Is the U.S. Military hording and pricing oil?

Kunstler pleads for help in answering a question relating to an oil pricing theory he has:

"Surely there is some enterprising graduate student or trust fund nerd on the peak oil web sites who might investigate this dark notion."

Phew! (wipes brow) That definitely counts me out.

Now watch this drive...


Link courtesy of a Politial Animal commenter. As it happens Kevin Drum thinks Bush's poll numbers have nothing to do with gas price.

Secret Code Exposed

From last week's President's Address to the Nation, comes a reference to the 23rd Psalm. What does this specific fairy tale say?

... Thou anointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over. ...

No wonder his poll numbers have gone up recently.

And then Bush said this:

"We look to the day when the nations of that region recognize their greatest resource is not the oil in the ground, but the talent and creativity of their people."

Translation: Your oil will become mine, all mine.

Blooperstan

George Monbiot lets loose on a most cloying British columnist:

In January this year, for example, the Daily Mail's columnist Melanie Philips asserted that most of the atmosphere "consists of water vapour"(1). She now admits that this was a mistake, but she still maintains that the planet was two degrees warmer 1000 years ago, that there has been no overall rise in global sea levels and that as many glaciers are expanding as shrinking(2) -- all of which are just as wrong.

Now realizing just what kind of hard hitting research backs up her claims, I kind of doubt that we will see a Londonistan any time in the future.

In keeping with tradition, Bush's polling unpopularity tracks very well with the average price of gasoline, which means he has managed a bit of an uptick recently. No luck for Londoner Blair though, as his former trustworthy MP's have left in disgust, draining away political support almost as fast as the North Sea loses its own stockpile of black treasure.

---

I have had mixed feelings with the reshuffling of the Air America Radio lineup. First off, it disappointed me that the creativity, comedy, spark, and ranting of version 1.0 (Winstead, Maron, Seder, Malloy) have essentially gotten replaced with safer and less spontaneous NPR-lite-style programming. However from my own biased energy perspective, the lineup looks fairly solid. AAR has EcoTalk on 5 nights a week, and my local outlet decided to syndicate Thom Hartmann every evening.

Lots of good targets out there ripe for mockery; just from the tiny emirate of Dubai alone, we have ecologic/economic disasters in the making (via comments at TOD):

Prankster's Gallery

Not since Ken Kesey's day has a group of like-minded individuals deserved the moniker of prankster as the cabal of oil depletion analysts (not). Just look at this gallery of production curves, stunningly and meticulously put together at GraphOilogy.

If that bit of heavy lifting ranks as a prank, kick me in the nuts.

Graphoilogist Khebab posted a couple of interesting and potentially relevant volatility charts to TOD a few days ago. In light of the spectactularly huge speculative losses in natural gas hedge funds and ongoing fluctuations in the price of gasoline, this must have a lot of people thinking -- do resource constraints wreak such havoc on the supply/demand curves that all bets go out the window on expecting any kind of stability?

GOM Discovery Model

I have waited for data corresponding to something like the recent deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) find for a while. This discovery has the right elements of right-wing business hyperventilation and media overkill to make a significant point -- namely that in the greater scheme of things, contributions such as Jack 2 and its siblings remain insignificant for our future global oil production outlook.

Industry analysts estimate that the GOM discovery could add 5 to 15 gigabarrels of oil to our reserve. In terms of the oil shock model, the discovery provides an additional stimulus to that model's world estimate. Putting the two together and using the optimistic value of 15 GB, the new out-year estimate appears below. (Recall that the oil shock model uses a stochastic estimator, so the new curve provides a probability view of expected production and ultimate depletion).

Note the inset which provides a magnification of the two curves around the year 2030.

That basically explains why mental midgets like Larry Kudlow haven't a clue and no one should trust advice emanating from these investment charlatans. In other words, they don't know Jack!

Peak Update (alternate universe version)

Khebab has aggregated a bunch of world peak oil predictions on to a single graph and posted the results to TOD. I added the data points from my oil shock model from last year to his plot below:

The oil shock model sits right dab in the middle of the other pessimistic estimates, nearly matching Staniford's median logistic model in the out years.

As I noted in a comment over at TOD, Khebab's loglet analysis perplexes me a bit. Every time I see an analysis like the loglet approach, with a potentially infinite number of variables, and no physical basis behind it, I feel better about the oil shock model which uses a few intuitive stochastic parameters backed up by solid physical reasoning. Yet, as ProfGoose at TOD stated:

Still, I come from the school that the more models you run, the better job you do critiquing the assumptions of other models.

In the end, all we have is incomplete information, and we are forced to guess. I like having as many (prima facie valid) tests of those guesses at my disposal as humanly possible.

Can't argue with that. And as always, Khebab keeps doing the hard digging and his efforts remain greatly appreciated.

Lawbreaker

If it hasn't sunk in yet, Wisconsin and Oregon would consider this little tyke a lawbreaker.

At the start of the trial it was clear that neither the Judge nor the Officer understood just what a fixed-gear bicycle was. To help them visualize, Ginsberg likened a fixie to a child’s Big Wheel. Once everyone was clear and the cop was finished with his opening testimony, Ginsberg began his cross-examination:

Ginsberg (to Officer Barnum):
“When you approached the rider did she stop?”

Officer Barnum:
“Yes.”

Ginsberg:
“How’d she stop the bike?”

Officer Barnum:
“I don’t know.”

Ginsberg:
“The gear itself stopped the bike.”

Officer Barnum:
“But the gear is not a brake.”

...

Now it was time for Officer Barnum to ask questions. He asked Holland,
“What would you do if your chain broke?”

Holland:
“I would use my feet.”

Officer Barnum:
“What if your leg muscles had a spasm?”

Holland:
“I’m not sure…these are emergency situations.”

Ginsberg interjected with a question for Holland:
“Did any of these situations happen on the day you were stopped?”

Holland:
“No.”