What's the Endgame Here?

[PE Scott + 563]

7 minutes ago, DayTrader said:

I'm sure the USA said and thought that every time they went to the ME. How's that panned out? 

Fair enough, but I don't see it being some world wide thing where everyone gets involved. If anything, it will probably be the U.S. wasting a bunch of money and resources unilaterally.

[remake it + 288]

16 minutes ago, PE Scott said:

I'm guessing the killing of an american citizen was the proverbial straw. If Iran had continued without causing physical harm to anyone....I bet it would have been tolerated with out much response by the U.S.

Th US has killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and its regime of renditions and torture is legendary, so what did you say when this type of incident occurred?  

[PE Scott + 563]

1 minute ago, remake it said:

Th US has killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and its regime of renditions and torture is legendary, so what did you say when this type of incident occurred?  

I'd say it happened when I was 4, that multiple regime changes have occurred in the U.S. since then, and that it's hardly important in the current argument.

That being said, in 1988 I think that should absolutely be addressed and responsible parties should be held accountable. Personally, I feel like these are things that require an appropriate response at the time it occurs, not 32 years later.

[remake it + 288]

1 minute ago, PE Scott said:

I'd say it happened when I was 4, that multiple regime changes have occurred in the U.S. since then, and that it's hardly important in the current argument.

Iran's theocracy is unchanged since then and never suffered the fate of Iraq which has been so well protected by the USA that that they turned to their former enemy in Iran to help them rid ISIS from their country.         

[Papillon + 485]

5 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

Which is why I said Xi Jinping will be pissing his pants laughing right now!

I agree sir and maybe if or when this escalates we will still be discussing this phase one deal in 2025? During this time presumably China will be sat on their hands waiting for this deal to magically happen?  /sarc

[Zhong Lu + 845]

16 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

Zhong Lu, you seem to overlook that US foreign policy and the White House are subsumed by, and effectively run by, the American advertising industry.  When the Executive blasts some Iranian warlord to oblivion, it is emulating the urgings of the AT&T Corporation  (huge US telephone company):   "Reach out and touch someone."  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1xrNaTO1bI

"Reach out, touch me."

Like this? 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

5 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

I would add that if there was no oil in this region then I am pretty sure N.America + Europe would all leave them to fight amongst themselves and not care who was in control of the region.

^ this

[NickW + 2,714]

5 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

Thank God for that!

Look I agree the initial agression was Iranian but surely there was an alternative to sending in the missiles?

You may be right with Iran that you just cant trust a word they say, and they may only understand brute force. However we just dont know their nuclear capabilities at present and it is a scary thought that they could launch an attack of the kind you suggest.

The history books show us that an escalation in hostilities such as we are witnessing rarely proves beneficial to the world at large.

Agree totally with this Ron.

I would add that if there was no oil in this region then I am pretty sure N.America + Europe would all leave them to fight amongst themselves and not care who was in control of the region.

 

Just think what alternatives could have been developed /  purchased with that $6 Trillion pissed up the wall on Operations Enduring Carnage and Mayhem. 

[Papillon + 485]

22 minutes ago, NickW said:

Just think what alternatives could have been developed /  purchased with that $6 Trillion pissed up the wall on Operations Enduring Carnage and Mayhem. 

Indeed sir, this is what happens when the apparent care of entire regions happens to coincide with the amount of oil they have. 

I cannot help but notice how easily swayed some here are, as many users have recently stated this region of the planet has been nothing but trouble for centuries and that the USA should leave them to it. Now these same users are praising yet another inevitable escalation and appear to wish for yet another war, as the previous tensions have brought nothing but peace, success and a love for the USA in their eyes. 

I am sure in every one of those cases they believed it to be the last time too and that no more American lives would be lost. They were quite possibly distracted however by presidential statements of ending needless wars, who knows? What I do know is that if the recent embassy event was carried out by almost any other nation, the reaction would have been close to nothing, as DayTrader recently commented. Considering the majority surrounding Mr Trump wished to attack over an unmanned drone several months ago, it is not a surprise at all that they have reacted this way recently. I am also sure that the USA would have been over the moon to have an Iranian drone in their airspace and left it to go on its way ..   /sarc

I would also note that a user recently joked here ''what was God thinking when he put American oil in the ME?'' This comment received laughs from many users, the majority presumably American. Ponder that humour for a moment sir.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Papillon

[remake it + 288]

4 minutes ago, Papillon said:

I am also sure that the USA would have been over the moon to have an Iranian drone in their airspace and left it to go on its way ..   /sarc

Luckily President Trump cannot be accused of double standards, the inference being he had any to begin.

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

Iran attacked the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

This is an act of war.

Trump is not going to roll over and appease the Iranian dictators and send then billions in cash like Obama did.

I suspect the Iran government and the corrupt politicians in the U.S. (both Democrat and Republican) are going to get a severe reality adjustment soon.

[Papillon + 485]

Sir have you made it some form of resolution to not post unless you can mention Obama in some way?  /sarc

Edited January 12, 2020 by Papillon

[NickW + 2,714]

4 minutes ago, Papillon said:

Indeed sir, this is what happens when the apparent care of entire regions happens to coincide with the amount of oil they have. 

I cannot help but notice how easily swayed some here are, as many users have recently stated this region of the planet has been nothing but trouble for centuries and that the USA should leave them to it. Now these same users are praising yet another inevitable escalation and appear to wish for yet another war, as the previous tensions have brought nothing but peace, success and a love for the USA in their eyes. 

I am sure in every one of those cases they believed it to be the last time too and that no more American lives would be lost. They were quite possibly distracted however by presidential statements of ending needless wars, who knows? What I do know is that if the recent embassy event was carried out by almost any other nation, the reaction would have been close to nothing, as DayTrader recently commented. Considering the majority surrounding Mr Trump wished to attack over an unmanned drone several months ago, it is not a surprise at all that they have reacted this way recently. I am also sure that the USA would have been over the moon to have an Iranian drone in their airspace and left it to go on its way ..   /sarc

I would also note that a user recently joked here ''what was God thinking when he put American oil in the ME?'' This comment received laughs from many users, the majority presumably American. Ponder that humour for a moment sir.

$6 Trillion could have build about 1200GW of nuclear (based on $5000 / KW) which would generate about 2.5x the USA's current electricity needs. You can apply similar formulas to wind and solar.

The USA would have effectively bought itself off the oil import hook forever (at least ME oil) by diverting some of its gas into heavy transport. 

[NickW + 2,714]

3 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Iran attacked the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

This is an act of war.

Trump is not going to roll over and appease the Iranian dictators and send then billions in cash like Obama did.

I suspect the Iran government and the corrupt politicians in the U.S. (both Democrat and Republican) are going to get a severe reality adjustment soon.

To be fair that was Iranian cash and a cause of ongoing tensions for decades. 

[remake it + 288]

Just now, NickW said:

$6 Trillion could have build about 1200GW of nuclear (based on $5000 / KW) which would generate about 2.5x the USA's current electricity needs. You can apply similar formulas to wind and solar.

The USA would have effectively bought itself off the oil import hook forever (at least ME oil) by diverting some of its gas into heavy transport. 

They could have built solar farms and UHVDC interconnectors to Europe and weaned the EU off oil - just sayin'.

[NickW + 2,714]

10 minutes ago, remake it said:

They could have built solar farms and UHVDC interconnectors to Europe and weaned the EU off oil - just sayin'.

Europe has piddled enough of its own money on Ops Carnage and Mayhem . Also the banksters bailouts*

*When that happened I said they should protect the domestic investors. Sack the Banksters and put the quantitative easing money into building the Bristol Channel Barrage. This would have provided several %  of the UK's electriricty for the next 200 years, protected the entire wye - severn estuaries from sea flooding and created some real jobs in infrastructure. 

Up to 2010 the costs to the UK alone were 20 billion (sterling) 

Edited January 7, 2020 by NickW

[Marcin + 519]

On 1/6/2020 at 1:18 AM, Zhong Lu said:

Generally you go to war for a reason. So what's the reason? What is the US hoping to accomplish with further expenditures in the Middle East? 

MAGA is just FAGA

[remake it + 288]

In the past 20 years there have been more than 20 incidents at US embassies or consulates and despite the one at Baghdad being at the lowest end of the scale - ie. a mob protest - a scared fool decides that he can invade another country's airspace to provoke war in a different country again.

[D Coyne + 305]

19 hours ago, 0R0 said:

It is not about keeping oil away from China but keeping China from controlling the oil. And you don't shoot China because it has nukes on hupersonic missiles. China is on the verge of a credit crisis and it will translate into a currency crisis. They are having such capital flight that only a small fraction of the trade surplus makes it back to the PBOC books to make payments on dollar debt.  $3.7 Trillion known dollar debt mostly via Hong Kong and Caymans registered borrowers. It is a matter of restricting China's ambitions by pushing them over the edge financially before the natural collapse of the credit structure 5-10 years from now just from demographics alone. Their credit to GDP is 2.75X officially, but with known off balance sheet provincial and Municipal debt, it is 3.7 X GDP. Which would have been fine if China were like Japan and have collected 4X GDP in gross external investment. But Chinese haven't done much of anything there.  Just about $3 T of capital flight which is no longer in Chinese control. 

 

https://www.rystadenergy.com/newsevents/news/press-releases/United-States-cements-its-position-as-world-leader-in-oil-reserves/

The complete figure for the analysis is 293 Gb of both conventional and LTO resources in the US. About 63 year's worth of current level production. The halfway mark would be in 30 years time. By which time oil demand will have shrunk 20% because of global demographic decline alone, and probably less than that through displacement of heavy vessel fuel by LNG and continued gains of market share by EVs. So a decline of 30% in demand. 

oro,

The Rystad estimates are quite inflated,  it is unlikely that US resources will be anything like the Rystad claims.  The USGS mean estimate for tight oil TRR is about 100 Gb for Permian, North Dakota Bakken/Three Forks, and Eagle Ford. Roughly 80% of the TRR will be economically recoverable, I estimate about 10 Gb URR from other US tight oil plays.

So if we assume 2PCX is about 4 times 24 Gb of conventional reserves we get about 96 Gb of conventional reserves, add the 90 Gb of likely tight oil resources and we get 186 Gb of remaining resources, about 225 Gb of resources had been produced at the end of 2018 so this gives us a URR of about 411 Gb, the half way point would be 206 Gb, and we are past that point.

So we need to focus on tight oil resources, those are likely to peak by 2027.  Using the mean USGS estimates for TRR (note that oil pros think these estimates are ridiculously high (or that seems to be the view of Mike Shellman, an oilman with over 40 years experience running his own oil company), I get the following range of scenarios (see chart attached).  The medium scenario is my best guess based on well economics and an oil price scenario where Brent oil prices rise to $90/bo in 2018 US$ by 2025 and then remain at that level for 15 to 20 years, the low scenario assumes lower prices and lower completion rates and the high scenario assumes higher oil prices and higher completion rates.

My guess is that there is about a 3 in 4 chance output of US tight oil will be between the low and high scenarios with a 37.5% chance it will be between the low and medium scenario, and a 37.5% chance it will be between the medium and high scenario. About a 12.5% chance output will be below the low scenario and about a 12.5% chance it will be above the high scenario.

The probabilities are subjective as the future is unknowable.

[remake it + 288]

Here's an introductory salvo to the "end game."

[Papillon + 485]

1 hour ago, remake it said:

In the past 20 years there have been more than 20 incidents at US embassies or consulates and despite the one at Baghdad being at the lowest end of the scale - ie. a mob protest - a scared fool decides that he can invade another country's airspace to provoke war in a different country again.

this ^^^

[ronwagn + 6,290]

6 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

Ron do you dream of natural gas?

Not at night yet but I think about the lost potential almost every day. We are still having wars based around oil when natural gas is available or could potentially be made available very easily. By lumping all fossil fuels together the green movement has equated coal with natural gas. Natural gas is very clean while coal is very dirty. One of the reasons is that the Russians carried on a large propaganda effort against fracking and suckered the greenies into opposing natural gas. IMHO the whole CO2 theory of global warming is fallacious but natural gas has a lower CO2 level than coal or petroleum. Renewables have a role but it is presently more as a helper to fossil fuels. Technological breakthroughs are coming, but can't be relied on to replace fossil fuels anytime soon. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

9 hours ago, Zhong Lu said:

And now they're launching more attacks on said embassy because they see that as an act of war.  So, who is Trump going to bomb now? 

Just hold that thought...the answer to you question should be apparent shortly.

[Zhong Lu + 845]

Well, yeah.  Then the Iranians retaliate more.  I'm gonna make money. 

And for the people  who voted for Trump because "he wouldn't be stupid like Bush"- well, sucks to be them.  

Edited January 8, 2020 by Zhong Lu

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

39 minutes ago, Papillon said:

this ^^^

Yet it is okay for Iran to plan an execute an attack on a foreign embassy located outside of Iran...correct?