Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Revi - Mr. R may have had the big stick back in the 1800's. But anytime in the last 50 years the PA legislators could have put a severance tax on future oil/NG any time they chose to. Years ago I wrote to editorial pages in some local PA newspapers explaining in detail how their citizens were getting screwed by the oil companies. Never saw a single one printed.

So I give up. Now it's up to you to get them stirred up. LOL.

Revi - And just so you have some ammo to use in PA: if they had the same severance tax as Texas the state would have received $120 million in just the last 10 years. And if like La: about $350 million. And given the latest surge in PA production they would be getting the value of 320,000 bbls per year (Texas) or 875,000 bbls per year (La).

Wow! I was amazed at how quickly Pennsylvania went for the whole fracking thing. There were old wells back in the woods when I used to live near there that would pump a few barrels a month into a wooden tank. They were still running since the early 1900's and late 1800's. I knew people who had farms with free natural gas. The old wells would still provide them with enough to heat their houses and barns. Then they brought in these big thumper trucks that were seismically testing for oil and gas, and the fracking boom began. Funny how PA never made much on the first oil boom, and they missed out on the second one also. Do you think there will be a third? The places with oil and gas are still some of the poorest in the state.

http://www.marcellus-shale.us/seismic_testing.htm

Revi - "Do you think there will be a third?" Based upon a big increase in oil prices perhaps. Based upon new trends or tech: very unlikely IMHO. PA has a somewhat unique problem: tens of thousands of very old wells that were not plugged properly. And most with unrecorded locations. So an unknown risk by pressuring up on new wells near those old ones. Just one more reason for the state to tap the oil patch for some $'s

Curious: have you wondered why an oil patch hand has been a whistle blower over PA severance taxes?

Leveling the playing field a little?

z - "Leveling the playing field a little?" Exactly! LOL. Some folks here still thinks the oil patch is one big happy band of brothers. That we all support the efforts of each other. Such a childish inability to understand even the basic nature of competition.

For instance conventional oil/NG explorers, like the Rockman's company, would have been very happy had frac'ng been banned in the entire country. It would have allowed them to sell their production at higher prices. The NG boom in the Marcellus completely shut down the Rockman's S La drilling program. And shutting down all the segments of the Keystone pipeline system would have been great.

It really is that simple.

The film will be shown next on Weds. Nov. 16th at 6:30 in Diamond 153 at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. It's going to be uuuuuuge!

Still under 2000 hits. It's a very well made, watchable film, but I think the concept of peak oil fell off of most people's radar screen. It's on youtube now, so just type in Peak Oil: A Love Story. I'll try to link it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5efV-w8Ejk

Revi wrote:Still under 2000 hits. It's a very well made, watchable film, but I think the concept of peak oil fell off of most people's radar screen. It's on youtube now, so just type in Peak Oil: A Love Story. I'll try to link it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5efV-w8Ejk

Fell off most people's radar is one way of putting it. Another would be "OMG WE LOOK LIKE HAROLD CAMPING!!!" and folks decided to glom onto climate change instead. But I watched it Iver. Even gave a blow by blow review right here on peakoi.com. I liked your mom in it, standing up for the steadfast nature of her boy.

Thanks for your review Adam B! I am thinking of going on a "Told Ya So" tour of local places. What do you think?

Revi wrote:Thanks for your review Adam B! I am thinking of going on a "Told Ya So" tour of local places. What do you think?

Do it!! Just roll back any implications of falling for peak oils 2002,2005,2006, or 2008 and it'll come out a little more credible. No one will have heard from the amateur hour folks claiming the 2015 one, so you can skip that one, and just move right to pretending 2018 is the Rapture. Without..well...the rapture itself occuring if course, but you can gloss that over. Lead with mom, she was great.

Thanks. I think this time it's for real. It would have been nice if anything at all was done back in the early 2000s. It seems like the only thing that has slowed fossil fuel use was covid. Now it's back to full speed ahead.

Revi wrote:Thanks. I think this time it's for real.

Oh Revi, of COURSE you do. Your unshakeable faith in church teachings has never been questioned in any place I've bumped into you.

Revi wrote:
It would have been nice if anything at all was done back in the early 2000s.

It was. Look at what you did, building your own EV. I'm lazy, I waited until the 2008 peak oil caused car manufacturers to build me a peak oil solution, but you Revi are OG when it comes to this stuff. Plenty was done by some, even more by folks like you. Creating movies, get mom and other family involved, pitching it to the local churches and neighbors, I mean those known for just blogging like Gail and some of the TOD retreads are lillyputian compared to you.

Revi wrote: It seems like the only thing that has slowed fossil fuel use was covid. Now it's back to full speed ahead.

Oh, the 2008 recession slowed crude oil growth. The global peak oil in 1979 lasted for what, 15 years before we began using and producing that much again? I think the world needs a good blood letting in the energy industry, zap the consumers hard, get more folks into EVs, solar panels for everyone, build some nukes, keep producing more natural gas than anyone else on the planet and exporting it willy nilly. Supply and demand will balance at some price or another, and folks will make their micro economic transportation decisions, and most likely when all is said and done, more people will be like you and me than those neanderthals burning a valuable chemical feedstock for nothing more than to take johnny to little league practice.

This fourth wave of covid made me reconsider plans to show the film to a bunch of people in a room. Especially since we have one of the lowest vaccination rates in New England in our county. I guess I'll just hang on to my DVD's. It's becoming obvious that we need to do something anyway. The point of the film was to get people aware of alternatives to the lifestyle that we are living. I know that my tiny voice can't influence many people, and that it's kind of a quaint notion that anything can be done about the problems facing us. I guess I thought that I had to try something.

Revi wrote: I guess I thought that I had to try something.

I imagine most of us think something similar. I downsized and resized and went electric early, more than a decade ago now. Haven't regretted it for an instant, and have profited admirably for having changed my discretionary spending away from liquid fuels, and natural gas, and coal.

Keep trying Revi. I sure have no intention of stopping in a world of increasing prices, every additional dollar saved is a dollar earned.

Supply and demand will balance at some price or another

Not necessarily. This is above my knowledge of finance, but somebody that gave a talk in the Financial Times summer festival a few years ago (I went there for free after being a regular commenter in the Financial Times Alpha blog and asking nicely if they had some last-minute tickets to go free if the festival wasn't sold out) claimed that major central banks, especially the Fed and the European central bank, are targeting their policy to keep oil prices stable. As I say, I really don't understand these things enough to even tell if this guy could be right, but I assume that the Financial Times don't let somebody give a talk in their festival if the guy hasn't proven that he knows what he's talking about by their standards. And if that's the case, then we won't see oil prices balancing in any free-market way, just moving along controlled lines.

Doly wrote:

Supply and demand will balance at some price or another

Not necessarily. This is above my knowledge of finance, but somebody that gave a talk in the Financial Times summer festival a few years ago (I went there for free after being a regular commenter in the Financial Times Alpha blog and asking nicely if they had some last-minute tickets to go free if the festival wasn't sold out) claimed that major central banks, especially the Fed and the European central bank, are targeting their policy to keep oil prices stable. As I say, I really don't understand these things enough to even tell if this guy could be right, but I assume that the Financial Times don't let somebody give a talk in their festival if the guy hasn't proven that he knows what he's talking about by their standards. And if that's the case, then we won't see oil prices balancing in any free-market way, just moving along controlled lines.

Supply and demand will balance...you are just describing some exogenous force (like taxes) that cause it to balance at a different level than it would naturally. This isn't a finance concept as much as it is just one of the basic concepts of this particular social science...so take it for what it is worth. You can also cause a rebalancing of supply/demand/price by some force hitting just the marginal barrel alone, say, US light tight oil production. Make that more expensive, and (lacking cartel effects), and it can take the rest of the world with it. Canadian tar sands might fall into that category as well.

I've found, when building models that include basic precepts from any of the sciences involved, you can get far further in model durability and output credibility if you stick more with the basics of each specialty involved, rather than delving too deeply into one or the other.

Doly wrote:

Supply and demand will balance at some price or another

Not necessarily. This is above my knowledge of finance, but somebody that gave a talk in the Financial Times summer festival a few years ago (I went there for free after being a regular commenter in the Financial Times Alpha blog and asking nicely if they had some last-minute tickets to go free if the festival wasn't sold out) claimed that major central banks, especially the Fed and the European central bank, are targeting their policy to keep oil prices stable. As I say, I really don't understand these things enough to even tell if this guy could be right, but I assume that the Financial Times don't let somebody give a talk in their festival if the guy hasn't proven that he knows what he's talking about by their standards. And if that's the case, then we won't see oil prices balancing in any free-market way, just moving along controlled lines.

It made me think that the financial markets may be just a way to dole out resources. They can't cope with shortfalls. That could be the end of the whole game. Like the Roman empire used the dole to keep people fed. Bread and Circus until it all falls apart.

Revi wrote:It made me think that the financial markets may be just a way to dole out resources. They can't cope with shortfalls. That could be the end of the whole game. Like the Roman empire used the dole to keep people fed. Bread and Circus until it all falls apart.

America has been using the dole to keep people fed for half a century now. You figure maybe we've got another half century or more before many notice?

AdamB wrote:

Revi wrote: I guess I thought that I had to try something.

I imagine most of us think something similar. I downsized and resized and went electric early, more than a decade ago now. Haven't regretted it for an instant, and have profited admirably for having changed my discretionary spending away from liquid fuels, and natural gas, and coal.

Keep trying Revi. I sure have no intention of stopping in a world of increasing prices, every additional dollar saved is a dollar earned.

Actually every dollar saved becomes worth less next year, and does not "earn" anything.

Peace