Oil Transport Reality

Oil Transport by Rail : Estimated loss 42 people and  $200 million. 

Oil Transport by Pipeline : Estimated loss $44 million.

Pipeline Strategy and Politics

It's sheer madness to continue to push for pipelines across any territory.  Here are the facts:

Any pipeline requires onerous regulatory review, which often ignores the facts, and review at many levels.  All it takes is one jurisdiction to object to the placement en route to block the project for almost indefinite periods.  Certainly longer than any company can afford to wait.  As the resource loses value, the business justification evaporates as well. Anytime the people get upset, the politicians fear for their jobs and delay the business.  Any politically motivated mayor, reeve, or alderman can manipulate the democratic process for personal gain. Obama, the Democrats, Boehner, the Republicans, Harper, Prentice, and Trudeau and Mulcair are all benefiting from energizing people to get active in the political process, supporting them, which has little to do with the approval of any pipeline.  Pipelines are approved by bureaucrats.

The environmental lobby is powered by emotions, not facts. The environmental agenda manipulates people to ignore the relative safety and risks of options.  It's far easier to manipulate sentiment.  How does one gallon of oil sands refined oil emit more than a gallon of Saudi Arabian oil?  It does because Neil Young says so. The environmental lobby is the same as the politicians - they want people to support them on an issue people agree with.  We still need energy at the end of the day, what alternative do they offer?

No one remembers the Three Mile Island accident, they remember that nuclear power is dangerous because Greenpeace told everyone it is.  Why do we need to burn oil as the majority fuel source in North America?  Because people blocked the construction of nuclear power plants because Greenpeace told them so.  So, now what? We would have been better off with a nuclear power plants so we didn't need as much crude.

Every jurisdiction demands their cut, their bribe, from the proceeds of the pipeline business.  One could argue that insurance towards reimbursement for loss from pipeline spills justifies this demand.  But the reality is if a spill happens people will sue the company and expect them to pay it off any case.  All those payments are a tax on oil that doesn't belong to them.  A tax that benefits environmentalists as much as other citizens.

What Alberta should do is build a refinery and save the jobs for the local Albertans. Then the problem of shipping the refined oil becomes everyone else's problem. That's the way the public wants it, and then no other jurisdiction can benefit from it.

What is stream of conscious creation?

I use a very simple creation method to get ideas out: continue creating until your thought process stalls. I start by some simple meditation.  Normally just breathing. Not Om meditation. I do not aim my mind at a goal. I let it wander which is against meditation where you are focussing on the centre to consider your inner self. Not bad for a white guy?

Start with one idea and let it evolve and come out into some form as your main goal. Attaining that level of control on one thought is key.

Never delete your thinking nor criticize it while your brain is trying to get the ideas out. Most people lose creating by starting to edit before they have fully formed ideas. Don't self edit. Don't criticize.
Last edit comes later once you've distracted yourself and forgotten your thought process.

It really helps thinking like a Buddhist. You realize that the ideas don't exist anymore than you do so you don't feel ownership. Just stewardship. It's ok if they don't make sense. That takes time.

Accept your ideas as a starting point. Not a final goal. Once you attain idea maturity then put it on paper and THEN edit it. Simple is better. Concise and packed with meaning is better. Most insightful thoughts are deep but centred. Not bland and obvious. There is a design saying, a design is complete when you remove all that need not be there.

Most blog posts are stream of consciousness. That's why a word or two is wrong and some time later I've gone back to do a final pass. But look at the output. Apart from a few words or clarifications they are all stand-alone ideas done to fruition. Takes me less than 5 minutes. I can write off one before I board a plane. I do them waiting in line. My brain is constantly meandering. I have learned a unique valuable skill to realize I can form it and then release it.

Now my other secret is I've written four books. 300+ pages each in Strunk & White so about 600 pages each in normal writing. That is how I learned short sharp writing.

If you want to learn how start by meditating and ask for some advice. I'm here as long as my brain is. 

Your boss is the biggest stressor in the workplace

There is mounting evidence, that most people know with anecdotal evidence, that your boss is the beginning of your stress at work.

While people may have thought something similar to today's Dilbert. There is evidence to back that up:

Boss Competence and Worker Well - being

The Link Between Employee Satisfaction and Firm Value, With Implications for Corporate Social Responsibility

It is a serious issue for companies in the future when the success depends on the #Bosses.

Economic War: Western-Style

Russia's Central Bank Steps In to Steady Ruble


Putin may be a pre-Glasnost Russian oligarch, but he was raised in the world of intrigue and not the world of finance.

Perhaps he miscalculated while he was busy preparing military plans to defend his temporal sphere of influence?  His economy's collapse was entirely predictable.  What he did not learn in KGB spy school is that capitalist  economies are interrelated. Interdependent.  And dominatable by the biggest bully on the block.

So once you plugged into world finances you are subject to risk of economic warfare.  And the US can swamp anyone, even allies, when and if it chooses.  Just ask Canada about all the trade sanctions against the US for unfair / protectionist practices they simply ignore - wood, salmon, - and keep going.   


http://gwynnedyer.com/2014/oil-blind-sided-by-technology/

Sanctions were not the biggest weapons in the American arsenal.  Oil independence means their demand can be used as a weapon against corrupt governments as Gwynne Dyer explains above.  They can turn production up and drop the ruble to nothing.

And it gets worse if you are Russia.  What people forget is that the US has a strategic ban on oil exports.  They are artificially lowering supply, not just lowering their purchase of oil, due to the 40 year embargo on oil export thanks to OPEC and the 1978 crisis.  http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-05/bhp-billiton-starts-exporting-u-dot-s-dot-oil

All that needs to happen to make the Russian economy - in these worsening times - drop to zero is to allow US companies to dump oil on the market. 

So Putin can celebrate liberating a few hectares of land.  Maybe that will comfort the Russian people unemployed in bread lines?

Alternate strategies are just as viable as military strategies

Where would America be now, if instead of invading Iraq in 2003 for a second time they had invested $1 trillion in solar panels and wind farms? 

Here is my conjecture:

Oil would be $40 a barrel and the treasure and more importantly the lives of both soldiers and civilians would remain.  The Middle East would be full of poor dictators unable to buy weapons to keep their people down. The rotted governments would have collapsed from the inside. Real change might have taken root and without the rallying cry of America the Crusader perhaps the moderates would have won.

There are many ways to win. Not all of them are obvious.