Peak Oil and Shells Deep Water Drilling Decision

Yesterday Shell Oil announced that it would spend 4 Billion dollars in the effort to tap the Gulf of Mexico deep water oil reserves. Shell stated that they expected the field to produce up to 130,000 barrels a day for 20 years. To put that in to perspective consider the following hard facts. In September of 2006, The US imported 14 Million barrels of oil a day. In addition, the US domestically produced roughly 5 Million of barrels of oil a day for a total daily oil usage of 19 million barrels a day. At its peak, the Shell Gulf of Mexico effort represents 0.7% of current daily US oil consumption needs and 0.15% of daily worldwide production which is 86 million barrels a day. A drop, or maybe two, in the bucket.

A few months ago I completed my own amateur research on the question of whether or not the world was fast approaching or perhaps currently experiencing the occurrence of worldwide peak oil production. I came to the conclusion that the “imminent peak oil” prognosticators seemed closer to reality than those who believed the opposite, that oil was now and would remain plentiful for there next 50 to 100 years.

I read some fascinating books on the subject including Beyond Oil: the View From Hubberds Peak, The Oil Factor, Twilight in the Desert, and The End of Oil. All of the authors of these books believe that worldwide peak oil production is close on the horizon or in fact upon us. The authors state that one indicator of this scenario is the dearth of super or mega oil fields now known about, much less being exploited, compared to what has occurred up to now. One author states that the last mega field developed in the world was the North Sea Oil Field which was fist tapped 30 years ago and is now in a state of significant decline.

The granddaddy of all mega oil fields is the Ghwar field in Saudi Arabia that produced 5,000,000 barrels a day in 1994 and although in decline, is still producing at astounding daily rates compared to all the other great oil fields in the world. Common sense tells me that oil business leaders would prioritize their investment decision and go first to where they can get the biggest bang for their buck. In the past, billions of dollars were invested in oil fields that produced in the high hundreds of thousands and in a few cases the millions of barrels a day.

Now, it appears that our best shot at getting oil out of the ground and our top priority is to go where we have never gone before, 8000 feet deep in the ocean, for maximum production of no more than 130,000 barrels a day for 20 years. Keep in mind that US oil production peaked in 1970 and has been declining every year since then. I think the “peak oil” message is one to pay attention to. The implication of an imminent peak oil reality is that commitment to funding alternative energy research must become a priority perhaps as high as the war on Islamic Fascism.

Newspaper Business in Decline; My Adios to the N&R

The above linked article got my attention today and reminded me of the exchange of correspondences I had recently with my local newspaper. About a year ago I was on a tear trading email messages with the Editor of the Greensboro News and Record over repeated examples of what I considered to be biased reporting. The story that really set me off was the reporting of the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson hoax and how they steadfastly refused to print truthful accounts of that situation.

An excellent investigative reporter for the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes, single handedly and devastatingly debunked the entire MSM story line and agenda regarding this story, yet months after his writing was published and posted on the web, the Greensboro N&R kept printing false and amateurishly incomplete information.

Fed up, I dashed off the following email to the Editor:

“I think it is really bad business strategy for a newspaper to alienate and ultimately cut itself off from 1/2 of its revenue stream by taking sides (any side!). The N&R has much to do to convince me that they haven't taken sides and unless they take aggressive steps to demonstrate that they are not trying to drive a pro Democratic Party anti Bush agenda then I will soon bypass the N&R daily newspaper altogether and go straight to the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, RealClearPolitics.com, and Powerline (to name a few) for news and perspective.”

“In a democracy it is not the role of newspapers to drive agendas - it is the role of newspapers to report the facts about others in society who choose to drive agendas. Many in the newspaper business have crossed the line and this is perhaps the greatest collective dereliction of duty and abuse of privilege that has occurred in this country in recent history and is a sad and highly troubling development.”

“By taking sides and driving an agenda you cease to be trustworthy and move towards becoming propagandists. Your reporting of the Wilson Plame affair is one of many proofs I would offer up. If you honestly evaluated what you have reported and compared that to the facts and reams of available documents on this matter you would be embarrassed at the number of corrections and retractions that would be required to set the record straight.”

I got the usual lame denial of bias and followed that non-response up with the letter below but in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing this is the key point:

“Cone fails to point out the fact that roughly half of most newspapers paying customer base (non liberal readers) is being driven away by what is perceived to be an agenda driven, pro liberal bias in coverage and reporting.”

“In almost any business situation, the shareholders and board of directors would demand accountability from the management team if they were pursuing a personal or political agenda that alienated and automatically cut the company off from ½ of its potential customer base and revenue stream. As a matter of fact, such wrongheadedness would be grounds for dismissal.”

All of this was to no avail. A few weeks ago I simply dropped my subscription altogether. The primary reason is that the N&R is both obsolete and inaccurate. I found myself not even taking the paper out of the bag on most days because on the web I had already read every bit of national news days prior to it appearing in the paper.

Furthermore, I simply couldn’t get over the fact that the N&R has a pro liberal and pro Democratic Party agenda and therefore purposefully presents a slanted and inaccurate version of the news. They are certainly not unique in that regard but it occurred to me that this was the only slanted news source that I was actually paying for! However, no longer is that the case.

Read the full letter below.

Dear Mr. Robinson,

Edward Cones article titled “Newspapers needed a wake up call” was interesting but glaringly incomplete in describing what ails today’s newspapers. Mr. Cone missed perhaps the most fundamental and obvious of all the factors that are contributing to declining subscriptions. Cone fails to point out the fact that roughly half of most newspapers paying customer base (non liberal readers) is being driven away by what is perceived to be an agenda driven, pro liberal bias in coverage and reporting. Although newspaper editors and other liberal pundits are loath to admit that such a bias exists, the fact remains that a huge percentage of your potential customers believe that it does exist. The big difference today, compared to 20 years ago, is that those readers now have options to get accurate information through the internet that simply never existed before.

In almost any business situation, the shareholders and board of directors would demand accountability from the management team if they were pursuing a personal or political agenda that alienated and automatically cut the company off from ½ of its potential customer base and revenue stream. As a matter of fact, such wrongheadedness would be grounds for dismissal. Yet, by virtue of their inaction, newspaper owners and board members seem to condone politicized and agenda driven presentation of the news. Business managers of newspapers continue to watch their organizations decline while their papers continue to offer readers inaccurate and misleading reporting of important events.

Now, thanks to the internet, news bias and inaccuracies are being exposed and deconstructed on a daily basis by informed web researchers and authors. These authors show, on a point by point basis, where the papers are getting it wrong and they link to proof sources to boot (powerline.com, drudgereport.com, lucianne.com, patterica.com and many more).

Many good web sites differ from newspapers in that they make no haughty pretense of impartiality. Most good web sources declare their biases outright. What maddens me is that newspapers claim to be unbiased and not driven by political agendas when in fact many are blatantly biased (NYT, LA Times, Washington Post). If I were running a newspaper as a for profit endeavor, my business strategy would be to demand adherence to impartiality in order to insure the largest pool of potential customers possible. On the editorial page I would make sure I had a good balance of both liberal and conservative columnists (I think you are doing better here).

It is the job of reporters to convey the facts and it is my job as a citizen to synthesize those facts and come to my own conclusions. I should emphasize that I am making a distinction between news and opinion or editorial writing. It is biased news reporting that I believe is the cause of reader loss. I resent news reporters attempting to manipulate me towards a conclusion. I don’t resent columnist trying to do that because that is what they are supposed to do. I believe that the papers that will thrive in they future will do many of the things that Mr. Cone mentions in his article but first and foremost, if they don’t embrace the reality that the road to success lays in true impartiality, they are doomed to continue to loose readers to more balanced and trustworthy sources.

This letter is probably not in the right format for you to print but at the very least I urge you to circulate it internally and see what reaction you get from your editors and reporters. If there is a visceral and strong across the board denial of liberal bias and disagreement with my thesis, then you may want to take that as a strong sign that you should look a little deeper. At the very least, ask your editors and reporters if they see any bias in today’s AP news story on the 1000^th day of the Iraq war and how the reporter uses that contrived milestone as a way to recite all that is wrong or has gone wrong in the war.

The Greensboro N&R is not as outrageous in its blatant pro liberal agenda as the NYT but in my opinion you are certainly to the left of center if by nothing more than your healthy reliance on routinely slanted AP generated news stories. You are foolishly alienating a huge percentage of your potential customers by presenting a pro liberal version of the news and I think that is simply a very bad business decision. I also happen to think that slanting the news to fit a political agenda is dereliction of duty and irresponsible on a grand scale but the Greensboro N&R is certainly not alone in that regards.

There you have it. Two very good reasons to change your strategy. Either because it is the right thing to do or because it is simply smart business. Take your pick. The net results will be that you can better secure your future and regain a reputation of trust if you boldly stake a claim to impartiality.

Early Voting Fast and Convenient

I just voted in our mid-term elections. It was painless. I arrived about 11:40 am and immediately was checked in and led to a voting machine. The last time I voted was in the Presidential election 2 years ago and I’m sure I waited for at least 1 hour before casting my ballot. For early voting locations and times check out this web site.

Moveon.org Recruiting Active Duty Soldiers for Antiwar Petition

Read this article and consider some of the consequences. Moveon.org (pay attention to their success stories like the one about obstructing the renewal of the Patriot Act) is soliciting active duty soldiers to sign the following petition:

"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq."

This is in the same league as the Code Pink radicals demonstrating against wounded soldiers outside of Walter Reed Hospital. Moveon.org was behind the lunatic protesters at the WTC site on September 10 and 11 that I wrote about in previous posts. Cindy Sheehan is featured on the front page of their website.

Retired Air Force General Thomas McInerney has this to say:

"I think it is shameful because the timing is so close to the election. They ought to be ashamed of themselves," a retired Air Force lieutenant general, Thomas McInerney, told The New York Sun yesterday by phone from Israel. "The soldiers should be ashamed of themselves for being duped into this. It is to be expected from a MoveOn.org-type group. They have no standards."

“They have no standards”. What do you think?

The Educational Power and Timeliness of the Internet and Blogs

In a number of previous posts I have extolled readers to dig for more and better information on the Internet by using search engines to gather information. I haven’t mentioned blogs or other news sites but I have been reading a variety of blogs and news sites pretty regularly for the last 4 years or so (see site sidebar). I find them to be highly informative and in many cases way ahead of the traditional media in terms of both story scoops and timing of distribution of the news.

Regarding scoops, probably the most famous Internet/blog driven scoop was the Dan Rather hoax of the Bush National Guard memos that within 2 hours of airing on 60 minutes was in the process of being thoroughly deconstructed by bloggers on Little Green Footballs and Powerline. I happened to follow this process on the Internet, albeit a day late which by blogger and internet standards is ridiculously late, still early enough in the process to know way ahead of the masses that relied on the Greensboro N&R or TV news that CBS and Rather were in deep trouble.

Newspapers and TV almost entirely ignored the story for the first 2 to 3 days but finally had to get on board and report the story. Ultimately, virtually every main stream media (MSM) outlet retracted their previous reporting on the story and acknowledged that the story CBS breathlessly reported as fact was basically a hoax. “Fake but accurate” was Rather’s lame and now infamous defense.

Yesterday on TV news and today in a variety of newspapers is a story about how Hillary Clinton falsely claimed that she was named after the famous mountain climber who first conquered Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary (along with his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay). This is, of course, ridiculously false since Hillary was born 6 years before Sir Edmund scaled Everest.

I think I first read about this over 1 years ago on one of the Internet blogs I regularly read. For a week or so this story made the rounds and all of us who have a healthy dislike for the Clintons had a good chuckle seeing Hillary exposed for lying about something that in the grand scheme of things is so inconsequential – who cares who or how she was named? My immediate thought was if she will make up something like this and ok its placement in her informal biography as well as Bills autobiography, what else of significance will she distort or lie about? My belief was and still is - probably a whole lot!

To my knowledge, the story never got picked up by traditional media outlets. Now they finally are getting around to reporting this information at least a year or so after it first appeared on the net; information that I contend is significant in what it might say about Hillary’s mindset and character. You be the judge.

Even more importantly, get on the Internet and read, research, and dig for truth that you will simply either never get through traditional media outlets or, if you do get the information it will be fed to you when they choose to do so. In this case “feeding time”, so to speak, is years after the fact. Break the MSM tethers and feed yourself on the web.

A Great Book: A Team of Rivals

I am currently reading the Pulitzer Prize winning book “A Team of Rivals” by author Doris Kearns Goodwin which chronicles Abraham Lincolns life and the workings of his amazingly talented yet at times fractious war time administration. I am only half way through the book and I am finding it utterly fascinating and very enlightening.

Momentous events in our nation’s history like the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott Supreme Court Decision are presented in fresh and exquisite detail and placed in much more dramatic and meaningful perspective than was or is possible in the history textbooks of past and current generations. I highly recommend this book, and will probably do so again when I complete it.

The book is full of excerpts of letters, campaign speeches, and legislative floor speeches that are truly inspiring to read as our nation’s leaders intellectually battled for and against the abomination of the institution of slavery. I just finished reading about the first battle of Bull Run (or Manassas) and the utter desperation and outright panic that gripped Washington in the immediate aftermath of that thorough Union defeat. For a brief time, the government entertained thoughts of fleeing Washington believing that the Confederate Army would follow-up on their victory and march unopposed into the city. The battlefield was in Virginia only 35 miles from the Capitol Building.

The book quotes Walt Whitman as he pays homage to the steadfastness and strength of will that Abraham Lincoln exhibited during the immediate aftermath of the battle. Whitman realizes that such a disastrous turn of events and defeat at the very beginning of the conflict that virtually everyone predicted would last 60 days, would have destroyed most other leaders in Lincoln’s shoe.

“If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with”, Whitman reflected, “it is enough to send with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, that bitter gall – indeed a crucifixion day – that it did not conquer him – that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it”.

Out of disaster and with what seemed to be a nation disintegrating before his very eyes, with a war plan that from the very beginning went very wrong, with treachery and treason in virtually every corner, and with many cabinet ministers who thought themselves to be the intellectual and political superior to the President they served, Abraham Lincoln persevered and ultimately on all fronts, he prevailed. This is really a great story and a very well written and professionally researched book.