups.

The PIW Web site says the group's initial funding came from "business organizations." In an interview, Mr. Hardiman declined to name any of those sources. He said he left PIW in February 2004 to work in Iraq as a civilian employee of the Defense Department. His successor at PIW, Lewis Fein, who serves as interim executive director, also declined to name any of the group's funders.

PIW's most recent federal tax filing, covering August 2003 to July 2004, states that $120,000 of the $124,094 the group received in contributions during that period came from Exxon Mobil. The company wouldn't say whether it provided funds to PIW at other times, but said it no longer gives money to the group. The previous year, PIW reported donations totaling $49,600, but didn't identify sources.

PIW has criticized several nonprofit groups for alleged misdeeds, including the American Heart Association, which it accused of allowing its logo to be used to endorse Subway sandwiches in exchange for donations -- a charge the AHA denies. It also wrote to the IRS in August 2003 to urge an audit of Dogwood Alliance, an Asheville, N.C., forest-protection group that has campaigned against office-supply chains Staples Inc. and OfficeMax Inc.

Sarah Hodgdon, executive director of Dogwood Alliance, said the IRS audited the group in 2004 but didn't revoke its tax-exempt status. "I suspected that the audit followed the letter that Public Interest Watch sent," she says.

She said the group has never targeted Exxon Mobil; the company said it isn't familiar with Dogwood Alliance.

Messrs. Hardiman and Fein said PIW hasn't specifically targeted groups of a particular political bent. "We went after conservative and some of the more lefty groups," Mr. Hardiman said. "We tried to throw our net rather wide."

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/NA-AI199B_AUDIT_20060320204813.gif

Since 2003, one of PIW's biggest targets has been Greenpeace. In its signed application that year for tax-exempt status from the IRS, PIW named only one nonprofit on which it was focusing -- Greenpeace -- and noted that it "has launched an indepth investigation of" the group.
While PIW is exempt from paying federal taxes, contributions to the group aren't tax-deductible.

Greenpeace has labeled Exxon Mobil the "No. 1 climate criminal" and taken particular exception to the oil company's insistence that fossil fuels aren't the main cause of global warming. Greenpeace protesters spilled red wine on tables at an oil-industry meeting in London in February 2003 where Lee Raymond, Exxon Mobil's chief executive officer at the time, was the guest of honor. In May that year, activists chained themselves to the main gate of Exxon Mobil's headquarters in Irving, Texas, where executives were gathering for the company's annual meeting.

In September 2003, PIW wrote to the head of the IRS urging the agency to audit Greenpeace and to challenge its tax-exempt status. PIW attached a report it published in which it accused Greenpeace of "blatant self-dealing," money laundering and other illegal activities. The letter accused Greenpeace of "laundering" more than $24 million in tax-deductible contributions by diverting them to a related entity that had held protests against the Iraq war, an oil tanker and a nuclear-power station.

Greenpeace officials said an IRS auditor showed up at their Washington office Sept. 12, 2005. Mr. Passacantando said that when the auditor, Charles Walker, arrived, he pointed to a picture of an activist chained to an Exxon Mobil gas pump and said, "You guys are engaged in illegal activity and this stuff has got to stop." Mr. Walker later said the audit had been triggered by the PIW complaint, according to Mr. Passacantando.

Mr. Walker didn't return a telephone call seeking comment. Mr. Smith, the IRS spokesman, said he couldn't comment on Mr. Walker's alleged remarks.

Greenpeace officials said the audit lasted nearly three months; they had a closing conference with the IRS on Dec. 8. The group received letters from the IRS dated March 1 that said both arms of the U.S. organization -- Greenpeace Fund Inc. and Greenpeace Inc. -- still qualified for tax-exempt status.

The letters did note nine "deficiencies" uncovered during the audit, including Greenpeace's recordkeeping. The agency also found that while the activist group had been engaged in unspecified unlawful activities, they weren't Greenpeace's primary purpose and therefore don't affect its tax status.

Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114291044305003774-TOpAth_GWFzcGJaKzMWSR6ZEXqk_20060328.html?mod=blog s#)

[lofter1]

Here's more on Public Interest Watch from "SourceWatch":

Public Interest Watch (PIW)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Public_Interest_Watch

Funding

In a January 2003 letter to the IRS - as well as on its website - PIW states that it "has been established as a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization, which means contributions to PIW are not tax-deductible." Asked whether PIW had filed an anuual return with the IRS since the organisation was formed Fein said "I believe so".

On its website PIW states that "initial funding for PIW has been provided by business organizations", but does not disclose the names of sponsors. [9] (http://www.publicinterestwatch.org/about.htm) As with many of the conservative groups urging greater 'transparency' for non-profit advocacy groups, they claim that it doesn't apply to them and especially not to corporate donors.

In September 2003, the then PIW Executive Director, Mike Hardiman, rejected calls from Greenpeace that PIW disclose its funding sources. "I don't have to reveal my funding because I am not mooching off the taxpayer. Contributions to Public Interest Watch are not tax-deductible," he said. [10] (http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200309%5 CNAT20030923b.html) In Hardiman's assessment, disclosure is warranted - not because of a public right to make an informed judgement based on all potentially relevant information - but based on the tax-status of the organisation.

The Wall Street Journal (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Wall_Street_Journal), in a front page story dated March 21, 2006, indicates PIW gets major funding from Exxon Mobil Corp., and further, that PIW was responsible for provoking an audit by the Internal Revenue Service against Greenpeace -- an audit they passed with flying colors.

While gifts from individuals to a 501c(4) non-profit group are not tax-deductible, it is not necessarily the same for companies. Companies can, for example, enter into a fee-for-service contract - such as a research consultancy - and claim it against taxable income. Alternatively contributions can be subsumed into a marketing, promotions or similar budget and claimed as a deduction against tax. In this way, a 501 c(4) could indeed engage in a little "mooching off the taxpayer".

It's a way of doing business that the pro-hunting non-profit group, the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance understands. "Contributions to the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, a 501 (C) 4 organization, are not tax deductible unless you are in an outdoors related industry," it helpfully explains on its website.

[lofter1]

PIW's 2003 Tax Return:

GuideStar.org, "2003 IRS form 990 for Public Interest Watch, Inc. (http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2004/134/212/2004-134212779-01952a06-9.pdf), accessed March 22, 2006.

[Jake]

My 2 cents...

there is NO way the US can even reduce its dependence on oil much less eliminate it. These other "green" economies are only such in name and fail to tell the people that they will indirectly need oil anyway.

I don't think people really realize how dependent we are. It's not just gasoline, the heat from your homes is oil-based, the electricity in the power plants is NG-based, pretty much EVERY plastic is oil-based. Hydrogen power is oil-based, Wind and Solar are not even at a fraction of efficiency. There is I don't think a single product in the US right now that somehow doesn't require oil. Nuclear is, perhaps the only competitive source of energy in the world and we sill simply have to build more reactors or import more oil.

All this green stuff is real publicity bullshit, people think the future will be hydrogen cars and solar panels, and no oil imports. That's even besides the fact that our American oil and gas productions have peaked or will peak in the next decade. Canada holds much promise in oil-sands but you need NG to extract it, sort of an endless cycle.

Ideally I think we should do exactly what the Energy Bill provides, help our domestic companies to gain higher efficiency. We also need to restart nuclear programs and secure mining regions in other countries for our companies, be it by war or else. Unlike most opinions these are not empty words, I have a LOT of money waged on my view.

[RandySavage]

Jake eloquently states that America should “secure mining regions in other countries for our companies, be it by war or else.”

I’m no genius, but to me a better idea might be to demand from our elected representatives legislation that requires Detroit to build vehicles with high fuel economies – like we did during the OPEC crisis of the late 70s.

It’s true that every fabric of our lives is saturated in oil. In fact, petroleum-derived chemicals are used to make fertilizers and pesticides, so most of our food is dependent on oil as well. But oil will never be $15/barrel again. As painful as it may be, we need to wean ourselves off the stuff. We may never be completely oil-free, but, we could choose to realistically reduce our consumption by 50% or more in the next 10-15 years. There is not one clean or easy solution: nuclear is a controversial option. Hybrids and more efficient fuel standards are not “publicity bullshit” but real, proven solutions that would sharply reduce oil consumption. The one unifying issue among Americans is that we all (Liberals, Conservatives, Environmentalists, Religious Fundamentalists, etc.) want energy independence.

Jake, you can’t seriously believe we should keep going to war to secure a steady supply of oil. You “have a LOT of money waged on” oil? Does that mean you want these wars so that the price of oil will spike and you have a cash windfall? Have you met any of these 19-year-old Marines that you would like to die for your personal profit?

[ZippyTheChimp]

I’m no genius, but to me a better idea might be to demand from our elected representatives legislation that requires Detroit to build vehicles with high fuel economies – like we did during the OPEC crisis of the late 70s.Didn't go far enough.

What Detroit didn't do was develop fuel efficient cars with good performance like the rest of the world. The gas-guzzlers that were detuned to meet fuel requirements were "dogs," and that's when Americans began to buy foreign cars in significant numbers. Instead, Detroit relied on the fact that trucks were exempt from the fuel efficiency requirements. Through clever marketing, they convinced buyers that off-road 4WD trucks were SUVs. That became the bread 'n butter of Detroit over the next decades, but now that SUVs will have to meet higher fuel-efficiency requirements, Detroit is losing its best seller.

The irony is that, after spending a half-century of neglecting mass transit and accommodating the country to the automobile, we can't even build the cars that travel our roads.


It’s true that every fabric of our lives is saturated in oil.It would be difficult to do and take some time, but the same situation existed with the first lubricant of the Industrial Revolution - whale oil. Today's oil industry began as a need to find a replacement for the rapidly diminishing whale population at the beginning of the 20th century.

[Jake]

lol, whaling will not be very popular :D


When I mean "secure it by whatever means" I mean that the US still has extremely cheap oil, I mean think about what would happen at 200 a barrel? Very simply life as we know cannot go on at those prices. Either Americans start to fork over serious bucks, like $5 a gallon gas, or they need to stop bitching about big-oil being bad. Adjusted for inflation oil isn't even at record levels, it may go very far up for all we know.

Let's just say this, if OPEC did not have a few hundred thousand American soldiers sitting all over the mid-east they would not be doing the US any favors, the current prices are very low compared to what they could be if OPEC decides to raise them. We simply can't go anywhere else for supply other than protected sites in the US.

All I'm saying is that all these new gizmos and fuel efficiency do very very little to lower our dependence. Would you rather not produce food or take oil from another country. I don' t personally give a rat's ass about the financial well being of anyone south west of the bosphorus strait and if it were up to me we'd be pumping it for free and buying gas at 5 cents a gallon, but obviously we can't. I just ask for people to be a little more aware of the fact that without Exxon they are seriously ****ed.

Many talk about how I'm ignorant about people's rights and all that bs, well the truth is that most people have no idea as to how large our consumption is, it just seems to me like everyone is a hypocrite, people still drive to those "down with big oil" rallies, don't they?

And it's not just light sweet crude we're talking about, natural gas and heating oil, and coal are gigantic portions of our consumption. You can eliminte cars and use mass transit but what do power stations run on? Natural Gas, what does heat run on? NG and Heating oil. Oil pumps your water, powers your lights, makes your mattress possible. Don't underestimate it.

I have money on it means that I own Exxon, I own Conoco, I own XTO, Devon, Chesapeake,.... and BTW Exxon is the largest American company. America=Oil, I'm sorry that the truth is very shocking when it hits people on this island but America is a different country than Manhattan.

[BrooklynRider]

Oh Jake... tsk, tsk... how will you ever get out of this canyon you dig yourself into...


I don' t personally give a rat's ass about the financial well being of anyone south west of the bosphorus strait and if it were up to me we'd be pumping it for free and buying gas at 5 cents a gallon, but obviously we can't.

[lofter1]

By citing "southwest of the bosphorus strait [sic]" do you mean Greece, Italy, Spain, Morocco and all of South America?

Or somewhere else?

http://www.fvalk.com/images/Earth_hrpt/Winter/Bosporus.gif

[ZippyTheChimp]

Sure. Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Morocco have plenty of oil.

Wait, that's olive oil.

Well, why not? Extra-virgin is reason enough to mobilize the troops.

[ablarc]

Could you burn olive oil in a car?

[Jake]

I sincerely apologize I meant south EAST, I by no means want to get rid of spain, italy, and greece. :) A simple mistake due to lack of time to proofread, but thanks for poiting it out.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Could you burn olive oil in a car?
It's already graded, so converting the pumps would be a snap.

[lofter1]

The dependence on oil runs deeper than you might think ...

The oil in your oatmeal
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/26/ING3PHRU681.DTL)
A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast

Chad Heeter
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, March 26, 2006

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/26/ING3PHRU681.DTL

Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.

On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)

My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.

Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.

Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)

Nearly 20 percent of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially raised coffee in Guatemala -- think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.

The next 40 percent of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging and shipping.

Take that box of McCann's oatmeal. On it is an inviting image of pure, healthy goodness: a bowl of porridge, topped by two peach slices. Scattered around the bowl are a handful of raw oats, what look to be four acorns and three fresh raspberries. Those raw oats are actually a reminder that the flakes require a few steps 'twixt field and box. In fact, a visit to McCann's Web site illustrates each step of cleaning, steaming, hulling, cutting and rolling that turns the raw oats into edible flakes. Those five essential steps require significant energy.

Next, my oat flakes go into a plastic bag (made from oil), which in turn is inserted into an energy-intensive, pressed wood-pulp, printed paper box. Only then does my breakfast leave Ireland and travel 5,000 fuel-gorging, carbon-dioxide-emitting miles by ship and truck to my grocery store in California.

Coming from another hemisphere, my raspberries take an even longer fossil-fueled journey to my neighborhood. Though packaged in a plastic bag labeled Cascadian Farms (which perhaps suggests birthplace in the good old Cascade mountains of northwest Washington), the small print on the back, stamped "A Product of Chile," tells all -- and what it speaks of is a 5,800-mile journey to Northern California.

If you've been adding up percentages along the way, perhaps you've noticed that a few tablespoons of crude oil in my bowl have not been accounted for.

That final 40 percent of the fossil fuel in my breakfast is used up by the simple acts of keeping food fresh and then preparing it. In home kitchens and restaurants, chilling in refrigerators and cooking on stoves using electricity or natural gas gobbles up more energy than you might imagine.

For decades, scientists have calculated how much fossil fuel goes into our food by measuring the amount of energy consumed in growing, packing, shipping, consuming and finally disposing of it. The caloric input of fossil fuel is then compared with the energy available in the edible product, the caloric output.

What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)

But this is only an average. My cup of coffee gives me just a few calories of energy, but to process 1 pound of coffee requires more than 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy -- the equivalent energy found in nearly a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.

So how do you gauge how much oil went into your food?

First check out how far it traveled. The farther it went, the more oil it required. Next, gauge how much processing went into the food. A fresh apple is not processed, but Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal requires enormous amounts of energy to process. The more processed the food, the more oil it requires.
Then consider how much packaging is wrapped around your food. Buy fresh vegetables instead of canned, and buy bulk beans, grains, and flour if you want to reduce that packaging.

You may think you're in the clear because you eat strictly organically grown foods. When it comes to fossil-fuel calculations though, that isn't relevant. However it is grown, a raspberry is shipped, packed and chilled the same way.

There is some energy savings in growing organically, but it's probably slight. According to a study by David Pimentel at Cornell University, 30 percent of fossil-fuel expenditure on farms growing conventional (nonorganic) crops is found in chemical fertilizer.

This 30 percent is not consumed on organic farms, but only if the manure used as fertilizer is produced very close to the farm. Manure is a heavy, bulky product.

If farms have to truck bulk manure more than a few miles, the savings is eaten up in diesel-fuel consumption, according to Pimentel.

One source of manure for organic farmers in California is chicken producer Foster Farms. Organic farmers in Monterey County, for example, will truck tons of Foster's manure from their main plant in Livingston (Merced County) to fields more than 100 miles away.

So the next time we're at the grocer, do we now have to ask not only where and how a product was grown, but how far its manure was shipped?

Well, if you're in New York City picking out a California-grown tomato that was fertilized with organic compost made from kelp shipped from Nova Scotia, maybe it's not such a bad question.

But should we give up on organic? If you're buying organic raspberries from Chile each week, then yes. The fuel cost is too great, as is the resulting production of the greenhouse gases.

But if there was truth in packaging, where my oatmeal box now tells me how many calories I get from each serving, it would also tell me how many calories of fossil fuels went into the product.

On a scale from one to five -- with one being nonprocessed, locally grown products and five being processed, packaged imports -- we could quickly average the numbers in our shopping cart to get a sense of the ecological footprint of our diet.

What appeared to be my simple, healthy meal of oatmeal, berries and coffee looks different now. I thought I was essentially driving a Toyota Prius hybrid by having a very fuel-efficient breakfast, but by the end of the week, I've eaten the equivalent of more than two quarts of Valvoline.

From the perspective of fossil-fuel consumption, I now look at my breakfast as a waste of precious resources. What I eat for breakfast connects me to the planet, deep into its past with the fossilized remains of plants and animals which are now fuel, and into the future, when these nonrenewable resources will probably be in scant supply.

Maybe these thoughts are too grand to be having over breakfast, but I'm not the only one on the planet eating this morning. My meal traveled thousands of miles to reach my plate.

Then there's the rise of perhaps 600 million middle-class Indians and Chinese, already demanding the convenience of packaged meals and foreign flavors.

What happens when middle-class families in India or China decide they want their Irish oats for breakfast and topped by organic raspberries from Chile? They'll dip more and more into the planet's communal oil well. And someday soon, we'll all suck it dry.

A crude menu


A lot of fossil-fuel energy goes into the production of food:
-- Bowl of oatmeal porridge: 4 ounces of crude oil.
-- Serving of red raspberries: 1 ounce of crude oil.
-- Butter, milk and salt: 1 ounce of crude oil.
-- That cup of java: 2 ounces of crude oil.
-- Energy required to produce 1 pound of coffee: a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas, or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.
-- Energy required to produce one week's worth of breakfast for one person: More than 2 quarts of crude oil.

Chad Heeter grew up eating fossil fuels in Lee's Summit, Mo.
He's a freelance writer, a documentary filmmaker and a former high school science teacher.


©2006 San Francisco Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright/)

[Jake]

muahahahahahhahahaa, liberals stop eating and I'll sell my Exxon shares. :p

thanks for posting that lofter

[Fabrizio]

Excellent article....and isn´t that really a call for "locally grown"?

My deal:

Since electricity, heat and water is so expensive hall lights are on timers, toilets are kept only half full of water, heat is kept low and there is little-to- no air conditioning. I don´t drive and can do everything... and I mean everything within a few block radius with a CHOICE of shops, butchers, bakers, banks, hardware, barbers, doctors, 5 movie houses, bars, clubs.... plus municiple buildings and services...post office, hospital, town hall etc. My town´s center (think the size of the West Village) is closed to traffic....everyone rides bikes or scooters. The town center hosts a permanent local farmers market of fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, cheese. In the last few years we can get strawberries in January, but eating out of season or exotic produce is still rare..... ok, we do like coffee...and chocolate...but nearly everything I buy (and really not through concious effort), from wine to oil, is locally grown.... even my clothing is maybe 99% made in Italy (although unfortunately that´s changing fast). Everything is expensive.... no Wal-mart prices here, but good stuff is affordable... you pick wisely and get things repaired and mended rather than throwing things a way. And if I want to get out of town, I have a nice choice of trains and buses... and from my town I can easily connect with the rest of Europe. I can go on and on.... and maybe the savings in oil production is a drop in a very big bucket ...but the US has got to start using resources differently and make some changes in life-style.

[lofter1]

Chávez seeks to peg oil at $50 a barrel

· Price could see Venezuela producing for 200 years
· Country's reserves may exceed Saudi Arabia's

Mark Milner
The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)
Monday April 3, 2006

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1745467,00.html (http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1745467,00.html)


Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is poised to launch a bid to transform the global politics of oil by seeking a deal with consumer countries which would lock in a price of $50 a barrel.

A long-term agreement at that price could allow Venezuela to count its huge deposits of heavy crude as part of its official reserves, which Caracas says would give it more oil than Saudi Arabia.
"We have the largest oil reserves in the world, we have oil for 200 years." Mr Chávez told the BBC's Newsnight programme in an interview to be broadcast tonight. "$50 a barrel - that's a fair price, not a high price."

The price proposed by Mr Chávez is about $15 a barrel below the current global level but a credible long-term agreement at about $50 a barrel could have huge implications for Venezuela's standing in the international oil community.

According to US sources, Venezuela holds 90% of the world's extra heavy crude oil - deposits which have to be turned into synthetic light crude before they can be refined and which only become economic to operate with the oil price at about $40 a barrel. Newsnight cites a report from the US Energy Information Administrator, Guy Caruso, suggesting Venezuela could have more than a trillion barrels of reserves.

A $50-a-barrel lock-in would open the way for Venezuela, already the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, to demand a huge increase in its official oil reserves - allowing it to demand a big increase in its production allowance within Opec.

Venezuela's oil minister Raphael Ramirez told Newsnight in a separate interview that his country plans to ask Opec to formally recognise the uprating of its reserves to 312bn barrels (compared to Saudi Arabia's 262bn) when Mr Chávez hosts a gathering of Opec delegates in Caracas next month.

Venezuela's ambitious strategy to boost its standing in the global pecking order of oil producers by increasing the extent of its officially recognised reserves is likely to face opposition. Some countries will oppose the idea of a fixed price for the global oil market at well below existing levels. Others are unlikely to be happy with any diminution of their influence over world oil prices in favour of Venezuela.

Caracas's hopes for an increase in its standing would be a far cry from the days when Mr Chávez came to power after years of quota-busting during which Venezuela helped to keep oil prices down. "Seven years ago Venezuela was a US oil colony," said Mr Chávez.

As he seeks to bolster his country's standing on the world stage, the Venezuelan president has also introduced radical changes to the domestic oil industry. Last Friday his government announced that 17 oil companies had agreed to changes which will see 32 operating agreements become 30 joint ventures that will give the government greater say over the country's oil industry.

The original deals were signed in the 1990s as part of a drive to attract more investment into the country's oil industry. However Mr Chávez said the deals gave foreign companies too much and the government too little. Under the new arrangements state-run Petroleos de Venezuela will hold 60% of the joint ventures. "Now we are associates and this commits us to much more ... it's no longer a contract for doing a service, it's a strategic alliance," Mr Chávez told the companies that signed up.

The new arrangements were not universally welcomed by the oil companies. Exxon Mobil and the Italian energy company Eni have refused to sign up to the new arrangements.

Mr Chávez, a former paratrooper who has survived several attempts to oust him and who faces re-election in December, regards Venezuela's oil revenues as crucial to his plans to fight poverty. Critics accuse him of squandering the country's oil wealth on improvised social programmes.

The Venezuelan president used the Newsnight interview to attack the role of the International Monetary Fund in Latin America, where it has a reputation for pushing market-based reforms as the price of its help to countries struggling with their finances.

The Chávez government has helped a number of countries, including buying Argentinian and Ecuadorean bonds, with Mr Chávez arguing that he would like to see the IMF replaced by an International Humanitarian Fund.

Backstory

Hugo Chávez was born in 1954. The former paratroop colonel first came to prominence after a failed coup in 1992, for which he was jailed for two years. He was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, launching a social programme known as Bolivarianism, after the revolutionary Simón Bolívar, and reversing planned privatisations. In 2002 he survived a coup attempt and, two years later, a bid to unseat him in a referendum. He has close links with Cuba's Fidel Castro and has frequently clashed with the United States.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

[Jake]

ummm...I don't exactly understand. He wants to lock it at $50 forever? What an idiot? Why would he possibly want to do that? And lmao Venezuela has enough oil for 200 years, well gee wow, I guess their geologists are super smart that they can say that.

Besides the fact that $50 for a barrel will be hardly break-even in 10 years, especially for Venezuela. Why would he want to benefit America with this low price? What does he want some mini-OPEC control over the States?


All of this seems very Chavez-like and completely devoid of reason.

As of right now NYMEX crude is down 7 cents in electronic trading. I don't think it's that serious though it could shake up the markets quite a bit tomorrow.

[Jake]

Well he's throwing out Exxon, so he basically just ****ed himself as far as any likability in the US goes.

source is eluniversal.com, it's a link from Yahoo Finance's XOM stock quote.


Energy minister: ExxonMobil is no longer welcome in Venezuela
Venezuelan Energy and Petroleum minister Rafael Ramírez announced that US corporation ExxonMobil was no longer welcome in Venezuela.
The US firm rejected changes in oil taxes implemented by President Hugo Chávez' government, as well as migration from oil operational agreements to joint ventures where the Venezuelan State has a majority stake, AP reported.
Chávez is championing "re-nationalization" of the Venezuelan oil industry, the world's fifth largest.
ExxonMobil recently sold its stake in a joint venture with the Venezuelan State to Spanish-Argentine corporation Repsol.
"Some companies rather left" than accepting changes in Venezuelan oil policies, Ramírez told state-run TV channel Venezolana de Televisión. "ExxonMobil chose to sell its stake to Repsol rather than fitting in."
"Consequently, we said we do not want them here. We have many partners, many capabilities and many countries are ready to join us in managing our resources."
ExxonMobil was also the only foreign oil company operating in Venezuela that publicly expressed rejection against increased oil royalties.

[BrooklynRider]

Jake-

You focus on the personalities rather than the ideas.

US companies have been shafting developing countries for years with deals that strip these countries of their most valuable resources for a pittance. While you focus your venom solely on Chavez you seem to be missing the fact that he is part of a much broader coalition of countries that are rebelling against US hegemony in this hemisphere. It is another dismal failure of this administration. Rather than seeking to work with other countries, our corporate sponsored government make demands and ultimatums on foreign governments and leaders and, if they are refused, we move in the military.

[lofter1]

The neo-cons tried to oust Chavez back in 2002 (http://66.101.143.208/lsn/news.asp?articleID=1893), but to their dismay Chavez bounced back (read on for Republican operative Frank_Luntz' (http://www.progressiveu.org/235_frank_luntz_daily_show) input on this):

Chávez's Resurrection

By June Thomas
April 18, 2002
SLATE (http://www.slate.com/id/2064467/)

Last Friday, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez looked like a goner. News reports (see "International Papers (http://www.slate.com/id/2064326/)") claimed he'd resigned the presidency at the "request" of high-ranking military officers. By early morning, a new interim president was installed—a business leader with roots in the oil industry—and "el Comandante" was in custody. But on the third day he rose again. On Sunday, after a countercoup, Chávez was back in the presidential palace delivering one of his trademark rambling speeches. What happened in Venezuela last weekend, and who was behind it all?

Many suggested that the Bush administration, the CIA, and/or the Pentagon were involved in orchestrating the anti-Chávez putsch ... But did U.S. officials actively conspire to overthrow President Chávez?

Several sources came forward with circumstantial suspicions ... And in a bizarre exchange on CNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews last Thursday, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who was in Mexico City, told the host he was pondering a trip to Venezuela: "[A] number of people were killed today. And it looks like there may be a full-blown coup attempt against the dictator there. I've been involved in Venezuela."

©2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

++++++++++++++++++++++++

I saw Luntz' on that Hardball and was floored by his comments. So were some others ...

buzzflash (http://www.buzzflash.com/mailbag/2002/04/18_mail.html)
Apr. 18, 2002


Buzz --

This is something that I hope your readers might have some information on.

Last week, either Wednesday or Thursday, Frank Luntz was on "Hardball," commenting on some polls taken in the Arab world, whatever. Luntz was in Mexico City, and Matthews asked him what he was doing there. Luntz said, "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you," then admitted he was on his way to Venezuela -- this is one or two days before the coup. Luntz said he was on the side of "freedom" in Venezuela, and that was it.

Does anyone out there know what THE Republican pollster was doing in Venezuela at the start of the coup?

Thanks,
Bob Yates
Evanston, IL

[[I]BuzzFlash Note: BuzzFlash'll give you one guess and it's not "buying coffee."]

[Jake]

Jake-

You focus on the personalities rather than the ideas.

US companies have been shafting developing countries for years with deals that strip these countries of their most valuable resources for a pittance. While you focus your venom solely on Chavez you seem to be missing the fact that he is part of a much broader coalition of countries that are rebelling against US hegemony in this hemisphere. It is another dismal failure of this administration. Rather than seeking to work with other countries, our corporate sponsored government make demands and ultimatums on foreign governments and leaders and, if they are refused, we move in the military.


hmmm...as the only superpower in the world it is our place to make demands. Why should WE appease? We have economic and military power to make the world work for us, and we should use them. Look who we're talking about, these countries are not Australia or Japan or Germany, they are shitty little 3rd world nations that have no rule of law. Chavez is just another moron dictator who should be assasinated IMO and replaced with some new puppet.

All this crap US companies get fro "exploiting" these poor poor helpless countries. If it wasn't for Exxon they'd still be drilling for oil with their turn of the century machinery. Exxon provides the only money, jobs, and technology these people will see. The money we pay them isn't even that little, not much less than what it costs for domestic producers to extract crude. That's not even taking into account the fact that it costs A LOT to establish wells in places like Venezuela. It is a privelage IMO to receive interest from Exxon and if Venezuela doesn't like them well fine we can always go to the other countries that produce.

XOM is up over .7% today so this "news" didn't even phase them.
XOM should just establish its own military, go to Venezuela and bring me $1 a gallon fuel. I'm sure that their CEO would do a better job at running the country than Chavez. But of course I'm full of it.

[ZippyTheChimp]

At least one sentence made sense.

[Ninjahedge]

At least one sentence made sense.

They all made Dollars Zip.

[lofter1]

Jake -- So, just a rough number: How many people are you willing to see die for a puppet and a dollar a gallon?

[Fabrizio]

"....as the only superpower in the world it is our place to make demands. Why should WE appease? We have economic and military power to make the world work for us, and we should use them."

Jake it´s not 1950.

Guess what? If you piss off "the rest of the world" enough, it´ll unite (already happening) and have YOU licking IT´S boots.

--------------------

You might want to check this out:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/19/features/booklun.php

[Azazello]

I thought Jake's posts were an 'April 1' (as in Fools) thing. Then I read my calendar. :eek:

Is he playing devil's advocate, or is he for-real?

[Jake]

Jake -- So, just a rough number: How many people are you willing to see die for a puppet and a dollar a gallon?


hmmm....uno...Chavez

I'm not for a ground war involving American soldiers with ANYBODY, not Iraq, not Iran, not Venezuela. That being said I am absolutely for using our air and naval capabilities to secure resources for Americans, be they for corporations or the government. How plausible is that plan? I don't know, but I think we've gone about fighting too many wars the wrong way. I don't cheer when Americans have their limbs ripped off and die alone in foreign lands and think our present military deployments are a joke. We haven't had professional soldiers in real combat in a long time, we have stupid 750-on their SATs kids who don't quite grasp the idea of "death" sitting in the middle of intersections and oh wow what a surprise, getting shot at. We could take ports and coastal areas without any troops. As far as casualties on the other side I don't really care. There's 6 billion people on this planet and 95% of them are nothing but useless "meat." Does war claim lives, sure, as do AIDS, Malaria, poverty, famine, their own governments, and everything else.

Quite honestly it matters more to me if I have enough money for a cruise to Alaska than the fate of the entire population of Venezuela. My view is a bit exaggerated but while it is "radical" here it may not be radical at all elswhere in the US.

[Fabrizio]

We know.

Jake...what are you putting in your Mountain Dew?

[ZippyTheChimp]

Godwin's Rule is just over the next hill.

:)

[Jake]

As anyone with a Political Science degree will tell you, Thucydides really got it right.


For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

[lofter1]

Equals in Power, eh?

Depends on what kind of power you've got -- and how you use it ...

Chavez also seems to understand the " HEARTS (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=156) & MINDS (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010901430.html) " game (a game the USA used to be good at back in the olden days -- but it seems we've forgotten the rules):

Venezuela takes back oil fields

BBC_NEWS (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4873202.stm)April 3, 2006

Venezuela has taken control of two oil fields operated by French firm Total and Italy's Eni.

The government said it had taken the step after the failing to agree a deal with the two firms which would give it a majority stake in new ventures.

President Hugo Chavez has been working to strengthen state control over oil production in the country.

So far, 16 oil firms have agreed to change their operations into joint ventures with state oil firm PDVSA.

US based Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and Spain's Repsol are among the companies that signed the agreement on Friday.

In an interview on state television, Minister Rafael Ramirez said the government took over the fields operated by Total and Eni on Saturday.

"We are waiting for a resolution with these operators after they exhausted the possibility of entering into the mixed companies," Mr Ramirez added.

Legal action?

Total's Jusepin field produces about 30,000 barrels of oil a day, while Eni's Dacion field produces almost 60,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Eni has vowed to fight the takeover which it declared illegal.

"Eni believes that this action by PDVSA is a violation of Eni's contractual rights," it said in a statement.

The company added it was considering possible legal action and would be seeking compensation.

Total confirmed its oil field had been taken over, but declined further comment.

Tighter controls

Last year, Mr Chavez declared 32 oil exploration deals in the country illegal - prompting the change to the contracts.

PDVSA officials had voiced fears that the previous agreements were disguised attempts to privatise the country's oil industry.

However, some oil firms have refused to sign new deals, arguing that they have pumped millions into operations in Venezuela, and now may not see any return on their investment.

Venezuela is currently the world's number five crude oil exporter.

The government has been tightening its grip on the oil sector to raise additional funds to fight poverty in the country.

As well as demanding firms give up majority control of their Venezuelan oil ventures, the government is also demanding firms pay more taxes.

Last month, BP was slapped with a back tax bill of $61.4m (£35m) covering 2001 to 2004.

© BBC MMVI

******************************

Chavez spending billions abroad to counter Bush Administration

RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/)
Monday April 3, 2006

President Hugo Chavez is spending billions of dollars of his country's oil windfall on pet projects abroad that are aimed at setting up his leftist government as a political counterpoint in the region to the conservative Bush administration, the New York Times will run on page ones Tuesday.

Excerpts:

With Venezuela's oil revenue rising 32 percent last year, Chavez has been subsidizing everything from samba parades in Brazil to eye surgery for poor Mexicans, and even heating fuel for poor families from Maine to the Bronx to Philadelphia.

The spending has given more power to a leader who has been provocatively building a bulwark against what he has called American imperialistic aims in Latin America.

DEVELOPING...

[Dan Miner]

Well, Hugo Chavez knows the increasing value of oil - in a world where supplies of our favorite fuel are depleting. How will we deal with permanently decreasing supplies of oil, and permanently rising fuel costs?

On April 27 – 29, there will be a conference in NYC on rising energy costs & fuel depletion. The best response to the global energy crisis already unfolding will start with local solutions. National and local experts will gather to discuss how NYC can prepare for higher energy prices, and our transition to a low-energy, sustainable society. See the report at www.peakoilnyc.org (http://www.peakoilnyc.org/), and read about the conference at www.energysolutionsconference.org (http://www.energysolutionsconference.org)


But first, start out with this introduction...

Preparing New York City for Higher Energy Prices
Dan Miner, Peak Oil NYC

After Hurricane Katrina plowed into Gulf Coast oil rigs, gasoline rose to over $3 a gallon. The amount of oil taken off the market was only a small fraction of the 1.5 million barrels of oil or so the world uses daily, but it was still enough to cause sharp price hikes. In the past, disruptions like this didn’t have such a big effect, because there was always more spare oil production capacity to fill the gap. However, with world oil demand at over 84 million barrels a day and growing steadily, that spare production capacity is nearly gone. Oil fields around the world are pumping as fast as they can. National security experts tell us that future disruptions will cause even higher price spikes, and predictions of oil passing $100 a barrel, and gasoline at $4 a gallon or more have become commonplace. With the Gulf of Mexico a bowling alley for climate change-amplified hurricanes, and growing tensions in key oil-producing areas, it's just a question of time until the next crisis.

Can’t we just drill for more oil? Well, no. The supply and demand crunch is a symptom of a deeper problem: we’re running into geological limits. We’ve had unlimited access to cheap oil for the last hundred years and haven’t had to think about it much. We’ve just assumed that we would always be able to bathe in oil, the most convenient, high yield source of energy the earth has to offer. We’ve built our entire society, from transportation, to agriculture, to manufacturing, on the unexamined premise that we will always have as much cheap oil as we can pump. As President Bush has admitted, we’re addicted to the stuff, and that puts us in a very difficult situation.

We can plan ahead, but only for short periods of time. It’s just human nature. Ordering the all you can eat dinner buffet takes no more than a couple of hours, so the waiter never has to remind us that the special applies only while supplies last. We think of quarterly financial projections. Planning even five or ten years is a stretch, and hardly anyone looks further ahead than that. Twenty years? Forget about it.

So when the U.S. Geological Service says that in 2037, we will have used half of all the world’s oil, and production will begin a permanent decline, most assume that some remarkable futuristic source of energy will be developed well before that, and go about their daily business. However, a group of retired petroleum geologists, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, claim that the official projections are way too optimistic, and in fact, world oil production will peak by 2010. Oil won’t run out for a long time, but after that point, we won’t be able to increase production, and the remaining oil will be increasingly expensive to extract, while demand for energy will continue to increase.

Could they be right, and what if they are? We know the peaking phenomenon is real. The U.S. was once the world’s largest oil exporter. Discovery of U.S oil peaked in the late 1930s and our production peaked around 1970, after which we became increasingly dependent on imported oil. Discovery of new oilfields around the world peaked in the 1960s, and has dropped off ever since. Production is dropping at many major oilfields, like Cantarell in Mexico and Burgan in Kuwait. Not even Saudi Arabia is immune to depletion. And according to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, former advisor to the Cheney energy task force, states that the biggest oilfield in the world, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, may be about to peak - or may have peaked already.

The Hirsch Report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, states that "the peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented." The report has not been officially publicized, but that hasn’t stopped Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, (R-MD) founder of the Peak Oil Caucus in Congress, from taking up its call for a national emergency effort to conserve energy and maximize efficiency to buy time while we develop alternative fuels, and solar and wind power. Is he overreacting? The New York Times doesn’t think so, having published an editorial urging action on peak oil, [http://www.energybulletin.net/13368.html (http://www.energybulletin.net/13368.html)]. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report says that peak will occur soon. [http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf (http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf).]Google the Hirsch Report, read it, and decide for yourself.

The bottom line is that we’re going to have to break our addiction to oil and also to natural gas. Even if the optimists are right, the Hirsch Report estimates twenty years of massive national efforts will be needed to make a smooth transition to alternative fuels and transportation systems. If the geologists of ASPO are right, we are already in an emergency but don’t realize it. Will we wake up and begin the transition immediately, or will we have to wait until a massive energy crisis proves they were right?

Production of renewable fuel and energy supplies can be scaled up, but will not be able to completely substitute for declining fossil fuels, so the first priority must be to conserve energy and raise efficiency. Nuclear power and coal may be tempting, but they too depend on finite sources of fuel, with enormous health and environmental costs, and fail to solve our need for sustainable energy. There are silver linings: this new energy revolution will yield vast new business opportunities, and by reducing our dependence on foreign imports, greater national security. Reducing pollution from burning fossil fuels will lower rates of asthma, cancer and heart disease, and lowering carbon emissions will slow climate change, protecting us from extreme heat waves and flooding. Climatologists issue ever more dire global warming scenarios, and call for deep cuts in fossil fuel use, but we’ve barely responded. Maybe the only thing that will force us to cut back is massively higher prices.

New York City is already doing a fine job on energy issues, but most of the players haven’t found out yet that the rules of the game have been changed. There are lots of ways for individuals, businesses, and building managers can save energy and cut costs. By itself, rising energy costs is old news. Grasping the fuel depletion problem fully should raise motivation to save energy to an entirely new level.


Government at all levels will have to be involved, and should begin coordinating energy-saving efforts with business and civic organizations. Options for NYC include expanding net metering to commercial buildings, revising the building code to require all new construction to meet energy efficiency standards, and creating emergency energy contingency plans. Transportation costs are going to go up further. To buffer their effect, municipalities should prepare to roll out programs for car pooling and telecommuting, and expand and subsidize mass transit services, especially bus lines, to the same extent car transport has been subsidized in the past. Revitalizing the national rail system and scaling up alternative fuel production will be top long term priorities.

Since most elected officials, civic and business leaders are not yet aware of this problem, concerned citizens should encourage them to begin mapping out community responses. There’s a sample letter, and contact information for elected officials at www.peakoilnyc.org (http://www.peakoilnyc.org/), along with a report on preparing NYC for higher energy prices. A conference, Local Solutions to the Energy Dilemma, is set for April 27 - 29 in Manhattan. It will bring over 50 national and local experts together to address the problem. For information, go to http://www.energysolutionsconference.org/ (http://www.energysolutionsconference.org/). As the Chevron ad says, will you join us?

[lofter1]

Ex-Exxon CEO's Massive Pension Draws Firehttp://hosted.ap.org/icons/spacer.gif



http://hosted.ap.org/photos/N/NY11304160537-small.jpg (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/photos/N/NY11304160537.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT)
AP Photo/DONNA MCWILLIAM
By STEVE QUINN
AP Business Writer



Apr 16, 2006

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EXXON_PAY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-04-16-09-20-32

DALLAS (AP) -- A $69.7 million compensation package and $98 million pension payout to Exxon Mobil Corp.'s former chief executive and chairman Lee R. Raymond has some shareholders and economists asking, "how much is enough?"

"Some folks will ask the question, 'Is this more evidence of big oil taking an enormous windfall and retaining all the riches?'" said Mel Fugate, assistant professor for Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business.

The Irving company has drawn criticism from politicians and economists for becoming the most profitable company in history - at consumers' expense, they say.

Exxon benefited from high oil and natural gas prices and solid demand for refined products en route to earning $36 billion last year. The company has defended its profits, saying that other industries have larger profit margins but oil companies' bottom lines stand out because they operate on a much larger scale.

Recent news of Raymond's payout and pension is stoking embers Fugate said had been starting to die out. But with gasoline prices again reaching $3 a gallon at the pump in some areas and big oil companies about to report first-quarter earnings in coming weeks, expect more fallout, economists say.

On Wednesday, Exxon reported executive compensation in a regulatory filing that showed Raymond receiving $48.5 million in salary, bonuses, incentive payments and stock awards.

His compensation package also included $21.2 million from exercising stock options, which the company stopped awarding in 2001.

His $98 million pension payout reflects 43 years of service. But he would have received nearly $17 million less had he retired just last year, according to the company's 2005 proxy statement.

In this year's proxy statement, Exxon defended the package by saying it rewards Raymond's "outstanding leadership of the business, continued strengthening of our worldwide competitive position, and continuing progress toward achieving long-range strategic goals." Raymond had been CEO since 1993 before stepping down at the end of last year.

Exxon added that Raymond's compensation is "appropriately positioned relative to CEOs of U.S.-based, integrated oil companies and other major U.S.-based corporations, particluarly in view of the long-term performance of the company and the substantial experience and expertise that Mr. Raymond has brought to the job."

Last year, Chevron Corp. Chairman and CEO David O'Reilly received a $1.55 million salary, $3.5 million bonus and $3.57 million in long-term compensation. He did not exercise any options, but owns options valued at just over $34 million, including exercisable options worth $28 million, according to Chevron's proxy.

Fugate, who specializes in executive compensation and management, said Exxon is sending a "very, very bad signal" by allowing Raymond to select the lump-sum payout.

"They are in very, very rich times, so on one hand they say, 'we can afford it,' but on the other hand they are taking an awful lot of heat because they've made too much at the expense of consumers. I'm surprised they are not being asked to justify that."

They will be at the company's shareholders meeting in Dallas on May 31. Several shareholders have placed resolutions on the agenda that, if passed, would put the clamps on some executive pay.

Shareholder Emil Rossi, author of one of the resolutions, says that although he's done well as a longtime owner of Exxon stock, he believes the executives are keeping too much for themselves.

"(Raymond) took over a good company," said Rossi, of Boonville, Calif. "He didn't bring it out from being a bad company, so his pay is clean out of reason. It's not because of his smartness."

Twice since November, big oil executives, including Raymond before his retirement, sat in Senate hearings defending their profits and deflecting accusations of gouging.

© 2006 The Associated Press.

[ShotMagnet]

While I am all for virtually any and every energy replacement possible if it is renewable and environmentally friendly, there will be other reprecussions.

Huge populations in countries that export oil will face severe hardships and millions of premature deaths due to a rapid spiral down into grinding poverty without these revenues. What this means in terms of the spread and increase in virulence of islamic fascism in the middle east and Nigeria is nothing to take lightly. The social upheaval will be catastrophic.


Most of the countries that recieve money for oil are third world countries where the majority of the people are already in poverty and dieing because only a few people in that country are making money off the oil. The only people getting rich in the middle east are Europe / US industties and only a few people in Europe or in the US.

I for one an considering moving to Sweden, at least there everyone would be aimed at at least one good goal.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The only people getting rich in the middle east are Europe / US industties and only a few people in Europe or in the US.
No sheiks?

[ShotMagnet]

lol yea I said a few of the middle east get rich

[ZippyTheChimp]

Only a few?

So how is Dubai getting built up? I doubt they're using all that sand to blow glass and sell bottles.