gildone

Al-Naimi Says Saudi Oil Output Below Target; Stockpiles to Fall http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBL_62gRgvrE&refer=home# By Christian Schmollinger and Shigeru Sato April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest oil exporter, is producing less crude than its target and global stockpiles are likely to decline, according to Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi. The country is producing less than 8 million barrels of crude a day, al-Naimi told reporters today in Tokyo, where he is attending a meeting of Asian energy ministers. Stockpiles “will come down eventually,” he said. U.S. stockpiles have climbed to the highest since September 1990 even as Saudi Arabia leads the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ efforts to implement a 4.2 million barrel a day reduction in oil output from the group’s September levels... The country is producing 7.79 million barrels a day, less than its target of 8.1 million barrels a day. To contact the reporter on this story: Christian Schmollinger in Tokyo at [email protected]; Shigeru Sato in Tokyo at [email protected]; Last Updated: April 25, 2009 08:43 EDT

^again, technology isn't the problem, it's how much oil there is left to get.

^This is an area where liberals and conservatives can agree. I think Mr. Shaengold misunderstands that "liberal-minded" people tend to like walkable communities and transit and locally-based economies for the same reasons he says conservatives should. Of course, I'm tired of the national obsession of pigeon-holing everyone in America as one or the other and nothing else. I would have to say that a majority of Americans have ideas and beliefs that can be found all over this narrowly-defined political spectrum. I know mine are.

Past performance is not a predictor of future results. We are very good at finding oil. As has already been pointed out to you, oil discoveries peaked in the '60s. The reality we are in is that the world needs to discover about a Saudi Arabia's worth of oil (~260 bbl) every 8 years, just to keep up. There are no more Saudi Arabia's left. All the technology in the world, current or future, isn't going to change that.

Perhaps this needs its own thread, like "The Future of Automobile Transportation" or something (I'll let the mods decide)... but the developed world seems to be hoping that we can just switch out gasoline for something else in our cars... like lithium batteries. As it turns out, this would just make the developed world dependent upon yet another finite resource that it doesn't have: Lithium. Recently, there was an excellent article in the UK paper, The Daily Mail, on this very subject. See below. One thing the developed world, particularly the US, needs to come to grips with is that the question needs to shift from "how do we keep all of the cars running?", to "Is car-based transportation at developed world levels really sustainable?" I strongly urge everyone to read this article... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1166387/In-search-Lithium-The-battle-3rd-element.html# In search of Lithium: The battle for the 3rd element The good news: A wonder metal that fires your phone, iPod and shiny new electric car is so clean it may save the planet. The bad news: More than half of the world's lithium is beneath this Bolivian desert...and getting it is so dirty it inspired the latest Bond plot By DAN McDOUGALL April 5, 2009 Salar De Uyuni in Bolivia Salar De Uyuni in Bolivia is a little-known but expansive desert of Cactus, rainwater lagoons and ten billion tons of salt covering nearly 5,000 square miles Darkness falls across the Andes, turning the distant snow caps from blinding white to nothingness in the blink of an eye. From the east, the night races across the bleak Altiplano towards us, as the temperature plummets to below zero, leaving the windswept emptiness of the planet's largest salt plain in a vast cold shadow....

Eighth and State answered this just fine. I only want to add: don't make the mistake of thinking that technology = energy. It doesn't.

the American way of life... with its wasteful use of energy and massive consumption of disposable consumer items is not sustainable. The world is already consuming resources faster than the earth can replenish them. We can have a high standard of living and high quality of life without all the waste. Either the world gets its collective act together, or the economy, and the standard of living that some of the world has and the rest of the world wants, is toast.

Just like with respect to transportation, there is no free market in the energy sector either. Energy companies of various sorts have lobbied for and received tax breaks and subsidies of various kinds. The US has a military presence in the vast majority of places where there is oil, the cost of which is not reflected in the price. The full cost of air pollution from burning fossil fuel isn't reflected in the price either. We've let coal companies blow up entire mountains without any accounting of the costs of polluted watersheds, stressed communities, lost ecosystem services, etc. Because their survival in elections depends upon it, politicians aim to keep energy prices cheap to the end users regardless of or not those prices reflect the true cost of providing that energy. In the case of oil, there has to be, or at this point I should be saying... there should have been a long term national strategy to reduce our dependence on oil decades ago. In the case of oil, we are so dependent upon it and there is no single source of energy that can replace it (and no single resource that can replace all of the other things oil does for us), that the lead time needed to be a good 20 years or more before the real trouble began. Remember, you don't know for sure when the peak hits until after it happens. While we may currently be in a temporary reprieve, the real trouble started in 2005 when we first hit the (slightly undulating) plateau of oil production. The price signals hit the market with a dangerously short, and very likely inadequate time frame for a smooth transition.

Gillmor... Subler... the playbook is always the same, isn't it? These guys have no idea how stale and empty their argument is...

I suppose the only way to look at this is on the bright side. Let's keep our fingers crossed...

^Why Cleveland-Toledo and not Cleveland-Detroit? (I'm not complaining, just wondering...)

^I can't believe that in today's day and age it's that difficult, labor intensive, or expensive to winterize a rail car.

I'm all for splitting the Lake Shore into separate trains, but I'm sure that would require infrastructure investment in the route, not just additional equipment. On a similar note...the best think Amtrak could do with the Lake Shore Limited would be to not forget that winter comes every year and properly winterize their cars.

I think what Simmons is getting at is that depletion is catching up due to lack of investment. Yes, there is a lot of oil sitting around right now, but as depletion catches up, those stocks well diminish. I think his 3-9 month estimate has to do with how long those stocks will last. And, since investment in drilling has plummeted, we're not doing a good job of maintaining the plateau we've been on for nearly 4 years now. I often wonder how much of the Saudi's "production cuts" are really just net depletion: Additional drilling they have done (mostly heavy oil) minus depletion in Ghawar

Matt Simmons: Oil Price Shock in 3-9 months: http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersComService_3_MOLT/idUSTRE52P2D620090326 Financier sees oil shock from credit crunch Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:56am EDT By Christopher Johnson LONDON (Reuters) - The global financial crisis and collapse in the oil market have stalled vital investment in oil exploration and production and are likely soon to lead to a sharp spike in prices, an energy consultant and financier says. Matt Simmons, founder of Houston-based investment bank Simmons & Co, argues the underlying rate of decline of the world's aging oilfields is as much as 20 percent a year and only high levels of investment can reduce that to single digits. With credit tight and oil prices almost $100 a barrel below their highs last year, oil companies are unable to sustain previous levels of spending and the result is falling production, he said in an interview on Thursday... .........

Spirit Air to begin charging a fee... for buying a ticket: (anywhere other than a Spirit Air ticket counter). Spirit Airlines: Fee For Buying Tickets http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604492886515417.html This is getting ridiculous, IMHO. By implementing all these different fees instead of just sucking it up and raising their fares, they are just further complicating things. They need to keep their fare structures simple and easy to understand.

Went to the public meeting last night. I thought the meeting would cover the Front Street grade separation project as well as an introduction to Mayor Kleem's concepts for the north end of Front St after the project is finished. As it turns out, it just covered the grade separation project. The project is going to take 2 1/2 years. It will be completed in September 2011. So, I guess we'll have to wait a while to see Mayor Kleem's concepts/plan. Anyway, everyone was supportive of the project, but those who live along or off of Rocky River Drive were understandably concerned about traffic and whether or not they'll be able to get out of their driveways and side streets. The power point that ODOT gave is here: http://www.dot.state.oh.us/districts/D12/Documents/03.24.09SR237Presentation.pdf

^Most recently it was Toth Buick, but it doesn't matter because it has been closed for a few years now. I think what was Penton Printing is now Color Matrix. Not a printer anymore, but a blender of pigments. The DIY has been re-habbed and is now the new location of Fosbel (relocated from about 1/2 mile away), maker of some sort of hi-tech ceramic parts. The only restaurant left is Nuevo Acapulco, which seems to be holding its own. There are a couple of bars too, but I've never been in any of them. Other than that, that part of front street consists of a Burger King, KFC, a self serve car wash, a towing company, a laundromat, Berea Hardware, NAPA Auto parts, a tire dealer and a few auto repair shops.

^somebody who was at the press conference better correct Mr. Hallet.

^Urban freeway lane miles can be very expensive, particularly when land acquisition is involved. I read about an urban freeway expansion project somewhere in southern california in the 1990s that cost over $100 million per mile. Meanwhile, Denver's first light rail line was built for about $27.6 million per mile. South Carolina DOT, for example, said in 2008 that it would cost and average of $20 million/mile to add a lane in each direction to their existing interstates-- and that's just an average for adding a lane to an existing freeway. In urban areas, it often requires land acquisition which makes the price skyrocket. SCDOT estimates the cost to re-construct a single urban interchange at $40 million, and a rural one $35 million (http://www.scdot.org/inside/multimodal/pdfs/InterstateCorridorPlanSummary.pdf). Didn't someone here say the central interchange project in Columbus is going to cost around $1 billion? Don't the soundwalls alone in Ohio that ODOT is building cost about $3 million per mile (I seem to recall someone posting that on UO somewhere). Maybe Noozer can correct me, but isn't the Ohio Hub is going to cost around $6 million/mile (back in '02 it was about $3.5 million, but costs have gone up-- as they always do). Rail is not as expensive as O'Toole tries to say. What really got me was when he said that the automobile is the most egalitarian form of transportation there is. Oh really? Then why in this economic downturn are vehicle miles traveled down, but intercity rail and urban transit usage up? What about the 8.6% of Ohio households that don't have cars (That number goes way up when you look at inner city populations). What about the older people who become less able and willing to drive as they age? I have many older and aging relatives who fall into this category. If the auto is so egalitarian, then our population wouldn't lose mobility as they age.

Found this post on the All_Aboard discussion list on yahoo groups: >>How about this for irony; Mr. O'Toole back in the early 1980's wrote decent pro-rail articles for Passenger Train Journal. Also, I was told that he belongs to the NRHS chapter in the Seattle area (Pacific Northwest Chapter, I think). Imagine, a train buff who is against trains! --MJA<< Sure would be fun to get our hands on those articles!

This video has a shot of the last streetcar run in Columbus at around 58 seconds and about a 2 second shot of a train in Columbus Union Station at the end (can't see too much, but what the heck...):

BuckeyeB, relax. I started this out by saying: "Good thing that reality is overwhelming the arguments of people like O'Toole and the "think tanks" they are shills for." Why is it on UO? Because it's not smart to forget about the opposition, even if it is beyond ridiculous. If you ask me, it's almost becoming funny. O'Toole is kind of like "Baghdad Bob".

The list is now up to 15 states that support intercity passenger rail. How much more proof does the Ohio Senate need?

This was on NPR. Good thing that reality is overwhelming the arguments of people like O'Toole and the "think tanks" they are shills for. His "opinion" below is a good example of: if the facts don't conform your argument, start making up your facts. I'm only sending this along to remind people that these folks haven't gone away. You can make comments on NPR's website at the link below if you wish: Trains Are For Tourists http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102068196 by Randal O'Toole NPR.org, March 19, 2009 · When I went to Europe, I loved to ride the trains, especially the French TGV and other high-speed trains. So President Obama's goal of building high-speed rail in the United States sounded good at first. But when I looked at the details, I discovered that — while high-speed rail may be good for tourists — it isn't working very well in Europe or Japan...