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David Seaton's Energy Links® War in the Middle East: from
Yellow to Red Alert
War drums are beating in the Middle East. In a short time,
the United States has increased the number of its carrier strike groups
opposite Iran to three, and reports are raining down of a tightening
ring of American and Israeli concentrations all around the Islamic
Republic. On the diplomatic front, the Israelis are unusually concerned
about their international image (for example, making concessions in
Gaza) while their top officials - including Defense Minister Ehud Barak
and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself - are shuttling between
Jerusalem and Washington. Victor
Kotsev - Asia Times
I ask myself: what are Israeli
warships doing for the first time in the waters of the Persian Gulf, the
Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s maritime areas? Fidel Castro - Granma
The
temptation for President Obama to double down on Iran will grow rapidly
as he concludes that Afghanistan will remain a festering sore as far as
anyone can peer into a murky future, hardly a recipe for success at the
polls in November. With a war in Afghanistan, which is bound to get
worse, and a military theater in Iraq replete with sectarian violence,
the bombing of Iran may give Mr. Obama a three-front war - and a chance
to retain both houses of Congress. Arnaud
De Borchgrave - Washington Times In fighting summer
forest fires there is a critical point, which might be expressed as (+35º
-30% +35Kph): If the temperature is over 35 degrees Celsius, the humidity
is less than 30% and the wind is blowing harder than 35 kilometers per
hour, a major forest fire could and probably will break out at any
moment.
When you have the optimum conditions in a long, hot, dry,
summer, one windy day, a piece of broken glass in the sunlight, a
cigarette, a field mouse chewing through a wire or an arsonist trying to
buy charred land cheaply: in an instant, anything can set off a fire that
consumes thousands of acres and many lives.
This might be an apt
metaphor for the situation in the Middle East right now.
If you are
following the news, you can see that the tinder is dry and there are
potential sparks aplenty: Iran, flotillas, settlers, Gaza, Hamas,
Hezbollah and the alembic of Israel's coalition politics. Nothing new
there, but for the "red alert" there also has to be a high
wind.
What is the equivalent of the "high wind" in today's Middle
East?
To my mind there are two factors that make me fear that a war
in the Middle East could be imminent.
The first is simply
meteorological. In the summer there are less clouds in the sky than in the
autumn and air strikes are easier to carry out.
The second is that
both Democrats and Republicans would like to win the midterm elections in
November and neither one of them would want to do or say anything to
offend the powerful Israel lobby at a time like this.
That means
that a rather attractive window is open at this moment for Israel to
attack Iran.
The question remains, is the USA going to attack Iran
simultaneously or are all those US carrier battle groups in the Persian
Gulf just to keep watch on the Israelis?
Of course, even when all
the elements are there, the low humidity, the hot weather and the wind,
forest fires are not inevitable... but at that moment you are mostly
dependent on luck. Such, I fear, is the case today in the Middle East.
David Seaton
David Seaton's Energy Links®
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China
surpasses US as world's top energy consumer - Associated
Press China has overtaken the United States as the world's
largest energy consumer, the International Energy Agency said
Tuesday. China immediately questioned the calculation. The
Paris-based agency said China's 2009 consumption of energy sources
ranging from oil and coal wind and solar power was equal to 2.265
billion tons of oil, compared to 2.169 billion tons for the U.S.
According to the IEA statistics, China's energy consumption has more
than doubled in less than a decade, from 1.107 billion tons in 2000
- fueled by its burgeoning population and rapidly growing
manufacturing-based economy. Energy consumption is a touchy topic
for China, which is sensitive to complaints it is pushing up prices
on global markets and adding to pollution and emissions of
climate-changing gases. An official with the Chinese Cabinet's
National Energy Administration cast doubt on the IEA's statistics,
according to a report Tuesday by the official Xinhua News Agency.
"IEA's data on China's energy use is unreliable," said Zhou Xian,
adding that the agency "still lacked understanding about China's
relentless efforts to cut energy use and emissions, notably the
country's aggressive expansion of new energy development." The
report cited data from China's National Bureau of Statistics that
said China's energy consumption last year was equal to 2.132 billion
tons of oil - less than the IEA figure. The IEA's head economist,
Fatih Birol, told The Associated Press that the organization had
used the same sources and methodology as always in compiling the
2009 statistics, which he said were in line with the trend for the
past decade. "The trend is undeniable that the Chinese energy
consumption is growing very strongly - which is very legitimate, by
the way, considering their population - and the energy from the OECD
countries, the U.S., Europe and Japan, is stagnating. They are two
major undeniable trends," Birol said in a telephone interview.
"There's nothing specific from this year, it's all the same
methodologies we used before." He said that per capita, the United
States still consumes five times more energy than China. Birol also
emphasized China's status as the world's leader in wind and solar
power and said the country was also making "major efforts" in
nuclear power. China has invested heavily in hydroelectric dams,
wind turbines and nuclear power plants in an attempt to cut rising
reliance on imported oil and gas, which its leaders see as a
national security risk. Click here to read
more Contents
Oil
Rises a Second Day as Tropical Wave Forms Over Caribbean -
Businessweek Crude oil rose for a second day after a tropical
wave formed in the Caribbean and as volume diminished on the last
day of trading August futures. “If it weren’t for the tropical wave
we wouldn’t be higher,” said Phil Flynn, vice president of research
at PFGBest in Chicago. Crude oil for August delivery rose 66 cents,
or 0.9 percent, to $77.20 a barrel at 12:06 p.m. on the New York
Mercantile Exchange. The August contract expires today. The
September contract added 60 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $77.50.
September futures had almost nine times the volume as the August
contract as of 11:52 a.m. in New York. Aggregate volume on the Nymex
was 265,893 contracts, less than half the 2010 daily average of
687,000. The Gulf of Mexico makes up about 31 percent of U.S. oil
output, 10 percent of its natural-gas production and seven of the 10
busiest ports, according to the Energy Department. States along the
Gulf are home to 43 percent of operable U.S. refining capacity.
Stockpiles of crude oil fell 1 million barrels last week, according
to the median of 13 analyst estimates before an Energy Department
report tomorrow. Inventories of gasoline and gasoline and distillate
fuel, a category that includes heating oil and diesel probably
increased. “We’re seeing some short covering ahead of the numbers,”
said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, a
Galena, Illinois, consultant. “The market is starting to show some
independence and not following stocks like before.” Short covering
occurs when an investor who has borrowed securities or commodities
buys them to complete a transaction. China overtook the U.S. as the
world’s biggest energy user last year, according to the
International Energy Agency. China consumed 2,252 million metric
tons of oil equivalent in 2009 in the form of oil, coal, natural
gas, nuclear power and renewable sources, Fatih Birol, IEA’s chief
economist, said yesterday. That exceeded the 2,170 million tons used
by the U.S. Recent patterns indicate China may surpass the U.S. as
an oil importer within a decade, sooner than the IEA expects. Brent
crude oil for September settlement gained 44 cents, or 0.6 percent,
to $76.06 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe
exchange. Click here to read more Contents
The
well is capped. But what else lurks below the surface for BP? - The
Observer On Friday afternoon, BP senior vice-president Kent
Wells was trying hard to contain his elation. The well in the Gulf
of Mexico, which had been leaking oil for 88 days, was holding up.
The cap, lowered onto the well on Thursday, remained in place. And
after numerous failed attempts, the torrent of oil had finally
stopped. "It felt very good to see no oil going into the Gulf of
Mexico," Wells told reporters on the daily conference call he hosts
from Houston on BP's attempts to stop the leak. An end appeared to
be in sight to the worst environmental disaster in US history.
Shares in BP rose again on Friday as investors hoped that the
company, whose value has plunged by more than a third in the wake of
the disaster, was over the worst of the crisis. But just as the oil
has, for now, stopped flowing, the recriminations have already
started to fly. Next month BP is expected to report the findings of
its own internal investigation into what – or who – it believes
caused the disaster. BP's contractors are already preparing their
defense if, as seems likely, the finger of blame should point to
them. Given its poor safety record in the US, BP is an easy target.
But evidence is emerging that even after a series of major accidents
several years ago, safety at its US operations still leaves a lot to
be desired. Ken Abbott, a whistleblower from BP's giant deepwater
Atlantis platform in the Gulf of Mexico, alleges that operations
there are "like a Wild Wild West show". At the centre of the legal
storm now brewing over Deepwater Horizon is the blow-out preventer
(BOP). A supposedly failsafe piece of equipment, it is the last line
of defense to stop well blow-outs. This one failed, with disastrous
consequences. US investigators have already subpoenaed the 450-ton
device, and when relief wells finally secure the leak, as early as
next month, it will be lifted off the seabed for forensic analysis.
Cameron International, the Houston-based company that manufactured
the BOP, has already been hauled before US politicians to explain
itself, along with Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon
rig to BP. The Observer has learnt how Cameron will try to pin the
blame on BP for the failure of the BOP: lawyers will claim that BP
ordered Transocean to modify the BOP in China so significantly that
the remodeled component no longer resembled what Cameron had
originally manufactured. BOPs are complicated pieces of kit that
cost millions of dollars, according to Mike Sawyer, an independent
Houston-based oil industry engineer. He told the Observer that it is
cheaper – but not uncommon – to get equipment modifications done in
countries such as China, India or South Korea rather than the US. He
added that it was vital that contractors' work was properly
monitored to make sure the oil company's instructions were followed.
But if the BOP was found to have been modified incorrectly by a
Chinese contractor, BP could be found liable for damages on its
behalf. It would be almost impossible to successfully bring a case
against a company in China, where the rule of law is notoriously
lax. One industry lawyer says: "An 'empty chair' defense – where BP
blamed a Chinese contractor which could not be pursued in the courts
– is unlikely to stack up." Click
here to read more Contents
BP
oil debate spills into academia - USA Today Within three days
of the BP oil spill, Joe Griffit was out in the Gulf of Mexico
taking water samples to begin assessing the damage. As an assistant
professor of coastal sciences at the University of Southern
Mississippi, Griffit says he's been eager to assist in the
restoration efforts taking shape in the region. So when lawyers
representing BP came to Griffit with an offer – help us assess the
damage and find a way to restore what's been destroyed – Griffit
says the option was "initially very attractive" to him and some of
his colleagues. "If we were on the inside, we knew we could have
some effect on BP," says Griffit, who is stationed at the
university's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, Miss.
"And after talking with some of the lawyers involved, we all saw it
was a nice idea." Griffit now thinks he was perhaps a bit "naïve."
After a single three-hour meeting with BP representatives several
weeks ago, Griffit and several other professors resigned from
consulting positions they'd held only briefly. The faculty members
began feeling anxious about the appearance of siding with BP,
particularly when company officials mentioned that the professors
would probably be called to testify on the company's behalf as
lawsuits inevitably unfold. "We're all employees of the State of
Mississippi, and none of us really felt comfortable about testifying
on the other side – even if what we said was scientifically
accurate," Griffit says. News of BP's efforts to secure the
consulting services of university faculty spread rapidly over the
weekend, following a report in the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala.,
that provided details from contracts being offered to scientists.
The newspaper said it obtained a copy of such a contract, noting
that the agreement restricted consultants from discussing or
publishing their research for at least the next three years. At a
time when many have already accused BP of low-balling or playing
down the extent of the oil spill's impact, many denounced the notion
of professors gathering potentially damaging data for the company
and letting BP sit on it for years. "The idea that some scientists
are willing to be bought off has caused quite a stir, and I guess
the other thing is people don't think too highly of BP trying to do
that," says Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of
South Alabama. The debate surrounding professors working for BP is
not unlike concerns often raised about professors conducting paid
drug research for pharmaceutical companies. The fact that BP is
pursuing faculty members who work sometimes within eyeshot of the
spill's impact, however, appears to have given the conversations
additional intensity. A number of professors have backed out of
their agreements with BP in recent weeks, even before the
Press-Register's article appeared, several administrators told
Inside Higher Ed on Monday. The reasons vary from ethical concerns
about restrictions on the publication of data to the stark
realization that BP's demands on faculty time for a project of this
magnitude are simply more than a working professor can offer in good
faith. BP officials did not respond to requests for comment, nor
would they answer specific questions about compensation levels for
faculty or the number of professors who've signed on. While Griffit
declined to share a draft copy of the agreement, he says he was
offered something in the neighborhood of $150 an hour, adding that
compensation levels "varied" with the experience of faculty. BP's
participation in the assessment of the spill's damage is a byproduct
of the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. Set up in the wake of the Exxon
Valdez spill, the act provides that industry officials work
alongside the federal government in calculating restoration costs.
While that approach has drawn critics who question whether BP's
participation is appropriate, it helps in part to explain the
company's desire to bring on additional scientists to gather data
about the damage. The oil company's overtures to faculty have placed
public universities in a particularly difficult position. While
universities don't want to restrict faculty from engaging in
consulting work, professors working for BP are perceived to have
taken the side of the company responsible for the biggest
environmental disaster in U.S. history. Moreover, they'll be
supplying BP with research that skeptics assume the company will
spin to its advantage, as faculty are contractually obligated to
remain silent. But Chris D'Elia, dean of Louisiana State
University's School of Coast and Environment, says it's an
oversimplification to see work with BP as the only potential
conflict for faculty responding to the oil spill. Federal agencies
also are seeking out LSU faculty, and they have a vested interest in
research that will raise the price tag on the cleanup, D'Elia says.
"You're working for a side with a financial interest" either way, he
says. "The federal government is trying to maximize the damage
assessment for obvious reasons, and the oil companies are trying to
minimize it." "But there's no doubt about it," he adds. "You're much
more on the "white knight" side if you're with the feds, the
aggrieved party." D'Elia says his preference would be for the
federal government to provide a pool of money to scientists for the
purposes of studying the spill's impact. Absent that, research
becomes part of a legal process – not necessarily a scientific one,
D'Elia says. D'Elia says he knows of some Louisiana State faculty
who are working for the government, as well as professors working
for BP in the disaster's wake. He couldn't say, however, whether any
faculty at Louisiana State had contracts with the kinds of
restrictions outlined by the Press-Register. There's no question
that the news reports struck a nerve across academia. In response to
an e-mail inquiry about the subject, D'Elia wrote: "At least seven
people have forwarded me this article, which has had a huge impact."
At South Alabama, Shipp became a sought-after interview subject,
spending his day in talks with national outlets that included NPR,
the Associated Press, CNN and CNBC, along with Inside Higher Ed.
Whether the media attention given to the story will make professors
think twice about working with BP is unclear, but it's obvious
universities are already thinking about the implications of working
with the company. Denis Wiesenburg, vice president for research at
the University of Southern Mississippi, says the university quickly
ruled out becoming involved with BP on a campus-wide scale. "We made
it pretty clear from the beginning that we weren't interested as a
university in taking on that particular effort on behalf of BP,"
Wiesenburg says. "We don't obviously want to become the University
of BP in this instance." Individual faculty members, however, are a
different matter. Southern Mississippi approved all three requests
from professors to work with the company, Wiesenburg says. But of
those professors, two have since decided not to consult for BP. "I
assume that they felt like there were so many other opportunities
for work related to the oil spill outside the BP request (and) they
wanted to focus their energies on that," Wiesenburg says. William E.
Hawkins, director of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research
Laboratory, says professors courted by the company began hearing
from colleagues that teaming up with BP might affect their future
ability to secure federal and state grants. Would a scientist who
provided data to BP in this instance lose credibility for future
spill research funding from government agencies? "I think
everybody's kind of feeling their way through this, and I think our
researchers believed it would be better for their careers that they
have access to the funding that would come through the public,"
Hawkins says. And then, of course, there's the personal animosity
some in the most-affected regions feel toward BP and its handling of
the disaster. For some professors, just having their names
associated with the company is almost a non-starter. George Crozier,
head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, a statewide consortium in
Alabama with close ties to the University of South Alabama, says he
first heard about BP's interest in faculty research partners through
the university's general counsel, who relayed an e-mail from BP
lawyers interested in professors willing to "represent BP." "I'm
going to go to my grave remembering the words that said 'Represent
BP,' " Crozier says with a laugh. Crozier did, however, attend a
meeting between South Alabama officials and lawyers representing BP.
The university laid out strict parameters for any potential
partnership, including complete control over the use of data
collected by faculty. They've not heard back from BP since. Click here to read more Contents
Doomsday:
How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event -
Helium Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage
operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of
Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions. 251 million years
ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions,
poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all
life on Earth. Experts agree that what is known as the Permian
extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the
history of the world. 55 million years later another methane
bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late
Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM). The LPTM lasted 100,000 years.
Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet
when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is
today called the Gulf of Mexico. Now, worried scientists are
increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that
led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known
technology can stop it. The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon
drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading
geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass
extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years. The oil giant
drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have
set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane
mega-bubble. Northwestern University's Gregory Ryskin, a
bio-chemical engineer, has a theory: The oceans periodically produce
massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the
scientific evidence that such an event was directly responsible for
the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago. Many
geologists concur: "The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic
eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be
catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region "boils
over," ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g.,
CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land.
Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water
droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing
with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane
mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%;
as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are
ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of
the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of
carbon dioxide..." The warning signs of an impending planetary
catastrophe—of such great magnitude that the human mind has
difficulty grasping it-would be the appearance of large fissures or
rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the
seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the
surrounding water. Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the
methane bubble containment—it can then permit the methane to breach
the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it
catapults into the Gulf waters. All three warning signs are
documented to be occurring in the Gulf. The people and property
located on the greater expanse of the Gulf Coast are sitting at
Ground Zero. They will be the first exposed to poisonous, cancer
causing chemical gases. They will be the ones that initially
experience the full fury of a methane bubble exploding from the
ruptured seabed. The media has been kept away from the emergency
salvage measures being taken to forestall the biggest catastrophe in
human history. The federal government has warned them away from the
epicenter of operations with the threat of a $40,000 fine for each
infraction and the possibility of felony arrests. Why is the press
being kept away? Word is that the disaster is escalating. Methane is
now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated
rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA
is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen
sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced
protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.
Reports, filtering through from oceanologists and salvage workers in
the region, state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is
succumbing to greater and greater pressure. That pressure is causing
a huge expanse of the seabed-estimated by some as spreading over
thousands of square miles surrounding the BP wellhead-to bulge. Some
claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet. The
fractured BP wellhead, site of the former Deepwater Horizon, has
become the epicenter of frenetic attempts to quell the monstrous
flow of methane. The subterranean methane is pressurized at 100,000
pounds psi. According to Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert, the
methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a terrifying
40,000 pounds psi. Another well-respected expert, Dr. John Kessler
of Texas A&M University has calculated that the ruptured well is
spewing 60 percent oil and 40 percent methane. The normal methane
amount that escapes from a compromised well is about 5 percent. More
evidence? A huge gash on the ocean floor—like a ragged wound
hundreds of feet long—has been reported by the NOAA research ship,
Thomas Jefferson. Before the curtain of the government enforced news
blackout again descended abruptly, scientists aboard the ship voiced
their concerns that the widening rift may go down miles into the
earth Click here to read more Contents
James
Howard Kunstler: What if he's right? (...) Matt Simmons
Houston-based company has been the leading investment bank to the US
oil industry for a long time, financing exploration and drilling in
places like the Gulf of Mexico. Simmons, 68, recently retired from
day-to-day management of the company. For much of the decade he has
been what may be described as a peak oil activist. His 2005 book,
Twilight in the Desert, warned the public that Saudi Arabia's oil
production had reached its limits and, more generally, that an
oil-dependent world was entering a zone of serious trouble over its
primary resource. He took this aggressive stance despite risking the
ire of the people he did business with.(...) From the beginning of
the BP Macondo blowout incident in April, he's taken the far out
position that the well-bore is fatally compromised and that BP has
been consistently lying about their operations to stop the flow of
oil. Perhaps most radically, Simmons claims that an oil "gusher" is
pouring into the Gulf some distance from the drilling site
itself.((...) Simmons's current warning about the situation focuses
on the gigantic "lake" of crude oil that is pooling under great
pressure 4000 to 5000 feet down in the "basement" of the Gulf's
waters. More particularly, he is concerned that a tropical storm
will bring this oil up - as tropical storms and hurricanes usually
do with deeper cold water - and with it clouds of methane gas that
will move toward the Gulf shore and kill a lot of people. (I really
don't know the science on this and welcome any reader to correct me,
but I suppose that the oil "lake" deep under the Gulf waters
contains a lot of methane gas dissolved at pressure, and that as the
oil rises toward the ocean's surface, and lower pressures, the gas
will bubble out of solution.) Simmons makes two additional points
that are pretty radical: he says that several states along the Gulf
ought to begin systematic evacuations in counties along the shore
now. From his experience in Houston with Hurricane Rita (2005), he
says a last-minute evacuation is bound to be a disaster -- the
highways jammed hopelessly, drivers ran out of gas, and then the gas
stations ran out of gas. Based on where the nation's collective
state-of-mind is these days, I can't imagine that any Gulf state
governor or mayor will heed this warning and begin preparing an
evacuation now. (The practical problems are obvious for householders
but what if it really is a matter of life and death?) Secondly,
Simmons maintains - as he has from near the beginning of the blowout
- that the US military should take over operations from BP and ought
to set off a "small" nuclear device down in the well-bore to fuse
the rock into glass and seal the site permanently. Simmons says,
based on his experience growing up in Utah near the government's
underground nuclear testing sites in neighboring Nevada, where
scores of very large atomic bombs were set off for years with no
measurable consequences above ground, that a small nuclear explosion
down in the Macondo well is unlikely to have any effect above the
undersea rock surface. I have no idea, personally if this is
true. Click here to read more Contents
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