Poor people are skipping meals because they can’t afford what little can be found, and what little they can afford comes with the additional price of standing in line all day.
FWS calculates killing 4,200 of the above birds per year will not put the species in danger. Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Proposal from the Fish and Wildlife Service would allow 30 year permits for ‘incidental taking’ of bald eagles and golden eagles. A few other articles provide more news on the damage from unreliable energy.
Some graphs to show the value of oil produced in North Dakota.
First, the value of production by year from 2010 through December 2015.
To show the impact of volume, next is a graph of the volume of production for the year from 2003 through 2015.
Finally, to see the impact of drop in prices is a graph of the value of monthly production from January 2010 through February 2016. Based on information through mid-April, February was the low point in oil prices. There has been an uptrend since then.
Unreliable energy near Palm Springs, CA. Notice turbines are facing many different directions as indicator of low, irregular output. Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
Renewable energy sources are unreliable because the output is variable and unpredictable. They also require massive subsidies to underwrite installation and production. Here are a few articles I’ve noted that describe the economic and environmental damage from unreliables.
Residential solar power only works because of massive subsidies. Federal taxpayers must provide subsidies through federal tax credits, state taxpayers must provide subsidies through state incentives, and electricity users must provide subsidies through net-metering. If any subsidy goes away, the economics of residential solar collapse.
Article makes the point one more time: unreliable renewables only with heavy subsidies. When Nevada announced plans to cut back the massive cross-subsidy from other consumers, solar installers closed up shop in the state.
Here’s why. Look at the payment given to solar-customers for electricity their site produces but doesn’t use:
Well-earned long term housing Keith Graves will occupy for a several decades. Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
The Bureau of Prisons reports an expected release date of December 24, 2043 for Keith Graves (register number 13523-059).
If you have been following my blog, you recall Mr. Graves was convicted on five counts of human trafficking, one count of drug distribution, and one count of drug possession.
His well-earned sentence was 33 years, 9 months.
Mr. Graves was a key player in a documentary titled The Overnighters, which covered Williston and the oil boom in the Bakken. We now know that Mr. Graves conned the producer and the pastor featured in the documentary along with a large number of women whom he trafficked.
The soon-to-be condition of working light bulbs in Venezuela. Photo by James Ulvog.
One old joke and two new ones:
What did socialists use before candles? Electricity.
Before tree leaves? Toilet paper.
Before the telegraph? Telephone and email.
Was planning to hold on to this post for a while, but the bad news is piling up too fast. Need to print this while it is still of readable length.
Bonus question for the day: What economic system is in place in Venezuela that is producing these results?
4/15 – Yahoo News – In Venezuela, no toilet paper and now lousy phone service– The government distributes dollars as it wishes. It has not provided enough dollars to telephone companies and cable companies for them in turn to pay their providers. As a result several international telecoms have cut off long-distance services to the country. In addition vendors providing cable channels are cutting their services because they haven’t been paid.
As a result, telephone service is deteriorating and the number of channels available on cable TV is dropping.
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have turned the energy world upside down. The massive transition isn’t over. A few articles on the massive benefits of fracking. Part 1 of this discussion here.
Pointing out news that is not news to anyone who has paid attention to the energy business in the recent years, article explains the current volatility is currently disrupting and will continue to disrupt many producers. A lot of producers will go out of business. Keep in mind that the drilling rigs, equipment, and especially the oil under the ground will not vaporize as a result. The know-how to more efficiently drill more productive wells more quickly more cheaply will be around a long time.
Article explains a cited book which makes the point that the shale revolution is just getting started. The improved efficiency producing higher output in the last two years has brought many producers to the point where they can be productive in the $30 or $40 range.
The technology has increased to the point that if prices rebound to slightly higher levels than where they are now would make it possible to bring horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing into conventional oil fields and produce increases there.
The net effect of all these amazing advances is that shale oil will put a cap on how far oil prices can rise. As prices go up a whole bunch of undrilled locations become lucrative.
My rough graph above shows the lousy accuracy of Dr. King’s 1956 projections of natural gas production in the US.
Dr. M. King Hubbert fell in with a fellow named Howard Scott, whom Prof. Priest calls
a magnetic charlatan.
Mr. Scott dreamed of a glorious time in which scientists and engineers would run the world through a powerful Technate or Technocracy Inc. As I havementioned before, I’m not sure if this authoritarian system was more fond of fascism or communism, but it certainly was authoritarian. My inclination is this tended toward fascist, meaning our betters would let us peons own private property but they would tell us what we can do with our property and how we can live.
Dr. King was apparently not a very nice person. The review highlights Dr. King’s approach to knowledge:
It was not enough for him to be right. Someone had to be humiliated in the process. Mr. Inman appears uninterested in pondering the mixture of arrogance and resentment that shaped Hubbert’s personal interactions.
That Dr. King had an overabundance of arrogance is visible if you read through his 1949 and 1956 papers.
Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has turned the energy world upside down. The massive transition isn’t over. A few articles on resilience of the industry.
Oh, and a university report showing no ground water contamination from fracking will be kept from public view. Why? Actual research results contradict the researcher’s stated agenda.
Same article. Different agenda. Different headline.
On to the article…
One County Commissioner says the current facility will be sufficient if it’s upgraded. Airport Director says upgrades to comply with FAA standards would be something in the range of $240M to $350M. At best it would cost as much to upgrade the current facility as it would to build a new airport.
Another county commissioner says the airport is not needed “right now” and therefore shouldn’t be built.
Big implications from a few minor shipments of crude. Also, the OPEC+Russia meeting over the weekend did not result in any agreement to hold production at current levels.
4/19 – Bakken.com – Bakken crude sold as export first time since ban lifted– Not a big story by itself but the implications are huge. Hess Corp. shipped the first-ever load of 175K barrels of Bakken crude to an unspecified European refinery.
How much new housing will Williston need in the next few years? None? Some? A lot? Photo by James Ulvog.
A recurring human foible I see is making an assumption that the immediate past trends will continue in a straight line forever.
In the context of crude oil in general and western North Dakota in particular, the question is whether the slump of the last year will continue for an indefinite period of time (measured in years or even decades) or will there be surges in production at various points?
City officials in Williston give every indication of thinking that the boom is over and will never return. Seems like they are preparing for life in the city and surrounding area to have current level of employment plus only slow growth for decades.
I think that reasoning is why there is opposition from public officials to expanding the airport. Why spend any money on a new airport when you don’t need the extra capacity this afternoon and for the rest of the week? There is no reason to go through all the effort of tearing up farmland when the current airport is sufficient for traffic this month. There are open seats on flight to Minneapolis. Why, I’ll bet the airlines could even add a flight or two if they actually get more customers.
Why not chase all the crew camp facilities out of town? They are not needed. There is enough capacity in apartments and hotels to absorb the number of people who are in crew camps this month, so what purpose is there for ever again having any crew camp capacity in the city? Just force the temporary workers who don’t know how long they will be in the area to sign a one-year lease and everything will be fine. In the alternative, they can just stay in hotel that will only cost $3,000 or $3,500 or more per month. Problem solved.
If you assume that oil prices will stay where they are today for the next several decades and if you assume the number of rigs in North Dakota will stay in the range of 20 or 30 or 40 for a decade or two then you should plan for a city with population at about the current level.
If you assume the trends of the last 12 months will continue for decades, then there is no need for new facilities.
Rounding out the picture of North Dakota oil production based on data released by the state on April 15, 2016, here is a graph of the sweet crude prices in North Dakota from January 2010 through April 2016. Quite visible is the dramatic drop in late 2014. Of particular note is prices have recovered in the last two months.
Next is a graph of the rig count by month. You can also see a dramatic drop starting the end of 2014.
Finally is a graph of the fracklog from January 2012 through February 2016. This is the number of wells that have been drilled yet are uncompleted (DUC) meaning the well is drilled to total depth but the fracking has not yet been done. Basically this is a half million barrels of oil put on the inventory shelf until prices recover. That represents nearly a thousand wells than can be brought on-line rather quickly.
Reports have been in the media for a long time that OPEC will have an unscheduled meeting to discuss production levels. The meeting is tomorrow, 4/17/16.
Finally read an article that makes some sense of why there should be a meeting to freeze production at the currently high, pump-everything-you-can levels which are sustaining the world-wide oversupply.
Average daily production dropped to 1,118,333 bopd (Prelim) in February from 1,122,462 (revised +352 bopd) in January. That is a mere 4,129 bopd decline, or 0.37%.
Here are a few graphs to paint the story. First average monthly production from 2008 through February 2016 showing total for the state and Bakken field only. Included in that graph is a pro forma of what production would have been (based on my wild guess) if the production increased after the winter at the average rate of increase over the preceding 24 months.
Second graph is average production in the state since 1990. Finally, to show the change since 2010 more dramatically is a graph of production since 2004.
