[Tanada]

The cap is in place, not very tight at the moment, but it can be changed. The cap is $60 but Russian crude is trading at $52. It seems to be a mechanism by which the West can incrementally punish or reward Putin.

Turkeys play is interesting. They are now requiring ALL vessles to show more proof of adequate insurance, hence there is a backlog of Russian AND OTHER tankers. The West is hollering about delays.

Not sure what Turkey is up to, maybe just making their presence and power known to all sides?

About a month ago we took about 100 gallons in St Thomas, at $6/. Bad timing. Significanly cheaper now.

Turkey has a long standing policy of working against oil spills in the Black Sea as their entire northern coastline is vulnerable to damage from such. Requiring insurance to cover clean up costs of vessels entering a war zone is not a bad idea, though processing speed seems to be an issue in this case.

[Baduila]

[Newfie]

Russia has had a couple of what appear to be major infrastructure incidents in the past week. Two or three refineries and a gas pipeline have had fires, at least one major. I have no idea if this is just coincidence, or intentional or due to the withdrawal of Western support technicians.

Angarsk Petrochemical Plant (largest oil refinery in Russia) has had 2 significant fires in less than a month.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-mystery- ... 77818.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Ru ... tery_fires

[ROCKMAN]

Not responding to any particular post. But if one googles the "cost" to produce a bbl of oil countless results noting the cost to DEVELOP new production are found...not the cost to produce from existing wells. Finally found one but can't completely vouch for accuracy.

http://graphics.wsj.com/oil-barrel-breakdown/

Russia spends $19.20 per bbl. But back off $8.44 in taxes (which goes to Putin) it cost the typical operator a bit less than $11 per bbl. So, they still make a profit at $20/bbl. Of course, whether they are willing to sell their proven reserves that cheap is another question. But at the end of the cash flow tends to be paramount. Particularly if one is financing a war.

[Newfie]

Sounds like a good way to devalue your financial reserves.

[theluckycountry]

Only the western nations think in terms of quarterly profits, the Russians probably think in years, the Chinese in decades. But it'll all be over soon for the average consumer, another decade or less perhaps and they will have to forgo their cars and that will allow whatever oil is left to last a lot longer. It was always the solution, and Zero-Carbon agreements are one way to push it through. A phoney war for democracy another.

[theluckycountry]

There used to be a lot of Cod off cape Cod. All gone.

I's an old story, repeated many times

Collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery

In 1992, Northern Cod populations fell to 1% of historical levels, due in large part to decades of overfishing. The Canadian Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, John Crosbie, declared a moratorium on the Northern Cod fishery, which for the preceding 500 years had primarily shaped the lives and communities of Canada's eastern coast. A significant factor contributing to the depletion of the cod stocks off Newfoundland's shores was the introduction of equipment and technology that increased landed fish volume. From the 1950s onwards, new technology allowed fishers to trawl a larger area, fish more in-depth, and for a longer time. By the 1960s, powerful trawlers equipped with radar, electronic navigation systems, and sonar allowed crews to pursue fish with unparalleled success, and Canadian catches peaked in the late-1970s and early-1980s. Cod stocks were depleted at a faster rate than could be replenished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_ ... od_fishery

[Newfie]

To add to that story, one day the Newfoundland minister in charge of fisheries, himself from a fishing family, called a press conference and announced the fishery was CLOSED. Zero warning, 30% of the islands GDP gone in a minute.

[ROCKMAN]

newfie - Exactly. Bank et al run a spreadsheet to value companies. A couple of mouse clicks changing the future price of oil and bottom line can change significantly. Especially for reservoirs with high operating costs: they can be completely removed from the total if revenue doesn't cover ops.

[Plantagenet]

I dont think the North Atlantic Cod fishery and global oil production are directly comparable.

The graphs for cod fishery collapse and oil production collapse do indeed look similar, but the mechanisms involved and the nature of the problem are totally different.

Cod are a RENEWABLE resource.....the reason they are gone is they were overfished. If the cod fishery had been managed properly it would still be sustainable at reasonable levels today. Its even possible that with future restrictions on commercial fishing it will recover to some degree.

In contrast, oil is a NONRENEWABLE resource. Once an oil wells or oil field is depleted the oil is gone forever.....and once the planet is depleted of oil the oil is gone forever.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Plant,

I get your point.

HOWEVER, the reality may even be worse.

Research has postulated….
Cod stocks WERE renewable, but they were depleted to such a degree that they actually changed the dynamics of the eco system. Cod would feed on shrimp and crab, reducing their biomass. But cod were so depleted that shrimp and crab populations exploded and they are now feeding in cod young, thus cod can not make a come back.

In other words, we made a renewable resource NONrenewable.

Sweet eh?

[Tanada]

Plant,

I get your point.

HOWEVER, the reality may even be worse.

Research has postulated….
Cod stocks WERE renewable, but they were depleted to such a degree that they actually changed the dynamics of the eco system. Cod would feed on shrimp and crab, reducing their biomass. But cod were so depleted that shrimp and crab populations exploded and they are now feeding in cod young, thus cod can not make a come back.

In other words, we made a renewable resource NONrenewable.

Sweet eh?

I consider myself to be an environmentally minded person and I somehow missed this bit of info about COD not recovering once fishing was effectively reduced. Do you have any links to papers on how this dynamic is working? Admittedly I live off the coast of Lake Erie not the Atlantic so the fish stocks I am most familiar with are Yellow Perch and Walleye, not sea living fish like Cod or Halibut.

Most ecowebs are vastly more resilient than we give them credit for and simply withdrawing human over harvesting often allows them to rebound fully to a state very similar to what they were over a generational timescale. COD are one of the fish species that take a long time to reach maturity so a generational time scale is more like two decades compared to say white tale deer with a generational scale on the close order of three years.

[careinke]

Plant,

I get your point.

HOWEVER, the reality may even be worse.

Research has postulated….
Cod stocks WERE renewable, but they were depleted to such a degree that they actually changed the dynamics of the eco system. Cod would feed on shrimp and crab, reducing their biomass. But cod were so depleted that shrimp and crab populations exploded and they are now feeding in cod young, thus cod can not make a come back.

In other words, we made a renewable resource NONrenewable.

Sweet eh?

I consider myself to be an environmentally minded person and I somehow missed this bit of info about COD not recovering once fishing was effectively reduced. Do you have any links to papers on how this dynamic is working? Admittedly I live off the coast of Lake Erie not the Atlantic so the fish stocks I am most familiar with are Yellow Perch and Walleye, not sea living fish like Cod or Halibut.

Most ecowebs are vastly more resilient than we give them credit for and simply withdrawing human over harvesting often allows them to rebound fully to a state very similar to what they were over a generational timescale. COD are one of the fish species that take a long time to reach maturity so a generational time scale is more like two decades compared to say white tale deer with a generational scale on the close order of three years.

The original problem may not have been overfishing. We are having a similar problem in the Southern Puget Sound with Dungeness Crab. So far, none of the Marine Biologist I have spoken with are sure what happened here. I have a Hypothesis, and unfortunately it seems to be playing out in other parts of the State.

My Hypothesis is: the Dungeness Crabs were severely stressed by some other environmental factor. This stress lead to a huge increase in new off spring, to the point of a massive die-off due to lack of food. I know it sounds strange, but hear me out.

About four years ago Crabbing in the lower Puget sound was abruptly halted. This area is all Puget Sound Waters south of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge(s).

It was weird because the previous two years, the state raised the limits for Dungeness and even added another season due, to a high population count. I caught a lot in those two years, but a lot were returned because they were less than legal size. That didn't really matter, with a couple of pots, you had no problem getting your daily limit, especially if you are "retired." . We were basically self sufficient in crab for a $65.00 License. We even used our sailboat to put the pots out.

Today we get a lot of Rock Crab (also delicious) molted shells on the beach but very few Dungee's. Our Geo Duck diver says there are a lot of crab down there, but mostly small.

Lots of species, including Humans, speed up procreation when under stress. You can tell a couple of years in advance when a Cedar will die, it spends most of its remaining energy producing cones, and amazing amount of cones. The same with most conifers.

This year, the kids went up the Straights to Crab, while we watched the grandkids. They came back with a crazy amount of crab, along with Halibut. Ling Cod, and Salmon. When you add Geo Duck, oysters, and steamer clams from our beach. We are doing fine this year in the seafood department.

But I'm thinking the crab population up there may be in it's final phase. The kids said you had to pull up the pots every 20 minutes, and they were only in 20 feet of water. Very unusual.

The animals especially predator's is shifting dramatically around here, plus record high tides, and extreme weather has made 2022 exceptional. But that's another, if still connected, story.

Peace

[Newfie]

Plant,

I get your point.

HOWEVER, the reality may even be worse.

Research has postulated….
Cod stocks WERE renewable, but they were depleted to such a degree that they actually changed the dynamics of the eco system. Cod would feed on shrimp and crab, reducing their biomass. But cod were so depleted that shrimp and crab populations exploded and they are now feeding in cod young, thus cod can not make a come back.

In other words, we made a renewable resource NONrenewable.

Sweet eh?

I consider myself to be an environmentally minded person and I somehow missed this bit of info about COD not recovering once fishing was effectively reduced. Do you have any links to papers on how this dynamic is working? Admittedly I live off the coast of Lake Erie not the Atlantic so the fish stocks I am most familiar with are Yellow Perch and Walleye, not sea living fish like Cod or Halibut.

Most ecowebs are vastly more resilient than we give them credit for and simply withdrawing human over harvesting often allows them to rebound fully to a state very similar to what they were over a generational timescale. COD are one of the fish species that take a long time to reach maturity so a generational time scale is more like two decades compared to say white tale deer with a generational scale on the close order of three years.

Tanada, a quick search, my first hit. I have read much more.

By 2002, after a 10-year moratorium on fishing, the cod had still not returned.[45] The local ecosystem seemed to have changed, with forage fish, such as capelin, which used to provide food for the cod, increase in numbers, and eat the juvenile cod. The waters appeared to be dominated by crab and shrimp rather than fish.[45] Local inshore fishermen blamed hundreds of factory trawlers, mainly from Eastern Europe, which started arriving soon after WWII, catching all the breeding cod.[45]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_ ... od_fishery

I do not think there is consensus of WHY the cod have not returned, they have made some slight rebound but not like what was expected. This ecological explanation is one of several.

Cod went down, crab went up. Now I appears caplin are in trouble. Iceland has been warning of this collapse for a long time, time. Last year the caplin were scared, and for the first time the whales did not come in. I hope it was an normal cyclical event only.

Capelin are funny, like salmon they return to historic beaches to spawn. Some populations of caplin still return to underwater beaches (on the Grand Banks) that they used during the last ice age.

[AdamB]

Russia has said it will cut its oil output in response to Western embargoes and price caps. Moscow's move doesn't come as a surprise given the pain inflicted by the sanctions on Russia, but what about its real motive?

Is Russia weaponizing oil after natural gas misfire?