MUENCHHAUSEN
AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT
ENVIRONMENT, ENERGY,
RENEWABLE
RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS
By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD 20817
JJGREENBARON(at)VERIZON.NET
===============================================================
January 3, 2015
===============================================================
RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS
By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD 20817
JJGREENBARON(at)VERIZON.NET
===============================================================
January 3, 2015
===============================================================
WELCOME!
The Green Baron (TGB) welcomes one and all who
take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to "tell it like
it is" as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions.
There are enough of those to go around in other publications. The Green Baron
also welcomes comments from anyone who may read Muenchhausen.
Please send comments to the e-mail address above.
HAPPY "GNU" YEAR!
Yes, 2015 is what's "gnu", and I am sure that those poor antelopes are fed up with that tired old pun. But then, TGB has never met a bad pun he didn't like.
Here is what's "gnu". (1)
ENJOY IT WHILE YOU CAN!
TGB is referring to the recent rapid drop in
automotive fuel prices. TGB also is enjoying them, but he has a sneaking suspicion
that this situation, happy for the consumer but unhappy for many in power,
including owners of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), soon will come to the proverbial
screeching halt and be reversed. How and when “normalcy”—if “normalcy” is how
the previous price situation can be characterized—will be restored, TGB
hesitates to guess. But he does expect that such restoration will start in the
near future and be steadily rapid through constant increases in prices.
Increases in fuel taxes, he believes, will be imposed at a steady pace.
TGB just heard a news report (2) that sales
of large vehicles such as sport utility vehicles (SUVs), pickup trucks, and
large automobiles have been surging recently. Given the current lower motor
fuel prices, this should not be surprising. The same news report said that
dealers are offering incentives to buy smaller cars. TGB, however, believes
that smaller cars will soon come back into vogue as fuel prices return to the
normal quasi-cartel control (however “normal” might be defined).
Service station, Berryville, VA. Photo by Will Watson, National Press Club.
A factor of the fuel price dip is sharply
increased oil and gas production in the United States, mainly through updated
extraction technologies, including hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). Another
may be actions by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to increase oil production; this
is partly geopolitical and is aimed partly at disrupting the oil economies of
nations such as Iran and Russia. Indeed, it is arguable that this combination
of these and other factors has led to the current weakening of the economic
power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). How long
OPEC will remain this weak is, in TGB’s view, open to question. Nevertheless,
the government of Iran has referred to the current oil price drop as
“treachery”.
“LAWFARE” AGAINST FRACKING
Several factors could contribute to curtailing
oil/gas production. Among them may be efforts to reduce the pace of fracking in
some places. Indeed, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of the State of New York, has,
in effect, ordered a ban on the process in that state. TGB believes it possible
that in other states of the US, similar bans may be brought about by
legislative or executive action, or perhaps by court order. Environmental
groups are filing lawsuits to put a stop to fracking and TGB would not be
astonished by a veritable blizzard of such suits. And—please bear with TGB for
a bit of cynicism—some of the expenses of these lawsuits are possibly paid by
the SWFs of member-nations of OPEC, plus the Russian Federation. TGB cannot yet
prove this to the extent that it would stand up in a court, but he believes
that this supposition is not unreasonable. TGB has seen such tactics
characterizes as “lawfare”, an approach to warfare through legal systems; a
current salient example may be found in the Palestinian campaigns against
Israel.
Gov. Cuomo: Banned fracking in NY (3)
TGB might add that in some quarters, there was hope that Cuomo would lift this ban. These hopes were to be dashed (4).
AN ABUNDANT SUPPLY (?)
Bill Colton, chief strategist for Exxon Mobil, forecasts an abundant supply of hydrocarbons essentially into the foreseeable future; perhaps one could even characterize his view as sanguine (5). He predicts that the US will be a major exporter of hydrocarbon fuels and feedstocks therefor by 2025, and said, "Peak oil theorists have been run out of town by American ingenuity" (the hypothesis that world oil production has peaked for all time and that production always will decrease from now on).
Colton: Sees abundant oil/gas to far future. (6)
Somehow, TGB is not as sanguine as Colton appears to be. TGB believes that major efforts will be made in various quarters to curtail hydrocarbon production sharply to restore prices and increase them further and, yes theoretically to stop and reverse climate change and force conversion to renewable resources. (Nuclear? Actually fraught with environmental problems and not politically palatable.) That is a goal TGB would love to see accomplished; there is, after all, more renewable energy immediately available than humanity, even with its large numbers, for millennia to come. However, can someone explain to TGB how all this renewable energy is to be accumulated, concentrated, stored, and distributed to support economies such as exist in the world today? He awaits a suggestion for a system or systems.
REFERENCES:
1. http://naturalworldoflivingthings.blogspot.com/2012/12/what-is-gnu.html
2. News report, WMAL, Washington, DC, Jan. 2, 2015, 16:00 EST.
3. Photo:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo
4. Gallay, P. "Why Andrew Cuomo Banned Fracking in New York". http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-gallay/why-andrew-cuomo-banned-f_2_b_6388228.html
5. Fahey, J. "Exxon sees abundant oil, gas far into future". http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e0a2729f04c14578b2c7183ffb2a4b5f/exxon-sees-abundant-oil-gas-far-future
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