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H&I Fires* 13 May 2008

By Denizens on May 13, 2008 | | Comments (8)

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.

You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...

Time to add a new caveat, because from email it's not clear to some folks (mind you, if you don't read this it won't matter...) Being an open post, people (collectively, the Denizens) other than I post in the H&I. They sign their work (most of the time) - keep that in mind when you want to flame someone in email please - if it doesn't say "The Armorer" or "John" then I didn't write it! And honestly - if you don't like something said or posted... leave a comment, and hash it out (within the context of The Rulez which are clearly posted on the comment form, I would add).

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Navel-gazing... lessee, two awakening economies (India and China), with 8 times our combined population start buying vast amounts of oil on the world market, making the raw material of gasoline and diesel fuel more expensive, making gasoline and diesel fuel more expensive, and the culprit is... BIG OIL!

Heh. If you've been pricing wood, steel, and concrete lately, that's more expensive, too. Those are commodities that SWWBO and I have been buying over the last few months, and guess what? Prices are high, and rising, there, too. Where is the Congressional outcry against Big Wood, Big Steel, and Big Cement?

Well, the housing downturn has taken some of that sting away, I suppose. At least in terms of noticing it.

Heh. So, now we have the President headed to Saudi Arabia to ask the bankrollers of Wahabism to pump more oil, please? Supply and demand. If the supply is going to remain mostly fixed, or controlled by a cartel, I guess we'll just have to moderate our demand, huh? Because that seems to be about the only solution offered by the Left, certainly. And the Right has managed to mis-manage itself more and more out of power.

Heh. Countries the Left sees as virtual paragons of virtue drill a lot of offshore oil. And have managed without huge environmental disasters. Something along the lines of 1K wells were damaged or destroyed by Katrina... but we didn't see huge oil slicks. Could be the technology has improved? Something like 85% of our offshore oil reserves are fenced off from development... when was the last time we built a new refinery, vice expanded existing ones? Doesn't matter how much raw product you have if your refining capacity can't keep up with the demand.

Of course, many Greens are really Watermelons. Green on the outside, Red on the inside, and this sort of thing is exactly what they want, because it gives them more reasons to exert economic and social control, and there is no better way to expand your power than through an "emergency". See Lincoln, Abraham, Wilson, Woodrow, Roosevelt, Franklin, Johnson, Lyndon, Nixon, Richard (remember those wage and price controls?), and Carter, Jimmy. And the favored boogeyman of the Left, Bush, George W (gotta be balanced).

Heh. This was s'posed to be a blurb. Turned into a rant, didn't it?

The point being, there isn't/doesn't have to be a single solution to the problem. If the "crisis" (mostly of our own making) produces new sources of energy or more efficient use thereof, that's a net good (and the market in action, one would note - unless we're going to take the money away from the people who are doing the research to give to the government - not that some tweaking with tax breaks can't incentivize people...) but it just seems the height of folly to ask the financiers of much of our current troubles to... make more money, when we actually have the tools to reduce their hold on things - if we were but to use them. -the Armorer

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Pvt. John J. Wiliams, credited with being the last soldier killed in the Civil War - in the last, and wholly un-neccessary, battle of the war - the Battle of Palmetto Ranch, 13 May, 1865. I admit - the controversy surrounding the history of the fight makes this book a candidate for the Castle library: The Last Battle of the Civil War, by Jeffrey Hunt.

Off for analysis in support of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. -the Armorer

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Apropos the Armorer's comment on China and oil, I have this argument about twice a week with my not yet totally converted brother and my mom who never watches the news. It barely registers with them. I tell them China is building its third oil reserve as of December '07 with a final goal of over 98 million barrels (for apprx a 30 day supply), that China has put 1 million more cars on the road since 2001, built a giant dam, expanded Beijing and multiple other cities (all requiring fuel and oil)...

It sinks in for a minute, then its off to the races about why the government hasn't done anything and the "big oil companies" getting rich off of the little people. Why...somebody ought to do something about it! I ask them if they are going to tell a billion Chinese and a few hundred million Indians that they can't have any more oil...

No takers so far. - Kat

*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.

Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.

Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*

The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.

I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".

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8 Comments

By fdcol63 on May 13, 2008 8:41 AM
One (1) angel can dance on the head of a pin ... if said angel or pin is big or small enough. Occam's Razor. LOL
 
By kat-missouri on May 13, 2008 8:54 AM
China started building its third oil reserve in December 2007. Expected to reach a total reserve of 98 million barrels of oil or more. That is on top of their expanded use due to expanded economy.
 
By JimC on May 13, 2008 10:23 AM
Does anyone in Congress or anywhere else outside of corporate board rooms understand that corporations,ultimately, don't pay taxes? The just pass on the additional cost to us consumers. I really do wish that someday we get a government that sort of, almost, understands economics and our system.
 
By fmr_grunt on May 13, 2008 11:17 AM
I spent four years working in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields in the early 90s. Hurricane Andrew took a path a bit west of Katrina that put it directly through the the heart of the oldest oil fields in the Gulf. No major oil spills after Andrew either. The reason for this is that the wells are shut down as the storm approaches. As a general rule the field hands take their role protecting the environment very seriously. Like hunters, they tend to be a group of people that use and enjoy the outdoors. I remember seeing only a few small slicks (the largest being made by tens of gallons at the most) during my time in the Gulf. All of which were caused by malfunctioning equipment. Only once was the spill from a platform. The rest were from the work boats that service the fields. I think the reason Florida, California, the Carolinas and even Michigan are so afraid of expanded offshore drilling is strictly NIMBY. They don't want to look at the structures. Same for new refineries. Refineries are big and they stink. Plain and simple. New jobs and lower gas prices be darned.
 
By BillT on May 13, 2008 3:43 PM
Two of the biggest refineries in Jersey are located at Eagle Point and Swedesboro, just east of Philly. The scrubbers in the stacks work just fine, thanks. No stink. They do have that industrial look, but if you're into retro, wellllll... BTW, angels don't dance on the heads of pins -- they have enough trouble just trying to hang on to the wing of a Cobra...
 
By Argent on May 13, 2008 9:20 PM
JimC, actually in a capitalist economy pricing is set my supply and demand. Unless the taxing changes that the best pricing point (capturing the most purchasers fro the most money) will remain the same and the extra costs are not passed on. Hence is just directly affects profitability. The same applies to corporate 'savings'. In reality of course we may see taxes and other corporate costs passed on, which therefore cost the company custom and that there is a double impact on profit. The tax impact and the loss of sales from bad pricing policy. Keep in mind this is capitalist idealism. It does not apply as well for high 'need' materials like water or electricity where the price can pretty much hit the moon before people change their purchasing habits. It also doesn't apply as well where government protectionism of consumer or business is involved. And then there's cooking the books where the tax itself is challenged.
 
By KevinB on May 14, 2008 3:23 PM
First time poster here. Folks, my undergrad training was as an engineer. By and large, that profession is obsessed with finding better and more efficient ways of doing things; that those new solutions are often more elegant and, dare I say, beautiful than the ones they replaced. For example, you can look at the Red Baron's Fokker triplane with a certain bit of nostalgia but an F-18 just strikes awe into you. The Brooklyn Bridge was a feat for its time, but I saw a documentary on the building of the world's largest suspension bridge, and that bridge is almost ethereal in design. So it irks me when I hear my fellow conservatives decry attempts to build a better car platform. I think global warming is a pile of BS, and I think we have plenty of oil, but I don't think either of those is a good or sufficient reason to stop trying to find a better way to move people around. Most Canadians and Americans do the majority of their driving in stop-and-go urban traffic. When you're stopped at a traffic light in a gas car, you're getting zero MPG. In an electric car, you're not wasting any energy. From an engineering point of view, an electric motor supplemented by a gasoline engine for longer trips (where the energy density of gas is far higher than that of ethanol or hydrogen) is by far the most sensible solution. Let's say the extra cost of a hybrid is $3,500 per car. The $7 billion spent on ethanol subsidies would allow the Big 3 to produce two million hybrids each year at no extra cost to the consumer. What would this do to US energy security? Using US Dept. of Transport figures of 12,000 miles per year for passenger cars, 66/33 urban/rural split in miles driven, and 25 mpg average fuel economy (numbers slightly rounded for ease of calculation), the average driver uses 480 gallons a year. Further assumptions: hybrid car gets 100 mpg in urban driving (mostly off battery but assume the gas engine has to kick in occasionally), and the same 25 mpg on highway. This driver uses less than 240 g/yr, or about half the previous average. This represents about 65,000 barrels/day, which may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the 5.5 million b/d the US imports from OPEC, but after 10 years, this would be close to 700,000 b/d, assuming no one else bought a hybrid. In 10 years, I would expect the price differential of hybrids to come down to next to zero, and the actual number of hybrids on the road would be substantially higher than 20 million. If half the roughly 100 million passenger cars converted to hybrids over the next ten years - a not unreasonable assumption - and the gas portion of the hybrid didn't improve from our current estimate of 25 mpg - a quite unreasonable assumption, IMHO - the US could save over 1.6 million b/d, or roughly one third of its OPEC imports. I believe in the event, we would see savings of at least half of OPEC imports. 2.5 million b/d at $100/b, saves $250 million per day, or over $91 billion/year that won't go to the Saudi terrorists. Isn't that a goal worth getting behind?
 
By John of Argghhh! on May 14, 2008 4:16 PM
Welcome, Kevin. Heh, ya made me re-read what I wrote to see if you were aiming at me. I'm guessing not.