A Bunch of Subversives in Central Maine (Portland, South Portland: lease, buying)

[Northern Maine Land Man]

As I said, let the owners decide. Maine has the highest percentage of private land in the nation. It drives big government control freaks nuts. That statistic is in decline though as more and more land is contaminated with all kinds of easements, covenants codicils and perpetual restrictions. There is still private land to be had, but it is becoming scarce. Scarcity brings higher demand.

As to energy, we are destroying hydro power in our country, but that could be compensated for by our 200 year supply of natural gas. The world's biggest supply of low sulphur coal is in the grand escalante staircase. Clinton put that out of reach by declaring that sagebrush country a national monument. He did it with a stroke of the pen. As his chief of staff said, "Stroke of the pen; law of the land. Heck of a deal."

Anybody know where the second largest low sulphur coal deposit is? Indonesia. Know who owns it? The Riyadi family. Anybody know who bankrolled Clinton's campaign? Yup, the Riyadi family.

Want to reduce the cost of gasoline? Do away with alcohol in our gasoline. It would improve the environment and prolong the lives of our vehicles.

Our GDP is in decline. We have the lowest percentage of our population employed since 60 years ago. As our economy shrinks and more people lose jobs, other people are making decisions about where they want to be when the EBT cards show a zero balance on the first day of the month. Pssst. It isn't on the outskirts of major cities in Blue states. People are coming to Maine where there are pockets of freedom still to be had.

[IHeartMaine]

Again.....what jobs will an "East/West Highway" bring???

[beltrams]

Originally Posted by Coaster

Absolutely excellent and timely post, Beltrams! Bravo.

Thank you, but you have written similarly about such subjects yourself, if I recall correctly.

By the way, I noticed my second link is incorrect and broken. This story is what I meant to link to.

[beltrams]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

As to energy, we are destroying hydro power in our country, but that could be compensated for by our 200 year supply of natural gas. The world's biggest supply of low sulphur coal is in the grand escalante staircase. Clinton put that out of reach by declaring that sagebrush country a national monument. He did it with a stroke of the pen. As his chief of staff said, "Stroke of the pen; law of the land. Heck of a deal."

I'm sorry, but there is no 200 year supply of natural gas. The most widely quoted large figure is but 100 years' worth and if it were to replace oil on a BTU for BTU basis, the gas supply drops to but about 24 years.

The thing is, as I point to in my last post, the remaining oil and gas is proving very costly to develop and produce and as we've also seen, the world economy is having trouble paying for even the oil and natural gas it is using now. Raising oil and natural gas prices even further in order to pay for even higher tech discovery and development methods is out of the economic question. There may well be more oil and gas out in the ground, but if we cannot afford to pay $200, $300 or more per bbl for oil, or pay $15 or $20 per MBTU for gas, it all might as well sit in the ground as it's an academic question at that point.

It's an open question as to whether we'll even get enough natural gas back into storage before next winter hits, we used so much this past winter. Indeed, if a hot summer occurs, we may not replenish national natural gas stockpiles because of how much natural gas is now used for power generation.

[Maineac]

One should apparently never let the truth get in the way of parroting various disproven political arguments, nor, in particular, in the way of Peter Vigue's plan to retire a billionaire. If you can't parrot what is fed to you verbatim, with new additions to the repertoire nearly weekly, you just aren't a good soldier against Agenda 21 and those damn Democrat, Liberal Progressives or the Republicans who don't vote for the way they're told. Those independents, like me, who often vote a split ticket also need to be shouted down. Trouble is, when I hear a candidate go off the common sense reservation, I head in the other direction. Poliquin is already there.

[Mark S.]

Originally Posted by IHeartMaine

Again.....what jobs will an "East/West Highway" bring???

It will bring a bunch of highway construction jobs for a few years and funnel millions of tax dollars into the coffers of billionaires.

[Coaster]

Originally Posted by beltrams

Thank you, but you have written similarly about such subjects yourself, if I recall correctly.

By the way, I noticed my second link is incorrect and broken. This story is what I meant to link to.

Yes, I have written quite a bit on Peak Oil topics here and elsewhere, to the point where I feel like a broken record sometimes. It's good to see others speaking on the same subject, especially as clearly as you have.

BTW, I highly recommend Gail Tverberg's (AKA Gail the Actuary) latest essay at Our Finite World, Converging Energy Crises. Joe Costello over at Naked Capitalism just posted a cogent analysis of the major problems now facing the oil industry here.

It amazes me that people are still talking about huge new highway construction projects at a time when any objective analysis of energy supplies must conclude that the days of long-distance trucking are almost at an end. As Costello notes:

Globally, the production of conventional oil – “black gold, Texas Tea” – plateaued ten years ago at around 75 million barrels per day. Meanwhile “unconventional” oil and oil substitutes such as Natural Gas Liquids, have seen the biggest growth in oil accounting. However, they are neither cheap or simple substitutes for crude.

ETA: The massive Monterey Shale formation in California, which was supposed to be the tight oil megafield rescuing America from depletion, was recently downgraded by a full 96 percent from earlier estimates. From the LA Times:

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California's vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national "black gold mine" of petroleum.

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.

[Maineac]

But, but . . . these protesting grandmothers are a bunch of socialist - nay, communist - old ladies who WANT the Maine economy to fail, and it WILL if we don't give 20,000 acres to Cianbro for an E/W highway for Canadian trade for Irving Oil, ultimately to be owned by Chinese interests. At least that's how these grandmothers have their goal of destroying the Maine economy plotted out - clearly, there can be no other reason for standing against cutting a 500' foot wide scar across the State of Maine.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

beltrams makes a good point on the miro-economic level, but misses the causative factors.

"Raising oil and natural gas prices even further in order to pay for even higher tech discovery and development methods is out of the economic question. There may well be more oil and gas out in the ground, but if we cannot afford to pay $200, $300 or more per bbl for oil, or pay $15 or $20 per MBTU for gas, it all might as well sit in the ground as it's an academic question at that point."

If things continue as planned, we could well see $10 a gallon gasoline. If that happens, you will still be able to buy gas at 29 cents a gallon as advertised at a gas station in Washington State today. It is priced at 29 cents a gallon payable in pre-1964 dimes, quarters and halves. You see, inflation is a tax. We may soon see a situation like the Jimmy Carter years when interest rates on home mortgages were 18% and inflation was 15%. We know the remedy for such things, but Joe Sixpack will need to feel the pain before he turns off Dancing With the Stars and gets off the couch.

I remember when oil was $3 a barrel. We were shipping F-4 attack fighter/bombers to Israel. Saudi Arabia wanted some to balance the power in the Middle East. Henry Kissinger spoke with the Saudis and said that politics in the USA would not allow us to ship F-4s to the Saudis as foreign aid.

The Saudis said they didn't have the money to buy F-4s. Henry said to raise the price of oil to $30 a barrel.

But, nobody would buy our oil, said the Saudis.

Henry said they ought to get together with the other producers and set a price. OPEC was born, compliments of Henry Kissinger, and Americans waited in gas lines or bought gas every other day. The Saudis got their military jets.

-break-

Will you admit that we have a 200 year supply of rain? Yet we are tearing out hydroelectric dams all over our country.

[mensaguy]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

<snip> Henry Kissinger spoke with the Saudis and said that politics in the USA would not allow us to ship F-4s to the Saudis as foreign aid.

The Saudis said they didn't have the money to buy F-4s. Henry said to raise the price of oil to $30 a barrel.

But, nobody would buy our oil, said the Saudis.

Henry said they ought to get together with the other producers and set a price. OPEC was born, compliments of Henry Kissinger, and Americans waited in gas lines or bought gas every other day. The Saudis got their military jets.

-break-

Go ahead and post a link to the YouTube recording of this Kissinger conversation. I want to watch the whole thing.