Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
There’s a lot of misleading information out there these days about the oil industry and the high cost of oil. So I thought I’d provide a basic overview of the oil industry for context and understanding.
How do I know anything about the oil industry? Well, it’s because of following my motto, “Retire Early And Often”, the origin of which I discussed in a post called “It’s Not About Me”.
So c’mon in, sit down, it’s a sea-tale of business adventure.
In 1986, I was living with my gorgeous ex-fiancée in Honiara on Guadalcanal Island, north of Australia and just south of the Equator. Hey, the tropical ocean waves ain’t gonna surf themselves … I had my own business doing a variety of computer work and training for government, business, and individuals.
My mad mate Mike Hemmer told me that a job had come open on Liapari Island, a tiny coral atoll way out in the Western Province of the Solomons. The job was to be the General Manager of the Western Province operations of a local company, “R&R Limited”.
What were R&R’s Western Province operations? Well, it started with their ownership of Liapari Island, which contained a shipyard, a machine shop, a hundred-acre (forty-hectare) coconut plantation, a slipway for hauling out boats, a machine shop manufacturing aluminum boats and water tanks, a piggery, a trade store, a Postal Agency, and a couple of guest cabins rented out as needed. Plus housing for our about 40 workers and their families. We lived on the island.
Then there was running the Western Province operations of the M.V. Liapari, a 70′ coastal trading boat that moved people and freight around the western Solomons. Along the way, the boat was trading on the company’s behalf. So we had a copra wharf with scales to weigh the bags, where we both unloaded and stored copra from the M.V. LIapari and also bought copra brought to Liapari on small boats by the local islanders.
And finally, I oversaw the operations of the Gizo Fuel Depot, over in Gizo 17 miles across the tropical ocean from Liapari. That’s the depot tanks in the graphic at the top. It was run, and run very well, by my aforementioned friend, Mike Hemmer. I mostly just did the books for the business and oversaw the finances.
Here’s a photo that will help explain Mike’s strange position in these lovely islands … his wedding picture. There he is next to the Pastor, looking impossibly young and still in possession of his hair, with his equally young bride Grace on the other side of the Pastor …
And here they are today, with a couple of grandkids on their laps …
Even after my last tattoo, Mike still says that I’m woefully under-inked … next time I’m in Australia I’ve gotta do something about that. But I digress.
The Fuel Depot was the main (and pretty much only) source of fossil fuels in Western Province. We sold outboard motor mix by the 55-gallon drum, dispensed fuel into containers and tanks, sold kerosene and white gas for the lanterns, and had a fuel dock that fueled the small boats. Here’s the dock at the Fuel Depot. Outboard skiffs are the cars of the islands. Check out the lovely old lady in the bottom boat …
The fuel was provided to the Depot by large oceanic tankers, which came in periodically to refill the huge tanks.
And who owned the Gizo Fuel Depot?
Exxon/Mobil. The company that Mike and I worked for leased it from them.
So, time went on, and Mike, a very canny businessman, decided to see if he could buy the Depot from Mobil. He enlisted me on the project, and over the next couple of years we pulled off a remarkable coup.
We put together a contract where Mike would buy the operation from Mobil along with the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel in the tanks … and Mobil would lend him the money to do it. One of the slickest deals the two of us ever pulled off, and we’ve pulled off a few.
So … fast forward a few years. After living for four years in Fiji, I was back in the US. Mike got in touch with me. Seems the Shell Oil Company was going to pull out of their Pacific operations, and the main fuel depot and importing business was up for sale. Did I have a spare million $?
Sadly, I didn’t. But Mike wanted me to take a look at the books of the Solomon Islands Shell representative, which were in horrible shape. So I did a one-month consultancy back in Honiara, beat the accounts into submission, told him he was right, it was indeed worth buying, and returned to the US.
So Mike bought the business. It was far and away the largest fuel-importing business in the country. And he hired me to be the Chief Financial Officer and Dive Team Leader. We were selling about US$40 million worth of fuel per year, the majority of it in the ubiquitous 55-gallon (200-liter) oil drums. The sheer volume of transactions was daunting.
In any case, I was the CFO for a bit over two years. During that time, I routinely signed million-dollar checks to and negotiated million-dollar contracts with the major oil companies. Or in terms of the global oil market … trivially small. As Mike once said,
We’re not Big Oil, like people keep accusing us of being. Heck, we’re not even Small Oil.
We’re Baby Oil
However, despite our relative size, we were the big fish there. We provided all of the fuel for the country’s only International Airport, Henderson Field. It was our trucks that pumped the JetA1 to refuel the big jets and the avgas for the inter-island planes. We delivered fuel to the wharves all over the country, fueling the fishing and trading boats with diesel, and selling premix to power the thousands of small outboard motorboats like those shown above.
And to return to the theme of this post, as with every job I’ve had, I was always reading about the field I was working in, and learning about it, and talking to the Shell guys, and the petroleum engineer, and the Mobil guys, and the guys we went to cut a deal with in the huge Korean refinery, and the men on the oil tankers … and I walked away with a pretty good understanding of the industry as a whole.
So … why are oil and gas prices so high?
The answer is, it’s because the oil business is an endless series of million-dollar and billion-dollar high-risk high-return gambling bets that will only pay off, if they do, in a decade or so.
First, you’ve got to get the government somewhere to lease you a tract for exploration, the beginning of a long series of money outflows. And not just any tract. You want a tract that looks good, so there will likely be other bidders, so before even bidding, you’ll have costs plus time for due diligence to pick a tract worth betting on.
Then you’ve got to explore your lease to find out if there’s any oil. Now, back in the day when most oil was found on land, this wasn’t too hard. Do your sonic exploration of underground geology from trucks and jeeps. Set up and drill a test hole, shift the rig, and drill another test hole. Rinse and repeat, you’ve determined if there’s oil to be extracted.
But now, almost all new oil is found under the ocean. So you have to have a big boat and a sonic cannon just to do your sonic exploration. And if it looks promising, you can’t simply hire a few guys to haul in a drill rig from Omaha and move it from place to place like you can on land. Instead, you need a giant floating oil rig that costs between a hundred million and a billion dollars, takes weeks and additional millions to move and re-site for every new well location … and you still don’t even know if your expensive lease contains even one barrel of oil.
Also, the process of moving those giant offshore rigs is slow and perilous. It takes years of drilling just to decide if an offshore oilfield is even worth developing, more money gone.
So let’s say the field looks good. Then you need to spend years and additional hundreds of megabucks drilling all the extraction wells, installing the backflow preventers and all the downhole gear, and running the pipes from each well to the central collection platform that you just built for another quarter billion or so …
And finally, at that point, well over a decade older and a billion dollars poorer than when you started your genius plan of “maybe I should start down the primrose oil path”, you finally get to sell your first barrel of oil … IF everything has gone well.
And if it hasn’t gone well? Smile, forget your losses, say bad words, shake your head, say “That’s the oil game”, and look for the next field.
Now, with that business model as a constant context, imagine the effect on the industry of the ascension to power of the Capo of the Biden Crime Family, the man with the street name of “10% Joe”.
His very first action upon assuming power, his first executive order, blocks the Keystone pipeline (although he doesn’t mind Russian pipelines). He suspends of new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits for federal land and water. He limits fracking. He puts the ANWR oil off-limits. He encourages the banks to not loan to the oil industry. In short, in thrall to his far-left masters, he goes to war against the oil industry in every way possible.
And he appoints our favorite entitled white elite New England patrician, private jet enthusiast, and golden-years hair model John Kerry, to be the “U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate”, AKA the “Climate Czar”.
And our noble Climate Czar proceeded to tell the oil industry the following:
“You’ve got 6 years, 8 years, no more than 10 years or so. No one should make it easy for the gas interests to be building out 30 or 40 year infrastructure.”
I am somewhat inured to idiots in positions of power, but this, this takes a special kind of stupid. He is establishing a far-too-short drop-dead time in an industry where as I spelled out above, nothing happens in less than a decade or more, and it’s a gamble where lots of people have lost big money.
And what might you imagine that the oil “majors”, the Exxon/Mobil/Shell/Total/BPs of the world, are going to do when they hear that?
Well, you’re right. They’re not going to place the next bet, duh. What would you do, bet a billion dollars when a cranially-challenged geriatricat in the White House might wake up tomorrow and issue an Executive Order bankrupting you? He’s already said he’ll do everything to put you out of business … what would you do?
The answer is, you wouldn’t make the next bet. You’d leave the oil in the ground and wait for the madness to subside.
In addition, if you have the brains you were born with, you’d cut back on all operations, slow down your drilling and development schedules, maintain inventories, and start buying back stock and maintaining high profits to prepare for the upcoming storm.
Now, folks say “But oil prices have gone up worldwide, and the Capo is here in America only, how can that be 10% Joe’s fault?”
The answer is, it’s a global market and one where supply and demand are in a fairly tight race. Here are the top producers. Suppose the Saudis cut production by 30% … will oil prices only rise in Saudi Arabia?
Similarly, when the “President” of the US, the world’s largest oil-producing country, says he hates the oil industry and then proceeds to do everything he can do to destroy it … just what the heck do you think will happen to world oil prices?
Yep. You’re right. They’ll go up. But not, as 10% Joe falsely claims, because of “oil company greed”. Companies are always greedy, and oil companies are no exception. But are we to believe they suddenly got greedy just when Capo Joe took power? Sorry, don’t believe in coincidences like that.
So regarding the question of high gas prices, the answer is, the Biden Crime Family has (hopefully temporarily) made it far too risky to invest the necessary billions in oil exploration, drilling, and production … and the oil majors have responded exactly as you and I would, except more so because they have giant publicly-owned businesses at risk from the whims of an old man with mental issues.
Not only that, but at this same critical time, the oil companies are also fighting a totally different and separate fight, as shown below.
You can see the problem. The majors lost money for five straight quarters due to governments pulling the wheels off of their economies in a misguided attempt to stop a virus. Funny, I didn’t hear Joe congratulating them for their lack of “corporate greed” in 2020 …
So in addition to threats from the White House, they’re recovering from not one or two but five consecutive quarters of multi-billion dollar losses.
And the bad news is … all of that is the good news.
Why is it the good news?
Because oil doesn’t come out of some tap that you can just turn off and on at will. Once you stop exploring and drilling, once you turn the tap off, it will take years, up to a decade, to turn it back on. The UK is currently facing this problem. They need gas now, right now, this winter. And they sit on one of the larger shale gas formations on the planet. Enough for generations.
But even if they removed their demented ban on fracking, it wouldn’t provide one cubic meter of gas for at least a year and likely three … by drinking the green Koolaid, they’ve worked themselves into a coffin corner.
And you can forget about pushing for electric cars. Private transportation isn’t the issue.
The bad news is that we currently have no substitutes for: diesel for trucks, machinery, tractors, and boats; premix for outboards; avgas for prop planes; JetA1 for the big birds; coal for steelmaking; or Bunker C Crude for the big ships. None.
And thanks to the green hand-gluing zealots and the Biden Crime Family, not only are the prices for all those fuels skyrocketing—they’re also getting in short supply. The US is down to a 25-day supply of diesel … and if the diesel stops, the 18-wheeler trucks stop … and if the 18-wheeler trucks stop, the country stops. From here, yesterday:
A fuel supply company is warning of an impending diesel shortage impacting the southeastern United States, due in part to the low supply of diesel reserves.
Mansfield Energy, which delivers more than three billion gallons of fuel annually in North America, said in a memo on Friday that conditions in the diesel supply market are “rapidly devolving” and that the company expects several states to experience serious effects from the shortage. The announcement comes days after the Energy Information Administration reported that diesel reserves are at their lowest level since 2008, Fox News reports:
So buckle up and keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle, because it’s likely we’re in for a rough and expensive few years … or more …
Can we get real for once? FOSSIL FUELS POWER OUR CIVILIZATION, and we have NO SUBSTITUTE. We’ve thrown five trillion dollars at solar and wind, and here’s what we got.
Fossil fuels are providing the only currently available source of power for the extraction, refining, manufacturing, growing, and transportation of everything we use.
Can other technologies eventually replace fossil fuels? Absolutely … but it is literally madness to think that we should starve and price ourselves out of fossil fuels before the replacement is tested, available, better, and cheaper.
And yet we’re seeing the results of exactly that madness in Europe today. Here’s a joke adapted specially for this post.
Q: What did the Germans used to use for home heating in the days before firewood?
A: Electricity and gas.
Not bad for made to order … but it’s absolutely no laughing matter.
So to summarize:
- Capo Joe’s insane war on fossil fuels that is pushed and backed by the various green Apocalyptarian sects, combined with the decades-long timeframe of fossil fuel exploration and extraction, is causing the major oil producers to dig in and retrench rather than produce … meanwhile, the Capo is traveling worldwide to osculate the fundaments of foreign totalitarians while begging them for oil.
- This war on fossil fuels is driving gasoline and all other fossil fuel prices through the roof.
- And because energy is a huge component of every part of our lives, this is assisting in pushing inflation through the roof (of course, printing trillions of $ out of thin air helps too, but energy is used in everything).
- Finally, the sooner we reverse this lunatic war on fossil fuels, the fewer old people will freeze to death or catch pneumonia due to energy poverty, and the more single moms will be able to feed their kids instead of their car’s gas tank.
Now, when I was a kid, I always liked stories with morals. It seemed to finish things with a chef’s kiss. So … here’s the moral of this story:
NEVER let go of the old, or harm it in any way, until the new is well and truly in hand.
Further Affiant Sayeth Not
And other than having the requisite Scuba Certificates (Open Water I, Open Water II, and Rescue Diver), why was I the Dive Team Leader as well as the Chief Financial Officer of South Pacific Oil? Or more to the point, why does a shoreside oil company need a dive team, anyhow?
Well, Honiara doesn’t have a place for a big oil tanker to tie up alongside a wharf. No fuel dock. So to unload fuel, first, the tanker crew ties off the bow and stern (front and back of the ship) to a couple of moored buoys permanently anchored to the harbor floor.
A winch then lowers a hook on a cable down into the water. It’s lowered down about thirty feet (nine meters) below the surface to the bottom of the harbor. Down there, our dive team in scuba gear is waiting. We attach the hook to a lifting ring on the end of a long rubber pipe lying on the harbor bottom. It’s the ocean end of a pipeline that leads to our onshore fuel tanks.
The tanker crew hoists the end of the pipeline off the bottom, out clear of the water, and onto the deck, connects it to the ship’s oil piping, and the pumping starts.
And during the two deliveries a month, hanging out on the harbor bottom looking up at the hook descending from the tanker is a lovely way to break up an otherwise slow tropical afternoon …
With wishes that your life be full of light, love, and laughter, I remain,
Yr obt svt,
w.
Dealing with political risks is always a consideration.
Yes. Isn’t that what the oil industry is supposed to be good at?
A couple of other things: Shouldn’t we be looking at net exports of the producing nations when looking at world prices?
And can’t the oil majors invest elsewhere rather than the US
And thirdly (yes that makes it more than two, just like the Spanish Inquisition) how significant is it that the Biden bans is on federal land only?
Fourthly, I recall reading that the explosive growth of fracking in the US was accompanied by extraordinary increases in speed and efficiency such that this particular activity was able to expand far more rapidly in response to changes in price than the bigger-scale majors.
It is also The Biden gang pushing ESG rules on investment, and threatening higher taxes. Most other countries treat mining as a defacto government monopoly, so the political risk is even higher outside the US.
Most countries outside the US have all minerals and oil and gas in the ground as government owned , not those who own the land above.
That means those government are interested in ‘their assets’
Any one drilling or mining merely gets a license to extract , and indeed even licenses to explore can cost big money before you even get into the production phase
Just because they have experience with handling the risk of government interference is not evidence that there is no risk.
Total supply vs total demand is what drives prices.
They can invest elsewhere, however the same nonsense infests most of the developed world. Also the regulations on banks makes investing anywhere more difficult.
Obviously if Biden’s bans were more widespread they would be even more devastating. As the article mentioned, in the US, most of the new discoveries are happening offshore, and offshore is almost entirely federal land.
New fields are coming on in North Dakota and the Texas -new mexico permian basin just keeps on giving even larger reserves
I see you don’t know the difference between most and all.
Name them, most must mean more than the 2 areas I mentioned ?
Dont worry I use this against the climate extremists too, as they like to say ‘most’ when they havent thought it through
And as usual, you define terms the way you want to. I’m used to that, the reality that you inhabit bears no relationship to the real world anyway.
You have no idea of your ‘most’ They have names dont they
I challenge you name even one NEW OFFSHORE oil field
back up your claims sir or retract them , but whats the bet you will be just like Trump and just make the fake claims bigger.
U.S. crude oil production in our forecast averages 11.7 million b/d in 2022 and 12.4 million b/d in 2023, which would surpass the record high set in 2019.https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/us_oil.php
Clearly oil saved by Biden not killed . hahahahaha
https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-biggest-new-oil-find-turns-guyana-upside-down-11582909332
Is Guyana the 51st state ? The claim was US onshore and offshore fields
Guyana is definitely “offshore.” Perhaps you meant US Continental Shelf? In any event, oil is a fungible resource and the Majors will be exploiting this and impacting US and world prices.
Additionally, there can be restrictions on which regions can invest in a given country’s oil and gas industry. Not just anyone with capital can invest in any location having oil and/or gas.
Meanwhile, back in Peking, Xi Jinping checks out the latest ports for his Belt and Road initiative, turns more fossil fuel into plastic junk for Walmart, builds the biggest and most modern coal power stations.
And laughs his little cotton socks off.
Of course, we in the West find the problem of Trans Gender Bathrooms much more diverting.
Not a nice man. But not an idiot. And aware that he needs to supply affordable and reliable electricity to keep industry growing and the plebs from revolting.
Here is what we are disrupting our society for: Trans are about 0.5% of the adult (18 y/o+) U.S. population, whereas 13-17 y/o’s are 1.4% trans. While 13-18 y/o’s make up 7.6% of the general population, they make up 18.3% of the trans population. [Data from UCLA, School of Law, Williams Institute’s 2022 “How Many Adults and Youth Identify as Transgender in the United States.”]
One may interpret the above as reflecting the susceptibility of youth to social pressures and adults’ systematic grooming.
13-17, not 13-18
Yes, they can expand “rapidly” (everything is relative) if the money lenders will lend them the capital to do so. But the fossil-fuel haters have gotten to the lenders, persuading them to not lend to FF projects.
Other reasons refinery capacity has dropped in last 2 years ( it was rising up to 2019 despite number of sites falling ( on average)
The Phillips 66 refinery in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, (also called the Alliance refinery) stopped refining operations following substantial flooding related to Hurricane Ida in late 2021. This refinery had an operating capacity of 255,600 b/cd.’
Look who’s been in control of the US government for the last two years and your mock shock about the drop in refining capacity should vaporize.
The government doesnt open or close refineries.
I was very surprised there even was a refinery in US Virgin Islands mothballed to 10 years, opened for a while and now closed again.
Jamie Diamond (JP Morgan Chase) had something to say to one of the Congressperson “Squad” members who tried to shame him about that. “stopping oil and gas funding would be ‘road to hell for America’”.
He would not back down, either. Another HSBC “climate change is not a banking risk” moment.
How does any company handle political risks such as just occurred in the UK?
One PM – ban fracking
New PM – allow fracking
42 days later, another PM – ban fracking
With 10+ years to develop, as Willis outlines, an election every 3-4 years needs oil executives with the clairvoyance skills of Nostradamus
The new PM just returned to the governing partys election policy on which it won in 2019
Truss was the aberation who flip flopped on bigger thisngs than that . Her policies were just aspirational and never implemented.
Come during this winter the Tories will cleverly use the the gas shortage emergency to restore fracking.
Its all about the timing when doing a flip flop
If the Tories are so smart, why are they insoucient about the ever burgeoning invasion on the South Coast?
And you imagine no-one joins up the dots on Lockdowns, Vaccine Mandates, Printing Money and the Davos set?
The fact that the “opposition” only screams for “sooner faster harder and longer” will not help the Tories. Most people figure that the opposition couldn’t be any worse. They just might be right about that.
“Most people figure that the opposition couldn’t be any worse.” A dangerous thing to figure. That we have such a woeful opposition at the same time as a woeful government is the real problem we face.
It still won’t help this winter.
The worse things look for the Democrats, the more desperate Duker gets.
The first time he posted he claimed that he was a Republican who voted for Trump twice.
I apologize to all for wasting so much space refuting Duker. I should have learned by now about the futility of trying to debate the deranged. They go on and on about whatever piece of minutia is driving them at the moment. Not able to make sense and unwilling to give up.
A great article, Willis. As someone who spent my life in that industry, I’d say you have a pretty good idea how it all works and why we’re in the position we are right now! Malfeasance by politicians in an epic scale!
As a 41-year veteran of “small to medium” oil, I’ll second this.
Not just the politicians look to the Blackrocks of the financial world, Larry Fink and the rest of the ESG crooks, they knee-capped the fossil fuel companies.
They are crying in their beer now that markets have realized what a bunch of crooks they are. In the meantime, it will take 5-10 years to rebuild the capital investments that was diverted to useless alternate energy.
History will judge them and those that profited from their deception
32 years in the Oil Sands of Alberta
Love it up in Ft Mac
“pretty good idea how it all works”? An excellent idea
It never ceases to amaze me that people have no concept of the amount of money and time it takes to bring a new field online. So, in WE’s example… we are looking at 3-5 years, and close to $500million spent before we see a single penny of profit.
“we are looking at 3-5 years, and close to $500million spent before we see a single penny of profit.”
They won’t see any “profit” for YEARS after they start seeing income. They must pay off the debt incurred and also pay the ongoing production and transportation expenses while producing the product.
Well okay. About 1950 to 1952 I walked with my Uncle Foster on the steep hills of McKean County PA and we drained the water from the tanks that stored the fluid coming up from the rocks below. My aunt provided a grocery bag so I could collect wild leeks as I “helped”. When not in the oil patch, I watched my Uncle Ed use a dragline excavator (Clarion County) to remove overburden from coal seams. My father worked in a glass plant that used gas to melt raw materials to make milk and other bottles. Back then, I was allowed to walk through the plant and learn the process. It was hot and noisy.
So as an oldster to the carbon-based fuel society, I add to the seconding or thirding or …
Good post, Willis.
Thanks
The MSM is all about the upcoming COP
It’s worse than you ever conceived…
COP changed to CLAP after 17 nations said they disliked cops
C = Climate
L = Liars
A = Annual
P = Party
Fina report on the CLAP meeting to be called
The Claptrap Report
Thank you!!!
I especially liked your treatise on Tweedle dee (Kerry) in service to Tweedle dum (Biden)
Just remember Biden does not have the cognitive function to make decisions. A committee of dopes are pulling the strings and his wife should be ashamed of herself.
Hehehe . see above
His cognition , while fading, is soooooo far ahead of Trumps which is reduced to superlatives
Remember the time he held onto Mitch McConnel ( 80 yr old ) while walking in from the podium in the Rose garden
Who said anything about Trump? Is your TDS so severe that you actually think that insulting Trump counts as a defense of your boy Biden’s ineptitude?
As to your nonsense, well you just have to consider the source. Is this what results when you can’t admit your mistake in supporting Biden?
Ohhh. I thought you were making a point about 70 yr olds who are in decline
Covfefe to you my friend
I thought you were trying to say something both intelligent and relevant.
I should have know better, you aren’t capable of either.
No it was about BIDEN not 70 year olds in decline. I am 71 and NOT in decline like Biden.
I am still older but refuse to exploit, for a nonsense purpose, co-commenter’s youth and inexperience. {or something like that}
Shades of the Great President Ronald Reagan.
You are in decline my friend . Its a medical fact
But good on you for having high spirits instead
I’m still waiting for evidence of Trump’s mental decline. Biden’s is painfully obvious. The fact that you hate Trump is obvious, but it is not the evidence you imagine it to be.
Didnt you see the pictures as he steadies one hand by using another. Its a neurological thing
But keep looking for those new oilfields my friend. You might even be able to enrol in Oil 101
Duker, it seems in your case that one of the symptoms of chronic TDS is verbal diarrhea.
How about you give the EX-President a rest, and come back to 2022 where the rest of us are? We get it. You hate him with a white-hot heat.
But what you don’t get is that basically, nobody cares about your obsessions and mental problems. Read the responses. You’re getting zero traction, in fact, you’re losing ground fast.
You seem like a smart guy, but you’re destroying any respect I have for that with your insane Trump hatred. Not a good look on you. Talk about oil, not Trump, thanks.
w.
That’s a big so what. If that’s all you’ve got I can’t see how you can avoid hanging your head in shame.
I just had lunch with a friend and his 95 year old uncle.
He is doing better physically then he was 10 years ago after instituting an exercise regime to regain his balance. He needed a cane to walk then, not so now. He NEVER exercised other than his work until then.
As far as his cognitive abilities, I saw no decline whatsoever.
My mother is 93, and she is as sharp and as stubborn as she ever was, although physically she does have issues.
BUT in both their cases, they apparently started from a much higher level cognitively then you, so their “decline” probably still has them far above your abilities.
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Id rather have my president holding onto an 80 yr man than grabbing a 8 yr girl and sniffing her hair
Check out the “moves” Jumpin’ Joe put on his granddaughter. Younger male teenagers all over America are studying slow motion videos of the event to get tips for when they start dating.
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So you werent a ‘close family’ then . More like distant relatives even within the extended family
you dont want to talk about Big Donny and his ‘moves’
Oh Duker – your Biden apologist syndrome is showing
Sure . But lest not forget Trump is a moron, is declining too, as well as the biggest liar.
did you not know he took the vaccines , in secret of course and never used the quack medications when he caught covid ( flu…hahahaha) he suggested for others.
You keep making that claim, yet you are unable to back it up.
You just can’t stand it that Trump is a success, and you will never be.
No matter what Biden does, you will find a way to excuse it.
Trollin’, trollin’, trollin’
Trollin’, trollin’, trollin’
Trollin’, trollin’, trollin’
Trollin’, trollin’, trollin’
Brain dead!
Hah! Hah!
Keep trollin’, trollin’, trollin’
Though their brains are swollen,
Keep them libtards trollin’, brain dead
apologies to Frankie Laine
Whos trolling. This is a very informative story about the oil industry .
Then Derg wanted to make a different point unrelated one
The damage that your boy BIden has done to the oil industry is well known. To bad you can’t bring yourself to admitting your mistake.
Damage ?
Production fell from 2020 before Biden became President
But actual news may surprise you
EIA expects nine new Gulf of Mexico natural gas and crude oil fields to start in 2022https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=52819
Nine !
Same as the myth about no new refinery’s since the 70s .
Not only that but existing refinerys expanding is a thing too.
Are you really that desperate to distract from the damage your boy Joe has been doing to the country.
Production always fall when prices are low. Thanks to Trump’s policies, production in the US had risen sufficiently that it was pushing down world prices.
With Joey in office, prices have risen dramatically, but there has been no concurrent increase in production? Why not?
production fell when Trump was in office , it peaked in 2019
It peaked in 2019. Hmmm I wonder if something unusual happened in 2020 with demand that would force cutbacks in supply?
After Demonrat governors demolished their economies and collapsed demand, Dementia Joe comes on the scene and takes rapid fire actions to prevent and discourage ramping supply back up just as demand recovered.
Government stupidity caused the collapse in demand through Demonrat-led lockdowns. Government stupidity compounded the damage by discouraging and blocking supply. High demand and low supply means what about price? Is that too hard for you, Duker?
Then to pour gasoline on the bonfire, let’s drop literal trillions of dollars into the economy. Many more dollars chasing fewer goods. What does that do for inflation? Another hard question for a Demonrat, I know.
Let’s review notes in a week’s time and see if these questions are too hard for American voters.
I explained why production fell. You, as usual, merely repeated your lies.
As mentally deficient as Biden has become, he’s still in better shape than you are.
Well, you put on your thinking cap and proved via comment your abject ignorance.
What Trump polocies.
he was trying to boost coal production and failed on that.
Oil and Gas had been rising long before Trump, as it was advanced technology. And they still imported Russian and others petroleum products
I don’t know if your memory is as defective as BIden’s, or if you are merely as big a liar as Biden is. Trump cut regulations across the board.
Increase in production. Thats covered in Oil 201 and Bidens got that covered.
But you have to find those new offshore fields first. I wish you well for you learnings
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/us_oil.php
Silly child, models are never reality!
NINE! Be still my beating heart! Nine! And guess what?
The leases for all NINE! of them were granted under Trump, not under the Biden Crime Family.
It seems you’re missing the point. The problem is not old oil like that, now coming online from leases granted years ago.
The problem is that Joe has shut down new leases both on and offshore, along with strongly discouraging the banks from lending to oil companies.
w.
Lol…this is why they sent Biden to Venezuela and the Middle East to increase oil production…you are almost as dumb as Simon.
Describe the damage.
Among other things there was drastic increase in regulations, cancelling pipelines, refusing to issue permits.
You were the one bringing up Trump. Biden has destroyed the American oil industry and self reliance
Some destruction , their profits have never been higher. And oil people love profits way ahead of politicians
Are you really as ignorant as that post makes you seem? No wonder you are in love with Biden.
Profits are up because production is down, causing prices to rise.
Production fell when Trump was in office.
But wait , you must be declining faster than Trump as you are proven liar again about Biden ‘ killing something’
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/us_oil.php
Wrong again, silly child!
Earnings are not “profits“!
Price jumps by 100% to 200%, means the big oil companies receive large amounts of cash.
Receiving earnings is just one small part of the process! Companies have yet to run the entire accounting process. First they need to tally all of the costs.
Earnings minus costs with the difference being a first indication of “profits”.
Still not finalized as lease costs, capital costs, transportation and refining costs, taxes and subsidy payments to the government must be calculated before “profits” are identified.
Then why will next years production surpass the 2019 record.
Of course its the oil companies doing it, but if you want to blame a President blame Biden
Some destruction
Model estimates are fantasy!
Good spatting here but becoming very tedious as a stuck record – I confidently predict that your cognitive production for 2023 will smash your 2022 record issuing the same logical computational methodology you use to state “Then why will next years production surpass the 2019 record.”
Triggered!
Russia colluuuusion anyone 😉
Donald Trump had the best foreign policies of any POTUS since the end of the Cold War
Afghanistan surrender signed by Trumps minions and Pompeo in Doha ?
Plus he wanted the troops out by Xmas 2020 ( his exact words) ahead of his later timetable and criticised Biden for slowing it down
How did the Kim Jong Un huuuuuge summits work out
And the attempted heavying of the Ukraine president , how did that work out- not that he could point to Ukraine on a map, but his buddy Putin would have said ‘theres no there there’
You are starting to sound like griff. It doesn’t matter how many times a lie is disproven, you will continue to trot it out.
The deal signed by Trump required the Afghanistan government to meet certain milestones. When Biden came in he ignored all that and just pulled out as fast as he could. He even refused to listen to the advice of his own generals.
And, in so doing, armed an enemy with modern US weaponry.
At least Trump isn’t so deluded that he thinks there are 54 American states.
Speech impediment , Biden has had it before he was even a politician
A speech impediment causes one to use the wrong word?
That Biden has always been an idiot is not in doubt, it’s just that he keeps getting worse.
Oh!?
So it was a speech impediment when Biden recently said his son died in Iraq? Then later said his son died from brain cancer?
Biden is a pathological liar who has lost the ability to remember his lies. Like Hillary, Biden caters (lies) to what he believes the listeners want.
I see. A speech impediment causes serial lying. Whoda thunk? I wonder if he was manifesting that speech impediment when convincing his daughter to join him in the shower?
I have 3 daughters and I tell you that one act disqualifies him from participating in normal society. He should be required to register as a sex offender. Do you have a daughter, Duker?
Remembed the time Biden wanted to shake the hand of an invisible person?
‘ But did he brag in a tweet about the size of his “nuclear button”
And this time he used the other hand to steady his hand holding a bottle of water to his mouth
And the second time he held a small glass with both hands, the soprt of thing a 90 year old would do
Biden rides bikes ( and falls too) and drives in a drag race at 120mph…. while Trump cant hold a glass normally and probably hasnt been behind the wheel of a vehicle for 20 years because he cant
Your jealousy regarding Trump is showing again.
You are amazingly gullible!
President Trump, just last week, played in a golf tournament where he and his team had the lowest golf scores and won the tournament.
Physically, Biden is a derelict compared to Donald Trump.
Although Trump isn’t perfect, he was a very good president. He cut taxes, made America energy independent, kept the southern border under control, took the US out of the Paris Suicide Pact and didn’t start a single war. An opinion poll showed that most Americans correctly believed that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump had been president.
In a nut shell, compared to today Trump’s four years look like a golden age. Biden – together with his socialist handlers – have pretty well destroyed America.
Biden is deluded on climate change and pretty well everything else. Just a few weeks ago he specifically stated that inflation was zero. In fact it was around 8%. And Putin had little to do with it. The graph of US inflation is very clear. Inflation was normal under Trump. But inflation started to go up and continued to go up almost literally on the day Biden sleep-walked into the White House.
There is hope, however slim. It looks like Biden and the far-left Democrats will be slaughtered in next week’s mid-terms, and it’s very likely the Republicans will take back both houses.
Chris
As suggested by another, I verified that the government’s GDP Deflationary Index gives an effective inflation rate of about 12%+.
How many geriatrics can do0 a drag race up to 118 mph ?
https://www.localsyr.com/hill-politics/biden-clocks-118-mph-but-loses-drag-race-against-colin-powells-son-on-jay-lenos-garage/
BTW, I notice that you still haven’t even tried to actually defend Biden.
he is in decline . But still way smarter than the other moron ( the description from the senior people who he picked to work for him)
I’ve yet to see you even attempt to prove your fantasies.
Like most Democrats, all you can do is scream insults towards those who are more successful than you are.
Dont you remember those senior people he picked to work for him described him as a moron, was a common opinion
Then there was an incident of slurred speech. Announcing the relocation of the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—a dramatic foreign-policy move—Trump became difficult to understand at a phonetic level.
Show links to recordings, then.
You have got nothing!
Joe Biden currently can’t find his way off a speaking platform by himself.
Trumps exact words when he called a radio host live
Question by Kilmeade: According to a Axios-Ipsos poll, 70 percent of white Americans say they trust the local police. Only 36 percent of African Americans do. How do you attack that problem? How do you change things?
Trump: Well I think it’s a very sad problem. As you know, as a Republican I’m doing very well with African Americans and with the vote with the — in polls and everything — especially, I mean, I haven’t seen one very recently because you had the plague come in from China.
So that changed things up, but we had the best economy ever. We had the best numbers for African-American on employment and unemployment in history. Best homeownership — best everything. We had the best numbers in everything — not only African-American, but the African-American numbers were great.
The guy cant even ramble incoherently on topic . because of his rapid decline he just mumbles superlatives nowdays, about six themes unrelated of course
But “best” is huuuuuge
Thats was of course before he was voted out in the biggest election turnout in 90 years
Sometimes even 110% turnout. It’s fantastic, isn’t it?
Its 65% or so.
No places had that. Biden even won in places where the republicans run the enrolment and voting. But I see trump increased his share in democrat heartlands like Philadelphia city.
Even the down ticket republicans mostly did well , but the majority just didnt want Trump
50-60 court cases about voting all came to nothing, just total bulls$#^
Giess who will face the courts now about trying the rig the state-wide declarations after all the counting done
If Duker doesn’t have the data he needs, he’ll just make it up.
And what part of Trump’s “rambling” was factually incorrect?
“I’m doing very well with African Americans” – correct
“the plague come in from China” – correct
“best economy ever” – correct
“best numbers for African-American on employment and unemployment in history” – correct
I guess you could make a pedantic argument over the use of the word “best” when the numbers weren’t technically “best” (ever) but were better than anything we’ve seen in a long time, and miss the obvious and correct point about how good things were, especially compared to how bad they became in the recent two years under the feckless leadership of our current administration, but you would risk looking like a Trump-obsessed, deranged person, though you would fit right in with millions of others whose deranged hatred of Trump short circuits the critical thinking capability of their frontal lobes.
“The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally” — Salena Zito
And that’s why the rest of us understand the clear and obvious points Trump makes. We’re not blinded by hatred.
That’s because he’s unfamiliar with the geography of States 51 through 54.
Obama once described the ’57 states of America’ he hoped to govern when he became President
you could fill encyclopaedias with the mis-spokes of every President ever since the television age made them public
Come you know that Trump wins hands down in the rambling sentences, the mis spokes ( remember when he shut the entire country on air – later corrected to be non citizens only)
When you can’t win using data, you just make up what you need.
That’s because Biden said he attended a traditionally black university.
Again, Biden made lies up to cater to Biden’s audience. Biden likely converted that entire crowd to Republican in one speech.
It is also why Obama is out campaigning instead of Biden.
All it takes is a heavy foot. After all, it was a straight road.
John Kerry walks into a bar
Bartender says: “Why the long face?”
Mr. Eschenbach,
…and I thought I was the world’s champion ranter about the Biden MalAdministration’s deranged energy policies!
Well done you!
I’ll be sending a link to your piece to everybody I know.
It hasn’t helped that the Philadelphia refinery wasn’t rebuilt/repaired after the explosion. You can clearly see the impact on PADD1 after the refinery was closed.
Due to insane interference by so-called “Greens”, we haven’t built a new refinery in the US for FIFTY YEARS … these bogus “environmentalists” are slowly destroying the US.
For far too many of them, it’s not about the environment. It’s about shutting down civilization, which they see as evil.
w.
This ^
Ehrlich and Holdren were up front about that in 1970… a massive campaign to de-develop…
‘The newest refinery in the United States is the Texas International Terminals 45,000 b/cd refinery in Channelview, Texas, which was operable on January 1, 2022, but actually started operating in February, 2022″
you are thinking mega refinery’s but as a baby oil guy you should know that baby-small refinery’s are around too
When was the last refinery built in the United States?
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=29&t=6
Then theres the upgrades to the really big ones
Capacity has also been added to existing refineries through upgrades or new construction. Some recent examples of large increases include:
In 2012, Motiva upgraded its refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, making it the largest U.S. refinery, with a capacity of 626,000 b/cd as of January 1, 2022.In 2015, Valero expanded its Corpus Christi, Texas refinery after previous expansions, bringing its capacity as of January 1, 2022, to 290,000 b/cd.
Five refineries have shut down in the United States in just the past two years, reducing the nation’s refining capacity by about 5 percent and eliminating more than 1 million barrels of fuel per day from the market, leaving the remaining facilities straining to meet demand.
Name them ?
One was damaged by flooding after a hurricane , closed and never reopened.
Another was St Croix Carribean ( not a good location, The refinery had already been idle for a decade before restart.)
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/which-us-refineries-have-shut-since-global-pandemic-why-2022-06-17/
But Thats wasnt the claim was it . It was no new refinery’s.
Refinerys have been reducing in number since the 1980s when there was over 250 .
Now down to 180 even while total refining capacity was increasing over that period.
The big are getting bigger
Here is the list I used. I did not include the Virgin Islands refinery, which is on the list of seven.
I also did not include HOLLY FRONTIER, CHEYENNE, WYOMING, a small refinery which was converted to diesel biofuel
“June 17, 2022:
Factbox: Which U.S. refineries have shut since the global pandemic, and why?By Laura Sanicola
(Reuters) – Since the onset of the global pandemic, the United States has lost nearly 1 million barrels per day of oil refining capacity, with more set to be shuttered in the next few years. These are the refiners that have closed or cut capacity:
Factbox: Which U.S. refineries have shut since the global pandemic, and why? | Reuters
I am prepared to back up my comments with sources I believe are reliable. Your character attacks have been refuted,
blob:https://wattsupwiththat.com/c66aa3b4-782f-40c6-b655-c2647949af8c
10%Biden is not actually in charge. There is a shady unknown cabal somewhere behind him, and not just Kerry who is one of the designated spokespersons.
Big Oil.
They own fields of oil. And they instantly get richer.
And corporations want the short term profit, makes CEOs look like geniuses.
Did you, by any chance, notice the massive losses that existed earlier?
Did you, by chance, notice that most oil production is from Government Oil not Big Oil and that Government Oil owns 90% of the oil reserves on the planet? Funny how the dictators, autocracies, theocracies, royal families, oligarchs, and communists/socialists who control those reserves don’t hold the best interests of the petroleum consumers of the world as a top priority. Funny how the dogmatic environmentalists running our government don’t hold the best interests of their petroleum consumers as a top priority either.
Very interesting, puts my flying around the Louisiana coast some in oil company amphibians to shame. Quotes from the 1980s when the juveniles now running our government were much younger. “…potatoes partly made from oil….. without fossil fuels we will starve…”
Another oil story “Underwater mudslides have been known to displace historic shipwrecks and pipelines by hundreds or thousands of feet and are likely more common than previously thought.” Previously commonly thought at least back to the 1880s when they put in the jetties which were accidentally torpedoed by a German submarine in WWII. Rough place.
https://www.lsu.edu/mediacenter/news/2022/11/gulf-of-mexico-seabed-mudslides-map.php
Simple question, how many politicians have ever been on an oil rig? Probably have slipped on the rhetorical, but not real mud.
Willis
Watch this and weep, it’s no surprise we’re in Coffin Corner as you so eloquently put it
Julia Hartley-Brewer interviews Tom Burke
Pretty much covers it. (I was in “Big Oil” engineering for a number of years…..)
Thanks, Mark. My knowledge is wide most places, but deep in fewer places, so I always enjoy having agreement from people who are experienced professionals with lots of time in the field.
w.
“NEVER let go of the old, or harm it in any way, until the new
is well and truly in hand.”
That’s the basis of Xi’s energy policy in China (Smart, very smart!).
The West would be wise to follow suit.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/29/climate-change-weekly-451-green-energy-revolution-hits-energy-reality-wall/
WE, or anyone:
What production statistics would I look at to see this?
Right now, USA oil production has been running steady, and rig count is running steady.
Oil and gas rigs in operation are pretty steady.
I simply do not see any supposed decrease, or shortage, in oil that would reflect a Biden clamp-Down on domestic oil.
I am genuinely not disagreeing or arguing – I want to know what stats I should be looking at to understand this price change due to US policy.
See links regarding US production and rig count:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=M
https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_oil_rotary_rigs
Domestic natural gas rig count (1987-2022):
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/e_ertrrg_xr0_nus_cm.htm
Fracking makes the rig count obsolete. From a single rig they can and do multiple drills ‘horizontally’ in any direction
Notice the big drop when Fracking came along big time after 2012
Technology my friend changes a lot of things . Who would count the number of ocean tankers ( or containerships) without referring to their larger size ?
Drilling productivity has skyrocketed in the last decade thanks to the astounding laterals made possible by horizontal drilling in combination with fracking.
According to the EIA, natural gas storage injections set an all-time record in September notwithstanding the historically low 160 rigs drilling for natural gas (August 2008’s 1,581 rigs was the record high).
I used to see drill locations with one rig. They would drill 4 or more wells from one location and with one drill in about a month. I know one well had a horizontal leg over a mile in length.
thats exactly my point .
The data from the 1980s onwards shows a big drop after fracking really took off from 2012
I believe Willis’ point is that rig counts, refinery capacity and other fundamentals aren’t growing as fast as the increased demand for oil, resulting in higher prices that are likely to go higher as that mismatch widens. With the active discouragement of future oil and gas drilling and refining by Biden and woke NGOs, that is only going to get worse.
Thanks, TLD. The question is not the old oil. It was being pumped and continues to be, at the same steady rate.
But that’s not what should be happening. The production should be increasing as new fields come online … but they’re not.
The crisis is the new oil, After two years of Biden doing whatever he can to destroy the industry, the wise money is NOT going into new fields.
So here’s a quick check:
How much new oil are we getting in the foreseeable future from the ANWR? From offshore leasing that’s been closed? From onshore leasing that’s been shut down? From fracking that’s under pressure?
Little to none. And as I said, the oil industry is focused, not on today, but on the next decade. And that’s been taken away. If they don’t have future sources, they’re going to charge more for the oil they have.
Next, you say that “rig count is running steady.” Not quite.
We’re not even back to the pre-COVID levels, much less making the gains we need to make.
More good info here.
w.
The missing link is the lack of ongoing exploration, which will cause massive problems going forward if the mind-numbingly stupid democrat anti-fossil fuel policies continue.
About the diesel shortage. Thanks to the EPA, there has not been a new refinery built in the US since 1976. And several near century old small ones have closed because no longer worth EPA mandated upgrades. Shrinking supply eventually results in scarcity. Only good thing is that it is happening on ‘10% for the Big Guy’s watch.
Incorrect . Many new small – medium sized refineries that fit the definition of ‘new’
‘The newest refinery in the United States is the Texas International Terminals 45,000 b/cd refinery in Channelview, Texas, which was operable on January 1, 2022, but actually started operating in February, 2022.’
Plus the big guys are getting bigger. For various reasons its easier to EXPAND than do a greenfield site for the large units
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=29&t=6
Well, you taught me something. Be more precise.
Reality is, no new BIG refineries. And despite existing refinery expansions, closures of several old small ones mean a net loss of about 1mm b/day. Otherwise, how would you explain the diesel shortage?
I just learned that here, rather than true generalizations, to thwart the fastidious, be also fastidious. Your comment does nothing to change the on ground reality of possible diesel shortage.
Duker is a lot like Stokes, without the benefit of Nick’s intelligence.
Thanks, Rud. I went and got the figures. You can see the problem.
Just not keeping up …
w.
Its sad that the analyses by Leftists I’ve seen reflect static thinking. Its all a zero-sum game to them. How to meet growing demand in the future is the important question to commodity markets. Some of the oil and gas price increases reflect the governments’ declared war on FFs.
Feckless and destructive laws and regulations by unaccountable monolithic governments have consequences to the wellbeing of their citizens. Rather than acting as a government wants, free enterprise acts to protect its investors/owners. Aren’t socialist governments grand?
‘Otherwise, how would you explain the diesel shortage?’
Higher European demand for imports from the Atlantic Basin (which includes USGC and Canadian refineries) due to Biden’s idiotic Russian sanctions. Yes, Biden’s EPA is anti-oil, but the elephant in the room is his foreign policy.
Duker is obsessed with pedantic arguments and manages to completely miss the points being made. Rain Man?
‘Thanks to the EPA, there has not been a new refinery built in the US since 1976.’
No, but there have been significant capacity expansions at many existing sites. While the EPA has always been a drag on the industry, today’s shortage is mainly the result of the Biden admin’s forcing about 1.5 mmbpd of Russian distillate out of the market.
Not only that a group of major oil producing countries are under heavy sanctions
Iran, Venezuela, Russia
The US policy seems over last 50 years seems to be suck up to and act in in the Saudis interests in the ME and punish others . recently we saw how that worked out.
The Saudis will only ever act in the interests of themselves and OPEC
Frank,
Here in the USA a gallon of gas was ~ $2.35 the day Biden took office [Jan21, 2021]
and rose to ~$3.50 per gallon Jan. 2022, BEFORE Putin invaded Ukraine. IMO Biden’s policies get credit for the first $1.20 rise.
Today’s shortages have been worsened by Mad Vlad’s war.
BZ,
There’s no doubt that oil demand, and therefore prices, rose as we came out of the ‘plandemic’. But Rud was referring to a diesel (distillate) shortage, and the reason why homeowners in the Northeast US are looking at $6 per gallon heating oil has absolutely nothing to do with Mad Vlad’s war and everything to do with the Biden administration’s sanctions on Russia.
AND the Biden administration’s war on the domestic fossil fuel industry through reinstatement of over-regulation, refusal to hold leases or allow drilling, obstacles to building additional refining capacity, blocking of pipelines, etc. ad nauseum.
No, it’s also about weaponizing the EPA and the financial industry against all fossil fuel interests, including exploration, transport, and refining.
If policies instituted under the previous administration were continued, the US would still have energy independence and low prices.
Its not just the EPA. The Administration has declared an all-hands-on-deck, totality of government agencies in the war on energy.
Wow, Willis!
Just when I think my respect for you couldn’t be higher, you go and write an article like this!
I’ve been doing an in-depth study of the roots and origin of the totalitarian religion we know as cultural Marxism, and I am always thrilled when you throw out a hard slider of information that the Climastrologists will flail at madly. They swing and miss, just as they keep swinging and missing at history, science and human nature; but, hey, it looks good in their computer models!
Please consider writing something lengthier, the world needs to have access to your breadth of knowledge and experience! How’s my Gibson, by the way?
Marx wasnt even a communist. China isnt communist any more either .
They are more correctly a Leninist-Party-State system , which is actually what Lenin invented when he found the theories of Marx couldnt run a university let alone a country.
No body is a communist, it’s a ridiculous thought experiment that can’t even survive that test. “Socialist” and “Communist” are just other names for fascists and totalitarians.
fascists are the right wing totalitarians, Mussolini began the name as it was the name of his party
In Soviet Union the communists – again the name of their party- split off from the socialists
The US is a mixed system , partly socialist- party capitalist – the system used by all the worlds richest countries
The US Agriculture system is especially socialist as earlier the farmers were agrarian-socialists. Lots of government subsidies and price supports .
Hurricane insurance in florida has become socialist…well , you work it out
You really do give out the Democrat line at every opportunity.
Fascists are socialists, always have been, always will be. They allow private individuals to own companies, but government controls everything. That’s socialism.
Universally, the more socialism a country has, the poorer it is. Capitalism allows a country to afford the socialist parasites, but too many parasites always kill the host.
As to the many socialist elements in the American economy, you can always get a fool to vote for a free lunch.
It’s a technical thing. Yes, socialist are all fascists and totalitarians, but a communist is a socialist with a gun.
and a gulag or two
Hmmmmmmm!
Biden is doing what the Democrats falsely accused Trump of doing.
When will they start articles of impeachment over this admitted corruption?
Your BEST yet Willis! Thanks! And another moral that fits – “Never bite the hand that feeds you.” And while you might be eating steak and eggs, it’s energy that feeds you.
Thanks for the great story and for the data, Willis! And please keep hammering on the insanity.
Brilliant. Thank you for that.
excellent article. thank you. i will be sharing.
Well done article. Should be required reading for all democrats. Not that they would understand it….
Not that they would be willing to open their minds to understanding it…
Therein lies the problem.
Thank you for that picture. While having never worked in gas or oil, I had imagined something quite similar. It’s always nice to have the dots connected.
Fantastic personal common sense & detailed observations as always from Willis. Maybe he should run for presidency- still a spring chicken compared to today’s geriatrics.
Thanks Willis, great background story. You have enjoyed a fuller life than most clearly. Your overview of the oil industry is a great education for those not familiar with mining/ extraction industries.
How do we get these Alarmists to understand they have been had over by the Kerry/Gore nonsense?
What a wonderfully told, interesting and informative article Willis.
Right up there with the best recounting of your adventures through life.
Please never retire your pen (keyboard).
(and what prey tell was that line about having to go to Australia for a new tattoo? Is that another of your stories that needs telling?)
Thanks for the kind words, Mr. Click on the link in the head post that says “woefully under-inked” for the tattoo story …
w.
Thanks for another entertaining yarn Willis.
I see that Tu’s studio is at Pimpama. Impressive artworks.
I was born & bred in Brisbane, and in the 1950s, when traveling to Coolangatta for family holidays, Dad used to always stop at the Pimpama bridge to buy a few live mud crabs from the little shed on the muddy banks of the creek there.
Memories, hey?
Reading Willis’ informative post here, I’m reminded of another info-rich source about the realities of humanity’s absolute dependence on oil.
If they were capable of reading & comprehending anything more than TikTok or Tweets, I’d encourage the “Just Stop Oil” activists to absorb this piece by Wills and this reality-check about life-critical energy dependence by Vaclav Smil –
https://www.amazon.ca/How-World-Really-Works-Science/dp/0593297067/ref=d_zg-te-pba_sccl_1_1/135-0430154-1564425?pd_rd_w=TaFbx&content-id=amzn1.sym.c0c887ea-7f21-4f89-b6a1-a599c28c04a4&pf_rd_p=c0c887ea-7f21-4f89-b6a1-a599c28c04a4&pf_rd_r=T9PCR84808A8DKVV7TQX&pd_rd_wg=MAj0S&pd_rd_r=f9fd4d16-11da-4ec1-b5dc-ab30cfe7ba24&pd_rd_i=0593297067&psc=1
MR:
Great book! [I wish the climate/enviro nuts would read anything by Smil…]
A paraphrase from the book (regarding climate mitigation):
~”What the rich world can do is one thing, but the other > 5 billion people will need more
Steel, Ammonia, Cement and Plastics.” (Smil’s 4 “pillars of modernity”).
And the energy necessary to make them.
Sounds like he presents a lot of good information, but still accepts too uncritically the claims of the Eco-Nazis about “climate.”
He does what I think is a rational approach to grappling with the energy crisis our “leaders” have created for us –
separate the subjects of climate studies and energy resourcing.
If the climate people had to stay in their lane of academic study of what makes climates tick, and keep their noses out of practical engineering fields like energy resources & applications, we wouldn’t be in the pickle the world now faces.
… Green deal = flatline
Green Deal = Return of the Stone Age
Which is where we would be without fossil fuels.
Underinvestment in the oil industry started in late 2014 and has been going on for years. It is so profound that it would take many years of overinvestment to correct.
Thanks, Javier. True, and it’s one of the predictable results of the insane war on fossil fuels. The only difference now is that the Capo has doubled down on the war.
w.
The attack on the oil industry I would not describe as a war. It is more along the line of “shaping the field of battle”. The war is against humanity. The Malthusians’ running the WEF are hell-bent on reducing the human population. What’s going on here is just one of their tactics for accomplishing this.
I love Capo “10%” Joe.
Daily reminder…FJB
Willis, given a 10-year investment horizon, when would anyone drop a dime into fossil fuels given the current climate hysteria? If you had a solid Republican doing all he/she could to encourage investment, the U-turn is only 4 or 8 years away. Only once, with Reagan/Reagan/Bush did either party break the 10-year horizon since 1944. It seems some other pathway to oil and gas extraction is needed, but darned if I know what it could be.
This coming winter may be an eye-opener for many.
Stop electing Democrats for a couple decades, that’s what.
“There’s a lot of misleading information out there these days about the oil industry and the high cost of oil.”
I decided to compare today’s prices with a similar period of high inflation and high energy prices in the past, for a peak-to-peak ( aka apples to apples ) comparison. Too many people do a 2020 trough to 2022 peak comparison, which is biased.
Oil average price per barrel
$23.99 in November 1980 in 1980 dollars
$83.97 in 2022 dollars (x 3.5)
$89.30 current price in 2022 dollars
Regular gasoline average price per gallon
$1.19 1980 average in 1980 dollars
$4.17 in 2022 dollars (x 3.5)
$3.77 current price in 2022 dollars
Conclusion: Today’s oil and gas prices are somewhat higher than in a previous period of high inflation and high energy prices
After doing this analysis, I read the article, and it seemed like a well written, interesting autobiography, with a great “chart for good folks”.
I hope I was qualified to read that chart.
Why not compare oil prices compared to cycles of the moon. It would have equal relevance.
Why not get your head examined?
I’m sure they will find nothing.
You are the one who believes that market forces have no impact on prices.
Straw man argument
I converted prices to 2022 dollars so factors other than inflation would be visible (supply and demand).
Oil price was slightly higher in 1980 and gasoline price was slightly lower (although the 1980 average was not the peak for 1980).
So 42 years later, we have high energy prices again and we can’t blame OPEC for this.
I think you enjoy giving me a hard time!
I’d hate to see how you treat leftists.
I doubt your carefully reasoned and clinical number crunching will convince the hundreds of millions suffering from sudden massive increases in the cost of food and energy and the scarcity of diesel, natural gas, and electricity as we head into a cold winter will be persuaded by your analysis. I wonder why? Maybe because their suffering is real and immediate while your analysis is an interesting thought experiment. Those who are suffering remember very well how much better they had it a couple years ago. Seems like those are the relevant years to compare to.
Major difference- today’s high energy prices are self-inflicted!
Only partially true. The high inflation was created by the US Federal Reserve Bank in the 1970s and in 2021 and 2022. The consumer who buys gasoline paid the prices I listed, in 2022 dollars, and may have no idea why the prices were high. The US government will blame everyone else except the Federal Reserve Bank, the engine of inflation
Richard, who are the people who passed laws necessitating a massive increase in the money supply (i.e., inflation) by the Fed? Who voted for these laws and which person residing at the White House signed them?
Congressional in 2020, signed by Trump, and Congressional spending in 2021, signed by Biden.
The Federal Reserve chose to finance most of the federal deficit spending (mainly for Covid stimulus). They all spend money like drunken sailors on shore leave. So we all got our “free” covid checks, and then we paid back with higher prices of the goods and services we bought
It’s true that the 2020 spending, which basically all of Congress voted for and was signed by Trump, is a contributor. But the worst offenders by far are the blowout garbage bills the “American Rescue Plan” and “Inflation Reduction Act” (among other things – note also how Orwellian these names are). These 2021/2022 bills were voted into law entirely by Democrats and signed by Biden, therefore they deserve the lion’s share of the blame. The Federal Reserve is a scummy organization but to blame them for that is misdirection because they are not the ones who authorized trillions of dollars in new debt to pay off their political friends and allies.
So $5 trillion in new spending in 2020–2021 by Congress and the President(s) had nothing to do with it?
Try doing that from the same start point, but to what fuel prices were the on the date of the 2020 election.
As a former editor of a financial newsletter for 43 years, I have heard the phrase “greedy corporations” way too many times. For unknown reasons, oil companies often get criticized, while high tech companies do not, and it is happening again. The stupidheads (this does not Include Jumpin. Joe Biden — he’s not qualified to be a stuupidhead) are picking on ExxonMobil (XOM), and ignoring Apple (AAPL)
Here are the data for the trailing 12 months:
XOM
Sales = $387 billion
Profit = $52 billion
AAPLSales = $394 billion
Profits = $100 billion
So how is XOM greedy?
Exactly, and the comparison gets even worse when the huge losses of all oil-majors due to Covid lockdowns and corresponding economic downturns are included. There’s just no reason to blame oil companies for today’s profit levels being somehow “greedy” or unearned.
Showing the financial advantage of having your product made in China?
An excellent article, thank you Willis.
Thank you, Willis, for this outstanding and instructive article.
Interesting facts about number of refinerys in operation in US and the distillation capacity of those refineries.
It ends at 2019 and it dropped off when covid hit and demand went through the floor and hasnt recovered yet.
You really ought to learn how to spell “refineries.”
That’s called “the consequences of an administration that proudly proclaims it’s “going to END fossil fuels.””
Aside from the Eco-Nazi lawsuits and other obstacles to building new refineries, who in hell will invest in them in the current toxic political environment?!
Kerry isnt ‘patrician’
His parents were in US Military ( father a pilot and mother a nurse when he was born) and his fathers family ( despite the adopted Irish name) were jewish migrants from Austria ( family name Kohn)
Dude Kerry and the slobber in chief are 1% brain activity away from doctors being able to ethically harvest organs which puts them 1% above you and 90% below a comotose patient on life support.
Who needs two hands to take a bottle or glass of water to the lips.
Maybe when they have reached their 90s or early neurological impairment for some one in their 70s
For some reason, Duker seems to feel that a good dose of Trump hatred is the answer to any question he can’t answer.
Isnt it about declining 70 yr olds.
Great if you want the sharpest knife in the drawer as President but Trump is more far gone than Biden
I admit I hate him , so what, I love pushing his failings down the throat of his fan base which cant even get his ‘accomplishments’ straight
Did your mother have any kids that lived? Talking about mental decline you are a case study for it.
Here’s some pics for ya, Duker.
Biden’s 4-star admiral
biden gracefully ascending steps
Lets go Brandon!!!
The first female admiral suffering from male-pattern baldness. I notice more and more women are having that problem.
You sure he wasn’t adopted by a family called Heinz?
Declining mental capability seems to be spreading.
Marrying a rich wife doesnt make you patrician either … but go ahead reveal more of what you dont know
YES!
That’s EXACTLY what I thought when I read your lead comment.
“RCP Now Projects 54 GOP Senate Seats As New Hampshire Leaning Red”
Independents seem to be breaking big for the GOP. Kerry is part of the reason. Kerry and the rest of a stunningly woeful group of misfits, losers and perverts.
Duker November 2, 2022 3:09 pm
Got news for you, Duke.
When you are married to the Heinz heiress, your net worth is a quarter of a BILLION dollars, you live in any one of your SIX houses, drive one of your TWELVE cars, use one of your TWO yachts, and zoom around in your own private jet …
… you’re a patrician no matter who your daddy was.
w.
Something happened to him in ‘nam….he was so disturbed by the US Govt/Military/Arms business nexus he joined the Patrician elite that hides behind telling everybody else you must not enjoy “my lifestyle” , as it “aint good for you”.
But it does enable him and his crass ilk to “know best” how others must bend and scrape to his mantras..
Exceptionally pertinent and nice article, Willis.
The folks running the show know how to win elections. But are totally clueless about almost everything else in the world. Especially, science, technology and energy.
Thanks for the story. Enjoyed reading it and learning from someone who knows a thing or two about the oil industry.
Every and I mean EVERY person should read this
Another wording for the moral of this excellent presentation by Willis…. It’s called the number one law of wingwalking…“Never let go of what you’ve got, until you’ve got ahold of something else”.
The Decouple podcast just had a guest (BF Randall) who’s very knowledgeable about the diesel situation:
The podcast also has an informative discussion about the possible use of nuclear reactors as a source of process heat for production of carbon synfuels.
However, what is not said in this podcast is that the use of nuclear for this purpose must await definitive proof that the 4th generation reactor designs now in the pipeline (Natrium, NuScale, Rolls Royce, etc. etc.) can be delivered at a competitive cost while still being in compliance with strict regulatory requirements.
It will be the early to mid 2030’s before we have an answer to that question.
Oh, my white brother.
I felt your joy from the industry
I can say having worked in this industry for my career on designing, constructing and operating refineries, platforms, FPSOs etc for gas and oil I can easily say I have been involved in building some of the most iconic and largest structures ever created in hash environments of the North Sea (Piper B fast/largest heavist lift platform in the North sea – took all time UK production record and was built in 3 years) Hibernia (grand banks Canada designed for ice berg impact) North West Shelf Australia (LNG projects Darwin, Ichthys Gorgon Browse) – I am proud of providing energy and allowing places / people to flourish
All I can say to anyone who thinks wind and solar will keep them in their lifestyle then please provide your name so we can provide your ration book and please don’t ask for any medicines or other life saving items created by the Hydrocarbon industry
PS the current project I am on is in one of the most remote environments and has spent 50 years and 3Billion dollars + trying to meet development criteria – once developed it will provide power for a city the size of Tokyo for 50 years – not like some pissy solar panel which cant provide power for 1 person for a day for 10 years
What a fabulous, thought-provoking and riveting essay! A keeper. Thanks, Willis.
Many thanks for a very detailed description of the Oil Industry, plus your own life story.
Many thanks for a outstanding post Willi. Plus your remarkable life story.
⁰In a much smaller way my life wa
similar, lots of experience, but no so important bits of paper.
My Army serve, Burma, as a radio operator was from 7.12.44 to 27.4.48.
Mum lived in the country, nearest town was Chippenham. Only employment was Westernhouse Brake & Signal.
No bus or train, so the 9 miles was by a bicycle & Wiltshire is hilly.
With de mob pay I bought a sports Rudd Ulster cycle, 4 speed, all with a hub dynamo.
That kept me very fit & according to today’s Doctors accounts for my slow heartbeat, 44 per minute while resting.
One did not expect to own a car before one was 40 years of age.
We kept warm by wearing suitable clothing.
Wages were low, but so were taxes.
In December 1950 I wS on the way to Australia where I worked on a sheep station.
No motor bikes back then it was all horses, so I became a boundary rider., ie Cowboy.
Ridi g a horse was very similar to riding a motor bike, a wonderful experience.
With the madness of Climate Change despite all the detailed evidence of 4000 years of records, mainly the Chinese, it’s only a matter of possibly this Winter in mainly the EU & UK, before the people revolt.
While hopefully not as bad as the Frence Revolution, there will be a great leverleeing.
Obviously the Green movement is all for their version of Workd Government.
.
It’s Communism Mark 2.
So why following the USA Anti Communism 1950 Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy cannot realise that the Biden Administration is heading that way.
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Hopefully the US mid term election will reverse things, but the EU & UK better get used to bicycles & even horses for a few years before a return to coal plus long term Fracking.
Sadly at my almost 96 age ,I will not see it, more the pity.
Australia if it can keep the mainly African financial refugees away will survive, we do grow our own food & have plenty of coal, but it’s back to the 1930 tees for a few years.
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Unless of course Putin decides to use The Bomb.
Then all bets are off.
Michael VK5 ELL
PS VK5EELL is a Amateur radio call
sign. .
Michael, thanks for the interesting account.
w.
Call Sign: Hotel 44 Whiskey Echo