[Pops]

EFarmer made a nice rant in the Vermillion Bay thread and for whatever reason it made me think of the effort expended for North Slope oil in the '70s, Iraqi oil in the aughties and deepwater now.

Building the Alaska Pipeline was hard but easy and cheap compared to liberating Iraq's oil. Of course Cheney didn't have as much control as he needed but he gave it a shot. The guys that work the oil rigs I'd guess are mostly the same guys that worked the pipeline and the 50 cal. in Iraq.

I was just out of high school when they started the Alaska pipe and it was really a big deal as I remember. Right on the heels of the first Arab embargoes, the 'mericns got out the Drill, Baby, and got to work! It's no wonder Boomers have a hard time believing we'll ever run low on oil, all we need is a little gumption, a bulldozer and a few less environmentalists gumming up the works.

A quick search indicates the Alaska pipe and terminal would cost about $30B today - the Iraq resource development tab is up to $750B I think (not including oil infrastructure) and four thousands lives (Iraqis don't count) and we're not even back to pre-freedom oil extraction levels yet. That's a good indication of how far down the depletion road we've come. In fact the piddling (and I'm sure to Cheney, disappointing) amount of oil coming out of Iraq today is about the same as was coming out of the pipe at the peak of it's delivery - that indicates how much our requirements for oil have grown.

The cost of heroic measures to keep the old alcoholic alive is growing all the time.


http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/10 ... l-20100810

[wisconsin_cur]

Our memories seem to be based upon the use of shortcuts. Instead of rememebering the effort and result of the Alaska pipeline and comparing it to the present we use the short cut of "it all worked out" and since it all worked out then we extrapolate to say, "It will all work out this time."

Sometimes we are funny little apes just trying to get food out of the box like it worked last time.

Well, is it food or did we give that up for cocaine? I forget.

[Plantagenet]

.....Alaska pipeline....It's no wonder Boomers have a hard time believing we'll ever run low on oil, all we need is a little gumption, a bulldozer and a few less environmentalists gumming up the works.

There's 10 billion more barrels of oil in ANWR just to the east of Prudhoe Bay and god knows how many billion more barrels offshore, but 40 years later the environmentalists are still gumming up the works on those oil fields.

[efarmer]

There is perhaps 20 billion barrels in the Obama's Katrina region, which is the same big region of plays that gave us West Texas and Oklahoma when they were still underwater in the Gulf of Obama's Katrina. (We called it the Gulf of Mexico in the old days.)

I think we need serious data and serious petroleum strategies as part of a serious long term energy strategy.

We need but are not likely to get serious political cooperation and discussions in that direction.
The corporate whores of Washington are pivoting from pumping pork to pitching austerity and balancing accounting they have contrived beyond all reference to it's underlying resources under the alleged goal of "not passing this crushing debt on to our grandchildren".

This is a cover story for negotiating away financial "original sin" for future souls to justify burning up every form of energy that can be exploited for a greedy bunch of spoiled hogs, right now.


The traditional positive aspects of the investor class are fading away for America. Investors have been churned and the cream sucked off by the NY/DC casino operators and left to speculate on a gutshot nation and anticipate and drive the prices through the roof by beating the trend and positioning themselves to betting if the peasants are going to eat, travel, get sick or die, or borrow some money to buy something imported from where people sweat cheap to make things.

I don't buy the people who exploit every resource they can lay their mitts on for a quick buck when they say they are setting the books right for the next generation, do you?

Tell your grandson that he would have been $50,000 in debt if you hadn't been part of a great effort to burn up enough resources so he could be born broke instead of in hock, just like grandpa.
He will figure out later on that you had to use up all the resources in order to "save" him.

If we don't leave resources for our grandchildren where we can and be willing to sacrifice our comfort to do so if necessary, let's not kid each other with spreadsheets and paper certificates.
But the people who thought their vinyl box doubled in value to belch them out hot tubs and cruises and SUV's ARE going to buy this lie, and the pinheads in NY/DC are going to reel them in sure as the sun comes up in the morning.