While other nations take a wait and see approach, the shale gas boom is zooming forward in the US. If we combine the abundance of the resource with the proper policy choices (for example, the Zubrin plan for an open transportation fuel mandate), shale gas can completely change the energy landscape. However, we must be sensitive to the environmental concerns of others and make wise policy choices on the environmental front as well. Some are wondering whether shale is a false boon and really just a disaster waiting to happen – but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can serve both the energy and the environmental constituencies if both are willing to give a little to get a little. This is a time for leadership; unfortunately, in an election year, we are receiving too much demagoguery on both sides.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Fracking causes collapse in gas prices, decline in energy profits
February 21, 2012Profits for energy companies are down across the spectrum, due to the gas glut caused by the fracking revolution.
Islamic Feminism
January 20, 2012The rise of female leaders in the Islamist movement strikes many westerners as oxymoronic. In a new paper published in Politics and Religion, Arizona State University professors Jeffry Halverson and Amy Way analyze the contradictions between feminism on the one hand and Islamism on the other. They then use a case study method focusing on two female leaders from the Islamist movement. The study “reveals the existence of ‘Islamist feminism,’ distinguished from broader secular-oriented Islamic feminism, as a logical, albeit unique, extension, and expression of Muslim anti-colonial discourse rooted in the intellectual currents of twentieth century independence movements that still resonate today.”
This fascinating paper raises many questions. Perhaps feminism was never really a Western discourse to begin with – at its core, feminism is thoroughly rooted in anti-colonialism, and the Western brand is a deformed and maladjusted version of true feminism (as one of the case study subjects argues).
Read the whole thing.
Short vacation hiatus
December 13, 2011off to Sea World with the family . . . please come back for a new post on Monday. Posting will continue to be sparse – no more than 1 per business day – for the rest of the month. I should be back to posting multiple items in January, after the holiday season has passed. Thanks to all visitors for their continued support.
Energy and Geopolitics: some things to read
December 1, 2011This is a very busy week for me at my day job, so posting has been and will continue to be light. Here are a few things that I have been reading in my spare time:
- China becomes a net importer of coal – implications for the global market, via Platts
- Silicon Valley venture capitalism has been a bust on Green Energy, and will continue to be so, via European Energy Review
- Will Obama’s maneuvers provoke a trade war with China? CNBC
- EU President voices concern over growing militarization of the Asia/Pacific, Defense News
Job opportunity for experienced energy researcher
November 25, 2011a recently opened vacancy for an experienced social scientific researcher at the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) may be of interest to EnerGeoPolitics readers
http://www.ecn.nl/wens/ecn/vacancy/E2011070
Air Force facing critical shortage of drone pilots
November 15, 2011The US Air Force has had to shut down their drone “Top Gun” school because they need the instructors to fly combat UAV missions. The problem is that the Air Force restricts drone piloting to actual pilots, who see them as a step down from flying fighters. They could relieve their shortage by opening up drone operations to enlisted personnel. The Army already does that with their own drone program.
Shorter Graeber
October 19, 2011Yesterday, I posted a link to David Graeber’s book Direct Action, noting that anyone who truly wanted to understand (not necessarily join or agree, but understand) #OWS should read it.
Today, Graeber himself has put up a long post at Naked Capitalism that will serve as a much shorter introduction, for those interested.
Pipeline security
October 18, 2011Yesterday, I posted an argument on environmental grounds that the Keystone XL pipeline should be built – that, because the route traverses a relatively more built and accessible environment, that it is far preferable to the alternate proposed route through a largely pristine region of biological diversity.
The route of Keystone XL is also a preferred route because of security issues. Last month, a pipeline in Kenya exploded, causing the death of 100 local inhabitants. The explosion was caused when those locals gathered to siphon fuel from the leak. A suspected cigarette ignited the pipeline and disaster ensued. Today, the professional industry newsletter Oil & Gas IQ notes that the Kenyan tragedy is the largest and most recent example of a problematic issue of pipeline security in the developing world. Through poor monitoring and maintenance, leaks on such pipelines go unreported and/or untended, and as a consequence, fires and explosions are common. Additionally, pipelines through regions with unsettled political situations are frequent objects of attack and sabotage. This is not a weakness of pipelines, per se, but rather a weakness of local conditions. Regulation, monitoring, and the availability of trained repair crews render such disasters almost unheard of in developed nations. Building Keystone XL, with the inherent pipeline security that comes with its location, relieves the pressure to build other pipelines through far riskier environments.
US combat ready force set to range across Central Africa
October 14, 2011After the initial deployment to and buildup in Uganda, the force will be active all across Central Africa, with action anticipated in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Generally speaking, I support the use of US military power across the globe. I only ask that the exercise of force be done with clear geostrategic goals in mind, and that those goals be made explicit to the American public. I supported Iraq because I knew that unlocking the oil stores that were underdeveloped under the Hussein regime was crucial to the world economy. I supported Libya for the same reason. I do not understand this deployment. You can make an argument that the US should be heavily engaged in Central Africa because of the treasure trove of resources in the region that will become increasingly important in decades to come, but this tiny deployment, chasing a bandit across national lines thousands of miles from home with no clear strategic advantage to the US even if successful, is of dubious value.
A word of caution
October 11, 2011Massive new shale plays are being publicized on almost a weekly basis. EnerGeoPolitics, of course, believes that there are vast reserves of previously unconventional fossil fuels ready to be brought to market (validating, at least partially, our “technological positivism” post from a few years back). However, that does not mean that every shale play or investing opportunity that comes to light is a good one. There could very well be a “Shale Bubble” at the same time that there is a shale explosion – both can occur simultaneously. I sort through all sorts of news items in the search for my daily post(s), many of them are about new companies getting into shale plays. Lately, it strikes me that an awful lot of these companies are making very large claims about the reserves in their blocks. Some of them strike me as highly optimistic, if not inflated. I doubt that any serious investor comes to EGP looking for investment information, but if anyone is looking for a bit of free advice: make sure you do your due diligence before investing. We have been in a Big Casino investing environment for the last couple of decades, where bubble after bubble gets inflated. I am a bit worried that we could see that happen among shale companies.
On the lighter side . . .
October 10, 2011Lazy day for me, not going to post anything serious, but will be back with posts tomorrow.
In the meantime, check out this video from Zucotti Park of a local NYC character known as “the Fart Smeller.” Yes, a guy who gets off smelling women’s farts. He has joined the Occupy Wall Street protests as a voice for the rights of “guys like me, who can’t get women.” He claims that the women of OWS should be willingly “helping out” guys like him – they want a perfect world, and in a perfect world every guy gets hot chicks! One woman obliges him – on camera – and he is enraptured. “That’s like the Taliban putting down their weapons! A woman’s power base is her ass, and by letting me put my face in her ass, that’s like the Taliban putting down their weapons.”
Fart Smeller is in no way indicative of the larger populace at OWS – I don’t think any one person could be, the goals of those in attendance are so disparate. Rather, he is just another fiber in the odd human tapestry. The videographer, Normal Bob Smith, documents many other such oddly compelling characters, recently at Zucotti Park but primarily at his normal stamping grounds at Union Square.
The “Green Jobs” Paradox
October 6, 2011In a post that is primarily concerned with a debate (or, more accurately, a pissing match) on the Solyndra scandal, Mickey Kaus identifies the basic fallacy of the “green jobs” concept – it can be green, or it can produce jobs, but it is unlikely to be both at the same time:
One way to look at it is to note that there’s an obvious tension between the “green” part of a “green jobs” agenda and the “jobs” part. If all you care about is 1) promoting solar power, then solar cells manufactured in China are as good as cells manufactured here–even better, if they’re cheaper and therefore more likely to be installed. But if that’s the case then Nocera hasn’t shown that you need government financing to achieve your goals because private financing is unavailable. Grove doesn’t speak to this problem.
But if 2) what you care about is promoting jobs, then it will take a whole lot more than government loans and loan guarantees to keep green manufacturing and engineering jobs in the U.S.
However, citing Walter Russell Mead, Kaus discerns a way to square the circle and make both the “green” and the “jobs” parts of the equation cohere:
I’d always figured “green jobs” backers were focused on goal (1) and resigned to creating lots of Chinese manufacturing jobs. After all, there’d still be jobs that could only be performed here in the U.S., like installing the damn things. Nocera seems to suggest that’s not enough–or that when the time comes to try to rationalize a disastrous Obama boondoggle, it’s OK to quietly switch to goal (2).
P.S.: The alternative long-run strategy for goal (2), giving the market play while keeping the manufacturing jobs here, was I believe suggested by Walter Russell Mead: make it as easy as possible to start manufacturing enterprises in the United States, using our own recently acquired supply of productive workers willing to work cheap–for $10-$14 an hour, say. That means protecting firms from Davis-Bacon-style high-wage mandates and Wagner Act unionism, and from new “protected classes” of potential plaintiffs–a conservative goal. It may also mean relieving them of health care and pension costs by having government shoulder that entire burden–a liberal goal. Plus, of course, lower taxes (achieved in part by cutting government to the essentials) and simple, predictable regulations.
This is, of course, the key to a successful politics – recognizing that both sides have important goals and giving something to each in order to accomplish a larger goal. Unfortunately, both primary ideological camps in the US today are convinced that they must try to steamroll the opposition and forgo all such compromise.
Dealing with the Pakistan problem
October 3, 2011India’s relationship with Pakistan is at once more complicated, more intimate, and vastly more deadly than is our own. Still, although the situations are not analogous, there is much that US policymakers can learn from the experience of the Indians. Sushant Sareen, writing for India’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, today offers a bit of that perspective. Pakistan is maddening, even for those who know it best and whose very existence is threatened by that nation’s nuclear force. At the end of the day, Pakistan’s own latent instability is what is saving it – for both India and the US, the only thing more dangerous than the deceitful, duplicitious and dysfunctional state that is contemporary Pakistan is the anarchic vacuum that would be left should that state fail or be toppled. Sareen’s piece ends with a wistful imagining of a day when the US finally “solves” the Pakistani riddle and lets loose its fury. I don’t think that day will ever come, as I don’t believe that riddle is solvable. Maybe the best that can be hoped for is to pawn the Pakistanis off onto the Chinese.
Every gas or oil rig job adds 3 other jobs outside industry
September 8, 2011Terrific whiteboard presentation from the Offshore Marine Service Association.
Any jobs/deficit reduction program that does not feature America’s vast mineral wealth is simply not a serious plan.
This can be done responsibly and with sensitivity to environmental concerns. It is not an all or nothing choice.
Labor Day Recess
September 5, 2011There will be no new posts until late Tuesday (Sept. 6), at the earliest.
Global Resource Scarcity
August 29, 2011The current issue of World Politics Review is definitely worth reading, whether you fully agree with the various authors or not. Articles are behind a subscription wall, but non-subscribers can gain access to individual articles on a pay-per-view basis.
North America, the new global energy giant
August 17, 2011The Baker Institute’s Amy Myers Jaffe makes the point in an article at Foreign Policy:
For half a century, the global energy supply’s center of gravity has been the Middle East. This fact has had self-evidently enormous implications for the world we live in — and it’s about to change.
By the 2020s, the capital of energy will likely have shifted back to the Western Hemisphere, where it was prior to the ascendancy of Middle Eastern megasuppliers such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the 1960s. The reasons for this shift are partly technological and partly political. Geologists have long known that the Americas are home to plentiful hydrocarbons trapped in hard-to-reach offshore deposits, on-land shale rock, oil sands, and heavy oil formations. The U.S. endowment of unconventional oil is more than 2 trillion barrels, with another 2.4 trillion in Canada and 2 trillion-plus in South America — compared with conventional Middle Eastern and North African oil resources of 1.2 trillion. The problem was always how to unlock them economically.
But since the early 2000s, the energy industry has largely solved that problem. With the help of horizontal drilling and other innovations, shale gas production in the United States has skyrocketed from virtually nothing to 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply in less than a decade. By 2040, it could account for more than half of it. This tremendous change in volume has turned the conversation in the U.S. natural gas industry on its head; where Americans once fretted about meeting the country’s natural gas needs, they now worry about finding potential buyers for the country’s surplus.
And, shale gas is just the tip of the ice berg. The same or similar technologies are about to make economic recovery of America’s vast reserves of shale oil possible – and our shale oil reserves areou about three times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Finally, eventually and inexorably, clean coal-to-liquid processes that capture and sequester carbon will make the massive coal reserves of the US yet another strategic economic resource.
Of course, readers of EGP know that for years we have been predicting that (given the political will), the United States could become the worlds largest user, producer, and exporter of fossil fuels all at the same time.
