Best Posts in Thread: USA Policy in Middle East.. History for US citizens only

We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century." (end of article)

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Interesting read....

V/R,
nwlivewire[/QUOTE] I won't disagree with anything RFK said. I will not even disagree with the line in the post above! What I will say is that I am in oil and gas, an owner of land from which production occurs and I have to tell you this: I'm not worried. This is where my livelihood comes from and I'm not worried? Why? Because there is really only one (possibly 2) rational substitute for Petrol/gasoline and diesel and that would be GTL fuel which is gas to liquid. Using natural gas (methane) as a feedstock, fuel can be made that replaces gasoline/petrol, diesel and jet engine fuel. CNG, highly compressed natural gas can't do it. A 757 converted to CNG could take off and fly but it wouldn't be able to carry passengers and luggage because all available space would be required for fuel. CNG is just not concentrated enough. LNG methane chilled to the point it is 1/600th of it's original size. Possible but you would have a reliability problem. You don't want your fuel system to freeze up on the highway and certainly not 6 miles above the earths surface. The powers that be might be willing to kill us off wholesale anyway in the interest of "progress" but the decision isn't theirs.

The government doesn't own the supply network. LNG can't be used in (the great majority) current vehicles and it would be expensive to convert vehicles. LNG can not be supplied through fuel stations as they exist today and someone would have to pay for the change. I sure as hell do not be the one to pay for it! Which brings us to GTL. We have literally been drowning in natural gas for decades. Enough natural gas is flared (burned) off every year (because it is inconvenient to collect) to supply the fuel needs of the US. GTL can be distributed through the current network that sells gasoline / petrol, diesel and aviation fuel. All it would take to make GTL fuel a reality is a couple of trillion dollars worth of refineries. No scientific breakthroughs are needed. It is here, now. All it takes is for someone to pay for it.

Now, will that be cash, check or credit card? I would like to say it has been a pleasure doing business with you. Not you personally, but someone has to pay for it. Or then again, maybe it will be absorbed in the cost of doing business when change is inevitable, which by the way means you are still paying for your part of it, Just not up front.

There are people right now who are saying that peak oil was a lie. They had no understanding of what peak oil meant. Peak oil doesn't mean we run out of oil, it means there will be times that supply will not meet demand because most of the easy to extract oil already has been. There is a huge amount of oil out there and we know exactly where it is. If we can get 15% of the oil we estimate to be in any one spot it is considered great! The other 85% is still there, waiting for time it becomes economic to go after it. North Dakota went from producing a few million barrels of oil to just shy of 40 million barrels of oil per year in just a few years because the state of N. Dakota turned a blind eye. The waste, the ecological damage, the abuse of surface owners, mineral owners and the general public in the oil bearing western part of the state is hard to believe but undeniable. The output from N. Dakota would be 20% of what it is if time was taken to do it prudently with minimal impact. If one signs a lease for their mineral rights, the state makes an equal amount of money off of each well or more than the one who signs a lease and the state wanted the money. They spent most of the money in the eastern half of the state where the population centers are. If the same thing is tried where there is a greater population, it isn't going to fly.

Saudi Arabia has claimed the same amount of oil reserves or greater for the last half century or so. That doesn't mean they have them. Not saying they don't still have a lot of oil but they don't have an ever renewing resource.

Russia, Venezuela, Mexico must sell oil, every penny it brings in is a penny more than they had before and they need it. Venezuela is already down to selling their gold reserves to service their national debt. Mexico and Venezuela's fields are played out already and they can't seem to interest any foreigners to help them. Some silly thing about them nationalizing the oil fields and kicking the foreigners out. I don't see why companies are not rushing to help them. I'm sure it was all just a big misunderstanding. NOT.

Things will go on, feast and famine for a few generations. The time that change is required, has not yet come.

The US is brimming with oil at the moment. If there were to be a Mideast war, now would be a good time for it from a US perspective. Maybe that is why US companies have not until recently slacked production. There is literally no place to put any more oil. They are using rail cars for storage. tank farms are at 87% capacity and if they had more they couldn't move the types of oil around as needed. I won't go into what the types of oil are.

Oil and the middle east politics (and my income) are inextricably intertwined. If it ever becomes possible to change from oil, we might thank the oil companies for making it possible because it is them who really have made it possible with GTL fuel. To make my point, everyone with an electric vehicle, please raise your cursor!

All due respect to RFK but anyone can call for independence from oil, I have yet to hear the workable solution for how that will be done.

 

Interesting read....

After reading RFK Jr.'s perspectives on BOTH the historical backdrop that is causing all this foment in Syria (and elsewhere in the M.E.) and his solutions, his article ends with these excerpts (for which I will post no personal comment as he pretty much sums up this recent historical U.S./M.E. mess and his solutions to this mess very nicely):


“…Like the Syrians fleeing for Europe, no American wants to send their child to die for a pipeline. Instead, our first priority should be the one no one ever mentions—we need to kick our Mideast oil jones, an increasingly feasible objective, as the U.S. becomes more energy independent. Next, we need to dramatically reduce our military profile in the Middle East and let the Arabs run Arabia. Other than humanitarian assistance and guaranteeing the security of Israel’s borders, the U.S. has no legitimate role in this conflict....

The only winners have been the military contractors and oil companies that have pocketed historic profits, the intelligence agencies that have grown exponentially in power and influence to the detriment of our freedoms and the jihadists who invariably used our interventions as their most effective recruiting tool. We have compromised our values, butchered our own youth, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, subverted our idealism and squandered our national treasures in fruitless and costly adventures abroad. In the process, we have helped our worst enemies and turned America, once the world’s beacon of freedom, into a national security surveillance state and an international moral pariah....

America’s founding fathers warned Americans against standing armies, foreign entanglements and, in John Quincy Adams’ words, “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Those wise men understood that imperialism abroad is incompatible with democracy and civil rights at home. The Atlantic Charter echoed their seminal American ideal that each nation should have the right to self-determination. Over the past seven decades, the Dulles brothers, the Cheney gang, the neocons and their ilk have hijacked that fundamental principle of American idealism and deployed our military and intelligence apparatus to serve the mercantile interests of large corporations and particularly, the petroleum companies and military contractors that have literally made a killing from these conflicts.

It’s time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy. We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century." (end of article)

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Interesting read....

V/R,
nwlivewire

 

A four pages article written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for those interested in history...

Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria – POLITICO