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Higher Oil Prices Are Starting To Bring Jobs Home
penguin_dance notes a report up at ABC News that high oil and gas prices in the US may be moving jobs back home in a trend that some economists are calling "reverse globalization." It's becoming more and more expensive to ship finished product from other countries, so some companies are moving the manufacturing back to the US. The article hints that this trend may spill over soon to raw materials such as steel. One economist is quoted: "It's not just about labor costs anymore. Distance costs money, and when you have to shift iron ore from Brazil to China and then ship it back to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is looking pretty good at 40 bucks an hour."
It would be nice if there was a favorable reaction to high fuel prices such as some manufacturing coming back home.
We can only hope that the trend continues.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
from my home to my office....when will my company start teleworking as an option!
But US jobs and stable prices despite the raising fuel costs is great news!
Now if companies would pull their heads out and either/or/both go to a 4 day work week and re-implement telecommuting...
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
... by The Invisible Hand.
Adam Smith strikes.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's almost like there was some kind of invisible hand at work.
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Recently I saw a show that visited Asbury Park in NJ, and it was stated that the slow decline of the park started with cheap airfares. It immediately struck me that this trend should now start to reverse itself, as travel costs are rising while consumer confidence is dropping.
High gas prices are going to have some bad side effects, but also quite a few good ones. Hopefully, reduced travel will be effected on almost every scale: suburbs will wilt and cities will grow stronger, local foods will become more popular, inefficient business travel will be replaced by online meetings, etcetera. I think most people who have wanderlust aren't going to let higher airline prices stop them, but perhaps they'll take fewer and longer trips in order to reduce expenses - e.g., instead of going to France and Spain on one trip, and the U.K. on another, they'll wait and take a longer trip to visit all three.
Also, a nuclear ship can sustain high speeds much longer than conventionally-powered ships. Makes you harder to capture.
I think it might be an interesting development to bring back the "Q-ship"... troll for pirates, then blow their asses out of the water by surprise.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
It less oil to use rail over ships to move iron ore and other big stuff.
It's more that the price of dollars is low than that the price of oil is high. Turning every one dollar bill into a one million dollar bill won't cure world poverty either.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
my dad owns a drycleaning plant. steel hangers are one of his biggest supply expenses now. a few years ago a hanger might have been $0.10 or so, then 2 or 3 years ago it doubled overnight to $0.20, and a few weeks ago *that* doubled.
some of the larger hangers are 50 cents each. 50 cents for a metal coat hanger. he needs several hundred of these in a given week, nevermind the price of all the other supplies going up. it hurts, bad, and he has had to raise prices because of it (though not enough to actually cover the added cost)
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
The equation is tipping back towards domestic manufacture.
Shipping costs are only one of the variables and it is inaccurate to attribute the whole shift to that.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You won't get any more local steel production unless there are local manufacturers that want it or if it can be produced at internationally competative prices. Steelmaking is one of those things that is not labour intensive so nobody can honestly blame unions or cheap labour countries on the price of the stuff - it comes down to effective or ineffective management.
You can thank Uncle Sam and the protectionists for that one. Read more.
my dad owns a drycleaning plant. steel hangers are one of his biggest supply expenses now. a few years ago a hanger might have been $0.10 or so, then 2 or 3 years ago it doubled overnight to $0.20, and a few weeks ago *that* doubled.
some of the larger hangers are 50 cents each. 50 cents for a metal coat hanger. he needs several hundred of these in a given week, nevermind the price of all the other supplies going up. it hurts, bad, and he has had to raise prices because of it (though not enough to actually cover the added cost)
Perhaps your dad could provide a discount for customers who provide their own hangers.
Thank you, Mr Checkov. Mr Sulu, lay in a course for the 1970's.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
The concept of the broken window fallacy works if there aren't any external diseconomies in play. I'd contest that in this case.
This isn't a broken window fallacy: it's simply a change in the cost of doing certain types of business. There isn't an incentive to bring, for instance, tech support from Bangalore to Pittsburgh.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Are you kidding? You think that the product size actually matters? There is very little difference in shipping a container of refrigerators vs. a container of pens. It's a tiny fraction of fuel economy (a few percent) due to weight differences. The cost & distribution challenges come in breaking up the product at distribution centers, but that happens regardless of where the product is manufactured.
What will matter is raw ores (iron ore) and other relatively dense materials (steel, lumber), which greatly increase transportation costs and are easily replaceable commodities. This will be the first place the effects are seen, but it will spread to other products.
"The cost of shipping a refrigerator across the sea is way smaller than the cost of trucking it across a state."
Perhaps if you ship them one at a time. But that's not how trucks or ships work.
The statement in the article notes an increased container shipping cost of $3,000 to $8,000 shipping from China to NY. That $5,000 difference is about 1,000 gallons of diesel, which is enough to drive more than 4,000 miles carrying the 29+- tons of a fully loaded standard shipping container.
No, it's a lose-lose broken window fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Paying for breathing air might increase the GDP, but it would only be making the world net poorer. By definition of the consumer price index (CPI) being fraudulent data, so too is the GDP fraudulent data. Double the supply of money, ceteris paribus, the GDP doubles. Twice as much money trades for the exact same things. But in the real world inflation works it way through the economy discretely and unevenly, not universally evenly. People who get the new money and new credit first, spend more on specific things first. In the late 90s it was internet stocks, from 2000-2007 it was houses, and now it's commodities like oil. The poorest (last to receive the new credit and dollars) will suffer the worst for the longest time.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Add minigun.
they don't make steel in Pittsburgh any more. US Steel may be based here but most of the steel plants are no longer in the region. They make steel in Pittsburgh the same way they make cars in Detroit. Pittsburgh is mostly medical science and hospitals now. When industry comes back to the U.S. it will be in places that are less union friendly. (for the record, I do live in Pittsburgh)
The fact is, for all the environmentalists out there screaming to put regulations on carbon emissions, etc., the price of energy is the only thing that's going to have a substantial impact on the amount of fuel we use. People are actually considering more fuel efficient vehicles, and at my place of work people are taking advantage of opportunities to work from home once in a while. Especially when their commute is over one hour. If we keep it up, people might move closer to work.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
In the 50's it was Japan,
In the 60's it was Hong Kong
In the 70's it was Taiwan
In the 80's and early 90's it was South East Asia
In the late 90's to now it has been China
To be worthwhile producing elsewhere you have to be able to produce for less than 30% of your home costs.
There is nowhere left to go
We have to manufacture our own again
So maybe we will get decent working conditions at last!
The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime - Floyd, Pink
My dad has worked in steel for the past 38 years and he says they are busy as hell because the fuel cost and weak dollar has been making US steel cheaper for a while now.
except globalization is the sole reason for our comfortable living status and swelled middle class. be careful what you wish for.
No, not at all. Economic dominance and a thriving manufacturing sector maintained our standard of living. The global economy did little to help that, and in fact has been much of why that vaunted standard of living has been dropping in the past few decades.
The number of people who qualify as "middle class" is also not so swelled anymore.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
several customers recycle the hangers, usually it takes work to sort through them and pick out the ones that are worth keeping (ill say ~%70 are worth keeping, of 200 or 300 that are turned in each month)
we offer discounts so that no customer has to pay the full price.punch-cards, law enforcement/military discount, state employee, senior citizen, so i dont think hed opt for offering another discount.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
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Sails can be helpful, I've seen models for tall vertical turbines that are independent of wind direction (not independent of wind, however). And my old friend the Stirling cycle engine could still be useful here - exploit the temperature differential by dipping the cold-side heat exchanger of the engine in the stream of running water. Would work on warm days, no acreage of solar panels required. You don't need a huge temperature differential for them to work, although it would need some form of low-drag integration into the hull. Maybe just a few square meters of copper integrated into the bottom of the hull, a black surface for the hot end topside. I like Stirling engines...no fuel, just a temperature differential, sometimes a bit slow to start up. Cool technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine/
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
The problem with telecommuting is that your job is basically dependent on the quality of the IT staff to a much higher degree. My employer tries to do telecommuting, but somewhere between cost cutting in IT, draconian security restrictions, and a dodgy network connection, it fails to be useful for getting real work done.
We've been looking to move out of our high cost of living area for quite some time, but the rising cost of gas has put that on hold. I would like to buy a house - and can afford one on the edge of the suburbs, but alas, any saving in mortgage payments would be consumed by the cost of fuel. Even though I'm just a fifteen minute commute from work, I spend nearly fifty dollars a week getting there and back.
So yeah, it might bring some manufacturing jobs back home. But those of us who have become used to working in the city and commuting out from the cheaper communities are finding themselves in quite a bind. I can't afford a house in my current area, and I can't afford the gas to drive from the places where I can afford a house.
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm going to have to wait another 5 to 10 years for the next housing market crash before I'll be able to move into a house. When my Dad was my age, the loan on his (our) house was up - and he was a factory worker. Today, I make almost four times what he did, and can't even afford a three bedroom house. So much for the American Dream.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Less energy afforded and produced makes the world net poorer exactly the same way less food afforded and produced makes the world net poorer. Decreasing the supply of drinking water by half may make the price of that water double, but that means the world is twice as worse off by definition of having half as much water.
Increasing the costs of trade is just increasing the costs of the division of labor. Would you be better off if you to make everything you have completely by yourself? Grow and harvest your own food, make your own clothes, build your own house, manufacture and build your own computer? You wouldn't have enough time and skill to do it all by yourself and thus you would be much poorer operating as an isolated autocratic individual.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Yes, producing locally will be more expensive than it used to be to produce externally, and yes this will result in a higher local cost(presumably your basis for the broken window theory).
However where the broken window takes something that was fine as it was and claims that by breaking it and producing work for someone else is a good thing where it actually just creates an unnecessary cost for the baker and lowers overall productivity, this isn't the same situation.
The manufacturing work was going to be done by someone regardless, all this has done is make it more economical to do it locally. It isn't unnecessary work, or lost productivity it's simply someone else doing it.
You could argue that the increase in cost will do more overall damage to the economy than bringing the jobs back home will do good, but even that's sort of immaterial, the cost increase is going to happen pretty much no matter what we do, so our net result from this move is an increase in capital flowing into our the US economy and job creation, from the perspective of the US that's a good thing, maybe not so much a good thing for China, but still a good thing.
One of the things that's going on is that the value of the dollar continues to fall. For years, overseas producers were hesitant to lower the price in the US, even though they were getting less for their goods. This was because the US is such a huge market and they didn't want to lose it. Because of this, prices tend to be "sticky", so things will stay at 10 cents per item until suddenly all the manufacturers decide they have to bump up the price to the next "even" amount.
Gas and oil are such global commodities that they were the first to jump up in price. Now we're seeing other goods do the same. I think the US is getting to the point where it's no longer the rich superpower it used to be, and that places like China and the EU can dictate economic terms to a larger degree than in the past.
From the summary: Distance costs money, and when you have to shift iron ore from Brazil to China and then ship it back to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is looking pretty good at 40 bucks an hour.
No it isn't if the alternative is (probably less than) 40 bucks per month.
True, handling and treatment of raw materials may be one of the first things to become cheaper when
handled in what I'll call "the west" as opposed to "the east", because huge quantities are handled
by relatively few people.
But what are we going to do with all those raw materials at home? They still need to be transformed
into consumable goods, which involves much more labour - cheapest done "somwhere else".
True, sea transport costs more than twice es much today than just a few years ago, but if you look at the
absolute numbers, it still is more or less for free compared to the worth of the shipped goods. There needs
to be at least another tenfold increase in shipping costs before businesses really start to feel it in
their manufacturing costs.
I know for a fact that it is (in quite a lot of cases much) cheaper to import presorted recovered paper
(for paper production) from China and India to Europe than to collect it and have it sorted in Europe directly.
Transport costs simply don't matter in that case.
This situation is changing at the moment - not because of higher bulk shipping rates, but because of developing
paper industries in China and India, consuming more of the recovered paper on the spot, thereby increasing prices for
the exported good "recovered paper". Interesting side effect: The shipping costs' percentage in the total price/weight is
therefore even decreasing.
Exports will also go down.
Ask anybody in the mail order business if the ballooning shipping charges have hurt or improved sales. Same goes for food prices, or anything which needs to be moved from point A to point B.
Greed destroys itself. --And let's not make any mistakes here; the higher fuel prices are being artificially inflated. It's a short-term money grab which will of course threaten the continued health of the oil industry and many of our daily economic realities.
I'd certainly enjoy seeing that happen, (especially if it involves the hanging of Bush and his oil cronies), although the collapse will be painful. We're probably going to see lots of unnecessary deaths from cold this winter, lots of frost-bitten children in emergency wards, and that will be difficult to live through. It will take a while before new systems are found to replace the rotten old ones, but New is good when it comes to the cycle of life and decay.
Where I do find this positive is in the alternative power markets; electric vehicles actually have a shot at market viability. That could be a really cool thing to see. --If new schemes are implemented smartly, that is.
But seriously. Let's hang Bush.
-FL
Environmentalists have been hoping for high fuel prices, to encourage use of less fuel.
They weren't expecting the return of blast furnaces to Pittsburgh, however. So we burn a little less gasoline, and dump tons of coal and limestone in the steel furnaces.
Although high oil prices will force us to live more frugally and locally (probably a good thing in terms of the environment), the US has the small problem that its transportation infrastructure is designed based around the roads. Cars specifically.
A coherent bus network simply doesn't exist, Amtrak is a pathetic mess, and Americans (white people, specifically*) hate the concept of public transport.
*I hate to bring race into this, but for whatever reason, it's more or less a heavily recurring trend that, outside of big cities, white Americans don't use public transportation. I'm white, in my 20s, and take the bus to work every day. It's an extremely rare situation to spot somebody from my own demographic on the bus that isn't also homeless.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It seems all the nuclear advocates I run across here are stuck in 1985 with this problem - will a nuclear advocate with a clue please stand up?
You're right in there is little difference in the cost between shipping a container of pens versus a container of refrigerators. The difference is that a container load of pens is worth more than a container load of refrigerators and the container of fridges would probably weigh less than the one filled with pens. A 40' ISO container has a maximum loaded weight of about 35 short tons. Let's take a pessimistic estimate for RR fuel consumption of 350 ton-miles per gallon (the Florida East Coast averages in excess of 1,000 ton-miles per gallon due to the flat terrain). This gives us about 10 miles per gallon for the container, so 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel will get you 10,000 miles. BTW, at speeds above about 25 mph, trains are more efficient than ships.
When my Dad was my age, the loan on his (our) house was up - and he was a factory worker. Today, I make almost four times what he did, and can't even afford a three bedroom house. So much for the American Dream.
The society that your dad lived in, was built by the Greatest Generation... the one that endured the Great Depression and won WWII.
The society that you live in, was built by worst generation (IMO), children of the 60's (Clintons, GWBush etc.)
Perhaps you missed the part where the libs, enviro-whackos, and "intellectuals" lobbied successfully against building any new reactors.
Why the hell should anyone research nuclear power generation technology when there was no way to build them and recoup the research costs?
You guys fucked it up big time in the 80s by shutting down nukes. Now you are all shitting bricks over "climate change" (not Global Warming anymore, is it?...at least not for another 10 years)
So the one thing that could have averted the latest end-of-the-world scenario is dead in the water because of a previous end-of-the-world scenario.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You're assuming that OPEC and other sellers won't decrease output to keep production (and therefore, prices) exactly where they are.
All drilling in Alaska is guaranteed to do is to screw up Alaska.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
On December 12, 1952 a combination of mechanical failure and human error led to a now-famous power excursion and fuel failure in the NRX reactor at AECL Chalk River Laboratories. At the time NRX was one of the most significant research reactors in the world (rated at that time for 30 MW operation), in its sixth year of operation.
During preparations for a reactor-physics experiment at low power, a defect in the NRX shut-off rod mechanism combined with a number of operator errors to cause a temporary loss of control over reactor power. Power surged ultimately to somewhere between 60 and 90 MW over a period of about a minute (the total energy surge is estimated to be approximately 4000 MW-seconds). This energy load would normally not have been a problem, but several experimental fuel rods that were at that moment receiving inadequate cooling for high power operation ruptured and melted. About 10,000 Curies of fission products were carried by about a million gallons of cooling water into the basement of the reactor building. This water was subsequently pumped to Chalk River Laboratories' waste management facility, where the long-term ground water outflow was monitored thereafter to ensure adherence to the drinking water standard. The core of the reactor was left severely damaged.
This accident is historically important, not only because it was the first of its type and magnitude, but also because of its legacy to Canadian and international practice in reactor safety and design. Nobody was killed or hurt in the incident, but a massive clean-up operation was required that involved hundreds of AECL staff, as well as Canadian and American military personnel, and employees of an external construction company working at the site. In addition the reactor core itself was rendered unusable for an extended period. Environmental effects outside the plant were negligible, as was radiation exposure to members of the public. The health record of AECL and Canadian military personnel involved in the clean-up was scientifically reviewed in the 1980s (no significant health effects were observed).
Several of today's fundamental safety principles of reactor design and operation stem from the lessons learned at this formative stage of Canada's nuclear program, making Canada an early leader in this field. Among these were:
The accident also demonstrated that, due to a combination of redundant safety features, emergency procedures, and a level of inherent "forgiveness" (or robustness) in the technology, a major fuel-melt accident in a nuclear reactor can occur without significant environmental effects and radiation exposure to the surrounding population.
The NRX core was completely rebuilt, improved, and restarted within 14 months following the accident (the first time something like this was attempted), and the reactor continued to perform for another four decades before being retired.
As with the analysis of the accident itself, the clean-up and re
The average American will whine endlessly about the dangers of nuclear power and cower under the nearest rock at first mention of "radioactive". Never mind the far worse environmental contamination caused by coal and oil power plants; nuclear is the boogeyman and white-bread Americans won't go near it.
That is, unless it saves them money.
Coal and oil prices skyrocketed during the 1970s, which brought lots of attention to nuclear energy and caused the average American to decide that maybe he/she had simply got off on the wrong foot with that whole nuclear scare, and that these reactor thingies that were popping up left and right just might be the miracle technology that would save us from the evil oil barons. The love affair didn't last long, however; fossil fuel prices dropped again in the early 1980s and nuclear development came to a crashing halt. There was no longer a big economic incentive, and anything 'nuclear' became the boogeyman again overnight.
The reason nothing has improved (in the US) since your books were written in 1985 is because no new plants have been built since then; even those plants under construction in the 1980s ended up being scrapped. The US is still using primitive 30 or 40 year old reactors while countries not in a cheap-fossil-fuel-induced stupor have been developing newer, safer, lower waste designs.
But once again, fossil fuels are expensive. And once again, Americans are seeing nuclear as the miracle solution. Until it stops saving them money.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The problem with bringing guns into a fistfight is the other part is going to step it up.
That means instead of somewhat bloodless captures the pirates will be shooting first and looting later.
Just don't have any children.
Slashdot: Part of the solution!
Then maybe if steel gets high enough, your dad might stop pointlessly giving away an endless supply of free hangers that end up in the trash. A principle of consuming only what you need, rather than all you possibly can. But then this sort of thing is well overdue.
Ok I'll bite.
Nuclear power, even when considering the one nuclear meltdown that we have had and all the deaths caused by it, has resulted in less deaths than any other form of power generation per MWh generated. Including wind and solar.
Secondly, Nuclear power in the only baseload power source which does not release significant amounts of CO2. If you believe that we need to reduce CO2 emissions significantly in the next few years to avoid catastrophic anothropogenic global warming, then Nuclear Power is your best currently available option.
Thirdly, Uranium is one of the most abundant materials in the earths crust - though it does cost quite a bit to extract. We have known reserves that will last us quite some time (though the same is true for coal).
Lastly, we are currently in the third generation of nuclear power plants, which now in the event of an emergency automatically shut down. i.e. it requires individuals to be pushing buttons to keep the reactor running and in a "dangerous" mode. If human intervention stops, the reactor ceases being dangerous (well excluding the radioactivity danger present in the fuel itself).
The problem with nuclear power is threefold - public perceptions (generally from irrational fear), high water usage and high long run marginal costs. Canada and France have shown us that nuclear power can provide a significant amount of baseload power relatively safely.
The American Dream is overrated because the "advertised" American dream is not necessary. If the standard to "achieving" the American dream is to own a house with an ample lot size, a nice car or three, and enough cash to throw parties every weekend or whatever other activity you find fun, well I say that's just the TV and popular culture brainwashing you.
You can be perfectly happy and successful living in a town house without a yard and an econobox car. Almost every form of entertainment or activity is still accessible without the McMansion or the SUV. The only lacking thing is the increased expenses and the ability to flex your debt-inflated-penis with your shiny SUV and spinners.
I'm probably in the same boat as you. I make more than my parents yet I can't afford a house near work. I can afford a 2 bedroom condo though. And after thinking, I would be plenty happy with condo as long as I was single. I'd still be happy with it if I was married. The only time it would start to feel cramped is if I wanted to have a family. But by then, I would probably be married and I figure a 3 bedroom town house would suffice. The only thing I really get with a bigger house is bragging rights and a whole lot more maintenance. For example if there was a yard I'd have to pay for a gardener or do it myself. If there were extra rooms I'd have to clean yet another room. I don't need that. A 2 bedroom condo with a decent kitchen, living room, and a few complex facilities (pool/patio) is plenty to keep me happy.
Houses (with full yards, extra rooms, and large garages) only make sense in rural areas. In places like suburbs they're just a luxury and bragging rights.
IMHO nuclear should be the LAST resort,and with new methods like molten salt and super black materials for solar,ever more efficient designs for wind,geothermal,tidal,etc it is simply not the right course at this point and time. There are simply too many problems we haven't fixed as far as treatment and disposal of waste to make nuclear a good idea at this time. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
> we haven't figured out what to do with the tons of nuclear
> waster we have NOW,much less if we did like McCain wants and
> added 45 new plants.
Of course ``we'' have:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Fast_neutron_reactors_(FBR)
Prohibited by the Carter Administration in the USA, but used
throughout the World. Breeder reactors use the output of
conventional fission plants as fuel and the resultant waste,
once reprocessed, has a half-life of a few centuries instead
of hundreds of millenia.
Actually, ships can be a bit more efficient . Depends on ship size, of course, and the availability of waterways vs. rails.
I have to point out the flaws in that one. Part of the reason we don't make nearly as much stuff anymore is because of the lack of tariffs, which have been taken away in the last few decades. A return to higher tariffs would be just fine in my book, because it would mean that more of our stuff would be produced *here*, in the US. Which would mean more jobs.
I completely agree. In fact, I want individual states to have tariffs. Can you imagine all the 50 states having their own chip fabs? Imagine the number of jobs created!
Why stop there? Let each city slap tariffs on products from other cities. This will mean more jobs. It could be just like the 1600s with each village making *everything* that they need locally. This way, money will not leave the village and, since money means wealth according to your theory, this will mean everyone will be much richer.
Actually, here is a great way to increase the number of jobs.
Check out this article which details exactly what this lease and usage entails.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121391719487790187.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
In other words, the politicians are using word play to infer that the oil companies are drilling on the lands relying on public ignorance that a lease of oil producing lands does not equate to a guarantee of oil.
So basically, the process is.
1. Secure the lease
2. Get the permits to do test drilling
3. Do test drilling
4. Determine if its economically feasible to recover the oil
5. Get permits to actually to set up a site to manage it
6. Get permits to drill on the site
7. Go to court to keep your permits after being sued by every other environmentalist group
8. Drill for oil
9. Profit?
Remember the first rule : If a Congressman's lips are moving he is 99% of the time telling you a lie or a falsehood by omission.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Guess what's different from 1999...
- the US dollar is worth ~40% less than it was in 1999
- there are over 2 billion people whose economy, and therefore demand for energy, is surging.
- there is an oil supply graph that, rather than increasing every year, has been roughly flat for the past three years (not coincidentally, the time when the price has skyrocketed)
Oil, in our lifetimes, is a finite commodity. It has an energy return on investment higher than anything else out there right now. There is still a lot in the ground, which is to say, we're not going to run out any time soon. But we have skyrocketing demand and a constrained supply. In the past, high prices have led to exploration and increased production. Well guess what. The large deposits of easy to retrieve oil have been found. We've reached a point of diminishing returns. Oh, there's still a lot of oil. The Saudis continue to pump almost 10 million barrels of it a day, more or less the same amount they've been pumping for the past 5 years. But in that time, they've been bringing new drilling projects online, in order to make up for declining production out of their old fields. And their oil exports have dropped by over 10% in just the past 2 years, due to increased domestic demand from a booming economy.
You can tell yourself it's all speculation, if it makes you happy. But the supply of oil to global markets is no longer increasing, while demand remains high, globally. And there are a whole lot of people in Asia who will gladly buy any oil that we don't.
I think people forget that this is not the first time people have been looking for a new fuel for industrial purposes.
Up until the 1850's, lighting lamps were fueled by whale oil, and with the rapid decline in the whale population even by then there was considerable concern about what to substitute for whale oil. The discovery of using kerosene derived from crude oil about this period changed all that, and that was the foundation of the oil industry as we know it today.
Today, rapid changes in technology could make gasoilne obselete as a motor fuel within the next 20 years. The most important announcement was MIT's announcement of research into high-energy supercapacitors using carbon nanotubes back in 2006; that may just open the way for a drastic reduction in the size of the battery pack needed for a battery-electric vehicle (BEV), making it possible for a practical electric car that could carry four passengers in comfort yet go up to 400 km (248 miles) or more on a single charge, and the charge time for the battery pack would be a tiny fraction of even Li-On battery packs.
That same technology could make it possible to have electrical storage units from home size to city size that could provide power after being charged up by a solar cell array or wind turbine array. I can imagine a single house with a sun-facing solar cell array (now much cheaper thanks to nanotechnology) that provides power during daytime and charges a supercapacitor electrical storage unit for use at night.
In short, I see within 20-25 years most homes and apartment complexes with cheap solar arrays on their roofs and supercapacitor electrical storage units somewhere in the building.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891
(My point is not that it can not work, it is that it is not ready yet...)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
We lost an bike-riding employee to a rhino attack just this week. I can still picture him, desperately peddling away in those Birkenstocks, trying to outrun that rhino while we sat back watching helplessly from the office window. We found out later that the rhino was attracted to the color in his tye-dyed t-shirt. All that was left of him after the rhino got done was part of his torso and his laminated PETA membership card.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I am strongly opposed to these high oil prices, because they are siphoning off our wealth and giving it to rich oil foreign oil companies.
Dude, you missed about half of the equation.
What about the wealth we create from the oil we buy? Like plastics, cheap electricity, a mobile workforce, etc. Surely those things help create some of the wealth we all enjoy, right?
Only focusing on the COSTS is only looking at half of the equation. And I'm nor arguing that we use oil efficiently - we don't. But you can't dismiss the wealth created from the oil we bought from the Saudis. We didn't just transfer X trillion dollars to them for nothing. We are getting at least as much out of the deal as they are.
That's called "commerce" and "the market". You should read about it sometime and I think you'd better understand what is going on. Carbon credits create artificial limits on that market. Maybe we need them, maybe we don't. But the justification you give for them is.....simple at best. High prices are the result of what is happening "in the market". They are not the starting point.
Your sarcastic reply neglects to mention that most Americans are free to move around the country to find the jobs in their field, but most Americans aren't free to immigrate to India or China or Malaysia to keep their job.
As long as labor can't flow as freely as jobs can, there's a place for tariffs.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Don't forget to mention that even with scrubbers, coal plants emit more radioactive materials directly into the air and otherwise than nuclear plants.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I can't believe that the energy policy in this country is written by people who don't have the slightest FN clue how it all works. And it's a popular stance to take because of ignorant masses that similarly know next to nothing outside of TV movies and hearsay.
Nuclear bomb
1. Take a tiny amount of highly reactive fissile material.
2. Define it's shape for maximum compression to within hundredths of a mm
3. Find a way to precisely add just enough more material to go critical WHILE compressing the entire mass equally in a hundredth of a second.
4. Boooom.
Nuclear Reactor
1. Take a large amount of low to mid fissile material
2. Extend place it in a configuration to maximize surface area while preventing uncontrolled reactions. IE fail safe, reaction cannot occur without neutron moderators.
3. Find a way to extract heat from the reaction in a closed loop system and use it to turn a turbine
4. Almost limitless energy.
To suggest that a reactor could some how trigger an atomic explosion is like saying that pouring jet fuel on a box of parts could some how spontaneously create a jet engine. The tolerances, timing, and materials that go into a bomb are so critical that if any one of them is off it will not detonate. It is realistically impossible for any given amount of material to cause a nuclear explosion.
The biggest danger would be an un controllable reaction which would lead to a fire and the far more dangerous condition of releasing fuel into the atmosphere.
You want to know why energy prices are soaring, pollution is up, and CO2 is fuggin with the climate? Because a few scares in Nuclear Power's infancy stopped the development and deployment of any new plants for the last 20 years. A few pounds of Uranium pellets puts out the equivalent of TONS of coal and hundreds of gallons of fuel's worth of energy. And we have abundant sources of fuel.
You want to save the world? Tear up the nuclear weapons, build new reactors, ditch coal burning power plants, and build electric cars to use the abundant free energy in the power grid. Problem solved.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I don't have the energy to go through this all over again, so I'll punt to the experts:
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6700447/Scrubbing-dirty-bombs-explosive-hype.html
http://www.news.uiuc.edu/gentips/02/07dirtybomb.html
http://www.notposta.com/?p=19
http://www.onthemedia.org/yore/transcripts/transcripts_072503_fear.html
Long story short: Dirty bombs don't work. It's not nearly as easy to distribute radioactive materials as the media would have you believe.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade