Uhoh:Californiasolarplantfriesthousandsof

Uh oh: California solar plant fries thousands of birds in mid-flight

posted at 10:01 pm on August 18, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

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Oh, dear. They even have a name for them:

Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

Trade-offs, people. Always trade-offs.

Jon Gabriel on the history of this plant with environmentalists and regulators:

The facility has concerned environmentalists in the past, as its construction bladed over 3,500 acres of virgin desert. Being California, the state government required BrightSource to relocate a bunch of desert gopher tortoises to the tune of $22 million. The installation also endangers pilots flying the busy Los Angeles–Las Vegas corridor; they can be dazzled by the intense light.

It remains to be seen if regulators will stop the plant’s operation, but at least the world’s largest bug zapper should educate environmentalists and green energy boosters.

For too long, the public has been told that energy production is less a matter of physics than one of morality. Renewable energy like solar and wind are sold as “good” while reliable energy sources like oil and coal are “evil.” Methods like hydroelectric, nuclear and natural gas all were initially sold as clean and green, but became demonized the instant they turned a profit or revealed unintended consequences.

Between this and slaying bald eagles with impunity, green energy is literally killin’ it lately.

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Tags: bald eagle, bird deaths, green energy, natural gas, oil, solar, wind

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‘WhenISIStakesBaghdad…’ postedat1:21

‘When ISIS takes Baghdad…’

posted at 1:21 pm on August 5, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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The headlines out of the Middle East leave the reader with the unmistakable impression that Islamic State militants are on the advance.

A combined assault on a variety of positions in Lebanon by ISIS fighters resulted in the fall of a series of border posts and a small city to the Sunni militant group. The fighting in Lebanon worsened on Monday. “It’s another front for ISIS and another sign containment of the Syria crisis has failed, a Middle East analyst told The New York Times.

Reports indicate that ISIS has also expanded the front in Iraq’s north and has begun to successfully engage Kurdish defense forces. Conflicting dispatches indicated on Monday that the fundamentalist army may have taken control of Iraq’s largest dam, a strategic asset which Islamic State propagandists have indicated they intend to use as leverage over the Iraqi government.

Several months after an American citizen who had joined Islamic State militants executed a suicide attack on a Syrian military outpost, a new video has surfaced which reportedly features yet another American professing his loyalty to the group. He is just one of “dozens” of Americans fighting with Islamic fundamentalist militants in the Middle East, a threat which has United States security officials nervous.

Inside Iraq, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards are engaged in the fight alongside Iraqi defense forces with the aim of pushing back ISIS fighters. Tehran is picking up the slack left by exceedingly cautious Western governments.

And the Iraqi government’s hold on Baghdad grows more tenuous by the day. As fears of an all-out assault on the Iraqi capital have begun to dissipate, ISIS’s new strategy appears to center on executing insurgent attacks inside and around the city – areas which they are able to access via a complex network of Saddam Hussein-era tunnels.

“For several weeks, the Sunni insurgents have been moving fighters, weapons and supplies from strongholds in western Iraq through secret desert tunnels to the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad,” Newsweek reported on Monday.

Capturing Baghdad would be difficult: the capital is home to thousands of elite forces as well as a vast number of Shi’ite militia fighters. But seizing towns on the southern perimeter would let the Islamic State step up suicide and car bomb attacks in the capital and perhaps restart the urban warfare of 2006-07 when Sunni and Shi’ite militia battled street by street.

Via Elizabeth Scalia, the global economic community is bracing itself for the fall of Baghdad. The economist and consultant Andrew McKillop, writing for Oil Voice, began to examine a nightmare oil shock scenario which would rival the 1973-74 OPEC embargo that would be brought about “when ISIS takes Baghdad.”

ISIS now has two powerful bargaining chips in Iraq. Its frankly apocalyptic general theory of forcing its Grand Caliphate into being would be served by the total destruction of Baghdad if the city and el-Maliki’s government do not submit. In no way avoiding the Apocalypse but welcoming it, the effects on Iraq’s oil production and oil exports can be imagined. Comparable insurgency, civil riot and rebellion and destruction of government is under way in both Syria and Libya. The extreme fundamentalist Sunni ISIS movement makes no secret of ‘the prize’ being the overthrow of albeit-Sunni ruling families, called ‘impious and heretical’ in the GCC countries.

America’s foreign policy establishment appears perplexed by the world’s lethargy in addressing the grave threat posed by ISIS.

Kind of crazy how little the world has done about ISIS.

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) August 3, 2014

ISIS looks to be the strongest, most well funded terrorist organization in history. With, for now at least, little stopping them.

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 5, 2014

The will in the West to address the crisis in the Middle East simply does not exist, and the press has moved on from covering the ISIS threat. Only a massive oil shock — or worse — would refocus the West’s attention, and by then it would be far too late to do much of anything about it.

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Tags: Iraq, ISIS, Lebanon, oil, Syria

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Kurdsseizetwooilfields,pulloutof

Kurds seize two oil fields, pull out of Iraqi government

posted at 10:41 am on July 11, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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If Nouri al-Maliki wanted to dissolve the Iraqi union purposefully, he could hardly be doing a better job. While Kurds fight ISIS in the north — and more effectively than Maliki’s politically purged army has — Maliki accused them of being in league with the extremists even as Kurds mull over whether to just go on their own. Now they want Maliki out, or they’ll be leaving for good:

Iraq’s Kurds said Thursday Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was “hysterical” and not fit to run the country, further dimming the prospect of a new leadership uniting to face jihadist fighters.

The worsening political discord comes three days ahead of a planned parliamentary session meant to revive the process of replacing what has effectively been a caretaker government since April elections.

Maliki “has become hysterical and has lost his balance”, a statement from the office of Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani said, reacting to accusations by the prime minister a day earlier that his administration was harbouring militants.

The Kurdish delegation in Iraq’s parliament has walked out, as have Kurdish ministers in Maliki’s government. That prompted Maliki to retaliate, albeit impotently:

A dispute between Iraq’s Shiite-led central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region is boiling over, as Kurdish ministers withdrew from all cabinet meetings. In response, Baghdad is reportedly halting some cargo flights between Kurdish cities.

The spat is playing out under the threat of the extremist Sunni group the Islamist State, which has taken over cities and territories in northern and western Iraq. …

The Kurdish part of Iraq is becoming ever more remote from the government in Baghdad. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused Kurds of sheltering terrorists and Saddam Hussein loyalists. In response, a Kurdish politician, Roz Nouri Shawesm, called Maliki hysterical and said he must step down.

“Kurdish ministers will no longer attend cabinet meetings. Kurdish fighters have taken advantage of the chaos engulfing Iraq to seize territory to which they have long laid claim, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

For one, Kurds have their own independent lines of communication when it comes to air travel and cargo. They’ve been handling that themselves since the 1991 war, which gave them long-awaited autonomy from Saddam Hussein after decades of genocide and oppression. They can get their own supplies, and with their suddenly improved relations with Turkey, may have more robust options than Baghdad does on trade.

Plus, the Kurds have their own oil revenue — and they’ve added a couple of new fields to that stock today:

Iraqi Kurds have taken over two oil fields amid a growing dispute with the government in Baghdad, Iraqi and Kurdish sources say.

Kurdish peshmerga forces seized control of production facilities at the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oil fields in the north of the country on Friday.

Maliki’s government demanded that the Peshmerga return the fields to Iraqi control, but the Kurds say Baghdad was about to “sabotage” the facilities:

In a statement on Friday, the Iraqi oil ministry condemned the seizure of oil refineries, adding that they expected Kurdish fighters to “support security forces in confronting terrorist groups rather than using the conditions to raid and occupy oil fields”.

Reuters news agency said a senior source within the Kurdistan Regional Government had confirmed the takeover.

The unnamed source said they had been “forced to act to protect Iraq’s infrastructure after learning of attempts by Iraq oil ministry officials to sabotage it”.

Global Post‘s Jean MacKenzie, writing at The Week, advises that the world should just let Iraq partition itself:

While the Iraqi army is much larger and better-equipped than ISIS and its affiliates, it has had limited success in dislodging the insurgents from other areas it has seized. Fallujah and Ramadi have been under ISIS control since January.

Steven Simon, a senior fellow at The Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, agrees that it may be too much to hope that ISIS can be defeated.

“ISIS is deeply rooted in western Iraq,” he said. “They also have safe havens on the other side of the rather blurred border [with Syria].”

The Kurds in the north, who have seized territory and become all but independent over the past two weeks, will not give up their gains, Mendelsohn insisted, and putting the country back together may be nearly impossible.

“We are looking at de facto partition,” said Mendelsohn.

Maliki had a chance to keep this from happening after the 2007 surge, and the US its chance to stick around and apply pressure to push Maliki in that direction. Those chances are gone now, and not even a US intervention in force is likely to revive them. Maliki’s actions in this crisis show that he has no interest in unity under a federalist, shared-power system, and as long as Maliki’s in charge the Kurds and the Sunnis will have no incentive to stick around. Get ready for the sectarian bloodbath to come, and the best the West will probably be able to do is to contain it to Iraq and Syria while promoting democracy in the new, independent Kurdistan.

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Tags: Iraq, ISIS, kurdistan, Kurds, Masoud Barzani, Nouri al-Maliki, oil

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Report:TheU.S.isabouttobecomea

Report: The U.S. is about to become a “titan of unprecedented proportions” in the oil market

posted at 8:41 pm on June 17, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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And a darn good thing it is, too. The International Energy Agency’s researchers have in previous reports noted that they were counting on an acceleration in oil production from Iraq as a pretty clutch factor in the global formula that determines oil prices; Iraq’s major energy hubs don’t seem to be in any immediate danger, but sans that hoped-for output acceleration or even just with stagnant output, growing global demand could start sending prices upward in a big way — and Iraq is hardly the only traditional supplier struggling with political instability and investment problems.

It’s encouraging news, then, that the United States is on track to become the world’ biggest oil exporter by 2020 — and even better, that other countries with potential shale deposits are now moving more quickly than expected on adopting the hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques that have helped us get there.

In its most recent analysis, which takes a five-year view of the oil market, the IEA predicted that tight oil production from outside the U.S. could account for 650,000 barrels a day of global oil supply by 2019.

Although that is just a fraction of the 5 million barrels a day the U.S. is expected to produce from its shale oil fields by 2019, it highlights the continuing impact techniques like fracking are likely to have in helping increase global oil supply even toward the end of the decade when the IEA expects U.S. oil production growth to plateau.

Indeed, by some estimates, the U.S. contains no more than 15% of the world’s total shale and light tight oil resources, but the impact of their development on the oil market is already profound. By the end of the decade the IEA expects North America to produce 20% of the world’s oil supply and to have become a “titan of unprecedented proportions” in oil product markets as its exports of refined products soar.

Other countries might not have the resources or the geology (not to mention the relative regulatory and investment freedom, because of their own self-imposed folly) to replicate our shale boom, but it’s pretty amazing to remember that just a few years ago, nobody was expecting this miraculous turnaround — and that it’s happened largely outside of the Obama administration’s purview.

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Tags: energy, exports, Middle East, oil, Oil and Gas Industry, OPEC, shale

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Iraq’sinsurgencycouldmeanasummerofpain

Iraq’s insurgency could mean a summer of pain at the pump

posted at 3:31 pm on June 12, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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So it begins.

Sectarian violence in Iraq sent the price of oil skyrocketing on Thursday, propelling both Brent and West Texas Intermediate up more than two percent amid growing concerns about a threat to global supply.

After a delayed reaction to turmoil raging in the country, oil prices soared as open warfare between rebel forces—threatening a reconquest of the country barely a few years after U.S. forces departed—and the government spilled on to the world stage. Iraq is a member of OPEC, second only to Saudi Arabia as one of the world’s largest producers of crude.

With violence threatening Iraq’s civilian population and overwhelming the country’s security forces, a shadowy group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) has managed to seize control of key cities including Mosul, the country’s second-largest, Ramadi, Falluja and Tikrit. Fears about global supply mounted, as reports surfaced that Russian tanks had moved into beleaguered Ukraine, sending crude on a tear and overwhelming the impact of lackluster U.S. economic data.

Iraq’s oil production is still going about its usual business as of right now, and doesn’t look like there’s any imminently huge threat of disruption. As one group of Macquarie analysts put it, however, “Although attention on Iraq has faded over the past two years, we have continued to believe that the political stability there was at best fragile. If the current situation overflows into oil-supply disruption, the total volume at risk could be material.” And as of yesterday, this was happening:

Sunni Islamist militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have rapidly expanded their control of Iraq as a whole. The group is now said to be within range of overtaking Iraq’s biggest oil refinery in the city of Baiji.

The Baiji refinery can produce over 300,000 barrels of oil per day and supplies oil to the majority of Iraq. The refinery is also tasked with supplying power to Baghdad, Iraq’s capital city. Iraq is OPEC’s second biggest oil producer. …

Security sources told Reuters that the ISIS jihadists drove into Baiji, the home of the refinery, with a caravan of armed vehicles. The militants then proceeded to burn down the court house and police station, and freed masses of prisoners from jails.

It’s impossible to predict how any of this is going to play out, of course, but markets are feeling pretty edgy right about now — and as Keith Johnson at Foreign Policy posits, Americans might have largely forgotten about the Iraq war, but it’s very possible they’re about to be reminded at the gas pump:

Depending on Iraq’s ability to rally its own security forces and successfully fight the group, the uprising could also upend Baghdad’s plans to increase oil production in other parts of the country and assert control over exports in the semi-autonomous northern region of Kurdistan. All that becomes hugely important when global oil markets are looking at growth in Iraqi production as the great hope to keep the world fully supplied.

“Iraq needs to deliver; it’s as simple as that. This is not good, irrespective of whether there’s a short-term impact or not,” said Amrita Sen, an oil markets analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd, an energy consultancy in London.

“You need a lot of incremental supply increase from Iraq, which the current dynamics are saying is not going to happen,” Sen said.

However, Baghdad’s efforts to fight the militants could have knock-on effects on the huge oil fields in southern Iraq that account for the bulk of Iraqi output. Every time the Iraqi government moves troops from the south to fight militants in other parts of the country, oil companies’ operations are disrupted because of security concerns. In fact, Sen said, the increased cost of security is undermining the appeal of Iraq’s massive and easy-to-extract oil reserves.

One bright spot all of this is that the United States’ oil and gas production has lately exploded — no thanks to the Obama administration — helping to absorb some of the recent downswings in production from places like the also politically unstable Libya, Sudan, and Nigeria. Major disruptions or even just a lack of production growth from Iraq combined with the ongoing sanctions on Iran, however, could be a bridge too far to keep global gas prices below some very economically painful levels.

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Tags: domestic energy production, gas prices, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, oil, Oil and Gas Industry

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Europe:Sorrywerejectedyou,Canada;wereally

Europe: Sorry we rejected you, Canada; we really want your oil sands after all

posted at 4:41 pm on June 5, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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One of the reasons eco-radicals harbor such strong distaste for the Keystone XL pipeline is because they believe that Canada should quixotically eschew the economic opportunities in their oil sands and instead leave those natural resources in the ground. Their quest to kill the pipeline has therefore always been epically illogical, since Canada will and has found a way to get their oil to market, either to our Gulf refineries via rail transport or else by building their own domestic pipelines out to the coasts for shipment by sea.

These Keystone XL-hatin’ eco-radicals almost had a helpful partner in the European Union, which — heeding the complaint that oil sands are somewhat more carbon-intensive than conventional crude — was all ready with legislation meant to encourage the use of cleaner transport fuels by slapping heavy and deliberately discriminatory penalties on imports of Canada’s oil sands. Canada was all ready to get to work and trade with Asian countries anyway, but all the better if they can open up the European market, too — and Europe’s newfound skittishness about energy security and eagerness to reduce dependence on Russia has the bloc looking to diversify its supplies.

I mentioned last month that the EU was rethinking its high-minded pooh-poohing of the oil sands, and it looks like Canada may actually get its wish in the form of a major reversal on those forthcoming EU regulations that will instead allow Canada’s oil sands to do steady business there, via the Financial Times:

Canada today exports little crude to Europe, but it has plans to increase those exports if new pipelines are built linking the oil sands to ports, such as TransCanada’s proposed Energy East project to take oil from Alberta to the east coast. …

Chris Davies, a European parliamentarian on the environment committee, said that Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate commissioner, had lost out to stronger voices in the commission with industrial and trade portfolios. “She got beat,” Mr Davies said. …

The latest draft of the EU legislation is a reversal from earlier versions of the plan, which would have required fuel suppliers to disclose the carbon footprint of the original crude oil that was used to make their products, and stay below maximum limits for associated emissions. …

Under the new methodology, companies will only have to make their emission cuts based on EU averages for the “output” fuels – the petrol or diesel – regardless of whether it was originally made from heavy crude or not.

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Tags: Canada, energy, Europe, natural gas, oil, pipeline, Russia

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ActualcoupattemptinVenezuela,oranotherwild

Actual coup attempt in Venezuela, or another wild conspiracy?

posted at 1:21 pm on March 26, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

And I mean that like an actual coup attempt, and not one of those made-up overthrow plots coming from unidentified foreign imperialist aggressors and subversive businessmen about which President Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez before have always raved in times of political turmoil. …Or it could just be that again, too. It’s always easier to explain away your problems to the public when phantom conspirators are attacking you.

Venezuela’s President says his country has arrested three air force generals accused of plotting a coup.

“Last night we captured three generals, who we had been investigating…three generals who were trying to turn the air force against the legitimately constituted government,” President Nicolas Maduro said in remarks broadcast Tuesday on state-run VTV. “They were organizing a coup. This captured group has direct ties with sectors of the opposition, and they said that this week was the decisive week.”

The generals, whom he did not name, will be charged in military court, he said.

Maduro revealed the arrests as he spoke to a commission of South American foreign ministers who are visiting his country as part of efforts to facilitate dialogue as political tensions mount.

It’s tough to discern exactly what’s going on within the ranks of the Venezuelan regime, but I would bet that now probably feels like an opportune moment to upset the order of things; there must be a lot of doubt about Maduro’s leadership capability to keep the Bolivarian revolution running strong, what with all of the desperate flailing he’s been doing with the deteriorating crime and inflation rates plaguing the country and the ongoing protests that have already resulted in at least 36 deaths. Chavez himself was briefly ousted in a coup back in 2002 when the military’s top officers turned against him after days of anti-government protests, and the military is the long-established key to power that any potential coup initiator would need to undermine:

The military is a vital institution of support for Mr. Maduro’s government and formed the backbone of the socialist movement started some 15 years ago by Mr. Chávez, who was a former tank commander.

“If Maduro begins to see members of the military that are starting to budge, starting to question the approach by the political folks in the government then you know they would be in trouble,” said Carl Meacham, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.

Tags: coup, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, oil, protests, socialism, Venezuela

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Mississippi,Louisianagettinginontheshaleboom

Mississippi, Louisiana getting in on the shale boom action

posted at 1:21 pm on February 28, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Texas, California, Oklahoma, and especially North Dakota have been grabbing headlines over the past couple of years as energy companies have been reaping the rewards of the technological innovation that has made it commercially viable to tap into the Eagle Ford and Bakken and other such gigantic shale formations, and they’re not even close to finished with expanding the boundaries of the shale boom yet.

Oil and gas companies have been steadily buying up acres of mineral rights in potential shale hot spots around the country, and it looks like the Tuscaloosa Marine shale is next on the list. It’s estimated to hold a full-on 7 billion barrels of recoverable oil, and as a couple of companies have been threshing out the situation, local economies are already starting to benefit. The Associated Press has a great rundown of the scenario:

Residents living above an oil-rich shale formation that stretches across southwest Mississippi and Louisiana have been waiting on a boom for years. A steady trickle of drilling is already boosting the rural region’s economy, and spending by two oil companies could make 2014 the year that many other locals finally cash in on the oil far beneath their feet. …

Gillsburg and surrounding Amite County lie above a prime section of the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, a geologic formation that stretches in boomerang shape across Louisiana’s midsection and into southern Mississippi. …

For the region’s economy, though, the drilling has already provided a much-needed infusion, even if it’s not an all-out boom yet.

Heavily wooded with only a handful of small towns, Amite County has relied on forestry in recent decades. But Georgia-Pacific LLC closed a plywood mill in Gloster in 2009. Combined with other business closures, Chancery Clerk Ronnie Taylor said Amite County lost as many as 850 jobs. The county’s 4,600 workers had an 8.7 percent unemployment rate in December, higher than Mississippi’s average. Here and there, pastures are reminders of the county’s fading dairy industry.

Bernell McGehee, an accountant in Liberty, said his family leased some forestland south of town to Encana for a $300-an-acre one-time payment. He stands to earn more in royalties if the land produces oil.

“Any debts we’ve had, we’ve pretty much been able to get rid of,” he said.

Read: The recession pretty much economically ravaged the area, and the energy sector is what’s helping to finally bring it back.

The region is still something of a financially risky play, with drillers trying to figure out the precise technological recipe for taking the best advantage of the Tuscaloosa Marine formation’s particular geological makeup, but the amount of oil and gas down there could very well be equal to amount in the Bakken formation that’s pulled North Dakota out of our otherwise meager economic “recovery.”

I would point out again that so much of this boom is happening on private and state lands, and not because of the Obama administration’s economic or regulatory policies, but in spite of them — and indeed, that the administration is actively preventing energy companies from bringing similarly robust economic recovery to areas that the federal government controls.

Tags: drilling, economy, energy, jobs, Louisiana, Mississippi, natural gas, oil, private sector, shale

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VenezuelastartsblockingTwitterusersaswidespreadprotests

Venezuela starts blocking Twitter users as widespread protests continue

posted at 5:01 pm on February 16, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Stuff really started hitting the fan in Venezuela this week, as public discontent with the ongoing crises of basic goods shortages, runaway inflation, and high crime rates has finally come to a head and protests have started popping up all over the country. Even with the “emergency decree powers” President Nicolas Maduro was granted and started wielding late last year, the economic situation in the oil-rich country has only continued to deteriorate, and the fact that armed motorcycle vigilantes showed up and started shooting to try and break up the protest in Caracas on Wednesday so far hasn’t deterred Venezuelans from keeping it up.

Which means things are going to start getting even more Orwellian in short order. Cue the beginning of a social-media crackdown:

Twitter Inc. said the Venezuelan government blocked users’ online images as opposition groups marched through Caracas for a third day, demonstrating against record shortages and the world’s fastest inflation.

Nu Wexler, a Twitter spokesman, confirmed yesterday in an e-mail that the government was behind the disruption. …

In the absence of information from the government or local television outlets, Venezuelans have turned to foreign reporters and social media for news. Twitter users had been posting their photos of demonstrations that started in provincial towns earlier this month, providing an alternative to state-controlled media. It’s unclear if photos were blocked for users of all Internet providers in Venezuela, Wexler said. …

“We are having a media blackout,” Josefina Blanco, a freelance science journalist and social media user, said in an e-mail from Caracas. Only because of Twitter, NTN24 and radio station RCR 750 “ can we know what is really going on in our streets,” she said.

And the leaders of the political opposition movement know their freedom is no longer guaranteed.

A Venezuelan opposition leader wanted by police in connection with deadly street protests told supporters via Twitter to keep demonstrating, but peacefully, and armed police visited his father’s home, apparently seeking to arrest him.

Authorities accuse Leopoldo Lopez of murder and terrorism in connection with violence around four days of sporadic anti-government protests that have left three people dead and both sides blaming each other for the bloodshed.

The demonstrators have vowed to stay in the streets until Maduro resigns, although there is no sign of that happening.

And on Friday, Maduro introduced a “program of peace and tolerance,” during which he denounced the protestors as “fascists.” I’m not sure how just saying that you’re going to bring about peace and tolerance somehow means that peace and tolerance are going to happen (socialism, for the win?), and Venezuelans don’t sound ready to be convinced. Via Juan Nagel at the Daily Beast:

Venezuelans are accustomed to their government using Orwellian language. Indeed, this is a government that claims the scarcity and inflation caused by its own disastrous economic policies is somehow the consequence of an “economic war” engineered by the opposition. It is a government headed by a man who claims his predecessor died of cancer because his enemies—namely, the U.S.—“inoculated” him with the disease. The feeling that lunatics have taken over the insane asylum is what is driving much of the protests. …

The young are restless, and they have had it. They want solutions to their problems, and an end to the mayhem that chavista Venezuela has become. Their strategy is not clear, and so far they are outnumbered and outgunned.

But they are not going anywhere.

Tags: economics, Nicolas Maduro, oil, protests, social media, socialism, Venezuela, violence

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Huh:ThisIraniansanctionsreliefsurelooksa

Huh: This Iranian sanctions relief sure looks a lot more like $20 billion than $7 billion, no?

posted at 6:11 pm on February 14, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

It looks like the Obama administration pretty much got its wish in allaying, at least for now, the large and bipartisan group of senators rallying for legislation that would impose further pending sanctions on Iran in the event that they fail to cooperate with the terms of the interim agreement of late last year. It’s kinda’ tough to tell if that’s happening, seeing as how the official text of that agreement still hasn’t been made public, but a big part of these lawmakers’ concern stemmed from the possibility of the Obama administration opening the floodgates of investment to Iran before they really have to make any major concessions.

A concern that was well founded, evidently. As Adam Kredo at the WFB reports, Iran’s oil exports soared in January to 1.32 million barrels from December’s high of 1.06 million, and Iran is gladly raking it in:

Iranian oil exports have steadily risen since negotiations with the West restored confidence in Tehran’s economy. The increase runs counter to a promise by the Obama administration that “Iran’s oil exports will remain steady at their current level of around 1 million barrels per day.”

The significant rise in oil exports has led some experts to accuse the Obama administration of misleading the public about the amount of sanctions relief provided under the interim nuclear deal.

While the White House said Iran would receive no more than $7 billion in relief, these experts say that the rise in oil exports and other economic spikes will give Iran “well more than $20 billion.”

“These numbers … cast doubt on the accuracy of the administration’s estimates for sanctions relief,” former Ambassador Mark Wallace, CEO of the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, said in a statement. “The $6 or $7 billion estimate does not take into account the tens of billions of dollars Iran will reap from increased oil sales.”

India, China, Japan, and others are eagerly gathering round, and while it seems like the White House is trying to nominally stem some of the flow by threatening to bring the pain on sanctions violators, this is definitely looking like a lot more economic relief and rather fewer concessions than Obama confidently and quellingly assured us he’d bargained for.

Tags: economics, Iran, Middle East, Obama administration, oil, sanctions, Senate

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Righteous:EnergyDepartmentapprovesanothernatural-gasexportterminal

Righteous: Energy Department approves another natural-gas export terminal

posted at 9:01 pm on February 11, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

In terms of truly bright-and-shiny economic news, there hasn’t been a whole lot to get too excited about for what seems like an age now — but the administration’s apparent recognition that they owe a lot of the United States’ recently increased exports (a stated goal of Obama’s economic agenda) to the oil and gas industry might be one of them. The federal government has been sittin’ pretty on more than twenty pending export-terminal applications, but with any luck, they’re finally advancing on unleashing our domestic production boom to the fuller economic benefits of global competition, via Reuters:

The U.S. Energy Department on Tuesday approved exports from Sempra Energy’s Cameron liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Louisiana as the Obama administration moves forward with its goal of expanding the global market for the fuel.

The conditional approval of exports from the terminal to countries with which the United States does not have free trade agreements, such as India and Japan, was the sixth approval by the department since 2011, and the first since mid-November. …

The latest export approval confirms that the review process is becoming “largely depoliticized,” said Leslie Palti-Guzman, a gas analyst for the Eurasia Group. The consulting firm predicted that permitting would “continue unabated through 2014.”

Well, I’d certainly hope so, but I won’t be taking it as a given, either:

But some analysts cautioned that a pause in approvals could still be near as licensed export volumes near the threshold of 12 bcf a day considered in DOE-commissioned studies by the Energy Information Administration and NERA Economic Consulting.

“We think a cautious agency may be unlikely to exceed the upper-bound of the range of studied outcomes,” ClearView Energy Partners said in a research note.

Which would be a damn shame, ’cause there are plenty more where that came from, also with their own job- and wealth-creating (not to mention geopolitical!) inducements. Even as the trade gap widened in December amid falling net exports, petroleum products’ role in the trade mix only continued to grow — which is a great reason to not only approve more natural-gas projects, but to make short work of finally ending the crude-oil export ban, too.

Tags: Department of Energy, energy, exports, jobs, natural gas, Obama administration, oil

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Industrialgroups:Thispaceofnaturalgasexport

Industrial groups: This pace of natural gas export approvals is moving dangerously quickly, or something

posted at 4:41 pm on January 10, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Yes, because the four total permit applications to export natural gas to countries with which we do not already have specialized free-trade agreements that the Obama administration has approved in the five years of their tenure is just much-too-much of a breakneck bureaucratic speed, never mind the almost two dozen other applications still waiting in line. We should probably arbitrarily slow down that pace even further, just to be on the safe side. …So argue the chemical and manufacturing interests that would prefer to keep natural gas prices artificially low even at the expense of job- and wealth-creation for all Americans, anyway:

Some large manufacturers that use natural gas say the department is moving too quickly to approve gas exports, pushing the United States into a “danger zone” that could raise prices and harm the economy. …

Industry groups, meanwhile, say the administration is moving too slowly, with just one of nearly two dozen proposed LNG export terminals given final approval in the past two years. Four other projects have received conditional backing.

“The Department of Energy’s slow-walk of LNG export licenses violates our trade obligations” and could cause the U.S. to lose billions of dollars in the global gas market, said Margo Thorning, director of the Act on LNG campaign, an advocacy group that supports gas exports. …

 Major companies, including Dow Chemical Co., aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. and steelmaker Nucor Corp., are working together as members of America’s Energy Advantage to limit exports. The group argues that the Energy Department has no legal standards for approving exports and is using a flawed study to support its finding that such projects are in the public interest.

Puh-lease. The ostensibly “flawed” study to which these groups are referring is the one the DOE commissioned on the net economic impact that allowing greater free trade would have on the United States — but the only thing “flawed” about it is that it concluded doing so would be a gigantic economic win, much to these industrial interests’ chagrin.

The White House, most fortunately, has at least kept an open mind about allowing for more natural gas exports as well as the possibility of lifting the crude-oil export ban, and they just announced a new executive “Quadrennial Review” to examine and update America’s energy infrastructure that proponents hope the administration will shortly use to start finding reasons to indeed open up the oil and gas industry to the wider economic benefits of the global market (although, the flip side of that is that I’m sure they will also use it to justify their anti-coal and renewables agendas too, so… wash).

Tags: Congress, energy, exports, free trade, natural gas, Obama administration, oil, special interests

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MajorityofsenatorsnowonboardwithIranian

Majority of senators now on board with Iranian sanctions bill

posted at 10:01 pm on January 9, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The White House is not going to be pleased about this.

The “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act” is now supported by at least 54 senators in the 100-member chamber, according to a congressional record, with six senators joining on Wednesday. A Senate aide said two more joined on Thursday, bringing the total to 56.

It is uncertain whether the bill will be introduced in the Senate and whether backers can win the two-thirds majority to overcome a veto by President Barack Obama. A senior Senate Democratic aide said there were no plans yet for advancing the bill to the Senate floor, despite the growing list of co-sponsors. …

The aide said more support could come soon from the bloc of Democrats. “At least two that I know of are inching toward public support for the bill,” the aide said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the talks. …

The bill seeks to cut Iran’s oil exports to zero two years after implementation. It also puts limits on the Obama administration’s ability to waive sanctions.

That still doesn’t bring the total up to the two-thirds majority the Senate would need to overcome the White House’s veto threat, but that brings the tally of Democrats supporting the measure up to at least 16 — despite the White House’s aggressive attempts to persuade the senators to drop the issue and just leave it to their own esteemed foreign-policy machinations. Jennifer Rubin at WaPo points out that the newfound participation of Sen. Michael Bennet, Democrat from Colorado and not normally an outspoken pro-Israel advocate, will put still more pressure on strident Democrats to break with the White House, especially if (let’s face it: when) Iran refuses to let up on their centrifugal intransigence and otherwise thwart the conditions of the interim agreement.

The talks between Iran and world powers resumed on Thursday, and no doubt they will continue to insist that even just the possibility of more sanctions being held over them will threaten their participation in the so-called deal. Their motivations for discouraging more sanctions at-all-costs are readily apparent:

Iranian oil exports hit a high in December, just one month after Western nations inked a nuclear pact with Iran that guaranteed up to $7 billion in economic sanctions relief.

Exports of Iranian crude oil rose from 789,292 barrels per day in November to 1,059,605 per day in December, according to new shipping data provided to the Washington Free Beacon by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). …

Some foreign policy experts worry that the interim nuclear deal reached between Iran and the West has reinvigorated the global markets and created a renewed demand for Tehran’s cheap—and heavily sanctioned—crude oil.

Tags: Democrats, Iran, nuclear, Obama administration, oil, sanctions, Senate

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