#OPEC President

[larryhappiday]

Tragicomedy of Diezani Madueke and Her Rear Admiral Husband

In this article, Pastor Ngozi Hippolytus Asoya takes a critical look at the the arguments for and against name change and concludes that both parents should be conscious of the damage they are doing to the mental health of their offsprings. Divorcing a spouse is considered the end of a relationship but the case of Diezani Madueke and her former husband, Alison Madueke, a retired chief of naval…

[head-post]

US oil producers, Saudi officials rejected Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” plan

US oil producers and Saudi Arabian officials informed US President Donald Trump that they would not ramp up drilling oil, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Earlier, Trump said lower oil prices would solve many global issues, including the war in Ukraine, as oil sales were one of Russia’s main revenue sources.

However, sources familiar with the matter said that the Trump administration had already realised that the “drill, baby, drill” plan was unlikely to be implemented, with another US oil boom not expected anytime soon.

The US oil industry shifted its focus from drilling fever, which led to the bankruptcy of many companies, to cutting costs and compensating investors. Against the backdrop of such developments, Trump decided to persuade Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members to release more oil to the global market.

Trump planned to reduce the price from $73 per barrel to $45. However, such a reduction could prove “catastrophic” for US shale producers and Saudi Arabia, sources said.

In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, dozens of oil drillers went bankrupt as prices collapsed.

Read more HERE

[hezigler]

How Joe Biden 'broke OPEC' and rewrote the rules for oil trading.

[glamnessaaumisc]

FUN AMERICA FACTS!

The US invented the Navy. The first boat was invented by Massachusetts native John Boat, who made boats so he could bring Christopher Columbus over.

The first Pilgrim to arrive at Plymouth Rock was Scott Pilgrim, who was famous for fighting the world. This fight is commonly known as World War I.

People know about the Lincoln and the Jefferson memorials, but few know about the 42 other memorials hidden all around the United States. Can you find them all?

Oil is grown on American soil and then exported around the world so other countries can dig it up themselves. This is known as OPEC, which stands for Oil Places Everywhere, Crazy! (Huh?)

Atlanta native Joey Steele was the second President of the Soviet Union. The Russians, humiliated that they elected a capitalist pig from the West, posthumously changed his name to Joseph Stalin, but do not deny he was born in Georgia.

Hurricane, Utah is technically the only state due to a legal loophole. The only reason we recognize 50 states is because that is how it has always been.

The least populous state in America is West Dakota.

Slavery was only banned in 2015 because they discovered the 13th Amendment had a typo all that time and "slavery" was misspelled as "slovery," thus invalidating the document. You can sue the government for making you think you weren't allowed to own slaves. Try it!

Few people know about the Understates. Go there.

There is a document hidden in an abandoned steel mill in North Carolina. Find it and you will legally own Mississippi.

[misfitwashere]

We thank you, Joe

Tonight is for you

Robert Reich

Aug 19, 2024

Friends,

Tonight’s opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be an opportunity for the Democratic Party and the nation to take stock of Joe Biden’s term of office and thank him for his service.

He still has five months to go as president, of course, but the baton has been passed.

Biden’s singular achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that reigned since Reagan and return to one that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980 — and is far superior to the one that has prevailed since.

Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government.” It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.

The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Reagan’s presidency: markets are human creations. The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They stopped the looting of America. They also gave Americans a modicum of economic security. During World War II, they put almost every American to work.

Subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.

America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration developed satellite communications, container ships, and the internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA, and infectious diseases.

Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. Labor unions thrived. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders.

But then America took a giant U-turn. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of it by raising interest rates so high that the economy fell into deep recession.

All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism. From 1981 onward, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that markets functioned well only if the government got out of the way.

The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from the common good to economic growth, even though Americans already well-off gained most from that growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit reduction — all of which helped the monied interests make even more money.

The economy grew for the next 40 years, but median wages stagnated, and inequalities of income and wealth surged. In sum, after Reagan’s presidency, democratic capitalism — organized to serve public purposes — all but disappeared. It was replaced by corporate capitalism, organized to serve the monied interests.

**

Joe Biden revived democratic capitalism. He learned from the Obama administration’s mistake of spending too little to pull the economy out of the Great Recession that the pandemic required substantially greater spending, which would also give working families a cushion against adversity. So he pushed for and got the giant $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

This was followed by a $550 billion initiative to rebuild the nation’s bridges, roads, public transit, broadband, water, and energy systems. He championed the biggest investment in clean energy sources in American history — expanding wind and solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen and small nuclear reactors. He then led the largest public investment ever made in semiconductors, the building blocks of the next economy. Notably, these initiatives were targeted to companies that employ American workers.

Biden also embarked on altering the balance of power between capital and labor, as had FDR. Biden put trustbusters at the head of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. And he remade the National Labor Relations Board into a strong advocate for labor unions.

Unlike his Democratic predecessors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Biden did not reduce all trade barriers. He targeted them to industries that were crucial to America’s future — semiconductors, electric batteries, electric vehicles. Unlike Trump, Biden did not give a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy.

It’s also worth noting that, in contrast with every president since Reagan, Biden did not fill his White House with former Wall Street executives. Not one of his economic advisers — not even his treasury secretary — is from the Street.

The one large blot on Biden’s record is Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden should have been tougher on him — refusing to provide him offensive weapons unless Netanyahu stopped his massacre in Gaza. Yes, I know: Hamas began the bloodbath. But that is no excuse for Netanyahu’s disproportionate response, which has made Israel a pariah and endangered its future. Nor an excuse for our complicity.

***

One more thing needs to be said in praise of Joe Biden. He did something Donald Trump could never do: He put his country over ego, ambition, and pride. He bowed out with grace and dignity. He gave us Kamala Harris.

Presidents don’t want to bow out. Both Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson had to be shoved out of office. Biden was not forced out. He did nothing wrong. His problem is that he was old and losing some of the capacities that dwindle with old age.

Even among people who are not president, old age inevitably triggers denial. How many elderly people do you know who accept that they can’t do the things they used to do or think they should be able to do? How many willingly give up the keys to their car? It’s not surprising he resisted.

Yet Biden cares about America and was aware of the damage a second Trump administration could do to this nation, and to the world. Biden’s patriotism won out over any denial or wounded pride or false sense of infallibility or paranoia.

For this and much else, we thank you, Joe.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

President Joe Biden is no longer a candidate for 2024. However, no one should be less than incredibly enthusiastic—and grateful—when it comes to his accomplishments during his term. Biden is simply the greatest progressive president of our lifetimes. Full stop. Biden pulled America from the death, despair, and economic hardships generated by Donald Trump's criminal mismanagement of the pandemic that was killing 20,000 Americans per week when he took office. He steered the nation around a recession that economists considered inevitable, generated a surge in manufacturing that is still just getting started, brought new business creation to record levels, broke records on creating jobs and reducing unemployment, and shored up the importance of unions as the heart of the middle class. 

He restored faith in America around the world, healed the rift Trump created with our allies by strengthening and expanding NATO, and kept faith with Ukraine as it struggled against an illegal and unprovoked invasion by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He put America back into the fight against the climate crisis, oversaw record levels of new renewable energy, took serious steps to address long-festering environmental issues, steered U.S. auto manufacturing toward the future, and did it all while reaching record levels of oil production and destroying OPEC’s hold over the United States. He demonstrated compassion and took action to protect society's most vulnerable members in the face of rising Republican hate. He ushered in an era of declining crime, declining gun sales, and rising opportunity. 

[...] People are going to be driving on better roads, crossing safe bridges, and enjoying improved public facilities for years thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The American Rescue Plan not only provided the vaccine that pulled the nation through the worst of the pandemic, but kept money in people’s pockets, kept families in their homes, and kept businesses in business at a time when other economies around the world were suffering. Technology jobs and factories that had been bleeding away from the United States for decades came racing back thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, and that same bill is stimulating basic research whose benefit will be felt for decades. The Inflation Reduction Act not only helped address its namesake issue, but provided funds for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and the protection of both farmlands and wild spaces. 

This is a far from exhaustive list. Biden accomplished more in the last three and a half years than any other president has done in two terms. He did it while never sinking into treating his political opponents as any less than his fellow Americans. He never surrendered his boundless faith in American institutions and our founding principles. And he did it while attending church each Sunday before visiting the graves of his first wife and two of his children, all lost to tragedy.

Joe Biden in his one term as President did a lot of good for America, as he helped get America out of the mess as a result of COVID and got several influential bills passed.

[nostalgicamerica]

I want the Billionaires to pay more in taxes. The money they hoard does not go back into the economy. Trickle Down Economics never worked. If Hunter Biden can get called on the carpet for his taxes then Trump should too. The President doesn't have control over the price of oil. OPEC does. Supply and demand dictate prices here and if OPEC chooses to cut production, that's where the blame lies. I want a meaningful Border Bill. Republicans voted against a Bill and Trump told them not to vote yes on that Bill saying that he will fix it when he gets into office. I don't want wars either but Trump says he'll let Putin do what he wants if he wants to invade a country. The Hunter Biden trial proved that the Justice System isn't rigged.

There is a lot to unpack here.

I want the Billionaires to pay more in taxes. The money they hoard does not go back into the economy. - Then change the tax code.

Trickle Down Economics never worked. - So what

If Hunter Biden can get called on the carpet for his taxes then Trump should too. - I don't even know what this f*cking means.

The President doesn't have control over the price of oil. OPEC does. - Under the last president we were energy independent and on Jan 20, 2020 the price of gas in my neck of the woods was $1.97. It is not that now.

I want a meaningful Border Bill. Republicans voted against a Bill and Trump told them not to vote yes on that Bill saying that he will fix it when he gets into office. - Republicans want illegals here, too. Just for different reasons. And republicans suck almost as much as democrats.

I don't want wars either but Trump says he'll let Putin do what he wants if he wants to invade a country. - Why is it our business what Vladimir does anywhere? I frankly don't care if Macron wants to invade Estonia. Not my concern. And, by the way, under the last president, there were no major wars.

The Hunter Biden trial proved that the Justice System isn't rigged. - This is how to say, "I'm a fucking retard" without using the words, 'I'm,' 'retard,' 'a,' or 'fucking.' If you can say that with a straight face you truly are a fucking retard and I pray you don't breed.

[beardedmrbean]

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s capital and outlying provinces have faced rolling power blackouts for weeks in October and November, with electricity cuts disrupting people’s lives and businesses. And while several factors are likely involved, some suspect cryptocurrency mining has played a role in the outages.

Iran economy has been hobbled for years by international sanctions over its advancing nuclear program. The country’s fuel reserves have plummeted, with the government selling off more to cover budget shortfalls as wars rage in the Middle East and Tehran grapples with mismanagement.

The demand on the grid has not let up, however — even as Iranians stopped using air conditioners as the weather cooled in the fall and before winter months set in, when people fire up their gas heaters.

Meanwhile, bitcoin’s value has rocketed to all-time highs after the U.S. election was clinched by Donald Trump. It hit the $100,000 mark for the first time last week, just hours after the president-elect said he intends to nominate cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins to be the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The surge has led some to suspect that organized cryptocurrency mining — sucking away huge amounts of power — has played a part in the outages in Iran.

“Unfortunately, some opportunistic and exploitative individuals use subsidized electricity, public networks and other resources for cryptocurrency mining without authorization,” Mostafa Rajabi, the CEO of Iran’s government-owned power company, said back in August.

Iran’s state energy company did not respond to a request for comment.

Power outages have come and gone in the past in Iran, which struggles with aging equipment at many of its plants. Over the summer, sustained blackouts struck industrial parks near Tehran and other cities. Then in October and November, rolling power cuts across Tehran’s neighborhoods became the norm in daylight hours.

Climate change has been blamed in part, with persisting droughts and less water running through Iranian hydroelectric dams.

Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered several power plants to stop burning mazut, a high-polluting heavy fuel common in the former Soviet Union countries. Tehran has used it in the past to make up the difference in electricity generation.

Fuel reserves, both in diesel and natural gas, also remain low even though Iran is an OPEC member and home to one of the world’s second-largest reserves of natural gas, behind only Russia. There’s been no explanation for the decision to keep those reserves low, though critics have suggested Iran likely sold the fuel to cover budget shortfalls.

For his part, Pezeshkian has said that he must “honestly tell the public about the energy situation.”

“We have no choice but to consume energy economically, especially gas, in the current conditions and the cold weather,” he said in mid-November. “I myself use warm clothes at home; others can do the same.”

Still, winter heating isn’t in full swing quite yet on Tehran — raising questions where the power is going.

In many poor and densely populated neighborhoods across the country, people have access to free, unmetered electricity. Mosques, schools, hospitals and other sites also receive free power.

And with electricity in general sold at subsidized rates, bitcoin processing centers have boomed. They require immense amounts of electricity to power specialized computers and to keep them cool.

Determining how much power is used up by mining is difficult, particularly as miners now use virtual private networks that mask their location, said Masih Alavi, the CEO of an Iranian-government-licensed mining company called Viraminer.

Also, miners have been renting apartments to hide their rigs inside of empty homes. “They distribute their machines across several apartments to avoid being detected,” Alavi said.

In 2021, one estimate suggested Iran processed as much as $1 billion in bitcoin transactions. That value likely has spiked, given bitcoin’s rise. Meanwhile, Iran’s blackouts began in earnest as bitcoin spiked from around $67,000 to over $100,000 in its historic rally.

Rajabi, the state electricity company CEO, said his firm would offer rewards of $725 for people to report unlicensed bitcoin farms.

The farms have caused “an abnormal increase in consumption, disruptions, and problems in power networks,” Rajabi said.

The amount of power used by some 230,000 unlicensed devices is equivalent, he said, to the entire power needs of Iran’s Markazi province — one of the country’s chief manufacturing sites.

Iranian officials and media have not linked bitcoin’s surge and the ongoing blackouts but the public has, with social media users resharing a video showing a massive bitcoin farm earlier this year uncovered in Iran. A voice off camera asks how it was possible the electrical company did not discover the farm sooner.

The U.S. Treasury and Israel have targeted bitcoin wallets that they’ve alleged are affiliated with operations run by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to finance allied militant groups in Mideast war zones.

That suggests the Guard itself — one of the most-powerful forces within Iran — may be involved in the mining.

In contrast, Iranian media nearly every day report on individual mining operations being raided by police.

Iran may see bitcoin as a hedge against increased pressure from the incoming Trump administration and as regional allies are engulfed in turmoil, said Richard Nephew, an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“The question for the economists inside Iran is do we trust this enough to fund the government,” said Nephew, who has long worked on Iran issues and sanction strategies in the U.S. government.

However, he cautioned against thinking of bitcoin as a magic bullet for Iran, particularly as bitcoin wallets can be targeted in sanctions.

“A pattern of behavior screams out to intelligence services,” Nephew said. “It screams out to bank compliance departments.”

[foreverlogical]

We have been seeing numerous stories in the media about how people support Donald Trump because he did such a great job with the economy. Obviously, people can believe whatever they want about the world, but it is worth reminding people what the world actually looked like when Trump left office (kicking and screaming) and Biden stepped into the White House.

Trump’s Legacy: Mass Unemployment

The economy had largely shut down in the spring of 2020 because of the pandemic. It was still very far from fully reopening at the point of the transition.

In January of 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, up from 3.5 percent before the pandemic hit at the start of the year. A more striking figure than the unemployment rate was the employment rate, the percentage of the population that was working. This had fallen from 61.1 percent to 57.4 percent, a level that was lower than the low point of the Great Recession.

The number of people employed in January of 2021 was nearly 8 million people below what it had been before the pandemic. We see the same story if we look at the measure of jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics establishment survey. The number of jobs was down by more than 9.4 million from the pre-pandemic level.

We were also not on a clear path toward regaining these jobs rapidly. The economy actually lost 268,000 jobs in December of 2020. The average rate of job creation in the last three months of the Trump administration was just 163,000.

What the World Looked Like When Donald Trump Left Office

In the fourth quarter of 2020 the economy was still being shaped in a very big way by the pandemic. Most of the closures mandated at the start of the pandemic had been lifted, but most people were not conducting their lives as if the pandemic had gone away. We can see this very clearly in the consumption data.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis and author’s calculations.

The figure above shows the falloff in consumption between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020 in some of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic. While overall consumption was down just 0.8 percent, there has been an enormous shift from services to goods.

Inflation-adjusted spending at restaurants was down by 21.5 percent, and much of this spending went for picking up food rather than sit-down meals. Spending at bars was down 47.7 percent. Spending at hotels and motels was down by 43.8 percent as people had hugely cut back travel. Air travel was down 52.4 percent.

Spending on football games, baseball games, and sports events was down by 68.3 percent. Spending on live concerts and other entertainment was down a bit less, at 67.4 percent. And movie going was down 92.7 percent.

The Story of Cheap Gas

Donald Trump and his supporters have often boasted about the cheap gas we had when he was in office. This is true. Gas prices did fall below $2.00 a gallon in the spring of 2020 when the economy was largely shut down, although they had risen above $2.30 a gallon by the time Trump left office. The cause of low prices was hardly a secret, demand in the U.S. and around the world had collapsed. In the fourth quarter of 2020 gas consumption was still 12.5 percent below where it had been before the pandemic.

In fact, gas prices likely would have been even lower in this period if not for Trump’s actions, which he boasted about at the time. Trump claimed to have worked a deal with Russia and OPEC to slash production and keep gas prices from falling further. The sharp cutbacks in production were a major factor in the high prices when the economy began to normalize after President Biden came into office since oil production cannot be instantly restarted.

The End of the Trump Economy Was a Sad Story

Donald Trump handed President Biden an incredibly damaged economy at the start of 2021. People can rightfully say that the problems were due to the pandemic, not Trump’s mismanagement, but the impact of the pandemic did not end on January 21. The problems associated with the pandemic were the main reason the United States, like every other wealthy country, suffered a major bout of inflation in 2021 and 2022.

It is often said that people don’t care about causes, they just care about results. This is entirely plausible, but the results in the last year of the Trump administration were truly horrible by almost any measure.

It may be the case that people are more willing to forgive Trump for the damage the pandemic did to the economy than Biden, but that is not an explanation based on the reality in people’s lives, or “lived experience” to use the fashionable term.

That would mean that for some reason people recognize and forgive Trump for the difficult circumstances he faced as a result of the pandemic, but they don’t with Biden. It would be worth asking why that could be the case.    

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

President Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” call for a resurgence in United States oil production will be frustrated by the reluctance of Wall Street to approve another frenzy, according to shale bosses, reported the Financial Times.

U.S. oil and gas output during Trump’s second term will increase by less than 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, Wood Mackenzie and Rystad Energy said, well below the nearly two barrels a day rise under Joe Biden.

“The incentive, if you will, to just drill, baby, drill… I just don’t believe that companies are going to do that,” said Wil VanLoh, chief executive of Quantum Energy Partners, one of the largest investors in shale, as the Financial Times reported.

“Wall Street will dictate here — and you know what? They don’t have a political agenda. They have a financial agenda… They have zero incentive to basically tell the management teams running these businesses to go and drill more wells,” VanLoh said.

This could be a big letdown for the new president, who is expecting a surge in oil supply to lower U.S. inflation by making fuel and goods less expensive.

“We will bring prices down… We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said during his inauguration speech.

At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos on Thursday, Trump called on OPEC to bring down oil prices. However, lowering the price of oil and gas would reduce profits for shale companies, making them less likely to heed Trump’s agenda.

“Prices will be a bigger signal than politics,” said Ben Dell, managing partner at energy investment firm Kimmeridge, which owns shale assets in the Permian Basin in Texas, the most productive oilfield on the planet.

Oil production in the U.S. reached a record high in 2024, but the Energy Information Administration predicts output will only jump 2.6 percent this year to 13.6 million barrels a day before growing less than one percent the following year due to price pressures.

[head-post]

Vladimir Putin to visit Saudi Arabia and the UAE on Wednesday

Russian President Vladimir Putin will make a one-day trip to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on the war between Israel and Hamas, the presidential administration said on Tuesday.

Putin will pay working visits to both countries on Wednesday, as well as an example in Moscow of Iran’s president this week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The talks will focus on the two countries’ relations, the military conflict between Israel and Hamas, and will also focus on the OPEC+ oil price cap.

Putin’s trip was first announced on Monday by his foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, who did not give a date for the visit when speaking to Russian news agency Life. He said:

 “I hope that these will be very useful negotiations, which we consider extremely important.”

Read more HERE

[mariacallous]

In an online conversation with Elon Musk on Monday,former PresidentDonald Trump said he’d swiftly reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling if he’s elected again.

Trump also suggested that the refuge in northeast Alaska could become one of the world’s top oil producers, even rivaling Saudi Arabia.

But the oil potential in the 19-million-acre refuge is not at all comparable to Saudi Arabia, though an official with the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday the Arctic Refuge coastal plain does contain significant pools of oil.

Trump, in the conversation on X, also blasted President Joe Biden’s administration for halting oil activity in the refuge, after the Trump administration issued exploration leases there in a lease sale in 2021 — though that sale generated few bids, including zero from major oil companies.

Before that, Alaska leaders and congressional Republicans long dreamed of seeing oil development in the refuge’s coastal plain, but conservation groups and many Democratic leaders successfully fended off those efforts for decades.

In the conversation with Musk, Trump said the refuge “could be bigger than Saudi Arabia. But they went in and they terminated it.”

“And I’ll get it going very quickly,” he said. “Because not only is it big for Alaska. I mean, you talk about economic development. That for the United States, I mean, that is, they say, bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size, and pure, really good stuff.”

However, OPEC estimates put Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves at well over 200 billion barrels of oil. It has produced well over 150 billion barrels of oil over time, OPEC figures show.

The refuge’s coastal plain, where the lease sale was held, contains an estimated fraction of that amount, or 10.4 billion barrels of “technically recoverable oil” on average, the Congressional Research Service reported this summer.

Dave Houseknecht, senior research geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and a leading expert on the topic, said ANWR’s oil potential is nowhere near Saudi Arabia’s.

“There’s no way,” Houseknecht said in an interview on Tuesday. “Not by any imagination.”

The Arctic refuge coastal plain estimates are based on a 1998 USGS report that Houseknecht helped develop. The USGS report was based on old 1980s seismic data that has not been updated by the federal government, he said.

Though it’s no Saudi Arabia, the report estimates that the refuge contains pools of oil that are comparable to large discoveries made in recent years in Alaska, far west of the refuge, Houseknecht said.

Some pools of oil could hold between 500 million to 750 million barrels of oil, Houseknecht said.

That puts them about the size of Willow, the controversial ConocoPhillips oil development that the Biden administration approved last year, and that climate activists called a “climate bomb.”

The biggest pools in the refuge might hold about 2 billion to 4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, Houseknecht said.

That’s about the size of a pool of oil associated with the Pikka field, which is largely located on state land, he said. The Pikka discovery hasn’t generated the same national attention as Willow.

Oil production in the refuge would nonetheless face economic hurdles, Houseknecht said.

While some of the oil accumulations there are big, they’re not all connected, he said.

“The simplest way to think about it is it’s not all one big pool (in the refuge) that can be readily developed from a single location,” he said. “So that would ding the economic aspects.”

“But it’s still economically viable because the 1002 area is not a big area. It’s 1.5 million acres,” he said, referring to the refuge’s coastal plain that’s often called the 1002 area.

Trump in 2017 took a major step toward potential drilling in the refuge.

He signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act after Alaska’s Republican delegation managed to add a provision for at least two lease sales in the refuge, a first.

But the federal government’s first-ever lease sale in 2021 indicated that — at least at the time — the oil industry had little interest in exploring the controversial area.

It came during a time of low oil prices, with many major banks saying they would not finance new Arctic oil and gas projects. And Joe Biden, the president-elect at the time, had said he opposed drilling in the refuge, another obstacle.

The sale produced a paltry $14.4 million in bids. That was a poor start to the federal government’s estimate that the two lease sales could generate $1.8 billion in revenue.

Only two small private companies submitted bids and later relinquished their leases under the Biden administration.

That left the main bidder, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. The state agency is suing after the Biden administration canceled its leases last year, saying the federal government did not properly conduct an environmental review before the lease sale.

Under the 2017 law, a second lease sale must be held before Dec. 22 of this year.

The Biden administration has said it will determine by the end of September how the refuge oil program will proceed.

Will the administration hold a lease sale in time?

“We will follow the law,” said Melissa Schwartz, a spokesperson with the Interior Department, in an email on Tuesday.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

For Lula to be a climate leader, he must phase out oil

At COP28, the Brazilian president has sent mixed messages by aligning with OPEC. If he really wants to tackle the growing threat of droughts and floods, he must set a clear fossil-free, pro-nature direction for the UN climate summit he will host in Belém in 2025

The biggest-ever UN climate summit is well underway in Dubai with eighty thousand participants discussing hundreds of agenda items to avert the climate crisis, but ultimately there is only one goal that matters: reducing carbon emissions as quickly as possible by phasing out fossil fuels and eradicating deforestation.

By comparison, everything else is hot air. Delegates can talk all they want about green technology, net zero pledges, compensation payments, scientific studies and other well-intentioned initiatives, but none of that will be effective unless the world halts the build up of carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases in the atmosphere. That existential challenge, upon which all life on Earth depends, can only be achieved by phasing out coal, oil and gas and restoring the health of the world’s climate infrastructure: the forests, oceans, wetlands and other centres of natural vitality.

If anyone was still in any doubt about the urgency of the climate crisis, this horrendously destructive year has surely made them realise we cannot wait a second longer: 2023 is already confirmed as  the hottest year on record. July was the warmest month in more than 120,000 years. This has brought devastating drought to the Amazon, floods to southern Brazil, heatwaves to the Andean mountains, fires to Canada and death and destruction across many parts of the planet. This is just the start. If emissions from fossil fuels and forests continue to increase, then temperatures will continue to rise for decades. We will look back on 2023 as one of the coolest years of our lives. Soon, it won’t just be dolphins and fish that suffer mass mortalities, it will be people. “We are terrified,” a group of 1,447 scientists said in an open letter released at Cop28. “If we are to create a liveable future, climate action must move from being something that others do to something that we all do.”

The first week of Cop28 shows the desperate need for a new perspective. The process has been captured by the very people who profit most from increasing carbon emissions. The president of this climate conference is Sultan Al Jaber, who is the CEO of the biggest oil and gas company in the United Arab Emirates. As many climate campaigners have joked, this is like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse or asking Dracula to run a bloodbank. But it is not funny when the man in charge of addressing the most difficult and important challenge in human history goes on record to deny that eradicating fossil fuels is the only way to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or that a life without oil would send humanity back into caves. These comments, which have been thoroughly rebutted by scientists, reveal the true face of the fossil fuel industry, which has been holding up progress for more than three decades.

All of which makes Brazil’s decision to align itself more closely with the world’s biggest oil cartel Opec, more disappointing. Announced at the start of the climate summit, the timing of this move could not have been more of a kick in the teeth to international efforts to tackle global heating. It is brutally pragmatic. Brazil aims to expand oil production in defiance of advice from the International Energy Agency that 1.5C is impossible if countries open new fields. The day after Cop28 finishes, Brazil will hold an auction of dozens of new oil development blocs. All of these steps will mean more drought, more suffering, more death in the years to come.

Continue reading.

[friday-911]

Trumpocalypse - 1/23/25

RISE RESIST REPEAT!!!

What we're covering

• Trump outlines economic plans: President Donald Trump delivered virtual remarks to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this morning, where he slammed his predecessor’s policies and said his presidency began a “revolution of common sense” as he warned global business leaders to make their products in the US or face tariffs.He also said he wants OPEC and Saudi Arabia to cut the cost of oil to help end the war in Ukraine.

• Immigration agenda: Trump’s crackdown on immigration is in full force. The acting secretary of defense directed 1,500 ground personnel to the southern border. A new Justice Department memo outlines plans to challenge sanctuary city laws by threatening to prosecute state and local officials who resist. The first hearing to challenge Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship is scheduled for this afternoon in Seattle.

• Cabinet confirmations: The Senate has scheduled a key procedural vote to advance the nomination of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary for this afternoon.This comes as the chamber’s committees continue to approve other Cabinet nominations on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, the House voted Wednesday to pass a GOP-led bill to require detention of undocumented migrants charged with certain crimes, handing an early legislative win for Trump.

-Stay safe and sane!

[ranwing]

A great man...

The media in the United States is now commemorating the life of former President Jimmy Carter, who died yesterday at the ripe age of 100. He was a one-term president whose administration was beset by multiple crises that he was assigned the blame for (even if in hindsight we recognize that he had little control over these events). He struggled with an oil embargo by OPEC and then the hostage crisis in Iran (hamstrung by negotiations done behind the scenes that would benefit Ronald Regan by having the hostages released after the election). At the same time, he spearheaded the Camp David Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and Egypt and made a lasting peace in the region a true possibility.

In the years after he left the presidency, Carter devoted himself to doing great public works. We all know about his work with Habitats for Humanity, where he and his wife personally helped to build over 4000 homes for those in need. His foundation waged a nearly complete victory over the Guinea worm, which was one of the leading causes of blindness in several African nations. He was a tireless advocate for democracy and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of free elections around the world. He continued to work for peace between Israel and Palestine, and was a prolific writer on matters of politics and faith. He was a true Christian, who lived humbly and separated from the Southern Baptist Convention over their doctrines about the role of women in the church. Unlike so many on the religious right, Carter's faith lead him to be an advocate for women, the LGBTQ+ community and people of all ethnicities.

I had the great privilege of getting to meet President Carter at a book signing years ago and found my appreciation of the man reaffirmed. He was kind and funny and generous to a fault. The world has lost both a great statesman and a great human being. He lived a life filled with purpose and love for his fellow man and now is united with his beloved wife Roslynn. I can only be grateful for the impact that he had on my life.

[blackpilledkremlintsarina5294]

April 16, 2008

Russian President Vladimir Putin writes on the guestbook at Libyan leader Moamer Gadhafi's destroyed residence in Tripoli. The house was destroyed by a US-led air raid in 1986. Putin arrived in Libya for a 24-hour visit expected to be dominated by talks over energy contracts and arms sales. Putin was immediately taken to Bab Azizia Palace, a sprawling complex where Kadhafi usually pitches his tent when in Tripoli. Putin is visiting the country at Gadhafi's invitation -- one of the Russian leader's final formal trips before he steps down on May 7. Arms sales to Tripoli and the clearing of Soviet-era debt may also be touched on during their talks, according to Russian government sources. The visit comes as Russia is trying to coordinate policy with other gas producing states, notably Algeria, and is promoting plans for an organization of gas producers similar to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), of which Libya is a member.