Bishop Hill Delingpole on shale
Aug 17, 2013 Energy: gas Royal Society James Delingpole has a perceptive piece on shale gas and the parallels with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged:
One of the things she foresaw was the current nonsensical, dishonest, canting campaign against shale gas. In Atlas Shrugged it takes the form of Rearden Metal, the miracle technology which is going to transform the US economy if only the progressives will let it. But of course, Rand’s fictional progressives don’t want Reardon Metal to succeed any more than their modern, real-life equivalents want shale gas to succeed. Why not? For the same rag-bag of made-up, disingenuous reasons which progressives have used to justify their war on progress since time immemorial: it’s unfair, it uses up scarce resources, it might be dangerous. Rand doesn’t actually use the phrase “the precautionary principle.” But this is exactly what she is describing in the book when various vested interests – the corporatists in bed with big government, the politicised junk-scientists at the Institute of Science (aka, in our world, the National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society), the unions – try to close down the nascent technology using the flimsiest of excuses.
Although it has been pointed out that the Royal Society have been broadly supportive of shale developments, the parallels that James points out are rather striking.
Reader Comments (99)
Katisha
My enlarged redesign of Al Gore's experiment (details now sadly removed by the Bishop Hill moderator)worked repeatedly under school laboratory conditions.
My own calculations of energy flow in terrestrial environments agree with the climate scientists, rather than the sceptics.
As a retired science teacher I am not in a position to collect satellite data, visit the Arctic or otherwise crosscheck everything for myself. What I have been able to independantly check confirms AGW.
I'm always willing to do more. You mention "the experimental data that increasingly contradicts them".
Links please, to proper scientific reports, not spin-sceptic propoganda. And please, none of the simplistic tropes like" no warming for fifteen years".
EM, if UK shale is so useless and unlikely to generate productive wells, why not let the privately-financed evil oil drillers the opportunity to waste their ill-gotten gains on it. If it was not going to work (and I have no idea, and nor do you) what harm would it do? A few dry holes and they'll give up, no need for protest groups or anything.
How's that ocean deep warming doing? Still using it? Not tripped up by the fallacy of the argument yet? That is, if we don't know how it gets there or when it is coming back, it is no use worrying about it? Or maybe we are back to using surface air temps? Or just shifting the goalposts in your constant search for a good old argument.
Entropic man says:
The Bowland Shale and other UK deposits are deeper and much less uniform, with productive volumes scattered among unproductive volumes.. Whoever develops the plays will have to drill longer wells and hit fracking "sweet spots". Both come down to the bottom line of "more expensive".
Not necessarily. In the thick Bowland shale vertical drilling may well be enough to get a reasonable gas yield. It is the precise directional drilling in the thin produictive layers that is the main cost driver in the american shale fields. Directional drilling is still more an art than a science, at least according to a friend of mine who makes a (very good) living out of it.
Entropic Man:
"The best of the US wells are in the Barnett and Marcellus shales. The rock is relatively shallow and in uniform layers. It is easy to place multiple wells into productive rock.
The Bowland Shale and other UK deposits are deeper and much less uniform, with productive volumes scattered among unproductive volumes.. Whoever develops the plays will have to drill longer wells and hit fracking "sweet spots". Both come down to the bottom line of "more expensive"."
As tty says above, you are misinformed. UK shales are very thick, every well will drill through good intervals. No need for horizontal wells, just general deviation from a single pad. Much simpler and cheaper to drill. Gas productivity is generally going to be proportional to frac length and exposure of well to cross section. Lots of cross section without complex drilling when the shales are really thick like the Bowland.
Entropic Man - The office you guys send your posts from is it promoting windfarms or is it promoting solar PV ?
- not got many customer enquiries to deal with these days ?
@Vangel 11:35pm
The stock prices of internet companies and hardware markets exploded in the late 1990s as they created jobs and made many people rich. But capital was destroyed as balance sheets had to be written down. Eventually, most of the players went bankrupt or were taken out at pennies on the dollar.
Yea, Right. GOOG, YHOO, AAPL, QCOM, CSCO are all figments of our imagination. IBM, Microsoft, HP all were the major players. /sarc. It is a fallacy. There will be losers. They will be losers because others will be winners. XOM, CVX, Shell, BP missed the boat because Wall Street MBA told them to monitize their US onshore assets 20 years ago. Oops! Now they have to buy in as minority players.
Here is a comparative stock price performance chart for 2007-2013 of
CRL (Continential Resources), RRC (Range Resources), PXD (Pioneer Nat Res) with GOOG, IBM, XOM, $INDU)
http://i39.tinypic.com/11mf6o9.jpg
Nobody is claiming that you can't get a very good return in the core areas.
And how do you find profitable core areas without first exploring and testing in non-core areas? So, you admit that good return is possible. You are simply mistaken in belief that such core areas are small. They are many times bigger than the North Slope ever was.
The trouble is that the average shale well is not productive,
WRONG!!! Probability of success in shale wells now exceeds 95%. (Pioneer 2012 Edgar: 898 Gross wells, of which 16 were dry
(Permian: 664 successes in 673 wells)
(Barnett : 57 of 57 wells, 53 classified as exploratory)
(Eagleford: 137 of 137 wells, all classified as exploratory)
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=9081675-169320-235222&type=sect&dcn=0001038357-13-000009
not that a company can't find a few good locations that will turn out to be profitable.
Companies have more good locations than they can drill before leases expire.
If you bother to remove the non-core areas from the projections shale oil and gas will be profitable but won't move the needle.
A self-fulfilling prophecy. You remove the profitable core businesses from any company or industry, little is left.
That is why the 'learning curve' argument fails.
You don't know what you are talking about. The Learning Curve is essential.
Every shale play is different from others. There is a technical learning curve on the geology, the drilling technique, the completion plan, and the human operations. Range showed their "weekly" operational stats for late 2012 to early 2013 where they shut down operations from mid November to January (weather, production, and budget constraints). Once they restarted in January, it was evident that that six week break was enough to raise average costs of wells by 20%. It took 4 weeks to get back to pre-break operational efficiency and metrics.
And given the fact that the shale sector has been writing off assets
Who, what, when, where, how much? I write facts and numbers. You write fluff.
You know what? There are some companies that have screwed the pooch, like Chesapeake. They didn't do the learning fast enough. It didn't help that Chesapeake's CEO treated the company like a personal piggy bank. Other companies over acquired land that couldn't be drilled before the terms expired. Other land was purchased on spec for new plays. But there are several million acres under lease, jealously guarded.
you might consider citing more current material rather than old promotion papers.
Maybe you miss the part where the facts I wrote about were from peer reviewed papers from the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference, Aug 12-14, 2013, less than a week ago, sponsored jointly by the professional organizations of AAPG, SPE, and SEG attended by over 3000. You cannot get more current than that. You are the one believing out-of-date information.
Range has seen a relatively flat cash flow from operations over the past three years while borrowing and capital investment has about doubled.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=RRC&annual
Range Resources 2010, 2011, 2012 (time left to right)
Net Gas Production BCF 106, 145, 216
Avg Gas Price $/mcf: 4.54, 4.21, 2.83
Gross Profit $MM, 664, 942, 1038
Net Oper Profit $MM, 107, 180, 114
Interest Expenses $MM, 91, 125, 169
Net Income $MM (240), 58, 13
Yes, Interest expenses are killing their bottom line.
But look at the average selling price: $4.54 /mcf in 2010 dropping to $2.83 /mcf. This is a 38% drop in two years and 67% drop since 2008. They have saturated the market. However, this should be welcome by anyone who is a consumer of natural gas.
In the thick Bowland shale vertical drilling may well be enough to get a reasonable gas yield. It is the precise directional drilling in the thin produictive layers that is the main cost driver in the american shale fields.
Practice make perfect. The Barnett shale is "two miles down, two mile out, 20 days." The make over 1000 ft per day of horizontal well.
I don't know the Bowland. But 10,000 feet of perforated well bore in a shale gas or shale oil rock is better than 1000 feet of vertical well. There is another aspect to horizontal drilling. You can use 'Stacked Laterals" to drill many parallel 10,000 foot lateral wells, separated by 200 to 500 feet in depth and 400-1000 feet horizontally. From one well pad, you could drill 50 such wells, 10 horizontally, and 5 deep. Half a million feet of fracked well bore from one surface drilling pad.
Think of the regulatory and operational simplification of minimizing the surface impact by getting so many wells from such a small surface impact.
Stephen Rasey: The Bowland Shale is up to 5,000 m thick and is likely to be mature below about 3,000 m. Because of the great thickness there is huge flexibility on well design, so horizontal drilling may not be critical, instead multiple sidetracks might be preferred. What you say is true, but for the Bowland it could be even easier.
I have debunked Vangel's arguments 3 or 4 times now but he is not interested. I get no response to my debunking, he just comes back and repeats the same message over and over again. IMHO it is time to regard Vangel as a troll, he is not interested in facts or discussion.
EM & Vangal,
Possibly a little OT and I came in late so didn't read all your posts, but you always seem to jump in about how bad the economics of shale gas is. I (with a couple of others in my family) own the mineral rights to a few acres in New York (think Marcellus) where they won't even let the gas companies drill. A couple years ago, they still renewed our leases at a decent fee (I'm still working, not retired, so no big oil money here). I'd like your take on why the gas companies are buying leases in areas that they can't even develop yet if the economics are so bad.
Aug 18, 2013 at 11:38 PM | Registered CommenterDung
IMHO it is time to regard Vangel as a troll, he is not interested in facts or discussion.
Posted before I saw this. I agree, and tired of hearing over and over again the tired refrain of how uneconomical it is. If they can't make money, they wouldn't be doing the exploration and development (and New York s**ks).
As a retired science teacher I am not in a position to collect satellite data, visit the Arctic or otherwise crosscheck everything for myself. What I have been able to independantly check confirms AGW.
What would confirm AGW again? The sea ice cover has not changed much over the satellite era. There has been no statistically significant warming for an 18 year period even as CO2 emissions have exploded. The polar bear populations are doing very well. The world's glaciers are in no danger of melting any time over the next century or millennia. All of the available evidence seems to point to natural factors driving temperature change, not human emissions of CO2. In fact, the ice core data shows that the changes in temperature come first and that CO2 levels follow. The actual temperature measurements show no major warming since the 1930s. All of the reported warming comes from the 'adjustments' made to the data and to changes in station siting. Since you are retired I suggest that you try to take time and get more informed.
Vangel, its called a story and its read for the purpose of entertainment.
It promotes central planning and the rule of secret elites. That is hardly entertaining to those that are fed up with that kind of crap. There is no evidence that you can have a group of men work in secret to run and plan society. Yet that is what Mr. Asimov would have his readers believe possible. And it is that kind of thinking that is responsible for the lack of liberty and justifies the type of interventionism that has been a cancer on working people, savers, and investors.
Yea, Right. GOOG, YHOO, AAPL, QCOM, CSCO are all figments of our imagination. IBM, Microsoft, HP all were the major players. /sarc. It is a fallacy. There will be losers. They will be losers because others will be winners. XOM, CVX, Shell, BP missed the boat because Wall Street MBA told them to monitize their US onshore assets 20 years ago. Oops! Now they have to buy in as minority players.
You can't hide the fact that the tech bubble destroyed a great deal of capital and wiped out many of the investors in the sector. GOOG was not even a public company until AFTER the tech bubble burst. Like APPL, it saw a huge increase in its share value long after the tech bubble collapse. In fact, AAPL would not have even survived without the help of MSFT. As for MSFT, HP, YHOO, QCOM, and CSCO, they are selling at a lower nominal price than it was in 1999. In some of the cases you are looking at a real price that is down by more than 80% from the peak during the tech bubble. And let us note that these are the survivors. Most of the really hot names during the tech bubble are now gone and their investors wound up losing almost 100% of the value of the shares at the peak. The one company that did really well, IBM even through the short therm aftermath of the tech bubble, IBM, had already transformed itself into a consulting and services company and was very different than it had been even a decade prior to the bubble.
Here is a comparative stock price performance chart for 2007-2013 of
CRL (Continential Resources), RRC (Range Resources), PXD (Pioneer Nat Res) with GOOG, IBM, XOM, $INDU)
I do not claim that companies can't see their shares go up during a bubble. We have seen that time after time. What I do claim is that the evidence shows that these companies have funding gaps that need to be closed by continued borrowing and that they are not fully depreciating the cost of their wells. In the case of Continental, Christopher Joye had a nice bit of analysis that showed that the company was depreciating around a quarter to a third of the cost within three years even though the production data was showing that half the oil had already been extracted. That was the same thing that Nortel and Luscent were doing during the tech bubbles. Those of us who saw it reported in the regulatory filings argued that sooner or later the game would end only to have the other side point to rising share prices as if that would be a sufficient argument against the analysis. In the end the shares were valued by the markets a great deal lower than even our analysis was showing as nobody was willing to purchase falling knives. So instead of going from $120 to $0.75 as my analysis was showing as fair value one could have picked up the shares for around $0.10 after the crash. I suspect that the same will happen to the shale players.
And how do you find profitable core areas without first exploring and testing in non-core areas? So, you admit that good return is possible. You are simply mistaken in belief that such core areas are small. They are many times bigger than the North Slope ever was.
The companies are very good at what they do. I would say that more than 80% of the wells drilled are in the core areas. The trouble is that even these locations cannot produce positive cash flows because shale is not economic; the EURs are overstated and the real ultimate returns are insufficient to pay for all of the costs incurred when developing fields. You may not like it but that is what the filings are indicating.
WRONG!!! Probability of success in shale wells now exceeds 95%. (Pioneer 2012 Edgar: 898 Gross wells, of which 16 were dry
That is not the problem. The problem is that you may need 200K barrels to have an economic well and are only going to get 90K barrels out of that well. As I have said many times, the EURs are overstated and the funding gaps are not going away.
A self-fulfilling prophecy. You remove the profitable core businesses from any company or industry, little is left.
Agreed. The problem is that the locations where shale is profitable are limited and will not move the needle. Such oil and gas locations are not very important in the general scheme because they will only provide a tiny amount and are not a solution. Think of the idiocy of wind farms. While a few wind turbines in select areas may make economic sense the aggregate makes no economic sense whatsoever.
John Whitman -
I don't think Rand ever had anything you could call a philosphical idea in the usual sense. As to the novels, they really are at the level of L Ron Hubbard. Maybe worse.
The ideology as expressed in Atlas Shrugged caused Whittaker Chambers, no angel he, to remark that she was authoritarian. His review is penetrating and well worth reading.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback
Her approach was basically fascist in the general sense. The world consists of authoritarian heroes and heroines. What they wish to do is reasonable, and to oppose it is to be opposed to reason. There are ironic echoes of 'being against science' here.
The world of Atlas Shrugged is one in which 'the looters', which is to say anyone who opposes the Nietschean heroes and heroines, are evil, and in the end any sort of action against them will be justified. The heroes are beautiful vigorous physical specimens who never feel doubt or hesitation. They are truly innately superior beings who should in no way be hampered or obstructed by mere 'looters' who are probably genetically inferior to them.
As Chambers hints, this is drifting imperceptibly into a veiled exterminationist fantasy.
If you admire Rand as novelist, you do not know how to read. Get Middlemarch and Anna Karenina and read them slowly and carefully. Before embarking on this read The Secret Sharer several times. When you understand how the first paragraph of this works, read Pride and Prejudice, and think about the implications of the opening paragraph.
If you admire her as political theorist, read Robert Conquest's history of the Great Terror. Because that or the Third Reich is where she is coming from.
Admiring invocation of Rand by climate sceptics is only going to persuade everyone they are a bunch of nutters. And rightly so, were it to be general, which fortunately it is not.
Incidentally, in her personal life she was every inch the sexually predatory cult leader. Read about the Brandon affair. But then, someone so superior that to dissent from her was to be an enemy of reason itself was surely both irresistible and entitled.
Michel
The whole point of the GWPF is to make sceptics looked like nutters. That is why it exists. That is why it is funded.
Montford promoting Ayn Rand is like Nigel Farage blogging the speeches of Enoch Powell or the Archbishop of Canterbury channelling Aleister Crowley or Dennis Wheatley.
Next week. Abu Hamza's surprisingly low estimate of climate sensitivity, why CO2 is actually beneficial for global terrorism and a moving account of his long term friendship with Christopher Monckton..
That is not the problem. The problem is that you may need 200K barrels to have an economic well and are only going to get 90K barrels out of that well.
Where did you get that idea? That's absurdly low.
Notes from Panel: "Making it Happen in the Field"
Dennis Degner, Dir. Operations, Sourth Marcellus Shale Div., Range Resources
"Marcellus wells contine to improve and impress. 10 BCF/well."
That is 1700 MBOE / well, almost 20 times your estimate of 90 MBOE
another paper:
Economic Feasibility Analysis of the Marcellus shale, PA
Williams Fleckenstein, Dept Head Colorado School of Mines.
A study on economics if changes in Royalty, Severance Tax, or treatment of Intangible Drilling Cost.
The study used a 800 MBOE as the reserves per well.
A comment from the floor at the end of the paper indicated that that estimate is the low side of reserves for the Marcellus.
Getting reserve per well numbers in technical papers is usually hard to get approval. But some of them had them in the text, others had some data in charts.
URTeC 1526628, Evaluation of Unconventional Resources Using a Petroleum System Modeling Approach, Bryant et. al.
Has a table in it with Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR) per well of estimates ( BCF) of 1.2, 2, and 3.5 (low, mid, high) and Condensate 25 to 40 STB / MMCF. So for 2 BCF/well, you would also get 50 to 80 MBC.
URTeC 1558757, Impact of Completion Design on Unconventional Horizontal Well Performance
R. Yalavarthi, et al.
Fig. 7, shows Cumulative Gas (Bscf) (from 0 to 8) vs time in days (from 0 to 8000) With two sets of curves, one at 500 nD permiability (0.5 microDarcy), and 10 nD. The 500 nD curve shows about 2.5 Bscf at 1000 days, 5 Bscf at 4000 days.and 6.6 Bscf at 7000 days.
the 10 nd curve was at 1 Bscf 1000 days, 2 Bscf at 4000 days, 2.4 Bscf at 7000 days.
URTeC 1561817 Reservoir Characterization of Eagle Ford Shale through Lithofacies Analysis for Identification of Sweet Spot and Best Landing Point
Sahoo* et. al
Figure 7b: scatter chart of 180 day Cum production per 1000 ft lateral MMscf, vs thickness of the productive facies. At 100 ft thickness, they estimate 120 to 240 MMscf per 1000 ft lateral. Given a 10000 ft lateral, that woule be 1.2 to 2.4 BCF in the first 180 days.
URTeC 1562913 New Reserves in an Old Field, the Niobrara Resource Play in the Wattenberg Field, Denver Basin, Colorado
Sonnenberg (Colo School of Mines)
"Recent horizontal completions have initial production of approximately 100 to 700 BOPD with a GOR of 500 to 10,000 cu ft per barrel. Estimated ultimate recovery per well is greater than 300,000 BOE."
"Resource estimates for recoverable reserves from the Niobrara appear to be 2 to 4 billion barrels equivalent of oil (Noble and Anadarko estimates)."
The well orientation enables up to 18 laterals to be drilled in a section (laterals generally alternate between Niobrara chalk zones and the Codell Sandstone). "The wells are fracture stimulated with up to 20 fracture stages. Production information is tight but is reported to be 300 to 700 barrels oil equivalent for the wells. Estimated ultimate recoveries range from 300,000 to 600,000 barrels oil equivalent:
URTeC 1563066 Integration of Natural and Hydraulic Fracture Network Modeling with Reservoir Simulation for an Eagle Ford Well
Offenberger
Fig 11: Oil, gas, water and total fluid history matches for Well #1 through February, 2013.
It shows a hyperbolic decline curve, shut-ins, and a cumulative curve. Well went on production in April 2011, passed 50 MBOE in July, 100 MBOE before Oct. 2011, and about 180 MBOE by Feb. 2013.
URTeC 1563140 An Improved Method to Obtain Reliable Production and EUR Prediction for Wells with Short Production History in Tight/Shale Reservoirs
Shaoyong YU*,
Fig 9: A Cadomin Hz Well and Its Production History in British Columbia
Reaches 1.1 BCF cumulative in 2500 days. final EUR being 1,261 MMscf
That's enough for now.
Delingpole is a comedy writer who is trying to position himself as the British Ann Coulter.
God created Ann Coulter to prove that there is nothing too evil, too venal, too cruel, too moronic, too comically fiendish or dastardly that the demented legions of right wing crazies won't descend upon like a plague of locusts and devour to the last morsel.
eSmiff, I find myself in the odd position of thinking Rand beneath contempt, and also thinking that Montford's work on the hockey stick is an outstanding expose of scientific misconduct and wishful thinking masquerading as science. The section on PCA and its use and misuse is the clearest lay exposition one will find anywhere.
I am a proper AGW sceptic, rather uneasy about some of the ideas of my fellow travellers, in rather the same way in which Briffa may perhaps be alarmed by the state of mind of some of his own more ultra fellow travellers. The evidence for catastrophic AGW seems to me so bad that scepticism is justified on its merits and cannot not gain from any background support from the half baked Rand.
michel
I totally agree on the science, but there is a major disconnect on the Ayn Rand front, isn't there ?
Montford is lending it credibility by discussing climate sensitivity.
The great debate of global warming was carried out between Nobel prize winner and president of the Royal Society, Paul Nurse and right wing crazy comedy writer James Delingpole, a man who makes Rush Limbaugh look like Mother Theresa and who has more personal issues than Stephen Fry, Morrissey and the Village People combined..
This is an orchestrated farce for children. I really do wonder where the so called science experts of the GWPF got their expertise in global warming science.
Vangel
Deal with this or I will do my very best to get you banned.
The only problem faced by the USA over shale gas is that they got too much of it too quickly and the economy could not adjust fast enough, that includes the fact that they still do not have the facilities to export it. All the available storage facilities are bursting at the seams.
However since the size of the shale bonanza became apparent, gas power stations have been replacing coal. energy intensive industries like the chemical industries are repatriating from China to the US but all of this takes time. Most important of all the rest of the world is crying out for gas and the USA is building the LNG terminals that will allow it to take advantage (I believe 2015 is when the first one comes on stream).
The above "facts" are the reasons that companies in the shale gas industries are desperate to stay in the game and be there when the good times arrive.
@michel, 7:14 am.
I don't think Rand ever had anything you could call a philosphical idea in the usual sense.
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Ayn Rand, 1979, revised ed. 1990.
Developed a series of essays in 1967.
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, Ayn Rand, (1964) Essay collection.
AYN RAND here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds that man's life -- the life proper to a rational being -- as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man's nature, with the creative requirements of his survival, and with a free society. (From a Signet paperback printing.)
michel, you might not be able to agree with Rand's Objectivist philosophy. That's your right. But for you to say that Rand didn't have "anything you could call a philosphical idea", says boat loads about YOU.
Ok, you use the weasel word clause, "in the usual sense." It doesn't agree with the usual philosphy you might agree with. Rand had unusual ideas. She didn't write the claptrap you got from the mainstream nihilists.
If Rand wrote nonsense, she'd be ignored.
Instead, by some she is hated. She has been hated for decades for she exposed Colllectivists for who they are.
Stephen Racey, thinking scientist
Thank you. I'm finding it difficult to get detailed technical information.
Phil R
It's partly a matter of confidence. If the shale gas companies show confidence the money keeps rolling in. Lose that confidence and it all falls apart. If they give up their leases, their investors will realise the bubble has burst and the money flow will stop.
Just in time for the IPCC, report (already previewed in the NYT) . Britain's leading global warming comedian reveals his love for Ayn Rand and young boys. The cheque is in the post, James.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/10228938/Male-writers-on-their-romantic-regrets.html
I was 19 at the time, just out of school, still a virgin and, I suppose, mildly uncertain about my sexuality. It happened at a border crossing between Sudan and the Central African Republic.
Waiting interminably with my fellow overlanders to have our passports stamped by the inevitable corrupt customs officers, I spied across the other side of the grass hut one of the most exquisite creatures I have ever seen. Our eyes met and I was smitten.
I thought it was a girl at first, though I couldn’t be totally sure.
She – or was it a he? – was travelling with a man old enough to be its father. God knows what their relationship was but they weren’t family. We got chatting. They were Belgian and I was the only one in our group who spoke reasonably fluent French.
Discovering that the pretty thing was male, I felt surprised and mildly guilty to realise that it didn’t stop me fancying him.
It was pure, romantic, all-consuming. As day turned to night (clearly, our border bribe hadn’t been enough), I began fantasising about our escape. My ephebe and I would run off and end up God knew where but it wouldn’t matter – the point was we would be together forever.
Game over folks.
An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue at a runaway pace.
The scientists, whose findings are reported in a draft summary of the next big United Nations climate report, largely dismiss a recent slowdown in the pace of warming, which is often cited by climate change doubters, attributing it most likely to short-term factors.
The report emphasizes that the basic facts about future climate change are more established than ever, justifying the rise in global concern. It also reiterates that the consequences of escalating emissions are likely to be profound.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/science/earth/extremely-likely-that-human-activity-is-driving-climate-change-panel-finds.html?comments#permid=245
If you admire her as political theorist, read Robert Conquest's history of the Great Terror. Because that or the Third Reich is where she is coming from.
I think that most Rand haters go way too far. Hers was a philosophy of individual responsibility and freedom and in a world devoted to socialism hers was a much needed voice. (And no, she was not exactly what one would call a National Socialist.) While I have little time for Objectivism and prefer Rothbard to Rand it is hard to attack her too hard given her heroic stand against the type of totalitarianism you mistakenly think that she promoted.
eSmiff,
And the Bums' Rush continues.
It is IPCC's Kamakazi attack. There won't be an AR6. Spend what credibility remains, now. So win the war on this wave.
Stephen Rasey
'It is IPCC's Kamakazi attack'
LOL ! I think you could well be right. I hope so. For now, they have won the battle of the sensitivity.
Where did you get that idea? That's absurdly low.
Yet that is what the production data is indicating and the SEC filings are showing. Had the EURs been what you expect them to be many of the players in the industry would be self financing by now.
Notes from Panel: "Making it Happen in the Field"
Dennis Degner, Dir. Operations, Sourth Marcellus Shale Div., Range Resources
"Marcellus wells contine to improve and impress. 10 BCF/well."
That is 1700 MBOE / well, almost 20 times your estimate of 90 MBOE
Range has been around for a long time and is not a new company in the shale space. If you bothered to look at its filings you will find that it has been cash flow negative and needed to borrow almost a billion dollar in 2012 to finance its drilling activities. If you look at the production data you find that most of the cash flow is generated in the first two years of operations, which means that the amount of borrowing should not be necessary. (A conventional player that develops a field is swimming in cash after a few years. The fact that Range isn't should tell you what you need to know.)
And before you get too excited please note that the BOE number includes a 6:1 BTU conversion rate, not the 30:1 price ratio. Add to that the 70%-90% depletion over the first year for gas and you have a huge problem with making the story work when explaining the cash flows. Gas wells need to pay for themselves very quickly because the wells drilled two to three years ago generate very little cash for their owners. I am dealing with the oil story because it is more favourable to your side of the argument. Because oil can be transported easily the prices have not gone down and producers are able to get a much better deal. The problem is that the math does not work.
http://www.afr.com/r/2009-2014/AFR/2013/05/24/Photos/333ed700-c422-11e2-821c-f7d31f9028fe_25p27sm_joye.png
The link above shows a graphic that is part of an article on the elusiveness of shale profit and is part of an analysis of one of the companies that you mentioned, Continental Resources. As Mr. Joye writes at the end of this article, "Continental says their average Bakken well will yield 600,000 barrels of oil. Yet the US Geological Survey says lifetime production of a Bakken well is between 64,000 and 241,000 barrels. That’s the difference between a revolution and a scam."
Delingpole is a comedy writer who is trying to position himself as the British Ann Coulter.
I think that his role is to explain to the public just how stupid and hypocritical the simpletons at the IPCC happen to be. It is somewhat ironic and sad that in the case of shale gas he is concentrating so hard on the errors made the the green lobby that he missed the fact that much of his support comes from self interested people within the industry. He missed the fact that while shale makes sense in a few of the core areas of many formations those areas have too little oil and gas to provide a solution for the supply side problems that are facing us today. As such he is doing a disservice to a public that needs to know that there is no plan B that will get us from the point when Hubbert's Peak becomes evident in the rear view mirror to the point where a viable solution is found.
michel, you might not be able to agree with Rand's Objectivist philosophy. That's your right. But for you to say that Rand didn't have "anything you could call a philosphical idea", says boat loads about YOU.
That our friend's ideology gets in his way is not a surprise. That should tell us what we need to know about HIM.
@michel.
I didn't read your nonsense until I saw the reply from vangel @ 3:52 pm.
If you admire her as political theorist, read Robert Conquest's history of the Great Terror. Because that or the Third Reich is where she is coming from.
You obviously have not read a thing she wrote. No one who actually read her works could misunderstand her fictional plots or her philosophy and honestly connect her with support for any totalitarian regime or slave society, much less the Third Reich.
Try her first novel: "We, The Living." It is a fictionalized account of her growing up in and escape from Lenin's Russia / USSR.
But if We, the Living is too much for you to read, try this courtroom speech of Howard Roark's, from The Fountainhead.
Link to nasonart.com LifeLessons
It begins:
“Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth.
And ends with;
“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.
“I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.
“It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
“I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man’s creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who’re destroying the world.
“I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.
“I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give the ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place."
It's partly a matter of confidence. If the shale gas companies show confidence the money keeps rolling in. Lose that confidence and it all falls apart. If they give up their leases, their investors will realise the bubble has burst and the money flow will stop.
You are right my friend. But an objective individual should be able to look at the data and see reality for what it is. From my perspective this is an exact replay of the tech bubble when equipment makers like Nortel showed in their filings's footnotes that they were not making any money even as the accounting assumptions allowed them to report profits. When the CEOs were talking about facilities that had no economic value but those facilities were shown to be worth billions on the balance sheets the alarm bells should have gone off. And they did for some of the analysts. The problem was that nobody was listening because the temptation of make believe riches made by little in the way of effort was too great for most to resist.
@Vangel 4:14pm
Your own afr link says that Continental Resources is depreciating only 25% of its capital expenditure after 3 years when 50% EUR production is over in first 3 years.
Two explainations: Continental Resources, like others, spends capital on more than wells. It spends it on facilities, its own drilling rigs and fracking trucks. These have longer lives than individual wells.
The other explaination is a bit into the accounting. A good deal of the drilling of a well is classifiied as "Intangible Drilling Cost". This is Capital Expenditure that can be Expensed, not Depreciated.
As for USGS estimates.... well, the government couldn't be wrong or out of date, could they? /sarc.
Two explainations: Continental Resources, like others, spends capital on more than wells. It spends it on facilities, its own drilling rigs and fracking trucks. These have longer lives than individual wells.
The conference calls and filings have indicated that the 'other' category is tiny compared to drilling and exploration costs. You are beginning to look a lot like the Nortel true believers. Minutes after I would point out something wrong with the accounting assumptions someone would come up with a nice explanation that was created without looking at the actual filings. Like I said before, I have no dog in this race and could care less about what actually happens from a personal investment angle. I do not short anything and would like to see the coal players that interest me come down in price before I pick up any of the shares. My primary interest is to understand reality as it is and right now I am not very confident with the shale promotion side of the argument.
Note the irony here. Most of the promoters of shale are using exactly the same tactics as the AGW promoters and the green industry. Yet, the people who were able to see through the positions taken by the AGW side are somehow blind to the flaws in the positions taken by the shale promoters. The trick is to approach any of these debates knowing that what we think we know may be wrong and to go to the original data. That may not be easy or convenient but it is clearly informative, education, and ultimately more accurate.
Vangel
Any particular reason for ignoring my comments on your contribution yesterday?
Aug 19, 2013 at 12:10 PM | Registered CommenterDung
and
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michel,
Thanks for your comment.
Re: your references saying Rand is other than inimical to fascism => You have not read her extensive non-fiction work (which is much more extensive than her fiction) which is all consistently devastating analyses of the irrational philosophies that form the basis of such concepts in social organization as: socialism; authoritarianism; collectivism; fascism; communism; totalitarianism; altruism. As to interpreting her fiction work as supporting any of those concepts, I am very curious to see any direct quote (shown in context to the body of one of her novels) that you interpret as supporting any of those social organizational concepts.
Re: as to your 'nutter' name-calling theme=> Your 'nutter' name-calling says that anyone is a 'nutter' who finds significant rational value in both the extensive philosophic analysis by Rand and in her famously successful fiction works that highlights / portrays it. Clearly, your 'nutter' theme serves no logical purpose; it is merely the most crude of smearing techniques. Your 'nutter' name-calling theme just allows us a reasonable basis for a highly perceptive insight into the level of your philosophic development.
Re: your assessment of Rand's sexual life=> It is as relevant to the same level as would a public exposure of your private sexual life bears on your positions on this comment thread. One can easily see in your sex discussion a continuation of your 'nutter' name calling theme.
Finally, the rational nature of human beings and therefore the science achieved because of it is essential to climate science and to its discussion on blogs like this. Rand's value is to help shine light on understanding the nature and importance of that rational capability through philosophic analysis. Her still popular novels continue to inspire the study of philosophy; a renaissance can yet be assisted by them.
John
Guys, I have read Rand's non-fiction. Its not philosophy. If you want to understand what philosophy is and is not, you could start with Russell's History of Western Philosophy.
Rand was a cult leader. Her personal life is not relevant in one sense - its not about her lovers or her tastes. That is indeed irrelevant.
What is relevant is that she used her position as cult leader to exploit her followers. In her case it was sexually. This expoitation is relevant. Its not about her sex life. Its about exploitation. If she had used her position to exploit them financially it would also have been relevant and in exactly the same way.
There are dreadful similarities between the nutters of AGW and Rand. In their case opposition is described as being 'anti-science'. Dissenters are called 'deniers'. In her case to oppose her whims was to be against Reason itself.
Did she oppose something called 'collectivism'? Its never clear from her writing what exactly this is, nor is it clear what 'altruism' is. I do not think she understood what philosophical clarity consists of, how to define a term or construct an argument.
You will find no diagnosis of the former Soviet Union in her writings. That would have required an attention to historical, social and economic detail she was incapable of. What existed in the former Soviet Union was in fact something like the ideal state that Rand's thinking drifts towards, it would just have been run by different people on different lines. But the 'looters' would still in the end have gone to the camps.
Read Whittaker Chambers. Not a nice man, not a trustworthy man. But his review is penetrating and right, and comes from a seriously conservative perspective.
Read what Rothbard had to say, here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/understanding-ayn-randianism/
It was a noxious cult while she was alive, and its sad that she is still taken seriously by otherwise intelligent people.
And by the way, read William F Buckley - a genuine conservative. The ironic thing is that when American conservatism was an intellectual force to be reckoned with, Randism was properly evaluated as a fringe and cult movement, comparable in fact to the John Birch Society.
http://critiques.us/wiki/William_Buckley_on_Ayn_Rand
The influence in the Republican Party of today of fringe cult attitudes (they cannot really be called ideas) that were drummed out by people like Buckley and Rothbard in the sixties and seventies of the last century is a disaster, both intellectually and politically. Its comparable to what would have happened if Militant had taken over the Labour Party and substituted its slogans for policy. It is far, far worse than what did in fact happen to Labour under the leadership of the honourable but misguided and ineffectual Michael Foot.
If you admire Thatcher, you should shudder at Rand and her followers. There is no British politician or publicist on the right (one avoids calling her a thinker) comparable to Rand, and that is a great compliment to British political culture. Thatcher one might disagree with, but she had a core set of values which were rooted in the British democratic tradition. Not like Rand.
http://critiques.us/wiki/William_Buckley_on_Ayn_Rand
@michel: Guys, I have read Rand's non-fiction. Its not philosophy. .....
There is no point in reading further. We are writing different languages. Words without commonality of meaning.
Are you guys for real? You mean to tell me you think opposition to fracking is the result of ulterior motives and baseless eco-evangelism? You think there is absolutely no basis for the complete ruination of ground water? You guys are wacko. Complete phukkin nutters.
"Delingpole is a comedy writer who is trying to position himself as the British Ann Coulter.
God created Ann Coulter to prove that there is nothing too evil, too venal, too cruel, too moronic, too comically fiendish or dastardly that the demented legions of right wing crazies won't descend upon like a plague of locusts and devour to the last morsel."
This is why man will become extinct. Long before AGW becomes a problem our seas will have mostly rub out of and become uninhabitable to fish. Our ground water become polluted over large areas. Our food poisonous for the masses. Man will become a caricature of a living thing. And finally, only a caricature.
There are geological differences between the US shale gas plays and the potential UK plays.
That is true but even if the UK plays were identical the economics would still be unfavourable for all but the few wells that can be drilled in the core areas. While the US shale industry has some fabulous wells that exceeded expectations the average well is a destroyer of capital.
To think in terms of the extinction of man kind, think of a dystopian future like Elysium, then think of documentaries like "Working Man's Death", "Seeds of Death", "Gasland" and actually a whole host of documentaries with similar and relevant themes like "The Cove" and "End of the Line" and documentaries that explain mechanisms of finance like "Secret City". And your response? "Yea, Go Baby!" And Why? I speculate that its cause is arrogance and conceit grown out of an obtuse mindset. It would have to be obtuse because the evidence for destruction is overwhelming. And it is arrogance and conceit ever since man learned to say "It is my God given right."
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Whereas you, replicant, are a danger only to yourself.
Nurse, come and collect him. He's forgotten his meds again.
The typical first responder makes a devastation counter argument.