Saturday, February 16, 2002
10:56 PM LINK
Buchanan Qualification
I feel obliged to point out that I found much of what Pat Buchanan says to be reprehensible. This is not because I disagree with him on certain issues. Just because I disagree with someone doesn't mean I necessary find their views reprehensible.
Although I agree with Buchanan's criticisms of NAFTA, I cannot abide his views on how individuals lead their private lives.
Friday, February 15, 2002
1:22 PM LINK
The Bush-Clinton-Bush Administration
My friend Adam wrote me after my Methanex articles with the following very valid point:
By the way, I've been reading the Methanex thread on Viva, and you might mention that the NAFTA "controls" were signed through under the Clintons (even though the negotiations began under George I) -- this would have happened whether this Bush was in the White House or not.
Quite true. It's quite disturbing that both political parties were not only behind NAFTA, but are pushing to expand it.
Everyone in the U.S. remembers Ross Perot's warning during the 1992 election that the "giant sucking sound" that NAFTA would cause if it were ratified. He implied there would be a huge loss of jobs to Mexico.
His concern was somewhat of a chimera. Really, the "giant sucking sound" from NAFTA is loss of national sovreignty (e.g. primacy of U.S. law and its citizenry on its own soil) to the extranational corporate-appointed NAFTA arbration panel, which decides whether national laws, jury decisions and court cases (including U.S. Supreme Court cases) are in violation of the treaty such as to harm future profits of a corporation.
As loathe as I am to admit this, the only candidate in either party who was openly warning about this kind of consequence of NAFTA back in 1992 was, well, er, Pat Buchanan. Scary indeed. Was he right in this article from 1993?
"Contemptuous of states' rights,
regional differences and national
distinctions, NAFTA would supersede
state laws and diminish U.S.
sovereignty. It takes power from
elected leaders and turns it over to
transnational bureaucrats whose
allegiance is to no country at all.
Though our Constitution specifically
empowers Congress to regulate foreign
commerce, Congress is not even
permitted to amend NAFTA.."
(note: I can't believe I've been reduced to quoting Pat Buchanan. I hope Adam forgives me for quoting him and Buchanan in the same post.)
At the time, the
New Republic, which has become a leading
Anti-Anti-Globalization forum, claimed Perot and Buchanan represented "the cause of evil" for opposing NAFTA.
The most ironic aspect is that Buchanan was upset that NAFTA might prevent the rollback of environmental regulations.
9:50 AM LINK
MMT: Canada Backs Down
The Methanex case, which has yet to be decided by the secret three-judge panel that now serves as the de facto Supreme Court for North America, is not the first case like this come out of Canada.
Under threat of 250 million dollar law suit by a U.S. Company under NAFTA's provision, Canada was forced to repeal a ban on a gasoline additive called MMT. They had to pay the U.S. manufacturer 13 million in profit damages just for the short time the ban was in place. Details are in this article on the web site of the Public Citizen.
"What Congress and U.S. consumer and environmental groups were promised could not happen just did: Canada has repealed a national public health law after it was challenged under NAFTA.
The Canadian ban on the gasoline additive MMT was challenged directly under NAFTA rules by MMT's producer, U.S.-based Ethyl Corporation. The corporation was able to bully the sovereign government of Canada into abrogating its duty to protect the health and safety of its citizens."
I find it interesting that the highest profile cases coming out of NAFTA involve
gasoline additives.
Most states in the U.S. already ban MMT as hazardous to human health. But in Canada, the result is not only a repeal of the ban, but:
"The Canadian government settled the NAFTA suit yesterday agreeing to pay Ethyl $13 million in damages and to cover the company s legal costs. It will also proclaim publicly that MMT is "safe" in direct contradiction of the view of its national environmental protection agency."
(italics mine)
The word seems to be out among the multinational corporations that the Chapter 11 Provision of NAFTA can be used to stymie any environmental legislation in Canada, U.S., and Mexico.
Bill Moyers and
William Greider seem to be among a very small group of mainstream journalists talking about this for now.
3:00 AM LINK
Methanex
By the way, Bush's touchy-feely policy initiative on air pollution I mentioned below is fakery. He knows there is very little chance these rules will be put into place, so he can afford to score points by promoting it.
How do I know it won't happen? Simply put: the era of new environmental rules is over. You'd better be happy with the environmental regulations and laws we have in place now, because there will not be any more for a long time.
Why? Well if you haven't heard the name Methanex by now, get used to it, because this case is going to be a big deal. I don't even know where to begin to describe this case. But I don't have to. Others will tell you. You will learn. You will know, and you will get very,very angry about it.
Here's just a taste of Methanex from the above link to Bill Greider's article:
Multinational investors can randomly second-guess the legitimacy of environmental laws or any other public-welfare or economic regulation, including agency decisions, even jury verdicts. The open-ended test for winning damages is whether the regulation illegitimately injured a company's investments and can be construed as "tantamount to expropriation," though no assets were physically taken (as is the case when a government seizes an oil field or nationalizes banks).
NAFTA's arbitrators cannot overturn domestic laws, but their huge damage awards may be nearly as crippling--chilling governments from acting once they realize they will be "paying to regulate," as William Waren, a fellow at Georgetown law school, puts it.
Remember that name--
Methanex. Among other things, it's the legal case that will establish that the Supreme Court is no longer the highest law in the land. The highest law of the land is now a secret panel of arbitors. Only multinational corporations can bring suit in the court. They rule on whether U.S., Canadian, and Mexican laws are harmful to future profits that a corporation
might earn. If so, the government must reimburse the corporation for those unrealized profit.
There is no appeal from this panel. The panel is unelected and unresponsive to any democratic process. Its decisions and deliberations are final and secret. If the panel says that a California's proposed ban on a gasoline additive is going to harm future unrealized profits of any multinational corporation, then the U.S. will have to make up the difference.
The floodgates are opened. Welcome to the 21st Century!.
2:27 AM LINK
Tattered Cover Under Siege
The venerable Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver where I bought Deffeyes's Book (see left inset) was the target of police raids searching for their customer purchase lists.
2:08 AM LINK
Bombonas de Butano
Can't help passing along this crazy link about the Spanish contest for decorating butane bottles.
1:26 AM LINK
The Hydrocarbon Elephant in the Room
You gotta hand it to Bush. He is nothing if not consistent to his principles. This policy initiative on clean skies and global climate change he issued at the NOAA today contains the following statement:
"Today, I'm confident that the environmental path that I announce will benefit the entire world. This new approach is based on this common-sense idea: that economic growth is key to environmental progress, because it is growth that provides the resources for investment in clean technologies.
This new approach will harness the power of markets, the creativity of entrepreneurs, and draw upon the best scientific research. And it will make possible a new partnership with the developing world to meet our common environmental and economic goals.
We will apply this approach first to the challenge of cleaning the air that Americans breathe. Today, I call for new Clean Skies legislation that sets tough new standards to dramatically reduce the three most significant orms of pollution from power plants, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury. "
Stunning.
Notice what's missing on that last list? Carbon dioxide, the principal waste product of burning any hydrocarbon fuel (coal, oil, natural gas), and also by far the most significant greenhouse gas.
To first order, the process of generating electricity in this country consists of turning hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide. Everything else is a secondary product. Yet he didn't mention carbon dioxide a single time in the entire address. To provide an initiative that claims to be about "global climate change" and to leave out any mention at all of carbon dioxide is basically a farce, if you ask me.
You can tell how much a lightning rod the phrase "carbon dioxide" is, and that his advisors told him to avoid saying it. The closest he gets is this:
"And we will look for ways to increase the amount of carbon stored by America's farms and forests through a strong conservation title in the farm bill. I have asked Secretary Veneman to recommend new targeted incentives for landowners to increase carbon storage. "
(italics mine)
Carbon storage? Why not call a spade a spade? It's a very oblique reference to the major waste product of burning fossil fuels,with no mention at all of why we need to keep "carbon" out of the atmosphere at all.
The BBC was not impressed with Bush's speech.
Thursday, February 14, 2002
2:17 PM LINK
Shameless Plug
This post is completely off topic and has nothing to do with petroleum. I am simply announcing a Java SOAP web service that I just released called Orbitarium, which gives the current planetary positions using SOAP over HTTP. Here are some example SOAP messages, in case you're interested.
This post is a blatant attempt to get the site listed more quickly in Google.
Now back to our regularly scheduled hydrocarbon programming.
Sunday, February 10, 2002
4:44 PM LINK
Total Ultimately Recoverable
A couple entries ago, I mentioned that the following facts:
1. The total amount of petroleum recovered to date from the Earth is about 800 billion barrels.
2. The total amount of worldwide proven reserves is considered to be almost exactly 1000 billion barrels.
Adding these two numbers up, you get the figure 1.8 trillion barrels for all the petroleum that has been recovered, or that could be recovered in the future, supposedly, from existing wells.
But does this number actually equal the total amount of petroleum that existed in the Earth before the first well was drilled? The answer is no, for the simple reason I mentioned already, that proven reserves indicates the amount of petroleum that is believed to be recoverable from existing wells.
That is, this figure does not include oil fields not discovered or drilled yet. For example, ANWR is not included in this figure.
So how much petroleum is not included in the figure for worldwide proven reserves? The answer: nobody knows for certain. We can only guess.
Instead, there is an accepted range of probable reserves that is to be added on to the 1000 billion barrels of proven reserves. The range of additional probable reserves is considered by most petroleum geologists to be between 300 billion and 1000 billion barrels on top of the figure for proven reserves.
More often, one hears this figure quoted as the total that is ultimately recoverable. This figure includes the 800 billion barrels already recovered, the 1000 billion barrels in proven reserves, plus the 300-1000 billion barrels more in probable reserves.
With simple arithmetic, you arrive at a range for the total amount of petroelum that is ultimately recoverable of between 2.1 and 2.8 trillion barrels, of which about 0.8 trillion has been recovered to date.
By the way, in case you're wondering what accounts for such a huge discrepancy in the range of probable reserves, here's a clue from this page:
Experts differ on these figures; some take a static view, emphasizing
geological and statistical issues that lead to a low reserve estimate, and some take a dynamic view, arguing that rapidly advancing
technology will help discover more reserves and make a wider range of already known deposits economically recoverable.
(emphasis mine). So we come back to faith in technology to save our petroleum-based societ again.
