I sincerely hope that no staff including shareholders will get any bonus's or profit share now after the bail out until debts are repaid... I also hope that the salary packages of the top brass are being reviewed and cut by a few million that will see the banks closer to showing a profit!!
Those "share" buttons do work and people pick up on good pieces. I don't know why they do not comment here, but they sure do read here which we all should be grateful for.
I'm trying to improve the fact we've got some good supports on the site for discussion.
What do you think about my latest oil piece? Myself, I'm not surprised at all by team Obama being an extension of team Bush frankly. The entire financial reform situation sealed the deal for me.
Also, the politics are insane. We have talking heads on cable and so often the political sites pick up on the trivial and the nonsensical, all the while the middle class is destroyed, the environment is destroyed, the economic future is destroyed....
I mean there just ain't no common sense! Maybe we should rename the site "do you have common sense? Can you add up 2 numbers together?
those arrows next to the post will put a post onto the front page if you hit the "up" button.
On the "big bathroom shower curtain" idea, now I image that could "corral" some, but I cannot imagine the water currents, the force of the water all the way to the ocean floor actually working. I'd have to see a computer model with the materials and pressures and so on, but intuitively, the power of the sea currents against a shower curtain? I don't think so, even with the milder currents of the Gulf.
This verifies what the Forbes article said early on. Partial human error. Its possible this could have been prevented.
According to BP, there were also three warming signs of problems with unwanted flow in the well starting 51 minutes before the explosion. About 18 minutes before the explosion abnormal pressure leaks of the fluids known as mud meant to keep oil and gas capped were observed and the pump was shut down.
"The data suggests that the crew may have attempted mechanical interventions at that point to control the pressure, but soon after, the flow out and pressure increased dramatically and the explosion took place," the memo said.
Something else to consider: it's been said that the workers were in the final stages of casing and cementing the hole and that within a couple days the Deepwater Horizon was to leave that spot to go drill a new prospect. My deepwater engineer source explains that the closer a rig gets to the end of a job like this, the more pressure there would be (from supervisors, etc) to not take a drastic step like engaging the BOP's shear ram. If they had suddenly disconnected the rig from the well at that point in the cementing process, "they might have lost the whole thing." On a well that cost BP and its partners $100 million to drill, none of the nine ill-fated Transocean and two Smith International employees on the rig floor would want to make that call.
In all seriousness. That is completely not controlled and would blow a crater the size of the Grand Canyon in the sea bed floor. Now that's 5,000 feet to 18,000 feet but assuredly a nuclear bomb could blow down 13,000 feet of ocean seabed right? At which point....couldn't that simply release the oil reserves underneath in masse?
Seriously, this does not make sense to me. If it was an implosion, similar to bringing down a building in one controlled explosion like they do in cities to rebuild in an area, I could see that concept working, but it takes a lot of computerized modeling and I'm not sure that's been attempted under water ever.
But a nuclear bomb? Somebody is going to have to explain how that's the answer cause I'm not buying it. Plus, if one looks at the Bikini Islands, they are still completely radioactive, not inhabitable. You've got millions and millions of people living near the spill site in miles.
While EP is an economics blog, this is economically disastrous I am sure of it. That said, I cannot believe all of the crap I'm seeing, with no action, when this is a disaster emergency and the answer is a technical/engineering one. If someone isn't doing something due to politics and the like, we can do a call out on them and frankly, by not letting Louisiana take immediate action to protect their wetlands, that's politics! There is no time for feasibility study or impact study or whatever. While they sit there and argue instead of taking immediate action, more and more permanent damage is done. Much of this is too late, but a lot, is not but if and only if they start moving right this minute and quit with the red tape brigade.
This could be a budget buster for BP. Depending on the number that is settled on for the leak and how long this takes I figure the fines could be in the tens of billions.
The military should have, and could have taken care of this within 48 hours after it occurred.
A tactical nuclear weapon, or some other explosive could have been used to cave in the ocean floor around the well, sealing it. However, this would have been devastating to BP's oil interests. But... guess what Obama cares more about: ordinary people and ecosystems, or big oil? That's right - big oil.
This is no where in the scope of the Gulf accident but it goes to a lack of best practices something that in their business they should be all over.
I can tell you in my business I'm known as Doctor Doom because I won't move forward till I'm satisfied that any possible accident or mistake is considered and has a response.
There are no accidents in life only things that were not properly prepared for.
over in the right hand column. I hope to put up a fresh post later with expert videos, status, solutions that are probable to work and the never ending politics and other reasons for no real action.
If this was WWII, we'd all be singing work will make you stronger. (sic).
13.7 cents for a 12 month contract price versus the low I could find of 0.0899 cents/kwh in the New York city area through Green Mountain Energy. Thats a little over 50% more for the renewable rate. They make some profit by selling carbon offsets to coal plants and such and through tax credits otherwise the rate would be higher.
On par? I'm not sure but a lot better than the 300% difference that the wind power company was trying to stiff RI with.
Chevron has a renewables division that is doing great things for onsite power that allows manufacturing plants and such to avoid the grid. I'll bet that 13.7 rate in New York would be great if the distribution costs were cut out. Thats where renewables has a possible edge price wise right now plus it helps to decentralize the grid which saves money and allows for better security etc.
From the Green Mountain site if you put in a bad zip code.
Carbon Offsets & RECs
The zip code you entered is not in a competitive electricity market served by Green Mountain. However, you can still support renewable energy for your home by purchasing renewable energy certificates (RECs) from Green Mountain, which are available to customers in any geographic region. With the Green Mountain Home product, we match 100% of your monthly electricity use with clean energy from renewable resources throughout the U.S. We make it easy to green up your home! Click here for more information or to purchase Green Mountain Home Offsets.
Green Mountain also has a variety of carbon offset products to help you reduce your environmental impact from other areas of your life, like driving and flying. Want to learn more
Green Mountain Energy used to sell me pure renewable electricity a few years back at par with fossil fuels.
Green Mountain was bought out by a little company called BP. At the time, I thought that fungible dollars would be paid into the corporate BP till, which they could use for any purpose.
The BP ads used to say, "Why should anyone trust an oil company". That was in 2001, they were painting themselves as the good-guy oil company. I guess we found out how that worked out.
The latest on regulating the Oil Trust is that the MMS regulators would write drilling reports in pencil, send the report to the Oil Trust and the Oil Trust made corrections and traced over the rest in pen.
The RI PUC just turned down a wind farm proposal that priced power at 24.5 cents/kwh plus a 2.75% bribe to the utility plus about 6 cents/kwh for the power cables to the mainland making the first year cost about 31 cents/kwh.
They wanted a 3.5% annual multiplier built in over 20 years making the end cost in 20 years about 62/cents/kwh. This price is also lower due to federal tax credits and regional renewable energy credits.
Thats plus the utility distribution costs.
This is a utility grade power project there are no batteries as there would be in a residential set up.
The market rate to consumers now here is 9 cents and its likely to go down to 8 as NStar in MA just lowered their rate to 8 based on lower natural gas rates (most of our power here is from ng plants). CapeWind came in at 20.7/cents/kwh with the same 3.5% multiplier.
So 8 cents versus 31 cents. Which is cheaper?
I've seen various vague claims that renewables are cheaper but never any detailed explanation of the claims.
When someone lays it out in detail with no vague generalities I'll but into the cheaper theory.
I don't feel renewables have to be cheaper buy outrageously higher is another thing.
The process to release the gas from the shale is called 'fracking' and thats where they use a myriad of poisonous materials.
Energy companies have no use for human life. We are expendable but like I said I bet this continues on for some time and maybe forever because the end product is cheap and America was America when we had cheap energy.
Their idea of austerity was shown by CitiGroup in the fall of 2008.
They laid off 50,000 US employees. Pandit cut his salary from $38 million a year to $1/year. I'll wager his stock options will make him a billionaire when all this is over.
A less know book by a very famous author on the Spanish
Civil War is "Homage to Catalonia", by G. Orwell. It is autobiographical, & gets into the Nazis, Stalin, and Spanish Anarchists, Communists and Fascists.
Late into the 70s and 80s, you could talk to Spaniards
who were part of the Andalusian Anarchistas, and supporters of Largo Caballero, whose government voluntarily surrendered power in 1938. If you were a young American, traveling in Spain before Franco gave up,
you routinely got the fist when many Spaniards greeted you.
The best solution is to take away all of the corporate welfare being doled out to the fossil fuel industries and give it to renewable energy.
Once that is done, there would be no way that fossil fuels would be able to compete with renewable energy.
But even if everything stayed the same, photovoltaic energy is already cheaper in the sunny southwestern states than what the electric utility companies charge. The same goes for wind energy.
What makes alternative energy expensive are the batteries. So the solution is to force the electric utilities to buy back any excess electricity produced, which by the way, is always produced during the most expensive daytime hours.
Of course, if we were ever to force the fossil fuel industries to actually pay for all the environmental damage they cause just from the drilling and mining, they would immediately go out of business.
I sincerely hope that no staff including shareholders will get any bonus's or profit share now after the bail out until debts are repaid... I also hope that the salary packages of the top brass are being reviewed and cut by a few million that will see the banks closer to showing a profit!!
Those "share" buttons do work and people pick up on good pieces. I don't know why they do not comment here, but they sure do read here which we all should be grateful for.
I'm trying to improve the fact we've got some good supports on the site for discussion.
What do you think about my latest oil piece? Myself, I'm not surprised at all by team Obama being an extension of team Bush frankly. The entire financial reform situation sealed the deal for me.
Also, the politics are insane. We have talking heads on cable and so often the political sites pick up on the trivial and the nonsensical, all the while the middle class is destroyed, the environment is destroyed, the economic future is destroyed....
I mean there just ain't no common sense! Maybe we should rename the site "do you have common sense? Can you add up 2 numbers together?
BuzFlash.Com posted this article on it's front page yesterday. That's a nice nod at the Economic Populist and the fine work that goes on here.
Thanks BuzzFlash.Com!
See BuzzFlash publisher Mark Karlin's editorial on how to deal with BPP here.
The Oil Belongs to Us, Not British Petroleum: Let the Revolution begin here!
those arrows next to the post will put a post onto the front page if you hit the "up" button.
On the "big bathroom shower curtain" idea, now I image that could "corral" some, but I cannot imagine the water currents, the force of the water all the way to the ocean floor actually working. I'd have to see a computer model with the materials and pressures and so on, but intuitively, the power of the sea currents against a shower curtain? I don't think so, even with the milder currents of the Gulf.
This verifies what the Forbes article said early on. Partial human error. Its possible this could have been prevented.
BP had warning signs before Gulf blast: panel
What Happened and Why
In all seriousness. That is completely not controlled and would blow a crater the size of the Grand Canyon in the sea bed floor. Now that's 5,000 feet to 18,000 feet but assuredly a nuclear bomb could blow down 13,000 feet of ocean seabed right? At which point....couldn't that simply release the oil reserves underneath in masse?
Seriously, this does not make sense to me. If it was an implosion, similar to bringing down a building in one controlled explosion like they do in cities to rebuild in an area, I could see that concept working, but it takes a lot of computerized modeling and I'm not sure that's been attempted under water ever.
But a nuclear bomb? Somebody is going to have to explain how that's the answer cause I'm not buying it. Plus, if one looks at the Bikini Islands, they are still completely radioactive, not inhabitable. You've got millions and millions of people living near the spill site in miles.
While EP is an economics blog, this is economically disastrous I am sure of it. That said, I cannot believe all of the crap I'm seeing, with no action, when this is a disaster emergency and the answer is a technical/engineering one. If someone isn't doing something due to politics and the like, we can do a call out on them and frankly, by not letting Louisiana take immediate action to protect their wetlands, that's politics! There is no time for feasibility study or impact study or whatever. While they sit there and argue instead of taking immediate action, more and more permanent damage is done. Much of this is too late, but a lot, is not but if and only if they start moving right this minute and quit with the red tape brigade.
I started a new oil open thread post to continue the discussion. replying to your comment in new thread.
This could be a budget buster for BP. Depending on the number that is settled on for the leak and how long this takes I figure the fines could be in the tens of billions.
BP Liable for Up To $4,300 a Barrel With No Cap on Liability
The military should have, and could have taken care of this within 48 hours after it occurred.
A tactical nuclear weapon, or some other explosive could have been used to cave in the ocean floor around the well, sealing it. However, this would have been devastating to BP's oil interests. But... guess what Obama cares more about: ordinary people and ecosystems, or big oil? That's right - big oil.
These guys are an accident waiting to happen.
This is no where in the scope of the Gulf accident but it goes to a lack of best practices something that in their business they should be all over.
I can tell you in my business I'm known as Doctor Doom because I won't move forward till I'm satisfied that any possible accident or mistake is considered and has a response.
There are no accidents in life only things that were not properly prepared for.
BP Shuts Down Trans Alaska PipeLine After Accident Causes Unknown Amount of Oil to be Spilled
over in the right hand column. I hope to put up a fresh post later with expert videos, status, solutions that are probable to work and the never ending politics and other reasons for no real action.
If this was WWII, we'd all be singing work will make you stronger. (sic).
13.7 cents for a 12 month contract price versus the low I could find of 0.0899 cents/kwh in the New York city area through Green Mountain Energy. Thats a little over 50% more for the renewable rate. They make some profit by selling carbon offsets to coal plants and such and through tax credits otherwise the rate would be higher.
On par? I'm not sure but a lot better than the 300% difference that the wind power company was trying to stiff RI with.
Chevron has a renewables division that is doing great things for onsite power that allows manufacturing plants and such to avoid the grid. I'll bet that 13.7 rate in New York would be great if the distribution costs were cut out. Thats where renewables has a possible edge price wise right now plus it helps to decentralize the grid which saves money and allows for better security etc.
From the Green Mountain site if you put in a bad zip code.
Carbon Offsets & RECs
The zip code you entered is not in a competitive electricity market served by Green Mountain. However, you can still support renewable energy for your home by purchasing renewable energy certificates (RECs) from Green Mountain, which are available to customers in any geographic region. With the Green Mountain Home product, we match 100% of your monthly electricity use with clean energy from renewable resources throughout the U.S. We make it easy to green up your home! Click here for more information or to purchase Green Mountain Home Offsets.
Green Mountain also has a variety of carbon offset products to help you reduce your environmental impact from other areas of your life, like driving and flying. Want to learn more
Green Mountain Energy used to sell me pure renewable electricity a few years back at par with fossil fuels.
Green Mountain was bought out by a little company called BP. At the time, I thought that fungible dollars would be paid into the corporate BP till, which they could use for any purpose.
The BP ads used to say, "Why should anyone trust an oil company". That was in 2001, they were painting themselves as the good-guy oil company. I guess we found out how that worked out.
The latest on regulating the Oil Trust is that the MMS regulators would write drilling reports in pencil, send the report to the Oil Trust and the Oil Trust made corrections and traced over the rest in pen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/us/25mms.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2...
The RI PUC just turned down a wind farm proposal that priced power at 24.5 cents/kwh plus a 2.75% bribe to the utility plus about 6 cents/kwh for the power cables to the mainland making the first year cost about 31 cents/kwh.
They wanted a 3.5% annual multiplier built in over 20 years making the end cost in 20 years about 62/cents/kwh. This price is also lower due to federal tax credits and regional renewable energy credits.
Thats plus the utility distribution costs.
This is a utility grade power project there are no batteries as there would be in a residential set up.
The market rate to consumers now here is 9 cents and its likely to go down to 8 as NStar in MA just lowered their rate to 8 based on lower natural gas rates (most of our power here is from ng plants). CapeWind came in at 20.7/cents/kwh with the same 3.5% multiplier.
So 8 cents versus 31 cents. Which is cheaper?
I've seen various vague claims that renewables are cheaper but never any detailed explanation of the claims.
When someone lays it out in detail with no vague generalities I'll but into the cheaper theory.
I don't feel renewables have to be cheaper buy outrageously higher is another thing.
The process to release the gas from the shale is called 'fracking' and thats where they use a myriad of poisonous materials.
Energy companies have no use for human life. We are expendable but like I said I bet this continues on for some time and maybe forever because the end product is cheap and America was America when we had cheap energy.
Their idea of austerity was shown by CitiGroup in the fall of 2008.
They laid off 50,000 US employees. Pandit cut his salary from $38 million a year to $1/year. I'll wager his stock options will make him a billionaire when all this is over.
Crooks.
Planning is for socialist, so we can't expect a corporation to do it. Besides, planning cost money and reduces profits.
A less know book by a very famous author on the Spanish
Civil War is "Homage to Catalonia", by G. Orwell. It is autobiographical, & gets into the Nazis, Stalin, and Spanish Anarchists, Communists and Fascists.
Late into the 70s and 80s, you could talk to Spaniards
who were part of the Andalusian Anarchistas, and supporters of Largo Caballero, whose government voluntarily surrendered power in 1938. If you were a young American, traveling in Spain before Franco gave up,
you routinely got the fist when many Spaniards greeted you.
The best solution is to take away all of the corporate welfare being doled out to the fossil fuel industries and give it to renewable energy.
Once that is done, there would be no way that fossil fuels would be able to compete with renewable energy.
But even if everything stayed the same, photovoltaic energy is already cheaper in the sunny southwestern states than what the electric utility companies charge. The same goes for wind energy.
What makes alternative energy expensive are the batteries. So the solution is to force the electric utilities to buy back any excess electricity produced, which by the way, is always produced during the most expensive daytime hours.
Of course, if we were ever to force the fossil fuel industries to actually pay for all the environmental damage they cause just from the drilling and mining, they would immediately go out of business.
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