Iraqi Oil

[Occhidiangela]

I heard yet again on the radio this morning a fellow protesting the impending war, and he once again uttered the idea that this was about the US going to Iraq and getting our hands on Iraqi oil.

For the last 12 years, Iraqi oil production making it to the world market has slowed to a trickle, where there was once a nice, healthy stream. UN sanctions, enforced by US and Brit ships, in the main, with an assist from loyal allies like the Spanish (Why their pulling over of the ship with missile parts near Yemen was handled the way it did still confuses me.) is what keeps this flow reduced. For what it is worth, Turkey loses over a billion a year in oil and fees not pumped through the pipeline from Northern Iraq into Turkey and its ports of debarkation.

The world market, as it now stands, has plenty of oil. Here in America there are no gas lines, as there were in 1973. Any oil producer anywhere has, in the short term, reaped the "hostility premium" of (depending on who you read) of some 5-15 dollars per barrel as the future of Iraq et al remains a bit uncertain. The price of gas here in Corpus Christi just hit 1.59 per gallon, up from last spring where it was about 1.07, and last month in the 1.29 region.

In other words, if Iraq never pumped another barrel of crude from the earth, there is no world wide oil shortage. The price per gallon may go up a bit, which is how markets work, and as always, the folks on the edges of liquidity are the one's who get hit the hardest.

When Iraq re enters the international oil market, sanctions lifted at last, the price of gas will go down for everyone, a bit, as Iraq will be trying to make money to repair its economy and standard of living. But the need for 'their' oil is chimerical.

I don't understand what basis these folks have in using that soundbyte as their point in the debate, since it is so blatantly and transparently dead, from a simple economic stand point. The international oil market will adjust, and it has the capacity to adjust. If Americans bitch about the price of oil, I will remind my countrymen about . . . 1973, and the gas lines.

Full disclosure: I drive a Saturn for many reasons, and fuel economy is one of them. :) I'd rather have more beer money each month than to pay more to Shell or Exxon just to get to and from work. The filling station gets my money either way, but at least this way I get to drink some of the product, rather than my car being the only one who gets a drink. :o

Iraqi oil is not what US is after. Were that the case, we would not have embargoed Iraq for 12 years, we would have stayed around and taken over Saddam's oil fields in 1991. It wasn't the issue then, and it aint the issue now.

And regarding the Persian Gulf, I still want to know when the Green Party folks in Europe will post their formal suit against Saddam Hussein for the environmental damage he did when he ordered the opening of the pipelines that pumped untold rivers of oil into the Persian Gulf, and had the Kuwaiti fields set on fire as his troops left Kuwait.

The myth that America would go to war to save a few cents a gallon at the pump is complete falsehood, and the clearest point is that the blockade we now enforce keeps the price of gas up since Iraqi oil is witheld from the global market.

Why don't these folks argue 'points against' that have a bit more value to them? Are they afraid to think? There are opposing arguments with greater merit, even if I personally disagree with some of them.

*edited since I forgot that "Preview is your friend."*

[--Pete]

Hi,

Why don't these folks argue 'points against' that have a bit more value to them? Are they afraid to think?

Not all of them. Most are too stupid or ignorant to think.

Just an example of "Most real problems have a simple, easy to understand, WRONG answer." And the fact that "simple" is all many are equipped to handle.

Of course, the other simple lie is that going to war with Iraq has something to do with terrorism. So it's not just one side that is using ignorant arguments. The sound bites are coming from everywhere.

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

http://brain-terminal.com/articles/video/p...ce-protest.html

This fellow who put this together had some fun baiting a group of rather lame protesters. He also used what all of the media used, which was editing. Sort of funny. :)

[--Pete]

Hi,

Once again we see that if stupidity and ignorance were fatal, humanity would be on the endangered list ;)

--Pete

[Taeme]

Why?

I'll tell you why :

This is too complex a conflict for 99% of the people discussing it to grasp. It has a lot of history, a lot of complexity and the politics are very, very deep. This isn't a conflict with a single surface answer. I wouldn't be as cynical as Pete, I don't think it's just that the simple answers don't work. It's that it takes people too much effort to find anything real in this one.

This is a conflict that isn't about sound bites or the easy answers or anything in the clear and obvious. This is the concept of a shadowy political war being examined by people who seem to barely understand politics. I feel daunted every time I read about it...

[--Pete]

Hi,

I wouldn't be as cynical as Pete, I don't think it's just that the simple answers don't work.

Again, not quite what I said. There are times when simple answers work just fine. But it has to be a simple *right* answer. And those are rare. Most simple answers are wrong, and it is the "wrong" and not the "simple" that makes them bad.

--Pete

[Taeme]

I meant totally in regards to this issue.

[whyBish]

*edited since I forgot that "Preview is your friend."*

Well, I suppose it's like scientific development/learning. First you propose the simplest idea. When you find it is inadequate to explain things you expand/re-jig it.

The problem here seems that many people don't look for counter-examples to things they propose.

[Occhidiangela]

I just had a thought that I need to add a touch of clarity.

The American Civil War, (War Between the States, War of Yankee Aggression, etc) was not only about slavery, but slavery was the prime political catalyst that led to seccession, and thus to the conflict.

It aint Iraqi oil that is the issue, but a critical issue is Persian Gulf Area oil writ large, and the stability of the region where it pumps from, since that oil is a key ingredient of the entire global industrial economy.

I may have glossed over that point, but the global economy's health is in the interest of every nation on the planet. If the world suffers a recession, or depression, millions all over the globe will come on harder times than they see now. It is within the interests of every nation that trades beyond its own borders that the Persian Gulf region be reasonably stable.

In any case, while it aint about Iraqi oil, oil plays into it from a global perspective, just as it did in 1991. WIthout the oil being there, the likelihood that anyone would give a hoot about the Persian Gulf region, beyond those who live there, is remote.

[Grumpy]

Ummm maybe some people think that its about oil because oil was the Primary reason IMO that we defended Kuwait?

Maybe because the US seems to primarily get invloved in conflicts when our money is at stake?

Maybe maybe maybe....

Myabe we protect the car industry so much, protect the oil industry so much, that people believe oil will drive our government to do anything in the interest of oil...

A bunch of Maybes...

[Occhidiangela]

Try to peel back a few more layers of the onion. The 1990 and 1991 action took into account long term predictions about what happens in the Persian Gulf region if the annexation of Kuwait was allowed to stand.

1. Iraqi economy, in big debt due to 8 year war with Iran, a war that Saddam started, gets more money faster and heals. All to the good, if the economy was not a war economy to begin with. I once again remind our readers here: in 1991, the fourth largest Army on the planet belonged to Saddam Hussein. It was an army built for conquest, not self defense. It was pretty well trained, and very well equipped with good Russian equipment. Say what you like about the Gulf War, but the Russians build good tanks and pretty darned decent tactical aircraft.

2. Iraq/Saddam's influence on the international oil market becomes greater, to where his influence trumps King of Saudi Arabia. He can flood the market with oil and basically put a lot of western countries and non Arab countries and their oil businesses, which typically pay more per barrel to pump oil out of the ground, into the red to where their oil reserves start to go untapped.

3. This puts the price of oil into a regime where other market forces are more influenced by it. I remind our readers once again of the 1973 embargo. When the Arabs acted together, they put a slam dunk pinch on our economy. No president is going to let someone do that to the American economy, or the global economy, again if he has half a brain. Using oil as an economic weapon influences billions of people due to the simple fact that the world, all of it, has yet to wean itself from the teat of the oil well. Alternative energy, dammit, where are you?

4. The known goals of Saddam Hussein to be the One Hegemonic Power in the Mid East were well known in the mid to late 80's. The Kuwaiti oil revenue represented an ability for him to be able to fund that vision to its logical conclusion.

5. Every other Arab nation in the area knew that the bully on the block had just bought a Glock. They looked for the cops, and George Bush led the rest of the UN in showing up.

Auto makers? Hah. 1991 was not about auto makers, it was about people in the Northeast, and NEW YORK not having to pay 5.00 per gallon for heating oil in the winter. :P

[--Pete]

Hi,

Alternative energy, dammit, where are you?

Blocked by many of the same type of people shown in the clip you linked to. The ignorant. The stupid. The misguided do-gooders that cause many more times the harm than the little good they do.

If ignorant jackasses who didn't know the difference between nuclear power and nuclear weapons hadn't influence a bunch of cowardly politicians, we wouldn't be nearly as dependent of that oil teat.

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

Agreed.

[Taeme]

If ignorant jackasses who didn't know the difference between nuclear power and nuclear weapons hadn't influence a bunch of cowardly politicians, we wouldn't be nearly as dependent of that oil teat.

Better that they don't absentmindedly use the power of the atom, as politicians are fond of doing. Reactors are simply not any easy way of making power.

Worse that those who lobbied didn't lobby for responsible usage, just outright removal.

Shame, really. Ignorance stabs at us more ways than one likes to consider.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Better that they don't absentmindedly use the power of the atom, as politicians are fond of doing.

I don't understand. Are you implying that politicians shouldn't be using nuclear WEAPONS? If so I agree. But politicians shouldn't be using nuclear power? In what sense? They don't design or operate the reactors, they just use the power generated there like anyone else. So your statement leaves me confused.

Reactors are simply not any easy way of making power.

Reactors are not as simple as hydro plants. They not much more complex than gas turbine plants. And they are, in many ways, simpler than oil and coal fired plants. Most of the "complexity" of nuclear plants has less to do with controlling nuclear breakdown than with the process of making electrical power from that breakdown. All thermal-electric plants are very similar. Of course, hydro plants aren't heat plants at all which makes them especially simple. In the gas turbines, the source of heat is the fluid that drives the turbines and that makes those relatively simple. All the others require a source of heat, a medium to move that heat to a turbine, and then the turbines themselves. Nuclear plants are simpler than oil and coal because a continuous supply of fuel is not needed.

Worse that those who lobbied didn't lobby for responsible usage, just outright removal.

If those who lobbied understood nuclear power, they would have realized that the plants were designed for "responsible usage" from the start. Thus, they would have had no reason to lobby at all. The fact that they did indicates that they were completely ignorant of the whole process.

Shame, really. Ignorance stabs at us more ways than one likes to consider.

Yep.

--Pete

[Taeme]

One of the things I've been raised to believe is that the dangers of nuclear power plants isn't so much that they're atom bombs sitting on site or something absurd like that. The danger, from what I've learnt, is mismanagement, poorily trained staff, underfunding, so on. Chernobyl, which I have no chance in hell of spelling right, is a disaster not because nuclear plants are dangerous, but because people are when they mismanage powerful things.

Politicians can absentmindedly cut funding or underfund plants, that I'm certain of. Only there are the plants any more dangerous, as lack of funding just makes them less safe until they actually become dangerous.

Edit : This post makes no sense. I'm currently having a strange conversation and can't make words ... connect ... and ... stuff.

[kandrathe]

Actually, Chernobyl, a graphite moderated light-water reactor, is a model that is more dangerous than most of the reactors used around the world. Most modern reactors are built so that the default action is reactor shut down. But even the accident at Chernobyl was a Homer Simpsonesque nightmare. Read about it here: OECD/NEA - Chernobyl, Chapter 1 - The site and accident sequence...

The severity of TMI (which was nothing when compared to Chernobyl), the only US accident, was also generally due to operator errors. Three Mile Island Event

Oh, this site was very interesting as well: The Nuclear Tourist

Pete's points in the post below regarding deaths prompted me to add this; Most people do not think about the pollution we take for granted with coal fired plants. While the releases Pete speaks of were bad, the radiation is traceable, and therefore removeable. The heavy metals from coal fired plants literally rain down on us daily, have no half-life and are hard to detect and impossible to remove from the environment.

Out of the entire US electric industry, coal-fired power plants contribute 96% of sulfur dioxide emissions (SO2), 93% of nitrogen oxide emissions (NOx), 88% of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) and 99% of mercury emissions.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I understand what you are saying. But there are two factors that mitigate the dangers, design and training. The plants themselves can be designed so that they are almost totally safe. I couldn't find a link to it, but a couple of years ago a plant in Canada did a cooling loss test. They expected that they would have to shut down after a few minutes. After the second or third day when all that had happened was that the core temperature went up over normal but not in the danger zone, they aborted the test. That is good design. Any power plant is dangerous. Even without the nuclear aspect, there are a lot of big powerful things that can bite you. Which is why all the people working in the power industry are trained. After all, it is their life, too.

Chernobyl, which you spelled as right as you can without using the Cyrillic alphabet, was a function of the Soviet system. Poorly designed, poorly manned. A disaster, yes. But the actual effect was, aside from scaring a lot of people, minor. You can find a fairly detailed report of the situation at http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/reports/2003/nea...8-chernobyl.pdf Note that the death toll from that accident (the only serious accident involving nuclear power) is less than 100 -- bad, sure, but nothing compared to how many miners have died getting coal or workers making dams.

In both absolute terms in in terms of megawatt produced, nuclear power is the safest of all. It is much like airplane travel -- safer than any other, so that when something does happen it becomes front page news.

Politicians can absentmindedly cut funding or underfund plants, that I'm certain of. Only there are the plants any more dangerous, as lack of funding just makes them less safe until they actually become dangerous.

Yes. Which is why power generation should *not* be a government function. The government's function should be to regulate, inspect, and investigate. Having the government do that and generate too is letting the fox guard the hen house. And a well run industry (which might be a fantasy nowadays) realizes that it is cheaper in the long run to do things right and keep things up.

The biggest spoke in the wheel that the politicians put in the nuclear industry is the agreements they made not to process used fuel rods because one "could" make weapons material from them. That one misguided regulation is primarily what makes the "nuclear waste" question important. If the material is processed, much of it can be reclaimed and reused. Some of it can be purified for medical and other applications (smoke detectors). The rest can be separated into very active short lifetime materials which require very special handling for a comparatively short time and long half life low activity materials which can be made into ceramic bricks and stored most anywhere (they aren't soluble and nothing short of a volcano or a nuclear weapon will melt them). And don't let people tell you about "very radioactive material that will last millions of years." Radioactivity is a means of liberating energy. The rate at which it is liberated (the half life) is a measure of power. If you have a certain amount of energy, you can use a lot of power for a little while or a little bit power for a long time. You can't use a lot of power for a long time, you just don't have the necessary energy.

--Pete

[Quark]

I didn't find the TMI one to be very useful (also having studied it before in my Nuclear Science class).

It missed which was, in my opinion, the worst/most dangerous operator failure in US nuclear history. A day or two into the emergency, they discovered the hydrogen bubble forming at the top of the reactor. When studying this bubble, one person came to the conclusion that it was a large bubble and, in fact, threatened to 'explode' (don't remember if that's the term they used). Of course, not explode in a nuke sense, but enough for the reactor to open up and release plenty of radiation. For the next day, everyone was frantically working to discover if this was true, with the discussion splitting pretty evenly.

Obviously, TMI did not have such a problem. If it did, I most likely wouldn't be living here right now. The problem? That engineer, who's job was to protect people from Nuclear emergencies (he was one of the government officials IIRC), used a stupid formula wrong. The people working that emergency almost acted on information concocted by the fact that someone couldn't get his math straight. And no one figured out why there were two divergent theories for a whole day! Obviously all humans make mistakes, but that just seems to me to have been a pure 'Yes man' problem to me.

[Taeme]

And a well run industry (which might be a fantasy nowadays) realizes that it is cheaper in the long run to do things right and keep things up.

Yes, a lot of people have begun to realise that while it's nice to own a company and keep it well run, it's also pretty easy to simply take what you can and vacate the premises, letting your shareholders take the burn. Kinda biting in this day and age. So I'm really not sure on the whole government issue into this. Ideally you would have a government interested in maintaining a solid power supply for the populace, as in some regions -- like up north -- power going down will kill a lot of people.

And don't let people tell you about "very radioactive material that will last millions of years."

Yes, I know a little about nuclear science. Not a ton. I'm not going into the field. There is obviously a lot of misinformation on the topic, but look at the misinformation regarding say, sex. People have been having sex since there were people and still don't know what the hell they're doing. How can we expect the ignorant to understand nuclear science when half the world can't even figure out the magical properties of a condom?