EIA: Annual Energy Outlook 2006
Posted by Prof. Goose on February 15, 2006 - 11:57am
The Annual Energy Outlook 2006 presents a forecast and analysis of US energy supply, demand, and prices through 2030. The projections are based on results from the Energy Information Administration's National Energy Modeling System. The AEO2006 includes the reference case, additional cases examining energy markets, and complete documentation.Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that it was out: (link). (and here's a link to the general forecasting page which links to this report...). I am betting we'll be talking about this over the next few days...
“A third of humanity doesn't want to ride bikes anymore; that has profound geopolitical implications.”
—Anne Korin, the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (May 1, 2005)
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I wonder if they even believe what they're writing?
Our EIA Scenario is not affected today as the extraction forecast in the AEO is based on their reference scenario while we chose their 2005 "high price scenario" which is more conservative than today's outlook. The URR remains exactly the same as the last release an thus does not affect the exhaustion date next century.
All Scenarios and EIA's 1991 outlook is at http://trendlines.ca/economic.htm
Can someone disagree with your outlook and not whine?
If so, tell us how.
Yet pundits here ignore the best Peakist predictions and dwell on their navel gazing and ad nauseum posts that we are post peak. As if our friends from Ireland and the Netherlands had somehow joined "the dark side".
So yes, Bio, it is mere whining.
In 1991, Lynch said we be at 81-mbd in 2005. It was indeed 84. IEA was next best with its 1996 forecast of 80-mbd for 2005. And EIA (aka DOE) saw 79-mbd coming back in 1997.
All the while Campbell foresaw 55-mbd in '91 and upped it to 64 in 1997.
In this our third year of publishing the Scenarios, we continue to see the optimists coming down and the Peakist revising upwards. And IEA's middle-of-the-road outlook continues to represent the likely outcome...
Extremists at both ends of the spectrum face gnashing of teeth each year end. We have two sets of whiners...
Saying April was peak, like the "whiners" on TOD or that production will continue to rise to 120 million (or whatever number) in some far off date?
We both know the answer.
The worry here is that this rate cannot be maintained. The evidence is growing that it cannot.
While I still think your input is needed, it must be noted that the reason some people here think you are a complete douchebag is that you never bring any evidence to the table suggesting the opposite.
Nobody cares about trendlines. I know. I actually follow them. Try providing some indicators that we can continue "producing" oil at 1 or 2 million barrels per day more than the year before for the next few years. Dotted lines on a chart mean nothing.
"The same is true as you pointed out in natural gas where the stocks were reported as going up when one day 2 months ago the EIA web page showed that there was a notice to participants that the pressure readings inside the salt-dome storage capacities were so low that the structural integrity of the pressure chambers was called into question. There's a limit below which the pressure would cause the chamber to collapse. This was reported on the website and immediately removed in a matter of hours later. When you look at the official information on storage there is no record of that low pressure reading in the long term EIA natural gas storage chart. So there's clear evidence that the government is playing around with the storage information for natural gas."
http://financialsense.com/fsn/BP/2006/0204.html#seg4
Has anyone heard anything on this, could it have been true?
Domestic Crude Oil Production
Begins To Decline After 2016
The graph actually shows domestic production bouncing up in a big way between now and 2016.
And this is the assumption that ANWR will not be touched!
I bet the EIA crew comes here and reads this. They say to one another "yep TOD is right on the money, too bad we would get fired if we didn't put out this propaganda.... aka Future energy Outlook".
I wish we would hear more from the Abundant Oilers - if any of you are listening, let me ask you some questions: "How does it feel to have people call you liars? How does it feel to be a part of a system that will lead to the majority of the people being blindsided by some nasty scenarios? If you see that people's lack of the ability to effectively plan has led to massive hardship and even death, will you take any responsibility?"
Come on Abundant Oilers - come out and defend yourself! Get your buddies who aren't on this blog to join and fight using your cold, hard data.
Here is another interesting article:
http://www.mywesttexas.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15933008&BRD=2288&PAG=461&dept_id=474107 &rfi=6
If we drill down, we find that the fudging is getting less and less plausible, even compared to AEO's of a few short years ago. Here's the graph of what they claim for domestic US production (a subject I happen to have looked into somewhat).
In the text surrounding this figure, there are basically no arguments justifying why it's believable. Here are the issues I see.
- The deepwater production is all in the Gulf of Mexico. The last two years in a row, it's been seriously impacted by hurricanes, and the global warming evidence to me suggests this will continue to be a major issue - much more so by 2030 than today. Thus that big increase in deepwater production is, IMO, contingent on figuring out Category-5 proof techniques of subsea oil extraction - I'm not saying that can't be done, but I expect it to spread production of the available reserves out significantly. However, let's let this point slide - I accept that my view is certainly not mainstream yet.
- The lower 48 onshore has been declining at a gradually increasing pace for many years - it's now up to several percent a year. They are proposing that in the future, production will level out and become almost constant (ie the gradually increasing decline rate is doing to gradually decrease back towards zero). No region has ever done this. I don't know why any would - it seems completely implausible.
- Ditto the shallow water offshore which also miraculously levels out.
- The net effect of all this is that, after many years of basically decreasing production (with the odd exception before JD calls me on it), we will now have a sharp trend break and production is going to increase again for most of a decade.
- The area under the curve to 2030 corresponds to about 50gb of oil. Judging by the relatively shallow declines obtaining in 2030, it would seem they are calling for another 50gb-100gb after 2030 before we hit the final URR. Ie, they are estimating total that the US can producing another 100gb-150gb of oil, versus the roughly 190gb we've used to date. My estimate was remaining oil production was 27 ± 8gb. Proved reserves stood at about 22gb at the end of 2004.
Now, maybe some would like to argue their extrapolations are more reliable than mine. What I would have liked to have seen is their argument for why their extrapolations are plausible. There's absolutely no justification provided in the text (see p91). When I see unlikely looking extrapolations, with no justification, which lead to a politically convenient conclusion, I tend to draw the inference that the process which produced the document was too flawed to be worth further reliance on it.... But then again, staring into the sun can make a fellar blind and deranged.
On energyresources a while back (I can't find the ref# dang it!), Glenn Morton <http://home.entouch.net/dmd/Oilcrisis.htm>
ran down a list of the deepwater GOM fields with the projected production rates and the actual, to-date, production rates of those that had started up. All were fairly well below projections. Seems that optimism is the hallmark of any entrepreneurial endeavor. Maybe there is a psychological principle involved which dictates that the higher the stakes, the grosser the exaggerations of projections. We could call it the Kurzweil effect :-)
ET
'Twas ever thus.
Having said that, there are some points in their favor. The deepwater graph shows steady growth interrupted by the recent hurricanes. EIA forecasts that growth will resume. Basically they are assuming that the last couple of years of bad hurricanes were an anomaly. I think that this accurately represents the mainstream meteorological view.
I understand that you don't agree, and that there are those in the community who say that global warming is beginning to have an effect, but even among that group I don't think they would claim that we are going to see a repeat of 2005 every year from now on. Even if the average is getting worse, it is a very slow, gradual climb, and there is a lot of random year to year variation in terms of how any given region will be hit by hurricanes. I doubt that even you would predict that there is a greater than 50-50 chance that 2006 will produce significant hurricane damage to GOM oil production.
As for the rest, my eyeballing of the lower 48 production curve shows it concave upwards. This is exactly what you expect from exponential decrease. Their extrapolation looks just fine, visually.
The main one that I agree is questionable is shallow water, which has been concave downwards but where they show it leveling off. Still, this is the smallest contribution to the overall production so it wouldn't change the main conclusion much.
As far as your estimate of 27 +- 8 GB remaining, does that include deepwater offshore? Kind of an awkward question, I'd think. The HL technique doesn't exactly respect geographical boundaries. You draw a curve and fit a line. If that curve includes the beginning of a ramp-up of deepwater production, then what, the line automagically knows how much will come from that region? I don't think so!
That's what a constant decline rate matching the 1990-2004 data would do (the red line). So they are definitely assuming that decline rates are going to get milder in the future for some reason. However, don't forget that over the long haul growth/decline rates have been fairly continously, if noisily, getting worse, not staying constant:
So even the exponential is likely over-optimistic.
In response to your point on extrapolating the Hubbert Linearization (which indeed was of all US production in including Alaska and GoM deepwater): it obviously is feeling the beginning of the deepwater GoM bump because it has been going on for a decade or so. However, if one felt that there was a very large amount of GoM such that only a tiny fraction of it had been so far developed or proved up, the linearization would miss that (I agree). I do not believe that is the situation - there is not large amounts of unproved discovery out there (Bubba could speak more strongly to this). It's possible GoM will push things up towards the top of my error bars, but I see no reason to revise my estimate at this point.
There is some disagreement between all three sources (EIA, MMS and World Oil) but it is relatively minor up to about the year 2012. Even outside of hurricanes, only a very minor bump can be expected from GOM oil production. And it looks like the MMS predicts that GOM production actually peaks in the 2009 to 2011 period. Somehow, the EIA has GOM production increasing after that to about 2016/2017 or so. Needless to say, I'm skeptical about that.
And of course Stuart's Lower 48 estimate is real based on historical decline rates. The EIA's is an unsubstantiated fantasy that doesn't seem to consider declines at all.
But really, it changes my conclusions very little. The peak is 2011 at about 2.2/mbpd for GOM oil production. Again, no disruption from hurricanes.
As far as GOM deepwater, their graph seems to show a good 15+ GB coming out of there, but I don't know if that is plausible or not. I don't see how the USA-based Hubbert curve could predict the GOM total, since we are so early in its production history at least as shown on the EIA extrapolation.
I couldn't figure how to post the picture, but this link gets you to an interesting graphic.
http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2005/09sep/hurricane.cfm
http://home.att.net/~thehessians/disasterwatch.html
"THE COMING HURRICANE SEASON - The director of the National Hurricane Center is warning Americans that the 2005 hurricane season may end up being mild compared to 2006. The effects of an El Nino weather system in the Pacific that raises ocean temperatures could increase the intensity of hurricanes this year. He says far too many residents ignored hurricane evacuation requests in 2005."
Mars Tension Leg Platform BK MC 807 is at 3250 ft water depth and should produce 220,000 BOPD and 220 MMCFD
Good discussion of the Magnolia field development ($ 600 MM) at 4,700 ft water depth 180 miles south of Cameron, Lousiana, in Garden Banks blocks 783 and 784. Magnolia will tieback to Shell Enchilada Plfm 50 miles away.
http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/magnolia/
Notice the graphic showing the increase in TLP depths over the years from 1000 to 4000 ft.
As near as I know, 5000 ft depth is thought to be the limit for anything to be semi-attached (using Tension Legs) to the ocean bottom. Water deeper than that requires a semisubmersible and a lota' anchors. Anadarko's et al Mississippi Canyon block 920, in a water depth of 8,000 feet
will serve as a hub for the development of 17 (!) blocks in the surrounding area. Cost $ 400 MM. Project fiche is here.
http://www.anadarko.com/news/news_release_detail.asp?r=1&id=642680
A new pipeline from Magnolia to the beach would run (I estimate 2 MM/mile) = $360 MM so total would be a cool $1E9, so that's out of the question. Besides, as the older shallower fields run out, the existing pipelines gain excess capacity, so they'll naturally want to take advantage of those existing assets. I finally started to feel my 38 year age one day when I arrived on Galveston 144 to inspect the old plfm there to see if it was suitable for removal and recycling it as a pipeline junction platform we needed over towards Corpus Christi. I had designed the pipelines that connected 144 and 146 across the Galveston Anchorage Area and Galveston Shipping Fairway to the beach 10 years earlier, but it had finally run out of gas and was being decommissioned (that was 1988). The pipelines are still there waiting for a deeper strike in the vicinity to come along.
I think this year there are probably a lot of offshore platform engineers running around in Houston updating their design wave height much higher than the 54 ft they used before.
Yes, yes, but that NOT accurately represent the mainstream CLIMATOLOGY view. There are some diferences between climatologists and meteorologists. Science is one diference...
Bsically, the meteorologists give no explanation for the "anomaly" while the climatologists MAINSTREAM vision is that Greenhouse Warming is real. There are almost no controversie between climatologists currently, the GW is mainstream between climatologists and the "sceptics" lose the last terrain they had the last year because 3 scientific papers showed that the troposphere was going warmer as predicted by the GW's models. The "sceptics" are being reduced to say that the GW will be not so strong as the models say it will be, because they were forced to admit that there are GW.
We too need take note that the Pacific's Typhoons are geting more intense the last years too and that the meteorologists cannot explain it. While the meteorologists say that there is a Gulf's anomality they cannot say that there is an Pacific's anomality, see you, the Pacific Ocean have too much water to have an "anomality", anything happening to the Pacific Ocean is mainstream and not an anomality. So, the only explanation for the Pacific's Typhoons geting more intense is GW.
The meteorologists have no explanation for the "Gulf's anomality". They cannot give a physical explanation for that "phenomenum", they simply give no explanation, nada. The only scientific papers explaining it show a strong correlation between warmer Gulf's waters and stronger hurricanes. But meteorologists are having a strong aversion to link the dots and say that GW is geting the Gulf's waters warmer. The problem is that there is no other explanation for the Pacific's waters geting warmer, only Greenhouse Warming. And there are scientific papers that show a correlation between warmer Pacific's waters and stronger Typhoons...
The scientific vision is that there are GW. There is no real controversy between the scientists. The TV's meteorologists are not following the scientific trend for now. The meteorologists will need sooner or later to account the GW effect to make correct weather predictions or they will have problems if they continue to predict a weak hurricane season at the year start and after they change the prediction for a strong hurricane season (yes, that happened the last years... see you, that is the reason there is a hurricane "specialist" that never get a wrong prediction about the hurricane season, he ever change his predictions from "weak season" to "strong season" when start to be evident that will be a strong hurricane season).
And while we maybe not have a strong hurricane season this year (well, USA can get lucky, luck happens), strong and maybe stronger hurricane seasons will happen because there are Greenhouse Warming (don't count on good luck forever, Fortuna is capricious). By the way, while maybe there is not a strong hurricane season this year, it is problable that the summer will be very hot because the winter is being warm. Take note that very hot summers make the energy consumption go up to he sky, all that people using air conditioners. And there are a good deal of electric energy that come from oil...
João Carlos
Sorry my bad english, my native language is portuguese.
I happen to be well acquainted with a National Weather Service meteorologist.On several occasions I tried to get his thoughts on climate change. He seemed to be completely disinterested in it. Their entire focus in on getting the short-term forecast somewhere near right. In my words, meteorologists study the noise not the trends.
In all likelyhood we will see more seasons nearly as active as 05, as the trend is for the next fifteen years or so to see above normal activity. This is from both the meteorologists and the climatologists. (And some mets really do care about this stuff) :)
This is from NOAA's forecast for the 2005 season:
"3. Multi-decadal fluctuations in Atlantic hurricane activity
Historically, Atlantic hurricane activity has exhibited very strong multi-decadal variability, with alternating periods lasting several decades of generally above-normal or below-normal activity.
Hurricane seasons during 1995-2004 have averaged 13.6 tropical storms, 7.8 hurricanes, 3.8 major hurricanes, and with an average ACE index of 159% of the median. NOAA classifies all but two of these ten seasons (El Niño years of 1997 and 2002) as above normal, and six of these years as hyperactive. If the 2005 season verifies as predicted, it will be the seventh hyperactive season in the last 11 years. In contrast, during the preceding 1970-1994 period, hurricane seasons averaged 9 tropical storms, 5 hurricanes, and 1.5 major hurricanes, with an average ACE index of only 75% of the median. NOAA classifies twelve (almost one-half) of these 25 seasons as being below normal, only three as being above normal (1980, 1988, 1988), and none as being hyperactive."
In other words, every 25 years or so hurricane activity "flips" from an inactive mode to an active one. Since we are still a few years away from even the mid-point of the latest active cycle, and since SST's in the Gulf and Carribean have been at record levels the past few years, with no sign of a reversal in the trend, we are almost assured of several more seasons like 05.
ET
It looks like they have deliberately 'wiggled' the line to make it look more believable.
How can they predict such a 'noisy' curve?
Even if domestic production could rise, an increase of around 35% until 2030 in Oil consumption is completely unrealistic. Probably not even CERA would came out with something like this.
As for prices, projections these days are completely useless. When the heat turns around the corner some economies will simply colapse, progressively easying away prices. But as production continues to fall prices will go up again and other economies will in turn fall.
These kind of reports are very very dangerous.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/forecasting/04842000.pdf
I don't actually know how one would do a good comparison ... perhaps a plot of their five year previous projection alongside the actual outcome? I'd expect to see them "trailing reality"
Looking at the history of their previous projections compared to what subsequently happened is certainly an important level of response.
Because of their importance in the public's eye, that history should always be but one click away on TOD.
I suggest that major arguments that have been slowly developed here be easily accessible. The crtique of their reliability as forecasters should be high among our arguments.
One click away. Put these in a sidebar. Unfortunately, blog structures allow major arguments to be slowly buried. Not a good structure.
I tried that once but on three years:
Their predictions don't mean much!
And you can't just blame EIA for this. It's the nature of, well, reality. I've tried to explain this before. The future is unpredictable and nobody knows what future prices will be. People do their best to guess at them but those are only guesses.
Due to the nature of oil, its ease in storage (namely, just leave the stuff in the ground!), the market automatically adjusts prices not only on the basis of today's supply and demand, but based on its guesses of supply and demand for the next several years. This means that expected and anticipated oil prices can never be much different than today's prices plus a modest percentage increase. Otherwise today's prices will adjust to erase the difference.
So it's not the EIA's fault that they tend to forecast future prices as being about the same as present ones. They are just listening to the combined wisdom of every person in the world who is working in oil related businesses and investing in oil markets. And it's true: the whole world has been wrong. They have been surprised about the future. Some people conclude from this that the world is stupid. My conclusion is that the future is surprising.
If you really think the world is stupid, then you ought to find it easy to become rich. And maybe you do; if so, good for you. But my experience is that it's not easy to get rich or, well, everybody would be doing it.
Like someone else said, it would be great to get these cornucopians come and post here. We would likely end up with a permanent flamefest. We'd need a separate site to flare off the flamefest, maybe flareingrefinery.com?
Heck, in an unpredictable market ... one might project predictability in an attempt to promote stability.
I know of many "experts" in other fields who were frequently and consistantly wrong. Few people have a lock on truth. Look at the breadth of people at TOD trying to devine the true state of oil based on data sets. Imagine a much smaller group with similar viewpoints/worldviews interpreting the data. They could all come to the same conclusion and all be equally wrong.
All of us who promote peak oil are currently being called incompentent (or worse). And this would be proved true (the incompetence part) in the future if production keeps going up!
I'll likely break from my recent pattern and read this edition, even though my wife gets tired of hearing me yell, "Oh-- COME ON!" every 5 minutes.
Now think: If you knew what they new, wouldn't you want to be on drugs?
I have another problem with stockpiles. Trying to explain the huge increases in gasoline stocks, I tried to compare them with the difference in total gasoline supplied (ie gasoline sold) and the total gasoline imports and output from refineries. I must say that I cannot explain the increase in stocks (as I can't explain the huge decreases like in July 2005 for example). I mainly work on the weekly summary from EIA. Any suggestions ? Are there unknown buffers for gasoline (but the same holds for fuel, kerosene and even crude) ?
With this bunch running the show, I see no reason why they would not do it.
He goes on to talk about bad data, long reporting periods, in many corners of the world ... reminds us that not everyone has US style accounting rules, etc.
To be more specific, today's example.
Gasoline imports : 1094 kb (kb=1000 barrels)
Gasoline output from refineries : 8526 kb
Gasoline sold : 9083 kb
exces production : 537 kb
in the same time : stock of gasoline increases 2115 kb
... with american acounting rules. This is going on since the beginning. I must be missing something, there must be inputs in the stock I don't see or my reasoning is just wrong.
- One part of total production is recirculated or directly invested into production as an energy source for example
- Another little part is exported
thank you.My source : EIA
How far are they out of whack?
S! Maybe they're using too much gasoline to refine more, or they're re-refining it... or its another Enron deal showing the auditors the same assets, from one tank farm to another ;-)
- It contains what it does because they were stoned
- They were told what to write and subsequently got stoned in order to write it up
I favor case #2 since the current administration can not justify tax breaks to the oil companies unless the EIA maintains the illusion that new E&P activities will, in fact, result in finding more oil--even though as most of us here know that oil does not actually exist or in most cases can not be recovered. Though there is that "technically recoverable potential" from CO2 injection that HO mentioned the other day. I point you to Table 18 from this EIA document (pdf) from the report.Technically recoverable U.S. crude oil resources as of January 1, 2004 (billion barrels)
Proved Unproved Total
23.1 124.1 147.2
Note that whichever subcase you prefer, they were stoned in either case. However the theory is not testable and is only a reasonable inference working backwards from the actual contents of the AEO2006.
- They were seriously stoned when they wrote it.
- Then they got more stoned when they finished and began dropping mass quantities of acid in hopes of happy hallucinations.
. . . but it turned into a bad trip.Not to be conspiracy-minded, but I'm just curious what expertise we have here to answer this question?
Possibilities:
- Hiding M3 stats and printing more currency?
- Using hedge funds through 3rd parties?
- Altering US EIA and MMS data?
What else?- Inflation all 5 recent years is stable and stuck around 2%. However I and most people I know don't feel like it; of course I can not prove it but IMO the cost of living has risen much more than 10%. I'd say 20% would be much closer.
- GDP growth - no comment here, but that same sub-personality tells me that if you "lower" inflation/deflators you "raise" GDP.
- Unemployment - also stuck in the middle 4%-s in spite of evidence of growing population, loss of jobs overseas etc. This one is less suspisious, but still...
Overall it could be true and could be false, I don't have enough information to decide. any ideas?Also anecdotal, but an annualized CPI of 2% over the past five years seems absurd to me. In my case, it's closer to 7%. Someone's cooking the books.
http://www.gillespieresearch.com/cgi-bin/bgn/
(and links upper right of page to other articles in the series)
A bit more about employment in the middle of this:
http://www.safehaven.com/article-4591.htm
And on inflation measures:
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/0624.html
If we were measuring these data now in the same way the US did 20 years ago I would guess the reality to be:
CPI inflation: +6%
GDP yearend 2005 yoy: +0.5%
Unemployment: 7.5%
Especially the last one. I wonder... if the evidence presented for inflation manipulation leaks into the financial market what will be the effect? I have that little feeling that the major players have that information already and know that the end-game is near. It is hard for me to believe they are not having their plan B when it comes to it, and are relying on the little dummies to pay the whol multiTrillion bill (yeap with T). Plan A we know of - GAU (greed as usual), but I wonder what is plan B?
GDP growth is also books-into-meth. GDP is calculated by the addition of ALL economic activity. If you buy a TV, that adds GDP. But so does it add to GDP when your father gets cancer and undergoes a million bucks' worth of ICU care. Same with building a house shredded by a hurricane. And also it adds to GDP when housing prices climb faster than a space shuttle with steroid-laced fuel.
And unemployment is also a case of books well-done. Has been for as long as I was aware of economics. An obvious omission is "discouraged workers" who ran out of unemployment benefits and still jobless.
Of course, the books are cooked for political expediency. Gotta keep the masses from panicking you know! ANY wannabe dictator knows that! Cooking books is as old as the hills. It happens on corporate scale all the time. A company with a union will cook books and put out propaganda to get leverage in negotiations. This is predictable with the postal service, When contracts come up, the postal service "loses money". During intervening 3 year periods, they "gain" it all back, resulting in break-even over the long run. (until collapse, anyways)
A good project would be to dig up economic stats before and after major elections. The incumbent wants to keep his party in power! As far as the oil reports, my bet is they sure wanted to get stoned after putting out the solid bull emissions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11356890/
(excerpt)
Gasoline bottlenecks?
Bottlenecks may also be looming for U.S. gasoline supplies, which could make the recent drop in pump prices only a temporary reprieve.
"This is a bipolar market," said Kloza. "We're in probably the advance stages of one of the more depressive phases, but I think the manic phase is going to follow in the second and third quarter of this year."
What will drive prices back up again? For starters, demand typically rises in summer, which will add upward pressure on prices.
There are also several potential bottlenecks that could put a crimp in gasoline supplies. Though most refiners damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita are now back on line, the rest of the industry was forced to postpone routine maintenance to keep the markets supplied. As those refiners begin to go offline to take care of maintenance and repairs, that lost production could tighten supplies.
Gasoline stocks could also get tighter as dealers in many parts of the country switch to so-called reformulated blends for summer, which are required to make fuel burn cleaner and prevent smog. Until recently, that meant using a fuel additive called MTBE. But after the chemical was found seeping into groundwater, and chemical makers failed to win liability protection in last year's Energy Policy Act, most refiners have stopped using MTBE. The only available substitute is ethanol, which is more costly.
I like that metaphor.
N.B. manic-depressives typically suicide not at the bottom of the depressive cycle but when they are on the beginning of an upswing off a deep low.
There has been a lot of pretty good socilogical research done on revolutions. IMO, the best one is still the classic by Crane Brinton, in which he compared American, French, Russian, and I think was English revolution of 1688. ANATOMY OF REVOLUTION is the title.
Every time a new book comes out, I reread an old one.
Right click and View Image to see bigger version)
A democracy is based upon informed choice. This document intentionally undermines the truth, and therefore undermines democracy and the Constitution.
It's not funny.
- Laugh
- Cry
- Puke
Well I prefer to laugh.This parameter was invented in order to make growing greenhouse emissions look like they are diminishing, by dividing by GDP.
There is a meeting in March, put on by DOE. All scientists should show up and protest.
I have no money, but if such an event took place, I would find enough to go.
I suspect the conclusion the regime started with was that Republican success in the mid-term elections was not likely to be helped by high oil prices. Looking at the supply situation realistically, the gang-in-charge decided that, in light of real world supply constraints, talking down the price of oil was the best course of action. Hence more disinformation.
Are there analysts at the EIA who will confirm or deny my suspicion that they have been led to produce evidence to support prior (political)conclusions?
doug gabelmann
ottawa
All of this will start turning around the other way as Europe stops importing within a few weeks or earlier (since all their MBTE gas must be sold by the end of March), and gas stocks will drop rapidly as March progresses. This should offer some solice to the crude market. Besides, by that time the hedge fund guys that have been panicking about too much inventory will have all sold out. Plus we'll start worrying about a hot summer around the corner.
Interesting, I had not heard this up till now. One question I have is why Europe needs to get rid of the gasoline with MTBE in it. Are they phasing out their use of MBTE as well? I thought MTBE use in gasoline started in Europe, and that they are still using it. If so, why would they need to liquidate stocks of this fuel?
If anyone else knows more about this please comment as well - thanks.