About The Oil

Republicans like to say Biden has completely fucked up the petroleum markets, and he's so anti-oil that he's crippled our ability to be a good producer of Dirty Fuels.

That's a big fat lie.

Yes, we hit Net Exporter status under Trump, but these things don't happen overnight, so the drive towards that goal had to have started earlier - like under Obama maybe(?)

And it's not like Biden couldn't have fucked it up if he'd wanted to - but apparently, he didn't want to.

As much as I hate the Dirty Fuels Cartel, and I wish we were doing smarter things, I have to say Biden's actually doing what Republicans are always carping about, which means they're being true to form - ie: they're a buncha lyin' sacks of shit.

So Trump's "drill baby drill" is bullshit (surprise surprise), cuz that's kinda what we've been doing this whole time. And it lends a little more credence to the already fairly well documented belief that Trump is willing to turn the US into a Russia-style hellscape in return for the billion dollar "donation" he's asked the Dirty Fuels Cartel to give him. 

(ed note: It took me a minute to get my brain to make the distinction that 'Crude Oil' is not the same as 'Petroleum Products')

Oil and petroleum products explained

The United States became a total petroleum net exporter in 2020

In 2020, the United States became a net exporter of petroleum for the first time since at least 1949. In 2022, total petroleum exports were about 9.52 million barrels per day (b/d) and total petroleum imports were about 8.33 million b/d, making the United States an annual net total petroleum exporter for the third year in a row. Total petroleum net exports were about 1.19 million b/d in 2022. Also in 2022, the United States produced about 20.08 million b/d of petroleum and consumed about 20.01 million b/d. Although U.S. annual total petroleum exports were greater than total petroleum imports in 2020, 2021, and 2022, the United States still imported some crude oil and petroleum products from other countries to help to supply domestic demand for petroleum and to supply international markets.

The United States remained a net crude oil importer in 2022, importing about 6.28 million b/d of crude oil and exporting about 3.58 million b/d. Some of the crude oil that the U.S. imports is refined by U.S. refineries into petroleum products—such as gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, and jet fuel—that the U.S. later exports. Also, some of imported petroleum may be stored and later exported.

U.S. petroleum imports peaked in 2005

After generally increasing every year from 1954 through 2005, U.S. gross and net total petroleum imports peaked in 2005. Since 2005, increased domestic petroleum production and increased petroleum exports have helped to reduce annual total petroleum net imports.

Shares of U.S. petroleum imports from OPEC and Persian Gulf countries have declined, and the share of imports from Canada has increased

U.S. petroleum imports rose sharply in the 1970s, especially from members of OPEC. In 1977, when the United States exported relatively small amounts of petroleum, OPEC nations were the source of 70% of U.S. total petroleum imports and the source of 85% of U.S. crude oil imports.

Since 1977, the percentage shares of U.S. total petroleum and crude oil imports from OPEC countries have generally declined. Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC petroleum exporter to the United States, was the source of 7% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 7% of U.S. crude oil imports. Saudi Arabia is also the greatest source of U.S. petroleum imports from Persian Gulf countries. About 12% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 12% of U.S. crude oil imports were from Persian Gulf countries in 2022.

Petroleum imports from Canada have increased significantly since the 1990s, and Canada is now the largest single source of U.S. total petroleum and crude oil imports. In 2022, Canada was the source of 52% of U.S. gross total petroleum imports and 60% of gross crude oil imports.

Most U.S. total petroleum exports are petroleum liquids and refined petroleum products

Because of logistical, regulatory, and quality considerations, exporting some petroleum is the most economical way to meet the market's needs. For example, refiners in the U.S. Gulf Coast region frequently find that it makes economic sense to export some of their gasoline to Mexico rather than shipping it to the U.S. East Coast because lower-cost gasoline imports from Europe may be available to the East Coast.

Petroleum liquids include hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGLs). HGL exports, mainly propane, have increased substantially since 2008, and in 2022, were about 25% of total U.S. total petroleum gross exports.

Some companies purchase imported crude oil and gasoline

Although we cannot identify which companies sell imported gasoline or gasoline refined from imported oil, we publish data on the companies that import petroleum into the United States. A company that imports crude oil does not necessarily use those imports to produce the gasoline sold as that company's brand of gasoline. Gasoline from different refineries and import terminals is often combined when shipped by pipeline. Different companies owning service stations in the same area may be purchasing gasoline at the same bulk terminal, which may or may not include imported gasoline or gasoline refined from imported oil.

Paying Up

Factor this shit in, and it gets real clear we're paying a lot more for gas than we think.

Colorado oil and gas wells can’t fund their own cleanup. Taxpayers may foot the bill

A Carbon Tracker report shows the cost to safely shut down low-producing wells is $3bn more than what they earn

Thousands of oil and gas wells across Colorado cannot generate enough revenue to cover their own cleanup costs, according to a new report. Unless state officials act “simply and quickly”, it says, Coloradans can expect to be on the hook for a $3bn shortfall.

In its report, the thinktank Carbon Tracker found that 27,000 low-producing oil and gas wells in Colorado – more than half the state’s total – will generate, at most, $1bn in revenue. The state’s oil and gas reserves peaked five years ago, with production volumes declining dramatically in all but one region. It will cost $4bn to $5bn to decommission those sites responsibly, the analysts found – meaning the state can expect a cash crunch of at least $3bn.

Unless properly decommissioned, unplugged wells can leak carcinogens and methane, a potent greenhouse gas. But according to Colorado’s energy and carbon management commission (ECMC), the state’s energy regulator, it can cost $110,000 or more to close a single site. Many companies have avoided paying those costs, either by delaying cleanup indefinitely, selling off ageing wells to smaller competitors or simply going out of business. Today, there are at least 120,000 “orphan” wells across the US that lack financially solvent operators, making them instead a problem for government entities to solve.

“The biggest problem here is just the nature of this activity: You make a lot of cash at the beginning, and then you have a big cost at the end,” said Rob Schuwerk, executive director of Carbon Tracker and a co-author of the report. “The way you cover a cost like that is you make people save along the way, and this is not done now.”

In 2022, Colorado rolled out a much-lauded approach to ensuring fossil fuel companies foot the cleanup bill. The regulations, which Colorado governor, Jared Polis, last year called “an example the nation can follow”, included major changes to the state’s bonding requirements – the system of financial assurance it uses to make it harder for operators to walk away from polluting wells.

Yet a review of public financial documents by DeSmog and the Guardian showed that Colorado’s modest reforms failed to keep pace with the fossil fuel industry’s ballooning liabilities.

“Even under the new rules, the gap between projected cleanup costs and secured bonding is measured in the billions of dollars,” said Margaret Kran-Annexstein, director of the Sierra Club’s Colorado chapter. “It’s frankly dangerous for Colorado to imply this is the best we can do.”

This dynamic is widespread across the US. In the 15 biggest oil- and gas-producing states, funds on hand for cleanup amount to less than 2% of estimated costs, a recent analysis by ProPublica and Capital & Main found. That Colorado, a state that’s been celebrated for an unusually proactive approach to bonding, still faces such a dramatic shortfall suggests that other state governments have much more to do before the trend can be reversed.

“The bonding isn’t enough. It’s never been enough,” said Kelly Mitchell, a senior analyst at Documented, a watchdog group. “And I think the states typically aren’t being very sober in considering the scale of the problem they’re facing.”

In emailed comments, Megan Castle, ECMC’s community relations supervisor, noted that plugged wells outnumber unplugged wells in Colorado.

Colorado’s financial assurance structure is designed to ensure operators – not the State – remain responsible for the entire lifecycle of the well and site,” she wrote, adding that Colorado’s bonding programs are meant to act as “a backstop” only when companies cannot fulfill that obligation themselves.

But the rules, by law, were designed to ensure that all operators have the ability to meet their plugging obligation fully – and that outcome is still very far away.

‘More loopholes than net’

In 2019, Colorado became one of the first states to try to take comprehensive action on the soaring costs of oil and gas cleanup. That year, lawmakers passed sweeping legislation that set the stage for a broad regulatory overhaul, while also giving ECMC a mandate to protect human health and the environment over industry profits. The commission imposed a fee on producers and set restrictions around transferring wells, an effort to stop bigger companies from selling off low-producing assets to smaller, poorer companies without adequate plugging resources. But the centerpiece was the revised financial assurance requirements, which ECMC officials called “by far the highest” in the nation and “truly a paradigm shift”.

ECMC required every operator to develop a unique, company-specific bonding plan based on well count, production levels and other factors. But the rules’ high degree of flexibility and customization allowed some companies to exclude certain poorly performing wells from their totals or to propose their own bespoke plans.

The result, said Dwayne Purvis, a petroleum engineer and consultant who co-authored the Carbon Tracker report, is that companies generally aren’t bonding enough. The rules are so flexible they end up being “more loopholes than net”, he said.

Rich reserves in a single region – the Denver-Julesburg basin – could generate more than enough to one day close down all of the state’s wells, something that will cost between $6.8bn and $8.5bn, according to Carbon Tracker. But most of those longer-term future profits will be concentrated in the hands of just three publicly traded companies: Chevron, Occidental and Civitas.

Schuwerk called it “a case of haves and have-nots” and said existing ECMC policy doesn’t do much to correct that fundamental imbalance: one group is sitting on billions in profits while the other can’t afford to resolve its billions in liabilities.

At least one operator, KP Kauffman, has already said it can’t pay. Reportedly Colorado’s largest owner of low-producing, so-called “marginal” oil wells, the company in 2021 said it could not afford to pay a $2m fine ECMC levied for environmental violations, and in January it sued regulators in protest of the amount ECMC had ordered it to bond.

The commission has struggled to enforce other bonds, according to an analysis of an ECMC database that tracks daily activity. As of 25 June, 66 companies representing 1,075 wells hadn’t even filed initial paperwork to develop bonding plans. And at least two dozen operators have still not filed financial assurance after their bonding plans were approved. Two of those companies are more than a year late, according to a review of public documents.

The non-compliant companies “have been sent some enforcement letters”, then-ECMC commissioner Karin McGowan said in a public webinar on 22 May. “We are trying to close that out and find out what’s going on with those operators.” She added that this group represented a small overall proportion of the total number of unplugged wells in the state, about 2%.

After initially telling the Colorado Sun it planned to have $820m in bonding in hand by 2044, ECMC now plans to have just $613m in financial assurance on hand in 20 years. Even if every dollar of that amount materializes, it’s still $2.4bn less than the state will need to safely shutter its lowest-producing wells.

A separate analysis by Carbon Tracker, shared exclusively with DeSmog and the Guardian, showed that the state’s wells that face near-term risk of being orphaned represent at least $520m in liabilities. In other words, the amount of assurance ECMC plans on for 20 years from now may barely cover what’s already needed today.

“Negotiation and compromise cost six years of delay with no tangible improvement” in covering budget shortfalls, the Carbon Tracker analysts conclude.

‘Socialize the cost of plugging these wells among operators’

Adam Peltz, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund who praised the ECMC’s rules in 2022, said Colorado is still better off than other states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico, which both have more unplugged wells than Colorado and have struggled to pass more rigorous rules.

He said Colorado will need to look outside the bonding system to solve its massive shortfall.

“You can’t solve this problem with bonds alone, because for so many companies it’s too late,” he said. “They’ll never generate enough money to pay to close their own wells.”

He pointed to another aspect of the rules developed in 2022 as a potential revenue source: the fee on producers. Currently, that program only generates $10m a year, which Peltz conceded is not enough to overcome the billions Colorado faces in oil and gas liabilities, even factoring in the availability of matching federal funds. But, he said, raising that fee significantly could help to redistribute funds from resource-rich Denver-Julesburg to depleted areas in the state.

“Colorado’s innovation was saying, here’s this additional fee, you need to pay to socialize the cost of plugging these wells among all operators,” he said. “I wish every state would do that.”

Ultimately, the Carbon Tracker analysts conclude, policymakers must decide between developing new, rigorous alternatives, or sending the bill to taxpayers by default. That will likely involve compelling resource-rich firms to start setting aside savings from their profits now.

Mitchell, the Documented analyst, recalled advice she first heard from a former colleague at the Department of the Interior: “The best time to collect is on payday.”

“In this period of record profits for the oil and gas industry,” she said, “this is kind of it.”

BTW - Trump has already proposed a deal that trades our lands and our air and our water to the Dirty Fuels Cartel in exchange for their "donation" of $1 billion to his "campaign". Let Trump win, and we're guaranteed to lose big on this.

Dirty Fuels

We have to keep moving away from dirty fuels, but that threatens the plutocrats who are looking for control by commoditizing everything, and then monopolizing it.

You can't sabotage the sun, you can't cut back on the production of wind, and you can't blow up the motion of the water.

If we want energy independence, and the healthier world, and the freedom all of that implies, then we have to stomp the rent-seekers out of existence (figuratively of course - if possible).

How do you expect to hold me hostage to something that you don't have?

The WaPo editors conveniently miss that point.

(pay wall)

Opinion
Undersea pipeline sabotage demands the West prepare for more attacks

Evidence continues to accumulate regarding underwater explosions that blew huge holes in two Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipelines on Sept. 27, and the circumstances all point to what a official NATO statement called “deliberate” sabotage. Sweden and Denmark have officially informed the U.N. Security Council that there were “at least two detonations” using “several hundred kilos” of explosives. This is the kind of capability usually wielded by a state actor, though NATO did not say officially what everyone suspects unofficially: The author of this strike against Europe’s stability and security was Russia. Now, the United States and its allies must meet a new challenge: threats to critical infrastructure, just as they are about to try to get through winter without Russian oil and gas.

Intelligence sources had foreseen this, and, indeed, Ukraine’s government warned of it. Getting the response right begins with understanding why Russian President Vladimir Putin might have chosen to strike where and when he did. In some ways, the pipelines — known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 — made attractive targets precisely because the short-term harm to Europe’s economy would be relatively limited. Neither carried much gas. Russia shut off the flow in Nord Stream 1, ostensibly for routine maintenance, more than a month ago, and the German government canceled Nord Stream 2’s planned opening in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Furthermore, the explosions took place in international waters in the Baltic Sea, meaning they cannot be construed as a direct attack on any NATO member, which could have triggered the alliance’s mutual-defense agreement. As for the timing, the attack came on the day a new undersea gas pipeline opened from one NATO member that borders on Russia, Norway, to another, Poland, which the latter had billed as a quantum leap for its energy security.

Put it all together and the attack looks very much like an attempt to take revenge on countries that have backed Ukraine — a signal to them that more expensive energy supply disruptions might be coming — while preserving plausible deniability.

The West has long been aware of Russia’s capacity to disrupt critical energy and communications infrastructure through cyberattacks and disinformation. In April, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, along with the FBI and the National Security Agency, issued a joint warning about the cyberthreat to critical infrastructure such as energy and utilities. And so far, Ukraine and its supporters have kept cyber-damage to a minimum. Sabotage to the gas pipelines shows that Russia might use more prosaic “kinetic” tools — high explosives — to achieve the same purposes. In fact, Norway has suspected the Russian navy damaged its undersea fiber-optic cables earlier this year.

NATO was wise not to assign blame without ironclad proof, while warning it would respond forcefully against known culprits. What must come next, however, is stepped-up air and naval surveillance of the global network of undersea pipelines and cables, more accumulation of energy reserves for the winter and assurance that existing pipeline repair services — they already exist in both the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea — can act rapidly if needed. In protecting critical infrastructure, resilience is an essential part of deterrence.

Ukraine

Here' another one from NYT.

And when the inevitable blame wave starts - with Republicans trying to tell us that the whole problem lies with Biden's energy policies - let's be sure to smack those idiots right in the face with a reminder that Vladimir Putin decided to invade his neighbor, and that's what started this whole fucking mess.

Ukraine didn't invade themselves - they weren't asking for it - Biden didn't "lose Ukraine" by making wrong moves - or any of the other bullshit they're going to throw against the wall.

Putin made the decision. He invaded Ukraine believing he had all the leverage he needed to coerce the rest of us into letting him Make Russia Great Again.

Let's also remember that if we hadn't allowed ourselves to get hornswoggled into being dependent on Dirty Fuels, a pimp like Vladimir Putin wouldn't be trying to play that energy card in the first fuckin' place.

(pay wall)

Shock Waves Hit the Global Economy, Posing Grave Risk to Europe

The threat to Europe’s industrial might and living standards is particularly acute as policymakers race to decouple the continent from Russia’s power sources.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the continuing effects of the pandemic have hobbled countries around the globe, but the relentless series of crises has hit Europe the hardest, causing the steepest jump in energy prices, some of the highest inflation rates and the biggest risk of recession.

The fallout from the war is menacing the continent with what some fear could become its most challenging economic and financial crisis in decades.

While growth is slowing worldwide, “in Europe it’s altogether more serious because it’s driven by a more fundamental deterioration,” said Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics. Real incomes and living standards are falling, he added. “Europe and Britain are just worse off.”

Several countries, including Germany, the region’s largest economy, built up a decades-long dependence on Russian energy. The eightfold increase in natural gas prices since the war began presents a historic threat to Europe’s industrial might, living standards, and social peace and cohesion. Plans for factory closings, rolling blackouts and rationing are being drawn up in case of severe shortages this winter.

The risk of sinking incomes, growing inequality and rising social tensions could lead “not only to a fractured society but a fractured world,” said Ian Goldin, a professor of globalization and development at Oxford University. “We haven’t faced anything like this since the 1970s, and it’s not ending soon.”

Other regions of the world are also being squeezed, although some of the causes — and prospects — differ.

Higher interest rates, which are being deployed aggressively to quell inflation, are trimming consumer spending and growth in the United States. Still, the American labor market remains strong, and the economy is moving forward.

China, a powerful engine of global growth and a major market for European exports like cars, machinery and food, is facing its own set of problems. Beijing’s policy of continuing to freeze all activity during Covid-19 outbreaks has repeatedly paralyzed large swaths of the economy and added to worldwide supply chain disruptions. In the last few weeks alone, dozens of cities and more than 300 million people have been under full or partial lockdowns. Extreme heat and drought have hamstrung hydropower generation, forcing additional factory closings and rolling blackouts.

A troubled real estate market has added to the economic instability in China. Hundreds of thousands of people are refusing to pay their mortgages because they have lost confidence that developers will ever deliver their unfinished housing units. Trade with the rest of the world took a hit in August, and overall economic growth, although likely to outrun rates in the United States and Europe, looks as if it will slip to its slowest pace in a decade this year. The prospect has prompted China’s central bank to cut interest rates in hopes of stimulating the economy.

“The global economy is undoubtedly slowing,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at the global consulting firm EY- Parthenon, but it’s “happening at different speeds.”

In other parts of the world, countries that are able to supply vital materials and goods — particularly energy producers in the Middle East and North Africa — are seeing windfall gains.

And India and Indonesia are growing at unexpectedly fast paces as domestic demand increases and multinational companies look to vary their supply chains. Vietnam, too, is benefiting as manufacturers switch operations to its shores.

Even so, China, the eurozone and the United States together account for roughly two-thirds of the planet’s economic activity, and if those powerhouses all slow down, it will be hard for any country to remain insulated from the fallout.

Poorer people, who spend much more of their total incomes on food and energy, are being hit hardest.

In Europe, anxiety about frigid living rooms, shuttered production lines and head-spinning energy bills this winter ratcheted up this week after Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy company, declared it would not resume the flow of natural gas through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline until Europe lifted Ukraine-related sanctions.

Daily average electricity prices in Western Europe have reached record levels, according to Rystad Energy, surging past 600 euros ($599) per megawatt-hour in Germany and €700 in France, with peak-hour rates as high as €1,500.

In the Czech Republic, roughly 70,000 angry protesters, many with links to far-right groups, gathered in Wenceslas Square in Prague this past weekend to demonstrate against soaring energy bills.

The German, French and Finnish governments have already stepped in to save domestic power companies from bankruptcy. Even so, Uniper, which is based in Germany and one of Europe’s largest natural gas buyers and suppliers, said last week that it was losing more than €100 million a day because of the rise in prices.

The European Commission, which has scheduled an emergency meeting of energy ministers for Friday, is calling for a cap on wholesale gas prices and an overhaul of how electricity is priced. And in recent days, Germany, Sweden, France and Britain all announced sweeping billion-dollar relief programs to ease the strain on households and businesses, along with rationing and conservation plans.

The cost of all these measures would be enormous, at a time when government debt levels are already staggering. The worry about perilously high debt prompted the International Monetary Fund this week to issue a proposal to reform the European Union’s framework for government public spending and deficits.

Still, a pitiless and unyielding reality remains: a lack of energy that countries can afford.

At current prices, there is simply not enough to produce the steel, lumber, microchips, glass, cotton, plastic, chemicals and electricity that go into making the food, home heat, garage doors, tampons, bicycles, baby formula, wine glasses and more that consumers want.

The root of the shortage predates the Ukraine war.

Commodity prices started rising in 2020 as countries began emerging from pandemic restrictions, noted Sven Smit, a senior partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. In the United States alone, consumers were, in effect, buying $1 trillion more goods than expected, based on spending patterns before coronavirus hit.

And the sudden switch in spending on products like new kitchen tiles and cars rather than services like restaurant dining and entertainment added to the problem because more energy and materials are needed to make them.

There is a “depleted supply chain,” more than a broken one, Mr. Smit said. “This is a physical crisis rather than a psychological crisis,” which is different from those that most people remember.

In the past, “you got scared of something, you stopped spending, and then you got more comfortable and spending came back,” Mr. Smit said. “That’s not what’s happening right now. To solve this puzzle, we have to restore supply.”

That puzzle is complicated by the need to produce energy that not only is quickly available and affordable, but also won’t aggravate the calamitous climate change already endangering the planet.

Achieving that goal will take years, rather than months.

In the short term, a limit on energy prices could offer struggling households and businesses relief, but economists are concerned that caps blunt the incentive to reduce energy consumption — the chief goal in a world of shortages.

Central banks in the West are expected to keep raising interest rates to make borrowing more expensive and force down inflation. On Thursday, the European Central Bank raised interest rates by three-quarters of a point, matching its biggest increase ever. The U.S. Federal Reserve is likely to do the same when it meets this month. The Bank of England has taken a similar position.

The worry is that the vigorous push to bring down prices will plunge economies into recessions. Higher interest rates alone won’t bring down the price of oil and gas — except by crashing economies so much that demand is severely reduced. Many analysts are already predicting a recession in Germany, Italy and the rest of the eurozone before the end of the year. For poor and emerging countries, higher interest rates mean more debt and less money to spend on the most vulnerable.

“I think we’re living through the biggest development disaster in history, with more people being pushed more quickly into dire poverty than has every happened before,” said Mr. Goldin, the Oxford professor. “It’s a particularly perilous time for the world economy.”

Dear GOP

Republicans love to spout about gas prices, blaming Biden and his "anti-American-oil policies".

As usual, it's bunkum.

Axios:

A Barclays analysis of oil output on federal lands and waters finds that "regulatory changes to date are not slowing U.S. production growth."

Why it matters:

• These areas make up roughly a fourth of total U.S. output and are directly affected by federal permitting and leasing decisions.
• The analysis arrives amid questions about why domestic production growth isn't growing more quickly, given high prices and the potential loss of lots of Russian barrels.
• Reuters has more on the Barclays report.

Catch up fast:

• A Dallas Fed survey of producers in its region, where most wells are on private lands, found that investor pressure to maintain discipline was the biggest check on growth.
• Supply chain and labor constraints are a problem too.

Yes, but:

• Industry officials say the Biden administration's leasing policies and overall posture about the sector's long-term domestic future also deter investment.

And that last bit - really Axios? "Industry officials" are complaining about "regulations"? Just toss that one in there to fill your Both Sides quota.

BTW:

Today's NFW

Lukoil is a Russian company which has more or less recently started to make its presence known in the American marketplace.

They say they're not all that tight with Putin, but Putin is the boss of Russia's dirty fuels sector, so you don't do jack shit in that business without Putin's blessing.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Russian oil giant Lukoil had big dreams for its U.S. gas stations. The invasion of Ukraine could spell the end.

The private company, which observers said has maintained some independence from Putin, is now caught in a high-stakes economic battle

The cash price for unleaded gas posted outside Michael Tusinac’s window at his gas station in Morristown, N.J.: $4.49 a gallon. The price would rise another 10 cents within two days. But the bigger problem was the station’s red and white Lukoil sign.

“It’s killing me,” Tusinac said.

He was on the phone with his landlord, Kashmir Gill, who also runs a Lukoil gas station, just up the road in Whippany.

The two men shared their laments at being tied to a Russian oil giant that is now a target for American protests over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Lukoil is a corporate pariah. Two decades ago, it entered the U.S. market harboring big dreams, with even Vladimir Putin flying in for the opening of one Lukoil station. Now, its gas stations face boycotts and calls to shut down.

Tusinac has had picketers some days. Forty minutes away in Newark, local leaders voted to force that city’s two Lukoil stations to close. And New Jersey’s governor was just on TV talking about taking action against all Lukoil stations in the state.

“Did your volume go down in the last couple of days?” Gill asked.

“Hell, yeah,” Tusinac said. “Forty percent.”

Gill laughed. His station had been hit, too. The news was so bad it was funny.

“I have no idea what to do,” Tusinac said.

Lukoil, one of the world’s largest energy producers and the second-biggest oil company in Russia, is caught in the middle of an economic war with the West, as previously welcomed Russian companies are cut out from the international system.

The broad and swift unwinding of Russia’s ties to the global economy — spurred by public backlash to Russia’s invasion and the pressure on Western governments to respond — has led to confusion and chaos, resulting in collateral damage for people including American franchise owners Tusinac and Gill, whose stations don’t even sell Russian gasoline, as well as for Lukoil, which former executives and experts described as maintaining a degree of independence from Putin during his decades in power.

Lukoil CEO Vagit Alekperov, they said, has managed to toe a narrow line during Putin’s reign, protecting the company from takeover by Putin allies. This month, Lukoil’s board called for “the soonest termination of the armed conflict” in Ukraine and expressed support for negotiations. The statement stopped short of condemning the invasion, but still represented a distancing from Putin, observers said.

“[Alekperov’s] whole philosophy has been, Lukoil is better as a global company and Russia is better as part of the global system. Both of those are inoperative now,” said Toby Gati, a former National Security Council official who joined Lukoil’s board as an independent director in 2016 and resigned in response to the Ukraine invasion. “It is not possible to isolate Russia forever. When this is over, you’re going to want to engage with Russians who understand that Russia needs to be involved in the global system, and Lukoil would be a good place to start. But not now.”

I beg to differ on that point. Russia is, at best, a corrupt Oligarchy / outright Kleptocracy.

Even when Putin is dead and gone, the oligarchs will remain, so I'll forever mentally link every Russian company with those Oligarchs, who will forever be linked to the Russian Mob and their dirty money, which will forever make every transaction with any Russian business suspect.

 

Once you've demonstrated to me that you're not worthy of my trust, you're going to play hell working towards a time when I can trust you again, and that time may be never.

You fucked it up, and you 'ain't gettin' it unfucked any time soon.

As for the small operators here in USAmerica Inc, I'm sorry, guys - I feel for you. And not to put too fine a point on it, but them's the breaks - fortunes of war. Maybe you could call your cousin in Odessa and you can commiserate together.

Lukoil executives both in the United States and in Russia did not respond to requests for comment or an interview request for Alekperov.

In 2000, Lukoil became the first Russian company to buy a public U.S. company when it paid $71 million for Getty Petroleum Marketing Inc. and its 1,300 gas stations along the East Coast. Getty’s red, white and gold signs eventually became red and white Lukoil ones.

Lukoil marked its American arrival with a 2003 celebration at a former Getty gas station on 10th Avenue in Manhattan. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was there. So was Putin. He shook hands with employees, sipped gas station coffee and even bit into a Krispy Kreme doughnut, according to press reports. (The gas station was eventually replaced by a luxury condo tower.)

At the time, Putin and Russia were heralded. Schumer said Russian oil could help the United States break free from dependence on OPEC nations.

“I hope it does cause problems for OPEC,” Schumer was quoted as saying.

Lukoil soon snapped up hundreds more gas stations, mostly Mobil stations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, thanks to antitrust concerns following the $74 billion merger in 1998 between two other oil giants, Exxon and Mobil.

One of those Mobil stations was run by Tusinac. He’d run his station in Morristown since the early ’80s. He saw problems right away with Lukoil.

“They didn’t understand American business, American law, the amount of red tape it takes to get things done,” Tusinac said.

Lukoil told station operators it planned to build an oil refinery in the United States and ship oil straight from Russia — which would give it a pricing advantage, said Tusinac and Gill.

“That fizzled,” Tusinac recalled.

Instead, Lukoil buys gasoline from the Phillips 66 refinery in Linden, N.J., according to three station operators. Phillips 66 declined to comment on its Linden plant. But multiple refinery customers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss refinery operations said the crude oil mostly comes from North America, South America and sometimes West Africa.

In more recent years, the United States has not played a large role in Lukoil’s international expansion. In 2014, after Russia invaded the Crimea region of Ukraine, new, relatively mild U.S. sanctions barred the provision of certain services and advanced technologies to Lukoil and several other Russian energy companies.

Several former executives said that Lukoil has largely declined to pursue energy exploration in the United States.


“Looking at stuff in the U.S. at the time I was there was never really on the table,” said Robin Winkle, a former Lukoil executive in Houston who left in 2017. “I suspect there was a concern that, yes, with the sanctions in place already, it would be difficult for the company to own assets in the U.S.”

One exception was an investment Lukoil made via a private equity fund into a shale energy project in Texas, said Kevin Black, a former managing director at Lukoil based in Houston who oversaw the investment. The investment, which Lukoil has since exited, was massively profitable for the company, Black said.

Alekperov, a Soviet-era oil ministry official and energy executive who was born in Azerbaijan and helped form Lukoil after the Soviet Union collapsed, is seen as a clever operator who has managed to keep Lukoil independent during Putin’s reign, even as companies owned by other oligarchs have been taken over by Kremlin insiders.

One former American Lukoil employee said there was a feeling within the company that “Lukoil was the last independent major oil company in Russia,” and that oligarchs close to Putin were perpetually eyeing Lukoil for any missteps that would give them an opening to take over its assets.

Black said that at the high-level company meetings he attended, some of which included Alekperov, executives stayed far away from politics.

“Politics never came up in meetings, even in Moscow,” he said. “They said, ‘We’re businessmen. Politics is somebody else’s job. All we’re here to do is get oil out of the ground.’”

Anders Aslund, a leading expert on Russia who has written about crony capitalism under Putin, said Alekperov’s strategy to make Lukoil a global oil company, with projects in Mexico, Iraq, Eastern Europe and Africa, has given it a complicated corporate structure. That arrangement would be more difficult for a Russian state company such as Rosneft, headed by close Putin ally Igor Sechin, to take over, Aslund said.

Rosneft said in an emailed statement that it “has great respect” for Alekperov.

“We have repeatedly stated that Rosneft has no interest and no relevant plans for a possible acquisition of Lukoil, with which we are working on a number of projects,” the statement said. “We have always maintained a competitive environment and have not sought to monopolize the market.”

Though Alekperov is firmly within the Russian establishment, he has consistently held himself out as at least somewhat independent of the Kremlin, Aslund said.

“He’s not very close to Putin. He doesn’t do favors for Putin,” he said. “Alekperov wants to say, ‘I’m not Putin’s servant, I’m an independent businessman,’ which is of course an exaggeration. But he’s trying to be as independent as he can.”

But that degree of independence may not mean much now, given the broad appetite in the West for measures that would punish Russia and the shunning of Russia-linked companies by investors. The company’s stock price stood at less than $7 in early March when the London Stock Exchange suspended trading on a string of Russian companies, a 92 percent drop from the prior month.


Mexico, where Lukoil has oil exploration projects, has said it will not pursue sanctions on Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion. In Iraq, where Lukoil is developing one of the world’s largest oil fields, the central bank has advised the government against signing new contracts with Russian companies, though current deals are unlikely to be affected. Earlier this month, JPMorgan strategists recommended purchasing Lukoil corporate debt, citing in part the company’s international presence.

In an interview, Gati attributed her decision — to resign as an independent director — to Putin’s “horrendous” invasion of Ukraine. A new law that threatens a 15-year prison sentence against anyone who contradicts the official line on Ukraine also was a factor, Gati said, because she knew that she would not be able to keep from speaking out and that doing so would put the company in an impossible position.

“I would look forward to a day when Russia would be open again, when it would be possible to get back to the place we were, but we’re not there, and I just could not be a part of it,” Gati said.

Another independent director, former Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, also resigned after the invasion, Reuters reported. Schuessel did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent weeks, as U.S. companies pulled out of Russia and American airspace was closed to Russian planes, the hunt began for other ways — both big and small — to show disapproval of Russia’s invasion. Some U.S. liquor stores stopped selling Russian vodka. Bar owners made a show of pouring Russian liquor into the street. Some high-end restaurants stopped selling Russian caviar.

Protesters gathered outside some Lukoil stations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And in Newark, the city council voted unanimously earlier this month to instruct the city’s business administrator to shut down the city’s two Lukoil stations.

Anibal Ramos, the council member who introduced the resolution, did not respond to requests for comment. But he said on Facebook that he wanted to “suspend the license of Russian-owned LUKOIL gas stations in Newark to show our solidarity with the people of Ukraine.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Sal Risalvato, head of the New Jersey Gasoline, Convenience Store and Automotive Association. “It’s nothing more than a publicity stunt.”

The Lukoil gas stations are not owned by Lukoil N.A. Local residents own the gas stations and operate them, he said. Closing the stations hurts American workers, Risalvato said, including the people who pump the gas. New Jersey is the only state that still bans self-serve gas pumps.

Newark has yet to actually close the Lukoil stations. It was unclear whether the city business administrator has the authority to do so.

Now, Gill is looking forward to 2024, when his contract with Lukoil expires. He said he’ll turn to a different brand. But he is powerless until then.

He told Tusinac on the phone that he, too, should look forward to the day when he can get out of his Lukoil contract.

“After that, your misery will be over,” Gill told him.

Tusinac didn’t think it would take that long.

“Lukoil is going to have to sell,” he said. “I can’t never see them coming back from this.”

This feels different from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill or the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Tusinac said. Those led to outrage and protests, too. But at least they were accidents, he said.

What Russia is doing now is different.

“The only way out for Lukoil right now,” he said, “is to replace the signs as soon as they can.”

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen is tired of Republicans' shit - as are we all.

Here's the graphic on "contributions" to politicians

Fight For It

Fossil fuel companies are run by smart guys who clawed their way to the top of their organizations by knowing what the fuck they're doing.

Those guys have invested most of their lives in their careers - and since the global oil reserves are supposed to hold out for another 50 years, and since they're not getting any younger, they'll be cashing in on all that hard work - so don't expect them to bail.

They have to be beaten - by political means and by economic means - because they won't just walk away from that kind of power.

Seems Like Good News

From Juan Cole:

Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman announced Friday that Saudi Arabia would use its oil assets to back a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund. The move suggested to many observers that the kingdom is preparing for a likely end of the petroleum business and transitioning to being primarily an investor. While it is true that the money for the sovereign wealth fund is expected to come from petroleum sales, it also seems clear that the kingdom recognizes that it has a stranded asset that won’t be nearly as valuable in a decade or two as it is now. It could even end up, like coal, being regulated out of existence in many countries.

Here are 3 reasons Saudi Arabia is likely making this massive change in economic strategy:

1. Climate change denial, which the Saudis pushed and helped fund, has failed. A majority of Americans now accepts that humans burning fossil fuels is causing global warming. And that’s in anti-science, capitalist-ridden America. Everywhere else in the world it goes without saying. Since the impact of global warming will become increasingly apparent in the coming decades, likely pressure to abandon burning fossil fuels will grow. Already, most new investment in power plants is in renewables,not coal and gas.

2. Another fossil fuel, coal, is being quickly phased out and will likely be illegal in fifteen or twenty years. It is being phased out by the Environmental Protection Agency because it puts out pollutants, including CO2. The writing is on the wall for coal and petroleum.

3. More affordable, longer-range electric cars are now coming on the market, with the Chevy Bolt due next December and Tesla 3 the following year. Most petroleum is used for transportation, so electric vehicles are deadly to that market. The new generation of electric cars is less than $30,000 in the US after tax rebates. And it typically can go 200 miles on a charge. Tesla is putting fast recharging stations everywhere it can, and people have already gone across the country in a Tesla. Battery costs are falling and batteries are becoming more efficient, so the writing is on the wall for the combustion engine. Consumers are combining electric cars with solar panels on their houses, getting free fuel. Low gasoline prices won’t impede solar car sales because prices would have to fall another dollar US before EVs would not be worth it.

In as little as fifteen to twenty years, petroleum may be illegal in some places; and will be in retreat everywhere. Saudi oil is a stranded asset. So they are attempting to create a revenue stream from investments. As for fossil fuels, their business model is under severe pressure.

So, if I look past the part about The House of Saud becoming even more parasitic than they are now - at least they're making some attempt to move away from literally burning the place to the ground trying to milk every last dime outa the suckers, to a new and exciting career as straight-up Rent-Collecting Leeches.  Which somehow seems bizarrely logical in that it means they're being more "honest" as to the total buggery of what they're all about(?)

Baby steps.

Big Change Maybe

The faintest of wry smiles comes across my face when I find something that even barely hints at the prospect of the death of Commodification coming sooner than expected.

From a short bit at NASDAQ earlier this month:

The critical natural gas transit country, Ukraine, reached a supply agreement in the last week of September with the EU’s largest fuel supply partner: Russia.

One could argue that this agreement could actually have come too late. Natural gas supply to Europe heading into winter 2015 seems more secure than ever before, a sharp contrast to the icy winters of 2006 and 2009, in which Russia cut off natural gas supply to Eastern Europe over a conflict with the Ukraine. The following factors have turned the European natural gas market from a ‘’beggars can’t be choosers” into a true “buyers’ market’’.

And this from CNBC today:

Kilduff said gas was being hit by expectations a record amount of natural gas will soon be in storage. Weekly data show gas storage at 3.81 trillion cubic feet, and the record is 3.929 trillion cubic feet in November 2012.

The Energy Information Agency predicts a peak of 3.956 trillion this November, said Kilduff, who projects it to reach more than 4 trillion. He said the most recent weather report shows above-normal temperatures for the eastern region, a significant user of heating fuels

The oversupply is also causing problems. "The producing region is at a record storage level," said McGillian. He said if more gas is forced into the spot market, the price will drop even more.

But then again, I can't ignore that this is part of the little political game we love to play.  So instead of taking any real steps toward understanding that resources are limited and we have to figure out how to move ourselves past the self-destructive nonsense of Chop-It-Down-Burn-It-Up-Dig-It-Up-Burn-It-Down, here's what I think is most likely to happen.

Nothing.

Not much that's different anyway.  And prob'ly nothing but the usual and customary crap of tax-payers gettin' stuck with the check.  We more or less bank-rolled the drive for all this "energy" - sweetheart tax incentives and access to public land; roads and utilities; and sometimes direct subsidies; not to mention having the watchdogs conveniently look the other way while Halliburton (eg) gets to poison the living fuck outa everything.  Plus, we get to pay for some pretty high-priced consultants and PR pricks to make the products of USAmerica Inc more palatable to "foreign markets" etc etc etc.  And now that those markets are reacting to a supply glut (that we manufactured btw), guess what all those high-rollin' entrepreneurial self-made macho assholes are gonna do next.  I think we can pretty much count on 'em to go crying to "their" congress critters that the sugar bowl's empty now and they just can't possibly be expected to take it all on their-own-poor-selfless-selves to clean up the ginormous fucking mess they made while soaking the last dime's worth of life from one more patch of a dying planet.

We can bumper-sticker-ize it: Privatized profits and Socialized costs, but here's the kicker - since they did it on our dime (and because nobody's complaining about 2-dollar gas), they can make a lot of us believe they did it all because we asked them to do it.

And they can make it stick - shit, we'll pay 'em to do it.

And they can do it all over again next time.

No soul and no honor.

Today's Lesson

...in household budgeting and money management - just a reminder about the money we're spending on gasoline.

We'll start with the basics, and say you drive a good medium size car getting about 25 mpg, and your daily commute is a short one at 20 miles per day; plus you go to the gym, and there's daycare/school, and you make groceries, and you go to the dry cleaners, and you run all the other errands in a very well-planned kinda way etc etc etc, which brings your total monthly drive to about 1100 miles.

@ 25 mpg, you're burning 44 gallons of gas, which is gonna cost you about $90 right now because gas is down around $2.05 for a gallon of regular 87 octane.

But hang on a dang minute.  You also get to pay your share of the tax breaks, and the sweetheart loan terms, and all the other subsidies that American oil companies get in various forms in order to help them provide us with all that "cheap" fuel.  

Then you get to add in your share of what it costs for the US Military to protect our (ie: Halliburton's) vital interests, the VA bennies for the vets, the increased healthcare and insurance costs, and the cost of lost productivity for the millions of us who get sick and die every year because of the toxic shit left over from drilling, pumping, storing, shipping, retailing and burning that crap and and and.

This "help" suddenly gets pretty expensive, even tho' it's next to impossible to get anybody who actually knows what the real amount is to say straight up what the real amount is.  Ya gotta figure it's pretty bad when it seems like so many people are going so far outa their way to keep us from getting at the answers.

Estimates on all this help run as low as about $40 Billion (which everybody knows is the PR Consultant Bullshit Number), and as high as $500 Billion to $1 Trillion per year, (which some think is the bullshit radical hippie pinko number).

But even if the low estimate is ridiculously low and the high end is ridiculously high, the ugly truth is that the gallon of gas you bought for $2.05?  That gallon of gas cost you more like 8 bucks.

8 fucking dollars for a gallon of gasoline

But hey - all that other stuff - that renewable stuff - c'mon, man - that's really expensive, and it's new, so it's scary.  And ya know what happens when we get scared?  That 8-dollar gas might have to go up to about 10.  Don't fuck with your betters.

Quick Check

I've been wondering why nobody's squawking about the effects the Iran Deal might have on oil prices - 

Oil prices fell further Thursday a day after U.S. benchmark crude tumbled below $50 a barrel for the first time since April as bloated U.S. inventories and the prospect of increased Iranian crude shipments fueled concerns about swelling supplies even as demand is waning.

"We've had a lot of supply," says Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service. "Now the worry is that demand is going lower."

West Texas crude for September delivery fell 67 cents, or 1.4%, to $48.53 a barrel after dropping 2.3% on Wednesday. That's down about 20% from a recent peak of $61.01 in late June.

The Obama administration's proposed nuclear deal with Iran would lift sanctions and could allow that country to ship significantly more oil, adding to a recent surge in supplies from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. A Senate hearing on the agreement is scheduled for Thursday.

- and there it is.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Scott Walker's been the most adamant about how the deal's so bad he's trying to figure out how to start bombing Iran the day after he's elected.  I guess maybe all that Koch money really is speaking pretty loudly.  Who doesn't see that BTW?

So now the notion pops into my feverish little noggin - Obama (and Kerry - full props for a guy I never tho't was the real thing, but anyway) Obama more or less neutralizes Iran basically by bringing them over to the good guys' side and getting them to promise they'll play nice for now; he precludes (at least for a while) that we'll get suckered into another clusterfuck war in western Asia, which makes it harder for War Incorporated to make money; and he puts the mechanism into motion that should drive Big Oil's profits down; which makes it a little less profitable for Wall Street; etc etc etc.

It just seems like it all adds up to one big old-fashioned bitchslap for an extraordinarily shitty system of legalized bribery that's had a stranglehold on our little experiment in self-government and produced a dumb-n-numb electorate that keeps sending Coin-Operated Politicians back to the trough at the expense of the people who keep saying they're fed up with sending Coin-Operated Politicians back to the trough...

Or maybe it's just a one-off stop-gap thing, and Obama's not the fucking genius I'd like to think he might actually be.

A guy can dream tho'

And just remember - ya heard it here first, muhthuhfuckuhs.

Too Obvious?

Watch this:

...and try not to think of this:

But always always always try to remember that nobody's trying to save the planet.  The planet doesn't need saving any more than it "needs" people - or any other life form for that matter.

What we're trying to do is to keep the joint from becoming uninhabitable for our own bad selves.

The decisions we make about work and family determine how our kids will live.  

The "bigger" decisions we make about the economy and about politicians and governments and about the biosphere and how we all co-exist in (and with) the natural world - those decisions are all about how our kids will die.

Gotta start making some smarter choices.

hat tip = Addicting Info

A Word From Professor Cole

Juan Cole (aka the smartest guy in any room when it comes to talking about the gigundous cluster fuck polite people call The Middle East):

Why the US needs Electric Cars: Saudi Arabia threatens Pivot away from US
Posted on 10/23/2013 by Juan Cole

The royal family of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no constitution and no elected legislature, is in a snit about US foreign policy. King Abdullah doesn’t like even the mild American criticism of the Sunni Bahrain monarchy’s brutal crackdown on the majority Shiite community in that country. He is furious that President Obama went with the Russian plan to sequester Syria’s chemical weapons rather than bombing Damascus. He is petrified of a breakthrough in American and Iranian relations that might permit Iran to keep its nuclear enrichment program and allow Tehran to retain a nuclear breakout capacity, which would deter any outside overthrow of the Iranian regime. Those are the stated discontents leaked by Saudi uber-hawk Bandar Bin Sultan.

Behind the scenes, another Saudi concern is that the US likes democracy too much. Washington ultimately backed the Arab upheavals that led to the fall of presidents for life in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Saudi Arabia hated this outbreak of popular politics and parliamentary competition. It connived with Egypt’s generals to roll back gains in Egypt in favor of more authoritarian rule. It has just cut off Yemen because the post-Saleh situation there isn’t developing its way. Only in Syria do the Saudis want regime change, and there it is because they want to weaken Iran and depose a Shiite ruling clique in favor of a fundamentalist Sunni one.

20/20 Hindsight

Wes Clark's been trying for a while to get us to step up and understand what's happening.  Not that he knows everything, but he's a smart cookie and he's been around the block more than once, and he seems at least to have maintained his sense of the need for those checks and balances to prevent too much power from being concentrated in too few hands.

What really strikes me is that even when "the Neo-Cons" - guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld - aren't "in power", they still somehow have the stroke to get us to take on these disgustingly imperial (ie: mercantile) projects.

One other thing:  Eventually, we gotta get hip to ourselves and start to understand that if we lose the need for the oil, the Middle East loses its strategic primacy, and we can stop letting the Saudi Royals (eg) use our Oil Jones to make us dance to whatever tune tickles their fancy at any given time.