----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 7:32
AM
Subject: [cia-drugs] No Reason For High
Gas Prices
From 2000 to 2004 I used to read Platt's Oil fairly often and
several Hightower reports every morning.
Hightower actually said once
that there was no change in oil supply or on-shore inventory to explain why
gasoline prices were rising.
Gasoline prices have continued to rise,
but you have not read a single story which gives objective data to show that
the oil supply or on-shore inventory has been altered by wars in Afghanistan,
Iraq, or Lebanon. Have you? Didn't think so. What did you think, Mike
Ruppert's Peak Oil scare explained today's gasoline prices? Or
environmentalist concerns that falsely so-called fossil fuel was going to be
in short supply some day by and by?
I give you an example of a story
which does explain an instance of reduced supply. And you remember Hurricanes
Katrina and especially Rita might have altered supply for a few days. But
neither last year's hurricane story or this story are about war-related oil
supply reductions. Iraq was under sanctions until the US invadd in 2003, and
Iraq's oil capacity has not been reduced or increased much since the
invasion.
Admit it, you WERE NOT THINKING. What numbed your mind out
every time you paid higher prices for gasoline? What is the NEURO-LINGUISTIC
BASIS for our collective unconsciousness? How did Goebbels do it? George Bush
and Sean Hannity say,"911 changed everything", but why are oil and gasoline
prices so high if the US supply of oil has not changed in MANY
YEARS?
Curious? The answer is that oil companies have raised prices.
That's all. And? And nothing. Congress did not investigate "price gouging".
Congress did not fine oil companies billions to recover what they looted from
us. They used to do that.
-Bob
D
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700131_pf.html
Pipeline Closure Sends Oil Higher
BP to Halt
Production of 400,000 Barrels a Day in Alaska
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday,
August 8, 2006; A01
After noticing an oil spill on a deserted stretch of frozen road in
Alaska's North Slope in early March, workers needed three days to find the
quarter-inch-wide hole in a pipeline, just where it dipped into a culvert to
allow the caribou to pass.
On Sunday, five months after that unwelcome discovery, BP PLC conceded that
the tiny hole was part of a widespread corrosion problem that will force it to
replace 16 miles of a 22-mile pipeline from Prudhoe Bay and to shut down
400,000 barrels a day of production from the largest oil field in the United
States.
News that BP would have to suspend production equal to 8 percent of U.S.
petroleum output for an indefinite period helped push the price of crude oil
up by 3 percent yesterday, to $76.98 a barrel on the New York Mercantile
Exchange. The price jump underlined the fragility of world oil markets,
already anxious about the thin cushion between global supply and demand and
potential threats to flows from Iran, Nigeria, Iraq and the hurricane-prone
Gulf of Mexico.
Shutting down the field will take three to five days, BP said, and Merrill Lynch & Co. oil analyst John P. Herrlin said that
the repairs would take "a minimum of two to three months," dealing another
blow to the chances of motorists getting relief from high gasoline prices
anytime soon.
Alaskan crude oil usually goes to refineries on the West Coast, where there
is enough surplus to last about two weeks, analysts said. After that, some
refiners will have to scramble to line up new supplies.
Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said yesterday that the Bush
administration would consider releasing supplies from the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve, though getting that oil from the salt caverns along the Gulf of
Mexico to the West Coast would take some time or involve some swaps.
BP's announcement also gave another black eye to a firm that has fashioned
an image as a responsible, environmentally concerned company, and it drew new
criticism from pipeline experts and environmentalists who have been saying for
years that the company had failed to do the maintenance needed to keep the
pipeline free from sludge and protect it from corrosion in the harsh Alaska
conditions. The Environmental Protection Agency has launched a criminal probe
to determine whether the company was negligent in managing the pipeline, said
sources who had talked to government investigators.
"They have known about these problems for a long time and promised for many
years to fix them, and they haven't done so," said Peter van Tuyn, an
environmental lawyer based in Anchorage.
Thomas J. Barrett, head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration, visited BP's operations in early July and said in a July 26
letter to Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) that he was "disappointed by the lack
of progress BP had made" since the agency had ordered repairs and an analysis
on March 15, after the spill was discovered.
There are 1,100 miles of pipelines in Alaska's North Slope, most of them
small lines that lead into three major, 36-inch-diameter transit lines called
Prudhoe West, where the March leak occurred; Prudhoe East, which was closed on
Sunday; and Lisburne. BP operates the pipelines and owns about 26 percent of
Prudhoe Bay; Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips Co. are the other major shareholders. These
pipelines in turn feed into the 800-mile-long, 48-inch-diameter Trans Alaska
Pipeline.
The oil companies have to regularly clean the lines to prevent a sludge of
sand and solid residue from building up, and they must monitor the aboveground
lines to detect corrosion in the harsh Arctic climate. To clean the pipelines,
they usually use a device known as a "pig" because of the screeching noise it
makes as it works its way through the line. A separate "smart pig" is used to
detect weak spots in the pipeline.
Steve Marshall, president of the BP subsidiary BP Exploration Alaska Inc.,
said yesterday that BP had discovered 16 "anomalies" in 12 locations after
inspecting about 40 percent of the 22-mile of transit lines. In some places,
corrosion had eaten away more than 70 percent of the 3/8 -inch pipeline wall.
In one spot, the company said it found a leak of four to five barrels.
At the center of the criticism involving BP is the decision by the world's
second-largest publicly traded oil company to let seven years go by without
using a smart pig on the pipeline that sprung a leak in March. The pipeline
segment closed Sunday was last inspected with a smart pig in 1992, before it
was acquired by BP, a company spokesman said.
Transportation Department regulations say that higher-pressure pipelines
should be inspected this way every five years, at least. If companies delay
pipeline cleaning, accumulations of sludge can make it impossible for a pig to
move through the line.
The buildup of sludge was one reason that BP had failed to fully comply
with the March order from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration, part of the Transportation Department.
"It's almost like a guy who is out of shape, who has been eating
cheeseburgers and whose arteries start getting clogged up and the doctor says
it's time to start exercising," said a congressional aide who spoke on
condition of anonymity because he did not want to appear to be speaking for
his representative. "And the question is how to get back in shape without
having a heart attack."
The Justice Department has asked BP to cut out a 10- to 12-foot section of
pipe where the 270,000-gallon March leak occurred and to give that to the
government for analysis, a source said. But there are thousands of gallons of
oil in that section, creating engineering problems. Next month, after
overnight freezing temperatures return to the area, those engineering problems
could become more severe.
BP chief executive John Browne was in Alaska last week to try to polish the
company's image and apologize for pipeline problems. BP, which used to be
known as British Petroleum, has tried to cultivate an environmentally
friendly image, saying that BP stood for "beyond petroleum." But yesterday an
official from a competing oil company said it stood for "big problems."
"We will not resume operation of the field until we and government
regulators are satisfied that they can be operated safely and pose no threat
to the environment," Robert A. Malone, president of BP America Inc., said in a
statement.
Prudhoe Bay's production level has been slowly declining since it hit a
peak of 1.5 million barrels a day in 1989, and BP has increasingly turned to
new prospects in places such as Russia.
"It's ironic," said Athan Manuel, an oil drilling expert at the Sierra
Club. "This is the company we've had the best relationship with. But maybe
they were taking money out of Alaska, which has aging fields, to put money
elsewhere."
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