Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: BP, Chevron, Deepwater Horizon, Exxon, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraqi oil production, Kurdish oil, Kurdish oil production, kurdistan, Kurds, macondo, production sharing agreements, Tony Hayward, Total, Total SA
The Kurdish region plans to increase output to 2 million barrels a day by 2019, Michael Howard, an adviser to Kurdistan Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami, said in a June 10 phone interview. It has signed energy agreements with about 50 companies and plans to increase output to 1 million barrels a day by 2015 from about 300,000 barrels a day now, he said.
Kurdish authorities recognize production-sharing agreements, which give investors a share of any oil they may produce, whereas Iraq’s Oil Ministry offers only fee-based service contracts. This has attracted interest from investors such as Norway’s Statoil ASA (STL) that are unhappy with the central government’s contract terms for exploration and production.
Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total SA (FP) are flouting warnings by the government against seeking separate deals with the Kurds, whom Iraq’s Oil Ministry accuses of “smuggling” oil from the country.
via Tony Hayward Loads Trucks With Kurdish Oil Awaiting Pipe: Energy – Bloomberg.
Filed under: maps | Tags: 2012 Denver bike map, Bike Denver, bike map, bike maps, bike routes Denver, biking, city bicycling, cycling, denver, Denver bike routes, map, pdf, transportation, urban bicycling, urban cycling
Via Bike Denver. Download: http://www.bikedenver.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/Bike_Map_Final_2012_Final.pdf
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Athabasca Oil Sands, bitumen, Canada, Canadian oil sands, China, CNOOC, energy, foreign control of tar sands, Foreign Investment Review Act, Jeff Rubin, Nexen, oil production, oil sands, PetroChina, Petronas, syncrude, tar sands, unconventional oil
Recall that American consumers are (strongly) encouraged to think of Canadian production as domestic production.
CNOOC’s blockbuster deal for Nexen, if nothing else, is a stark indication of how far the goal posts have moved not only for Canada’s oil patch, but also for world oil demand. Only four or five years ago, the notion that a state-owned Chinese company could buy—lock, stock and barrel of bitumen—one of Canada’s premier oil names was politically unthinkable. Any such deal was sure to be turned down by Ottawa under its Foreign Investment Review Act (not to mention the hue and cry that would come from Alberta’s provincial government).
Today, that’s all changed. CNOOC’s $15-billion offer for Nexen follows a number of major foreign transactions in Canada’s energy sector. Among others, Malaysian energy giant Petronas is paying $5.5-billion to get at Progress Energy’s natural gas reserves in British Columbia. Earlier this year, PetroChina completed a two-pronged deal for Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. that tallied $2.5-billion. In 2010, Sinopec paid $4.65-billion for a 9 percent stake in Syncrude, which runs Alberta’s largest oilsands mine.
via CNOOC’s Nexen Bid Shows How Far Goal Posts Have Moved | Jeff Rubin.
Filed under: Bike of the Day | Tags: Campagnolo, Cinelli, Ciocc, Graftek, Oschner, Puch, Suntour
This shiny beauty takes me back to the days when I would drool over catalogs from Cinelli, Zeus, Puch, Graftek — actually wouldn’t drool over the Graftek, just stare as one would at a circus freak — Columbine, Ciocc…
click to engorge
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: accident statistics, atrocities, bicycle, bicycling collisions, cameras, car-bike collisions, GoPro, helmet cam, helmet cam videos, Hero camera, Hollywood, paranoia big destroya, road rage, script writing, traffic accidents, urban cycling, wheels
Go Pro … or Go Paranoid?
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/07/20/technology/100000001638549/cameras-on-wheels.html
If you ride bikes regularly: Sickening video clips of car-bike crashes.
If you write Hollywood scripts: Comedy gold!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: DOT, energy, extrapolations, government estimates, peak oil, s, transportation, vehicle miles traveled
I have no idea. Just throwing that out there as a question.
I do know that quantifying the total amount of driving that has occurred on “all roads” by an entire population is necessarily a dark art, prone to wild extrapolations.
Currently not falling off a cliff, according to DOT.
via (pdf) http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/12maytvt/12maytvt.pdf
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Dark Knight, James Holmes, The Joker, theater shooting
Shot in the neck.
“I have some scars, but I’ll be fine,” said Martin. “I really want to ride.”
Martin could be released from the hospital as soon as Saturday.
via http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/31291807/detail.html
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Calvert Cliffs, Constellation, Electricite de France, energy, Exelon, high neutron flux, Limerick nuclear plant, Nine Mile, nuclear energy, nuclear power, Oconee, reactor, reactor core
Constellation Nuclear Energy Group’s 630-megawatt Nine Mile Point 1 nuclear reactor in New York automatically shut on Tuesday due to high neutron flux — meaning neutrons are not equally spread around the reactor core. Power traders guessed it could have been a faulty sensor and the unit could be back soon.
Constellation Nuclear is a venture between French power company Electricite de France SA (EDF) and Chicago power company Exelon Corp.
A unit at Exelon’s Limerick nuclear plant in Pennsylvania shut early Wednesday, according to power traders. Officials at the company and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission could not confirm the Limerick shutdown.
Constellation Nuclear 855-MW took the Unit 1 at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland offline by early Wednesday due to a small leak in an instrument line. The company said it had already fixed the plant and was ramping up the unit.
North Carolina-based Duke Energy’s 846-MW Unit 1 at the Oconee nuclear plant in South Carolina also shut by early Wednesday. Details about the Oconee shutdown were not immediately available to comment.
via Four U.S. power reactors shut & NYC sweats during heat wave – CNBC.
Filed under: maps | Tags: aircraft carriers, amphibious warship, crude oil, en route, energy, Iran, middle-east, Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, the Great Game
via http://www.zerohedge.com/news/three-us-aircraft-carriers-now-middle-east-fourth-en-route
click to enlarge slightly
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chukchi Sea, drill ship runs aground, Lauren Foss, Noble Discoverer, Shell, Unalaska
Unalaska?
I don’t know if I’ve never been there, or if I’ve been there my whole life, or both.
The Noble Discoverer appears to have run aground in Unalaska on Saturday afternoon.
Despite rain and 35-knot winds, more than a dozen residents came to Airport Beach to watch the Shell’s contract tugboat Lauren Foss straining to pull the rig back out to sea.
via Shell Drill Ship Runs Aground in Unalaska.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: crude oil, demand growth, demand plateau, energy, OECD, oil consumption, oil demand, oil demand forecast, OPEC, Peak Demand, peak oil
Interesting times.
“Demand in the OECD is in structural decline and we’re not expecting that to change,” he said, adding that the IEA’s forecasts do take into account recent weaker economic activity in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to the report, which contains the IEA’s first forecasts for 2013, global oil demand will be 1.1% higher than 2012, averaging 90.9 million barrels a day.
The forecasts are more bullish than reports earlier this week from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, both of whom projected slower global oil demand growth in 2013 of 730,000 barrels a day and 800,000 barrels a day respectively.
via RIGZONE – IEA: 2013 Oil Demand Growth Higher On Muted Recovery.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cosmic rays, electromagnetic, energy, GOES, magnetometer, NOAA, solar flares, solar storm
via http://www.solarham.net/magnetogram.htm
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bike racing, Cadel Evans, Chris Horner, Nibali, Radio Shack, Schleck, sports, TDF, Tour de France, Wiggins
Sure looked like it to me.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Boulder, Denver plutonium, Full Body Burden, Kristen Iversen, Leroy Moore, Plutonium, plutonium fire, Rocky Flats, Standley Lake
That’s right, 2003.
Toward the end of Kristen Iversen’s remarkable book, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, she provides a detailed account of a severe plutonium fire that happened in Building 371 at Rocky Flats in May 2003 in which Rocky Flats firefighters put their lives at risk in order to protect innocent people both on and off the site. By the time of this fire, I had for a decade been attending Rocky Flats-oriented meetings at the rate of two or three per month as a member of a number of advisory and oversight bodies focused on trying to get a responsible cleanup at Rocky Flats. When the fire happened, those of us engaged closely in Rocky Flats matters were awaiting publication of the final legally-binding Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement by the Department of Energy and the cleanup regulators, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Despite all this close attention to what was happening at Rocky Flats, I and others around me never heard that there was another serious plutonium fire at Rocky Flats in May 2003. No one from the federal and state agencies responsible for day-to-day activities at Rocky Flats, no one from Kaiser-Hill, the cleanup contractor, no one informed us of this fire.
It might as well have been 1957 when a plutonium fire at Rocky Flats resulted in the largest single release of highly toxic plutonium to the offsite environment and the public heard not a peep. Forty-six years later, not a peep.
via Rocky Flats « LeRoyMoore's Blog.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: American oil production, crude oil, crude oil production, Econbrowser, energy, James Hamilton, oil production, peak oil, Texas oil production, Texas Railroad Commission, tight oil, transportation, westtexas
A historical perspective.
via Econbrowser and James Hamilton: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2012/07/shale_oil_and_t.html
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bakken, Bakken Shale, crude oil, energy, horizontal drilling, James Hamilton, Jeffrey Brown, marginal costs of production, natural gas liquids, Niobrara, oil price, oil shale, peak oil, shale oil, shale plays, tight gas, tight oil, tight oil formations, unconventional oil, westtexas
Throwing a little cold water on some recent, loudly reported unscientific predictions. When you read Hamilton, always be sure to read the comments by Jeffrey Brown for an important Big Picture view.
In addition to the uncertainties noted above about extrapolating historical production rates, the rate at which production declines from a given well over time is another big unknown. Another key point to recognize is the added cost of extracting oil from tight formations. West Texas Intermediate is currently around $85/barrel. With the huge discount for Canadian and north-central U.S. producers, that means that producers of North Dakota sweet are only offered $61 a barrel. Tight oil is not going to be the reason that we return to an era of cheap oil, for the simple reason that if oil again fell below $50/barrel, it wouldn’t be profitable to produce with these methods. Nor is tight oil likely to get the U.S. back to the levels of field production that we saw in 1970. But tight oil will likely provide a source of significant new production over the next decade as long as the price does not fall too much.
via Econbrowser: Shale oil and tight oil.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: banksters, currency devaluation, debt, devaluation, employment, fraud, Iceland, Krugman, unemployment
again..
via Krugman: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/the-times-does-iceland/
Here’s an idea: Make the banks, rather than the public, eat the losses that the banks created.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bicycle, bicycle parking, bicycling, bike parking, bike racks, bike theft, cycling, denver, Downtown Denver Partnership, dumb racks, pedalcycle, urban cycling
The Downtown Denver Partnership advises cyclists to lock bikes to bike racks rather than trees, street lights or other sidewalks furnishings. There are 600 racks scattered throughout downtown Denver.
via More cyclists in Denver — and record numbers of bicycle thefts – Denver News – The Latest Word.
You mean one of these racks….
HURST CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING. In other downtown abominations, check out these new racks, which have plates welded where one would most like … to stick … one’s … lock. I should be happy you say, grateful that these things are being installed — racks is racks right? I mean, they are still useable. Unfortunately I can’t get past the sheer stupidity represented in these curious artifacts. Every time I am compelled to use one I find myself grumbling, so I avoid contact.
As the sticker there proudly proclaims, they are brought to you by the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District, an organization which until now has seemed to view bicycling as a hindrance to business, something to be stamped out rather than facilitated. These pants-suited business boosters never exhibited any appreciation for potential customers on bikes, or the workers downtown, from lawyers to dishwashers, who use bikes to get to their jobs. They certainly had little appreciation for the messengers who served their tenants, I mean overlords. Then the cycling renaissance of the ’00s took the BID by surprise. What are all these people doing riding bikes around down here? Now they present these awkward racks to their friends the cyclists with the prime rack area welded shut to create a place to put their sticker or some other form of advertisement. Am I on hidden camera here? This is a bit like getting a delicious sandwich with a huge bite taken out, and a sticky note there with ‘Brought to You by Mo’s Deli’ written on it. And of course the racks are popping up everywhere — except where they would be most useful. That’s about a D+ for execution, BID.
from http://www.industrializedcyclist.com/92809_Hope_You_Had_a_Nice.html
Industrialized Cyclist Notepad 