kenneal - lagger wrote:If the government insulated our homes properly we wouldn't need so much gas. Such insulation could reduce the national requirement by 30% at least on the basis that 40% of gas is used in home heating and an 80% saving is possible.
Instead of the government taking money off people and then spending some of it on insulating homes of the same people, couldn't the people themselves use their money to insulate their homes?
PS - I'm a big fan of very small government given that taxation is theft.
kenneal - lagger wrote:If the government insulated our homes properly we wouldn't need so much gas. Such insulation could reduce the national requirement by 30% at least on the basis that 40% of gas is used in home heating and an 80% saving is possible.
Instead of the government taking money off people and then spending some of it on insulating homes of the same people, couldn't the people themselves use their money to insulate their homes?
PS - I'm a big fan of very small government given that taxation is theft.
They should pay for it by Quantitative Easing. i.e. they should just print the damn stuff like they did to bail out the banks. The situation is just as bad as it was when they bailed their mates out.
The "economics" of the situation just don't stack up for most people because economics is broken and doesn't take into account environmental issues. We have an environmental imperative to act on climate change so either we readjust all economics to make it feasible for everyone to do or the government just prints the money and gets on with sorting the situation out. I don't think that we have the time to sort economics out but the government can conjour up the money at the flick of a mouse switch.
It's a matter of feeding printed money in at the bottom and taxing it out at the top, boisdevie. In other words, too sensible to ever happen.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
boisdevie wrote:
PS - I'm a big fan of very small government given that taxation is theft.
While many a tax dollar is wasted it can not be said that all taxation is theft.
Would you like to live in a community with no public roads, National defense, police protection, or ambulance service to name a few legitimate uses of tax dollars.
The problem is finding elected officials to vote for that will only raise and spend the taxes that are really worthwhile. They are scarcer then hens teeth.
I am surprised in the windy (and occasionally sunny) UK someone has not invented a rooftop mounted wind and/or solar powered heat pump to replace or alleviate gas heating. On a cloudy day in Australia yesterday my water was still solar heated to 42 degC. I am all for the ending of gas power but there are a lot of nasty ruthless people in that industry who are very self interested and can buy a lot of friends.
I was very interested in one of the links posted earlier on this thread on the Drill or Drop website that the Egmanton oil field is still producing oil (about 240 m^3 last year so the Saudis can sleep easy). It has been there all my life, I was born there, and one of my earliest memories as a naughty child was going up to what was must have been an injection well, turning a wheel valve and seeing an oily black watery liquid shooting out the end of a pipe nearly hitting my 5 year old partner in crime.
As the shale play matures, the field gets crowded, the sweet spots are all drilled, and some of these operational problems begin to mushroom. “Declining well productivity in some plays, despite application of better technology, are a prelude to what will eventually happen in all plays: production will fall as costs rise,� Hughes said. “Assuming shale production can grow forever based on ever-improving technology is a mistake—geology will ultimately dictate the costs and quantity of resources that can be recovered.�
There are already examples of this scenario unfolding. The Eagle Ford and Bakken, for instance, are both “mature plays,� Hughes argues, in which the best acreage has been picked over. Better technology and an intensification of drilling techniques have arrested decline, and even led to a renewed increase in production. But ultimate recovery won’t be any higher; drilling techniques merely allow “the play to be drained with fewer wells,� Hughes said. And in the case of the Eagle Ford, “there appears to be significant deterioration in longer-term well productivity through overcrowding of wells in sweet spots, resulting in well interference and/or drilling in more marginal areas that are outside of sweet-spots within counties.�
In other words, a more aggressive drilling approach just frontloads production, and leads to exhaustion sooner. “Technology improvements appear to have hit the law of diminishing returns in terms of increasing production—they cannot reverse the realities of over-crowded wells and geology,� Hughes said.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
Early financial reports from Q1 in 2019 demonstrate that fracking companies are still losing money hand over fist. It also appears that investors are finally waking up to the idea that this may never be any major returns on investment.
The industry kept humming along over the past few years, riding out multiple downturns due to periodic reinjections of capital from Wall Street. But, investors are beginning to sour on shale drillers. Very little fresh capital has been raised by shale companies, either from new equity or bond issuance, since late last year, according to IEEFA and Sightline.
The industry now finds itself at a cross roads. With capital markets beginning to shun shale drillers, consolidation is likely the direction the industry will take. The best bet for struggling companies now is to find a willing buyer.
But several oil majors have recently said that shale drillers are fooling themselves with their asking prices. “Most of the things we see tend to look overpriced, and we have tried to maintain cool heads,� Royal Dutch Shell’s CFO Jessica Uhl said on Tuesday, according to Argus Media. Exxon’s CEO Darren Woods echoed that, saying last week that there is “not always alignment among buyers and sellers.� ConocoPhillips’ chief executive Ryan Lance said there are “a lot of bid-ask issues in the market today,� adding that an “expectations change� will be needed before more M&A can occur.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
Investors have become sick and tired of the "Jam tomorrow" promise yet every year the shale patch turns in "Negative Cash Flow" economic results. A financial loss is a financial loss no matter how you try to dress it up.
The reluctance of investors to keep pouring money in through loans, IPOs etc is one thing.
It is when they start heading for the exits on masse is quite another.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
The sooner it happens, the better. Because then we can talk about the really cool part of oil and gas development, the resulting economics!
Oh what, you mean bankruptcy followed by a bailout?
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
ReserveGrowthRulz wrote:
The sooner it happens, the better. Because then we can talk about the really cool part of oil and gas development, the resulting economics!
Oh what, you mean bankruptcy followed by a bailout?
No.
Last edited by ReserveGrowthRulz on 17 Jun 2020, 03:55, edited 1 time in total.
To stop oil production we will either have to find ways of reducing demand in concert with reducing supply so that prices remain low and shale oil remains a loser or we have to make it illegal to explore for more. Until the banking system, which drives economic growth, changes or loses its political power, we have no chance of stopping oil production for the benefit of the environment politically.
Last edited by kenneal - lagger on 31 Jul 2019, 20:34, edited 1 time in total.
kenneal - lagger wrote:To stop oil production we will either have to find ways of reducing demand in concert with reducing supply so that prices remain low and shale oil remains a loser or we have to make it illegal to explore for more.
Currently, peak demand scenarios are the most commonly accepted future pathway among the think tanks and private analysis/market watching organizations.
Last edited by ReserveGrowthRulz on 17 Jun 2020, 03:56, edited 1 time in total.
