So, why didn't we cut them off at the pass?

business.telegraph Monday 14 February 2005

India and China battle over Russian oil
By Malcolm Moore (Filed: 14/02/2005)

India is fighting China in the battle for Russian oil by angling for a supply deal and a stake in Yuganskneftegaz, the oil unit that was seized from Yukos and is now owned by Rosneft, the state oil company.


Mani Shankar Aiyar, India's petroleum minister, will visit Russia on February 21 to discuss the possibility of the country taking a 15pc to 20pc stake in the oil unit, which is still the focus of legal action in the US. "There are no full stops and the dialogue is continuing," he said.

The fact that Yukos has threatened to sue anyone who interferes with its former unit has not put India or China off. China has offered $6billion (£3.34billion) to fund the purchase of Yugansk, in return for a guaranteed 360m barrels of oil over the next five years. India has been offered a similar quota but wants a slice of equity for its national oil company ONGC.

Rosneft paid $9billion for Yugansk, which pumps about a million barrels a day, through a holding company called Baikal Finance. Yukos has filed for damages concerning the sale of Yugansk, and is petitioning for $20billion from Rosneft, Gazprom and their subsidiaries. Yukos also said it would pursue Deutsche Bank, a situation that could see the German bank threatened in the US.

One source claimed Yukos had discovered proof that Deutsche had played a role in the sale of Yugansk, a situation that would put it in clear contravention of the US bankruptcy court that ruled that the auction should be delayed.

Yukos returns to court on Wednesday to persuade the judge that it should be allowed to continue its bankruptcy proceedings, and to plead that any claims against the company from the Russian government be heard in an international arbitration forum. Under its new plan for repaying creditors, the Russian government has slipped substantially down the list of importance.

Meanwhile, a former Russian prime minister has hit out at the destruction of Yukos and the climate of uncertainty that it has brought to the economic outlook in Russia. Yegor Gaidar, who was briefly prime minister under Boris Yeltsin and is a noted free-market economist, told a group of institutional investors in London last week: "What they are doing could be explained rationally only if the goal was to stop economic growth.

"Growth is very difficult to stop. It is very robust. Even the 1998 crisis only stopped growth for one year. So it is a very ambitious target but then, as Stalin said 'There are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks cannot storm'."

He added: "Ten days ago we held a seminar with Russian government officials to try to set the agenda for this year. They asked how could we compensate for the negative effects. The answer is that it is impossible. You cannot compensate for this sense of unpredictability by any improvement in regulations when Russians really do not believe that tax and property rules will be upheld. No laws will resolve this problem."

Mr Gaidar also called on the government not to bow to political pressure to use the country's savings to cut taxes. Russia has been building a budgetary stabilisation fund off the back of recent high oil prices, which amounts to 647.2billion roubles (£12.3billion).

 

Yup, just what we need......another "All President Bush's actions are just about oil" scenario.

 

Actually, that wasn't my point. China is the 2nd largest consumer of oil, with 4% of the population driving cars and most of the country in the cold, because of a shortage of coal and oil for their factories and powerplants. Can you imagine what it will be like when 10% of their population starts driving? If we don't keep ahead of them, we'll be playing second

 

Honestly, the next ten years will see Biodiesel replacing regular Diesel, with only a very little price increase being passed onto the consumer.

No matter what way you look at it, it is impossible to use anything other than hydrocarbon-fuel, and we aren't going to have enough of it as the rest of the world industrializes.

The transition to biofuels is going to be a smooth one. We already make a great amount of the stuff for the USAF, and other militaries probably have similar doctrines. The infrastructure, capital and technology is in place for the transfer to occur. The point is that the transfer of wealth will be HUGE. All the money going to the Middle East and such for oil- it is all going to go someplace else. Whoever figures out how to shave a piece of that off for theselves is going to be a next generation Texas Oil Baron.

 

Still waiting for Mr. Fusion........

Seriously, I think fuel cell technology is going to come on strong in the next 10 years.

 

Fuel cells?

Maybe when they develop an engine that will produce the hydrogen instead of re-filling it. Only then will it be practical.

 

The figure that blew me away is that 20% of all government Diesel burned is biodiesel. (Or most of it, anyways. There's probably some devil here with an exception...) That's for every humvee, military truck and postal service vehicle out there. (Although I don't know about the postal service big-rigs...) But they've all been using B20 for years. I mean, that's a lot of Biodiesel that gets used. While it's less than one percent of total fuel burned, it's still a lot, and you never hear about it affecting any markets or such. Not only that, but where's it all come from? Corn or soy beans, which are not the best for oil production.

With the efficiency of US-style agriculture, the US alone probably has enough crop land to produce enough Diesel for ourselves as long as we grow hemp or something that makes more oil than soy. Or we could go the wild card route and grow Algae, which makes more oil than hemp or any other complex plant but would take more capital to grow.

However, if we were to spread US-style agriculture to third world countries, we could EAISILY be on a sustainable oil use system within a decade, probably off of soybeans even. Heck, probably off of rice.

If third world countries were given capital, we would increase the world's crop production a hundred times. We could potentially generate so much oil that we would run out of holes in the ground to stick it. The world can generate so much biodiesel if we were to fully industrialize it, that it's insane.

Of course, the key to making a fully sustainable oil production system is the industrialization of third world countries. Third world countries, especially those with decent crop land, are going to be land grabbed by bigger countries as we run out of oil.

If a country like Mexico were annexed by a country like the US, it would open up massive capital to Mexico's economy. There would essentially be a massive carpet-bagger movement. In no time, if all trade and political borders were removed, (i.e. Mexico was fully annexed) Mexico would industrialize in a flash. In doing so, it would adopt agricultural programs just as efficient as the US. That right there would double the US's potential agricultural output, giving North America a ton of extra agricultural ability. And Mexico is not the best example for this, at all. (Actually it was kind of a stupid example to use, but it still works.) The point is that to industrialize a country, it needs capital. And the only way of supplying enough is through annexation.

Look at Africa for a better example. Africa could theoretically produce, if fully industrialized, enough biodiesel to make the Middle East look like an oil stain on a sidewalk from outer space. And, in it's industrialization, it would lead to a massive increase in quality of living and environmental health and a decrease in premature death and overpopulation.

The point is that agriculture can easily generate enough oil for us all as long as it is done to the US standards of efficiency throughout the entire planet. This requires the wealthier countries to annex the more impoverished countries. Yes, this means that the world needs to go into a new age of imperialism. Yes, this means that we need to kick those nice Ghandi and Kennedy ideals out the window and go out land grabbing again. But it is only by abandoning the peace that we all strive so hard for, and replacing it with good old fashion imperialistic, national greed, that we can end world poverty (and all its associated problems) and as a fringe benefit have large enough agricultural system to make Biodiesel for the entire planet.



And don't get me started on fuel cells. People say that using propane on a truck will blow you the the nine hells. And you want to carry around enough hydrogen to level a block? HAHAHA. Makes the suicide bombers' jobs a lot easier, I guess.

 

Of course, and that's why auto makers are expending huge amounts of money into storage research and paying scientists and engineers to think outside of the box. There is much research into new hydrogen storage technologies, such as carbon nanotubes and metal hydrides, both of which theoretically can absorb and hold large amounts of hydrogen safely in a relatively small space. I doubt you'll ever see autos and trucks with compressed hydrogen fuel tanks.

 

Well, then I guess the Orinoco project would be rejected, since it would violate the EPA's rule on low sulphur?
http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/...ess/3_1_04.asp

 

Begle1: You want to plant Canola, not soy or corn. Canola is primarily used by the fast food industry for cooking oil. That's the basis for most home-brew biodiesel.

 

Since hydrogen basically does not occur in nature as an element (i.e., it's compounded with oxygen as H20 [water] or carbon as CH4 [methane], etc.), the source of this hydrogen for a fuel-celled economy would be.......?????

(Hint: Many engineers recognize that hydrogen is not so much a fuel as it is an energy storage medium, and a not very efficient one at that. Like biodiesel, the energy balance of the complete production process must be analyzed - how many BTU's does it take to produce one BTU of elemental hydrogen or biodiesel?)

Rusty

 

Ooo!, Ooo!, Ask me!..Ask me!.. (Hand raised, waving wildly)

 

All right, Commatoze, you may answer the question.

Rusty

 

From natural gas?!

But! Good 'ol H2O could hold the key to an unlimited supply of hydrogen if we could crack it to extract the H. Can you say "thermonuclear assistance"?

 

1. If we depend on extraction of hydrogen from methane, we still haven't really moved away from a hydrocarbon-reliant economy.

2. BINGO. For a number of reasons we can discuss if desired, wind turbines, solar cells and even hydroelectric power are pretty much non-starters. If we really want to move to hydrogen as a fuel source, then we're going to be talking about nuclear power - LOTS of incremental nuclear power - to extract hydrogen from water. I have no problem with that - our company has supplied many emergency standby diesel gensets to nuclear power plants - but I wonder how the tree-huggers are going to feel about that?

Rusty