[ARABNEWS] It is no longer a issue of whispering in the corridors of the oil industry. It is now part of public debate. Is Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... launching an oil price war in tandem with the US to undermine or at least weaken energy dependent adversaries Russia and Iran?
The latest to join this discussion is the notable New York Times
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
10/25/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
The disaster was not only in the financial bleeding of those oil producing states, but many of them have what was known as stripper wells that bump between 5, 000 -- 10, 000 bpd. And if such wells are closed because of the low prices, they would never be opened again.
Total bullshi*! Firstly, 5-10k bpd does not fit my definition of a stripper well. Higher oil prices result in increased production (pump jacks going up and down - new drilling, etc, supply/demand thingy) Lower oil prices can result in lower production wells not being pumped, or pumped as often. That does necessarily mean the wells are capped. Farmers also store corn and soybeans in large, galvanized bins when the prices go down.
#2
Don't understand the 5-10,000 bopd stripper well thing either, Besoeker. 0.5 - 10 bopd is more like it. With a million of them out there, it does add up.
We indeed can shut them in if prices get lower than the actual direct lifting costs, and often re-open them later. But not much later - lease terms require sustained production to retain the lease, and regulations require inactive wells be permanently abandoned. 90 - 180 days are common (though not universal) limits on the former and 1-3 years on the latter.
[ARABNEWS] Years of knowing former Yemeni President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... has enabled this writer to better understand his tactics. One thing is for sure that Saleh is not credible and mainly relies on deception.
Saleh successfully managed to mislead the Americans, his Gulf allies, Iraqis and Syrians. The biggest victims of his deception were the political and tribal leaders in Yemen.
It was his manipulative tactics that enabled him to keep leading a country of contradictions and competitors. Saleh is the director of the events taking place for the past eight weeks in Yemen. The Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to Americaâ¢, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... takeover of Yemen's major cities with minimal confrontation from the government and tribal troops has left many astonished.
Houthis, by the way, have nothing to do with the self-ascribed Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) but are a tribal militia with strongholds in the north of Yemen. It was very unlikely for them to expand influence to the country's southwest without the help of any ally.
The element of surprise in the Houthis' capture of major cities appeared to have blunted the analytical skills of many. In addition to that, many other factors helped mislead the public opinion into believing the Houthi narrative.
Saleh's ex-employees spread false information about an alliance between Houthi rebels and the sitting president of the country and drag the name of UN International Envoy Jamal Benomar into the crisis.
These reports gaining currency in the mainstream media are not logical. While one can agree that Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is not capable enough to manage the country during the current crises, it is clear that he is not a fool to hand over the keys of the capital to his enemy. Similarly, the involvement of UN international envoy in this game is also far-fetched.
In this writer's opinion, whenever there is a problem in Yemen, Saleh is behind it. From unrest to spreading of rumors, the former president has a role to play in everything occurring in Yemen.
Saleh may have been ousted, but he still manages the institutions of the old state, as he still has influence over most of the military and security establishments. It's through these foundations that he is trying to overthrow the regime that replaced him and will continue to try to sabotage Yemen, hoping to return as the president.
He might not know that in the process of sabotaging the current situation, he is ruining the future of his son, Ahmed, who is seen as a good person and a potential leader in the future.
Before the current destruction, it would have been possible for Saleh's party to return to power in two transitional years, as it wasn't uprooted. But he ruined this opportunity by teaming up with the Houthis to topple the current regime.
Rather than praising God for staying alive in a soft transition of power in which he was granted partisan rights and his family was allowed to work in the government, Saleh is still plotting and conspiring to spread chaos in Sanaa. He should learn from the events in Libya and from the fate of Qadaffy.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/25/2014 00:00 ||
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Donetsk militias and their leaders have been warning that Kiev is planning a new assault on Donetsk for at least three weeks. All the signs are there for an attack, and are so blatant that even the Donetsk political leadership admits they expect an attack soon.
Most pro Russian militias say they expect an attack on or just after election day, October 26th.
Rantburg.com correspondent Chris Covert, who has been covering the hot part of this conflict since mid August details the coming attack and what to expect.
On the Rantburg.com Sunday Morning Coffee Pot, for Sunday October 26th, 2014
[IsraelTimes] Whether the violence in Jerusalem since the gruesome murder of Muhammad Abu-Khdeir in July amounts to a Third Intifada will only be clear in hindsight. But what the murder on Wednesday of Chaya Zissel Braun has shown, beyond the ruthlessness of the act and the enduring tension in Jerusalem, is the shrewdness of Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,'s strategy of overthrowing the Paleostinian Authority in the West Bank by, of all things, persistently killing innocent Israelis.
That is one of the ways Israel should view the recent developments in Jerusalem. When Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, a Hamas member and relative of a former head of the organization's armed wing, turned his car into a lethal weapon on Wednesday, he was, whether by design or not, acting exactly according to the alleged Hamas coup plans exposed in August.
At the time, the Shin Bet said that it had exposed a Hamas plan to "overthrow the Paleostinian Authority and seize control of Judea and Samaria."
Many pictured a coup: the surrounding of the Muqata and the deposing of the chairman of the Paleostinian Authority. But what the Shin Bet actually uncovered was a plan, coordinated from Hamas headquarters in Turkey, to establish a loose network of terror cells, comprising a total of 93 operatives, which would "destabilize the security situation in the West Bank and carry out a string of grave attacks in Israel."
The Shin Bet left the rest unsaid: Israel, as happened in Gazoo, would assign blame to the PA, seethe, and finally retaliate, weakening the PA to the point that Hamas could step in and finish it off.
And the reactions to the terror attack were, in fact, unusually harsh and directed squarely at PA President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... . Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, speaking from Washington, said that "there is none, nor has there ever been, in the Paleostinian Authority a culture of peace, but rather a culture of incitement and jihad against Jews."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assigned blame to Hamas, but also to Abbas, "who just a few days ago incited attacks on Jews in Jerusalem," as he said in a statement.
Hamas, of course, cannot take all of the credit for the roiling tension and constant drip of violence in the northern part of the city since the July murder. Other forces are at work, too ‐ the friction on the Temple Mount and the status quo that leaves many Arab residents of East Jerusalem cut off from the West Bank and also unaffiliated, at least by citizenship, with Israel. Nonetheless, it is squarely within the organization's interest to perpetuate instability so that even a random spark could light the fire of a third intifada.
"I say this and I repeat, I do not recognize an intifada," Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch insisted Wednesday after the terror attack.
Instead, he said, there was "a rise of incidents" of late but one that, with the help of an increased police presence in the capital, "we will overcome."
For Aharonovitch and the Israel Police, an organization beset by widespread malfeasance, that will be a tall order, and one hopefully achieved before the fire hops the fence and spreads to the West Bank.
[Frontpage] However the US campaign against ISIS goes, the beneficiaries will be its Sunni Muslim allies who are also doubling as our allies.
...Islamic terrorism benefits Muslims directly and indirectly. The direct benefits are obvious. The indirect benefits are more subtle. Whether it’s ISIS and the FSA, Al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, the "extremist" mosques that openly preach death and the "moderate" mosques that dress it up a little, Islamic violence benefits both sides in the game of "Good Caliph" and "Bad Caliph".
Islamic "extremism" creates a market for "moderates". The more bombs go off, the more the affected countries scramble to ally with cooler heads who claim to be able to defuse the anger of the radicals.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ARABNEWS] It is no longer a issue of whispering in the corridors of the oil industry. It is now part of public debate. Is 
[ARABNEWS] Years of knowing former Yemeni President 
[IsraelTimes] Whether the violence in Jerusalem since the gruesome murder of Muhammad Abu-Khdeir in July amounts to a Third Intifada will only be clear in hindsight. But what the murder on Wednesday of Chaya Zissel Braun has shown, beyond the ruthlessness of the act and the enduring tension in Jerusalem, is the shrewdness of 
