Deepwater Drilling Offshore of the US yields oil at $57 per barrel (see note 1) and, according to Forbes, the Break-Even price is $65 per barrel. It makes no sense to drill deepwater wells offshore of the US with WTI crude oil under $35 per barrel And given that the costs to produce a barrel of oil in the Middle East, range from $8.50 in Kuwait to $9.90 in Saudi Arabia, to $12.60 in Iran WE CAN’T COMPETE!
But we shouldn’t bother. We should move to a post fossil fuel economy.
Tweet 
While it ain’t over till it’s over, 2011 is over. A lot that could have happened, didn’t. Obama didn’t resign, Donald Trump didn’t throw his hat into the ring or divorce his current wife and marry one or more Kardashians. Newt Gingrich threw his hat into the ring, but also didn’t divorce his current wife and marry one or more Kardashians. These are the most significant events of 2011.
Eight nuclear power plants from South Carolina to Connecticut were shut down in the aftermath of the earthquake that struck with an epicenter in Virginia August 23, 2011, and Hurricane Irene a few days later (Popular Logistics, here). In the words of Mycle Schneider, describing the World Watch Institute report he authored, “The industry was arguably on life support before Fukushima. When the history of this industry is written, Fukushima is likely to introduce its final chapter,” (click here). However, the three melt-downs at Fukushima, coupled with the melt-down at Chernobyl in 1986 and the partial melt-down at Three Mile Island in 1979, suggest a probability of one melt-down every 14 years.
Via BBC News:
The BBC has conducted an investigation which demonstrated that Iraq purchased bomb detection devices in which the component purported to detect trace amounts of TNT was, in fact, “nothing but the type of anti-theft tag used to prevent stealing in high street stores.” Iraqi Interior ministry still backing ‘bomb detector’
According to the BBC,
Some Iraqi officials are insisting that a controversial bomb detection device works, despite a BBC inquiry in which experts said the item was useless.
Britain has banned exports of the ADE-651 and the director of the company selling them was arrested and bailed.(emphasis supplied)
But the device is still being used at checkpoints all over Baghdad. Continue reading
KBR, through negligence, kills Americans in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, of Pittsburgh, serving in Iraq was killed while taking a shower in his barracks in Baghdad . (Military.com.)
An Army investigation called the electrocution death of a U.S. Soldier in Iraq a “negligent homicide” caused by military contractor KBR Inc. and two of its supervisors
Sgt. Maseth was one of several soldiers killed by electrocution in the shower.
KBR, the firm once owned by Haliburton, the oil services firm once run by Dick Cheney, built the barracks, installed the shower, and apparently connected the electrical wiring to the plumbing, in violation of building codes and common sense and without oversight.
Q: Why is an oil services firm supporting a military operation?
A: Because, according to Alan Greenspan, it’s a war for oil (click here).
Q: Will KBR be held accountable?
A: I certainly hope so.
James Risen reports in the Times of July 18th (Electrical Risks at Iraq Bases Are Worse Than Said) that
Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.
During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007. Electrical problems were the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq, according to an Army survey issued in February 2007. It noted “a safety threat theaterwide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires.”
The New York Times published three articles in one day about fiscal impropriety, abuse of power, or incompetence of the Bush Administration.
On the front page, James Risen writes “Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir.” Charles Smith says he was fired from his job with the Army for refusing to approve paying more than $1 Billion to KBR after “Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion.” Smith, an employee of the Army for 31 years, was quoted in The Times saying “the money going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.” This is another case of firing the whistle-blower. As a patriot, it makes my blood boil.
According to Risen, the Pentagon has recently awarded KBR a 10 year, $150 Billion contract in Iraq, which indicates that we will be in Iraq for another 10 years.
Eric Lichtblau wrote “Grand Jury Said to Look at Attorneys’ Dismissals” that Justice Deptartment Prosecutors are using a grand jury to investigate criminal accusations that grew from the dismissals of nine United States attorneys. Some employees in the civil rights division of the Justice Department have said that they were given a “political litmus test.” The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Bradley Schlozman, acting head of the civil rights division may be the subject of a “grand jury referral” focusing on perjury charges. Schlozman admitted to Congress that he had bragged about his success in politicizing the Justice Department. Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General, may also have committed perjury in his testimony about wireless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.
As a patriot, this too makes my blood boil. The Government of the United States has always been subordinate to The Law, not The Party. This is the United States, not Communist China, Soviet Russia, Baathist Syria, or Saddam’s Iraq.
The Times also carried Judge Backs “White House in Dispute over E-Mail” a story by the Associated Press reporting the decision, by Judge Coleen Kollar-Kotelly, that the White House Office of Administration is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Since its creation, in 1978, the Office of Administration has responded to Freedom of Information requests. The White House has acknowledged problems with it’s e-mail system, while saying that any missing e-mail messages can be found on backup tapes. In a related matter, a judge is considering whether to instruct the Executive Office of the President on steps it must take to safeguard electronic messages. I am not a lawyer, however, I think that Judge Kollar-Kotelly is wrong. If she is making law, as a judicial activist, at least she is doing so legally.
These articles are reproduced below.
The Post World War II G.I. Bill paid 100% of tuition for veterans. Plus other benefits. Now it maxes out at $800 month. As U.S. Senators Jim Webb and Chuck argued in “A Post-Iraq G.I. Bill,”The New York Times, November 8, 2007: “[i]t is hardly enough to allow a veteran to attend man community colleges.
“In terms of providing true opportunity, the World War II G.I. Bill was one of the most important pieces of legislation in our history. It paid college tuition and fees, bought textbooks and provided a monthly stipend for eight million of the 16 million who served. Many of our colleagues in the Senate who before the war could never have dreamed of college found themselves at some of the nation’s finest educational institutions.
Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey went to Columbia on the G.I. bill; John Warner of Virginia to Washington and Lee and the University of Virginia Law School; Daniel Inouye of Hawaii to the University of Hawaii and the George Washington University Law School; and Ted Stevens of Alaska to the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard Law School.
College costs have skyrocketed, and a full G.I. Bill for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan would be expensive. But Congress has recently appropriated $19 billion next year for federal education grants purely on the basis of financial need. A G.I. Bill for those who have given so much to our country, often including repeated combat tours, should be viewed as an obligation.
We must put together the right formula that will demonstrate our respect for those who have stepped forward to serve in these difficult times. First-class service to country deserves first-class appreciation.
Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel, A Post-Iraq G.I. Bill
Wikileaks has a report, “U.S. Military Equipment in Iraq (2007),” based on leaked documents, outlining the array and cost of equipment held by United States forces in Iraq:
[photopress:M33A1_500_x_193_via_Wikileaks.jpg,full,pp_image]
Important points (on our first reading) include: Chemical and biological weapons portable facilities
The United States has been caught with at least 2,386 low-grade chemical weapons deployed in Iraq. The items appear in a spectacular 2,000 page leak of nearly one million items of US military equipment deployed in Iraq given to the government transparency group Wikileaks
. The items are labeled under the military’s own NATO supply classificationChemical weapons and equipment. Continue reading
In mid-2003, the World Health organization reported on cholera in Iraq:
rom 28 April to 4 June 2003, a total of 73 laboratory-confirmed cholera cases have been reported in Iraq : 68 in Basra governorate, 4 in Missan governorate, 1 in Muthana governorate. No deaths have been reported.
From 17 May to 4 June 2003, the daily surveillance system of diarrhoeal disease cases in the four main hospitals of Basra reported a total of 1549 cases of acute watery diarrhea. Among these cases, 25.6 % occurred in patients aged 5 years and above.
From Alissa J. Rubin’s piece in this morning’s Times,Suicide Bomber on Bike Kills 29 Iraqi Policemen
Police training in the provincial capital of Baquba turned into a blood bath on Monday when a suicide bomber on a bicycle set off his explosive vest in the midst of policemen, killing 29, the local police said.
A suicide bomber killed seven people just north of Baghdad, and the United States military said a brigadier general had been wounded by a roadside bomb in northern Baghdad, according to The Associated Press. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Dorko, the highest-ranking American officer to be hurt since the invasion in March 2003, was evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. His wounds were not life-threatening, The A.P. said.
That a brigadier general was hurt may be worth noting for the fact that it took so long to happen in a war without a “front.”
The combination of bicycle and suicide vest, however – I don’t think it’s entirely unprecedented. Butit may well make life in Baghdad even more dangerous for bicyclists, as those in the field become more cautious about bicycles. This in a country where – among all the other dangerous things – people are in harm’s way filling vehicle fuel tanks.
![[photopress:M33A1_500_x_193_via_Wikileaks.jpg,full,pp_image]](http://popularlogistics.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/m33a1.jpg){kind=link}