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There Would Be No Iranian Nuclear Talks If Not For Fracking
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Matthew Philips writes at Bloomberg that US Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Geneva on Friday to begin negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program and there is sudden optimism that a deal is in the offing. But the simple fact is that Iran would not be coming to the negotiating table without the US oil boom. Over the last two years, the US has increased its crude production by about 2 million barrels a day. According to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service (pdf), Iran's oil exports have been cut in half since 2011 (PDF), from 2.5 million barrels per day to a bit more than 1 million today. As a result, Iran has had to halt an equal amount of production. 'I think it's pretty clear that without the U.S. shale revolution, it never would have been possible to put this kind of embargo on Iran,' says Julius Walker. 'Without US production gains, I think we'd be looking at $150 a barrel.' Instead, international prices have hovered around $110, and are less than $100 in the US. According to data from Bloomberg, the combined carrying capacity of oil tankers leaving Iranian ports last month dropped 22 percent from September. 'They're having a very hard time finding buyers,' says Walker. If a deal gets done, the trick will be to ease Iranian oil back onto the broader market without disrupting prices. If not managed properly, flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable."
CAFE Standards are more important. They are capping demand.
Like a broken clock that is accurate twice a day, unintended consequences are most often negative.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
My impression is that revolutionaries are not necessarily very good at maintaining infrastructure. Same deal with Venezuela, decades of eating the seed corn and nobody who knows how to keep the black stuff flowing in charge.
This just in:
A politician tells a lie.
See the full report at eleven o'clock.
'I think it's pretty clear that without the U.S. shale revolution, it never would have been possible to put this kind of embargo on Iran,'
It's a global market - oil gets shipped all around the world via tanker. If the US buys less oil, that means the sellers have more oil to sell, which they in turn sell to someone else (Probably China, they have huge demand), who in turn then doesn't buy from Iran. It's all interconnected.
Which doesn't matter for a global fungible commodity. Think of the oil and gas markets as giant buckets with streams of inputs from various sources and streams of outputs to other places. Direct inputs and outputs don't matter, just the net inputs and outputs.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Global Supply and Demand doesn't care who buys from where. I'm not saying that it is true that we owe a debt of gratitude to frackers for bringing about world peace. I'm simply pointing out that your implication that there is no correlation because we don't specifically purchase our oil from Iran is a similarly flawed claim.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Who says making fracked oil in the U.S. unprofitable is a negative consequence? Fracking has had a negative impact on the environment, and I'd just rather say good riddance.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
"If not managed properly, flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable."
You know all those people comaining about the money the government 'wastes' on subsidising green energy?
The government spends a lot more on oil, just less directly. Whole wars have been fought to keep that fuel affordable, and now they are even important enough to engage in market price manipulation to protect their profits.
>"Iran would not be coming to the negotiating table without the US oil boom."
This is a perfect example of how oil has created such a horrible political mess over the years. It has been very dangerous for us to be so dependent on the middle east.
While I am glad our increased independence is forcing Iran and such to the table, I really wish it were because we accomplished that independence through renewable energy sources. Still, I guess we should take what we can get for now.
China could easily pick up the slack.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Or perhaps it isn't just a way for anybody to say anything. It just is.
Not everything has to be a conspiracy theory. Coincidences do happen, quite often in fact. If you disagree, then might I refer you to Alex Jones whose very words should be music to your ears.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Yet you posted something that is contradicted by it. Nor did your reply address the contradiction.
The moral of the story is Money Talks. An embargo is toothless if we have to keep buying Iran's oil. Once we can get our oil without them, the embargo starts to bite hard. The mullahs are looking at what happened in Egypt and Tunisia and Syria, and they can do the math. About 60% of their population is under 30. They are young, educated and unemployed, which is the recipe for social unrest and political instability. The sanctions are making an already bad problem much worse. If they have to choose between obtaining nuclear weapons, or regime survival, they will make the obvious choice.
Er? Citation please. None of the sanctions have been lifted to this point.
Interestingly enough the US imported more in 2012 from the Persian Gulf. We've mostly trimmed the amount of business we do with nations like Mexico, Nigeria, and Brazil, in response to our new gains in supply. This is just crude oil, a substantial part of US demand is met by imported petroleum products too, of course. U.S. Crude Oil Imports Mexico is due to begin declining in production in the next few years, and the Trans Alaska Pipeline may have to be shut down soon as well - this is more of a wildcard, estimates of how low the flow through can go before it becomes unprofitable to operate vary a great deal - so new sources of supply are going to be needed, even with US demand having peaked and declining slowly owing to less driving/more efficient new vehicles/the slow inroads made by EVs removing demand for gasoline entirely.
True. But the sanctions were never all that impervious.
On the other hand, with reduced demand for their Oil, (due to the US being a net exporter of oil), there is more oil available on the market. Other oil importers don't need to go to Iran.
Theoretically, with less of a market for oil Iran should not need Nuclear power and could be meeting their energy demands with modern oil and gas generation facilities, Far less costly and easier to build.
Therefore, they don't NEED nuclear. And they can't make the claim that the do. If Iran was really after power production all along, they should be willing to delay nuclear. If that was never their real goal, then these talks may lead nowhere.
News reports suggest that a deal is no where near as close as this cheerleading article suggests.
So the article is a bit pre-mature. I think there are talks mostly because there was an election, and there was a change in tactics on the part of Iran, who probably realize they are inching closer to being on the receiving a preemptive strike and they see their last friend in the region, Syria, being ground into dust by civil war in spite of Iran's help).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Misleading article...the whole context is wrong...
First off, the collusion in the oil industry is not fully known, so we are just guessing when we talk about 'global supply'
2nd, the US does not get its oil from Iran...our demand/supply is tagentially not directly related
3rd and most importantly for this PR propaganda of a TFA: It was a **decrease in demand** not fracking!
If the US automakers hadn't **killed the electric car** there would have been at least an **equal drop in demand**
Fracking has *nothing* to do with our diplomatic success in Iran.
Thank you Dave Raggett
No. You should have avoided making ridiculous posts like the one you originally made, the one you just made and this one and simply admitted that you hadn't thought about what you were posting before you posted it. All of your attempts to spin it to seem like your original post represented anything but a blatant lack of understanding and/or thought are just pathetic.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I agree with your general sentiment certainly, however we can look at history and see that our diplomatic success with Iran has *nothing* to do with fracking.
This is a PR propaganda article.
Iran has been a Banana Republic for global oligarch companies like Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Gasprom, etc...
anti-democratic dictators were installed by special operations work who would give favorable oil trading to the colonial oligarches...
it has happened **OVER and OVER** through history....
this is about the Arab Spring, the rise of democracy, and the triumph of US diplomacy in the region
fracking has **nothing** to do with it
Thank you Dave Raggett
Increased supply is only part of the equation.
US oil consumption has dropped down to mid 1990's level: http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=US#pet
The trend of declining oil consumption should continue due to factors such as:
- continued underemployment
- aging population
- urbanization
- improved vehicle fuel efficiency
Also, Iran knows that if Republicans come back to power, Israel will be able to dupe the US into attacking Iran. It is prudent for Iran to negotiate a deal with an administration that is capable of negotiating (and isn't Israel's puppet).
You probably should have accounted for that in your original snarky comment then. /snark
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable."
And this is a problem how, exactly? Fuck the frackers. Gimme my cheap gas. I'm sick of you bastards charging so much... you're squeezing the poor and putting our economy in the crapper. Cheap gas = fast economic recovery, not this stagnant crap.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
(due to the US being a net exporter of oil)
You have a strange notion of "net exporter".
And if you think it's too old data because of the shale oil "booming" the EIA also provides data for 2013.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Therefore, they don't NEED nuclear.
That's right. And since they have lots of trees, they don't NEED oil and gas either. Let them burn wood! They're nothing but a bunch of sand niggers anyway. What would they know about the health hazards of smog, right? You're a bigoted asshole.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/10/11/china_now_world_s_largest_net_oil_importer_surpassing_united_states.html
2nd, the US does not get its oil from Iran...our demand/supply is tagentially not directly related
Oil is a commodity. Every barrel the United States doesn't buy from country A is a barrel that country A gets to sell instead of Iran.
3rd and most importantly for this PR propaganda of a TFA: It was a **decrease in demand** not fracking!
Perhaps the truth is both an increase in supply due to substitution with fracked gas and a decrease in demand due to CAFE and foreign counterparts.
Quote: 'Without US production gains, I think we'd be looking at $150 a barrel.'
This is the bubble where ideology and proof are one and the same.
Well, the USA is falling apart. Therefore the need for nukes isn't quite as extreme as it once was. Also, Germany and Denmark are pointing towards how an advanced society can operate without nukes or carbon, and in a place as sunny as Iran, this becomes a kind of no-brainer.
Iran's biggest worry is their biggest asset: The South Pars gas field. The Europeans want it BAD as an alternative to Russian natgas, and the Americans would love to take it away from Iran, just cuz the Americans are a bunch of greedy dicks who'd love to stick it to the Russians, and screw the Iranians in the process. As long as South Pars stays underground, the Russians have their captured market (Europe) and Iran has money in the bank. As long as Iran was banging the nuke drum, the Americans were able to keep their psychotic fear machine rolling. Now that the USA Empire is entering late afternoon, they can afford to play nice with them and their pointy little all american bullet headed saxon mother's sons. Franking is crushing the natgas market, but everyone knows franking is a temporary solution, so Iran will hold that Ace of South Pars and cash big time when they will need the money to transition to solar. At that point the USA will be in some kind of tizzy tea party dipshit media freak show - probably with Britney Spears running as a Republican and (fill in name of faceless bureaucrat) on the Democratic ticket and some frothing tool of the Koch guard as a third party spoiler.
Ya gotta look at this stuff with a longer term view...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
it's possible, I can acknowledge that for sure...somewhere far down the chain, I'm sure that public perception that fracking in the US has reduced demand significantly has affected commodities trading...
you're coming from the right place, so I don't mind talking a bit of semantics, but this topic is easily trolled...
Thank you Dave Raggett
While the drop in Iranian exports is certainly a sum of many things, the article completely fails to mention the EU sanctions. Notice the very sharp drop in the export volume graph mid-2012? That's the sanctions coming fully to force in July 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_sanctions_against_Iran#Sanctions
So essentially we've gotten nothing from fracking
Did you even RTFA^HS^HHeadline? "We" have leverage over Iran. Which is generally recognized as a good thing (feel free to argue).
Whether or not it's worth the vast environmental damage is for you to decide, but don't display your stupidity by claiming there are absolutely no upsides.
Last post!
Oil is a commodity. The sky is blue.
that doesn't mean you have a point...you have *half* a point...your argument has only one leg to stand on...
wrong...you are ignoring important distinctions leading to a reductive argument
the global energy industry is not like AP Economics...the concept of supply/demand you illustrate above is about on the level of trying to talk quantum entanglement by commenting that "force equals mass * acceleration fool, therefore quantum computing is truely quantum"
First off, oil producing countries collude with each other to control global demand. Iran is part of more than one quasi-political union of oil producing non-Nato countries.
The US can import oil from certain suppliers for very cheap compared to others...
Fracking does not produce the oil that becomes gasoline. Almost all discussion of "oil prices" is statistically referring to oil that leads to gasoline...the "price at the pump"
I can acknowledge that **the perception** that US fracking has reduced global demand has affected commodities traders far down the chain...how much of an effect? is it salient? TFA sure didn't tell us
We need to just call out this garbage instead of making (correct) counterpoints...I'm not directing this at you, teeples, but all /. peoples...
it's really ok to say, "fracking didn't cause this...TFA is bullshit"...even though...**technically** one might be able to demonstrate some tangential effect...
the article is misleading 100%...its a 'lie'...or it is an attempt to craft a greater lie
Thank you Dave Raggett
I don't remember Israel, Pakistan, or India threatening their neighbors or openly supporting terrorist groups. There is a little more reason to be concerned with Iran then there was with other countries when they got the nukes.
If you think the real reason was to raise the price of oil, then you might want to explain why we haven't seen federal permits and royalties being created. You might want to consider who long the US knew they would need this in advance as it has been on the table with less support since the middle of Bush. It just seems that the US government would be cashing in on it more if that was the reason. But it appears they are not as most of the fracking is happening on private lands where no royalties are being paid to the feds who actually could use a large cash infusion about right now.
The argument in the summary is absolutely awful. Here's why:
First, let's start with two facts, and let's assume they are true: "the US has increased its crude production by about 2 million barrels a day" and "Iran's oil exports have been cut in half since 2011 (PDF), from 2.5 million barrels per day to a bit more than 1 million today". The implication in the summary is that Iran's oil production was reduced because the US increased oil production. Let's think about this for a second. This argument would make sense if all three of these claims were true: (1) Iran and the US were the only oil producers in the world, (2) The US was the only oil consumer in the world, (3) US oil consumption remained stable over the past two years. None of these claims are true. First, oil is a global commodity - there are plenty of producers and plenty of consumers. To put this in context, the global oil production is about 80-90 million barrels per day ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production ). So, why would it be true that an increase in 2 million barrels per day in the US would lead directly to a 1.5 million barrel reduction in Iran? Even worse, the US does not purchase any oil from Iran.(though there could be indirect effects, for example, a reduction in US oil purchasing could result in other nations purchasing more oil from Saudi Arabia or Canada, thus reducing their need to buy from Iran). If this is an indirect effect, then we would expect all oil-producing nations (*not* just Iran) to have a small reduction in oil sales (i.e. Saudi Arabia and Canada and Venezuela and other net-oil-export nations would all share in the decline).
In short, it's absolutely absurd to tie an increase of 2 million barrels/oil per day in the US to a 1.5 million barrel/oil per day sales reduction in Iran. These two things don't have any cause-and-effect relationship. They are merely correlated in time. (And I'd bet $100 that if the US never did any fracking, Iran would see the exact same decline in oil production.)
I can see the political implications of making this claim though: it allows (pro-oil) Republicans to pretend that fracking (which they support) resulted in forcing Iran (the country they hate) into a weaker position which pressures them to negotiate with the US. This allows them to take credit for Iran coming to the negotiating table while also undermining any anti-fracking talk. In short: if you damn liberals try to stop fracking, you're helping "Death to America" Iran. Why do you hate freedom?
Therefore, they don't NEED nuclear.
Sure, let's keep burning those fossils fuels to the bitter end.
the sanctions on iran have artificially raised the price of crude, transferring trillions of dollars from consumers to producers
My blog
How is making fracking unprofitable a negative thing?
Free Manning, jail Obama.
I agree that it is a coincidence that our increased oil production has brought Iran to the bargaining table, and that the negotiations have nothing to do with fracking at all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're wrong. I believe everything that I read, particularly if it is backed by big oil money. This is good enough for me, and I'm glad to give up clean drinking water, have flames shoot out of my faucets, and let the fracking industry pump any industrial toxins that they want into the ground, as long as they tell me that it is keeping the Iranians in check.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The Ayatollahs and the House of Saud should increase their funding of the various North American Green groups. Without green group obstruction, we'd have another huge new source of oil in ANWR, we'd be almost done with the Keystone Pipeline, and we would have vast new production offshore.
Also useful to Ayatollahs and the Saudi royals:
- Boko Harem terrorist attacks threatening to destabilize oil production in Nigeria
- Socialist nationalization of oil production facilities in Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro
They seem to have forgotten the link in their little plan there. We don't buy oil from Iran! So us producing more has a very diffused effect on how much Iran sells. Almost nobody buys from them actually. In fact, if the US buys less, other countries can afford to buy more oil for a lower price and there's more to go around so that drops Iran's oil outputs to the people that do buy them but it's so delayed and diffused that the correlation isn't as solid as this article makes it out to be.
I suspect he meant North America, but I can only speculate.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That's correct. But remarkably, we are (recently) a net exporter of oil products:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203441704577068670488306242
As I understand it, we put more effort into refineries, and apparently it's cheaper for some countries to let us import it, process it, and ship it. I'm not sure why more countries don't build their own refineries. Expertise? Pollution controls? Other needed raw materials?
It should also be noted that US has pressured Japan to stop trading with Iran.
I don't know about other countries, but embargoes seem to work sometimes.
Wat?
I can't believe I just read that. If you don't remember these things, all it means is you need to revise your 20th century history again.
Let's review. Israel, in its extremely short life so far, has managed to obtain a global reputation for being insanely aggressive and warlike. The very creation of it led immediately to war with its new neighbours. Israel not only has nukes, but also created the Mossad, which openly assassinates people it doesn't like. Its leaders routinely threaten to attack or invade Iran if Israel's "friends" even think about being the slightest bit reasonable or diplomatic. Fear of what the completely crazy Israeli leadership might do if diplomacy fails is one of the reasons the rest of the world has implemented sanctions - it's seen as marginally preferable to Israel starting all out war in the middle east, which we know they wouldn't hesitate to do.
Pakistan and India have been at each others throats since the moment India became independent from the British Empire. The Partition was the rest of one of the most bloody civil wars in recent history. Since then both India and Pakistan have managed to obtain nukes, and their constant fighting over Kashmir is rated one of the most likely triggers for nuclear war. Each side routinely accuses the other of sponsoring terrorist attacks.
Of all the countries in the world you could have picked to try and make Iran look bad, you could not have chosen worse. Iran, despite the incredible amounts of shit they have had dumped on them in recent times, is not at all likely to invade a neighbour or randomly start a war in the middle east. I know this runs counter to US and Israeli propaganda, but there's no evidence at all that this is even slightly likely to happen - the Iranian leader has even said that war is un-Islamic, and he's really big on not doing things that are un-Islamic. Contrast this to the Israeli leaders who talk about war all the time.
BTW the story is crap. It's been obvious for ages that the sanctions have been put in place because America is Israeli's bitch and Europe is America's bitch. They aren't going to be removed, ever, because the people who control the sanctions regime are motivated by power, and only power. See how the moment it looked like there might be progress in Geneva the American's were running to Israel to re-assure them that the sanctions weren't going to be lifted no matter what happens (and that's despite them being struck down as illegal in European courts).
The main reason Iran is negotiating on weapons is that the Iranian people elected president Rouhani. They were sick of Ahmadinejad clownish posturing and hostility to just about every other nation. Sanctions are having wearing effect on Iranian families and they didn't see an improvement in future as long as a leader like Ahmadinejad ( although he was not standing again ) was in power. The Iranian people elected a moderate with a mandate to improve Iran's foreign relations and that is what is happening. We will see a lot more of this in the months to come and more of Israel's attempts to derail any agreements.
"Theoretically, with less of a market for oil Iran should not need Nuclear power and could be meeting their energy demands with modern oil and gas generation facilities, Far less costly and easier to build."
Theoretically, any gallon of oil that gets burned in Iran can't be exported for a profit and any gallon of oil that doesn't get into the world out of its reserves is a gallon that doesn't add money to its gross domestic product.
Yes, yes, thank you Captain Obvious.
The point is that the spending on Nuclear energy may vastly exceed the revenue from Oil sales since the US has reduced its demand to the point that it cuts Iranian exports in half, and the international price drops.
When you look at the Nuclear expenditure and the increasingly real probability that Israel will destroy it the minute it becomes active, there is even more reason for the Iranians to stall for time by pretending to negotiate.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
For that to make sense Iran's oil would have to be somehow less valuable than oil recovered from fracking. It isn't, if anything it's probably better because sweet crude tends to come from there. There's no reason their output would decrease unless they deliberately wanted it to.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I agree with you that Iran's oil is more valuable. The reliability of the source is somewhat less, given the instability in the region.
I really don't believe that fracking has anything to do with Iran deciding to negotiate.
Remember, fracked sources have a very quick falloff. It's given rise to a term, "Red Queen effect" which means a fracked well has to do more and more fracking just to maintain the same level of output.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-dot-shale-oil-boom-may-not-last-as-fracking-wells-lack-staying-power
I can understand the US using fracking to try to boost the economy during a slowdown, but I really hope it's never seen as any sort of long-term solution, considering it creates a lot of environmental problems, which are created in a matter of days but take millenniums to go away. That's why I don't want to see the Keystone XL pipeline made. It will just accelerate the fracking and cause the US economy to rely on stripping itself of natural resources which is a recipe for becoming like a lot of failed African shitholes.
Natural resources are like treasure. And once you sell off the treasure, it's gone. The Keystone XL would take that precious shale oil and dump it on the world market where it will do absolutely nothing to ease fuel costs here in the US and will weaken us strategically.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In fact, I think it would be great if fracking and oil sands projects were unprofitable.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
check out Aamaco...wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco ;)
then check out who Bush Sr. was partying with on 9/11 :P
Thank you Dave Raggett
Other than cheap propaganda fiction movies, proof?
check out Aamaco...wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco ;)
Never heard of "Aamaco". There's "AAMCO", an automotive transmission repair company. There's "Amoco", which used to be Standard Oil of Indiana and became part of BP a decade and a half ago. But Wikipedia's article about Amoco mentions nothing about Saudi Aramco. Its article about Saudi Aramco does, however mention Saudi Aramco's origin in a joint venture between the companies that became Chevron and Texaco, which later drew investment from what is now ExxonMobil. Between 1973 and 1980, however, the Saudis acquired Aramco.
yes. exactly.
Thank you Dave Raggett
More likely the Israeli and puppet US sanctions are facing criticism and doubt and the US is more amendable to negotiation rather than being left to look like Israel's fool as the rest of the world abandons the sanctions. Israel of course will be kicking US politician's heads to continue the sanctions as Israel continues to attempt to position itself as the main power in the middle east, with the US military as it's puppet attack dog. The success or failure of the talks will be dependent upon how much face the US is willing to lose when the sanctions collapse. As for Israel's nuclear weapons, the US continues to play the fool and is now being globally recognised as Israel's court jester in the UN, both countries are suffering politically as a result.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
no.
**you** said "below market"
here's what I said, copied from my comment above:
your argument is pure trolling...you are using rhetorical trickery and this conversation is no longer value-added for anyone
my statements were sloppy, but they held up to scrutiny...the US has favorable trading status with Saudi Arabia and you've only helped show that
I'm not going to comment further on this thread
Thank you Dave Raggett
Using that logic it would be mad for Saudi Arabia to be investing in solar power. But they are doing so big time http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/486391/20130704/saudi-arabia-renewable-energy-solar-power.htm#.UoBN_icho-U
IIRC Opec quotas are based on stated reserves. Given this there is every reason to over state reserves, which means there is probably much less of the stuff left in the ground than people think.
Sometimes I think various streams directed into the wind is a better description.
No. Oil is still very expensive. Has to be now. Fracking is fracking expensive. Very sad really. The Saudis can still do it for about $7/barrel so all we needed to do was break OPEC to get gasoline well under $1/gal. But now we have intrinsically expensive oil in the supply chain.
Seriously, we should allow keystone pipeline, BUT, require a tax on it (say $1-2/BL) that is applied to move our vehicles to electric, CNG, and LNG. With this approach, we can drop America's oil addiction, while moving the west to clean energy.
And the nice thing about having CNG/LNG is that coal can be converted to methane relatively cleanly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Therefore, they don't NEED nuclear.
Incorrect. Iran winds up using a lot of its oil for domestic purposes, when it could export it at a higher profit. They're trying to maximize the returns.
And there are several reasons they are pursuing nuclear power, not just the oil. Part of it is to help bolster it's desire to lead the region in STEM, since they've been trying for decades to show their technological advancement (and they have good engineering), as well as their technological independence. Another part of it is so that they could achieve nuclear latency, or the Japan Option; if threatened with war, they could convert their civilian nuclear power program into a functional nuclear weapons program in a matter of months as a response. (Better than Israel currently threatening them with nuclear attack and the US military literally on both east and west borders of the country)
The question here is whether this is because of CAFE standards or the price of gasoline? When when oil(and therefore gasoline) was cheap 'everybody' was buying SUVs and Trucks because of the greater feature sets at lower upfront cost. As the prices headed up people started switching back to cars and a lot of work even went into trucks and such to improve their performance. F-250 class trucks are now getting F-150 mileage.
I'd argue that price of gasoline had more to do with realworld increases in efficincy and reduced consumption rates than CAFE ever did.
I don't read AC A human right
Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
Ask the Pentagon or even the IDF and they'll tell you the same. U.S. threats against Iran - and committing acts of war with Stuxnet or looking the other way as Mossad murders Iran's nuclear scientists - has nothing to do with stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, as Iran has no nuclear weapon's program.
And as for good-faith negotiations, Iran has been trying to do just that for over ten years. The U.S. has either ignored those attempts, or to move the goalposts as soon as Iran has done what the U.S. has asked it to do.
Comprehension isn't one of your dtrong points is it? Read again what wad said. When the got nuke capabilities, india and pakistan were not fighting, israel , was seen as pure defensive when they got theirs. None of the countries were seen as hhostile to other countries when they got their nukes. Everything you said happened after they got their nukes and they were seen to br defensive and not a world threat. In fact, even what you mentioning happening, none of the nukes have been used offensivly making my point.
Your revisionist history also neglevts the recent UN sanctions that are completely legal that all other countries have decided to honor as compared to the US only sanctions you mentioned.
Come on, this isn't top secret or anything. Stop pushing your ideology over facts.
I'm at a loss as to when all that terrorism was happening and known to the world when they were getting their nukes. It is as if you think everytjing that happened after that instance was completely known before they became nucular capable and thus making not only my comment innacurate, but somehow comparable to Iran because you want it to be.
The fact of the matter is that we treat countries with nuked differently thrn countries without then. At the time the countries mentioned got their nukes, we didn''T have their leaders claiming to want to wipe nations off the map or openly sponsoring terrorism. And no, an act you think is terrorism is not openly sponsoring it if you understand the definition of openly.
Sure, everything is interconnected, so it would be false to say there's no effect, but "Yay for world peace! All credit to fracking!" is a wild reach.
Motivated reasoning. It's a thing.
...is a marketing term. Thank you for sharing.
... if we had seriously tried to limit petroleum consumption and develop alternatives since 1979, we might not have to embrace either risky proposition.
How the hell is this a problem?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
There has never been any indication that this is truth besides American and Israeli posturing. The UN inspectors said there is no nuclear weapons program and that Iran had complied fully with the NPT and their inspections.
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This is a perfect example of how oil has created such a horrible political mess over the years. It has been very dangerous for us to be so dependent on the middle east.
The only direct dependence the US has on the middle east is due to oil being priced globally. The US isn't particularly dependant on the middle east and OPEC for oil supply. The problem is that other parts of the world are. Oil has created big political messes like Iran due to countries like the US being unable to resist being a bunch of evil a-holes and doing things like overthrowing governments in the region on behalf of oil companies without regard to future consequences. What's astonishing is that our leaders have the nerve to act surprised when it turns out that people in other countries don't like us meddling in their internal affairs.
Relatively little of the oil used in the US comes from the middle east. About 40% of the oil used in the US is produced domestically and this number has been climbing. Of the 316 million barrels imported by the US in August 2013, only 67 million came from the Persian Gulf region or about 21%. This 21% is about 13% of total US oil demand and about 2/3 of that 13% is from Saudi Arabia. In fact Saudi Arabia is the only middle eastern country to crack the top 5 exporters to the US - the others being Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria.
Wait, whoa, hold on. Let's look at that downside again:
If not managed properly, flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable.
So... coming at this as someone who drives a car, consumes oil, and general does business with other people who depend on oil production, the idea of the market being flooded with cheap oil sounds like a fantastic thing. It's a good thing for me and virtually everyone I do business with, even tangentially. It's good for consumers.
Ah! But I understand that markets and industries can be disrupted by volatility. This sort of thing takes out the small players, leaving only those with big pockets that can weather the storm, or conglomerates with diverse portfolios. But.... when you think of "small players" does the US oil industry come to mind? Are we worried about those poor starving orphans over at Chevron and Exxon? Are they mom&pop shops that are worried about their slim profit market being washed away as big players muck up their market?
I mean, competition is a good thing, and losing any players reduces competition... But we're the big players here. To be an ass about it, volatility kills competition to US dominance. If ever there was an industry that could weather a downturn, it's the oil and gas megacorps.
So Kerry is going to Iran to keep them from dropping the price of oil? Seriously?
US imports may have lessened due to fracking. But if investment in developing and implementing renewables in the last 30 years had been as intense as efforts to develop new drilling techniques, the US would be more energy independent AND there'd be less fracking. So "...there would be no..." is a patently false statement.
Iran has developed nuclear capabilities that are somewhat inconsistent with a purely energy production system but are consistent with a weapons development program. They have refused certain levels of monitoring and more importantly removal. They are being deliberately provocative. So yes they have a nuclear weapons program.
As for the United States ignoring attempts. The Islamic Republic of Iran has until recently consistently refused direct talks and consistently refused to establish diplomatic relations. In what possible sense can there actions be seen as good faith negotiations. Now I agree the United States isn't all roses either but both sides have genuinely a level of hostility just short of war.
Does anyone in the West actually believe anything coming out of the Iranian gov't? They'll say whatever needs to be said to avoid sanctions and then do whatever the hell they want in secret anyway.
First off, the collusion in the oil industry is not fully known, so we are just guessing when we talk about 'global supply'
Sorry but no conspiracy theories are needed here. Oil is a fungible commodity sold worldwide. Simple supply and demand analysis (with a bit of speculation thrown in) can explain oil pricing rather well. If you want to invoke collusion outside of known cartels like OPEC you need to provide even a hint of evidence that nothing else can explain oil price movements.
If the US automakers hadn't **killed the electric car** there would have been at least an **equal drop in demand**
I think you are going to have a hard time proving that assertion. Your argument basically is falling into the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc. I will happily concede that battery technology has not received adequate investment and that car companies (including GM) really dropped the ball here. However it does not automatically follow that electric cars would have had the effect on the market you seem to believe the would have. There were and are significant technology hurdles for electric vehicles to overcome to significantly impact the car market. We very likely might be further along than we are but that isn't the same thing as proving that electric vehicles would have been adopted at a rate sufficient to offset that much oil use.
Fracking doesn't have major effects on oil prices, and won't until cars run on natgas.
Curious since US oil production has increased dramatically recently largely due to close to a million barrels of oil per day coming out of the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale formations thanks to fracking. You want to explain to me how an extra million barrels of supply a day has no effect on oil prices?
Conversely, could it not be said that the nuclear crisis in Iran was manufactured to, in fact, raise the price of oil thereby making fracking economically feasible?