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don't know about 'never' or non-US exporters but at least in 2009 and 2010 China did not import significant quantities of wheat from the US.
chk out "Top 10 U.S. agricultural export markets for wheat, corn, soybeans, and cotton, by volume"
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FATUS/#monthly
i don't know how 'volatile' the grain export data are but China imported nearly 10x more corn from the US in 2010 vs 2009
China is, by far, the largest importer of US soybeans in the world.
the other biggie crop export from US to China is cotton (again China largest importer)
that article was about 30% truth and a 70% mix of error and plagiarized gibberish from "Gasland" so it doesn't surprise me that they missed the part about HES
ok, you're a Saudi prince who still doesn't know what he's talking about. btw, you might want to go back and checks your "facts" about what country is world's largest oil producer.
i have doubts that al-Husseini actually said what Forbes claims. i'd bet there is some sloppiness or lack of understanding in the use of the word "reserves". It's plausible (although still very unlikely) that aramco could be off by 40% on projected resources (probable or potential reserves) across the entire country but their proven reserves are a very tightly guarded secret and it's extremely unlikely that they are off by 40%. Much of Saudi has not been explored or only lightly explored and there are several large but untouched reservoirs. That article looks more like a YMB post than serious journalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proven_reserves
concur on the REE mythology claim.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2010-raree.pdf
China does have the largest reserves; however, the definition of reserve involves what is economically viable. Because labor and other mining costs are substantially lower in China, larger reserves do not equate to greater quantities of materials or more of a particular grade of ore.
As for other natural resources, China ranks low on coal and oil and middling in iron ore reserves. Overall, I'd say they aren't as well off as the US in spite of the higher extraction costs in the US.
each of your arguments were addressed by Judge Vinson. Why do you not simply read his decision rather than arguing with Tinker in this forum?
OT
re the part about "When is an amendment redesignated?"
skyrocketing oil - doubtful
perhaps this will dampen your enthusiasm:
i don't think the articles really contradict each other. Too much equivocation to call for that.
i have a friend who owns a small service company and he says his company was going to put some equipment on a deepwater rig in the GOM just after Thanksgiving. Whether or not it was going to get used soon is a different matter. For all i know there could be different flavors of permits, e.g. drilling operations that had been started prior to the DWH may have been allowed to restart but that is just wild-ass speculation on my part.
yeah, i agree that peak oilists are akin to cultists but i'm skeptical that the "embarrassment of mineral riches" uncovered by drillers in recent years will restrain oil prices because I don't think the producing countries will escape the political problems that have accompanied prior "windfalls" in many countries. Venezuela is amongst the largest reserve holders in the world and was not lacking in production capability yet their production has been steadily declining for 13 years. Nigeria: similar situation. Russia: sharp decline in rate of increase in production starting about 6 yrs ago. Iran: production almost flat for past 20 yrs and about 60% of what it was in 1975 - again in spite of having very large reserves and having had no shortage of production capability. Iraq: huge reserves and production capability; obviously production has been problematic over past ~20 yrs but i wouldn't bet on it getting vastly better for a prolonged period after US troops leave.
All of these countries would've loved to have taken advantage of >$100/bbl oil which would have dampened further price increases; however, none of these countries could significantly increase production because of their fouled up political environments/systems.
I hope the folks in Brazil and Ghana fare much better but given Brazil's history and the most recent election results i'm not betting on rosy and painless results. I know a person from Ghana and while she's proud of her country, she shares the fear that the country's 'embarassment of mineral riches' may be a curse.
interesting copy-editing:
back when MNTA hit $14 i sold my DSM and bought more MNTA. now i'm glad i did. Not a big fan of baby food.
this begs to get me in trouble ;^)
i would not say that there is a shortage of engineers, other scientists, or university professors. Over the past 2 yrs many 10's of thousands of the former 2 categories have been trimmed from O&G industry payrolls in north america alone. I'd venture that the 3rd category has increased in that time period so the school of mines guy is full of crap.
there are problems in matching up people to the available jobs. The field engineering jobs frequently require smart people who are willing to do dirty jobs in frequently miserable places under unpleasant conditions and those places tend to change frequently. That's why those folks frequently get paid better than folks that sit in comfortable air conditioned offices and drive home to the family every afternoon. There are many other problems: e.g. the HR people are frequently clueless as to the technical skills of applicants or the application (i.e. the HR people tend to be social 'scientists' or liberal arts majors who have never spent more time on a drill rig than what it took for the tour during their initial training). You might think that latter problem would be an obvious and relatively easy one to fix but i've been known to have naive opinions. HR people frequently do utilize field folk in recruiting but by the time the field people are involved there has already been a great deal of winnowing of schools, departments, and applicants so the potential advantage has been restricted.
The perception that the O&G biz is dying may be real. Part of this is due to the boom and bust nature of the business and the consequent effect on academic geology, geophysics, and petroleum engineering departments. Obviously, math, chemistry, engineering, and physics departments will not be affected as directly but O&G applications seem to be very low to non-existent in the list of topics to which students in those depts are introduced. Students also tend to be more idealistic and think 'green energy' is inevitable without paying attention to the practical (e.g. space & materials) and thermodynamic limitations. Consequently, new hires coming into an O&G company may be very smart chemists, physics, etc. but they have no clue about the physical characteristics of an oil reservoir or well. What we frequently get are geologists clueless of the physics, engineers and physicists clueless of the geology and, based on my experience, practically everybody is clueless of the chemistry unless it involves only hydrocarbons (the materials 'scientists' might be offended by that but that's a different topic ;^) ).
O&G wells and reservoirs and the techniques used to detect and extract oil and gas are very complex and there is no shortage of technical challenges for scientists and engineers. So if there is a perception that the O&G business is dying, then it is partially the fault of those companies for failing to 'sell' the scientific challenges to the schools and students. O&G companies do have university liaison's and outreach programs but my perception is that they fail miserably because there is a mismatch of personal aggendas. As an example, my company sponsors a 'chaired' professorship at a well known technical university, however, the professor in that position had never set foot in the company's major research lab until very recently and his research interests have nothing to do with petroleum or natural gas. Likewise, the company's university liaisons seem to be more comfortable in the wine and cheese circuit than the keg and pizza circuit. Of course, expecting good results from putting a 60 yr old guy into the keg & beer circuit would probably not be productive either.
cheers,
charlie
i guess you can include HES in the list of O&G companies silently cheering on the anti-fracking environmental folk.
edible frac stuff
nice marketing work by the Halliburton and BH folk. Unfortunately, the stuff that they claim is used in making beer and ice-cream is either stuff they've been using already (e.g. guar) or it's stuff i wouldn't want to eat (e.g. mineral oil). And as the environmental guy made clear, they will always find something objectionable about extracting oil or gas.
i think all of the incidents of water contamination associated with fracking have all been tied to surface contamination: e.g. loss of containment in storage or transportation containers and retension ponds. The only way to contaminate aquifers from the wells which penetrate the aquifers is to have a bad cement job and that problem wouldnt be caused by fracking. Fracking chemicals could leak up a bad cement job but placing blame on fracking for such a problem is illogical.
Things like biocides are, by definition, toxic so unless the fracking companies do without the biocide, then some fracking chemicals will continue to be toxic. Making a completely sterile and pH and Eh adjusted fracking fluid which could, in principle, eliminate the need for biocides is impractical (IMO).
Couple other errors or misleading points (not necessarily from the WSJ): 1. HAL does appear to be disclosing compositional info on their fracking fluids, c.f. http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/Hydraulic_Fracturing/index.html 2. i suspect the maltodextrin is used for increasing the density of the frac fluid for the purpose of better supporting the proppant. If so, then i doubt that it would be replacing any toxic chemicals.
Overall, i don't think you'll hear a whole lot of wailing and knashing of teeth from the bigger gas producers or service companies in response to the environmentalists' protestations over shale gas exploitation. The result will be increased costs for producing the gas which will drive the smaller operators out of the market and give greater pricing power to the larger operators and service companies. in the end everyone but NG consumers, T-bone, and the 'mom and pop' gas producers and service companies will be happy.
ob,
there's a world of difference between "preventing" a blowout and "causing" a blowout.
cso
see now tha k1 already made pt. feel free to delete.
if you look up Joe Barton's major donors you'll NOT see Teva amongst them. Joe has take money from the AMA, Merck, Abbott and a healthcare industry PAC. In anycase, I wouldn't worry much about Barton because he isn't particularly popular after his infamous BP apology.
some of those buy-and-holds may be related to company requirement that officers above a certain rank are required to have stock ownership equivalent to some % of compensation. Some of the folks in new positions probably got big bump-ups in the comp so they're playing catch-up on the stock. That's prob not true for Pai but he increased his holdings by a relatively small amount.
duck deaths
if Greenpeace is so interested in duck health they should wander down to the southern end of the Salton Sea in California. The number of ducks, fish, etc that die each year from Mexican sewage and agricultural run-off is far larger than the number of ducks cited in the NY Times story.
charlie
JNJ/CRXL
assuming the purchase goes thru; how do you suppose JNJ will handle Royal DSM's 50% ownership of PER.C6? e.g. leave alone or do you think JNJ will attempt to buyout Royal DSM's rights to PER.C6?
thx,
Charlie
I thought recycling frac wastewater for the next frac was already industry-standard. Is this product a significant innovation?]
don't know but i doubt if recycling is standard. I'd also be surprised if what is recycled is a significant fraction of the total volume of recovered frac water.
50 gal/min is not fast. according to:
http://www.geunconventionalgas.com/gas-processing-water.html
a typical operation injects 1 to 5 million gals water. The quantity recovered varies considerably, e.g. 20-50% is common. So either several of the GE units sit on a site for each job or one truck sits there for a couple of weeks. I don't know what the disposal costs are for the reproduced brine but if it's less than $100k/well then i'm guessing the GE units would not be economic. Obviously, GE disagrees. They tend to work out the economics before they start building things like:
http://www.gepower.com/about/press/en/2010_press/GE%20Mobile%20Evaporator.htm
if the rental rate is lower than i'm guessing or alternative disposal costs higher, then it could be a big deal. It will be a much bigger deal if they can increase the throughput rate. Unfortunately, the press release does not address the disposal costs for the residual solids and the disposal facilities that take that stuff charge a hefty premium.
I know that Baker-Hughes thinks the problem is significant enough that they've started a research program on produced water, e.g. they want to sell technology to minimize the quantity and cost. They're doing this at a time when folks in the service industry are getting trimmed right and left so it's an important topic.
i talk to a guy at GE Research occasionally and he would know about this so i'll do a little probing.
i looked into this a bit. it looks like the leases in question were off of North Carolina: the Manteo block.
There was a heap of litigation over the leases which seems to have involved Mobil, Marathon, and Chevron. Eventually, the US Supreme Court did rule in favor of Mobil that there had been a taking.
http://www.gomr.boemre.gov/homepg/offshore/atlocs/manteo.html
a somewhat succinct chronology of US offshore drilling moratoria
http://www.taylor.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=149:chronology-of-moratoria-on-offshore-drilling&catid=29:defense&Itemid=59