Category Archives: Oil and Gas Reserves

Relabeling

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What is relabeling? It means to change your outward appearance to more accurately reflect your organizations goals and purpose. That has lead to today’s leading story. The question you must ask yourselves, “Is this true? Or, is it about to be true?”

Headline from somewhere on the Internet…

Democrat Party to Relabel Itself

June 31st, 2015
OldDemSymbol

Old DNC Symbol

The DNC announced today that is was discontinuing the use of its century old icon, the Donkey, as its political symbol. After a complaint from PETA claiming the symbol was unfair to depict the party as a “beast of burden,” and after the party agreed that the symbol was inappropriate since many of its members haven’t held jobs nor worked for generations, the DNC announced it was adopting a new symbol more in line with its half century history and political goals.

NewDNCsymbol

New DNC LOGO

AltNewDNCSymbol

Alternate DNC LOGO for official vehicles

The DNC said the new symbol was adopted from the organization that has been closely aligned with the DNC since the 1960s, supporting the party and financing some leading democrat leaders. The DNC said it was finally time to openly display their aims and goals with their new symbol. The DNC included an alternate symbol in their announcement suitable for banners and bumper stickers, especially for official party vehicles.

Party leaders, activists across the the country and academia applauded the announcement.

Yes, I’m feeling snarky this morning.

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Is the US and NATO acting to blunt Putin’s aggression? He thinks so. NATO troops and armored forces entered Poland for a well publicized military exercise. It is to be a show of force against Putin’s aggression in Crimea and the Ukraine.

Putin is not amused and threatened retaliation. The Cold War has returned at a time when Obama is desperate to have a legacy, any legacy, now that his major accomplishment, Obamacare, may be crippled if the Supreme Court blocks federal subsidies for Obamacare recipients. One pundit said, “You can end communism in Russia, but you can’t remove the KGB from the Russian.” The Russian in this case is Putin. He has reverted to his previous KGB mentality.

The NATO exercise is not impressing the world’s military organizations. NATO has relied too long on the US for their security. NATO and the EU has sacrificed their militaries to feed their socialist states. Now, when the Cold War has resumed and with the US military resources still tied to the Mideast, NATO is barely able to field any forces to repel Putin if he invades the rest of the Ukraine…and perhaps the former EastBloc countries.

Even if the US was not sill involved in the Mideast, the US has reduced it’s military to a century-old level. The US Navy has fewer ships than it did prior to World War I. Much of the US war stocks, built up in Europe during the earlier cold war, has been expended during Gulf Wars I and II. With the military reductions imposed by Obama and the democrats, those war stocks have not been replenished. In some cases during military actions in Iraq and elsewhere, the US Navy ran out of cruise and land attack missiles.

Those miliary stocks have been slowly replaced. If at all. Some of the tooling needed to build more missiles was destroyed by DoD orders when the contracts expired. Now, when more missiles are needed, those tools are gone and it will be expensive to remake them.

But Putin isn’t the only aggressor on the horizon, The PRC, Communist China to everyone but the socialists around the world, is building a military base in the territory claimed by several other nations.

China builds new island military bases in South China Sea

Posted: May 20, 2015 8:06 PM CDT Updated: May 27, 2015 8:06 PM CDT
 
The new islands have been called unsinkable aircraft carriers. (Source: CNN)

The new islands have been called unsinkable aircraft carriers. (Source: CNN)

The new islands have been called unsinkable aircraft carriers. (Source: CNN)

SOUTH CHINA SEA (CNN) – It’s a tense confrontation between China’s military and an American spy plane monitoring disturbing developments in disputed waters hundreds of miles off the Chinese coast.

China’s activity in the South China Sea has peaked the interest of the U.S. military.

“Foreign military aircraft. This is the Chinese Navy. You are approaching our military alert zone.”

High above the South China Sea, the radio crackles with a stern warning.

“You go!”

The source of dispute appears on the horizon, seemingly out of nowhere.

Islands, manmade by China, located hundreds of miles from its coastline.

CNN got exclusive access to classified U.S. surveillance flights over the islands.

The first time journalists have been allowed on the operational mission by the state of the art P-8 Poseidon, America’s most advance surveillance and sub-hunting aircraft.

Three islands are the target of the mission. It’s the three islands that have been the focus of China’s building in the South China Sea over recent years.

China’s alarming creation of entirely new territory in the South China Sea is one part of a broader military push that some fear is to push U.S. dominance in the region.

Sailing its first aircraft carrier, equipping its nuclear missions with multiple warheads, developing missiles to destroy aircraft carriers, and now building military bases far from its shores.

For the U.S., the islands are a step too far. And the flight is a part of a new and old American military response that may soon include sailing U.S. warships close by as well.

In just two years, China has expanded the islands by 2,000 acres. The equivalent of 1,500 football fields and counting, an engineering marvel in waters as deep as 300 feet.

An American commander talks about what he sees.

“It appears to be a buildup of military infrastructure and not to mention we were just challenged probably 30 minutes ago and the challenge came from the Chinese Navy. And I’m highly confident that it came from a shore on this facility,” said Capt. Mike Parker, commander in the U.S. Navy.

What used to be the fiery cross reef now has early warning radar and an airport tower and a runway long enough to handle every aircraft in the Chinese military.

Some are calling it China’s unsinkable aircraft carrier.

The videos of the island taken from the P-8 advanced surveillance cameras never before declassified.

In a sign of just how valuable that China views them, the new islands are already well protected.

“There’s obviously a lot of surface traffic down there… uhh… Chinese warships and Chinese coast guard ships,” said Lt. Commander Matt Newman, mission commander in the U.S. Navy.

And there is proof. The Chinese navy ordering the P-8 out of the airspace not one, not twice, but eight times on the mission.

“This is the Chinese Navy. This is the Chinese Navy. Please go away quickly.”

And like the surveillance video, the audio of these warnings never before shared with the public.

What is interesting is there are also civilian aircrafts, there was a Delta flight on that same frequency. And when it heard that challenge it piped into the frequency to say what’s going on?

The Chinese Navy then reassuring them but as the flight crew says that can be a very nerve wracking experience for civilian aircraft in the area.

And the more China builds the more frequently and aggressively it warns away U.S. aircraft.

The crucial issue facing American voters in the coming national election is who to choose to lead us in the coming troubled times? Some of the candidates are isolationists, although they refuse to acknowledge the label. If a military confrontation occurs in the Ukraine or in the South China Sea, will our next President refuse to act, claiming it is not our business, or will he defend our allies and national security?

As much as some libertarians deny the fact, we cannot sit isolated from the world. We are dependent on allies and, if we are to have allies, they must be able to depend on us. The US and India has entered into talks discussing areas of mutual interest…the South China Sea, being one. India has a common border with China and has had military border disputes with China before.

When we choose a new President, we must chose one who is unafraid to remain involved in the world because the world will not be afraid to be involved in us.

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Oil War

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Were you aware that the US and OPEC are at war? No? I’m not surprised. It hasn’t made the headlines of the MSM.

How did this happen? Primarily, through the deployment in the US of new oil extraction techniques of fracking and oil-shale recovery. The continental United States has more oil reserves than any other place in the world including the Mideast and the former USSR.

Supply and demand works, contrary to the skeed of liberal economists. We have the supply—in the ground, and in the last year, the new extraction processes have increased the supply of oil and that has begun to affect the world market.

The US doubled its production this last year. The price of Brent light crude, the world standard, has dropped 30% in the last year and currently is around $68 a barrel…down from over $100 a barrel this time last year. The price dropped nearly $10 just this last week.

As you can imagine, OPEC is not pleased. The increased US production is affecting their revenues. A large number of OPEC members are small dictatorships, kleptocracies according to some, and when the price of crude drops, so does the personal income of those dictators. That, must not be allowed.

Some would think these dictators would cut their production to boost the price of crude to maintain their revenue stream. That’s not happening. Some of OPEC’s members are smart. They are pushing another tactic, economic warfare. They have pushed their production to flood the market, lowering the price of oil, in an attempt to make the new US technologies unprofitable, too expensive to operate.

It’s a question of who blinks first, OPEC when they cannot withstand the drop in their revenues, or the US when the price of crude hits their stop-loss line, the point where the cost of extraction exceeds the net revenue per barrel.

The target of the oil war is to see who goes bust first. I think it will be the US. The liberals and ecowackos are on the side of OPEC. So is the Obama administration. The success of the US oil production is an achievement of the free-market process. Obama and the democrats cannot allow that example of free enterprise to proceed without opposition.

Lower Oil Prices A Free-Market Victory, Not A Threat

By LAWRENCE KUDLOW, Posted 12/01/2014 06:12 PM ET

http://www.investors.com/image/Kudlow_Lawrence_big.jpg.cms

Lawrence Kudlow

Seldom has so much good news been portrayed so negatively. Oil prices continue to fall in the U.S. and around the world, but nearly everyone in the media is grumpy about it.

The headlines today are among the silliest I’ve seen: Energy-company stocks are declining, oil deflation is an economic threat, the Fed might raise rates much later than expected, OPEC is dissolving, shale companies are going bankrupt, Russia is going bankrupt(!), and on and on.

Well, most of this is just humbug. Lower oil prices are unambiguously positive.

First, U.S. oil production has nearly doubled in recent years to 9 million barrels a day, and the Paris-based International Energy Agency expects U.S. supply to rise by more than 1 million barrels a day next year. And it is this supply increase that is driving down prices.

Saudi Arabia and OPEC have essentially thrown in the towel, surrendering to the inevitability of lower prices from exploding U.S. energy production. This is not only a triumph of U.S. energy independence; it is also a victory for the workings of the free market. Greater supply, not government cartels, is driving down prices.

The latest oil-price drop of nearly $8 a barrel makes the economic outlook even rosier.

Apart from the declining share prices of some oil producers, virtually every other aspect of the world economy benefits, including most world stock markets.

(By the way, the IEA reports that most production in the Bakken formation, one of the main drivers of shale-oil output, remains profitable at or below $42 a barrel.)

And here in the U.S., the oil-price drop is a huge tax cut that will primarily help the middle class.

Sen. Chuck Schumer — who is still licking his wounds from the huge Democratic midterm losses in the Senate — is out there attacking ObamaCare as the wrong policy to halt the decline of middle-class incomes.

What he’d like to see is new big-government policies (wait, wasn’t ObamaCare a big-government policy?), including tax favors for targeted segments of the economy, presumably to bolster the middle class.

But guess what? We just had a free-market tax cut that will boost middle-class incomes and just about everything else.

The American energy revolution, combined with the market forces of supply and demand, is delivering something on the order of a $125 billion tax cut. Not only have wholesale oil prices dropped from about $100 a barrel to $66, but also gasoline prices have fallen from near $4 a gallon to $2.78 at the week’s close.

That’s a tax cut. With no big-government spending hikes.

While very few Democrats, including President Obama, supported the entrepreneurial, innovative dynamism of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, they’ve lately tried to take credit for the oil and gas shale revolution. No one’s buying it.

AEI’s Mark Perry actually wonders why the Democrats aren’t scheduling hearings in the lame-duck Congress to blame oil-industry manipulators and evil speculators for the drop in oil prices.

Of course, the far-left Democratic enviros aren’t sitting still. The EPA is now taking aim at the entire U.S. energy industry with its newly proposed smog rules — probably the most expensive regulations in history — even though the fracking revolution is producing much cleaner energy than ever.

So what we have is a clean-energy revolution, and it’s lighting a much-needed fire under the economy.

As energy prices are falling, GDP is being revised higher. Real economic growth in the third quarter shifted up from 3.5% to 3.9%, led by an increase in business fixed investment. The past two quarters averaged 4.2% at an annual rate.

Meanwhile, corporate profits, the mother’s milk of stocks and the lifeblood of the economy, continue to break records. After-tax corporate profits scored on the IRS basis and reported in the GDP revision hit a new high of $1.87 trillion, or 10.3% of GDP. Nonfinancial domestic profits came in at a record 7.3% of GDP and continue to show steady growth of 5% yearly.

As King Dollar rises, gold falls, inflation is barely discernible and oil prices have dropped, the year-end 2014 economic story looks a lot better, with the possibility of a rosier 2015.

No, we haven’t fully recovered. Not by a long shot. Year-on-year economic growth is still only 2.4%. It ought to be running 4% to 5%. And 200,000 new jobs a month ought to be twice that rate. For this we need more pro-growth economic policies from the new Republican Congress, especially lower corporate tax burdens and regulatory rollbacks.

But the entrepreneurial, free-market energy revolution has given us a big step in the right direction. Can we please be optimistic about it?

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1980s Redux

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When Hillary and Obama were kissing up to Putin, Hillary’s infamous “reset button,” the left irrationally assumed the Cold War was over; a long-dead confrontation between the West and the old Soviet Union.

They were wrong. the interregnum was just a period of regrouping and rearming…for Russia and the former communist that how rule her. Russia was too weak to maintain control of its empire in the 1990s—they aren’t anymore. They are rebuilding their empire once again; Belarus, Georgia, now the Crimea.

Why the Crimea? Because of Sevastopol, the old Soviet Union’s strategic naval base in the Black Sea. The base is in the Ukraine, although Putin, ‘scuse me, Russia retained basing rights.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2014/01/ukraine-protests-map-k.jpgIt wasn’t enough and the Ukraine controlled access to the area for food, fuel and power. Putin’s seizure of Crimea eliminated those potential risks…for Russia. Ukraine lost naval access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea beyond that.

On the other side of their common boarder, China is flexing its military muscles. They have laid claim to a broad undersea oil and gas region; a region also claimed by Japan, Taiwan and further south, by Viet Nam, and the Philippine Islands. Not long ago, China declared the region an aerial no-fly zone.

While neither Russia nor China can truly be called communist anymore; they’re more like state corporatists, they still have many political ties. This week, those ties resurfaced. China is giving Putin half-hearted support. It’s an apparent ploy for reciprocity if/when China moves to land troops on those disputed Pacific Islands or attacks Taiwan.

So, democrats and Washington liberals, the Cold War isn’t over. It’s just moved into a new stage; one Russia and China are, by rebuilding their military, prepared for, while Obama and the democrats have bee working diligently to demoralize and disarm our military and armed services.

The world has been and is a dangerous place. It’s not filled with rainbows and unicorns. With our navy and army reduced to pre-WW II levels, we’re setting ourselves up for another surprise attack—like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The democrats in Washington, and some RINOs, can not care less.

By the way, what does Tom Clancy’s book, Red Storm Rising, have in common with this?

 

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