The Financial Times highlights a concern we had raised early on about the effort by BP to drill a relief well to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. While many analysts have acted as if the BP forecast, that the well would be completed by August, there is no reason to assume the […]
Read more...By Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira A whole bunch of American ships are headed to Iran, including one aircraft carrier. Some claim this deployment is “normal”, while others think it might be the first move in a U.S. offensive against Iran, either actual […]
Read more...Gulf resident and fisherman’s wife Kindra Arnesen took advantage of the offer extended to her to visit cleanup sites and staff meetings: At any rate, I was invited the following week to go behind “enemy lines.” They gave me, of all people, security clearance to go into the base of operations meetings in Venice, Louisiana […]
Read more...The UK emergency budget, which will impose a £2billion tax on banks, both domestic and foreign bank operations domiciled there, along with the upcoming G20 meetings, is pushing a contentious issue to the fore: how and how much to tax banks. There are two motivations at work. First, with most advanced economies keen to narrow […]
Read more...The Pentagon, to secure supply lines, is effectively making payments to warlords in Afghanistan. Not only is that undermining the central government (as in by reinforcing competing centers of power), but it also appears to be helping to fund the insurgents. Now before you put that overview in the “You cannot make this stuff up” […]
Read more...By Wallace C. Turbrville, the former CEO of VMAC LLC who writes at New Deal 2.0 In the 1930s, a great many Southerners had no access to electricity. The Roosevelt administration perceived an enormous opportunity to restructure the region’s economy. By building facilities to bring power to the rural South, jobs would be created from […]
Read more...Readers may recall that we highlighted the report last week in the New York Times of an estimated trillion dollars worth of valuable materials, including copper, gold, and lithium. We pointed out that this announcement was awfully convenient, coming on the heels of reports that the efforts to pacify the country weren’t going terribly well. […]
Read more...By Glenn Stehle, an engineer who began working in the oil industry in 1974. After a two-year stint with Cities Service Oil Company, he worked for two years for Henry Engineering, a petroleum engineering consulting firm. Upon leaving Henry Engineering he worked as an independent engineering consultant in all facets of the oil and gas […]
Read more...Hat tip Francois T:
Read more...Note the fund is to be established over two years, through a combination of dividend cuts and reduction in spending. Moreover, a planned dividend payment for June 21 is being halted, which would appear to be a meaningful concession. From Bloomberg: Svanberg and Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward agreed to set aside $20 billion over […]
Read more...By Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira On the occasion of the BP oil spill disaster, President Obama’s delivered an Oval Office speech last night—a masterpiece of milquetoast faux-outrage. The speech was all about “clean energy” and “ending our dependence on fossil fuels”. Faced […]
Read more...The latest updates on BP, both via Bloomberg. We noted that Rolling Stone had reported that the median of estimates by scientists who has access to the leak data was 55,000 barrels, and there were reasons to take the dire estimates seriously. The latest estimates are allegedly based on a more careful reading of the […]
Read more...FT Alphaville has a very useful chart and related discussion based on Citigroup research, on the question of whether BP could segregate its operations as a precursor to some sort of “good company/bad company” restructuring. Such a move would no doubt be presented as a way to remove the cloud of uncertainty over BP, but […]
Read more...The House Energy and Commerce Committee chairmen, Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak published the text of a 14 page letter sent today to Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO. The House website not only contains the text of the letter, but also 23 additional documents from BP, Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Transocean. The letter itself provides a damning […]
Read more...The New York Times reports on a monster find of minerals in Afghanistan, some of them strategic (hat tip reader Francois T): The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war […]
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