United States Crude Oil Supply and National Security

A very interesting post from http://bigpeace.com about domestic resource strategy. This follows this post about a gay bar targeting Muslims by the Ground Zero mosque and this article about the recent news about the ban offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more posts like this click here.

United States Crude Oil Supply and National Security (Part 1)
Posted by Peter C. Maffitt Aug 11th 2010 at 4:59 am in China, Economy, Energy, Featured Story, Politics, Strategy Comments (21)

The future availability of our US crude oil supply is part of the current unrecognized international economic war. The objective of this conflict is control of natural resources, especially crude oil and natural gas, technology, shipping lanes, markets, job creating facilities, wealth formation activities, military assets, cyber security, etc.

From a strategic viewpoint, there are major decisions being made in Washington DC today which will negatively impact our future supply of crude oil. What politicians seem not to understand is that the oil industry must have long term planning, decades in the future. Administration-based oil industry decisions to change taxes, royalties, fees, limit access to offshore production and drilling on federal lands, increase regulations, impose environmental restrictions on coal fired power plants, emphasize Green Energy, etc. will create unpredictable, often unstable conditions for United States oil industry development.

Historical perspective is necessary, and our nation forgets that in 1940 Japan received 30 million barrels or 93% of crude oil and 90% of its gasoline from the United States. Our Japanese oil embargo was one of several factors which encouraged their military regime to decide to attack Pearl Harbor. Crude oil today is as important as it was in 1940.
In 1977 the Department of Energy was created to make the US less dependent on foreign sources of crude oil. However, the reverse has happened, and today we are substantially more dependent upon foreign crude oil. Today the US consumes about one-fourth of the world oil consumption with well over 50% of our crude oil being imported. This has a strongly detrimental impact upon the stability and value of our dollar and on our balance of trade. There are many forms of energy that the US could theoretically use in the near future which could lessen the dependency on foreign oil.

For example, the US has a couple hundred years of coal reserves, but several states are restricting building new coal fired power plants for environmental reasons. The restriction of coal- fired power plants will increase US dependency on foreign crude oil.

There are expectations renewable energy will substantially decrease our dependence upon foreign crude oil. In twenty years renewable energy from wind, biomass, solar, waste heat, and other green energy will not be a dominant percentage of our energy use in their current developmental state. Still, some New England states plan to replace all their current heating oil usage with renewable energy, especially wind energy. The viability of these ambitious plans is yet to be proven, and the economic cost of renewable energy will be high. For example, production of wind energy will never be consistent or predictable, so it will need to be supplemented with another source of energy. Also, wind farms often are in remote locations with high transmission costs, and currently the transportation is relatively inefficient.

This leads to the reality that in the future the US must rely upon all sources of energy: crude oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, renewable energy, hydrogen, atomic power, hydroelectric, etc.

The great change in the past few decades is that international large crude oil reserves are now controlled by National Oil Companies ( NOCs) which can fix prices and select buyers. Several nations, especially China, are gaining control of these oil reserves through joint ventures and development contracts. China has contracts to develop massive fields in Iran, Venezuela, Angola, etc. There is no longer a level field for contracts in many nations since some nations do not have anti-corruption restrictions, while other nations do not have a profit incentive. The predictable consequence will be that in the coming decade the US will have less and less access to international crude oil reserves at any price.

Offshore oil is the key to a stable US oil industry. The great giant undiscovered oil fields are offshore, either in shallow or deep water. There have been discussions to allow drilling off the US West Coast, East Coast, and Florida. Following the British Petroleum Gulf of Mexico deep water well blow out, drilling in these US offshore areas may not be allowed. The current debate over the federal deep water moratorium is just how it will financially impact drilling companies, labor forces, state taxes, and oil service companies. To survive, how many of these U.S. offshore oil companies and service groups will be forced to go overseas? Offshore domestic oil industry is the future of a strong, stable US oil industry, yet the proposed Senate CLEAR Offshore Drilling Regulation and the House HR 3534 bills will create great industry instability. Forcing our US offshore industry overseas will not foster a vibrant US domestic oil industry. A stable domestic US oil industry, especially an Offshore oil industry, is unequivocally essential to our national security and a strong dollar.

Jews in the News

An interesting post from www.badeagle.com about events that occured this weedend in Jerusalem.

Jews in the News
by David Yeagley
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Jewish people do not control the media. Certainly not the Associate Press wires. Look at this latest headline:
Israeli police storm Jerusalem’s holiest site
Immediately our hearts stop, as we wonder what those evil Israeli police could be doing, what sacrilege those wicked Jews could be up to. Invading the “holiest site” in Jerusalem! Just think of it.
“Palestinian” youth, wondrous devotees, noble defenders of the Islamic cult, elevated spiritual champions, throw rocks at the Israeli police whom they have intentionally provoked. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Then we find that the specific site in questioned isn’t a Jewish site, did not involve Jewish people, and is not a site considered holy by Jewish people.
You guessed it. It’s an Islamic mosque, a Muslim issue, again. It’s “Palestinians” at it again, making anti-Jewish headlines for an eager press, ever so anxious to malign and misrepresent the Jews.
Not until the fourth paragraph of the AP wire do we get something that might represent the truth.
Israel’s national police chief, David Cohen, accused a small group of Muslim extremists of trying to foment violence — echoing a charge made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks ago.
“The police will act with a strong hand against anyone who disrupts order on the Temple Mount and against those incite to riot,” Cohen said.
So, the “Palestinians” created a ruckus, to provoke Israeli police, to get a headline against the Jews? That’s certainly what happened. The AP headline wants everyone to think that Jews are sacrilegious devils, quick and happy to commit blasphemy, to denigrate anything holy, to totally trash others. Look at the headline again.
Israeli police storm Jerusalem’s holiest site
This time, consider the author: Rawhi Razim. If knowing the headline was an AP wire wasn’t enough, we could have noted the fact that the author is a very carefully obscured personage, obviously Arab, and no doubt Muslim. We know that in 2001 or 2002, a “Rawhi Kazim” was working for the Islamic Association for Palestine, in Mississaugua, Ontario (Canada). Google identifies the IAP as an Islamic terrorist site on the web. There are even YouTube clips of some of their public meetings here in the United States. It’s all about killing the Jews.
So, I don’t think it is likely that the Associated Press would be controlled by the Jews, as anti-Zionists love to claim.
But, the important theological issue inherent here is the matter of the holy. “Jerusalem’s holiest site,” as “Palestinian” terrorist Rawhi Kazim calls it. It is clear he refers to the black-domed Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount (the site of the 2nd Temple of the Jews, razed to the ground by the Roman Titus, in 70 AD).
Obviously, there is nothing holy about any Islamic mosque. There is nothing holy about anything man declares holy. Man does not have power over the holy. People that make this claim have a totally false concept of what it holy. As man uses the term, it is an egotistical, sociological power grab, of one kind or another. Declare something holy, and you can control all logistics pertaining to it. You can control people, kill people, create war, etc. All because you say the person, place, or thing, is “holy.”
In the Bible, the Jewish account of the living Creator, only God Himself has power to make anything holy, or to declare anything holy. In this, the Jewish religion is distinct from all others. Even in concept, the holy is something “wholly other” than man, than man’s mind, than man’s power. Man cannot create the holy. Man simply cannot make anything holy, or declare it to be such. He can merely act like it is holy. He can only seek to control behavior–based on such a claim.
Wrong ideas of the holy create wrong social relationships, wrong centers of power, and wrong behavior. Wrong ideas of the holy create war, often. This is the Muslim hold on the world, in their minds. It is completely false, arrogant, and maniacal. It is a perversion of man’s natural intuition of the existence of something beyond himself, something greater than himself, something “holy.”
I have written a scholarly research book about the holy. I have studied the subject in detail. (In January, 2007, the first edition of my book, Altered States, appeared on Amazon.com. Unaccountably, it was not available, but a false advertisement. August, 2007, an available edition appeared. Unfortunately, this edition was sized incorrectly, and the pagination made the index irrelevant (i.e., incorrect). There were numerous typographical errors as well. In the near future, a third and final edition will be available.) The full title of the book is, Altered States: The State of the Dead, and the State of the Holy. I feel that the proper, objective understanding of the holy is critically important, especially at this time in history, when what is truly sacred and honorable is being blasphemed and denigrated on a daily basis, while that which is artificial, arrogant, and manipulative, is being coerced upon humanity by the power brokers of the world–Communists, Muslims, and global capitalists alike.
I say, beware the claim of holy. Find out what is holy, where the idea came from, what it means, and how it is to function in the world. Study, research, make the effort to know. The false claim of holy is the foundation for all ills in the world. It is a simply matter of priorities. It is a clear case of psychological hierarchies. More on this latter.
For now, just note that the “Palestinian” terrorist headline, by Mr. Rawhi Kazim, and the first four paragraphs of his story, are as false and intentionally misleading as a false concept of the holy could make them.
And, to be “fair” to the Associate Press, they do have a Jewish version of the story: Violent clashes erupt at Jerusalem’s holiest site, by Matti Friedman. At least Friedman’s account is objective–the major feat in reporting a “Palestinian” story.