First Steps the Next Conservative President Must Take

[FactFinder]

There is definitely a shortage of supply. Right now we allow OPEC to set the price of oil by reducing and increasing the supply of oil since we're producing very little here. If we would produce more here we would reduce our dependance on them and be able to lower the price.

There is a perpetual increase of demand. China is nearing the point that their demand equals ours. That is not good because we get pretty decent treatment and agreements to buy oil right now and because we use so much we can make a stronger case for tying oil to the dollar instead of another currency. If we get passed by the Chinese then we need to be producing more here and less overseas or the market can get bad quick. India is another threat in much the same way.

Mike

Right now we let the speculators set the price of oil. OPEC is a bit player and scapegoat for scum like the ilk of Goldman Saks. Don't believe it? Search for Bernie Sanders and the CFTC.

Considering all I invest in is energy stocks I'm very familiar with how the speculation market works. The problem is that you have to have speculators or oil won't move. While its true that speculators actually trade the prices, OPEC could announce today that they are cutting production by 20% and the price of oil would skyrocket.

Without speculators no one would assume the risk of production and oil would not be able to be traded rapidly like it is today because people would not know the cost ahead of time. Right now you can buy a contract and lock in a price of oil. Absent that, how would a plastics company operate? How would they be able to set production costs and how would they be able to sell their wares if they can't tell someone "We'll make 20,000 widgets for you at $x.xx a piece, they'll be ready in 4 months"? Instead it would be "We'll start manufacturing your widgets and it will cost you $y.yy + the petroleum cost at the time of production". The alternative would be for a company to hold their petroleum on time. How does that work?

Mike

There are plenty enough legitimate users (those who will take delivery) to keep the market stable. We don't need a bunch of weasle middlemen. That is a very lame excuse for gouging.

 

[FactFinder]

If anything the market has been more unstable as more weasles have entered.

 

[Texanmike]

If anything the market has been more unstable as more weasles have entered.

I can tell with your technical terms like weasels that you clearly have no emotion in it. You don't know what you're talking about, period. Have you ever been involved in the oil business at any level?

Mike

 

[editec]

The "weasals" make just in time purchasing possible, folks.

The "weasals" who speculate on commodities are an asset to the industrial buyers and sellers who actually produce or consume energy.

Admittedly they DO cause wilder swings in prices but they also make it possible for consumers and producers to KNOW what they energy costs and profits will be.

I do not usually blame speculators for the state of the market.

The exception to that general theme will be in those cases where it becomes obvious that BIG CAPITAL is manipulating the markets.

When the HUNT Brothers, as an example, ran up the price of silver, for example, or when ENRON manipulated the market and fucked over the good people of Capifornia as another example.

Now those conspiring speculators ought to be have been frogmarched up onto the scaffold and hung by their greedy criminal necks until dead.

 

[Seawytch]

Oh I'm sorry. If pinwheels mirrors and moonshine were economically viable, we'd first have no need to subsidize it, NOR would there be an issue of producing enough energy. The green energy movement has failed again, just like it did in the early 1980's.

Hmm, you missed my questions.

Drill where? Why are you drilling? When will you clean up the last two "major" drilling mistakes? Who wants to drill? Where is the demand to drill? How does drilling help Americans?

Drill here, costal and not deep water. Drill wherever there is oil that is accessible. You won't have major spills if you're not drilling in deep water. Transporting it all the way across the world introduces more risk than offshore in shallow water. Who wants to drill? Every oil company. Where is the demand? Everywhere. Do you buy gas? Use electricity? How does drilling help? First, it brings the prices down. Second it provides employment. Third, start refining here. That will bring the prices down even more.

Mike

Great hypothesis...but there's a problem with your goals...

Deep water is where the oil is. We've hit peak oil and are just scrabbling around for the scraps. Time to look to new solutions instead of wasting time and (pardon the pun) energy on something that is almost gone.

We aren't even taking baby steps towards energy independence. China is even beating us in that category.

China leads world in green tech

China's green tech industry raked in $63.9 billion last year, making the Asian giant the world's leading green IT producer in terms of revenue, according to a study released Monday.

The study, commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), also revealed that the China ranked second only to Denmark in terms how much the green technology sector contributes to a country's gross domestic product (GDP). This market segment contributed 1.4 percent of China's GDP, compared with Denmark's 3.1 percent where the green tech industry generated revenues totaling 6.5 billion euros $11.7 billion, noted the study.​

Instead of drilling (and starting wars) for more oil, we could be putting in battery swapping and solar charging stations all across the US.

More towns could be switching to hydrogen for power like the Island of Lolland has done.

These small steps would go far beyond increasing supply of a finite resource would do. Reduce demand instead of supply.

We need to stop wasting our time on these technologies of the past century with a source that is finite and running out. We need to concentrate on technologies for THIS century and beyond.

Our energy needs should be appliance based, not resource based.

Come on America! We're the innovators...Get to innovatin'!

 

[J.E.D]

Must have been the power of suggestion of the avatar.

This is more telling:


Son? You described yourself perfectly unto me. Good job!

Yep, just like you did yourself.

"I have been shown to be a shill and ain't got nothing else of real substance..."

Good job. What a big boy you are.

Why thank you very kindly. I am pleased that you agree and see it MY WAY.

What a magnanimous gesture on your part.

Yes, I agree with you that you are a shill and aint got nothing of real substance. Now get back to that bottle.

 

[Big Fitz]

We've hit peak oil

Now if only nature agreed with your short sighted assertion. But dammit, we keep discovering new huge finds.

Pinwheels, Mirrors and Moonshine have FAILED to be a backbone of any functional economy. Pinwheels are too problematic, Mirrors only work half the day, and are only good for supplemental residential production. Alcohol is a negative EROEI all told and hydrogen uses hydrocarbons as the richest source for the hydrogen cracking process so we're back on oil again. Your best solutions are 50-100 years out at best and even then still have massive drawbacks.

Oh, and just because you disdain Oil Shale, and call it 'too expensive', were this really the case, we would not be doing it in Texas, PA, ND, SD and MT with great success. Energy does not stop at light-sweet crude, and coal is not by it's very nature evil.

 

[uscitizen]

Anyone with half a brain knows that we can fix the housing market very rapidly.

 

[Big Fitz]

Anyone with half a brain knows that we can fix the housing market very rapidly.

huh... someone in the administration should hire someone with half a brain then and maybe this will all be fixed since those no-brainers don't know the easy solution.

 

[Big Fitz]

That's the GD Pub default system. Poor America...

GD Pubs?

No no, we call them bars here. In england, they're pubs.

 

[Bfgrn]

what 401k's?

closing fannie and freddie would blow the real estate market in to smithereens...it would take 50 years to recoup....to readjust.

a poor home market always brings recession.

Why do you think we call them Tearrorists?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

So you want to drill? Drill where? Why are you drilling? When will you clean up the last two "major" drilling mistakes? Who wants to drill? Where is the demand to drill? How does drilling help Americans?

Only drill two places: foreign and domestic

I won't talk to ignoramuses who believe that oil is the one commodity resistant to supply and demand

Well dumbass, what is the supply and where is the demand?? Ignorant people like you are gullible enough to believe any spoonful of BS the RNC/GOP feeds you.

The supply is underground and under water. In Alaska and off our coasts.

Where is the demand? LOL!

 

[shintao]

The "weasals" make just in time purchasing possible, folks.

The "weasals" who speculate on commodities are an asset to the industrial buyers and sellers who actually produce or consume energy.

Admittedly they DO cause wilder swings in prices but they also make it possible for consumers and producers to KNOW what they energy costs and profits will be.

I do not usually blame speculators for the state of the market.

The exception to that general theme will be in those cases where it becomes obvious that BIG CAPITAL is manipulating the markets.

When the HUNT Brothers, as an example, ran up the price of silver, for example, or when ENRON manipulated the market and fucked over the good people of Capifornia as another example.

Now those conspiring speculators ought to be have been frogmarched up onto the scaffold and hung by their greedy criminal necks until dead.

Americans just do not have the protections afforded the Chinese, where your scenario would have happened.

 

[shintao]

Only drill two places: foreign and domestic

I won't talk to ignoramuses who believe that oil is the one commodity resistant to supply and demand

Well dumbass, what is the supply and where is the demand?? Ignorant people like you are gullible enough to believe any spoonful of BS the RNC/GOP feeds you.

The supply is underground and under water. In Alaska and off our coasts.

Where is the demand? LOL!

Supply isn't measured that way. Supply concerns above ground storage available for refining. But I do agree we have unlimited storage underground naturally existing. The question is do we need to drill for it? Where is there a demand?

And as I questioned, where is the demand? "LOL" is no answer. If you take away big oil's federal subsidies for exploration & drilling, you will quickly see there is no demand. They want to drill to tie up oil leases for future demands. There are millions of capped wells across America. What Demand? The reason is, cars fuel efficiencies are using 5% less gasoline a year, millions are unemployed and not commuting, above ground storages are full & more storage is being built to accommodate the oil being pumped. The rights problem is they cannot show there is a demand when refineries are operating at 80% or below production, refineries are being shut down & sold off, and the market price is being artificially manipulated for the benefit of Boardmember, stockholder, & CEO's profits. We are also exporting to japan, Korea, mexico & canada, so the situation is not serious, and there is no demand.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Fannie was the 900Lb gorilla, the revolving black hole at the center of the meltdown.

You think it was the 2 years that F/F wasn't the leader that caused it? You're ignoring all the groundwork the Jim Johnson put in during the 90's?

F/F set the standard for AAA rated paper and they used their currency to buy Congress to keep the profits flowing until the pulled down the entire market.

Also thank you pal Dodd for making sure AIG would get bailed out.

In the 90s, the GSEs had a 60% market share. By 2000, it was 40%. In 2006, it was 25%. They lost share.

Of course Freddie and Fannie played a role. How could they not? They were a huge chunk of the market. But the right-wing ideologues absolutely refuse to acknowledge that the market failed. To the ideologues, its religion. Markets NEVER fail. Positive feedback loops don't exist in the ideological fantasy world because people are automatrons, slaves to rational expectations and oblivious to emotions. The shadow banking system, capitalizing $2,000,000,000,000 in loans and leveraging up as much as 99:1, most outside the purview of the GSEs, would never happen if it weren't for some 6th degree of separation from the actions of the government. Because markets never fail.

As for AIG, I'm sure that if Lehman had been bailed out, conservatives would have been bitching about that. Good thing we don't have a petrie dish to find out what would have happened if the fantasy world of free market rational expectations that allowed AIG to stuff itself full of premiums from shit equity portions of CDOs and other structured products was allowed to play out.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANvMAyXuQpI]Laura Petrie Dick Van Dyke Show - YouTube[/ame]

My favorite Petrie dish.

 

[shintao]

FURTHER REASONS NOT TO DRILL OFFCOAST. Either the taxpayer or consumer the pump is paying for this ongoing boondoogle of desrtoyed oil rigs. Trillions of wasted expense, and a drop in efficiency causing an artifical demand which raises gasoline prices.

The cost to build the P-56 Platform: more than $1.5 billion.

Rita destroyed 63 platforms and one drilling rig when it tore through the region on September 24, she said. Katrina destroyed 46 platforms and four drilling rigs when it hit the Gulf at the end of August.

Katrina also caused extensive damage to another 20 platforms and nine drilling rigs. Rita seriously damaged 30 platforms and 10 drilling rigs.

"The two hurricanes coming so close together really illustrate how much of our offshore production was affected," Norton told the CNBC network.

"We had altogether, with both of the hurricanes, about 2,900 platforms that were in the path of the hurricanes," she said.

A total of 342 platforms remain evacuated, roughly 40 percent of the manned sites in the Gulf, Norton said.

As a result, 90 percent of crude production and 72 percent of natural gas output is paralysed, she said.

http://www.terradaily.com/news/energy-tech-05zzzzzzp.html

 

[Oddball]

Replacing destroyed drilling and pumping equipment is a "boondoggle"?

Hoooobooooie.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Welcoming the latest Mars Mission home.
Thanking 87 year old Barack Obama at the Kennedy Center for bringing to an end the "Dark Ages" of VooDoo and idiotic and divisive BS propaganda, for starting the US health system, the most popular social program ever, ending skyrocketing health and college costs, making the USA competitive again in the hightech world economy, and beginning the Pax Americana and the democritization of the Muslim, and the greater, world.


How 'bout allowing some jobs bills to pass, A-holes...

The Republicans passed an excellent jobs bill, when they repealed Obamacare.
Then the Dems blocked their repeal. Slow job growth continues.
Thanks Dems.

 

[Kuros]

Shutting down Freddie & Fannie isn't that easy, CF private money will demand and get higher rates, the housing industry is too fragile for that, if Obama had any sense he would have fixed housing, it has a huge positive impact on our economy...

Replacing Frank? Priceless, but I think Massachusetts will put him back in again...

Winding down Freddie and Fannie is already on the agenda. I'll take CF's proposal for abolishing Fannie and Freddie as a call to aggressively wind it down, just as I take anti-war's platform to bring home the troops tomorrow to mean ending all the wars within a year. Because frankly, you cannot simply immediately walk away from either such massive commitment.

Anyway, the good news here is that we have real bipartisan consensus when it comes to winding down the GSEs. Lets celebrate this point of agreement.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Well dumbass, what is the supply and where is the demand?? Ignorant people like you are gullible enough to believe any spoonful of BS the RNC/GOP feeds you.

The supply is underground and under water. In Alaska and off our coasts.

Where is the demand? LOL!

Supply isn't measured that way. Supply concerns above ground storage available for refining. But I do agree we have unlimited storage underground naturally existing. The question is do we need to drill for it? Where is there a demand?

And as I questioned, where is the demand? "LOL" is no answer. If you take away big oil's federal subsidies for exploration & drilling, you will quickly see there is no demand. They want to drill to tie up oil leases for future demands. There are millions of capped wells across America. What Demand? The reason is, cars fuel efficiencies are using 5% less gasoline a year, millions are unemployed and not commuting, above ground storages are full & more storage is being built to accommodate the oil being pumped. The rights problem is they cannot show there is a demand when refineries are operating at 80% or below production, refineries are being shut down & sold off, and the market price is being artificially manipulated for the benefit of Boardmember, stockholder, & CEO's profits. We are also exporting to japan, Korea, mexico & canada, so the situation is not serious, and there is no demand.

And as I questioned, where is the demand?

This may come as a surprise to you, but the US currently imports over 11 million barrels of oil, every day!

If you take away big oil's federal subsidies for exploration & drilling

I keep hearing about these subsidies, but I can never get anyone to explain what they are.
Can you explain them? Thanks.